Richard’s had many lives: grand, disastrous, rich, poor. Many opportunities to use his skills. He’s a prophet, intellectual, singer, writer, spell binder. He occupies the sagging recliner, in his Big Dog blue pajamas, directly across from the TV. He is large, heavy, has receding curly hair, dark expressive eyes, a congenitally bad hip, calls himself an “Elitist.” He is a historian, graduated from a religious university, spent thirty years running revivals and is meeting with his public defender tomorrow. He is instantly bright, a practiced public speaker, melodic voice, never runs out of words. Says he tries to keep his books under 200 pages. He’s working on one about religion that he will make an e-book out of since he doesn’t have any money because he gave it all away. He’s been charged with fraud. He didn’t do it. He has pounds of documents he has to organize for his attorney. They didn’t expect him to keep that kind of evidence. It proves he’s innocent.
When he was in high school, he went to Europe to sing. He was going to meet his dad in Paris, the first time since his dad had walked out when Richard was a baby. However, there was a threat from some group that didn’t like Americans, so the police sent them to England where they hung around the hotel with jazz and blues legends while they waited for their gigs. It was about then, just as he was reaching the zenith of his musical career, that he got into drugs and stopped singing because he realized that he was doing it for his own glory.
But just before the Easter Service at the Riverview Church, the Lord spoke to him, told him it was okay to sing. He lifts his voice from the middle of the sparse, adult congregation, joining the sore throated preacher’s wife and her quiet partner who make up the choir. He’s in his pajamas and his bath robe.
He comes from Portuguese royalty, has been a “hearing prophet” since he was young, though he didn’t know that’s what it was. God is telling him that he’s a prophet again. He doesn’t like titles. But it’s almost time for him to tell uswhat is going to happen next. He knows it. He’s just waiting for God to tell him.
He eats ice cream and two pieces of chocolate cake Hank brings him. Knows it isn’t good for his diabetes. He’s on the third day of his diabetes medication, after running out for three months. He feels like throwing up. The last thing he wants to do is eat. He’s built many businesses. Once, when he was going through another bust, living with a friend and paying his room and board by cooking and cleaning, he got a part time job, three days a week, hauling Los Angeles Times newspapers from LA to San Francisco in a bobtail truck. Then the owner sent him to LA to compete against Ryder Trucks, who had the rest of the Times business. He had two worn out Freight Liners. Within a year, it mushroomed and prospered.
He was two years old when his dad left. His mother said he’d come back. He didn’t. His mother was twenty, an Italian beauty, Elizabeth Taylor in her prime, who had the misfortune of falling in love with his dad, a brilliant, handsome, world traveler, forty years older than her. He made this traditional Roman Catholic girl have a back alley abortion. She nearly died, would have if someone hadn’t found her. The family never breathed a word. Richard never knew until she was on her deathbed. He learned that when she later became pregnant with him, God told her to name him Richard, told her that he would have trouble until he turned to God when he was older and then his way would be clear.
Rico says Richard had a heart attack last night. Someone suggested calling an ambulance. “No!” Richard said, “Pray for me.” They did. Rico says he didn’t know what to pray for or what to do so he started talking in tongues to God and suddenly he had a vision of the veins and arteries in Richard’s arms opening up and Richard coughed and was well.
Richard says he usually has some warning when the attacks are coming and is able to prepare. This one hit him quick. He had an extreme urge to vomit. He’s had about ten altogether. He’s not worried about dying because God has given him a job to do and isn’t about to kill him before he gets to do it.
The Lord has been talking to him and it’s been confirmed by other prophets he listens to. We are now in the educational period, where people are to come to God, because, if they don’t, by 2013, God’s coming to them. His job is to feed the people by making the ground, even the worst, fertile and productive. The seeds will fall from Heaven; the water will rise in the soil. He can bless ground and make it fertile.
He wants to feed the homeless, has a system and a method, for doing it, has written a thousand pages on how to do it. He sees a complex, a large building with homeless businesses on the bottom and housing on top. He sees it changing the world. He doesn’t see it as charity. He has been given the gift of making money. He goes on for a long time, a half hour or more, expansive, talking about his gifts and how to be falsely humble is to deny the gifts that God gave him. “I know billionaires,” he says, rattling off names. They think big. “I’m calling out for funding. God is telling me to do it. I want to do something that we have no right to think we can do. I’m tired of sitting around, but I don’t want to waste my time. And we have to wait until God lays out the details before we start. You’re not qualified if you don’t have an answer. If God hasn’t told you what to do, then you don’t start doing.”
Bill Siemer grew up on a farm in Lassen County, played basketball at Shasta JC, went to Vietnam, became a newspaper reporter and then a lawyer and now considers himself a champion of the story that needs to be told. He lives on the bank of the river and takes pictures.
