An Interview with Sheriff Will Diaz – Part 5 – The Answer

A continuation of the interview with Sheriff Will Diaz. Will Diaz is the central character in the four novels that currently make up The Lawman Series. The fifth book is expected out about Christmas of 2025.

Richard Muniz: What do you mean she’s to blame?

Sheriff Will Diaz: She asked me if I’d ever read the Bible. I had. I was one of the few Catholics I know that had read it cover to cover. What’s surprising is I was admonished that I wasn’t supposed to read it by my elders.

Muniz: Elders?

Sheriff Diaz: Parents, Uncles, Aunts. Those kind of elders.

Muniz: Why?

Sheriff Diaz: They said I’d never understand it. That only the priest could understand it and only he was allowed to read it. I haven’t a clue where they got the idea.

Muniz: What did you do?

Sheriff Diaz: I went to Father Verde who had given me the Bible and I told him what they’d said. He replied by saying, “I didn’t give you the Bible to put it on a shelf. I gave it to you to read it.”

Muniz: And did you read it?

Sheriff Diaz: I did.

Muniz: Did you understand it.

Sheriff Diaz: Not really. But when Jewell asked about it, I replied I had. She asked my opinion and I said, “Good history. Poor literature.”

Muniz: What did she say?

Sheriff Diaz: Nothing. She just hands me this old King James version and says, “Fine. Now, when you read it, ask God to reveal himself to you.” I thought, Right. I asked him that night in Saudi Arabia and he didn’t. How was I supposed to expect him to show up just from reading.

Muniz: Did he?

Sheriff Diaz: Did he ever. It was late night and I was handling dispatch. Everyone was out sick, so I was filling in. I killed time by reading the Bible. And that night, I was in the Book of Job when I read something that made me stop. Job chapter twenty-six, verse seven.

Muniz: And it says?

Sheriff Diaz: Here’s a direct quote. I bothered to memorize this. “He stretcheth out the north over the empty place, and hangeth the earth upon nothing.”

Muniz: And?

Sheriff Diaz: I had to stop, back up, and reread it. I couldn’t believe what I’d just read.

Muniz: Why?

Sheriff Diaz: Because when I read it, what popped into my head was those amazing pictures from Apollo 8. You know, the ones where we have Earthrise over the curve of the Moon on Christmas Morning. And I heard this voice in the back of my mind say, “See. No strings involved. Now what do you think?”

Muniz: Cool. What did you think.

Sheriff Diaz: I didn’t know what to think. But I did know that Job is considered one of the oldest of Bible stories. It was being told well before it was ever committed to paper around numerous tents and fires. No one knew what I’d just caught back then, I mean this is almost a casual, throwaway line. And I had to ask, how did they know this?

Obviously, someone told them or showed them. Yet, there it was. In Job was something that had to wait for twentieth century humans with moonships and cameras to see.

How did they know?

I don’t believe in ancient aliens or flying saucers. And moonships were in short supply back then. So who told them? I mean the highest astrophysical thought had the Earth being carried around on the back of turtle. And of course, it was carried around my a bigger turtle. In fact, it was turtles all the way down.

And here, in a line that is like I said. a throwaway line, is something big. How did they know?

Cut out the middleman and just say God told them.

And I’m sitting there, mind blown, and saying, “It’s true. Every word is true!”

Muniz: That’s some story.

Sheriff Diaz: It’s not a story. It’s the turning point of my life.

Muniz: So, you an Jewell got married shortly afterwards.

Sheriff Diaz: I asked.

Muniz: And?

Sheriff Diaz: And she turned me down flat!

CONTINUED

Image courtesy NASA

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