Few is the number who think with their own minds and feel with
their own hearts.
Albert
Einstein
The chill reminded the Reverend Doctor Peebles
of that night in Yemen. Sitting in a
dank, gloomy APC on a night much like this one, just prior to a midnight
ambush, unable to shine a light, running his large hands delicately over his
medic’s pack.
In the height of a mission gone wrong in
the Third Sa’ada Insurgency, a near miss by a 120mm artillery shell lifted his
Armored Personnel Carrier right off the ground and tossed him out like a rag
doll onto the sand in the middle of what the Yemeni called “the desert of
death.” A hell-world of vivid red-yellow flashes and ugly yellow-black geysers
of sand and smoke was exploding all around him. APCs leapt into the air,
spewing torn, bleeding bodies. The smell of cordite and death was everywhere. A
nasty ringing sound filled his ears with pain. The bombardment grew more
intense. Peebles became convincingly aware of the distinct possibility he was
about to be killed by friendly fire.
And then it happened.
The chaos went ghostly silent. He watched
the white cannon flashes on the horizon turn into a spirit chorus singing
Amazing Grace, which he heard as clearly as he had ever heard it in the Church
of God as a boy. It struck him that preparing for the life beyond this one was
a practice significantly more important than keeping sand out of his sidearm.
Years later, he would refer to it as the time the Lord knocked him off his high
APC and told him to get serious about saving souls, starting with his own.
He
and a scant few others were pulled out of the carnage. They told him he walked
around in circles for three days dazed and deafened by the concussion of the
shelling. Two months later, Peebles went straight from the C-135 that took him
back to the States to Columbia Theological Seminary and from there used the Wounded
Warrior Bill and the Army pay he had squirreled away to attend NYU medical
school. He graduated first in his class.
Alerted by the head chaplain of NYU Med,
who had grown up in Lackawanna, Buffalo’s Irish-Catholic south side, the board chairman
of a Buffalo nursing home which had just lost its chaplain and its chief
physician, flew down to New York to meet the young man of whom his friend spoke
so highly.
What Peebles knew about Buffalo was: snow,
cold and chicken wings, none of which he cared for. But he found himself inexorably pulled
towards this place in the snowy western part of the state. He felt it as surely
as he felt that first call to the ministry. He was as certain as if he had been
flung to the floor of the restaurant by an artillery barrage. Always on the
lookout for a bargain, the chairman made Bill a generous offer (at a
considerable savings from having to fill two positions) that included a car and
an apartment.
The Patriotic Board of Inquisitors that
vetted candidates were well aware of the potential savings to them. His
military bearing and intense no-nonsense replies completely won them over. It
was merely a matter of spinning out the necessary red tape.
But Peebles was not anything like the
typical appointee. Though Proverbs was his favorite book of the Old Testament, and
he quoted it freely, his time in the armed forces had helped him develop a fine
nose and a short fuse for what he freely called “chicken shit”. He had a quick
temper, his own way of prioritizing and would not allow small-mindedness or man-made
rules to prevail over common sense. There was no doubt about his courage. He’d
spent most of his hitch jumping out of rescue helicopters or APCs to pull
soldiers out of tight spots and had a Silver Star, two Purple Hearts and a
slight limp for his efforts. There was no doubt about his devotion to Christian
principles. He lived them. A decorated war hero could take some leeway, and
take it he did. He was formidable and frightening for the light of God was in
his eyes and he knew not fear. And it was good to not provoke him either to
words or action. He was in fact that most fearsome thing: A righteous man. The inner-city
nursing home staff lovingly called him “the irreverent reverend.” He knew he
had a mission to fulfil there. What he could not know was that it would involve
aliens and dancing with the dead.
