Twang (38 page)

A blanket of deep, black despair wrapped around me, growing heavier with each heartbeat as I trudged along toward the boat ramp, wondering,
Where would I go for my sanctuary now? My peace?

I passed a huge tree branch, like driftwood on the banks, and I heard Tonilynn’s words circling in my consciousness: “Speak up for those who’re afraid to, or don’t know how. Your autobiographical songs can be somebody else’s therapy. Wouldn’t helping some young girl be reason enough to keep braving the heartbreak?”

For an instant, I decided Tonilynn had written the letters, as some sneaky tactic, but just as quickly knew that was
ridiculous. She wasn’t that type. I was relieved when she picked up her phone after the second ring. “Tonilynn?”

“Hi, hon! How are you?”

“Fine.”

“You don’t
sound
fine.”

“It’s just the reception out here.”

“Where are you?”

“At the river.”

After a weighted pause, I heard Tonilynn say, “Seriously?” and the tone of her voice told me she was concerned. I felt bad for adding this on top of Aunt Gomer’s passing, but I didn’t need to be alone. I told Tonilynn about watching the flood report, how I’d spit in the Cumberland, and that I was standing on the LP Field side, on the boat ramp, feeling panicky. “Don’t move a muscle,” she said. “I’m on my way!”

I didn’t say a word of protest about having to wait two hours, and it’s odd, but it sure didn’t seem like that long until here she came slipping and sliding in her pink boots. Out of breath, Tonilynn reached out and pulled me to my feet, wrapped her arms around me, and held me close, one hand patting my muddy backside in a little flurry. “How’s my girl?”

“Um . . . hurting,” I answered, because something in my chest region was pulsing so bad I thought I might be having a heart attack. But the pressure of Tonilynn’s hug made it go away enough so I could get a good breath. “Better now,” I added, and Tonilynn drew back, holding my shoulders. There were bags beneath her eyes, her lipstick was smudged in one corner, but her blonde hair was teased up tall and firm, perfect as ever, and her smile was glorious.

“Tell Tonilynn what you’re thinking.”

I shrugged.

“C’mon now,
try
to put it into words. What do you need?” she asked, her been-there-done-that-and-survived-it aura really strong.

I didn’t know what I needed. I needed her to keep holding me, to worry about me, to promise me I wouldn’t ever be alone again.

“You watched a show on the flood?” she encouraged.

“Mm-hm.”

“Awful, isn’t it? Pure heartbreaking.” With a final squeeze, Tonilynn released me, and I stood there, feeling like a small child, inhaling her honeysuckle perfume. “Jennifer,” she continued in a firmer voice, “you know it’s best to talk about things. Can you tell Tonilynn what you’re feeling right now?”

I looked across at downtown’s skyline, scene of the crime. Well, part of the scene. I swallowed the lump in my throat as I thought about the unimaginable destruction. People who’d drowned, the devastated faces of their loved ones, folks fleeing their homes while their possessions were swept away. “Tonilynn?” My voice sounded shaky even to my own ears. “Some people are calling the flood an ‘act of God,’ and some are calling it a ‘natural disaster.’ What do you think?”

From the corner of my eye I saw Tonilynn flinch, then shut her eyes to murmur something. Finally she drew herself up tall and said, “I believe it was both.”

I made a sound like ‘Hmph!’ in my throat. She’d never be able to vindicate God after the devastation I’d seen.

“Look, Jennifer, God
allowed
the flood, but he’s sad about all the hurting folks and the homes that got ruined. He’s sad about our broken-down city.”

“Oh, really?”

“Really.”

I must’ve been frowning because Tonilynn bent her head sideways to have a good look at me. “I know, I know.” She
laughed. “Sometimes I could literally wring Eve’s neck for eating that apple. Ruined our perfect existence! Just think of our life on earth as this sort of in-between time, like when you put something on layaway, and you know it’s gonna be yours eventually, and so you dream of it, and it makes your heart happy to do that, but you don’t actually have it in your possession yet.

“We’re in an in-between time down here, an imperfect time that isn’t going to go on forever. Our perfect eternity is on layaway in Heaven.”

I frowned.

“It’s hard; you don’t have to tell me!” Tonilynn shook her head. “First, the Fall, or whatever you want to call it when Lucifer decided he wouldn’t serve, and now us having to
live
in the fallen world, the so-called Human Condition! I just take comfort in the fact that God’s still sitting on his throne, and it ain’t gonna be like this forever! I know there’s a life for us yet unseen, which is gonna be so wonderful we can’t even imagine it.”

I felt a smirk come on my face, an expression of unbelief I didn’t manage to cover quick enough.

“He hasn’t abandoned us, hon! If you’re his, you’re on layaway, and eventually he’s coming back for you, and everything’s gonna be perfect.”

“That’s so comforting.”

“I didn’t mean to sound flippant, hon. I’m not downplaying the hard stuff in this world. Life’s crazy sometimes! Even for believers. Especially for believers! But the thing is, we don’t have to travel the path of life alone. I have good days and bad ones, but none of my days are ever
alone
. Jennifer, I want you to learn to let the Lord be your strength too! I promise he’ll help when you take refuge in him. When the devil lets loose his evilness and the going gets rough, God Almighty will hold
your hand! Sometimes he’ll even carry you over the rough, scary places! It’s not easy. I’m not saying that. But it helps if you keep the perspective that even in the dark times, he’s there, and nothing can separate you from his love.”

“Not even a flood that sweeps a bunch of folks into an early grave?” This burst out of me like a sneeze.

“It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around some stuff too.” Tonilynn lowered her voice. “Satan wanted the flood because he loves showing off ‘the hand of death.’ He loves to see people weeping, loves chaos and distress. And God, in his sovereignty,
allowed
it. We just have to remember God came down here once already, when he sent Jesus, and he’s coming back to claim his own. Meantime, we’re caught in that in-between
layaway
time of what is and what’s gonna be. In this life there’s gonna be pain and suffering, but we’re not abandoned! God permits those things, Jennifer. Some he even
uses
to draw us to him, or to mold us into his image better. But I can guarantee you, he’s got his eye on his own, and he’s coming back for us. In the end, for all time, everything’s gonna be all right.”

Tonilynn touched my arm gently. “Let me baptize you, Jennifer. You need the Holy Ghost inside. Then you’ll be able to look forward to the time when all our tears’ll be wiped away forever!”

I shook my head.

“Oh, hon, can’t you feel it?” she pled, holding her hands upward and pulling them apart in an expansive gesture. “Can’t you feel God Almighty calling you to be his?”

I wasn’t sure if I could. I wasn’t sure I could buy all that about us living in this layaway time, about God permitting the evil, knowing our hurts, and still caring. But, that said, part of me couldn’t help loving Tonilynn’s explanation of the eventual happily ever after. Plus, I often felt alone, and I liked thinking that might become a thing of the past. She touched my cheek
when I didn’t answer, and I squinched my eyes shut tight and tried to feel it the way she did, and somewhere inside me, I thought she might be right.

Maybe
.

Not so long ago I’d taken a lot of dark things personally—the evil seemed directed straight at poor Jennifer Anne Clodfelter. But it came to me now that I no longer thought that way with the intensity I once had. Now I toyed with an idea I thought of as the “Big Picture.” We humans weren’t necessarily the stars of our own biographical movies but bit players in the larger story.

I wondered when it was I’d changed. Was it just getting older? The other morning I’d looked at my face in the mirror and it definitely had more lines and wrinkles. What shocked me, though, was that my eyes were carbon copies of my mother’s, and instead of contempt, I’d felt compassion. Part of me realized all too well why my mother stuck her head in the sand about things she felt she had no control over. Hadn’t I done that exact thing?

After all, we were both poor, pitiful, limited humans. We couldn’t make sense of everything. We could hardly keep up with our own life, much less other people’s. This life could get crazy sometimes, like water running through our fingers, everything dripping and splashing and moving away so fast. And that was only here on Earth! I gazed upward. There were whole other galaxies beyond our puny planet, places we might never know, and certainly over which a human had no control. I was a drop of water in a vast ocean.

Just contemplating all this made me feel very small and tired and scared. I decided it might be a relief to just place it all in some huge sovereign hands. It wasn’t hard to imagine that the Cumberland was a created thing, sprung from the mind of a mighty being. Someone who, in my finite state and limited understanding, I couldn’t fathom, who had us all—
rivers and people and land and sky—in his great big hand. Ready to yield, I plunged my own hands into my pockets and turned to Tonilynn.

Then my fingers felt those letters and a searing pain ripped through my heart, fresh blood spurted from where the scab had been recently ripped away. “I can’t forgive my father for . . .” I don’t know why I thought I could
say
the words when I couldn’t even get a breath.

Tonilynn tilted her head, narrowed her eyes. “Hold on. I’ve got something, well, some
body
I need to tend to.” I knew what was going to happen before she turned her back to me, put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. Her blonde confection of hair caught the last rays of dying sun, looking for all the world like the tip of a giant lit match. “Get behind us, Satan! I command you, in Jesus’ name to pack up your bag of lies and go! You want to keep Jennifer down, you snake. You just want her ineffective for the kingdom of God.” Her fiery head bobbed with every syllable. “Well, I’m telling your sorry self right now that she’s gonna use it for good. Anyway, you know you’ve already been defeated when the Lord kicked you out of heaven. So, go back to hell!”

Tonilynn stamped one pink boot and turned back to me, her face with this well-that’s-all-taken-care-of expression. She fanned away a bug that was exploring her hair. “Okay, hon, just close your eyes and mentally lay that anger toward your father at the feet of Jesus, and tell him you need some supernatural help to forgive the man, and then be ready to receive an incredible sense of release and peace.”

I could hardly look Tonilynn in the eye as I said what came into my heart then. “If I forgive my father, then God’ll forgive me for killing Mr. Anglin. Right?”

“You really need some peace about that, don’t you?” Tonilynn asked softly.

“Yeah.”

“Well, Jesus paid it All with a capital A. He crossed out the debt for every single sin. If you think you killed Mr. Anglin, then confess it to the Lord, and he’ll forgive you, and set you free.”

My hands were trembling as I placed the palms together beneath my chin and murmured, “Forgive me Lord, for ending Mr. Anglin’s life too early.” Then I stood, picturing Jesus dying as he gazed out upon humanity, his heart literally breaking as he bore all the ugliness, the agony of every person’s sin on his tender flesh. It was beautiful to think that maybe all the dark things in my life weren’t a waste, weren’t just meaningless suffering. That they could be recycled into good for helping other souls.

“As far as fathers go, hon,” Tonilynn said, putting her arm around my shoulder after I opened my eyes, “the Lord’s the best. He won’t ever let you down.”

Was there anything I craved more than a father with great big, strong arms? Like those pictures of Atlas holding the ball of earth on his shoulders. Something in me knew trust was the key, the key that would open the iron doors that had held me captive in a cell of fear and anger and bitterness, that would open the doors to peace and freedom. I just had to trust there was a sovereign God, that all that came to creation, from man or nature, was permitted by him, and that if I looked beyond my circumstances, beyond my pain, I’d see there was a purpose to it all.

Was I ready to take that step, to trust and let it all go? I stared at my mud-caked boots sunk in the riverbank.

Tonilynn called my name, and I looked up. She was inching toward the river, beckoning dramatically for me to follow, like John the Baptist. I reached for her hand, and we eased down the boat ramp into the Cumberland. The water was cold,
and we stopped when it was to our hipbones. My feet felt the fierce current at the bottom. Tonilynn stood to my side. She put one hand on my shoulder and one across my lower back. “Jennifer Anne Clodfelter,” she said, “I baptize you in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” and dipped me backward and under so quick I barely had time to close my mouth.

I emerged from the water to a cheer from Tonilynn. “You’re a whole new creature now! The old things have been washed away!”

I stood blinking fat drops of water from my lashes, my past floating away downstream behind me and leaving a girl who’d never despised her spineless mother or wished death on her depraved father or thoughtlessly caused the death of someone she loved, who’d never shut her ears to souls crying out for help. I felt a shift inside, something like an earthquake of my body’s cells, this tremendous sense of release, and I knew, without question, a dark veil had lifted.

I was free, my life stretching out indescribably sweet and hopeful before me.