Providence (2 page)

Art was playing a game of chess, advancing his army of pawns. “What do you think they’ll write about you once they hear you’ve backed out of your project? How do you think they’ll fill in the blanks? And Jack, they
will
fill in the blanks.”

“I never signed a contract …”

Art wasn’t listening. “Wake up, Jack,” he said. “People want to know why you’re so private. They’re interpreting your … introversion as hiding secrets. Everyone has questions about your history, questions about your finances. They want to know why a man who does so much good for the poor feels like he has to hide. Are you thinking about all the people genuinely interested in what you’re supposed to be writing about? Or the kind of influence you can have for good? Readers
want
this book, Jack. Booksellers want it; journalists and, yes, even us little people at Arthur Reed Publishing who have worked for twenty-five years with writers who can’t even sell five thousand books. Just like you used to be, Jack. You can’t just take your ball and go home because you don’t feel like playing anymore.”

The December sky looked like miles of dark cotton stretched across the sun. My head ached as I listened to Arthur, reminded of the people affected by the decisions we make, and more aware than ever how my elusiveness had created suspicion. I was a “best-selling do-gooder” who might just have something to hide. That’s what the press was saying. The problem was, they were right.

“Arthur, you have to understand something. I’m not complaining about deadlines or about writing late at night until the coffee burns the taste buds out of my mouth. It’s about delving into …”—I paused. In my mind I saw a picture of Art and me engaged in a tug-of-war, my flag being pulled across his line—“into areas of my past I’m not comfortable with.” The moment I said it, I wished I hadn’t. Friend or not, Arthur would push through my excuses like a linebacker finding a hole in the offense.

“What’s the big deal, Jack? Everyone’s got a couple of skeletons hiding in their closet!”

“I don’t have a few skeletons, Art,” I blurted out. “I have enough to build a whole skeleton army, and I’m not about to parade them down Main Street.”

Then it happened. A stroke of genius so obvious I wondered why I hadn’t thought of it in the first place. “Listen, Art, there’s something else. I’ve got a staff meeting at the Campus Missions Office this morning. I haven’t mentioned this book to anyone at CMO. You know I’ll need the full support of my colleagues before committing to such considerable time away from CMO.”

Immediately Art saw through the strategy I was employing. “Jack, listen. This book means more than you realize. You’re taking this far too lightly.”

That was an understatement, and for the first time I heard fear in Arthur’s voice.

“I’m heading over to the office now,” I said. “I’ll call you this afternoon and let you know the outcome.”

It was all over, and he knew it. Aaron and Peter would support me in whatever I thought was best. Nancy would follow suit.

“Jack, I need you to give this serious thought—”

“I will, Arthur, I will.”

I cut off the phone with my finger, ending our conversation. Round one had been messy, but I’d won. Round two would be easy. Aaron, Peter, and Nancy would surely agree that I couldn’t be spared from CMO’s work, especially during a demanding Christmas season. The memoir of Jack Clayton would be laid out flat. A two-round knockout.

~
T
WO
~

You can listen as well as you hear.

—Mike and the Mechanics

“The Living Years”

An eighties song was playing at the BP station when I pulled in to gas up the Jeep. Not everyone had switched over to wall-to-wall Christmas music. I knew the tune right away. I didn’t like it much as a twenty-year-old college student here at Providence, but as a forty-year-old, I found myself humming it as I drove off into the steady downpour of a thick, wet snow.
“Say it loud, say it clear; you can listen as well as you hear.”

The song had faded from my mind by the time I shut off the engine in the lot behind the Campus Missions Office. Jenny’s countenance, which had surfaced for the third time in less than twenty-four hours, thankfully faded with it.

Stopping for gas made me late. I climbed the icy stairs at the rear entrance of the building, darted past Mrs. Burman, our receptionist, and then bounded up the staircase to the second-floor conference room, nearly running into CMO’s fifty-three-year-old founder, Aaron Richmond. The man who’d hired me to work at CMO more than a decade ago was setting a full box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts in the middle of the conference table.

“Krispy Kreme,” I said. “What’s the occasion?”

“We’re officially in Christmas mode now,” he said. “In other words, I felt like it.”

Aaron is, not surprisingly, thick in the middle. Friends say he couldn’t be any smaller and still contain so much good humor and genuine compassion for others.

Peter Brenner came in after me, carrying a very large cup of something from Starbucks and looking like an advertisement for J.Crew. Tall and thin, sporting a short goatee, and round-framed glasses, he wore his trademark red flannel shirt, blue jeans, and a Duckhead cap. Peter looked casual because he was.

This probably accounts for some of his success teaching the hugely popular Crosswise Bible study on Tuesday nights. Peter has a gift for teaching, and even students who don’t identify themselves as Christians feel comfortable filling the seats in Warren Auditorium to hear him speak plainly and compellingly about the gospel.

“Krispy Kreme and Starbucks, oh yeah. Breakfast of champions.”

Nancy Arcone entered after Peter, trademark notepad and pen in hand. She took her seat next to Aaron. Nancy is CMO’s chief administrator and smartest teammate. She’s a married mother of three (two of them in college). She brought a master’s degree in nursing and a University of Wisconsin MBA to CMO with which she bridles what would otherwise be a disorganized organization.

“Has anyone heard the weather report? It’s starting to look pretty nasty out there.”

“They predicted three to four inches last night, and we got almost a foot,” Peter laughed. “Today it’s supposed to clear up. What was it doing when you drove in Jack?”

“Uh … snowing,” I said.

“Thank you for your brilliant analysis, Jack. You know as much as the guy on TV.”

“Jack, thank you for sending your book to my dad … and for calling him,” said Nancy. “I talked to him on Sunday, and I could tell he really thought that was something.”

“No problem. I only wish he were closer than Green Bay. I’d love to visit him.”

“Well, it did him a world of good. I wanted you to know that.”

Peter opened the meeting with prayer, then Aaron wrapped up a few loose ends from the fall semester, which felt more like winter. When he finished, he opened the floor for new business. I took my cue.

“Good morning again, everyone. There’s a small, simple matter I need to discuss with you. This shouldn’t take too long, but I do feel it’s necessary to bring up what’s happening in my life and ministry.” I glanced at the faces around the conference table, hoping to gauge their receptivity. There was no indication, so I went on.

“Arthur has asked me to start a new book. Don’t laugh, but he wants this one to be about yours truly.” I chuckled, giving them permission to laugh too. Nobody did.

“Anyway, this has been an unusual season for CMO, as I’m sure you’d agree. The commotion from the last book … well, you all know what that was like. This office was turned upside down, and there were times when the chaos got in the way of the real work that’s supposed to go on here.”

It was true. The attention lavished on
Laborers
was both a blessing and a burden. At its peak, tourists would stand in front of our building snapping pictures or knock on our front door asking for tours. One early morning Aaron had pulled into the parking lot to find a reporter from News Channel Five ready to pounce on him with a surprise interview as he climbed out of his Ford Taurus.

“Arthur will want to market this book in a big way. He hasn’t said it yet, but I’m sure that’s his plan. This would mean pulling my energies away from the office over Christmas when things will be at their busiest, and even into the first part of next year. So you can see why I wanted to discuss this with you before I commit …
if
I commit to this project.”

We were already overworked and understaffed. Even with just one person out, like when Peter had the flu the month before, the workload could feel crippling. The Christmas season was already upon us, and our student volunteers were up to their sleep-deprived eyeballs cramming for final exams just when the need for service was at its peak. This wasn’t merely a lousy time to make special requests, it was the absolute worst.

Aaron, Peter, and Nancy listened attentively, offering no clues on their faces as I finished my opening remarks. I suspected each was deliberating how to phrase a gentle letdown, something about how a less-hectic semester, like summer, would be a better time for me to write a book.

“I don’t know what anyone else at this table is thinking, Jack,” Aaron finally said, breaking the silence, “but I think you need to write the book.”

I was stunned. Across the table Peter nodded his head in slow agreement. This didn’t make sense. I turned to Nancy and asked her what she thought.

“I think you should do the book, Jack. Why wouldn’t you want to?” Nancy’s expression was calm, but her words shot their own kind of caffeinated stimulant into the meeting.

Peter and Aaron turned in unison to catch my reaction.

“It isn’t that I don’t want to write the book,” I said, hoping to sound convincing. “
Part
of me wants to write it.”

Nancy’s words had blindsided me. It hadn’t even crossed my mind that my three closest friends would agree with Arthur. The reality left me scrambling for cover.

“I’m very aware of how this … I’m trying to be sensitive to …”

In front of my friend’s knowing eyes, I wrote, erased, and rewrote excuses until Aaron mercifully stepped in.

“Jack, I’m going to speak candidly. What’s happened with your book over the past year or so has been remarkable. It’s something only God could have done, and through it, I believe He’s allowing millions of people to reconsider their faith and reflect on how they should serve the poor. But it wouldn’t surprise me if God is up to something more, Jack, something specifically focused on you.”

Around the table there were confident nods of agreement. There was also an odd burgeoning energy that made me uncomfortable. I began to squirm in my seat.

“Everyone who comes in contact with your book seems to benefit: the college, the Norwood community, and Arthur Reed, I’m sure. But I don’t think God’s done with it yet, Jack. I really don’t. There may be something in all of this He’s saving just for you.”

“You’ve got to be joking!” The words left my mouth before I could rein them in.

“No, I’m not joking. I’ve worked with you for twelve years. There are a lot of things about you
I
don’t know.”

“Never gives interviews,” Peter interjected, his face propped up against one open hand, his eyes studying me.

“I’ve read your books.” Aaron held three fingers in the air. “Hardly a word about yourself in any of them. Why is that?”

“Well, they’re not about me. They’re books about Norwood,” I said, sounding more defensive than I intended.

“Fair enough, but you found space in those pages to talk about everyone who lives in Norwood, and most of the students who’ve volunteered here. You even wrote a paragraph or two about those of us around this table, but never so much as a word about yourself.”

“Yeah, I’ve thought that too, Jack,” Peter said. He tugged at the white plastic lid on his Starbucks cup, a Cheshire-catlike smile appearing on his face. “Maybe this is God’s way of getting you to write your story.” He let out a slow laugh, and I heard something in it that scared me: truth.

With the three of them sitting on the opposite side of the table, the meeting felt like a parole-board hearing. I didn’t like how this was going. I’d already fought a tug-of-war with Arthur. Now Peter, Aaron, and Nancy were grabbing hold of the rope too.

I wanted to say something to change their minds, but before I could find the words, Nancy spoke.

“Jack, God may be giving you not so much a book to write as a course to take. Maybe He has something for you to discover about Him or yourself, something you can’t learn any other way.”

“That’s possible,” Aaron said. “He may even want to heal something from your past you’re not aware of.”

“I don’t know about anyone else,” said Peter, “but I don’t think you have much of a choice. You need to write this book.” He seemed awfully chipper about the whole thing.

“I don’t doubt this will be challenging for you, Jack,” Nancy added, “but look at the positives. It could be an incredible adventure.”

And there it was. My three friends spoke as if God Himself were speaking through them. I knew then that I had to write this book. I felt it in the core of my being just as surely as I feel this plastic keyboard beneath my curled fingertips. I’d raced in looking for a way out. What I found was a trio of voices to accompany Arthur’s self-assured solo.

There was a fifth voice, too. One that came from inside me. Until that moment it had been silent. I could say no to Arthur, even to my coworkers, but not to this inner voice.

“You’re not concerned about our work?” I asked.

“The students will come back in January ready to handle a lot more than when they arrived here last fall,” Peter said. “I can take on more.”

The four of us sat in silence.

“Jack, the work we do here is service based,” said Aaron. “It’s not just assistance to the college but serving any needs we see the Lord directing us to. If you’re asking for our counsel—which I’m not sure you wanted when you came in here—my suggestion is to take time off, to think and pray, to remember, and especially to write.”