Dawn of a New Day (29 page)

They had gone half a mile when Mark said, “Do you hear that, Prue?”

“Do I hear what?”

“It sounds like children's voices.”

“It is,” she said, lifting her eyes. “There's two of the children from the Vine, Jimmy and Elaine. They shouldn't be out playing around.”

“All kids like to play around creeks. We always did, didn't we?”

“Not when they were high like this. Come on. We'd better go tell their parents.”

“How old are the kids?”

“Oh, five or six. You know those children. They're just stair steps.” As they approached, Mark heard a cry from one of the children, and Prue said, “Mark, it's Elaine! She's fallen in!” They were only twenty feet or so away, and the boy was crying out, “She can't swim! Look! She's going to drown!”

“What is it, Prue?”

“She's fallen in, and the current's taking her down the stream! I'll try to get her, but you know I can't swim.”

Mark did not hesitate. “I'll get her!”

“Mark, you can't!” Prue protested, but he yelled above the roaring waters, “Point me at her! Don't argue!”

Prue tried to plead with him, but he made straight for the stream. When he felt the bank crumbling, he threw off his shoes and hollered, “Where is she?”

“Straight ahead, but going downstream quick!”

Mark leaped into the creek and felt the current catch at him. He heard Prue screaming, “Just ahead to your left!” With strong strokes he propelled himself through the current, but the current swept so quickly he lost the sound of Prue's voice. He thrashed around trying to find the girl, and a sense of terrible helplessness overcame him. He knew the girl would drown quickly in waters such as this, and he cried out, “Oh, God, help me to get her! Help me to see!”

For a moment the hopelessness overwhelmed him, and then a grayness came. Not solid blackness as he was accustomed to, but a gray light. He cried out, “Let me see, God! Let me see!”

The light became brighter and brighter, then—he could see!

He saw the muddy brown waters of the river with the caps of white, and not ten feet away a red piece of cloth—the girl's dress! She was sobbing and crying, and he drove himself toward her, caught her arm, and pulled her upright. “Don't be afraid, honey! I've got you!”

The current carried them downstream, and as he made his way to the shallows, he picked the child up and started up the banks. His feet stuck in the mud, but he heard Prue's voice and saw her running toward him along with the girl's brother.

When Prue came to him, he looked into her face and saw that she was weeping. “You saved her, Mark!”

Mark held the little girl for a moment, set her on her feet, and then straightened up. He looked at Prue, and her eyes met his. Immediately her eyes widened, and he smiled and pulled her into his arms. “I can see, Prue!” he whispered.

“Oh, Mark!” Prue said as she threw her arms around him.

They stood there in the muddy banks, the water rushing past them, the boy and the girl both crying. Mark pulled back and looked deep into Prue's dark eyes. “You're beautiful, Prue,” he said. He looked around at the rushing, muddy creek, at the skies overhead, at the green trees, and whispered as he looked back, “Everything is beautiful, but especially God, who has given me my sight back.”

J
uly 20, 1969, was a day that most Americans would mark on their calendars, for at 4:17, Eastern Standard Time, Neil A. Armstrong and Edwin E. Aldrin Jr. piloted their Apollo lunar module named Eagle to a landing on the Sea of Tranquillity. They walked on the lunar surface six hours later. Armstrong spoke the first words from the moon, “Houston, Tranquillity Base here. The Eagle has landed.” As Armstrong stepped down from the landing craft, he became the first man to step foot on the moon. He told hundreds of millions who were watching the scene on television, “That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

All the world was in the moon's grip. From Australia to Norway, from Kansas City to Warsaw, people pressed their ears to radios or watched the momentous events on television. The TV audience was estimated at six hundred million persons, one-fifth of the earth's population. Even in unfriendly nations the mission was reported favorably.

And so, as the decade of the sixties came to an end, most people would remember the moon walk as the most important event of the decade. But for a few people gathered in War Memorial Stadium in Little Rock, Arkansas, another event would always remain fixed in their memory.

Mark Stevens pulled the red Mustang up to the parking lot of War Memorial Stadium, and after shutting the engine off sat quietly on the rich leather seats. He turned to the young woman beside him and said, “Prue, I never thought I'd drive a car again, and now look at me driving a red sports car!”

Prue Deforge reached across the console and touched Mark's hand. She smiled at him, saying, “God is good.” She turned and looked out. “It looks like the stadium is going to be filled.”

Mark shrugged. “It's big news, I guess. Most people are watching the moon walk with Armstrong and Aldrin, but to me this is a bigger thing. Everybody's been wondering when Bobby would come back to his career, and I guess tonight's the night. Come on. Let's go try to find seats.”

Twenty minutes later they were inside the stadium looking down at the platform that had been built in the middle of the football field. As they settled themselves, watching the band set up their instruments and the sound people working busily, Mark looked down and said, “I always wanted to play football here with the Razorbacks. Maybe I did the wrong thing.”

“No. God's had his hands on you for a long time. He's been making you into a proper husband for me.”

Mark laughed aloud. “You brazen hussy! You were after me all this time! Why didn't you just tell me what was going to happen?”

Prue smiled at him brilliantly.

“You look beautiful in that yellow pantsuit.” He reached over and kissed her cheek and said, “And you smell good enough to eat. What is that perfume?”

“It's called
Mantrap
.”

The two sat there laughing and enjoying one another, and finally Mark looked around and said, “Hey look! There's Jerry and Bonnie down there, and Richard and his family.”

“I'm glad Bobby's family is all here. They've prayed for him so long. Look how happy they are.”

Mark agreed, and the two sat watching as the stadium filled up. A small group of teenagers came to sit down in front of them, one of them a skinny young man with a strange haircut and earrings who said, “I heard he got religion, but I don't believe it.”

Mark and Prue listened as the group expressed their distaste for Bobby's conversion. It had been well enough publicized, and now Prue's brow furrowed with worry as she said, “This is a rock-and-roll crowd. Do you think Bobby's going to play hard rock?”

“He hasn't said anything to anybody, but I think that young man there, and others like him, are in for a surprise.”

Ten minutes later Bobby Stuart walked across the field. As the crowd caught sight of him, they all began to yell and scream, “Come on, Bobby! Let's hear it!”

Down beneath Prue and Mark, Jerry Stuart held tightly to Bonnie's hand. His face was pale, and he turned to say, “Well, here we go.” He was gray-haired now, and his memory went back a long way. Even at the age of sixty-nine he had a youthful look in his eyes, and Bonnie reached over and kissed him. “He's going to do all right.”

Richard Stuart put his arm around his wife, Laurel. The two smiled confidently. Richard leaned over and said to his father, “It's been a long time since Bobby came in late and you threatened to thrash him, but God's going to do something tonight. I just feel it!”

They sat there watching until Bobby mounted the platform and without hesitation walked over and picked up a microphone. He did not welcome the crowd, as was his custom, but immediately began singing, “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.”

A silence fell over the crowd. Most of them had come expecting to hear the old Bobby Stuart with, perhaps, a little Christian stuff added, but as Bobby's voice filled the stadium there was a difference, and everyone in the vast stadium knew it.

The young man with the odd haircut stood up and cupped his hands over his mouth. “Come on! Let's have some of your old stuff, Bobby! Give us some real rock and roll!”

All over the stadium young people were calling for that, but Bobby continued to sing, “I Have Decided to Follow Jesus.”

When he finished the song, he waited until the cries quieted down, then he said, “I know that you've come here to hear the songs I used to sing, but I've got a new song now. It's about Jesus Christ, and that's what I'll be singing from now on.” Without apology he added, “Before I sing another song, I want to tell you about something that's happened to me.”

The crowd listened silently, except for a few Christians who were calling out “Amen” as Bobby gave his testimony. He did not spare himself when he revealed the barrenness and the sins of his past. When he began to speak about Reverend Pearl and how he had found Jesus in a small, frame church, tears rolled down his face, and some of the crowd began to call out, “Spare us the sob stuff, Bobby!”

Finally he concluded his testimony and said, “I'm going to be singing some of the songs I used to sing, but some of them I won't sing anymore because I've left that kind of life. Right now, before I get into that, I'm going to sing one song that's meant more to me than any other in my life.”

He walked over to the piano and began to sing, “On a hill far away stood an old rugged cross. The emblem of suffering and shame….”

Prue and Mark watched as from all over the stadium, young people began to leave, many of them. They were angry and felt betrayed, and they cried out blasphemies and obscenities at Bobby, and the stadium thinned.

Bobby finished the song and then began to sing other songs, and those who stayed applauded wildly.

“I don't know what this all means,” Mark said as they made their way back to the car after the concert. They had gone down and talked to Bobby and to the other members of his family who were there, and now as they stood in the parking lot, which was almost empty, Mark turned and said, “Bobby's going to be all right.” There was confidence in his voice as he added, “He'll lose some hard rockers, but he's going to reach some of them. He's got a powerful testimony.”

“I think it's wonderful that he had the courage to do it. He's throwing away so much.”

“But he's getting a lot too. He's getting everything as a matter of fact.”

The two stood there in the empty parking lot in the dimness of the lights, and finally Mark gave Prue an odd look. “I guess I'm ready to hear about our marriage plans.”

“Not so fast, Mark Stevens,” Prue said. She put her hand against his chest as he tried to pull her close. “You're my first real beau, you know.”

“What about Kent Maxwell?”

“That was never serious,” she said. “I respect him, but I told him that there could never be anything between us.”

“That's good news,” Mark said dryly. “Now, about getting married.”

“First you're going to have to court me.”

“Court you?” Mark said in astonishment. “I've known you all your life.”

“I want you to bring me flowers and take me out to nice places. I want you to be uncertain and miserable, and I want us to have some lovers' quarrels, and then we can make up again, and that'll be the good part.” She looked at him, her eyes shining. As she slipped her arm around his neck and pulled his head down, she whispered, “I want to enjoy being courted, Mark Stevens.”

Mark pulled her close, and as he lowered his head to kiss her, he whispered, “Well, let's get started.”