Ryan E. Felton

  • The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 11)

    XIV. …And Be Content with What You Have Three years before the Tanzania affair, Gideon Dodd thanked the man at the hardware store as he dropped two copies of a key into the preacher’s hand. He paid for the discounted wood scraps in his cart — they’d make nice whittling — and turned onto the…

  • The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 10)

    VII. Therefore My Harp Is Tuned to Mourning “Who died?” In America, five years before Gideon Dodd would don the very same outfit to honor his deceased wife, he straightened a black tie and practiced a somber punim in the mirror of his grandiose dressing room. A woman at the mahogany door spoke to him…

  • The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 9)

    III. Weep Bitterly for Her Who Goes Away Six days after Gideon Dodd’s sermon about Truth — and about his wife Tamera’s infamous interview with Maria Gutierrez (not yet Stenson) — he returned home late from an elders’ meeting. He was hungry. He was thinking about playing catch with his boy, maybe, after dinner. (Not…

  • The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 8)

    SELAH: III There is a stomp, a shattering of glass, and blood. The bridegroom collapses into a heap upon the bunched train of his newly-minted wife’s gown. Flat red flowers bloom on the white of her dress from under her man’s heel, where shards of a wine vessel sparkle in sunlight from the dirt —…

  • The Man Who Ran for God (pt. 7)

    III. …But with Many Advisers They Succeed “What was that horseshit? ‘Bad muchacho?’ Did you hear yourself out there?” Inside the Doddville bus, Kratz leaned against a crafting table, shaking in his mauve Adidas windbreaker. With the back of a hand he knocked a squeeze-tube of adhesive paste into an unreachable crevasse under the console.…