Tracie Peterson
Authors: Tidings of Peace
Tidings of Peace
Copyright © 2000
Tracie Peterson
Cover by William Graf
Cover design by Jennifer Parker
Ebook edition created 2012
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—without the prior written permission of the publisher and copyright owners.
ISBN 978-1-4412-7075-7
Published by Bethany House Publishers
A Ministry of Bethany Fellowship International
11400 Hampshire Avenue South
Bloomington, Minnesota 55438
www.bethanyhouse.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Library of Congress, Washington, DC.
DEDICATION
To the memory of my Great Uncle John who gave his life in war that others might be free, and to all those who have served their country in times of war and peace—who gave of themselves with honor and dignity that America might continue to know liberty and prosperity.
To you I say a grateful and humble thank-you.
CONTENTS
San Francisco, December 1942
David knew better than to open the blackout curtains. He likened it to a game of cat and mouse, a nightly ritual he played with the local air-raid patrol, but tonight was different. The charm of the game faded, and now David wanted nothing more than a last glimpse of the shrouded, silent city. The stage—his life—awaited his performance, the final act.
He and Kenny had often talked about coming to San Francisco. He supposed that was why he was here now instead of back in Chicago where he’d been born, raised, and left to fend for himself. Kenny had said San Francisco looked like a jumping kind of place. The kind of place that could have used a good preacher like Kenny, David thought regretfully.
He almost smiled. Kenny would have enjoyed the view from the two-dollar-a-night, run-down hotel. Beyond the serenity of the third floor, David thought of San Francisco as a vast Mecca of obscurity. Like Chicago, it was a town big enough to lose yourself in. But unlike Chicago, San Francisco draped itself in a charm and grace that reminded David of those higher-class women he’d waited on in Weinberg’s Shoe Store before the war.
The slightest movement on the street below caught David’s attention. It was odd how after two weeks in the hotel, David had come to know the movements and routines of most everyone in the area. The action below was none other than Mrs. Mac-something walking her prized Scottish terrier. She always waited until nine o’clock to walk the dog. David glanced at his watch but couldn’t make out much in the moonlight. He didn’t have to see the hands to know that it was nine on the dot. The air-raid Gestapo, as David referred to them, would soon be passing through to make certain no bit of light could be seen from the sad little coastal hotel. Mrs. Mac-something never
seemed to mind their chiding that she should be indoors hiding from the enemy rather than walking her dog.
Letting the curtains fall back into place, David switched on the table lamp and instantly locked his gaze on the revolver sitting rather casually atop the dirty bedside table. There, amidst a stale cup of coffee, a flashlight, and two sticks of chewing gum, the revolver seemed to beckon him with a haunting lure.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, David tried to pretend he no longer cared about the idea of using a gun. He hadn’t used a gun in the war. He hadn’t had to. Forced to join the military or go to prison for a long list of violations, David had chosen what he figured to be the easiest way out. He’d joined the navy.
The job had been pretty easy too. He’d eventually been assigned a job as machinist mate, and his supervisor, a chief petty officer with a heart of gold, was Kenneth Bennett. Kenny was the only person in the world to have ever given David the time of day. Kenny had cared about David in a way that no other human being ever had. Even David’s mother and aunt, the only relatives he’d ever known, had been sadly remiss in this area. His mother, a down-on-her-luck woman of Jewish descent, had found herself a victim of both the depression and a wayward husband. And because of both, she had been forced into a life that no one wanted to talk about. The last time David had seen her she was drunk, and his aunt, a stocky, stern-faced matron named Miriam, had screamed insults and damnation upon her until his mother had cowered into a corner of their filthy hovel. While David’s mother cried bitterly, Miriam had loaded up his clothes and, grabbing him possessively, yanked his undersized, nine-year-old frame toward the door.
“You’ll never see him again,” Miriam had stated firmly to Deborah Cohen. “You don’t deserve the boy.”
David remembered crying for his mother, but Miriam had slapped his arms as he reached out to break free and return to the crumpled form of the sobbing woman. Miriam had rattled off heated words in a mixture of Yiddish and heavily accented English, all the while forcing him out the door and down the rickety steps of the only home he had ever known. And Miriam had been right. His mother had never seen him again because that night she had died, succumbing to her alcoholism and broken heart.
Miriam hadn’t lasted long after that herself. Fixed in her staunch religious beliefs, Miriam had forced David to attend synagogue and
yeshiva
, where he was completely humiliated to realize he had no knowledge of his family’s heritage. Ostracized by most and bullied by others, David had learned quickly that the Talmud was of little help to him, but his fists seemed quite capable of getting his point across. When Miriam died three years after that hideous scene with his mother, David realized he was on his own.
Just as he was now.
He crossed the room and sank onto the lumpy mattress. Cradling his useless left arm, he grimaced as pain shot through him. He took a deep but ragged breath. The pain made him feel like crying, but he saw it as a pointless exercise. It wouldn’t end the pain. Only the gun could do that.
He would have preferred sleeping pills or even pain pills, but the doctor at the hospital had worried about David’s mental state, and while he couldn’t keep him on any longer for rehabilitation, he could limit the medication he doled out to David. David could come in every three days to receive another allotment of medication, but that was it.
David had thought of simply saving up his pain pills. He could take them all at once in a grandiose exit. It would be simple and painless. He could almost pretend to himself, and thus maybe fool his Maker as well, that he wasn’t really committing suicide at all, but simply had taken an accidental overdose of medication.
But saving the pills had been impossible. Every time David went more than six hours without them, the pain was too intense. Maybe it was all in his head, maybe not. It seemed strange that almost a year to the date he had received his injuries, the pain was as bad as ever.
He picked up the revolver with his right hand and settled it onto his lap while he opened the cylinder. The loaded cylinder seemed to reassure him that there could be no other choice. He closed it again without ceremony.