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214 A Face to Meet the Faces Lord’s Own Anointed Kevin Cutrer If Henry Hébert seems a little off it’s due to the fact he was whopped upside the head by Harley Swearinger’s 2 x 4 one afternoon ten years ago outside the mower shop when he had made a joke about the woman Harley lived in sin with. They say his eyes went bugged and bright before his knees collapsed and he fell on his face. Never the same, they say. Not ever the same. Lost his job, lost his stitches, got the Spirit. You see him in his short necktie, suspenders holding them awful pinstriped pants up high, his belly like a baby’s poking out, out by the hardware store, by the old highway, holding his imitation-leather bible, grinning his one-gold-toothed, immaculate grin. He stands out there to greet the customers, not hired nor shooed away by management. He talks a funny way I can’t describe, not that he ever talks that much at all but mostly stands around and grins at you. They warn of idle hands, but idle tongues are just as bad, ask Henry Hébert why. He’s the most thoughtful-speaking man you’ll meet in this or any town, if he will say a word or two about the holy scriptures. The preacher calls on him to pray each Sunday, 215 As It Was Written and every time he has a different prayer more blessed than any message that young pastor with all his years at college could invent. It’s never rambling, or too rushed on through, but sentence after sentence simply sings. He prays with all the energy a workingman puts to his pillow every night to sleep, that hard-won peace that only comes from struggle. He seems a little off but, child, he’s on. ...

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