Anna shot me a look. “I’m not saying he’s not a good, wellmeaning guy, but the last thing the repressed religious simpletons around here need is a repressed religious simpleton as a chaplain.”

“Thanks,” I said, and let out a small ironic laugh at the madness of it all.

“Don’t tell me you didn’t miss all this while you were in training,” she said.

I looked at her for a long moment. “I missed some things more than others.”

Blood of the Lamb Chapter 3

Leaving Anna wasn’t easy. It had never been, and every time it got more difficult.

The first time I left her after high school, I had fled to Atlanta, trying to escape the painful and nearly sobering reflection I saw in my mother’s glazed and unfocused eyes.

It was almost two years before I came home again to visit, and having heard that Anna was married, I avoided her. But, just like the song, I ran into her in the grocery store on Christmas Eve, and we had our own bittersweet Same Old Lang Syne. I started listening to Dan Fogelberg then, and have been ever since.

On my walk over to the warehouse, I was joined by Dexter Freeman, a young black inmate with closely shaven hair, a three inch part cut into the front of it. He was thin, but muscular, and held himself in such a way that even the biggest predators left him alone. He had recently transferred to this institution and had been attending my Bible class and weekly worship service.

“Chaplain, I’ve got a question for you,” he said, as he walked along beside me. “Can I walk with you?”

“Sure,” I said.

A loud burst of laughter erupted to my left, and I turned to see a small group of inmates seated behind the food service building, wearing soiled aprons and white plastic hair covers. The laughter came from a squat, balding black man leaning against the gray cinder block wall. I guessed he was attempting to entertain the others who were seated on over-turned plastic milk crates, but it was obvious that he found himself much more amusing than they did.

“Is the Bible true?” Dexter asked.

“How do you mean?”

“Did all those things really happen?” he asked. “The flood, the tower of Babel, Jonah and the whale?”

Unlike most of the inmates in this facility—or in any state facility—Dexter was well educated, and spoke with no discernable accent or dialect.

I knew what he was asking. It’s what most people of faith ask themselves at one time or another—are our stories true?

“The truth of a story isn’t contingent on its being a factual account of actual events,” I said. “Think about Jesus’ parables. Is there anything more true than them?”

He squinted as he thought about it for a long moment. “It doesn’t have to have happened to be true?”