Deadly Vows Read online

Stan, eyes wide, held up both hands in surrender and said, “Okay, okay!”

  When he was safely back in the hall, Stan apologized to Sean’s girlfriend and slunk back to his own room. Word spread quickly through the dorm of how the preacher man had lost his cool and beat up Stan.

  Of course, Sean hadn’t beaten up anyone, but it was easy to see how he might have.

  Other events intervened and the incident at the window faded in most people’s memory, but Sean’s boiling undercurrent of violence would come back later on to haunt him in the starkest way possible.

  Chapter 3

  FOUR CORNERS

  Sean’s future wife was fifteen when Sean met her during my sophomore year at Oklahoma University. I almost never ran into Sean that year; I was living off-campus, working at the fast food restaurant to help pay the bills and playing guitar whenever I could in local bars, getting high with my cousin and trying to find new ways to kill brain cells as I experimented with drug after drug.

  Sean said he had stopped by my apartment one time that year to invite me to a church function, and it had taken me several minutes to answer the door, shirtless, eyes glazed and hair down to the middle of my back.

  “You were terrifying,” he said to me years later, smiling. “I decided you probably weren’t going to be going to church with me, so I left.”

  I don’t remember the incident, but his description of me was accurate, so I’m sure it happened. I didn’t see much of Sean until much later, but he was busy anyway, courting his future wife.

  When she met him, Sean’s future wife was swept off her feet by him.

  She had always wanted to marry a man with jet black hair and blue eyes, she confessed to friends. In fact, she had been praying that God would send along just such a man for her. Fifteen may seem like an early age to start praying for a husband, but she thought she knew what she wanted and she decided she would ask God to give it to her.

  And, by all appearances, he did.

  Sean cut a dashing figure: well-dressed, well-groomed, thin, deceptively good-looking, and when he spoke, there was a simmering intelligence and passion behind every word, even those dropped idly, that seemed ready to boil above the surface at any time. Just as many other women at the time, Sean’s future wife was captivated.

  And then when he preached, the deal was sealed.

  Sean had landed a gig as youth leader at a church called Harbor of Praise, where he was in charge of mentoring and leading teenagers through the difficult times of puberty in God’s direction—and though he was just barely past puberty himself, Sean always seemed older than his years and he was the perfect pick, the church’s pastor had decided. With Sean preaching to his youth group, the pastor was assured that the kids would learn about holiness and living for God.

  “He was anointed,” said one of the congregation members at Harbor of Praise who later left with Sean when he formed a new church. “He was a man of God.”

  The woman’s husband remembers that Sean was an amazing preacher at age twenty-one, a time when most other people—like me—were partying their heads off, being as irresponsible as possible.

  The husband believes that Sean was just ahead of everyone else. When Sean was scheduled to preach, the amount of people in attendance was substantially more than those who showed up when the pastor preached. The husband believes that the pastor was worried that Sean would take over.

  But Sean wasn’t interested in taking over—the church, anyway. There was that cute girl in the youth group who always seemed to be making eyes at him, and Sean was definitely thinking about taking her over. Attractive, with long dark hair, big, sparkling eyes and a ready smile, she was just the kind of girl Sean was looking for: young (and thus, as he later told me, “teachable”), pretty and submissive to whatever her spiritual leader said. For Sean, it was the trifecta: attractive, malleable and youthful. He started immediately working his way into her family’s confidence and quickly developed a romantic relationship with the completely smitten teenager, who had never encountered anyone as good-looking, worldly and blazingly intelligent.

  Sean’s girlfriend from OU could only handle so much of the man being the boss all the time, so she and Sean hadn’t lasted very long after their initial fire in the dorms at OU.

  “He took over everything,” his girlfriend told me years later, as she and her husband spoke with me just before he and I left to accompany Sean on an evangelistic trip to Kentucky. “It was too much; he had to have his way, and he always had to be right. It just wasn’t for me.”

  After her, Sean wouldn’t repeat the mistake of dating a woman his equal in age or independence again. In his future wife he found a girl, not a woman, who naturally submitted to his authority as her youth leader, and that appealed to him religiously, while her looks appealed to him physically—though not as much as those of her younger sister.

  “If her sister had been older, I would have chosen her,” he told me in 2003. “She was prettier, but way too young.”

  In reality, both of the girls were pretty and Sean, twenty at the time, latched onto the one closest to his age: fifteen, almost sixteen. It shouldn’t have been a surprise to anyone who knew him closely that Sean would put rational considerations above emotional ones in choosing the older sister over the younger one. He was contemptuous of people who allowed emotions to influence important decisions (or even small ones) and he would never allow his decisions to be influenced by emotion, even one as powerful as love.

  In his mind, he wasn’t falling in love so much as making a logical decision for his future. Here was a future wife he could live with, maybe not as attractive as her younger sister, but old enough—almost—to marry. That’s not to say that his future wife was hard on the eyes and that made it better for Sean, because he needed his wife to be pretty as well as spiritual and submissive. Was it her personality that drew Sean to her? No. Was it her scintillating conversation skills? No. For Sean, “love” wasn’t about not being able to live without her. It was about choosing to make a life with someone he deemed compatible and suitable. It was, ultimately, the logical choice.

  That determination turned almost pathological for Sean. He sneered at those he considered easily manipulated by emotions and he took great pride in using that “weakness” to get them to do what he wanted them to do. And he saw nothing wrong with it; it was in a perverse way his own take on the survival of the fittest. If people were weak-minded and easily led, it was up to strong-minded leaders to lead them. And he was up to the task.

  “We were all really young,” a congregation member said later about Sean’s ability to get people to do what he wanted. “He knew how to manipulate that. He had been in it his whole life and, being so intelligent, he was really good at it.”

  For Sean, however, it wasn’t manipulation to be able to control people through their emotions. It was simply God’s way of culling the herd, letting the dominant bulls make sure everything went the way it should, including reserving the best females for themselves, which would lead to a better future not filled with so many lemmings. If that sounds harsh, in Sean’s mind it wasn’t. It was simply the way things were.

  Later he claimed to me that he was never sexually inappropriate with the underage girl, though he did tell me once that he “accidentally” saw her naked by walking in on her taking a bath at her parents’ house, where he was accepted as a nearly-every-night guest. He winked and smiled as he said “accidentally.” Why he felt the need to tell that story was always a mystery, except that, in fundamentalist Christianity, sexual immorality is in the top tier of sins, and seeing a woman naked when you’re not married to her can only lead to lust, which is second only to fornication in the pantheon of sexual immorality. It’s “naughty,” and Sean loved to walk the line between holy and naughty. He wanted to stay on the “holy” side of the line, but he didn’t mind flirting with the edges, especially when those edges involved his secret favorite subject: women.

  Most people in their early twenties have al
ready seen a few people of the opposite sex naked and it seems to begin losing its novelty by the time they’re in their mid-twenties, but for Sean, it wasn’t the sexual arousal at all that did the trick; it was the conquest. Women were prizes to be won, and seeing them at their most vulnerable—naked—was the white flag that signified that the prize had been secured. Nudity is a taboo to fundamentalist Pentecostals, so seeing someone he wasn’t married to without her clothes on was a big deal, one that made a lasting impression on Sean.

  After the “accidental” bath incident, one thing led to another, and in May of 1990, when his wife-to-be was seventeen, Sean called me up to invite me to his wedding.

  I had only recently converted to Christianity, so I was anxious to reconnect with Sean, who seemed so well versed in my new religion. It was a chance to spend a few days in Peggs, Oklahoma, deep in the woods outside Locust Grove in Oklahoma’s hilly and green northeastern corner, with his grandmother, who had been pastor of the Four Corners Church there since her husband had died.

  Though Pentecostals are generally strict fundamentalists, they largely differ from other fundamentalists in the area of women in the clergy. Sean, who had big problems with women exercising authority over men, made exceptions for female pastors in certain circumstances, most especially that of his grandmother, for whom he seemed to have an almost worshipful respect.

  His grandmother commanded that respect by her very presence, and Sean gave it. There was a sternness about her presence that seemed obvious until she started to speak, when an almost unplumbed depth of warmth and compassion radiated from her. Her long salt-and-pepper hair (mostly salt) was always impeccably tied into a bun, her eyes piercingly perceptive, nuggets of wisdom easily falling from her lips, seemingly without effort or thought. Jake seemed to have inherited his mother’s aura of perception; it just seemed that she knew your deepest secrets, and though she might not approve of everything she saw, she wouldn’t push you away because of it. In her, you could see the active presence of a very real God, and you could feel both the disappointment and the unmitigated love and forgiveness you expected from such a being.

  I found myself trying to not even think bad thoughts when I was around Sean’s grandmother, because I was pretty sure she would find out, and there was nothing I wanted to avoid more than a disapproving, yet knowing, look from her. It was in her house and her church that I first understood the idea that so many fundamentalist Pentecostals cling to: holiness. Holiness, as embodied by Sean’s grandmother, was a clean place, a tidy, pristine room where sin could not bear to even peek through the windows at a place so sanctified and revered. Holiness was a refusal to sin, not for fear of hell, but because the very thought of sin offended a holy God, whose presence could not tolerate even the slightest evil.

  When she preached, it was immediately obvious where the boys had gotten their passion and preaching style. Her delivery was powerful and persuasive, though not as explosive as Sean’s or Jake’s. Her power was more gentle, more feminine and matronly.

  Sean invited me up onto the platform to play guitar during the service before his wedding, and I was completely at a loss. I had been a believer less than a month; I knew no Christian songs, and the chord progressions in the old Pentecostal spirituals were foreign to a guy raised on three-chord riff rock. If they had wanted me to play Led Zeppelin, I could have happily accommodated them, but “Power in the Blood” was another thing altogether, and I just didn’t understand it. Worse, I was playing an acoustic twelve-string guitar after playing nothing but electric six-strings for fourteen years. I was terrified that my newness in the faith would become obvious as I stumbled all over the songs these people held so sacred, so mostly I pretended to play and instead observed everything going on around me—and there was a lot to observe.

  Sean’s grandmother’s Four Corners Church, a member of a loose affiliation of churches called the Church of God of the Apostolic Faith, was orders of degrees wilder than the Crossroads Cathedral I had attended with Sean in Oklahoma City. My first trip to Jake’s church was still in the future and my church was a basic Baptist-ish pod of normalcy, so I had never been in a church quite like Four Corners.

  The closest city to Peggs is Tahlequah, most famous for being the headquarters of the Cherokee Nation. Tahlequah has about fifteen thousand residents. Peggs has one hundred. To citizens of Peggs, Tahlequah is a big city.

  But Four Corners is actually down a few dirt roads deep in the woods outside Peggs, in an even more remote part of the countryside, too small to actually have a name. Sean’s uncle, typical of the men in the area, went “shelling” and “frogging” for a living, Sean told me. I’m still not sure if he was pulling my leg or not, but the fact that it was believable should in some way indicate just how out of the mainstream the area is.

  Sean’s aunt, his mother’s baby sister, played piano at Four Corners and the music was fast, loud and powerful. Her daughter played the drums, banging out rim shot after rim shot. In the congregation, people sang along as loud as they could, bobbing, swaying and dancing to the music, faces heavenward, hands in the air, tears streaming down their faces. It seemed to my eyes almost as if a fog descended into the room as the congregation worshiped and cried. It was a thin haze that seemed to permeate the building.

  Between the songs, cries of “Hallelujah,” “Praise God” and “Thank you, Jesus” refused to be suppressed by people who appeared absolutely sincere and worshipful. Throughout the congregation, smatterings of people speaking in tongues would periodically waft through the air, and strange as it sounded to me, it wasn’t jarring like it had been at Crossroads Cathedral, where it had felt assumed and less genuine. Here, among the poor hill folks, it seemed like even outbursts of tongues just belonged. There was a raw honesty that permeated the place. These people, I thought, weren’t putting on airs. They weren’t trying to do anything other than humble themselves before God. And in that place, in that time, it seemed like they might be onto something.

  It felt like it was okay to just let all your dirty secrets hang out in a place like that, because everyone was there to repent, to get back into alignment with God. It wasn’t a place where sin was judged, it was a place where sin was banished. I had never been anywhere like it and it was an overwhelming sensory experience.

  It was a lot to take in for a new believer who was accustomed to a more traditional church. I was so naïve about religion that I didn’t even know you could just go to a Christian bookstore and buy a Bible. I needed a new one desperately, and when my brother got baptized at a Christian church, they gave him a New International Version of the Bible, so I made an appointment with the church to be baptized, too, because I wanted the Bible. Operating from that level of ignorance, I was completely adrift on the stage at Four Corners Church, where everyone but me seemed to be privy to an intimacy with God that I simply had no clue how to access.

  The singers seemed to be shouting each song at the top of their lungs. At some point, I realized it didn’t matter what chords I played; no one could hear them anyway, so I just continued to pretend to play as I watched the carefully orchestrated chaos play out around me.

  When the music was done, ending almost as abruptly as it had begun, the entire building was silent except for sobs that dotted the congregation. I don’t remember the sermon. I just remember how powerfully it was delivered. I had never heard anything like it. Following Sean’s lead, I found myself saying “Amen” in the gaps in sound where Sean’s grandmother paused to take a breath. I have never forgotten the power of that sermon.

  I was in awe of her after that. I remember thinking, this is the first truly great preacher I have ever heard.

  The entire experience had a gravity that demanded orbit. It was both overwhelming and inspiring. I had never been in a church service that seemed to operate in the miraculous. It wasn’t that there were miracles—at least I don’t remember anything like that—it was that the place just seemed to exude holiness, a reverence for God that transcended words,
song lyrics or even the shouts and sobs of the congregation members. If there truly was a human way for people to have some sort of interaction with a sovereign God, I remember thinking that I had just experienced people doing it.

  Sean’s wedding was the next day, but I couldn’t get the service out of my mind.

  That night, Sean and I were staying at the parsonage where Sean’s grandmother lived. The water, drawn from a well, was so laden with sulfur you had to set the glass down for a few minutes so the white flakes could settle toward the bottom before you drank it. It was then that he introduced me to the first Christian rock I ever heard, a tape by Jon Gibson, “Jesus Loves Ya.”

  “He used to be Stevie Wonder’s backup singer,” Sean said with that trademark smile. “He’s working to win him to the Lord.”

  In Sean’s religious faith, being a believer wasn’t enough. You weren’t a Christian until you “got the Holy Ghost,” which meant you were filled with the power of God, as evidenced by speaking in tongues.

  Without that experience, you weren’t living the “full gospel,” which meant that, even though Stevie Wonder had long proclaimed his faith in Christ, he wasn’t a real Christian in Sean’s eyes until he was “baptized in the Holy Ghost.”

  We stayed up most of the night listening to Jon Gibson, me soaking up the talented songwriter’s music, Sean inexplicably not at all nervous about the next day’s nuptials. Sean slept in a bed in his grandmother’s guest room, its metal frame barely long enough to contain him. I slept on the floor at the foot of the bed, and it seemed as if sleep eluded us both for the longest time. I was obsessing over the church service I had just experienced, playing it over and over again in my mind, wondering how mere mortals such as Sean’s grandmother could have been graced with such powerful abilities to preach, how the congregation must be the most holy, dedicated people I had ever encountered to react to the music and the preaching like that.