Almost Heaven (17 page)

I was out of breath but managed to get their attention before they crossed Thirteenth Avenue. Their eyes lit up and they came running, the dogs thumping against the sides of the box.

“We didn't think you'd come back,” the girl said.

“Yeah,” the younger boy said. “Our mom said you ditched us.”

“Well, tell your mother that Billy Allman always keeps his word to a friend.” I pulled out the ten-dollar bill I had in my shirt pocket. “Looks like you still have all of your pups. Didn't have to take them to the pound?”

The girl looked up sheepishly. “Mama told us to forget the pound and just chuck them in the river, but I couldn't do it.”

“Well, I'm with you,” I said. “They just need a good home.”

“Your pup looks like he's doing okay,” the girl said.

“He eats like a king,” I said.

“What happened to that old lady who was with you?” the younger one said. “I thought she was going to kill that dog.”

“She was sick, actually. I didn't know how sick. She crossed over the river this past week, so she's in a better place.”

“She went to Proctorville?” the boy said.

Any other time I would have laughed out loud. Instead, I smiled, the hurt still there. “No, she passed away.” When the three of them shot me bewildered looks, I explained that she had died and that her funeral had been Thursday.

“I ain't never knowed anybody who died the same week they bought a puppy,” the girl said.

I gave them the box of hot dogs and the gallon jug of root beer, and the girl said they would have them for dinner. “Mama will freak out. We don't have much food in the house.”

“You tell her a satisfied customer came back to pay his debt.”

“You wanna come eat with us?” the younger boy said.

The girl shot him a mean look like he had just uttered a blasphemy.

“I don't think I could stay to eat, but I'll give you a ride home. How far away is your house?”

The girl pointed. “About a mile or so over thataway. But Mama wouldn't like us getting a ride from a stranger. Did you hear about that little girl who got kidnapped?”

I'd been listening to the news stories. A young girl had been abducted from Dogwood over the summer, according to her mother. I had volunteered on a search crew a few months back, scouring the countryside, but there had been no sign of the child.

“Tell you what, you put your puppies in the back, then, and I'll follow you home so you don't have to carry them.”

The girl thought a minute. “I don't think she'd mind you giving us a ride.”

They all scrunched into the truck and we drove past the brick homes of Huntington's upper crust and into an area of houses with rotting roofs and overgrown yards. The kids gave conflicting directions, and we wound up at some apartments that looked like they were too run-down even for college students.

The kids hopped out, carrying the dogs and the food and drink, a lightness to their step. “Mama, it's him! He came back and paid us!”

I stayed at the truck and waited for the mother to invite me in or call the police. Through an open window next door, I heard bluegrass music. I recognized the group and wondered if it was the radio or a CD. There weren't many stations in this area that played that type of music.

The mother came to the door barefoot, wearing faded jeans with holes in the knees, the sign of the bottle in her eyes. They were hollow and empty, like the life had been sucked out of them.

“What are you doing around my kids?”

The younger boy pulled on her hand and told her not to yell, but she pushed him away.

“I didn't mean to upset you, ma'am. I just wanted to pay my debt and do something nice for your children. I didn't have the money last week when I saw them—”

“You one of them perverts who steals kids?”

“No, ma'am, I—”

“Stop calling me ma'am. I'm not some old lady.”

“I know that, ma'—I mean, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you. That's just how I talk to people.”

Her hands were on her hips and her posture said she was ready for a fight. A curtain pulled back in another apartment. We had an audience. The kids were at the screen door. I didn't want an argument with her or anybody else.

I explained what had happened. How I didn't want to buy a puppy but my mother insisted. And how guilty I felt for cheating her children of those ten dollars. “My mother passed this week, and I think it was God's way of letting me have a little companionship. I remembered this morning that I owed them, so I thought the least I could do was give a little food and something to drink for their gift to me.”

“We don't need your charity,” the woman spat.

“Mama, he's nice,” the girl said through the screen.

She yelled something so mean to her that it cut me to the heart. The lady told her to close the door and then turned on me. “Get out of here and don't come back. Next time I see you around my kids, I'm calling the cops.”

I backed away to my truck. I wanted to explain more or at least say I didn't mean any harm. I had the good sense to know this wasn't really about me, but I still felt the shame of being there with people looking.

When I drove away, the kids were at the front window eating those hot dogs. I never drove by Stewarts again without thinking of them and their mother so scarred and scared that she couldn't see something good when it stared her in the face.

I go back to that event and what happened with the children as what started my dream. Hearing that music coming from the apartment and knowing how people identified with it, how much it could seep into a soul or break a stony heart, gave me an idea. I'd seen it happen before, the message of the music cutting through, even though the people who played it weren't perfect. I'd seen music change people, the words and the melodies working their way like a vine into the spirit, winding around their lives until they had to respond.

* * *

The next week, when my manager called me into his office, it was like a streak of lightning across the sky of my life. I didn't see it that way then, but it struck me later that God was moving the course of my life.

“How are you doing, Billy?” he said, speaking slowly as if he were reading a script. His name was Karl Stillwater, and I have never been able to get over the irony of that last name.

“I'm all right, considering. Thanks for asking.”

Karl was not a big man, either in stature, resolve, or heart. The cowboy boots made him a little taller, but they also seemed like props. He lived on a farm outside of town that had no animals in the barn or crops in the field. It was just country veneer. All look and no corn.

There had been several painful conversations when I first began working overnights for him. He said I'd never make it—even in the hills—as an announcer. He just wanted me to play the music along with the voice-overs of the image IDs and stingers that played in between songs, which was a little like taking a girl to a movie and sitting in the row behind her.

So I threw myself into the technical and watched others with better voices and less to say shuffle through the control room. It has always seemed to me that what you say is more important than having a good voice. You can have all the panache in the world and a smooth sound and professionalism, but if there's no heart, people can tell. But that is not the way the world works, I guess.

“Were you finally able to buy that piece of land down in Dogwood?”

“I'm paying on it every month.”

“Did your mama leave you anything to help out with that?” he said, folding his hands like a preacher about to deliver a sermon on hell.

“Mama didn't have much of anything. She left a few trinkets but no money. But she loved me with everything she had. I think that's better than a big inheritance.”

“No property or . . . ?” he said with a grimace, like what he was about to say would have been easier for him if she had a big life insurance policy.

I shook my head.

“Well, Billy, we've kind of come to a crossroads here. And I hate to do this at such a time, but I think we need to go another direction with the station.”

“Another direction? Format change?”

“No, we need to hire a different chief engineer. With the economy what it is and our ad revenue down, we've had to make some hard decisions. Like I said, I hate to do this to you at such a hard time. I know you'll understand.”

“I can take a pay cut,” I said.

He winced. “It's not just the pay issue. It's the whole package. You understand.”

“No, I don't understand. I haven't been late to work; I haven't shirked my duties. Can you tell me the last time the station was off the air because of equipment problems? The only downtime we've had is the lightning strike at—”

He put up a hand. “I'm not saying you've been negligent. This is a financial decision pure and simple.”

“Karl, you have to have an engineer. You said you were going to hire another one. There's nobody on the planet who's going to work for less than I do.”

“We're looking at somebody who could come in part-time, maybe. Might not pay benefits. The benefits are killing us.”

“Then let me do that,” I said. “I'll cut back to three days. Even two, if you want.”

He shook his head. “I don't think so. Now, I'd be glad to give you a recommendation, a reference as you job hunt. You might make money fixing TVs and such. You can fix just about anything. But I think we need to move in another direction. I'm sure you understand.”

“Stop saying I'll understand.”

“I'm sorry, Billy.”

“Don't do this.”

“I truly am.”

He stood up and reached a hand toward me.

“Is this about your brother? Is Jimmy the one you're going to hire?”

He looked down at his desk and took back his hand. “I'm sorry.”

I took my jacket and stood. When I turned to leave, something struck me. With my hand on the doorknob, I looked back at him. “The old Gates board in the production room. It's been unhooked for a couple of years. Would you consider selling that to me?”

He made a face and laughed. “That thing has been around here longer than I have. What do you want with it?”

“Would you sell it?”

He rubbed his chin. “Well, we have to give you two weeks' severance, but if you want it, I think we can work something out. Clear out your desk and I'll have Kathy put it down in writing. Don't want you suing us or anything.”

I didn't smile.

“Oh, go on and take it with you today if you'd like.”

I nodded. “I do thank you for giving me a chance, Karl. You didn't have to but you did.”

“It's been a pleasure having you with us, Billy. I wish you well. Let me know what works out for you.”

I closed the door and collected my things. It didn't take long. I had one of the announcers help me carry the heavy mixing board to my truck and load it in the back. I gave the key to the building back to Kathy, who had tears in her eyes.

“I'm so sorry about all this, Billy. I don't know what's going on around here these days.”

“I'll be okay. I thank you for your kindness.”

It felt like I was losing part of my life and that the long march on my personal Bataan was continuing. Looking back, I was just starting on a new adventure that I couldn't see. Jesus said in the Bible that unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it stays a single seed. But if it dies, it can produce a bunch of seeds. That means a lot more wheat can only come from a dead kernel. I think that's what happened.

12

A man with a singular vision is difficult to find. One who seeks with a whole heart to give his whole self to God, no matter the cost, no matter the pain, is a human anomaly. I've heard of such people, and those men and women have changed the world, not because of their great strength and abilities, but because of the relinquishing of their own desires.

If there is a wholly unreserved man on earth, I have not seen him. But I have come very close in Billy Allman. For when the dream of his life and the love of a woman and all that he had planned failed, as simple and unsatisfying as that would have seemed to someone who believed happiness was contingent on finding “the good life,” Billy was set free. He was released to run in the playground of God's will. Of course he did not immediately do this. He squandered much time and zeal by the swing sets before he could even begin to understand the scope of his opportunities.

Humanity is not easy for a being like me to understand. In our battles, there is no acquiescence to defeat. But on that time-bound planet, the goal for the human believer is not found in every victorious triumph, but in the elusive relationship with the Father that then leads to ultimate victory.

It is becoming much clearer that there is a veil of understanding on both sides of the eternal chasm. They do not understand how things in the heavenlies are ordered because they have no ability to
see
into our world. And there is an equally opaque veil for those of us who look on from this side of heaven's wonders. We cannot understand the ways of the heart. We cannot fully experience the strength of a loving Father carrying one through desperate times. For the human followers, it is in losing that they finally discover. It is in failing that they see. It is in the abandonment of the trail they believed would lead them to lasting joy that they set out on a new path. It is much narrower and overgrown, but in the journey through this wilderness of the soul, they discover more about themselves and Him than if every prayer of their wayward hearts had been answered in the affirmative.