Tracie Peterson (12 page)

“I still don’t think I understand.”

Rachel smiled and continued walking. “You may not like to hear this, but I think my mother sees a lot of herself in you.”

“That’s impossible. There isn’t a hateful bone in that woman’s
body,” David said, keeping pace beside Rachel.

“Don’t be so sure. She isn’t perfect and she’d be the first one to tell you that. She knows that people like the Akimotos had nothing to do with Kenny’s death, but she knows there are people who had plenty to do with it.”

They were nearly back to the house, yet David felt that there was so much he didn’t understand. “If she were like me, she’d show it. There’d be too much anger and hate to keep it inside.”

“She doesn’t keep it inside,” Rachel said matter-of-factly. “She gives it on a daily, even hourly, basis to God. She told me there was nothing else that could come anywhere near to equaling the productiveness of that single act. It doesn’t mean she doesn’t have her moments, David. It just means she’s found a way to handle her feelings.” They paused at the porch and Rachel reached out to halt David. “There’s something else—something our mother has always said, even well before Pearl Harbor.”

“What’s that?”

“Hatred only causes the pain to be more intense. Love eases pain.” The look on her face magnified the love in her voice. “I hope my love will help ease your pain . . . but if not mine, then I know God’s love will.”

He thought of his arm and how much better he’d felt ever since coming to Longview. Maybe love did ease pain. Maybe just being around love had the power to heal. Then David looked deep into Rachel’s eyes and in his heart he knew she was right. The answer to all his problems was so close at hand, he could nearly touch it. He opened his mouth to say that he didn’t know what to do, but Rachel had already turned to go into the house.
Show me
, David thought.
Show me what to do
.

Early on Christmas Eve day, David felt compelled to visit the cemetery. He slipped out of the house well before breakfast and made his way in the growing light of predawn. He knew it probably made no sense to anyone else, but he wanted to go there and apologize. He wanted to come clean with Kenny, and then maybe, just maybe, he could come clean with everything else.

What he didn’t expect was to find Grandpa Bennett already in attendance. The old man stood in the silent chill of the December morning, hat in hand, murmuring words that David couldn’t quite make out.

The sight of the old man touched David’s heart. He’d had very few men in his life. Perhaps that was why Kenny had meant so much to him. What had started out as nothing more than a relationship of subordination to a superior had grown in a most compelling manner into friendship.

“I thought I heard someone,” Grandpa Bennett said, turning to where David had stopped. Uncertain what to say, David only nodded and stepped forward.

The old man put his hat back on his head and sized David up for a moment. “I know you.”

“Of course you do.” David wondered if the cold weather had somehow affected the older man’s mind.

George Bennett smiled tolerantly. “No, I know you. I know you because at one time I was exactly who you are.”

David felt none of the old fear of being found out. Hadn’t he already confessed his actions to Rachel? Hadn’t Kenny’s letters home proven that the entire family knew David’s secrets? The gentleness of truth that came from Grandpa Bennett left David without worry or fear.

“You might find it hard to believe,” George Bennett continued, “but I was once just as lost and angry. I thought the whole world was my enemy. We weren’t even at war as a country, but I was at war with everyone.”

David knew that feeling well. He had always thought it a means of protecting himself from further hurt.
If I hate them first, they can’t disappoint me when they hate me in return. If I hurt them first, they can’t hurt me
. These thoughts had been his constant companions throughout his youth.

“I didn’t want Marion to court Ruth. I didn’t want them to marry,” the older man said flatly. “Ruth’s family were strangers. Their ways and religious notions troubled me. I didn’t care for foreigners. My family had been in this country since just about as far back as the
Mayflower
. I felt we were the only ones who truly belonged in America, not some Johnny-come-lately who saw the prosperity of the land and decided to make his fortune. My people were here when there was nothing to offer but hard work. I was mighty proud of that lineage.”

David had never heard anyone talk in such a manner. It made him suddenly mindful that his own heritage had certainly not started in America. His people were Jewish. He knew very little about where they’d come from, but their ancestry spoke for itself and many had been the time he’d suffered for that very thing.

“My wife thought me an ungrateful snob when Ruth’s family showed up and offered their friendship. When Marion and Ruth fell in love and it became very clear that they had marriage in mind, I did everything in my power to put an end to it.” David couldn’t help shaking his head and Grandpa Bennett smiled. “Kind of surprises you,eh?”

David smiled back. “I guess so. I would never know from the way Ruth treats you that there was ever any trouble.”

“Before I gave up having things my way, standing on my own merits and those of my lineage, I wasn’t a good man. I deserved Ruth’s anger and bitterness, I deserved her mistrust and suspicions, but you know what I got instead? I got her kindness and love and I also found peace with her Savior.”

“How did that all come about?” David asked, realizing he really wanted to know.

George Bennett squared his shoulders and walked to where Kenny’s marker lay. The poinsettia had withstood the weather quite well.

“One day, not but three weeks before Marion and Ruth were to be married, I went to see Ruth and her father. I had hoped to talk her out of the marriage and to put some sense in her father’s head. When I rode up, Ruth was the only one home. Seemed the little ones were still at school and her mother and father had gone to bring them and a few supplies home from town.

“She greeted me warmly and offered to see to my horse, and when I refused and told her I just wanted to talk to her and her father, she merely nodded. I gave her my fiercest look and harshest voice,” he remembered with a laugh, “and that little gal just stood her ground.”

David could well imagine. He smiled at the image in his head. “What happened next?” he asked eagerly.

George looked up and shook his head. “She told me her father would be back in about half an hour but that she’d be happy to hear me out. First, however, she wanted to ask me a favor. Imagine that. Here I’d come to destroy this young woman’s dreams and she wanted to ask me a favor. I eyed her kind of suspicious-like and asked her what she wanted, and she told me. She wanted only to be able to speak her mind first.”

“And did you let her?” David questioned.

The old man shrugged. “I didn’t see any harm in it. Especially since what I wanted to say to her, I really wanted to say to both her and her father. So I granted her permission to speak. Best and worst thing I could have done,” he said, and the amusement in his voice was clear.

“So what did she say?”

George looked back at Kenny’s marker. “She said, ‘Mr. Bennett, I love your son. He means more to me than anyone in the world. I think if I had to, I’d even be willing to die for him.’ I kind of laughed that off, thinking her a silly female with all her silly notions, but she didn’t leave it there. She told me that her love for Marion paled in comparison to God’s love for me. She shared the plan of salvation with me without even hesitating. She told me I was a sinner—that we were all sinners. That without repenting and accepting Jesus as my Savior, I was
hopelessly lost and would spend eternity paying for my mistake.”

David shivered and came closer to where Grandpa Bennett stood. “And what did you say?” He felt the pull at his own spirit. Kenny had tried on more than one occasion to share the plan of salvation with David. Kenny had hoped after leaving the navy to become a preacher, but while he was in the navy he saw no reason to let opportunities pass him by.

“I wanted to say a lot of things, but you know, I couldn’t. I opened my mouth to condemn that little gal, but nothing came out. And in my silence, she continued. She told me God knew how I felt and that He knew everything I’d ever done. She told me He knew those things for everybody and because of it, He’d sent Jesus to die on a cross—a sacrifice for those sins.

“I didn’t want to hear such nonsense, but I couldn’t leave. I’d given my word that she could have her say, but more than that, I felt as though my boots were nailed to the front porch steps where I stood. There we were, me six foot two and two hundred pounds and her a good foot shorter and half my weight. But in all my days I’ve never seen a stronger, more dynamic person as that little gal. She was the kind of person you’d want in your corner. The kind of woman you just knew would stand by her man and her family no matter what storms they had to weather. She wasn’t afraid—not of me, anyway, and I had my doubts that she was afraid of anything. Until this.”

He looked down at the headstone and shook his head. “Kenny’s death made her question a lot of things. Things like how God would keep you from bad if you trusted in Him. Or that if you prayed hard enough, you’d get whatever you asked for. She had to accept that bad and good happened even when you prayed. And on the other side of that fact, she had to decide for herself that God was still a loving and merciful Father.”

“It’s hard to believe that,” David admitted.

“Sure is,” George replied. “David, on that day so long ago, I knelt beside Ruth and gave my heart to Jesus. Suddenly all my pitiful efforts to be an upstanding man, a good father, a loving husband—it all just passed away in the void of my life without God. You have that void too. I can see it in your eyes. And I think that in your heart, in the depths of your soul, you know what it is you’re seeking. I guess I just want to ask, are you ready to come home?”

David couldn’t stop the tears that came to his eyes. His entire body began to shake. He could only nod. All the pretenses were gone, stripped away by this old man’s humble confession.

George Bennett knelt down on the ground beside Kenny’s marker. He reached up a hand to David. The time had come to stop fighting and lying. It was time to lay his painful life upon the altar and let Jesus heal his hurt. It was time to come home.

Ruth put breakfast on the table, then went upstairs to finish packing the last of Kenny’s belongings. Carrying the final box of items to the storage room, Ruth could not deny the sorrow she felt. She went back to the room, now nearly void of her son’s presence, and felt an overwhelming wave of emotion wash over her.

Blinking back tears, she sat on his bed and ran her hand over the quilt top. She’d made this quilt for him when he was ten years old. It had all his favorite colors—greens and blues and purples. She remembered his surprise at the gift and his pleasure at her efforts. He had hugged her hard, nearly squeezing the air from her.

She remembered other things as well. The feel of his hand in hers, so soft and warm. So alive. She remembered his voice, often yelling at her from some part of the house. She had chided him for all his hollering. How she wished she could hear him just once more. She wouldn’t mind him banging the screen door or forgetting to put the milk back in the icebox. She wouldn’t scold him when he teased his sisters or complain when he forgot to put his dirty clothes in the wash basket.

Tears streamed down her face. The image of Kenny in a cold, watery grave made her hurt in such a powerful way. She knew his soul was in heaven, but her mother’s heart wanted to tend to his body as well. She had been the one to wash him and dress him for bed when he was young. She had been the one to dress his scrapes and cuts. She had held his hand as the doctor set his broken arm, but now she couldn’t even bury him properly.

“Why, God?” she questioned. “Why Kenny? He loved you so. He had so much to live for.”

For the first time since Kenny’s death, Ruth was aware of her anger. It startled her at first, and then it broke her heart. How could
she be angry at God? He had been her mainstay. He had been her only hope. People like David got angry at God, not her.