(Editor’s note: Each weekend we’ll publish one chapter of the new Christian novel Which One of You? here at Christian Heartbeat.)

Seems the District Superintendent had waited long enough. I was lacing up my running shoes when he called back. He sounded impatient and I explained I figured to do my daily run before it got too hot. He brushed past my excuse.

“This is something we can’t put off Dietrich.”

“I understand.”

“First it was a phone call; now they’ve put it in writing. So it’s gone past the talking stage.”

“I understand.”

“Come on Dietrich, this is serious. Treat it that way!”

“Sorry Dr. Webster.”

“Dr. Webster? Remember when it was Uncle Charley?”

“Sorry Charley sounded disrespectful,” I said, “like the tuna ad,” trying to lighten the mood with a little laugh. He didn’t bite.

“Let’s get serious Dietrich and put our cards on the table. I’ve been a friend of your family forever. Stood up at your parents’ wedding. I’m on your side in this. I want to resolve it without you being damaged, but you have to give me some help. Now, about this party in the parsonage involving the boy …”

“Sagan.”

“Yes, Sagan …”

Sagan. Yea Sagan. Strange that I hadn’t seen or heard him moving around yet this morning. “Hold on a minute Dr. … Charley,” I said. I cupped my hand over the phone receiver and called out Sagan’s name. Nothing. I walked to just outside his bedroom door and called louder, “Hey Sagan!” I put my ear against the door. Nothing. I knocked. No response. I peeked in. His bed was made and he was gone.

“Yes, Charley,” I said into the phone. “Who’s been in your ear about … I mean I could guess, but …”

“It’s not about them Dietrich -- unless you want to dispute the facts. What we need is a plan to put this to bed as quickly as …”

“Wait a minute sir, with all due respect … there is more to this story but I don’t want to widen the circle of pain; on the other hand it seems we’re making a mountain out of one little lapse in judgment.”

“Drug use is a hot-button issue. People get worked up about it.”

Checked the family room. Not there. “You say you got a letter?” No luck on the screen porch either. Sometimes Sagan would sit out there and stare at the tropical fish tank.

“So what do you want me to do, Charley. What’s your plan?”

“I’ve called a meeting in my office Friday morning. I want you to come over to Orlando. Your two lay leaders will be here.”

“That’s who signed the complaint? You know one of them is my mother-in-law?”

“That’s part of why I’m hopeful we can resolve this. We’ll go over the specifics and …”

“About what happened that night?”

“And the process for resolving their complaint against you.”

I‘d had about enough of this. “The facts are simple: some kids came over when I wasn’t there, they smoked some pot and the cops came. Sagan was taken in and later released. Case closed!”

“On church grounds Dietrich! On church grounds.”

“As for their complaint -- have any of them complained about how I came in and tripled the weekly attendance? Solved their financial crisis? Made that church the envy of your entire district, Charley, where almost all the others are losing members?”

“Easy, young man.”

“I don’t feel like going easy! I worked my butt off for them -- long hours -- my door always open, whoever needs me! And beyond that I gave them my talent and my passion! Now they’re attacking me because my passion extends to a boy they don’t see as quite good enough. Christians? Jesus would be rolling over in his grave -- if he had one.”

Through the screen porch into the back yard. The shed door was cracked open. No Sagan there either. I circled around the house to the front and spotted a sheet of yellow paper under my windshield wiper.

“Are you still there Dietrich?” the superintendent asked.

“Yea.” I unfolded the legal pad page. A short note from the boy. “Dear Pastor Dietrich,”

“There’s a process in the Book of Discipline for handling this but I’m hoping we can avoid …”

“I know I really made a mess of things …”

I could hear Charley talking, heard his words more or less, but I was busy scanning the note. “They’re saying this wasn’t the first time with the pot. Someone spotted him and some friends hanging out in your shed in the afternoons.”

“What I did was really stupid …” Just like the kid to blame himself.

Charley pressed on, “You have an air-conditioned house, why would they hang out in a hot shed Dietrich?”

“I don’t belong with a nice family like yours …”

“The way I see it, you apologize and we come up with a treatment plan for the kid ...”

“After all the nice things you guys have done for me …”

“If you’ll just apologize; say you should have kept a closer watch on things …”

“Apologize?” Sagan’s note said he was leaving. Maybe would stay with his mom if he could. He’d call and let me know where he was.

“And of course we’ll have to get the boy out of your house, at least for a while.”

“Out of my house? To where? The street?”

“Some kind of treatment plan. Residential. Private maybe. We could help with the cost. Can’t you see he has a drug addiction problem Dietrich? I don’t think you’re qualified to help him with that.”

“He’s not a drug addict.”

“Denial won’t make it so. Professional help is what he needs now. Besides, to be honest, I‘m thinking more about what’s good for you and the congregation. We can‘t let a scandal explode on us all because one young man has no sense.”

“Friday morning, you say.”

“My office, 10 a.m.”

“You, me and the two lay leaders? Anyone else? The Bishop?”

“I’m trying to keep this off the Bishop’s radar for now. I invited your father to come.”

I chuckled. “My father?”

“Thought maybe he could help you see the light.”

“You don’t see the irony there Charley? Reverend John Waymire, the original rebel, teaching me to toe the line.”

“I think now he realizes his mistakes.”

“I guess I have no choice. Friday it is. Goodbye Charley.”

I looked down at my shoes. One was laced tight, the other not. I finished the job, and still holding Sagan’s note drifted across my front yard. I stopped, returned to the car and tossed the note on the front seat. I closed the door, then reopened it and added my tee shirt to the pile. I started again, crossing the grass toward a side street leading to the river walk where I ran in those days. Did someone pick Sagan up? I didn’t hear a car? He could have walked off or hitchhiked. I stopped, dropped to the grass and ripped off 40 pushups. Back on my feet my chest and triceps felt taut and powerful. Behind the house I pulled on the bag gloves and hit the big bag hard until I was lathered all over. I pulled off the gloves, dropped them to the ground and sprinted off toward the river.

Turning onto the sidewalk along the river I slowed my frantic pace. Two young women were coming at me pushing baby strollers. I didn’t want them to think me a madman. I nodded and gave them my practiced smile as I ran past and accelerated.

Friday morning. We would meet and talk. Exchange words. Try to smooth things over with words. Saying the right words would matter, as if words were reality. This is reality: my legs pumping high, my thigh muscles tightening with each urgent stride, my feet reaching for every possible inch, sweat flying from me like a race horse rounding the final turn. This is reality: Sagan sneaking silently out so as not to alert me, walking fast, alone, maybe running to escape the neighborhood unseen, his boy’s brain trying to make sense of a heartless world and where he fits in, trying to find his way, trying not to hurt anyone else along the way. Bastards! Friday morning. We’ll have words alright.

To my left the sun had climbed above the mangroves on the oyster islands which divide the Indian River into a series of channels. The tide was on the rise and the river’s washboard surface glimmered invitingly with dancing light. At the tip of an island, where the water flowed between the main channel and the narrow passage closest to shore, a mom and pop pair of fishermen pitched live shrimp into the moving water dreaming of redfish or sea trout for dinner. Soon the summer heat would drive them from the water, but for now it was the kind of postcard vision I would later recall and think, “ah yes, that was a good life.”