Read The Devil in Pew Number Seven for Free Online Page A

anxious to be fishers of men.
    While in Lumberton, Daddy was invited to bring the morning sermon at a local church. His topic was “Seek Those Things Above.” Upon hearing the passion with which Daddy preached his message, the ministers suggested he sow some seeds of faith in the outlying communities of North Carolina. To my daddy’s way of seeing things, I’m sure the idea of planting the seeds of truth among the area’s farmers had a certain ring about it. Eager to serve, he agreed to their proposal, and three revivals were scheduled.
    Their first assignment was to conduct a series of revival services at the Free Welcome Holiness Church, a small independent church eight miles south of Whiteville, North Carolina. Armed only with their Bibles and the conviction that God had opened this door, Daddy and Momma pointed their car south toward Whiteville, a thirty-minute ride.
    With fewer than four thousand residents, Whiteville wasn’t exactly a large town. It really wasn’t much larger than a whistle-stop. But at least it was a town, complete with a city hall, bank, grocery store, doctor’s office, gas station, hardware store, motel, and restaurant. As Daddy and Momma continued south, the signs of city life quickly fell away as the two-lane stretch of blacktop took them deeper into the sparsely populated outlying area, closer toward whatever awaited them in Sellerstown.
    As Daddy and Momma were quick to discover, while there was a street called Sellerstown Road, technically speaking there wasn’t a city of Sellerstown—at least not in any official sense of the word. Unlike Whiteville, Sellerstown was little more than a tract of farmland and residential dwellings. No banks, no businesses, no city hall. Just acres of farmland. In spite of the fact that Sellerstown is unincorporated and not noted as a town on any map, the locals had been calling their community by that name for four generations.
    They still do.
    More than a hundred years ago, four Sellers brothers moved to this beautiful stretch of wide-open country. With an eye on farming, three of the brothers purchased all the land on either side of the two-mile road that would ultimately be named after them. A thousand acres or so became home to their extended family tree, where the Sellers clan promptly put down deep roots in the rich, virgin soil.
    There, they built their homes and raised corn, tobacco, and soybeans. For better or worse, they lived, worked, played, and fought together. With a few rare exceptions, everyone in Sellerstown was related to one another in some way. Which is why at times, shotguns in hand, they watched out for one another. The Sellers kin are true salt-of-the-earth people . . . although some were saltier than others.
    Willie Sellers 1 comes to mind. 2
    * * *
    For ten years, Willie Sellers ran a service station. His was an explosive personality, dynamite looking for a reason to detonate. He possessed both a volatile temper and a short fuse. Willie was the kind of hothead you didn’t want to cross. His legendary anger would flare up at the slightest provocation.
    What’s more, Willie was obsessed with the thought that someone might swipe a pack of cigarettes or a stick of gum without paying. He patrolled his turf with an eagle’s eye. No one would take advantage of him, not if he could help it. If a stranger walked in seeking directions, Willie got straight to the point, having no use for small talk. Chitchatting was for women. Assisting the customer took a backseat to running a tight ship.
    If there was one thing that made Willie madder than a hornet’s nest when poked by a stick, it was hired help that didn’t show up to work. Such was the case one Saturday morning in the mid-1960s. Left alone to pump gas, fill kerosene cans, and run the register, Willie ran back and forth, in and out of the store, like a headless chicken. Midmorning, with more business than he could juggle, Willie called his cousin E. J. Sellers and asked if he could