Episode 20: Am I Born to Die?

Blurb
Three months before Frank Tilley met a hard death on the tracks outside Baker's Gap, Esther Campbell moved to Baker's Gap in search of a new life and a new way of worship.

Content Warnings

 * Discussion of Domestic Violence
 * Fundamentalist Religious Themes

Plot Synopsis
Three months before Frank Tilley is murdered, Esther Campbell moves to Baker’s Gap. Esther is determined to be of service to her church community. Moving from Arnie, Tennessee three months prior, when the town collapsed following the end of the railroad construction in the area, she is unmarried at 26 years old and works as a secretary.

After a few visits to Rising Creek Baptist Church, she is invited to join the Ladies’ Auxiliary, the main organizing body of the church’s community service. It is run by the pastor Claude’s wife, Josephine Pickens. As a younger woman, Esther is put to work doing things the older women in the Auxiliary aren’t quite up to doing, and becomes very busy as a result.

Georgie Tripplet, the other young woman in the Auxiliary, takes her aside one week and tells her that she can offer her a chance to do more meaningful work with an interdenominational group who provides for people on the fringes of society. Georgie invites Esther to a pancake breakfast, and she decides to go.

Four days later, Esther stands in the cold outside Rising Creek Baptist, waiting for her ride to the pancake breakfast. She second-guesses her decision, owing to things she’s heard about the poor who live in the woods and who ride the rails. Before she can walk home, however, a work truck arrives with Georgie and a black woman named Miss Darla, who cannot speak. On the way to the ministry, Georgie tells Esther Miss Darla’s story. Miss Darla has no family left and has survived on her own as a servant to white families, facing unimaginable abuse and horror. Then she found the ministry of The Good Mother.

Deep in the woods, at an orderly tent city, the truck arrives for the breakfast. Esther realizes all the utensils and equipment, even the truck, are all stolen, and furthermore realizes she doesn’t care. She feels at home, and sees genuine care for people in need.

After everyone eats, a rough church service is held where the congregants sing songs about bloodshed. A man named Luther sings a solo, and Esther falls into tears as she lets the sorrows of her life come out. Afterword, “the True Word of the Good Mother” is shared by a preacher named Timothy, who speaks of the Dark Earth and who thanks Esther personally for her work. Timothy speaks of the Age of Reckoning. He says the Good Mother walks, and will smile on them personally, answering Georgie’s prayer, which they will witness firsthand.

Esther is brought to a shed to meet Timothy, introduced to her as Evelyn, who explains she is both Evelyn and Timothy at the same time. Timothy invites Esther to come with them that night to witness the Good Mother’s answer to Georgie’s prayer.

That night, outside a house that once belonged to Georgie and her mother, the congregation gathers. Georgie’s stepfather lives in the house, and she holds him responsible for her mother’s death. A tall, pale woman holding an infant appears and summons strange animals made of the Dark Earth, and Georgie’s stepfather is destroyed by them.

Esther feels she has found her new spiritual home, and she and Georgie recruit others. One day, Bonnie Ward comes to them and asks them to invite Cora Lee, hoping they can offer her some relief and eventually persuade her to take action against her husband. Georgie agrees.