Dominion (117 page)

“What are you talking about?” Norcoast said. “No, you’ve got it all wrong. I remember it clearly. A bright angel, a beautiful home, peaceful feelings. Serenity. It was the most wonderful place I’ve ever been. The most extraordinary experience I’ve ever had. I’ve lost so much that’s dear to me in the last few days, but this is a great comfort. I’ve made contact with my angel now. Esther says eventually I’ll learn to talk to him and get his guidance.”

Clarence stared at him, at a complete loss for words.

“How is he?” Harley asked Clarence as the brothers stood outside their father’s room.

“Not good. Still unconscious,” Clarence said. “The doctor doesn’t think… there’s very much time.”

Harley nodded, removing his glasses and rummaging in his pockets. Clarence handed him an extra handkerchief.

“Look, Harley,” Clarence said. “There’s something I need to say to you….I’m sorry I’ve got such a big mouth sometimes.”

Harley looked at him somberly. “What do you mean, ‘sometimes’?”

They both laughed and put their arms around each other in a long embrace for the first time either could remember, maybe the first time since Mama died. Suddenly they heard the sound of faint singing. They both rushed into Daddy’s room. The words were barely audible, the tune broken but recognizable.

“O Freedom, O Freedom, O Freedom over me. And before I’ll be a slave I’ll be buried in my grave, and go home to my Lord and be free.

“O Canaan, bright Canaan, I’m bound for the land of Canaan.

“Amazin’ Grace, how sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me, I once was lost, but now am found, was blind, but now I see.” His voice whispered, but with surprising intensity.

“Someday when I his face shall see, someday from tears I shall be free. Somebody’s callin’ my name. Git on board, little children, git on board. De gospel train’s a comin’, git on board.”

Clarence and Harley stood over him, Clarence’s arm around his brother. Daddy’s eyes were open, but they seemed to be looking somewhere beyond the room.

“I hears that whistle blowin’,” Obadiah said. “Train’s a comin’. Folks a gatherin’.” His whisper gained strength, energized by something the brothers couldn’t see. “Who’s dat walkin’ beside me now? Tall as an oak. These ol’ legs don’t feel so sore. Who’s dat up ahead? Whose face I see? O, my sweet Jesus. It’s you. It’s you.”

Obadiah grew suddenly quiet, his eyes staying open, not blinking, but watering up. Clarence wiped away Obadiah’s tears with a tissue. After a minute the old man suddenly started talking again.

“Who dat, now? Daddy, it’s you, ain’t it? O Daddy, what you told me was true, and here it is. And… O Mama, yes, me too, Mama.” Silence again. “Moses! How are you, brother? How long’s it been now? And where’s my Dani? There she is! O Dani, I hadn’t stopped cryin’ for you yet, little girl. And who’s this one? My little Felicia, that you? O sweet Jesus, sweet Jesus. I never knowed such joy. Thank you, my sweet Jesus.”

Clarence and Harley stared wide eyed as the tears streamed down their father’s face. “He’s hallucinating,” Harley said. Clarence nodded. The brothers stood shoulder to shoulder, leaning close over their father, wanting to hear every word as his voice faded in and out.

“My oh my, and who’s dat woman? Uncommon pretty, she is. I missed you terrible, Ruby. Gets lonely countin’ cricket chirps and watchin’ stars all by yo’self.”

Clarence looked at Harley. He wondered whether…

“Wait a minute, there.” Obadiah said, “Mike? That you, ol’ soldier? Now there’s a grip. Been waitin’ a long time to shake that hand again. Hold on. Who dat behind you? Elijah? Where you come from, brother?”

No, of course not. It was all just a hallucination after all. Amazing what the mind could do. The old man’s body jolted with a spasm of pain.

“You all come out to get me, didn’t you? Well, don’t want to stay out here, that’s sure. I hears that ol’ porch bell a ringin’. Time to come inside, ain’t it? Time for me to cross dat ol’ Jordan. Time to come…”

Obadiah’s eyes grew big and his pupils contracted as if seeing a bright light. Then his eyelids fell over them as if they were blinds suddenly tugged shut. Obadiah Abernathy gasped his last breath in one world and his first in another.

The body lay abandoned. Clarence and Harley looked at each other in disbelief. It seemed impossible that only an instant before this empty shell had still contained a man.

“O Daddy,” Harley sobbed.

Clarence fell to his knees, laying his head on the bedspread. “We gonna miss you, old man,” Clarence said, choking out the words. “We gonna miss you terrible.”

Several minutes later, Harley and Clarence helped each other up and walked out into the hall.

“Antsy?” Clarence hadn’t heard Harley call him that for twenty years. “For just a moment, I thought maybe Daddy was really…I don’t know. Did you think…?”

“Yeah, I did,” Clarence said. “Up until he thought he saw Uncle Elijah. I just talked to him last night. ’Lijah’s still in Mississippi.”

“And if anything’s for sure,” Harley said, “it’s that Mississippi and heaven aren’t the same place.”

That evening, at Keisha and Celeste’s insistence, the family sat down to read. Clarence, Geneva, Jonah, and Ty all gathered close to the girls in the living room, sitting on the floor, propped up against the couch and beanbag chairs.

“Before Granddaddy read to us, he always sang a song,” Keisha said.

“What did he sing?” Clarence asked, figuring he knew the answer.

“‘Amazin’ Grace.’ And a bunch of others. He said some of them were slave songs.”

Clarence’s low voice rumbled up slowly, as if climbing stairs. “Amazing grace—how sweet the sound—that saved a wretch like me! I once was lost but now am found, was blind but now I see.” He continued verse by verse, climaxing with, “When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun, we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise, than when we’d first begun.”

“You’re a good singer, Daddy,” Keisha said.

Clarence cleared his throat, searching for a slave song. “Someday when I his face shall see, someday from tears I shall be free. Somebody’s callin’ my name. Git on board, little children, git on board. De gospel train’s acomin’, git on board.”

Geneva closed her eyes as Clarence sang. She absorbed the sound of her husband’s soothing voice, which resonated into her soul. It had been so long since she’d heard him sing like this.

“Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home, swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home.” The more he sang, the more Clarence felt like they weren’t alone in the room. The music linked them to other voices far away and yet very near. For a moment he sensed a voice that had been very thin when he’d last heard it this morning, but was now full and robust. It struck him as eerie, like hearing the whispers of eternity. He didn’t understand that the songs shared by earth and heaven sometimes create a momentary bridge connecting the two worlds.

The phone rang. They’d had calls coming and going from relatives all day, so Geneva reluctantly got up to answer it.

In a few minutes she returned. “It was your cousin Jabo in Jackson,” Geneva said to Clarence. “I left him the message about Daddy earlier. He called about your Uncle Elijah.”

“I suppose he’s taking it pretty hard,” Clarence said. “They were so close.”

“It’s not that,” Geneva said. “Uncle Elijah passed away.”

“When?” Clarence asked.

“Ten o’clock this morning, Mississippi time. Jabo said he was sorry he didn’t call earlier.”

“He died three hours before Daddy,” Clarence said. He put his big hands on his face and tears overtook him again. Geneva and the children put their arms around him and each other, there on the living-room floor.

After a few minutes of reminiscing about his father and uncle, Clarence led his family in prayer. Then he picked up the last Narnia book, opening to the bookmark at the beginning of the final chapter.

“Uncle Antsy,” Celeste said, “what does it mean when it keeps saying Aslan is not a tame lion?”

“Well…” Clarence hesitated. “Maybe that he’s good, he’s faithful, but he’s not predictable. He doesn’t always do things the way we want him to. He’s not a genie you can call out of a bottle to do your bidding.” He saw the children weren’t quite following him. “You know how a lion tamer is a man who makes the lion do what he wants? Well, God isn’t a tame lion. We can ask him for what we want, but we can’t make him do it. He’s the King, we’re not. He calls the shots, we don’t. We have plans that make sense to us. He has better plans that make sense to him. No matter what happens, we need to learn to trust in his wisdom, not our own.”

After reading twenty minutes to an unusually attentive audience, Clarence turned to the final page of
The Last Battle.

“Only one more page?” Keisha said. “I don’t want it to end.”

“I hope C. S. Lewis writes more books,” Celeste said. “Then we can read those too.”

“C. S. Lewis is dead,” Geneva said. “Sorry.”

Celeste and Keisha looked very disappointed.

“Okay, girls, here’s the end of the book.” Clarence read the final section heading, “Farewell to the Shadow-Lands.”

“There
was
a real railway accident,” said Aslan softly. “Your father and mother and all of you are—as you used to call it in the Shadow-Lands—dead. The term is over: the holidays have begun. The dream is ended: this is the morning.”

And as he spoke he no longer looked to them like a lion; but the things that began to happen after that were so great and beautiful that I cannot write them. And for us this is the end of all the stories, and we can most truly say that they all lived happily ever after. But for them it was only the beginning of the real story. All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page; now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story, which no one on earth has read; which goes on forever; in which every chapter is better than the one before.

About the Author

Randy Alcorn is the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM). Prior to this he served as a pastor for fourteen years. He has spoken around the world and has taught on the adjunct faculties of Multnomah Bible College and Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon.

Randy is the best-selling author of 27 books (over three million in print), including the novels
Deadline, Dominion, Lord Foulgrin’s Letters
and the 2002 Gold Medallion winner
Safely Home.
His ten nonfiction works include
Money, Possessions and Eternity, Prolife Answers to Prochoice Arguments, In Light of Eternity, The Treasure Principle, The Grace and Truth Paradox, The Purity Principle Why Pro Life?
and
Heaven: Resurrected Living on the New Earth.

Randy has written for many magazines and produces the popular periodical
Eternal Perspectives.
He’s been a guest on over 500 radio and television programs including Focus on the Family, the Bible Answer Man, Family Life Today and Truths that Transform.

The father of two married daughters, Randy lives in Gresham, Oregon, with his wife and best friend, Nanci. He enjoys hanging out with his family, biking, tennis, research and reading.

Feedback on books and inquiries regarding publications and other matters can be directed to Eternal Perspective Ministries (EPM), 2229 East Burnside #23, Gresham, OR 97030, 503-663-6481. For information on EPM or Randy Alcorn, and for resources on missions, persecuted church, prolife issues, and matters of eternal perspective, see
www.epm.org
. Visit Randy Alcorn’s blog:
www.randyalcorn.blogspot.com
.