The small town of Puffington is a pleasant location, one of the finest in the north-west. The snow-capped peaks of Montana can be seen on the far horizon and the land all around is fertile, with sweeping green pastures in the spring and a carpet of gold at the time of the barley harvest. It was at such a time, not many weeks before Thanksgiving, when something very strange occurred.
There is a large wooden church in the centre of Puffington, beautifully crafted more than a hundred and fifty years ago. The Church of the Redeemer is painted white and gold, with a dazzling cross above an impressive bell tower. White steps lead up to the great wooden doors and nearly all the people of the town file into this majestic place at least once every Sunday.
So it was, in the late 1980s, that they all heard an impressive sermon from their minister, the Revd Milton J. Swackhammer III, who fulminated at great length against the moral evils of American society. They all nodded their heads gravely as he listed the evils of the age: the drug culture, the sexual promiscuity, the blasphemy and violence now rampant in television and film. The whole congregation applauded when he condemned, in the most colourful language, the epidemic of HIV and AIDS as a plague sent by God in judgement on Sodom and Gomorrah.
‘This disease,’ he proclaimed, ‘is nothing less than the outer manifestation of an inner corruption. Every day, sinful men are being exposed, and their vile and secret sins are being revealed in all their hideous deformity! Who can escape from the wrath of God? No one!’ He banged the pulpit several times. ‘No one, for “The wrath of God is being revealed from heaven against all the godlessness and wickedness of men”, Romans chapter 1, verse 18!’
The Revd Milton J. Swackhammer, or ‘Rev Milt’ as he was known by his loyal congregation, loved the book of Romans, especially chapter 1. In fact, he read it a great deal more than the Gospels and knew it all by heart. ‘Men are now, in our time, in our age, before our very eyes’ – he didn’t mind embellishing Scripture a little now and then – ‘receiving in their own bodies the due penalty for their perversion! Romans chapter 1, verse 27.’
Somehow, repeating the chapter and verse out loud gave everything a little extra authority and certainly made him look extremely knowledgeable, because he preached without notes and never once looked down at his large, open Bible. It was as if the words of Scripture flew up, flaming, into his mouth, to be blasted into the vaults of the great Church of the Redeemer in Puffington!
The congregation loved his style, his fervour, his prophetic fury as he lashed contemporary culture time and again. The good people of Puffington would nod their heads, exchange glances and, at frequent moments, applaud and shout out, ‘Amen!’
The day of his ‘Plague Address’, as it came to be known, was warm and sunny, and the people filed out of the church feeling a wonderful sense of well-being. The fruit in the orchards was ripe, the barley harvest was almost ready for gathering, all the businesses, banks, grocery stores, hotels and other businesses were thriving. Puffington was a prosperous place and there was a great deal of cause for rejoicing as the celebration of Thanksgiving drew near. That very Sunday, the church had received its largest collection on record, because the people had been moved by the plight of the nation and the urgent need to spread the message of salvation.
The first peculiar thing that afternoon was a small spot appeared on the church treasurer’s forehead. Within hours it had grown and become quite a serious and unsightly lump. His wife called out the doctor and was amazed to see that he too was sprouting a large and very visible lump on his cheek.
‘What’s happening?’ she asked.
‘I’ve no idea,’ said the doctor, ‘but this is nothing to what is hidden under here.’ He rolled up one trouser leg and showed her an appalling sore that extended all the way up his calf.
‘Is there a cure?’ she said frantically, because now her husband was also rolling up his trouser legs and exposing several bizzare-looking growths.
‘I’ll need to confer with the hospital of tropical diseases in Missoula tomorrow. This is clearly some kind of . . .’ – the doctor hesitated – ‘mysterious plague.’
Rev Milt was relaxing in his bath that evening when he was troubled by the sight of what appeared to be three kneecaps emerging from the foam. Was he dreaming? He swept the foam aside and realized, to his horror, that a very large lump had grown on the side of his left knee. He jumped out of the bath and gazed in the mirror. There was a large spot on his forehead and a hideous lump growing from his ear.
The strange thing was, not everyone in the church was affected. Many of the men grew lumps, and a few of the weal-thier women. Puffington’s well-respected accountant was one of the worst hit. He had a veritable mountain range of lumps across his bald head.
Experts from the hospital of tropical diseases in Missoula arrived, wearing protective clothing, and examined the unfortunate victims in a special roadside decontamination unit. But this plague was like nothing they had ever seen.
‘Can any of you think of anything you have eaten or been in contact with, any plant or animal you have touched?’ asked the grim-faced scientist. But the victims shook their heads sadly as they stood in the showers and gazed at their lesions, spots and lumps, which were now multiplying at a terrifying rate.
‘We must trust the Lord in this time of terrible crisis!’ urged Rev Milt, but even as he said this, a very large lump appeared on his upper lip and he was no longer able to speak.
Puffington was now desperately trying to keep the affliction secret, but it soon became national news that nearly an entire population of highly respectable men, and a small handful of very well-to-do and influential women, were in quarantine. Puffington became known as Plague City.
It was the daughter of the local accountant who, remarkably, broke the spell of this dreadful curse. She was only twelve, but she was very clever and very good with numbers. She had often helped her father in his office and, as he was so severely debilitated (he couldn’t sit down because of the multiple lumps on his behind), she was going through his recent accounts for him.
‘Daddy!’ she exclaimed. ‘You’ve added all the figures up wrongly here!’
Her father stumbled to her side. ‘Impossible!’ he said, but he was not entirely convincing. ‘Add up figures wrongly? What do you take me for?’
‘Well,’ said the girl, who was very direct and had beautiful clear and honest eyes, ‘I would take you for a cheat! You should owe $35,000 to the IRS, but it says here you only owe $7,500.’
‘When did I make such a terrible mistake?’ blustered her father.
‘You did it last Sunday evening,’ she said.
With horrible clarity, he realized that the lumps on his head had appeared shortly after he had, not to put too fine a point on it, ‘cooked his books’. He immediately rang the church treasurer – the very first victim of the plague.
‘Mervyn,’ he said, ‘can you think of anything you did last Sunday afternoon?’
‘What do you mean?’ said Mervyn defensively, thinking of the six beers he had drunk before falling asleep in front of the television. ‘Having the occasional drink?’
‘No, no! Mervyn, think money. Did you do anything regarding . . . church funds, for example?’
‘What are you implying?’ Mervyn was becoming angry.
‘Think about it,’ said the accountant. ‘It may be your only hope.’
Mervyn sat in his chair and stared into space, for he knew very well that he had, well, borrowed a little money on a short-term loan from the Church Reserve Funds that Sunday afternoon but, of course, he intended to pay it back very quickly, as soon as his cash flow improved.
One by one, the hundreds of victims of the Puffington plague began to discover that the hideous lumps had appeared within minutes of some shady or reckless or unkind or mean or underhand financial act. Ladies who had refused to help a friend in desperate need or disinherited a wayward child to punish them; men who had kept secret accounts to spend on themselves, without their partners’ knowledge, or taken out loans to fund a gambling addiction; lawyers, accountants and businessmen who had played fast and loose with each other and with the IRS . . . the list was endless.
The Revd Milton J. Swackhammer III was the very last to face up to the truth. That Sunday, after his thundering condemnation of AIDS victims, he had visited a very wealthy old lady and poured out his heart to her about his desperate need for a brand new car, which was essential to his ministry. He had greatly exaggerated his financial need: he had enough money to buy a new car himself, but not the huge SUV he had set his heart on. She gave him a very large cheque and he prayed with her, fulsomely, thanking God and blessing her for this ‘completely unexpected generosity’. He had come home, singing hallelujahs loudly, and run himself a very relaxing bath, which was when the ‘third kneecap’ had suddenly appeared.
It was the accountant’s daughter, of course, who spoke the truth to them all.
‘What shall we do?’ they said, as if she were a prophet of God (although women were never allowed to speak in the Church of the Redeemer).
‘You have to put things right,’ she said very simply. ‘First with God and then with other people. Who knows? Perhaps he will take pity on us all in Puffington.’ They were very touched by the way she included herself in the suffering of the town, even though she was quite innocent. Indeed, the tears in her eyes as she spoke melted all the hardness of their hearts.
The entire quarantined community gathered in the Church of the Redeemer to pray all night for forgiveness. They confessed their sins – not only their secret financial misdeeds but also, above all, their spirit of judgement and harshness towards others.
As they prayed, one by one the lumps disappeared and the lesions vanished and the spots were washed away by a loving invisible hand. Every single man and woman agreed to make restitution to anyone they had cheated or hoodwinked or ignored or condemned unfairly. Rev Milt changed his tune too and was seen humbly welcoming people with AIDS into his home, which became a haven for anyone who was on the margins of faith and had felt wounded and rejected by preachers such as him. When he spoke in the pulpit of the Church of the Redeemer in Puffington, he described himself as a sinner who was desperately in need of grace.
Rev Milt was soon soundly condemned and vilified by a preacher in the nearby town of Vaunting, who described him as an ‘ambassador from hell’ because of his liberal views.
Needless to say, it wasn’t long before Vaunting was visited by a mysterious plague.