As they neared the courthouse bandstand, Lou recognized a voice. It represented a distant memory, but she knew the voice - cheerful, strong and familiar.
"Gather round folks, let me have a few minutes of your time. It could change your life," the speaker announced.
"Lord, Lou, it's the major - I mean Colonel Stevenson!" Alex explained just as Lou brought his face to her consciousness. That was confirmed when she saw the speaker.
===
The Fields' twins stood well back of the crowd of some two dozen, maybe thirty listeners.
The preacher began, "Folks, I left this town in '46 for the war in Mexico - served with the Lincoln Legion. All my folks are gone now or moved to Texas. I'll tell you that Dr. Sloan's horse medicine pulled me through a fever when I was ten." He smiled. Dr. Sloan was a medical doctor of sorts, not a veterinarian. He was so dignified a character that the kids had joked about him when he was a youngster. There were a few chuckles as Solon continued. "I've seen a lot of this world in the last 20 years, most on the back of a cavalry mount. Fightin' Joe Wheeler and the boys of the Army of Tennessee fought, bled, and died from yonder to yonder. We spent a lively afternoon over at the Stone Bridge in Sept. '63, yes real lively." He swept his hand from his far right to far left. "Those days are gone, thank the good Lord."
He paused and took in the faces - some affirming his presence and words, others leery but interested. Preaching was a form of entertainment for many. For others there was a hunger for something, something real but unfocused. Those who were needful conveyed a soul deficiency with their eyes and lost looks.
Lou and Alex, on the far edge of the group, were in the shadows of a big oak that shaded the courthouse. Alex's interest was seeing the major again and to see what he'd become. Lou's attention was for that and maybe something else.
"Yes. 'Good Lord'," Solon's voice went from a light conversational tone to that of a confident speaker. Not a huckster, his eyes offered a purpose and sincerity Lou had seen before in him. "Yes, I said 'Good' Lord," he emphasized the first word. "I'm not here to say any man is wrong in how he understands God or how one finds God's grace. I am here to say that where many folks look for that redeeming power is in the wrong places!" Solon message had begun. "My faith tells me that God's love is real and all encompassing. His strong arms and big heart take in all - all - the family of man. Yes, all Folks, not some! I'm over forty years old but I am a child of God. Blessed Jesus' gospel and sacrifice saved the whole of mankind, not just some. God is not partial. Let me say that again. God is not partial! Saved and condemned? Good and bad, saint and sinner? All such are blessed by God's salvation through Jesus Christ! Jesus, the Son of God, taught it and gave His life for it. But God did not give His only begotten Son so that we would be divided or condemned, but that we would be saved by His grace and through the blood of His Son, Jesus Christ and with him usher in the kingdom of God. Heaven is a big place - room for all - so big it runs over and washes over even Tennessee, even Fayetteville!" He pointed up to the sky, blue and bright. "It ain't up there. Jesus said it; 'the Kingdom of God is among you.' That's you, me - us. We got to tend to it, build it up, through living the Son's gospel - the Golden Rule."