RUDY
A man of mystery. Not much is known about his past. He originated somewhere in New England. He was ordained as a minister at 18. At 30 he went south, for the first and only time, to take over a congregation that had found itself deeply embroiled in the civil rights struggles of that period in time. While there, he met, courted, and married Karintha. One year later Malachi was born. It was during this period that people started calling “Rudy The Rock” for his steadfastness in the storm of the struggle that surrounded him as the community at the center of which lay his congregation moved through the tumultuous era of civil rights struggle. During these years, Karintha stood tall right by Rudys side, all the while tending to Malachi, helping him grow. The trials and tribulations of those years, however and despite Rudy and Karintha's best efforts to keep them at bay, nonetheless penetrated to the heart of their family and took a toll on Karintha that Rudy failed to recognize and Karintha refused to admit. The years of constant stress and tension had slowly but surely frazzled her nerves and unraveled her mind. It was only when Malachi started school and Karintha was for the first time faced with an empty and silent house that she could acknowledge the state she was in. Soon after, Rudy came to realize that something had happened to his wife. But by then it was too late. Karintha's mind had begun to whirl faster and faster and nothing anyone did could slow it down. One day Rudy came home and Karintha was gone. Her mind had whirled past her ability to hold on any longer. She had no choice but to let go. Rudy tried to find her, but she had disappeared: when a mind stops playing by the rules its trail cannot be followed by one that still does. Rudy waited a year then asked to be reassigned. He was sent to Fairvale.When Rudy, along with Malachi, arrived in Fairvale, he arrived to a community that, despite its diminutive dimensions, had found itself divided by race; infected by the virus of the times. With the "Black Church" on one side of the tracks and the "White Church"on the other, it seemed that no one could cross the great divide. Not long after Rudy arrived, everything came to a head. On the Saturday night before Easter Sunday, the “Black Church”, of which Rudy was the head, was burned to the ground in a clear act of arson. The next day, during Easter services at the “White Church”, interrupting the minister in the middle of a sermon in which were made veiled but non-too-subtle references to the burning of the "Black Church" as an “act of God”, a young black woman emerged from the rear of the church where she had secreted herself and strode to the alter where she presented the gathered congregation with her infant child which she revealed as having been fathered by the man ministering to them at that moment, whereupon she turned and denounced him as a hypocrite and dared him to deny her accusations before God and his assembled flock. The minister simply stood in silence before suddenly leaping from the pulpit and fleeing the church never to be seen in Fairvale again. The congregation was dumbfounded as the woman turned and calmly exited. Meanwhile, across town on the other side of the tracks, Rudy was doing his utmost to douse the passionate flames of vengeance that were leaping at the edges of the still smoldering ashes of the church where the stunned congregation had gathered. Rudy had just finished asking all those present to remember that, "'Vengeance is mine,' sayeth the lord,"when the woman who had just delivered her revelation to the congregation across the tracks arrived to share the news of her delivery and its immediate repercussion with her own. Rudy took this woman's actions as a manifestation of the divine spirit and quickly announced that the momentum must be seized and requested all who believed to follow him and cross the tracks, to go with him to find the common ground that must exist, and to help him show it to those who need to see it and to convince them that it is real and that furthermore once found it can be occupied by all and shared in the spirit of the Lord who granted it. The majority of those present agreed to accompany him and together they crossed the great divide. Notably absent was the woman whose revelations had started it all. Along with her infant child and like its father, she too disappeared from Fairvale never to be seen there again.
When the homeless congregation of the "Black Church"entered the physical structure of the "White Church"they found its leaderless congregation in disarray, attempting to come to grips with the recent revelation, its significance, and its implications. Rudy, instinctively sizing up the situation in the blink of an eye, and having already seized the moment, had little difficulty in seizing the higher ground. Commandeering the pulpit he delivered the sermon of a lifetime, a sermon that immediately entered into Fairvale legend and lore, that was quoted with reverence, and that changed the history and geography of the town for good. Rudy bared a truth that try as some might, and some did, no one could deny.
It turned out that history was on Rudy's side as well. The membership of the congregation of the "White Church"had, in the years leading up to this day, thinned as well as aged. With a majority of its members nearing retirement or already there and the next generation having left town in droves, there was a pre-existent consternation as to the congregation's future, fiscal as well as spiritual. As Truth manifests itself in different forms on different levels of existence, so was the decline of the "White Church"revealed to be financial as well as moral. It was agreed that the larger and healthier congregation of the "Black Church" would merge with that of the “White Church”, the great divide crossed once and for all. With the stroke of a pen, the entities that represented the forces of division and opposition were miraculously banished. While some might say that nothing changes overnight, others would disagree. In any event, it was further agreed that the insurance settlement that was due the congregation formerly known as the "Black Church"(while they were certainly surprised to the point of despair by the act of arson, they were nonetheless certainly not caught unawares) would be fully given over to the new entity, which came to be known simply as the "New Churchî, which was controlled by a board made up of equal numbers of each of the former churches. And finally, no matter what point of view one chooses to take and regardless of the level at which one chooses to locate Truth, there was really no option other than to have Rudy as the leader of the new church. And so did indeed he become.
It was, of course, a difficult position to have and to hold, and was extremely so during the early years of the new church. Rudy had no alternative but to prevail. And prevail he did, so successfully in fact that few if any can imagine anyone else occupying his position, let alone even begin to imagine what might have transpired had not Rudy been there to fill it. But Rudy did not achieve that success without paying a heavy price. Malachi, who had already lost his mother during the course of the battle against racial division for which his father believed he had been chosen, came to feel that he was losing his father as well, for despite the responsibilities of fatherhood weighing heavily upon him, Rudy found the responsibilities of his position of leadership within the community weighing even heavier and found himself unable to devote as much time and energy to the raising of his son that he knew in his heart he should. Malachi gradually grew to resent the church that Rudy led as he could not fail to perceive that his father devoted more of himself to its growth and development that to his own. Finally, as he reached adulthood, Malachi further came to view the loss of his mother as another sacrifice in his father's battle and his resentment grew unbearable; he felt he had to make a break. Malachi desperately loved his father, and in his heart of hearts wished for nothing more than to be closer to him than he was, but could see no way of making that come about. The object of his anger was the struggle for racial harmony that he saw as having taken first his mother and then his father away from him and that was embodied by the church which his father served. And so it was with the church and its struggle that Malachi broke, washing his hands of it all. He moved out, and took up his own ways, forging a creed that was and still is a mixture of love, loss, anger, and hope. Rudy found Malachi's rejection of the church and its struggle a heavy price to pay indeed, and it grieved him deeply as well as having the effect, as Malachi subconsciously intended, of reopening the wound of his wife's loss. Rudy is, however, most certainly no stranger to hope, and has chosen to see Malachi's decision to remain in Fairvale as a sign that all is not lost and that Malachi is in some manner acting to show Rudy the hole in his conscience that he did not know was there. He prays daily for guidance in this matter and has dedicated himself to discovering what can be done to repair the rift between them.