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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 30: Cooper 10
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Brown 291
Sitting in the cell, Brian wondered what to do, but only for about a minute. He remembered that when Paul and Silas were thrown in prison in Philippi, they sang praise to God. He began to sing. The first song that came to mind was the Lutheran hymn, A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, and he wished he knew the German lyrics, but English was fine. His strong tenor voice echoed in the stone cells and out into the hall. Finishing that, he continued through a repertoire of songs of praise spanning several hundred years–all of them, he suspected, still in the future.
In the middle of In the Garden he heard a voice at the door, exclaim, “English?!”
He leapt from his seat on the floor and responded, “You speak English?”
He peered through the bars on the small window in the door. The outfit of the man outside marked him as a priest.
“Not,” he answered, “good.”
“Father, I am here for refusing to worship a false god; I should not be here.”
However, the priest was already walking away, conversing with some soldier in what he guessed was Italian. With an exasperated sigh he returned to his seat against the wall. He tried to remember what he was singing, and recalled that when Paul and Silas sang praises to God from prison, an earthquake opened the doors and threw off the shackles.
I can do that.
It wasn’t a voice, exactly; it was much more like a thought, but one that had come to him from somewhere else. What? he thought, as if trying to hear it again. He did.
I can do that. Is that what you want?
He thought about what an earthquake might do to this densely-populated town near the bottom of alpine peaks. No, it would be too destructive. He didn’t want anyone hurt.
He heard nothing else, and indeed wondered whether he had imagined it. However, with nothing else to do, he drifted off to sleep.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #502: Character Setbacks. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
