Faith Wish (24 page)

The nausea she felt wasn't the same as the nausea of morning sickness; this was nerves. But the trembling of her limbs was something different altogether. It was more than panic, it was panic intensified by three days without food.
If my will is strong enough, though. If my will to serve and obey is just strong enough
.…

It was a long, draining climb up the steep and rocky path that led to the plateau of mountaintop, to the sacred height of Rachel's El Shaddai. It was dark most of the way. She was feeling her way, not seeing, but she had traveled this path before. She had to stop and rest frequently. Fortunately, there were those familiar boulders she could sit on until she was ready for more climbing.

She began her slow climb again, a few feet at a time between stops. In the clearings, the full moon helped to light the way. It had to be a sign that the Lord wanted her here. He wanted her here and now, in this place.

By the time she reached the top, she was utterly exhausted and light-headed. The rocky shelf of plateau was well-lighted by the moon. With no hesitation she made her way directly to the edge, sat down firmly, and let her feet dangle. The strong light from the moon enabled her to see clear to the bottom, even though the precipice upon which she perched herself was so very high above the shoreline. The reservoir was low from lack of rain, so the shoreline itself was a shelf of rocks and sand. Her feet were swinging freely back and forth.

She sat without trepidation for several minutes, long enough to regain a sense of equilibrium. She made her heart wide open before she said, “Dear Jesus, Dear Lord Jesus,” out loud. She sought the words that would make the perfect prayer, so as to encourage the Lord to deliver her an unequivocal sign. Her wide-open heart was ready to submit. Even death couldn't be scary, because to know the answer would overcome any fear. But she couldn't find the right words, in spite of her best intentions.

But how much would the words actually matter if the Lord knew the purity of her heart?
Was it death? Was it incubus
? The affairs of the Spirit were so elusive, but God would lead.

She sat alone with the Lord, in the dark, at the top of El Shaddai.

The Lord had led her here. It wasn't likely that she would fall; instead, the Lord would lift her up. She expected her own private Rapture; her own personal miracle. She believed in it with all her heart and soul.

In her escalating drowsiness, she didn't notice that she was leaning forward precariously. Her mind wandered to Rachel's supreme reluctance to share the meaning of her dream.
I wish I had the gift of interpretation, but the Lord hasn't blessed me with it
. She remembered Brother Jackson's advice to
put all faith in Him and He will light your way
. Well, there was light here for sure.

She gazed at the beauty of the moon path where it streaked the surface of the lake. It was hypnotic. The water was so still, the path of moonlight was as unwavering as a royal carpet. The water carpet itself might be the sign, or at the very least the setting for the sign. The Word said that the Lord had walked on water.

It would happen there, she felt certain. Could it be that the gleam on the water was the runway where the Lord would make himself visible to her? And would He appear all in white, cloaked in a resplendent pure gown of a special heavenly substance? And reach out His eternal arms so that she might step off the cliff to join Him in the air? And if so, there would be no body ever found, no corpse, only her glorified absence without a residue or a trace. Was this the way the Lord would bring closure and glory?

But an hour of openness, of submission, and receptivity, and she didn't hear an answer. Didn't see one, either. It might have been longer than an hour, perhaps even two; her sense of time was as out of joint as her other senses. She watched and waited a little longer, but then fell asleep, on her side.

When she awoke, just before dawn, she sat up slowly and rubbed her eyes. She felt keen discouragement combined with acute fatigue and drowsiness. The Lord's answer had not come to her in spite of her climb to this sacred place.

In His time, not our time
, wasn't that what Sister Abigail always said? Wasn't that what Brother Jackson preached as well?
In His time
was what true submission was all about. She couldn't let her disappointment weaken her faith.

She thought of her sister Eleanor's impatient ultimatum, but held no animosity. Eleanor cheated to win the Oneppo Medal. Had Anne-Marie thought to bring her diary notebook, she might have written this information on a page all its own. She thought of Nurse Howard, back at that clinic, who had shown her a pamphlet about parenting.

She thought of her parents and the contemptible contract that had taken away her freedom and dignity. If she ever had any dignity to begin with. But haggard and spent as she was, lacking sleep and food, even the thought of her parents coming to take her home was all of a sudden not threatening anymore. Ruth Anne was empty.

Still discouraged but weary and maybe even wiser, she stood up to leave. It had seemed so certain that the time for her sign was now. It was still dark, so at least she could return to the dorm without waking people. She would tell Rachel about this, but no one else.

This morning I'll have fruit
. But she stood up much too quickly. Her head swam and her limbs tremored so that she nearly blacked out. There was nothing to reach out for or lean against.

She lost her balance.

In the instant before she fell, she thought of her parents, her sister, and finally of Brother Jackson. She didn't think thoughts, she simply watched the faces racing through her mind's eye.

Then she was free-falling. The panic tore at her insides as she searched for perfect prayer words one more time. It took less than two full seconds before the rocky shore came up to savage her. She died without regaining consciousness.

A later coroner's inquest would reveal that had she fallen during a wet season, when the water level would have been higher, she might have survived.

Epilogue

“‘He who believeth in me,'” began the minister, reading from a series of Biblical passages, “‘though he were dead, yet shall he live.'” The minister was a Presbyterian clergyman, the pastor of the church in which Anne-Marie Morgan had been raised. He was a thin, pale man who wore a clerical collar. But his voice was rich and resonant.

“‘Let not your hearts be troubled,'” he continued, “‘but believe in God and believe also in me. In my Father's house are many rooms; if it were not so, would I have told you that I go to prepare a place for you? And when I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and will take you to myself, that where I am you may be also.'”

The graveside service was a simple, brief one, limited to family and closest friends seated on folding chairs beneath a canopy. The canopy wasn't really necessary because the weather was fine, but it provided a sense of additional privacy. Security personnel had cordoned off a section of the cemetery. There were curious onlookers and even a Minicam or two, because of the controversial nature of the circumstances of Anne-Marie's death as reported in some of the articles in the local papers.

The minister closed his Bible before clasping it firmly with both hands against his stomach. “Anne-Marie Morgan,” he began, “fell to her death in a camp in southern Illinois. We gather here to celebrate her life, to grieve for our collective loss, and to take comfort from the fact that she dwells now with the Heavenly Father.”

Then he began quoting Scripture without reopening the book. “‘If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal. And if I have prophetic powers, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have all faith, so as to remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing.'”

At this point, Eleanor, who was seated on one of the folding chairs between her mother and her Aunt Grace from Cleveland, took steadfastly from her purse Anne-Marie's handcrafted headband with
EL SHADDAI
in the vivid white letters. Slowly but carefully, she tied it around her head so that it was secured straight and firm above her long ponytail. Cheerleader hair.

Her appearance couldn't have been any more incongruous. She wore a simple, black sleeveless dress which was quietly elegant. She wore a string of pearls. And now, a ribbon headband.

The minister seemed nonplussed. Whether he was distracted by Eleanor's simple, dramatic gesture, or whether he wished to reinforce the poignancy of the Scripture, it was hard to tell. Nevertheless, he paraphrased the passage from First Corinthians. “If I have the powers of prophecy and tongues, and understand all mysteries, but have not love,” he said, “I am nothing. I am a noisy gong or a clanging cymbal.”

When he was finished with his remarks, which took no longer than ten or fifteen minutes, he quietly shook the hand of each family member and whispered his condolences. Eleanor, her father, and her mother each tossed a white lily on top of the silver casket.

Her parents then headed for their car, her father's arm around her mother's heaving shoulders. Eleanor left them briefly to make her way across the lumpy terrain in the direction of a blue Topaz parked beneath a large oak tree.

The car belonged to Sister Abigail, who was standing against the front door, her arms folded across her chest. It wasn't easy for Eleanor to traverse the cemetery lawn, not in her high heels. She took them off. When she neared the car, Sister Abigail said, “May the Lord bless you with His peace.”

“Thank you,” said Eleanor curtly.

“I felt compelled to come,” said Abigail, “even if just to watch from a distance.”

“You know,” said Eleanor, “I don't think I've ever slapped anybody's face before.” She didn't raise her voice, but she must have had a tone, because Abigail flinched.

“I see you're wearing her headband,” said Abigail quickly. “I can't think of a better way to honor Ruth Anne's memory.”

“There never was a Ruth Anne. That was just some sort of mystery fiction to satisfy your religious agenda.”

“I would never quarrel with you at a time like this. The Lord would surely disapprove.”

“
Disapprove
would be the word,” Eleanor confirmed. “I'm not wearing my sister's headband to honor her memory. I'm wearing it to remind me of my own shortcomings and the humility I need to learn.”

“The Lord blesses us for humility.”

“Then He must bless us for learning something from it. I didn't have the resourcefulness to give Anne-Marie the help she needed, and I certainly didn't have the courage. I could have forced her to go back home, where she could have received the full spectrum of counseling and options. I didn't do that. I didn't have the spine. Neither did you.”

“We put all our trust in the Lord,” answered Abigail quietly, “receiving direction from Him in His time, not our own.”

“That will be your excuse then. I won't have one. And the headband will remind me of it. I'm not nearly as good as I think I am. I have to get back to my parents now. Good-bye.”

“Just a minute, please,” said Abigail. She reached in her purse and produced an object which she offered to Eleanor. It was the Oneppo Medal.

Eleanor held it in the hollow of her hand while Sister Abigail explained, “It wasn't with her other things. We found it in one of the shelters near the creek. I wanted to return it to you.”

Eleanor stared at the medal until her tears started to flow. “Thank you,” she finally said as she turned to go.

She made a U-turn, though, before she headed for the car to join her parents. She carried her pumps in her left hand. She approached the grave where the lilies still lay on the casket. Some workers were beginning to dismantle the canopy. Eleanor came to within ten feet of the open grave.

She was no athlete, but she gave the Oneppo an underhand, arcing lob. It sparkled in the light like the gem that it was, or might have been. Her aim was accurate. The medal landed cleanly in the open grave without even striking the casket.

About the Author

James W. Bennett's uncompromising, challenging books for teens have earned him recognition as one of the nation's leading—and most provocative—novelists for young adults. His fiction has been used in curricula at the middle school, high school, and community college levels.

His 1995 novel,
The Squared Circle
, was named the year's finest by
English Journal
and the
Voice of Youth Advocates
.

Bennett has served as a guest author at Miami Book Fair International, as a featured speaker at the Assembly on Literature for Adolescents of the NCTE, and as a writer in residence (a program he established) for secondary schools in Illinois. He has also been the director for the Blooming Grove Writers Conference.

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2003 by James W. Bennett

Cover design by Mimi Bark

ISBN: 978-1-4976-8398-3

This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com