atholics, I am told, refer to their straying clergy as spoiled priests. Baptists have no equivalent term that I'm aware of, but if they did, I guess Ben Scroggins would have been one. Or maybe not, since he wasn't yet ordained when he got into trouble.
Ben was brought up by his mother, his father having passed on when Ben was a toddler. He was always undersized, and in the rough and tumble with other kids tended to come in last. By the time he became a teenager, he had largely taken himself out of the competition, had became interested in religion and now spent most of his time reading the Bible and memorizing the Book of Psalms.
The one thing he had going for him was his voice. At a time when his cohorts were still piping away or at best yodeling when they talked, Ben's voice had deepened to a rich bass. It was always a surprise when he spoke. No bigger than a scrawny twelve year old, with a high bulging forehead that took up most of his face so the rest of his features had to be squeezed into the space below, but when he opened his mouth, out would come this deep, resonant, big man's voice. And when he would quote one of those Psalms he had learned by heart, it was a pleasure to hear.
"What a fine preacher he would have made," old Mrs. Blackburn said later to her grandson Billy, "if he could only have controlled his privates."
"Controlled his privates, my ass!" Billy said, telling it later to those who happened to be idling at the New Zion Gen'l Mdse that day. "I ain't even sure he's got anything down there to control."
It was true Ben had never shown the slightest interest in privates, his or anybody else's. On the contrary, he thought the world was too preoccupied with the whole subject. Wouldn't go to movies, wouldn't watch TV shows. Would walk away if somebody started telling an off-colored story. Either that or interrupt and try to preach them a sermon.
"Finicky as an old maid," people said. "It ain't normal in a boy his age."
He was just as finicky about everything else. Wore a clean white shirt every day, kept a sharp crease in his trousers, put on a coat and tie even if he was only going to prayer meeting.
And that old Chrysler Imperial, bought new just before his father's death, put up on blocks until Ben was old enough to drive, he kept spotless, carried a rag around to dust it off when he stopped.
Ben was just out of high school when, as we say, he felt the call to preach. People said how fitting it was because he wasn't suited for much else. As soon as he could, Ben headed for Georgetown College, a fine Baptist institution in the central part of the state, to prepare himself. Before long we began to hear reports from his mother that in addition to his studies he was preaching to small rural congregations in the area that couldn't afford a full-time minister. Then we heard he was serving one of them as student pastor. It was there the incident happened that led to his downfall and his return to New Zion in disgrace.
The story that followed him home was that he had made improper advances to one of the good ladies of the church and her husband had denounced Ben before the whole congregation, whereupon Ben was summarily removed as pastor and subsequently expelled from Georgetown College for moral turpitude.
"Woman had a belly ache. Ben tried to ease it by the laying on of hands. Maybe laid them a little too far down," was the way it was generally interpreted in New Zion.
Maybe the woman misunderstood. Maybe she was one of these troublemakers who just like to stir things up. Maybe she was hysterical. We didn't know. But we did know Ben, and we didn't believe the charges for a minute, most of us, at least.
But it looked like Ben couldn't get over it. He came back changed. Stayed holed up in his mother's house. Escorted her to church but that was about all. Almost a recluse. Then he began taking his little trips. Throw a suitcase in the car and be gone for two or three days, sometimes longer.
"Where's he gone to?" they'd ask his mother.
"Off visiting friends," she'd say. It seemed funny that he could barely bring himself to speak to folks who had known him all his life yet could spend days at a time socializing with these mysterious friends. When it was remarked that Ben must have a lot of friends since he was gone so much, she said some of them were just acquaintances and Ben was counseling them in some way, being a witness for the Lord, don't you know. And that was as much as anybody ever got out of her, probably as much as she knew.
One day Ben went off in that old Chrysler Imperial and came back driving a brand new Fleetwood Cadillac about half a block long.
"First I though it was just running along by itself," Cecil Ledbetter said, "but when it got closer I could just see the top of his head through the windshield. He's going to have to get him a cushion if he expects to drive that thing."
"Naw," Amos Blackburn said, "he just didn't have it adjusted. Them things got electric seats; touch the right button and they run up and down like a barber chair."
Somebody remarked that Ben always did like to go first class.
"Yeah and he's going to first-class his mama out of every cent she's got if she ain't careful," Amos said.
She must not have been too careful for every year after that there was a new Fleetwood sitting in their driveway.
When she died some years later, New Zion was surprised to hear that all her money was going to set up a foundation for the education of ministers of the Gospel and other Christian causes. All Ben got was the house, which, they told each other, must cost a pretty penny to keep up.
The general consensus was that Ben would sell. "Here he is, thirty-five years old, never hit a lick in his life, lived off his mama and pretty well, too, if you need to ask. He's not about to take some menial job where he'll get his hands dirty. He'll have to sell. And when the money's gone, Lord knows what he'll do."
But Ben didn't sell. Things went on, much as they had before. He even hired old Malley Staples to come in and clean for him once a week, and he continued to take his trips two or three times a month and trade cars every year. Because we had it all wrong. Ben wasn't living off his mother and hadn't been for years. What with inflation and lack of sound investment, the money Ben's father had left had run out long ago. It was Ben who had been supporting them, in fact, much more than supporting them.
Ben came to see me soon after his mother's death. I thought- -because at the time I didn't know any more than anybody else--it was to get probate started on the will so he could get title to the house. But what he really wanted was to set up a foundation.
What kind of a foundation?
Well, his mother had set her heart on him becoming a preacher and was deeply disappointed when he didn't, so let it be to help train preachers and others who dedicated themselves to the service of the Lord.
And the endowment, where was that coming from?
"From me," Ben said.
In the amount of?
"Half a million dollars to begin with."
"You got half a million dollars?" I was dumbfounded.
"I've got a portfolio worth at least that."
"What in the world have you been doing, robbing banks?"
"No, it was come by honestly; at least I don't know any laws against the way I got it."
"I hope you are going to tell me how," I said.
"I have a number of, uh, clients around the country, women of various ages, some married, some not, who pay me for my services."
As I have said, Ben was a little man. Pinched-faced. Wore glasses, had now for several years. And his hair had already receded, lending even more prominence to that bulging forehead. Not what I could imagine women spending money on.
"I know what you're thinking and I take it as an insult. I have never touched a woman in my life, not in that way," he said, proving he didn't know what I was thinking after all. "I have, as the Scripture says, made myself an eunuch for the kingdom of heaven's sake."
More likely so born from your mother's womb , I thought, which was how the first part of the verse he was quoting went.
"What do they pay you for, then?" I asked.
"I pray with them and God sends a power through me that brings them joy and eases their minds."
"I'm afraid I don't understand."
"You don't need to understand," he snapped. "I don't understand it myself. It's a mystery."
"But they're willing to pay your fee."
"I don't have any fee. The Power is a gift of God. How could I charge for that? I take whatever the Lord lays on their heart to give me.
"The Lord must lay a bundle on their heart to build up a half a million dollar nest egg on top of living expenses and a new car every year."
"The laborer is worthy of his hire," Ben said.
And so he was. What right did I have to begrudge Ben the small portion of the total he used for himself, even if some of it went for new Cadillacs? Legally the whole thing was his. I apologized.
"I have to drive a lot, and I enjoy driving a big car, but everything above that and what it's taken to live on, I've invested. I want the Foundation set up in such a way that I can continue those arrangements."
That would be no trouble, I told him.
"I want the Foundation to bear my mother's name, and I don't want anybody to know where the money is coming from."
"Wht not?"
"I just don't."
"We'll have to tell them something,"
"You're the lawyer," he said, as if deception was a part of my stock and trade.
In due course the Mattie Scroggins Christian Foundation was established with a three-member board of directors, of which I was the treasurer, and began to grant scholarships and receive donations. The donations came from Ben's clients often in amounts of several hundred dollars and sometimes several thousand. After all, they were tax-deductible now. The Foundation paid Ben's living expenses, which included a new Fleetwood Cadillac every year. The people of New Zion said what a fine Christian woman Mattie Scroggins had been and, because they didn't know about his arrangements with the Foundation, increased their speculation about Ben's trips, which they figured had to involve money in some way, because how else was he getting by?
"I say it's poker," Amos Blackburn said. "I think he goes off to New York or maybe Las Vegas or somewhere and plays in big poker games."
"He wouldn't need to go that far. You can find poker games no further away than Paducah," somebody said.
"Not big ones, you can't," Amos said.
"Well, I think he's a hit man is what I think," Billy said. Billy was nephew to Amos and watched a lot of TV. "Now, don't laugh. A hit man ain't supposed to look like one. He'd be the last person in the world you'd suspect, and old Ben fits that description exactly."
"Well, whatever it is it must have something to do with hands," Cecil said. "Notice how careful he is with his. Wears gloves a lot and Malley says he washes them a dozen times a day."
"Poker players are careful with their hands," Amos said.
"Hit men are too," Billy said.
They argued about it off and on for the next ten years, and then one rainy night in Nashville a semi crossed the median, hit Ben's Caddillac head-on and killed him.
We laid Ben to rest in the family plot in old Zions Cause cemetery. Most of the town was there, not to praise Ben, because as far as they could see he'd never amounted to much, but because he was one of their own.
But a month or so later, as treasurer of the Foundation, I was invited to a memorial service for Ben in Washington, D. C., where I heard his virtues extolled with considerable eloquence.
They had gathered from all over the country, three hundred at least, maybe more. The whole assembly glittered. Some were household names or had been. The lady in charge of the arrangements, the one who had invited me, tried to help me understand.
"A great number of us know each other, professionally or socially. That's because the only way Ben would accept you was by sponsorship of someone already a member. Even so, for his own reasons, he might turn you down. We all consider ourselves fortunate, I might even say blessed, to have been a part of his ministry."
"It was like a church, then?" I asked.
"There were no meetings, and I doubt there was ever much discussion about it among members. It was a very private experience. But, although I am not a religious person, I must say that the sessions were religious events for me."
"Ben refused to talk about it, and I have only the vaguest notion of what happened during a session. Could you describe one, or would that be asking too much?"
"It's not something you can very well express in words. The session would begin with my lying on a bed or couch and Ben kneeling beside me. He would place his hand on my abdomen, and in that marvelous voice of his begin to speak. Sometimes he would pray, sometimes recite a Psalm. After a while his hand would grow warm and I would feel my skin began to tingle beneath it. The warmth and tingling would grow and pass into my body in waves, each wave more intense than the last, each lifting me higher and higher until I would be consumed by passion."
"It was a, uh, sexual experience, then?" I was embarrassed; she was not.
"Sexual, yes, but much, much more."
"In what way?"
"In its intensity. In its pervasiveness. As if every atom of my body were involved. When it was over, I would feel cleansed, absolved, renewed, at peace with myself and the world, at one with God, even though, as I have said, I'm not a religious person."
"The Ben I knew was right much of a prude," I said. "It's hard to imagine him in a role like this."
"Oh, I think he hated it. I think it disgusted him. And I know it drained him physically and mentally. But that was Ben's goodness. In spite of his personal feelings, he did it because he felt it was God's will and because of his compassion for me and the others."
"I will take your word about the compassion since I've never seen any signs of it, but I can see him toiling away at something he despised if he thought that's what God meant for him to do."
"Many of us have careers that leave us no time for proper relationships. A few are married, but their husbands are dysfunctional. Ben rescued us from casual affairs and left us free to get on our lives."
"Poor old Ben. He must have caught God in a bad mood all those years ago when he asked for power to ease that woman's pain."
"The woman you're referring to is here tonight. She was responsible for Ben getting into trouble, but she was also the one who later convinced him that the gift was from God and helped him get started."
And when the formalities began, she was the first to speak in praise of Ben. There were several others, the last being the lady who had been looking after me. When she finished she brought me forward and presented me with a check to the Foundation in the amount of one million dollars, contributed in Ben's memory by his grateful followers.
And donations continue to come in from time to time. For those hundreds out there whose lives he touched, he is not forgotten.
But in New Zion he survives only as the subject of an argument that I could settle but never will.
"Poker," says Amos.
"Hit man," says Billy.
"Yawl make me tard," says Cecil. "Why can't you find something else to argue about?"
