Forsaken (13 page)

Just as I was about to click to a news station, Simon walked out of the bedroom carrying a beat-up, green shoe box under his arm. The small amount of hair that he had left on the sides of his head was matted flat. His jeans and T-shirt looked as if someone had wadded them up wet and thrown them in a corner.

When he saw me standing in front of the television, he stopped and rubbed his hand over his head. “I heard the door close. I thought everyone had gone.”

“I’m sorry. I’m on my way out.” I placed the remote on top of the television. “I wanted to check the news one more time.”

“What are they saying?”

“I don’t know. I just turned it on.”

He stood barefoot in the middle of the floor and looked around the room. He was lean and athletic; his chest and arms stretched against the cotton of his T-shirt. I thought of my father and the way he looked that last night at the campsite. Then I pictured Simon the evening before, how calm he’d remained after the bomb went off.

Dad would have liked this man.

Simon continued to scan the room. His eyes were dark and bloodshot, and he seemed incapable of moving, as if he’d forgotten why he came into the room in the first place.

I stepped toward him. “Are you all right? Can I get you anything before I go?”

He blinked and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “No, I’m fine. Thanks.”

I walked toward the table, where my purse hung from the back of one of the arm chairs. “I’ll just get out of your way then. I’m sure you want to get some sleep.” I picked up my purse and slung it over my shoulder.

He nodded toward the kitchen. “Is there any coffee left?”

“I imagine so. We didn’t drink much out of that last pot.”

“Would you mind staying for a bit?”

Surprised, I didn’t respond immediately.

He shifted the shoe box to his other arm. “You’re probably exhausted. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, a cup of coffee would be good. I’m not sleepy anyway.” I dropped my purse onto the floor next to the wall and headed for the kitchen. I looked at him over my shoulder. “You like it black, right?”

He held up a hand. “You sit down. I’ll get it.” He walked past me, sliding the shoe box onto the table as he went by. “I’m sorry, I didn’t notice how you like it.”

“I like mine black, also.”

I sat down and rested an elbow on the table. The shoe box was inches from my hand. Part of the lid was torn. One of the bottom corners had a hole the size of a dime, where the cardboard had worn through. I resisted the urge to lift the lid and see what was inside.

A few moments later Simon came back from the kitchen and placed a coffee mug in front of me. I picked it up and blew over the top. It smelled strong, burnt. He sat down across from me. Neither of us said anything.

I wondered whether he wanted to talk or just sit for a while. The fear that I’d seen earlier that evening was back in his eyes. He had no one left, and I knew how that felt. I would sit with him all night, and all day, and the next night too if it would help him.

He took a drink of coffee and set his mug on the table. “Do you know how I got to be a preacher?”

“No, how?”

“When I was growing up, my family was not what you would call religious. We went to church once in a while, mostly on Easter, Christmas, Mother’s Day. When Marie and I got married, she was more serious about faith than I was. She went to church most Sundays. I stayed home.

“When Kacey was born, I had so much to be thankful for. I still never thought about God, though, or about much of anything except just living my life. We were happy. Our lives revolved around Kacey, and we thought we had everything we needed. At least, I thought we did.” He picked up his mug and sipped.

“Then Marie got sick. And then she died. After that, I wanted to die too. But I couldn’t. Kacey needed me. She was only three years old. So I kept on living. I tried, really tried, to get back to life, but it was so hard because I missed Marie so much. I kept on living on the outside, but on the inside I was dying more every day.

“About six months after Marie died, I lost my job at the auto factory. We basically had nothing in savings. We’d been a young couple with a kid. We’d poured every penny we had into our house. I’ll never forget when I got the notice in the mail saying that we had to move out within thirty days because I wasn’t able to pay the mortgage. I wondered how people lived when they didn’t have a house or an apartment. I remember lying in bed one night when Kacey was asleep. I put a pillow over my face and screamed into it so Kacey couldn’t hear. I was screaming at God. ‘Why are you doing this
to me? Don’t you have someone else to knock around for a while?’”

I wanted to reach out and touch him, hold his hand. But how could I? I hardly knew him.

He turned his palm up. “I don’t know why I decided to yell at God that night. It’s not as if I’d paid much attention to him in the past thirty years. For some reason, though, as soon as I finished yelling into that pillow, the strangest sense of peace came over me. It was as if he’d just been waiting for me to ask him to help. God moved into my life that night. He moved in because I asked him in. He came in quietly, and he sat with me. I began to talk to him that night, there in my bedroom. And that’s how God saved me. He did it very quietly. That’s how we talk even today—very quietly.”

He shrugged. “I’m sorry, I’m sure you don’t want to hear about this. I guess I just wanted to talk to someone.”

I leaned forward. “Please, I do want to hear. So how did you end up preaching?”

“That’s a little bit tougher to explain.” He took another sip of his coffee. “I got some odd jobs around town, things like painting, fix-it stuff. It was enough to get the mortgage caught up and keep us in our house. I wasn’t working full time, just a job here and there. I had time to think about things.

“At first the idea of preaching was something that flitted through my mind and was gone. Over time, when the thought came, it stayed longer. At some point I began to consider the details. How would it actually
work if I did it? How does a person begin something like that? I finally concluded that God was putting the idea in my head.

“So I raised my objections to him; and I had plenty of them. I’m not an educated man. I’m nobody. Who would listen to me? I would have to go to seminary, and that would take years. How would I pay for it? I had Kacey to think of. How would I earn money for the things she needed?”

I nodded. “Particularly important with a girl.”

He smiled. “Yes, you’ve got that right. Anyway, I sat down and wrote out a list of my strengths and weaknesses. I still have it. On the strength side of the ledger, I figured I was a hard worker, I was sincere, and by that time I felt I really loved God. I had some skills most preachers don’t have, but they didn’t seem to have much applicability. For example, I was a good athlete. I could dunk a basketball. In high school I’d been a quarterback and pitcher too. I figured that might help me work with youth somehow. I had a good sense of humor, and that could help with kids, also. You get the point. I had very few things going for me. None of them seemed to fit particularly well with being a preacher.

“There were plenty of weaknesses, though. I was still basically unemployed, which is not the best jumping-off point for any new career. I had no college education and no Bible training. I was a single parent, with all of the time demands that go along with that. I had no public speaking experience, and as a matter of fact the thought of speaking in public pretty much terrified me. I didn’t
have a single connection anywhere in the preaching business to get me started.” He took another drink of his coffee and made a face. “This stuff is like mud.”

I smiled. “It’s been sitting there for hours.”

He pushed his mug away. “Anyway, as you can imagine, when I looked over my list, it wasn’t a close call. There were practically zero reasons to think I could become any kind of a preacher. So I decided to look for a real job. I answered an ad at a local radio station, hoping to work my way into a sports talk show. Funny, but that’s how God started me in my ministry—with a job that I took because I didn’t seriously think I could be a minister.” Simon chuckled. “God must have realized that my baldness wouldn’t be a liability on the radio. I’d been on the radio for a year or so, and someone from my Sunday school class suggested I start working some stuff about faith into my bits on the show. I used real light things at first. People liked it. Before long I was being asked to speak in front of groups. It all snowballed from there.”

He leaned back in his chair. “I guess I’m the classic example of how God uses even the bad things in life to accomplish something good. If Marie hadn’t died, there is no way I would be a preacher today.”

I glanced at the shoe box. He followed my eyes and placed his hand on the lid. “I’ve been talking to Marie tonight. In the bedroom.”

I shifted my weight and scratched at the shadow of a cigarette burn that someone had buffed out of the tabletop.

“Don’t worry, Taylor, I’m not crazy.” He patted the lid of the shoe box. “This is how I talk to her.” He opened the lid. Inside was a stack of envelopes, many of them faded and yellow. Some had been opened and some were sealed. He poured them out on the table. Each envelope had
Marie
written in ink on the front. “I write her letters. I’ve been doing it since the first Christmas after she died.”

When he talked about Marie, the muscles in his face and neck relaxed. I wondered what it would be like to be good enough to have that sort of effect on a man. I couldn’t think of anything to say that wouldn’t sound inconsequential and stupid. I cursed myself for being just that—inconsequential and stupid.

“You think I’m crazy.” He turned the box on its side and raked the envelopes into it. “I shouldn’t have shown you this.”

“No, stop.” I couldn’t help myself. I reached across the table and touched the back of his hand. “I don’t think you’re crazy. I was just trying to keep from crying.”

“Why would you cry?”

I waved my hand in the air. “Oh, I cry a lot. It’s a real problem.”

He turned the box upright and laid the lid crossways over it. “That’s hard for me to believe. You seem . . . well . . . pretty tough.”

I straightened my back. “I
am
pretty tough.”

He smiled.

I wiped at my eye with my hand. “Let’s face it,
who wouldn’t cry? You’ve been writing letters to your deceased wife for more than fifteen years. That’s the sweetest thing I’ve ever heard.”

“Now you
are
crying. I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay. Like I said, I do this a lot.”

A few of the envelopes were still scattered on the table. He picked one up and ran his fingers over Marie’s name. “It’s just that sometimes I want to talk to her so much that I almost can’t stand it. I lie in bed and close my eyes and think what it would be like if I could touch her hand one more time. Sometimes I can feel it— her skin on my fingertips. I want to reach out and hold her . . . but I open my eyes and she’s not there.”

That did it. I got up and picked up my purse from the floor. I pulled out a tissue and sat back down at the table.

He nodded at the letters. “This is the closest I can get to her, and it helps. So I write.”

I wiped under my eyes with the tissue. “I can’t imagine anyone loving me that much.” I could have kicked myself for saying it; this was not about me. I crumpled the tissue and shoved it in the pocket of my jeans.

He waved the envelope that was in his hand. “Tonight I talked to Marie about Kacey. I asked her what I should do.” He leaned back in his chair and looked up at the ceiling. “That’s the issue, isn’t it? It’s a matter of who I love and how much. I think I must have loved Marie too much, and now she’s gone. I must love Kacey too much, because she’s gone too.”

“What do you mean, you loved them too much?”

“I think I loved them more than I love God. Maybe that’s why they’re gone.” He dropped the envelope back on the table.

“Why would God be angry that you loved your wife and daughter? Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do?”

He didn’t answer.

“Wait a minute. I know that you’re the preacher here, but that’s not the way things are supposed to work, is it? I thought God
wanted
us to love each other.”

He leaned forward and put his elbows on the table. “He does, but not more than we love him. ‘Anyone who loves his father or mother or son or daughter more than he loves me is not worthy of me.’ That’s straight from Jesus’ mouth. You can look it up in the Bible.”

“I’ll take your word for it. I wouldn’t be able to find it anyway. Surely that’s not meant literally, though. If it were, God would seem petty and jealous.”

“You want jealousy? ‘I, the Lord your God am a jealous God.’ You can find that in the Ten Commandments.”

“That’s in the Ten Commandments? Okay, fine. Even if it is, that was two thousand years ago. It was a different time.”

“Was it? Do you think I’m the first one ever to be put in this position? The Romans forced Christians to watch as their wives and children were tortured. But those people didn’t deny Christ. At least some of them didn’t. Do you think that people back then loved their families less than I love Kacey?”