Florence’s cry meets Gabriel’s ears not as his sisters voice, but as the voice of any number of sinners, including his own, when crying out for God’s mercy. In the silence following her cry, Gabriel is transported back to the days before he was saved.
Gabriel’s mother refused to die until she saw the last of her children saved. Sometimes, Deborah would sit with Gabriel’s mother, and she and his mother would watch in silence as Gabriel got ready to go out drinking. He felt guilty about what he was doing, but did it nonetheless.
Coming home from a night spent with a woman from out of town and having drunk too much whiskey, Gabriel felt that all the world stood still to look at his sins and see him cast away from God. He fell against a nearby tree, calling for mercy, but felt that he had sinned for too long and that God had turned away from him. Suddenly, he heard his mother singing for him. He praised God, turned from sin, and felt himself reborn.
Gabriel began to preach, and Deborah began to look after him following his mother’s death. She cooked his meals, did his laundry, and encouraged him with her praise of his sermons. Deborah had no husband nor even any suitors. The memory of her rape was a barrier between her and the community. She was perfectly suited to take care of the sick and dying, but no respectable man would dream of making her his wife. Still, she was a pillar of strength for Gabriel by helping him through his new life and vocation as minister.
Gabriel was asked that summer to preach at the Twenty-Four Elders Revival Meeting. There he would preach with distinguished ministers. Gabriel was honored and nervous about his performance, and he and Deborah prayed and fasted before he was to speak. On the appointed night, Gabriel and Deborah went together to the revival, and Gabriel asked Deborah to sit where he could see her. He mounted the pulpit, asked Deborah to read a passage from the Bible for him, and then began his sermon—a lecture on sin and salvation and the mercy of Jesus. At the conclusion of Gabriel’s sermon, a young man knelt on the altar weeping, seeking forgiveness. Gabriel felt that the Lord had spoken through him, and he saw that the elders approved of his sermon.
The Sunday of the great dinner came, and Gabriel was uncomfortable around these men of faith. He found them too worldly and too well fed. He discovered that they all had a repertoire of sermons that no longer really came from their hearts and so felt that they were not giving God his full due. Deborah served the ministers that night, and after her departure from the room, one of the elders joked about her rape. Enraged, Gabriel rebuked the ministers for their laughter. Gabriel believed that the others were shamed by his purity, and he saw himself sitting by the right hand of God. Suddenly, he questioned God’s plan concerning his relationship with Deborah. Perhaps it was God’s will that the two of them should wed. Because Deborah helped him to stand as a man, now he could erase her shame and raise her to a place of honor as a woman. No longer would she be the girl who was raped, the girl looked at with a mixture of lust and repugnance; instead, she would be the esteemed wife of Reverend Grimes. Through her, Gabriel thought, he would sire his line of holy children. He decided to pray and to ask the Lord’s will.
That night while walking her home, Gabriel asked Deborah to pray to help him to discover God’s will over a matter that God had placed upon Gabriel’s heart. Later that night, Gabriel had two dreams, which he interpreted to mean that God did intend for Gabriel to marry Deborah. Gabriel proposed the next day, and Deborah accepted.
Cries from Elisha, who is overcome by God’s power, interrupt Gabriel’s reverie. For a moment, Gabriel fears that the cries come from John. Then he becomes angry that his own sons are not present and have never been saved. One son (Royal) is long dead, and the other (Roy) is at home, wounded and angry with his father. Because Royal was a bastard, Gabriel thinks, it is understandable that he should be lost to sin, but his second son, Roy, was conceived in marriage and, therefore, should be saved. Gabriel is sure that Roy is not being punished for Gabriel’s sins, so he concludes that Roy is being punished because of sins for which Roy’s mother, Elizabeth, has not fully repented.
After Gabriel’s marriage to Elizabeth, Elizabeth insisted that they not treat John differently than any of their other children, but Gabriel believes that there is a difference between John, a child who is not biologically his, and the children he sired. In Gabriel’s eyes, John is the child of a “weak, proud woman and some careless boy,” while Roy is the son God had promised Gabriel to carry on his name and to do the Lord’s work. Gabriel has repented the death of Ester, the mother of his first son (Royal), and the death of Royal himself as a young man.
Ester moved into town soon after Gabriel’s marriage to Deborah and worked for the same family that Gabriel worked for. She had many boyfriends and, like her mother and stepfather, rarely went to church. One afternoon, Gabriel invited Ester to hear him preach. Ester arrived at the church with her mother. After preaching a sermon that was remembered for years to come, Gabriel called for sinners to come forth and be saved. When Ester did not rise, Gabriel was filled with rage. Not long afterwards, Gabriel and Ester had an affair that lasted for only nine days before Gabriel ended it. By this time, however, Ester was pregnant.
When Ester told him of her pregnancy, Gabriel questioned whether they baby was, indeed, his. Offended, Ester insisted that she had not been with so many men that she could be confused about the child’s parentage. Then she suggested that the two of them run away. When Gabriel refused, Ester demanded money to go away by herself and threatened to tell that Gabriel was the father of her unborn baby if he refused her the money. That night, Gabriel stole money that Deborah had been saving and gave it to Ester. A week later, Ester left for Chicago, telling her parents that she was looking for a better life.
On the road again preaching, Gabriel did not find the peace he sought; in fact, he found just the opposite. He saw the suffering of others much more clearly and saw how far they had strayed from the word of God. He began to pray for Ester, and although he saw the bleakness in the lives of others, he found in himself a new faith and vowed never to wander into a life of sin again.
Ester died in childbirth, and Ester’s mother brought her daughter’s body and her grandson home. Gabriel and Deborah attended Ester’s funeral, where Ester’s stepfather held Gabriel’s son, Royal. Still Gabriel did not claim the child. Deborah became more friendly with Ester’s family and reported how the boy was loved and spoiled by his grandparents. Gabriel watched his son grow up and into the life of sin that Ester had led. Gabriel found that whenever Deborah spoke of Royal, he was afraid that she knew the truth, and he had often thought to confess and unburden his heart. He wanted to tell her that he was Royal’s father and that he hated Deborah for her inability to have children.
Royal left town but returned inauspiciously soon after a black soldier had been found lynched just outside of town. Gabriel ran into Royal on the street that night and warned him of the danger of being out at that hour and advised Royal to find his way home. Royal, however, didn’t share Gabriel’s fear because, he said, the white’s appetite for blood had been satisfied.
Back in the present, John tries to pray. He contemplates salvation and wonders why, if God can heal all troubles, his parents, who have been saved, are not happy. John waits for the time when God will reach down and raise him up, the time when he will no longer be Gabriel’s son, but instead be a son of his Heavenly Father. When this happens, John thinks that Gabriel will be forced to treat him fairly and to love him. Strangely enough, John realizes that Gabriel’s love is not what John really wants. He wants to be justified in his hatred of his father and is not willing now to trade in so many years of abuse for love. He wishes his father were dead so that he could laugh at his screams in hell.
Gabriel remembers the stormy day that Deborah told him that Royal had been killed in a barroom in Chicago. During this conversation, Deborah finally asked Gabriel if Royal was his son, and Gabriel admitted the truth. He was openly angry with Deborah for her inability to bear him a son, and she said that if he had confessed at Ester’s funeral, she would have raised the dead woman’s son as her own. She advises Gabriel to pray for forgiveness.
Back in the present, Gabriel stands over Elisha, who is lying on the floor. Gabriel remembers his marriage to Elizabeth, an event that he believed was a sign that God had forgiven him. He looks at his wife’s son, John, who returns his stare. Gabriel believes it is the Devil who looks out of the boy’s eyes and would have struck him if Elisha, who is now speaking in tongues, were not between the two.
