Communications

Note- One of my former literature teachers, Michael Pyle, an award-winning nature writer, told me that this should be published. It hasn’t been, guess I can’t find a home for it. But here it is-

The wind blew fierce. Sporadic gusts that stripped whatever leaves autumn had so far missed. There had been only thirteen days of actual sunshine within the last three months. The rain continued with unbelievable endurance, coming down at a 45-degree angle against my fogged window. It was the time of the dying. The bridge between summer’s glee and winter’s disappointment. That brief moment when life flashes by in brief explosions of regrets and what-ifs.
I first encountered death when I was twelve years old. A friend of mine, my near neighbor, was hit by a speeding car and killed. That was October. Eight years later, death would once again scream in my ears, like the screech of car tires.
I was in the middle of a mission for my church, with one more year of service remaining. Teaching the gospel of Christ had been difficult at the start, frustrating in the middle, and a hopeless endeavor in the end.  But I still preached with a naive hope and an unwavering vigor.
Seven o’clock in the morning and the only thing on my mind was the painful separation from my bed. I cradled the scriptures on my lap, wrapped a blanket around my shoulders, and hoped spiritual enlightenment would effortlessly fall into my head like the rain outside my window. My assigned missionary companion, Joe Hansen, hobbled into the room and crashed onto the sofa. We waited for the two other missionaries that lived with us and then proceeded to study the scriptures. It’s interesting how the most tragic of days can start out so ordinary.

Nine-thirty rolled around and the other two missionaries left the apartment. Hansen and I sat at the kitchen table to plan out our day. I had coincidently gone to high school with him. I couldn’t stand him then. He had been on the football team and exemplified all the stereotypes that accompanied that. But now he was different. Now he had changed. A humility had settled into his prideful bones that seemed somehow out of place, and despite our different high school experiences, we became fast friends.
“We have a teaching appointment at noon,” he announced while snatching an apple from the fridge.
“What do you want to do until then?” I responded.
“We can knock on doors, check other teaching requests, whatever.”
“Sounds good to me, let’s go.”
We gathered our scriptures and teaching materials, stuffed them into our packs, and headed to the front vestibule where we stored our bicycles. Even with our rain-jackets we were immediately waterlogged. We left the inner city of Columbus, Ohio, and headed into the Bottoms, an area where the city slopped downward toward the Scioto River. This was where low-income white people lived, or at least survived. Columbus was a very segregated city. The blacks were on the east side and whites on the west. The Bottoms was the most undesirable place to proselyte in our assigned area, but a lot of teaching requests were called in from there. Our church was currently advertising free bibles on TV commercials. People would call the number on the screen, and we would deliver it to them. This allowed us to share our message with them. Sometimes. More often then not they snatched the bible from our hands and latched the door quicker than I could say my own name.

The one redeeming thing about trips to the Bottoms was the river trail. We rode it slowly that day in order to lessen the mud our tires kept flinging into our faces. Lush vegetation painted in the colors of autumn bordered the trail on the right side; the left side was the river. As we stopped to rest, a cardinal flew across the river directly toward us.  A quick flash of crimson blurred my vision, then the cardinal was gone, perhaps to seek shelter from the endless rain, and we continued on our way. Other frequent sights along the river were turtles.  These creatures had transfixed me from first glimpse.  How they gracefully yet clumsily entered the water and disappeared beneath its murky surface. Days after I had arrived in this area we encountered a fishermen along this trail. As we conversed with him he pulled a large turtle from his line. I didn’t know people fished for turtles before that day. After pulling it ashore he knocked its head repeatedly against a rock until blood gushed forth and threatened to spill onto my shoes. He offered to cook us turtle soup later that evening. We politely declined. I stood there watching the turtle’s blood pool about my toes. Transfixed.

We finally left the river and entered the Bottoms. Empty wrappers, drenched cardboard boxes, smashed Bud Light bottles, empty cigarette packages—these were the gatekeepers of the Bottoms. I felt guilty at my own disgust and remembered Jesus had spent much of his ministry in places just like this. Among the poor and the sinners, the diseased and lowly. But I was not Jesus, and I was disgusted.

We stopped to visit a man whom the missionaries had been trying to teach for years. He had company over and we got caught up in a discussion. Before we knew it the time was fast approaching one o’clock in the afternoon. We were almost an hour late for our noon appointment.

We said quick goodbyes and rushed out the door. Yards surrounded by chain-link fences and yellow grass, despite the rain, blurred as we sped to our appointment. Upon arriving, we locked our bicycles together and hurried to the door. It was wide open. We rang the doorbell. No answer. We knocked. No answer.

“Is anybody home?” I called into the house. No answer. We were an hour late and now they were gone. Apparently they had left the front door open. Famished, we returned to our apartment for lunch. The rest of the day was routine and mundane and wet.

The following morning we arose, studied, ate breakfast, and out of guilt returned to the teaching appointment we had missed. We knew a woman at a neighboring house so we stopped by. Her porch was adorned with odd sculptures, hippie beads, and multi-colored pots. I knocked.

“Well hello, missionaries, come in.”
“How are you today, Mrs. Hendrick?” I asked.
“Fine, just fine. Boy oh boy, you’uns must be soaked to the bone. Damn rain ain’t let up a bit. Pardon my French, boys, but this weather makes my old bones hurt.”
“Mine too,” Hansen said with a crooked smile. We stood shivering in the doorway until I remembered why we had stopped by.
“Mrs. Hendrick,” I began, “do you know anything about the Davies, at 153, just down the street?”
She stood there, frozen. Her mouth opened twice without a sound. She stood there—transfixed.

Finally, she blurted, “Haven’t ya boys heard what happened?”
“No,” we said in unison.
“Well, yesterday Mr. Davies . . . he. . .uhm . . . murdered his three little children. With a mallet, just plain murdered ‘em.” Stunned silence.
“When?” was all I could muster.
“Yesterday at noon. Poor kids, but now they’re in the arms of Jesus. Perhaps ‘twas a blessing, the man was cruel. Sure could’a used some religion, too bad ya boys didn’t get a chance to teach him.”

Wet and cold, we rode in silence. I was in front; Hansen a ways back to avoid the mud being flung by my rear tire.  It seemed a world of water. The rain struck vertical, the river flowed horizontal, and a tear escaped unabashed, rolling down my cheek.

“Sure could’a used some religion, too bad ya boys didn’t get a chance to teach him.” It echoed in my head. I jerked my brakes and waited for Hansen to pull up alongside me.

“Hansen,” I said as he skidded to a stop. “He killed his kids at noon. That’s when we were supposed to meet with him and give him a Bible.”    “I know,” he said, staring out across the dancing river.
“We could have stopped it. If he’d read that Bible or heard our message, he wouldn’t have murdered his kids.”
“You don’t know that. What if we’d arrived during the act?”
“Then we could have stopped him.”
“Maybe, maybe not. Look, the guy was obviously sick. A few Bible lessons weren’t going to stop this.”
“What if we’re held accountable by God? We were late.”
“Come on man, we’re not. There was nothing we could do. I hate the Bottoms; I hate coming down here. Let’s go.”

For days I couldn’t concentrate. My mind was filled with images of a crazed man killing his kids. With a mallet, for God sake. With a mallet.

What if we had done our duty? What a price to pay for being late. We could have stopped him. I couldn’t help thinking we could have stopped him.

The great poet, Robert Frost, wrote, “In three words I can sum up everything I’ve learned about life: it goes on.” How does one know if their hands are stained with blood? If their soul is under condemnation? No divine angel reveals it. No supernatural jury, no burning bush. God is the supreme judge. Only God can judge. Only God. On that rainy November afternoon I stepped into the miry clay of judgment. And only God could pull me out. Only God.

At dusk the rain stopped. For a brief moment the setting sun bathed us, cutting like a prism through the dispersing clouds. We stood on the lawn in front of our apartment and watched the sun sink into the west, into the Bottoms. It was an unusually cold November, the trees mostly stripped of leaves and the earth hard and cracked. Soon everything would look dead and forgotten, torn and lifeless. Like the children in the Bottoms. I yearned for summer. For fireflies scampering about the grass like a thousand glittering stars, signs announcing yard sales, the smell of barbeques and the sound of children laughing.

All far removed from this Fall in the Bottoms.