Almost Heaven (26 page)

“Is what?”

“That she took that Subaru off the side of some back road somewhere and nobody's going to find her until hunting season.”

“Callie wouldn't do that.”

“She would if she was desperate or depressed, and it looks to me like she was. I don't know what was going on. Maybe she was having trouble with her bills or there was some man.”

“Was there a man?”

“None that she talked about other than you. And if she didn't hurt herself, what do you think happened?”

“I don't know.” I looked around for any clues, like some bumbling detective, but I had no idea what to look for.

“Well, if you figure it out, you let me know,” Opal said. “I better get back.
Wheel of Fortune
is coming on.”

“I'm going to do these dishes. I'll bring the key back to you when I'm done.”

I left the front door open and cranked the kitchen window so I'd get some cross-ventilation. She didn't have a disposal and there were a bunch of vegetables caught in the drain, which had made the smell. I got the dishes washed and put in the rack beside the sink. I hoped Callie would be able to see what I'd done for her, just so she could see that somebody cared.

I went through the mail and most of it was junk. Stuff from a credit card company and ads for the grocery store. A water bill. Electric bill. A catalog filled with quilting stuff. A Christian book catalog with apocalyptic fiction. Something from a doctor's office. I opened it and saw he was a psychologist. It said the bill was overdue and asked for payment immediately.

I put all the mail in a neat stack on the table and fidgeted, looking out at the driveway and praying she would just drive up and the biggest problem we'd have was me explaining why I was sitting in her kitchen.

Before I left, I decided to check the refrigerator. There was a little bit of milk in an outdated carton, something on a plate covered with tinfoil, and three Coors Light cans that looked as out of place there as a pitchfork in a preschool. I could tell the three had been six, due to the plastic connector. My mind raced. Callie had never been one to drink. She had seen the ravages of alcoholism in her own family. Why would she have the beer in her fridge?

I looked under cushions and in the pages of the Bible she had on her coffee table. Then I got an idea and went back to her bedroom. There was another Bible in there by her nightstand and under it was a spiral notebook. Something inside told me I should stop, that a woman's private thoughts should stay private, but I told myself there might be something that would help me.

The notebook was half-filled. On each page there was a date and a listing of a passage read and her reaction. Some kind of application she wanted to make. Then a prayer. In fact, the prayers went on and on throughout the notebook. Maybe it was pride, maybe it was just a man's curiosity, but I started looking for my own name. It showed up on the third page.

Lord, I feel such despair. It feels like everything is pushing in on me and I can't see what you're doing. I don't see any hope with Billy, but I give him to you and thank you for him. You know the longing in my heart. You know how long I've prayed. I think it must be time to just let go and let you have him. Use him in people's lives and keep him safe. Help him take care of himself.

I looked at the date on the entry and saw it was right around the time we had talked in my living room. The next few pages were filled with much the same, mentioning me here and there, people at the church she was praying for, her job, different people on her route she was lifting up. I felt almost ashamed reading it. I always knew she was a deep well, but I had no idea how deep until I was wading through her thoughts.

Toward the middle of the journal, the dates got more sparse. She'd miss a day or two, and then a week would go by. She'd apologize to the Lord for not being in the Word. Her handwriting changed. Early on it was flowing and flowery but toward the end of her entries it became more angular, like chicken scratch. Even that was a far sight better than my handwriting, but it kind of scared me.

Dr. J thinks I ought to make more friends and go to the singles group at a bigger church. It's hard to even think of anybody but Billy, but maybe he's right. The world is a big place and there has to be somebody out there who would want a woman like me. I know I'm not much to look at, but I would try hard to make somebody happy.

Sometimes you see things that put everything in perspective real fast. War will do that. A trip to the emergency room. Something said in a church service when you ask God to speak to you and he does. Reading her heart was like falling down at some altar. I took a deep breath and turned the page.

Toward the end, which had stopped nearly two weeks earlier, she began talking about another fellow. Some of the words were just printed now.

Lord, I pray you would get hold of L's heart and give him a vision of what you can do with him. He could be so much more if he'd give his life to you. Draw him to yourself, and if it be your will, give him a love for me. I keep thinking about what you could do with the both of us together, but I know it's wrong for me to fall for him and be unequally yoked. Still, you know how he tugs at my heartstrings.

The final entry seemed more pleading than worshipful, more desperate. She talked about being tired of being lonely and how convinced she was that if she could just spend more time with L, he would understand the message and want to respond.

Lord, I feel like this is my last chance. When I'm around him, something inside comes alive. And since you came to give life, I can't help but think he's a gift from you.

I closed the journal and put it back under the Bible. I just sat there a couple minutes thinking and wondering.

I locked the front door, my mind searching for answers. Opal came to her door when I knocked, but it took her a while. I handed the frog back to her and she put it in an empty ashtray. I gave her my number and asked her to call me if she saw Callie or had any news.

When I got back home, the light was flashing on my answering machine. I changed the music reels and made an announcement that I would play the preaching programs beginning at 7:00 and I apologized for the inconvenience.

I called Sheriff Preston's house and talked with Macel. She was alarmed about Callie and I asked her to have her husband call me.

I cooked up a macaroni and cheese tray in the microwave and listened to the messages while I ate my supper. The first two were asking about the preaching programs. The last one made me sit up.

“Billy, this is Vernon Turley. I've been thinking more about your situation there and I want to offer you another chance. . . .”

I hit the Delete button and the machine beeped at me. I had to keep my hand to the task. Before I went to bed, I got in the car and drove over to Callie's again, listening to the station on the way, some of the songs speaking right to me as if God himself was trying to send me a message. I pulled in and let the headlights illumine the driveway. I could tell by the tracks in the mud that no one had been there since I had left.

Back at home, another message had come in; this one was Sheriff Preston. He said to call him no matter what time it was and I took him at his word. I explained what I had found out at Callie's place, and he said he would start investigating in earnest. He asked if I knew the license plate number on her Subaru and I told him I didn't, but I could find it.

“I'll drive over to her parents' house in the morning,” he said. “Hopefully she'll turn up before then and everybody can just relax.”

“I don't think that's going to happen, Sheriff. This is not like her. Something is wrong.”

“All right, Billy. We'll get the ball rolling. I appreciate you calling and your concern.”

* * *

Sleep did not come easily. Usually when 11 p.m. came and I began the overnight music—a soft and soothing blend of instrumentals and vocals that didn't have the fast pace of some bluegrass tunes—I could barely make it back to bed before I was asleep. This time, however, I lay there piecing together what I knew, thinking about the last time I saw Callie, her cutoff leather gloves, her hair pulled back. About where she might be and what had happened. I'll admit it's easy for me to think the worst because when my mind runs, it runs to the low places, where the water goes first. What kind of flood had Callie gotten herself into? Or had it overwhelmed her all on its own, without her help?

I drifted off but never fully slept and then sat bolt upright at 3 a.m. A better man would have made coffee and just stayed up praying for her. I started my morning show each day at 5:30, so I could only get about two hours of rest, but I changed the reels and then fell back into bed and dozed.

I awoke sweating, my body shaking, and I knew I was low. It's a feeling I can't describe. A craving deep down in the soul for something to bring me to normal, as if anything could. I always thought it was interesting that the Lord would give me the sugar diabetes with the way my life worked out. An inner realization that I didn't have everything I needed, and there was no way in the world to get it by myself.

That's what I talked about that morning on the radio as I opened the microphone. I usually gave some devotional thought from Oswald Chambers or some other preacher. Just a few words to stir up the soul for hardworking people who had to pry their eyes open at that hour of the day. But that morning I played an instrumental tune underneath and read from my journal, with some new thoughts mixed in.

“I have known a hunger in my heart during the early morning hours that can't be helped with a drink of juice or a carbed-up bar of some kind. When I wake up shaking and wondering how I'm going to make it to the kitchen without passing out, and with my feet and legs tingling like a thousand pins are sticking me, I think this is the kind of hunger we all have. Most of us try to fill ourselves with something. Stuff or food or drink or pills or sex or whatever feels good at the moment.

“Some of you may be shaking this morning, not from lack of sugar, but from a lack of knowing God loves you and has some kind of plan in the middle of what you call a life. It can get cloudy and misty at times, so thick that you aren't able to see much of the field he has planted you in. And if that's where you are, I'm here to tell you that you're in a good place. It probably doesn't feel that way, and you may be about to turn off the radio right now because you think I'm a nut. But God has you right where you need to be. Because it's not where you're strong that he will use you; it's where you're weak.

“I have lived long enough and have seen enough pain and problems to take me on a journey I would not have picked. And you may be right there with me. You didn't choose what's happening. And you know deep down that there's no relief from it. You may have forgotten that childlike feeling of hope you once had, that things could work out okay, could work out different. But that hope is there and available, even if you can't feel it. Sometimes you have to hold on to the hope that God has for you instead of the hope you can dredge up yourself.

“We read in God's Word, in the book of Romans, that we have been justified, or made right with God, through faith in Jesus Christ. And because of that, we have peace with God and can rejoice in the hope of the glory of God. Now get that straight—we don't have joy because we have hope; we rejoice
in
the hope God gives, and the object of that hope is his glory. Everything points back to that, the glory of God, and if we don't realize that, then we're going to be shaking and passing out all of our lives from the hunger. God alone is the one who deserves the praise and the glory because this is all his deal anyway. And it says in that passage in Romans, chapter 5, that if we put our hope in God and we focus on his glory, that kind of hope will not disappoint.

“I've known a lot of disappointment. I've known a lot of disappointed people. Things didn't turn out the way they thought they would. God didn't heal their child or keep their baby from going to jail. God didn't bring a husband. And when he did, he didn't bring a very good one. Or some woman has been praying every day for her husband to come to Jesus and it hasn't happened.

“The truth is this: you don't need your circumstances to change in order to give praise to God. In fact, the best place to live the Christian life and participate with God in the plan he has for you is right where you are. So whatever task he has for you to do, whatever job you have, or if you're just out looking for a job, I don't care what it is, God wants to work through you today, right where you are.”

I pictured in my mind's eye what it was like to be waking up to my voice. Women in curlers and men sitting on the side of the bed trying to shove to an upright position. Or husbands and wives with coffee at the table and the morning paper. I thought of Callie, too, and wondered if there was any way she could hear my voice. All of these images coalesced and gave me the urge to conclude.

“There's one more thing I want to say and then we'll get to the music, which is why most of you turned on the radio today. But if you're one of those who says, ‘God can't love me after what I've done,' I want you to hear me loud and clear. I don't care what you've done. I don't care where you are. I don't care what mistakes you have made or what laws you've broken or what sins you've committed.

“No matter what you've done or what consequences you face for your actions, there is great hope in God. So don't ever say you're too bad for him to love you. That's like saying the ocean isn't big enough to fit a rowboat. His love and his mercy and grace are so much bigger than anything you could ever even imagine doing wrong. Come to him and ask him to forgive you and he will. You can bank on it.”

I took a deep breath. “Now I told you that was all I was going to say, but there's one more thing that's weighing heavy on my heart this morning. Some of you know Callie Reynolds. She delivers mail here in Dogwood. Her family and friends are real worried because we can't locate her. If anybody has seen her or knows where she is, please let us know. She drives a green Subaru with a muffler problem.”