Which One of You?
A New Novel by Gary Broughman
(Editor’s note: Each weekend we’ll publish one chapter of the new Christian novel Which One of You? here at Christian Heartbeat.)
Chapter Eleven
Usually it’s someone with an advanced degree like a masters or doctorate doing the talking,
telling me my way of communicating flies over the head of the common person. “Too intellectual,” they say. “Letting my education show.” Stuff like that. Personally, I think it’s a crock. I have plenty of evidence to prove I communicate just fine with
regular people -- John-John for example or Sagan and his mom. I know when to
shed the big words, but big ideas are a different thing. Everyday that goes by,
I’m more convinced that a big idea is what everyday people are hungry for. Maybe
my critics are afraid of big ideas because they could upset their little world
of privilege. Could it be that dumbing down the people suits their purpose?
So here’s a big idea, and I confess in this case a big word too: apocalypse. Heard it
before? I know you have. It’s in the Bible and in the movies. But maybe you have only a general
understanding of what it means. Here’s my definition: apocalypse is a wall of fire you must endure while passing from
a world that sucks to one that delivers all the beauty God promised in the
beginning. Clear enough? If there’s no world of beauty on the other side, it’s not an apocalypse; it’s just business as usual -- another day for the masses to toast in the fire
while the few sit back with a smile, sip their Starbucks and say, “what we get is what we deserve.”
Right now Sagan is standing in the fire. Is he just toasting, or on his way to
the promised land? You might say I’m standing in the fire too, but with a view of the promised land before me, and
hell-bent on taking Sagan with me if he wants to go. But first I have to find
him.
Where does a boy turn when he feels he’s been turned away by the adults in his life? To his friends, of course, and at
a time like this, it’s best to find friends who know what you‘re feeling. When you’re feeling pissed off -- or pissed on, it’s good to be with someone who’s been pissed on too. So I figured if I could find Frankie I would find Sagan.
And damn Carolyn. Why couldn’t she work with me on this. Why couldn’t she come with me, ride along? What a night we had! Was there any reason to
doubt that I love her. Doesn’t a person have to actually do something to deserve a woman’s jealous rage? I’d never even so much as imagined myself with Becky. Sure I’d noticed her looks, yea she’s good looking, but I’d never imagined myself as her lover. It’s not my habit to let feelings of attraction play out that way. I was
practically a virgin when I met Carolyn, and I’ve certainly been true ever since. You might say that was easy for me since I
was a pastor all that time, but just pick up a newspaper and you’ll see that’s no guarantee.
Why couldn’t she just ride with me? This would have been our chance to put things right, to
come together for a purpose other than making each other forget the bind we‘d worked ourselves into. And I guess that‘s the point. She still loves me but that’s good for one great night only, not for giving ground, not for helping us find
an exit. That was up to me. Fall back. Go along. Do things by the book, quit
imagining myself as this special truth teller, this good shepherd, this savior
of the whole damn world. Here’s another revelation for me: Carolyn isn’t planning to walk through any walls of fire.
So I was right; we really were boxed in with no way out. But still I kept
dreaming that God’s will might open a hole we could squeeze through. I suppose she had her own
idea of God’s will, but I kept hoping God would slip her a bigger idea.
The skate park was a sea of kids -- as many as I’d ever seen there -- rising, dropping, crashing. When I didn’t spot Frankie right away, I walked through the gate and was almost blind-sided
by an out-of-control novice. The boy reeled and dumped to the asphalt, letting out a cry that caught everyone’s attention -- including Frankie’s.
Yes, he had seen Sagan this morning; and yes, he knew where he was. Sagan, it
turns out, had a job. Apparently, his mother felt a young man almost 18 in the
summer between his junior and senior years of high school should be working.
Frankie had helped him get on washing dishes at the restaurant. Sagan was there
now, getting ready for the lunch rush. Frankie said his shift would end “about 2:30 or 3.”
Sagan hadn’t told Frankie much about what happened. “Came bangin’ on my door real early this morning,” Frankie said. “Something about his mother; that’s all I know,” he shrugged. “Called her a stupid bitch but didn’t want to say nothin’ more. He laid down on the couch and I went back to sleep.”
With time to kill I sat in my car awhile, watching veteran skaters drop over
the edge to swoop down the half pipe face, while younger protégés mastered the basics of grinding a rail. I saw more than one fall and bounce up
again, laughing and grimacing as they rubbed a sore hip or knee. This was
living in the moment on full display. Not a care in the world. Most of them not
worried yet where they’ll go to college or even if they’ll go. Bet the ranch, no one inside that fence is talking about SATs or ACTs,
filling out the FAFSA or anything close to that. To them the wide world ends
with today’s cloudless sky, the warm sunshine and the smell of a salty seabreeze blowing
gently off the Atlantic a half mile to the east. Their day was like my night
had been -- no glancing over the shoulder or gazing into a crystal ball -- just
let today be itself and wring as much from it as possible. No questions about
walking through walls of fire for these kids. For them, at least in this
moment, their world was that perfect world on the far side of apocalypse. Too
bad that sooner or later, they’d have to wake from their dream.
When I said earlier that “every story has it’s moment and this was mine,” I think I allowed for more than one moment. If I didn’t, I was wrong. The moments keep coming. This was the moment when I understood
that you must run a gauntlet of fire to be born again. Sorry my friends. I wish
it was as easy as making some statement on Jesus Christ being my personal
savior. It’s not. Just like the first birth, the second birth is a time of both pain and
glory.
What would I tell Sagan when I saw him? What could I show him about the future
that would put him at ease? How could I make him understand that the burn he’s feeling is worth it; that this age of disrespect, this age of abuse and
suffering he has known all his life is at an end, and a new age was about to
begin, an age with a heart like God’s -- full of love, mercy, compassion. Whether he’d believe me, or how I would make that happen I had not the slightest idea. But
as God is my witness, I was determined to do my part and let God handle the
rest. Apocalypse: The end of an age marked by man’s values and the beginning of a new age marked by God’s, separated by a wall of fire. You might call it the difference between earth
and heaven. The inferno dividing them is where the flesh is reborn as spirit.
At the waterfront restaurant where Frankie works -- and now Sagan -- I sat
outside under an umbrella emblazoned with Corona’s emblem. A young woman I knew from church waited on me. She was a student in
Tallahassee at FSU and home for the summer. She was doing great; I was glad to
hear it. Wide grins and happy words were exchanged. She hadn’t heard what was happening at the church; I didn’t tell her. She wasn’t a perpetrator in this world; just a beneficiary. How could I be angry at her?
How could I blame her for anything, she with her bright straight smile, bouncy
cheerleader haircut and air of inevitable approval. She wasn’t the one who screwed up this world, just a daughter of the screw-ups -- or
those like me who stood by and watched it happen. It was up to us to fix it
before it found a way to victimize her too.
I ordered a flounder sandwich -- the catch of the day, and listened to the boat
wakes splashing against the channel walls. I asked my cheerleader/server if she
knew Sagan. “Oh, the new boy!” came spilling from her always joyful face. “Of course,” she would tell him Pastor Dietrich was waiting for him. “Tell him not to hurry,” I said. I would wait out here until he was finished working.
I was surprised at the pride I felt knowing Sagan was working and earning some
money. I’d wanted to give him a chance to focus on his education and just enjoy life for
once, so I never asked him to take a job. He had completed two classes in the
first session of summer school to bring himself back to 12th grade status so he
could graduate with his class. That had been my original goal for him: to
repair his past as best I could and turn him into a regular kid on a par with
his contemporaries -- as if he’d been my kid all along. Now I wasn’t sure if that ever made sense. But he was finished with school until late
August and under his mother’s roof, the rules are different: you learn to support yourself as well and as
early in life as possible. I couldn’t argue with her. She knew the art of survival and was teaching it to Sagan as
best she could -- at least until she decided to get drunk, get naked and do it
with her bedroom door open.
I sipped iced tea and watched the brown pelicans beg scraps from the fishing
boats cleaning their catch. Sagan materialized behind me with a tap on the
shoulder.
“Sorry,” he said, “didn’t mean to scare you.”
“Did I seem startled?”
“You jumped a little,” he said.
“Well, I’m not feeling jumpy.” I smiled, pointing to a seat.
Sagan sat, looking quickly over to the boats I’d been watching and then silently at his sweaty white tee shirt, spotted
randomly by his hours in the kitchen cleaning up other people’s lunch plates.
“So you’re a working man now,” I said, fishing for any bit of conversation.
“Looks that way.”
“You like it?”
“It’s alright.”
“I went out looking for you this morning,” I said, “and Frankie told me you were working here. I guess it’s nice to earn a few bucks for yourself, huh?”
“Yea, I guess.”
“Looks like you’ve been doing a fair bit of sweating. You thirsty?”
“No, I drank a bunch of water while I was working. And somebody brought me a big
Coke just before I got off.”
There‘s a victory, I thought; I got more than three words out of him.
“You wondering why I was looking for you?”
“Well … no … you’re always looking after me.”
