Visitation

In Independent Baptist Churches, we called it “visitation”. My sweet, Roman Catholic wife calls it “proselytizing” and she can’t believe that I ever participated in it. But participate, I did.

There were four of us who went on visitation every Thursday evening. Pastor Avery Ellis, his scrawny son, Duff, my father, known to everybody as Big Mike, and me-my name is Rusty Pickett.

We world meet at Lighthouse Baptist Church on Freeman Road, load into the preacher’s Dodge van, and head out. We’d go to some community in Pierce County and go on visitation.

It was a simple process. We’d split up, Big Mike and Pastor Ellis would be a team; Duff and I would be a team. We’d each take a side of the road. We would go door to door, each of us with a pocketful of “Gospel tracts”. Gospel tracts were small brochures with our church’s information and a brief message about our beliefs. We would take turns knocking on doors. If nobody answered after three knocks, we would roll the tract up and stick it in the door handle. If someone answered, I would said “Good evening, my name is Rusty Pickett, and this is my friend, Duff Ellis. We’re from Lighthouse Baptist Church. We would like to invite you to visit our church and give you some information about our services and what we believe. We’d be honored if you’d be our guest.”

It was that simple.

It was early October. The days were still warm, but the evenings would be cool. School had been back in for a little over a month. On this evening, we had chosen Owl Hollow as our destination. Owl Hollow was a paved road. Pastor Ellis had pulled his van off on a wide spot and parked. There were two gravel sideroads on either side of the main road. Duff and I took the side road on the left, Big Mike and the Pastor took the road on the right. There were four houses on our side of the road.

“This shouldn’t take long,” I said as we trudged down the road.

“It don’t matter as long as we’re doing the Lord’s work, brother!” Duff said. Of course, he spoke loudly enough for his father to hear it.

I suppose I should explain about Duff Ellis. Duff was a scrawny kid. He was 15, same as me, but he looked more like he was 10 or 12. He had a high-pitched voice and wore the thickest glasses that I have ever seen. Back then, we Independent Baptists had a serious problem with guys having long hair. Duff’s mom served as his barber to make sure that her son complied with the “no long hair” rule. She only knew one cut- crew cut. Back then, only military personnel and old men wore crew cuts! So, needless to say, Duff was not considered one of the cool kids. I remained his best friend, one of his only friends, despite of all that.

Duff was the preacher’s youngest child. He had four sisters and they were all smarter, more talented, and more spiritual minded than he was. He desperately craved his father’s attention and approval. To get that attention and approval, he would go forward in the invitation at church every few months and rededicate his life. After these rededications, he would become almost impossible to be around. He would constantly try to talk like a Baptist preacher. I couldn’t say a girl was pretty or do any normal teenage guy stuff without getting one of his sermonettes.

It had only been about six weeks since his last rededication when we arrived at Owl Hollow that evening.

We knocked at the door of the first home and Tammy Jo Pierce answered the door. Tammy was a year ahead of us in school. She was tall, slender, with long brown hair and a year around tan. She answered the door barefoot, wearing cutoff jeans and a tank top. Every teenage boy’s dream-or mine, at least.

“Hey, boys,” she drawled. “What can I do for you?” Tammy was one of the prettiest girls in the county, but she was never stuck up.

I went through my rehearsed sales pitch except for the introduction, since she knew Duff and I from school. She listened politely and accepted the tract when I offered. Our hands touched and I felt sweat beading on the back of my neck.

“Thanks for inviting me, boys,” Tammy replied. We go to the Christian Church downtown, but I might come by there someday. I’d like to see your sister, Leah, Duff. She was always real nice.”

“She’d like to see you, I’m sure,” Duff squeaked. One thing that we had in common was that we were both nervous wrecks when a pretty girl was around.

“You’re always welcome, Tammy. Thanks for talking to us. We’ll move on down the road now.” At least, my voice had settled into the baritone range by that point, and I didn’t sound like Deputy Fife when I talked.

“See you at school,” she said, ”and I’m really proud of you for doing the Lord’s work like this.”

She went back inside and closed the door. Duff and I headed on down the road.

I know that we shouldn’t have done it, but, back then, the guys in our school would assign numeric ratings to girls.

“Solid ten, right, bud?” I asked Duff.

Normally, Duff would join in on the ratings, but it was too soon after the last rededication.

“Brother, remember that God looks on the heart. She has a soul, brother!”

He was one of the best friends I ever had, but he could also be an insufferable snot. He was always reminding me that people had a soul. My usual retort was, “Yeah, one on each foot!” Of course, everything he had said was true, but his superior tone made me want to slap him around!

The next house was not such a pleasant experience. Hoss Cat Nash answered the door. He towered over my friend and I. He was barefoot, wearing bib overalls with no shirt underneath, and a baseball cap with a Confederate flag and the words “Equal Rights For Southern Whites” printed on it.

Hoss Cat was about two years older than Duff and I, but we were in the same grade. Duff was as big as a mountain and as dumb as a pile of rocks. He was illiterate for the most part. He couldn’t speak a sentence without at least one curse word in it. He had cussed everybody in our school out at least once. He truly believed that he had the eternal right to abuse anybody who was smaller than him and the big, dumb ox was bigger than almost anybody.

I’d been in several classes with him and I’d never seen him open a book or do any schoolwork. His only saving grace in school was the fact that he was an All Conference middle linebacker. Every grading period, a few weeks before report cards came out, Coach Thurmond and Mrs.Zornes, the principal would visit each of Hoss Cat’s teachers. And, sure enough, hoss cat would pass every class and, come football season, he’d be suited up and on the field.

Not that it helped. Coach Thurmond was almost as dumb as Hoss Cat. I think he had one winning season in his career. And, immediately after the last game of the season, this genius took his 15-year-old quarterback to a brothel and ended up in prison.

It was Duff’s turn to do the talking and it was a bunch of high pitched stammering. Hoss Cat terrified Duff. Last year, Hoss Cat had stuffed Duff into a dumpster behind the school. In gym class, he had dragged Duff out of the showers, naked, and thrown him into the girl’s locker room.

I handed Hoss Cat the tract and he stared at it dumbly. After Duff finished his pitch, the big guy stared at us for a few seconds and then asked “Are you boys religious or sumptin?” As he spoke, some tobacco juice ran from the corner of his mouth.

“We’re Christians, Hoss Cat. Duff’s dad is a preacher. You know that,” I said, trying not to let my dislike for him be obvious.

“You better git,” he told us. “My old lady is the religious one in the family. Dad don’t like church people and he don’t like people bein around here if he didn’t ask them!”

“OK,” I said, “we’re out of here!

“You don’t like him much, do you?” Duff asked as we continued down the road.

“Ain’t much to like!” I responded.

“Brother, he has a soul!”

“No brain, though!” I retorted.

The next house was actually a double wide. The front porch was crowded with bulging trash bags. The odor was nauseating and flies buzzed everywhere. There was only room for one of us on the porch and it was my turn. I knocked on the door. Nobody answered. I rolled up the tract and stuck it in the handle of the screen door.

I walked off the porch and saw Duff shaking his head.

“We always knock three times, brother,“ he said, sounding like a guilty conscience.

“The stench was killing me, brother!” I responded. “I was on the verge of gagging!”

At the next house, an elderly married couple were sitting in rocking chairs on the front porch. They were Pentecostal, but told us that they were proud of us for doing something worthwhile with our time.

“There’s a boy who lives on this lane who ain’t worth a tinker’s dam!” the elderly lady said. ”It’s wonderful to see some good boys for once!”

To his credit, Duff didn’t remind the dear lady that Hoss Cat had a soul!

After we left those nice people, I turned to go back out to the main road to meet Big Mike and the preacher. Duff stood there and stared at me.

“Hey, where are you going, brother?”

I turned and glared at him.

“To meet up with our fathers and get outta here!”

“No, brother, there’s one more house!”

He pointed to the end of the road.

“One more house! We need to get that one, too!”

He wasn’t completely wrong. There was a dilapidated house and the end of the lane. It was what my granny used to call a “shotgun house”. Asbestos siding, rusty metal roof, and windows that were broken or boarded up.

“There’s no one there, bud!” I told him. “As far back as I can remember, that house has been abandoned”

“There’s a light in one of the windows, brother!”

He was right. I could see a light through one of the windows. It looked like it could be a candle or a Coleman lantern.

“We have to be faithful!” He was preaching now. “There could be a soul in danger over there and we can’t abandon whoever it is!”

“OK, settle down,” I said, “We’ll go!”

And we did. We walked to the broken-down house and walked onto the porch. The floorboards didn’t seem very solid and I worried that we might end up crashing through the porch floor.

“Only knocking once, ok?” I said to Duff.

“ I guess that’s alright,” he replied.

I knocked on the door. And waited.

After almost a minute, I turned to Duff.

“OK, we gave it a try.”

He nodded. Then, I heard the door opening…

CREEEEEEEEEEAAAKKKKKK!

I turned back to the door. It was opening, almost in slow motion. When it finally opened, a man stood in front of me. He was huge, a lot bigger than Hoss Cat. He wore a pair of grey coveralls, covered with stains. I couldn’t identify what made the stains. It was a black substance of some kind. The man’s hair was red, to the point of being orange, and it stuck out from his head like he had stuck his finger in a light socket. He smiled and his teeth were mostly rotten. He looked above me, around me, at my feet, everywhere except looking at my face. Finally, after almost a minute of this, his eyes stared at me, bloodshot.

“Oh, it’s you!” he said, as though he recognized me. His voice was raspy and had an accent I couldn’t quite place. Sort of the proper sounding speech I heard in black and white movies.

I smiled and made the pitch:

“Good evening, my name is Rusty Pickett, and this is my friend, Duff Ellis. We’re from Lighthouse Baptist Church. We would like to invite you to visit our church and give you some information about our services and what we believe. We’d be honored if you’d be our guest.”

I offered him a tract. He reached out, touched it, and jerked his hand away as if he had touched a hot stove! He shook his head and glared at me as the tract fluttered to the porch.

“We didn’t realize that anyone lived here, sir,” I said, not knowing exactly what to say.

“Oh, I don’t live here,” he responded. “I only stay here during the nights!”

With that, he moved backward, into the house. It almost seemed that he was gliding. Then, the front door slammed shut.

I turned to Duff.

“Well, what about that?” I asked.

Duff wasn’t there! I saw him running past Tammy’s house, toward Owl Hollow Road! So much for being faithful and souls in danger!