God told me what to do.

In 2016, Mississippi adopts a Religious Freedom Bill, which grants people with Sincerely Held Religious beliefs the right to act on those beliefs, in some cases in violation of existing law.

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December 12, 2016

Hey, my name is Dick Reevers, and this is the story about what happened to me one day last August, down near Hattiesburg , Missippi, my home state.

This story is kind of about me, so I guess I should introduce myself, as they say.

I’m 30 years old, married-happily, with 2 great kids Julie 6, and Richard Jr. 3. Oh!, Also, I was born and grew up in Ellisville, what you could call a suburb of Laurel, if Laurel had suburbs, hah-hah. Still, it’s a family town.

I saw some action on the High School football team, but nothing great, then I graduated and 4 years later married Lula. I know, I know, Lula?

Look , Lu had been in my sights ever since I first saw her at our Annual Ellisville Chuch picnic. I must have been around 11 then. Then we were in Sunday School and High School together. I dated her, and finally got the nerve up to ask her to marry me, and she said yes. I was one proud man. My folks loved her, and they were proud for me too.

Like I said, I’d been on the Varsity squad at school, so I was in pretty good shape. I bummed around at a few construction jobs and other things after graduation, but when I got married, I figured I needed to settle down.

Jim Lyttle was our pastor, and maybe a couple of years older than me so I got to talking with him, and he came up with the idea of maybe going after a job as an EMT. I’d thought about the medical field, job security looked good, I’d be doing service for the community, and the benefits were good. Jim was supportive as they say. I worked at it. It wasn’t easy, but I made the team.

Then, Julie was born, and Richard. We were good friends with Jim and his wife and we joined and attended Jim’s Church.

Jim’s not a fancy preacher, but he’s a real Christian, believes in the Bible and he doesn’t mess around. He calls ‘em like he sees ‘em, and I like that. It looks to me like we’re leaving God, as a country, and I don’t think that’s right. We were founded a Christian nation, and unless we want to pay the price, we should stay that way.

Anyway, these days they talk a lot about LGBTs, or something like that. Not sure what the B & T stand for, but they say that they should be allowed to do whatever they want. But Jim had made it real clear that God thinks homosexuality is a sin and it’s wrong. He said that God tells us in the Bible that homosexuals are supposed to be stoned, but we don’t do it, anyway he said they’re an abomination to God and they are going to hell, unless they repent and get right with God. He said stay away from them, and keep your children away; they’re always trying to recruit someone.

We don’t have many queers down here, I guess they call ‘em gays, but I’m not sure why. Anyway I really didn’t think about them too much. Somebody’d tell a queer joke now and then, and I laughed with the rest. I don’t know why, but my Dad would get on a rant about queers occasionally, and he’d carry on about fuckin’ queers messing up kids and the likes, but usually he’d had maybe one or three too many, so I didn’t pay it much mind. Anyway, he’d always been good to mom, until she died just a couple of years ago, in a accident. Makes me wonder if that didn’t make me want to be an EMT.

Sorry, I wandered off my story a little there.

Anyway, there I was on the 2nd of August last summer, heading down to Hattiesburg in the ambulance to pick up Mrs Gratham to take her home. She’d had surgery, but she’d recovered OK, and although she was pushing 78. she was still able to take care of herself and she wanted to go home! More power to her, I thought.

It was a beautiful day, we’d had some rain and things looked green; and it wasn’t too hot and sticky yet. A few puffy clouds in the sky. There was no big rush, so I decided to go down US 11 and maybe stop a minute to see Dwayne, a buddy of mine I hadn’t seen in a couple of years. He lives in Eastabutchie, on the County line.

There’s a long straight as you approach Tawanta, and sometimes there’s a speed trap there cause people like to speed. I wasn’t worried about it cause I wasn’t going that fast, and anyway I’d known Bud Springer, the Deputy that worked this part of the County for ever. Anyway, I didn’t see him.

Then I saw a skinny plume of smoke in the distance, and it looked like it came from on down on the Highway.

Coming to the intersection at Shiloh Road, I saw the wreck, 2 vehicles, one on each side of 11, both on the north side of Shiloh Road. I hit the lights, slammed on the brakes, pulled over on the left side of the road. I got on the radio and broadcast about a wreck at the intersection of 11 and Shiloh, grabbed my bag, an extinguisher, and ran like hell.

Shiloh Road crosses US 11 at a sharp angle back from the left in the direction I’d been going. As best as I could tell, the 2010 suburban lying upside down on the east shoulder of 11 had been heading north, and the driver side and front corner were badly damaged. The fire at the front underside had been small, and seemed to be dying out, but I hit it with the extinguisher for good luck, looked like a bit of oil on the exhaust.

I ran to the driver side where the driver had started yelling “Help me out, goddam it, help me out.” Mr. Parks, as I later found out his name, had lacerations to his face and bare arms, but otherwise seemed pretty much OK. He was hanging upside down from his safety belt, beating at the now deflated airbag. He said his seat belt was stuck, but I think he just couldn’t get to to the latch. I wasn’t likely to either, since he weighed what looked to be around three hundred pounds, and had drawn his seat close to the steering wheel. I got him to stop flailing around, and since he was wiggling all over the place anyway, I figured his back was OK. I told him to brace himself and that I was going to cut his seat belt and turn him loose. He settled down, braced himself and with two strokes of my Ka-Bar knife he was loose. We struggled together for a minute getting him out and away from the car, and I noticed it sure seemed to be getting hotter. We got him out and him safe on the ground, in the shade and away from the car. Then he kept muttering about “that son of a bitch pulled out right in front of me”.

I’d spent too much time with Parks, I was worried the fire might start up again. I ran across the road to check out the other car. The Dodge Neon was on the east side of 11 and was facing south, ’bout a hundred and fifty feet north of Shiloh Road. As I got closer to the driver side, which was next to the road, the car didn’t look bad. I didn’t see anyone at first, and I ran to the passenger side which was another story altogether.

I heard a moan a saw a shock of hair at the lower edge of the open front passenger window. There was no passenger, and the driver had apparently not been wearing his safety belt. In the impact and the rotation that followed, he had been thrown across the seat, out from under the driver airbag that had deployed , and was lying diagonally in the car, twisted, with his head, almost his face, against the window and with his legs still pointing towards the driver’s wheel well. He groaned and gurgled and I saw his face had been battered, with his glasses broken and dangling from his left ear. His face was cut, and he was bleeding slightly from his nose and drooling blood and saliva from the corner of his mouth as he tried to say something.

I recognized him immediately. It was Jimmy Cross.

In a small town, you know most everybody, and you know most everybody’s story. For some reason Jimmy had come to town his junior year in High School, with his Mom and step Dad. He came from Atlanta, I think, and he made an impression in the school right away. He was different from the get-go, and things being what they are, he had a hard time. I was a year ahead of him, and after I graduated I heard that he’d been beaten up a couple of times, just for fun. Fun being somebody yelling “Let’s go roll a queer”, and 2 or three guys, with the occasional girl would go looking for a target in our limited supply of gays.

Talking to Bud Springer one day, he told me he’d seen Jimmy in a gay bar the Sheriff’s Department had staked out in Laurel. I didn’t even know there was such a thing in Laurel, and I wasn’t ashamed to say so.

Jimmy was hoarsely whispering about his leg. The door didn’t look like it could be opened and anyway I figured if it did Jimmy would fall out, so I stuck my head inside the window. The shifter knob was gone, and it looked like the remaining sharp metal shaft had raked and gouged his upper leg severing an artery: the blood was flowing fast and had already soaked his trousers and his trouser legs.

The world absolutely stopped for me.

I’d gotten ahead of myself, so I grabbed a pair of gloves and put them on. I knew gays carried aids, and I did not want to take a chance. My brain was thinking on two tracks. On the one hand, I’d never been a mean person, and wanting to help others was who I was. On the other hand, I remembered Jim’s lessons and how God looked at gays.

I looked at Jimmy’s leg, the blood, and then I noticed his, well, his personal parts had been badly injured when the metal gouged across his crotch and his leg.

God! And I meant it, I really meant it. I figured I might be able to stop the bleeding, but I kept going back to what I’d been told, and believed about gays. Did his wounds tell me God was punishing this man.

“Let him go”. Those words came into my mind as clearly as if you’d spoken them to me. “Let him go”.

I froze and closed my eyes. The sweat was really dripping off of me. I held my breath for what seemed five minutes, my mind blank, then I exhaled.

I pulled carefully back out of the car, and straightened up slowly. Jimmy looked up at me, really scared. I said to him “Jimmy, God is taking care of you” and I slowly walked over to the other side of the road to check on Mr. Parks, and called Ms. Gratham Care Facility to let ‘em know I’d be late.

Bud Springer pulled up in his cruiser.

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No actions were taken against Dick Reevers who acted out of Sincerely Held Religious Beliefs that he should not provide services to the Gays of the world.