by Richard Relham The burnt-orange ball of the sun had barely tipped the mountain ridge one Monday when I was awakened by a knock at the door. The ten-year-old son of the Elvis family stood there. "Elbe's almost dead and Pop wants you to come." As I hurriedly dressed and walked the block to their house, I speculated about the emergency. Ellie was a thirteen-yearold diabetic, and I uneasily wondered if there was any connection between her condition and a rumor I'd heard about the family's involvement with the Church of the Holy Flame, and whether the choice of me as a consultant had anything to do with the fact that I owned a car. It would not be the first time I'd been called on to transport people to the hospital , a service I gladly performed if there was a real need. When I arrived at the little frame house the Elvises rented, I discovered that they wanted my spiritual advice about whether to let Ellie die or take her to the hospital. Ellie, tall and thin for her age, and palefaced , lay on the bed in what I suspected was a diabetic coma. "How long has it been since she had an insulin shot?" I asked. Mr. Elvis looked embarrassed and his answer about the time was vague. He finally blurted out that the Holy Flame preachers had said she didn't need insulin if she only had faith. "The first thing to do is call the doctor ," I said, and sent one of the neighbors who was hanging around to the nearest phone to call the coal company doctor . Mr. Elvis made no objection and to my relief the doctor came immediately. He gave her a couple of injections and told us to get her to the hospital immediately . I ran for my car and parked it in front of the house. We carried Ellie out and disposed her as comfortably as possible on the back seat, and Mr. Elvis got in front beside me. I drove the eighteen miles to the county seat on a dirt road, up one side of the ridge and down the other, as fast as I safely could and arrived at the hospital in forty-five minutes. After Ellie had been admitted I left Mr. Elvis at the hospital and drove home. But we were too late. Ellie died the next day. With insulin and a proper diet she might have lived to an old age, but a religion that spurned medical science had captured the parents, and Ellie was too young to make any independent decision. Ellie would probably have been buried after a decent two days of mourning if it hadn't happened that an old lady connected with the Holy Flames died on Wednesday, and Ellie was held over for a big double funeral on Friday. In this region it was a custom to have "preaching" at the home each night the corpse lay there. This quite often attracted a lot of preachers, some of whom never got a chance to preach except on occasions like this. I didn't ordinarily go to these wakes unless I was in charge of the funeral or had been specially invited. In this case, because of my involvement with the Elvises, I went up the first night Ellie lay at the house. The rooms were packed 13 with people and as many more were on the porch and in the yard, including an unkown number of preachers of the Holy Flame and other denominations. I was the youngest minister there, the only "collar and tie" preacher, engaging in an unfamiliar custom and with no real pastoral tie with the family, all of which rendered me somewhat diffident. I was called on to "preach" and responded with some very brief remarks. After a decent interval, I took my leave. The young people, most of whom came tp my Sunday Schools and youth groups and were on my side, so to speak, gleefully reported the next day what the other preachers had said after Heft. During the course of my remarks the previous evening, I...