The Heaven Trilogy (39 page)

“God is a God of joy and peace and happiness,” he offered.

“Yes. But the Teacher did not have in mind sitcoms that make you laugh or happy sermons about what a breeze the narrow road really is. Heavens, no. What is pure, Bill? Or excellent or admirable? The death of a million people in the Flood? God evidently thought so. He is incapable of acts that are not admirable, and it was he who brought about the Flood. How about the slaying of children in Jericho? There are few Bible stories that are not as terrible as they are happy. We just prefer to leave out the terrible part, but that only makes the good anemic.” She turned from him and gazed at the picture of Christ in crucifixion.

“We are encouraged to
participate
in the sufferings of Christ, not to pretend they were feel-happy times. ‘Take this in remembrance of me; this is my blood, this is my body,’ he said. Not, find yourselves an Easter bunny and hunt for chocolate eggs in remembrance of me. We are told to
meditate
on Scripture, even the half that details the consequence of evil, the conquest of Jericho and all. Not to pretend our God has somehow changed since the time of Christ. Obviously, Paul’s idea of admirable and noble is quite different from ours. God forgive us, Bill. We have mocked his victory by whitewashing the enemy for the sake of our neighbor’s approval.”

He blinked and drew a deep breath. “Imagine me talking like that from the pulpit. It would scare the breath out of most of them.” He lowered his head, but his jaw was clenched, she saw. Suddenly those images from her past were crashing through her mind again, and she closed her eyes briefly. She should tell him, she thought.

“Let me tell you a story, Bill. A story about a man of God unlike any I have known. A soldier. He was my soldier.” Now the emotions flooded her with a vengeance, and she noted her hands were trembling. “He was from Serbia, you know, before he came to the States. Fought in the war there with a small team of special forces. He served under a lieutenant, a
horrible
man.” She shuddered as she said it. “A God hater who slept with the devil.”

She had to stop for a few moments. The memories came too fast, with too much intensity, and she breathed a prayer.
Father, forgive me
. She glanced up at the red bottle in her hutch, sitting, calling from the past. From the corner of her eye she saw that Bill was staring at her.

“Anyway, they walked into a small town one day. The commander led them straight to the church at the center. The soldier said that he knew with one look into the lieutenant’s eyes that he had come with cruel intentions. It was a gross understatement.”

She swallowed and plowed on before this thing got the best of her. “The commander had them gather the townspeople, about a hundred of them, I think, and then he began his games.” Helen looked up at the cross again. “The priest was a God-fearing man. For hours the commander played his game—bent upon forcing the priest to renounce Christ before the townsfolk. The horror of those hours was so reprehensible that I can hardly speak of them, Bill. To hear of them I would weep for hours.”

Tears slipped from Helen’s eyes and fell to her lap.

“The soldier was appalled by what he saw. He tried in vain to stop the lieutenant— almost lost his own life. But in the end the priest died. He died a martyr for the love of Christ. There is a monument to him in the town now. It is a cross rising from a green lawn bearing the inscription, ‘No Greater Love Has Any Man.’ The day after the priest’s death, they collected some of his blood and sealed it into several small crystal bottles, so they would not forget.”

She stood and walked to the hutch. She’d told no one other than her daughter of this, but it was time, wasn’t it? Yes, it was time she spread this seed. Her breathing was coming thick as she pulled open the glass doors. She placed her fingers around the small bottle and pulled it out. The container was only slightly larger than her hand.

Helen returned to her seat and sat slowly, her mind swirling with the images. “The soldier went back to the village the next day to beg for their forgiveness. They gave him one of the bottles filled with the martyr’s blood.” Helen held the bottle out on her palm. “Never to worship or to idolize, they told him. But to remind him of the price paid for his soul.”

It was not the whole story, of course. If the pastor knew the whole story he would be slobbering on the floor in a pool of his own tears, she thought. Because the whole story was as much her story as the soldier’s, and it stretched the very limits of love. Perhaps she would give him the book Janjic had written before he’d died,
When Heaven Weeps
. Then he would know.

“The experience profoundly changed his life,” she said, looking at Bill. His eyes were misty, staring at the floor. “And ultimately it changed my life, and Gloria’s and Spencer’s and even yours and countless others. And now Kent’s, possibly. But you see, it all began with death. The death of Christ, the death of the priest. Without these I would not be here today. Nor would you, Pastor. It is how I see the world now.”

“Yes.” He nodded, gathering himself. “You do see more than most of us.”

“I see only a little more than you, and most of that by faith. You think I wear the face of God?”

He blinked, obviously unsure if he was meant to answer.

“You see me walking around, disturbed, worried, with a furrowed brow. You think it’s the face of God? Of course not! He is furious at sin, no doubt. And his heart aches over the rejection of his love. But above it all he rolls with laughter, beside himself with joy. I see only the hem of his garment and then only at times. The rest comes by faith. We may have different giftings, but we all have the same faith. Give or take. We are not so different, Pastor.”

He stared at her. “I’ve never heard you say those things.”

“Then maybe I should have spoken sooner. Forgive me. I can be a bit mule-headed, you know.”

He smiled at her. “Don’t worry, Helen. If you’re a mule, may God smite our church with a thousand mules.” They chuckled.

For several minutes they just sat there and thought in silence. Their glasses clinked with ice now and then, but the gravity of the moment seemed to want its own space, so they let it be. Helen hummed a few bars of “The Martyr’s Song” and stared out to the field beyond her house. Autumn would come someday. What would walking be like then?

“Are you still walking?” Bill asked the question as if it had been the real reason for his visit and he was just now getting around to it.

“Yes. Yes I am.”

“The full distance?”

“Yes.”

“But how? I thought you were walking and praying for Kent’s soul?”

“Well, that’s the problem. That’s where things don’t seem to be what they seem. I’m still walking because I’ve felt no urge not to walk and because my legs still walk without tiring and because I still want to pray for Kent.”

“Kent is dead, Helen.”

“Yes. So it seems. But the heavens are not playing along. I walked that first day after the fire, seeking release. It was to be expected, I thought. But I found no release.”

She glanced at him and saw that he’d tilted his head, unbelieving.

“And then there’s the dream. Someone’s still running through my head at night. I still hear his breathing, the soft pounding of feet through the tunnel. The drama is still unfolding, Pastor.”

Bill gave her a small, sympathetic smile. “Come on, Helen. I talked to the lead investigator myself two days ago. He told me very specifically that the coroner clearly identified the body as belonging to Kent Anthony. Same height, same weight, same teeth, same everything. FBI’s records confirmed it. That body we buried three days ago belonged to Kent. Maybe he needs help in some afterlife, but he is no longer of this earth.”

“They did an autopsy, then?”

“An autopsy of what? Of charred bones?”

“DNA?”

“Come on, Helen. You can’t actually believe . . . Look, I know this is hard on you. It’s been a terrible tragedy. But don’t you think this is going a little too far?”

Her eyes bore into his with an unmoving stare. “This has nothing to do with tragedy, young man. Am I or am I not walking eight hours a day without tiring?”

He didn’t answer.

“Is it some illusion, this walking of mine? Tell me.”

“Of course it’s no illusion. But—”

“Of course? You sound pretty sure about that. Why is God making my legs move like this, Pastor? Is it that he has discovered a new way to make the tiny humans below move? ‘Hey look, Gabriel, we can just wind them up and make them walk around forever.’ No? Then why?”

“Helen . . .”

“I’m telling you, Pastor, this is not over. And I mean, not just in the heavens, but on Earth it’s not over. And since Kent was the main object of this whole thing, no, I don’t think he is necessarily dead.”

She turned away from him. Goodness, listen to her. It was sounding absurd. She had peeked in the coffin herself and seen the blackened bones. “And if you think it makes sense to me, you are wrong. I’m not even saying he
is
necessarily alive. It is just easier to believe he’s alive, given the fact that I’m still praying long days for him.” She turned back to him. “Does that make sense?”

Bill Madison took a deep breath and leaned back in his chair. “Well, Helen.” He shook his head. “I guess so.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, staring off in different directions, lost in thought. His voice broke the stillness.

“It’s very strange, Helen. It’s otherworldly. Your faith is unnerving. You’re giving your life to impossibilities.”

She looked up and saw that his eyes were closed. A lump rose in her throat. “It’s all I have, Bill. It’s all anybody really has. It’s all Noah had, building his impossible little boat while they mocked him. It’s all Moses had, holding his rod over the Red Sea. It’s all Hosea had and Samson and Paul and Stephen and every other character of every other Bible story. Why should it be so different for us today?”

She saw his Adam’s apple bob. He nodded. “Yes, I think you’re right. And I fear my faith is not so strong.”

He was beginning to see, she thought. Which meant his faith was stronger than he realized. It could use a nudge. She’d read somewhere that eagles would never fly if their mothers did not push them from their nests when they were ready. Even then they would free-fall in a panic before spreading their wings and finding flight.

Yes, maybe it was time the pastor got a little shove.

“Would you like to see more than you’ve seen, Bill?”

“See what?”

“See the other side. See what lies behind what you see now.”

He stiffened a little. “What do you mean,
see?
It’s not like I can just flip on a light and see—”

“It is a simple question, Bill, really. Do you want to see?”

“Yes.”

“And you would be willing to let go a little?”

“I think so. Although I’m not sure how you let go of something you can’t see.”

“You forget about how important you are, put aside your narrow field of vision; you open your heart to one thing only. To God, in whichever way he chooses to reveal himself, regardless of how it might seem to you. You let go.”

He smiled nervously. “Sounds a bit risky, actually. You can’t just throw out all doctrine for some experience.”

“And what if that experience is God, the creator? What is more important to you, an encounter with God or your doctrine?”

“Well, if you put it that way—”

“As opposed to which way?”

“You’ve made your point. And yes, I think I could let go a little.”

She smiled slowly. “Then let’s pray.”

Helen watched him close his eyes and bow his head. She wondered how long the posture would hold. “Father in heaven,” she prayed aloud and closed her own eyes, “if it would please you, open this child’s eyes to see what you have called him to. May he have the power to see how wide and how deep and how high your love is for him.”

She fell silent and closed her eyes to darkness.
Please Father, let him feel your presence. At least that, just a taste of you, God in heaven.

An image of Kent filled her mind. He walked down a long, deserted street, aimless and lost. His hair was disheveled, and his eyes peered blue above dark circles. For a moment she thought it might be his spirit, like some kind of ghost wandering the streets of her mind. But then she saw that it was him, really him, bewildered by the vacancy of the street on which he walked. And he was lonely.

She forgot about the pastor for the moment. Maybe she should walk. Maybe she should just leave Bill and go for another walk—pray for Kent. Yes, at least that. Her heart swelled in her chest.
Oh God, save Kent’s soul! Do not hide your face from this man you made. Open his heart to your spirit. Speak words of love to his ears, drop your fragrance in his mind, dance before his eyes, show him your splendor, wrap your arms around him, touch his cold skin with a warm touch, breathe life into his nostrils. You fashioned him, did you not? So now love him.

But I have.

Helen dropped her head at the words and began to weep.
Oh God, I’m sorry. You have! You have loved him so much. Forgive me!

She sat bunched in her chair for several long minutes, feeling waves of fire wash through her chest. It was a mixture of agony and desire—a common sentiment these days. The heart of God for Kent. Or at least a small piece of it. The piece he chose to reveal to her.

She suddenly remembered Bill and snapped her head up.

He sat on the green chair, head bent back like a duckling begging food. His Adam’s apple stuck out prominently on his neck, his jaw lay open, his mouth gaped wide, his nostrils flared. And his body shook like a ragged old cloth doll. Something somewhere had been opened. His eyes, maybe.

Helen relaxed and leaned back into her cushions. A smile split her face wide. Now he would understand. Maybe not any details of Kent’s plight, but the rest would come easier now. Faith would come easier.

Tears fell in streams down the pastor’s cheeks, and she saw that his shirt was already wet. Looking at the grown man reduced to a heap of emotions made her want to scream full throated. It was that kind of joy. She wondered how it was that she had never had a heart attack. How could a mortal, like Bill there, all inside out, endure such ravaging emotion, busting up the heart, and not risk a coronary? She smiled at the thought.