Almost Heaven (36 page)

I put down my fork. “This is not about perspectives. It's not about anything but telling the truth about what happened. You can tap-dance around this by saying how sorry you are about my feelings, but the fact remains that what I put in here is the truth. And I want you to admit it.”

He grabbed the letter as if I was going to snatch it from him. “I don't remember that time the way you do; I'll put it that way.”

“Really? And how do you remember it? That we were in that hotel room together watching CNN and drinking root beer?” I leaned forward. “And the morning after the first time, we walked into a church sanctuary and you gave your best performance. You even cried through the reciting of the verses you memorized.”

He shut his eyes and shook his head. Then he leaned forward and forced himself to speak in low tones. “Billy, you know I'm not like everybody else. I'm quirky. I might even seem weird to others. But that's what fuels the creativity and the musicality. It's what gets me out there in front of people. You knew that when you signed on for the ride. Am I an exhibitionist? Yes. When I go to bed, I sleep without clothes. Does that make me a pervert? If you were so offended by it or hurt, why did you keep coming out on the road with us? There was nobody holding a gun to your head.”

“So it was my fault.”

“No, you've got this all wrong. It's nobody's fault.”

“You're right that going to bed without any clothes on doesn't make you a pervert. But what I wrote in that letter, if it's true, does. Now I'll ask you again. Was I the only one, or were there others?”

“Of course not. And I don't think that what happened to you—I mean, I can see from your perspective how you might have been offended by some of my tastes in what to watch on TV. I should have been more sensitive to that—”

“More sensitive?” I said, raising my voice. “I don't believe you.”

“Please, please,” he said, holding out his hands again.

I felt a burst of adrenaline rush through my body and I leaned forward over my forgotten salad. “I could handle it if you just pranced around in your birthday suit. I could handle it if you sang about God's love and forgiveness and watched dirty movies with your wife. And I could handle it if you sat here tonight and said you regret everything that happened and that you're sorry and you'd do anything to make up for it. But what I can't stand is having you sit here and say it was a difference in perspective or that you have a special personality and we all need to bow to your genius. What you did was wrong. And what I remember is not just my perspective; it really happened. I've got the scars up here to prove it.” I pointed to my head.

His face was red and tight. “What do you want? I've offered you money to keep your little radio venture going, but you refused.”

I shut my own eyes now and shook my head. “That's what you think this is about. And don't call it my little radio station. It may be small potatoes to you, but it's a lot more than that to me.”

“I didn't mean to offend you. I think it's wonderful what you've done with your life, especially with all the strikes against you. I just don't understand why you're bringing this up after all this time. I'm not your enemy. I've always had your best interests at heart—”

“Stop,” I said. I wasn't shouting anymore, just resolved. And the people around us were getting quiet. Vernon could sense it too. He looked like a cornered rat. “You're going to sit there and listen to me. I'm going to tell you exactly what happened with all of the details. I don't spend one night trying to fall asleep that I don't think about what you did and have to work it through again.”

“Why don't we go outside and continue this?”

“No,” I said. “We'll stay right here and you'll listen to every word.”

“Okay,” he said, nodding and pushing his own plate back. Folding his hands, he said, “Maybe I did do some things to you that I shouldn't have. I'm sorry. If I thought for a minute you didn't want me to, I would have stopped.”

“Don't put this on me!” I yelled, slamming my fist on the table. The silverware rattled. People stared now, but I had a laser beam focused on him. “If you're sorry about what you did, just leave it at that. Don't blame me. I was a teenager. I was vulnerable. I'd lost my daddy. I looked up to you and you took that trust and you used me.”

“You're right; you're right,” he said, reaching for his forehead to rub it and run a hand through his hair again. “I'm sorry. Period.”

A portly man wearing a sweater vest came up to the table and knelt down. “Gentlemen, is there a problem I can help with?”

“No, we're fine,” Vernon said. “If I could have the check and maybe wrap this up in a doggie bag. Billy, do you want your salad saved?”

The man looked at me and something in his eyes led me to believe he was a kind soul trying to understand, but at the same time trying to keep his restaurant quiet.

“I'm finished,” I said, pulling out a ten-dollar bill and putting it beside my knife and fork.

“I'm taking care of this,” Vernon said.

I handed the bill to the manager. “This is for my salad and the tip. Will you make sure she gets it?”

He nodded.

It was pouring when I walked through the front door, one of those West Virginia gushers that fills the gutters in a minute or two. I stopped for a minute to cover my head with my hood and somebody grabbed me by the arm.

“If it's all right with you, I'm going to shred the letter,” Vernon said. “Nobody else needs to know about this, don't you agree?”

I turned and looked at him. He used to seem a lot taller, but with the years he had become bent at the shoulders and seemed to creep closer to the ground. His face was pleading, asking something of me rather than revealing, but even in the asking he was revealing.

“I've lived with the truth of what you did every day of my life, Vernon. What you do with the letter is your business. What I do with the truth is mine.”

I walked into the rain and he called after me. “Billy, I need to know. What are your intentions?”

I splashed through the parking lot and the running water across the yellow parking lines. He called again but I didn't turn around. When I got in the truck and started it up, he was at the cashier's station. I pulled through the standing water and down the hill to the stoplight.

Lost in thought, rubbing at the fog on the windshield and trying to peer through the rain streaks, my soul hydroplaning on the back roads of memory, the mesmerizing rhythm of the wiper blades carrying a beat of their own, I drove into the darkness, winding my way toward Dogwood. Like some magnet was pulling me, I wound up in Callie's driveway. I turned off the truck and just sat there with the lights on.

I've spent my whole life looking through the water to hear the music and shut out the pain. Right then, I saw through the torrent. Like when Moses parted the Red Sea, the truth came to me through the downpour. The hurt and pain and everything that trapped me in the little world I'd built surfaced and I decided not to push it away. I'd been running in place trying to get away from myself, not making headway, holding people at a distance, feeling comfortable behind a microphone, talking to people like they were friends when I really didn't know them and they didn't know me. No wonder I felt more comfortable with machines, old radios, and a soldering iron. No wonder I clung to the thought of a girl from years ago and the illusions.

It was like waking up from some long dream with drops of water running down my face, tears and rain mingled down. I was cold and soaked to the bone standing there by the truck, my hair plastered to my head. I didn't remember getting out, but I knew I would never forget what it felt like to finally
feel
. I smelled the wet earth and the worms struggling up through the sod and the muskrats in the holes by the creek. I heard the lonesome dove crying from some dry place for its mate. And my heart beating. And the sting of wet air in my lungs. A deep sadness and joy running through my veins with each pump of the heart. The trickling of water finding its own level.

The door opened and Callie peered into the darkness. She switched on the front porch lights and only one of them worked, but it was enough for her to recognize me. She came out in her bare feet with an umbrella held up high.

“Billy, what are you doing out here?”

Her voice was like an answer to prayer.

She looked close at my face, her feet squishing through the wet grass and mud. There was no way she could have distinguished the rain from the tears, but I guess if you love somebody, you can look into the eyes and see further down into the wellspring of life.

“What is it?” she said. “Are you going low?”

I gave her a sad smile and shook my head.

“Then what's the matter?”

“I think I see now. What you were talking about. The dam over my heart. It's broke. And I can feel everything washing away. Everything in the world.”

Her eyes went back and forth over my face. “Oh, Billy,” she said, and the kindness in her voice touched deep and the logjam burst. She gathered me in and hugged me tight through all the wet and cold, then took me into her trailer and made me take off my jacket and shirt and handed me a towel that I draped over me. The water just flowed from some cistern of the heart, like it had been trapped my whole life. I put my head down on her kitchen table and let it come, and she stood behind me and rubbed my back, crying herself.

“It's all right. Just let it come on out.”

“I don't mean to be this way,” I said through the tears.

“This is you, Billy Allman. I don't want anything else.”

“Do you mean that?” I said, raising the towel and looking up at her.

It was her turn for the red eyes and puckered chin. She sat down and put her forehead on my back and just let go. “I mean it, Billy. I mean it with all my heart.”

If you would have asked me what our problem was before then, I would have said her problem was that she couldn't love me like I was. She wanted somebody else. She couldn't be satisfied with the man I had become. But right then I knew she wanted the real me. She'd seen glimpses from time to time, flashes. I had been in there, covered by the past and all the debris, and the flood that meant to kill me had done its work.

I told her about my meeting with Vernon Turley. I told her everything he did. I told her about the ghosts that haunted me, and as I dug deeper, I remembered things I hadn't even told my counselor. Feelings I had and things I'd been through that had been locked tight. My counselor was right: getting this stuff into the light and telling the truth to myself and somebody else made a difference. Sometimes the biggest enemy you have is down deep in your own soul. It was there in that little kitchen that I began to feel the freedom he was talking about.

* * *

Three days later there was a story in the newspaper about the death of a beloved hometown gospel musician. It had Vernon Turley's picture on an inside section and a story next to the obituaries. The community was mourning a great loss. He was taken too quickly, some said. Others mourned him like he was an angel God had given for a short time and then took from us. The cause of death was unclear. He had been in excellent health but had become moody in recent days and seemed troubled. Still, the family insisted his death was from natural causes.

27

The revelations about Billy's past saddened me to the core. I had seen most of his life, except for the period when I was called away to service, and to think a person in some semblance of spiritual authority over him would take advantage of such innocence both sickened and disturbed me.

And I was astounded that a mere mortal like Callie, who did not have my insight and broader perspective, would pick up on his suffering and inner turmoil. Indeed, her love caused her to see more deeply. She did not let her own loneliness confuse her. She truly loved in a selfless way, and I was sure that her actions would pave the way of their future.

However, I could not help but take the logical trip past the choices of others and try to discern how I fit in with these events. You have heard of the angel who wrestled with Jacob. I know him personally. Now I was an angel wrestling with myself.

While this was happening to Billy, I was not only away; I had been
called
away. And I was told by my superior that things would need to occur. Why? For what purpose? If I had been present, I know exactly what I would have done to the man who abused Billy, and it would have taken all of hell's forces to protect him.

But it was not the man and his choices that vexed me the most. Sin corrupts. Sin destroys. It brings death. No, what bothered me most was my own commitment to The Plan. I had spent most of Billy's early life simply observing and, at times, becoming involved surreptitiously in minor incidents of protection I have not herein revealed. His first few attempts to drive were frightening in the extreme. There was an incident with wiring a station's transmitter that might have turned deadly had I not been there, but these I saw as minor instances and the payoff from my constant attention. If The Plan was to have Billy become all he could be, why throw into his life something the Almighty knew would further complicate and stunt him as a person? Why allow this needless occurrence to taint his life and relationships?