Whispers (18 page)

“So? Tell me.” His “baptismal” skills as a pastor were a little rough, but Teri thought he seemed like a tender, honest counselor. She wanted to hear his opinion.

Stretching out one arm, Gordon wrapped it around Teri’s shoulder and gave her a friendly squeeze. “This is with one arm,” he said. Then he encircled her with both his arms, drawing her close in an embrace so tight and so strong that it took her breath away. “This,” he murmured in her ear, “is with two arms.” Then, as instantly as he had hugged her, he let go and stepped back.

Teri caught her breath.

“The real question, Teri, is this: Does Scott embrace your heart with one arm or two? Answer that, and you’ll know.”

She felt her cheeks flush and didn’t look at Gordon. Instead of giving her helpful counsel, he had confused her.

“Thanks,” she mumbled. “I’ll give it some thought.”

A smile crept up Gordon’s face. “He’s the wild one, you know.”

“You mean Scott?”

“No.” Gordon laughed. “God. His ways aren’t our ways. His thoughts aren’t our thoughts. He just might surprise you, surprise both of us.”

Teri certainly agreed. She confessed to Gordon that not many events in her life had gone the way she had thought they would. But she had seen God’s presence in each situation, if not during the decision-making process, then certainly afterward. She could look back and find his fingerprints all over the circumstances.

Gordon smiled and said, “That’s the way then, isn’t it, Teri? To look for God’s fingerprints. I like that. We must do that. Watch for his fingerprints.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Teri said, turning an opened palm to the sky as she realized it was starting to rain again. “We should probably get back.”

They sloshed together though the mud to the cabin and found the card game still going. No one seemed to have noticed that they came in together.

No one, not even Scott, saw her place the orchid between several facial tissues and gently step on it with her heavy boot. She slipped the flattened, tissue-wrapped flower into the only safe travel place she could think of, the bottom of the small pack of Kleenex, against the thin piece of cardboard.

Teri thought about Gordon’s strange word picture and wondered if she had offered Scott a two-armed embrace. She was always holding back. She called it being careful, Scott called it rigid. Teri determined to extend to Scott a two-armed approach.

That evening, after dinner, they all sat around the table talking. She leaned against Scott and lifted his arm so that it encircled her. Scott willingly drew her close and, in front of the others, whispered into her hair. The attention was exhilarating.

The rest of the group treated them differently on the third day as they set out on their long hike back. Everyone assumed the two of them wanted to be alone, since they were making it clear they were a couple. The men were ready early that morning, before Teri had finished loading her pack, and so the others took off. Scott was ready, too. But he stayed behind, waiting for Teri. She quickly twisted a bandanna and turned it into a headband to hold back her wild and now dirty hair.

“Aren’t you about ready?” Scott asked as she tied the laces on her boots. “Come on.”

“I’m ready, I’m ready,” Teri said cheerfully, strapping on her pack.

“It’s a killer hike today, babe. Come on. They’re not going to want to wait around for us at the cars.”

“Let’s go,” Teri said, briskly sliding past him and opening the cabin door. It was raining again. According to Gordon’s information, the average rainfall at this cabin was 250 inches or more a year. “Wait! I forgot to put on my rain poncho.”

Now Scott was looking impatient. He kept that expression for the next three, long, soggy hours. By the time they were back into the sun-baked bowl of the crater, neither of them was in a good mood.

Scott looked as if he were even more perturbed when they spotted Gordon standing at one of the “points of interest.”

“Oh, great,” Scott sputtered. “Nature Boy is waiting.”

“Scott,” Teri said quietly, “he’s only trying to be helpful.”

“He bugs me. The guy doesn’t know when to let up! Did you hear him singing this morning?”

Teri had thought waking up to Gordon’s singing as he had
made breakfast for everyone was nice. He wasn’t singing loud. It was sort of like his laughter; the music tumbled out of him. She had heard him humming and whistling several times on the trip. “Be nice, okay, Scott?”

“And what do we have here, oh great Kahuna of the Crater?” Scott called out to Gordon. Teri could tell the teasing was not good-natured.

“The bottomless pit,” Gordon said. He was standing beside a railing that circled a hole about ten feet wide on the black volcano floor. “Sixty-five feet to the bottom.”

“Are you sure?” Scott said. “Can’t we try throwing something in to test it?”

Teri was afraid that Scott’s idea of “something” was Gordon himself. Scott kept walking past the scenic spot as if he had no intention of slowing down.

“Traditionally, it’s dried umbilical cords that go in.”

“Wait a second,” Teri said. “I have to hear this one.”

“Go ahead,” Scott said. “I have to keep going. If I break my stride now, I know I’ll cramp up. I’m sure you two can catch up with me in a few minutes.”

Teri watched him go and then turned her surprised face back to Gordon. She had forgotten what Gordon had said and why she had stopped. It was one thing for Scott not to hike with her on the first day of their trip. But now they were together. They were a couple. How could he leave her like this?

Gordon met Teri’s gaze, his steel blue eyes didn’t move from hers. Somehow she felt calmed.

“I’m sorry, Gordon. What were you saying?”

Instead of continuing his tour guide speech, he gave Teri a sympathetic look. “You all right?” he asked.

“Me? Sure. Yeah. I’m fine.” She pushed a smile onto her lips. “What was it you said about this hole? Sixty-five feet or something?”

“Right. In ancient times, the Hawaiian men would come all this way to toss in the umbilical cords of their newborns. Only their sons, I think. How many children do you want?”

“Children? How many do I want?”

“How many children do you want?” Gordon repeated.

Teri shook herself from her dazed state and answered, “Four. Maybe five.”

Gordon smiled and turned to head back up the main trail. He lost his balance for a second, and Teri lurched forward to grab his arm. They both steadied the other, only a foot away from the bottomless pit.

“That wasn’t funny,” Teri snapped. “We could have landed on a pile of petrified umbilical cords.”

Gordon broke into laughter.

“Come on,” Teri said. “Let’s catch up with the others.”

They marched up the trail silently for quite some time, breathing hard from the ascent. Suddenly Gordon said, “I think four is good. I’d like even numbers. Six would be better than five.”

Teri had no idea what he was talking about and was too winded to ask.

T
eri sat alone in the sand and watched the early morning waves rush toward the shore. The beach was deserted except for a few early-rising beachcombers. Three days had passed since she had returned from the hike through the crater, and she was still sore. Everywhere.

This morning she had borrowed the car, promising to be back by 8:30. She needed to get out of the house and away from everything and everyone to try to think things through.

Tracing her finger in the cool sand, Teri mentally listed her issues as if she were listing Spanish verbs on the board for her class to conjugate. Because most verbs were easy since they followed the rules, her students viewed the exercise as boring. That is, until she sprinkled in the irregular verbs, the ones that didn’t follow any rules or fit any logical patterns. The correct answer for those verbs could only be learned by memorization.

This morning Teri would give anything to know the correct answers to the “irregular verbs” in her life. She didn’t know
the right responses. She had no experience that would enable her to memorize them. And her most pressing questions didn’t seem to follow any pattern.

First irregular question: Was she doing the right thing by moving to Maui? Last night, with Dan’s help, Scott had formulated a plan for Teri. She would fly back to Oregon on her scheduled flight Thursday. In the next ten days she would cancel her teaching contract for the fall, give notice to her landlord, sort through all her belongings, pack only what she absolutely needed, and return to Maui. They were still working through the details of the business license. Oh, and she would secure the needed start-up money as a loan from her wealthy friend, Jessica.

“Is that what you want me to do, God?”

She waited for a thunderous clap of lightening to affirm her decision. All she heard were the steady waves. They ran to her, unrolling their foaming scrolls at her feet. But no words were written on the waters that could answer her question. Or at least none that she could read.

Teri ventured to ask the next question. “Father, do you want me to make this commitment to Scott?” She listened carefully to the morning winds, gusting their way to the farthest oceans. But to their powerful language, she was a foreigner.

With a sigh of exhaustion, Teri flung one final petition into the morning air. “Lord, what do you want me to do?”

Nothing. No answer. No sign.

All she could think of was Gordon. She smiled, remembering when Gordon had said, “He’s the wild one, you know.”

“The wild one,” she whispered back to the wind and waves. “But then, you knew that, didn’t you?” She was thinking of the familiar account of when Jesus commanded the waves and the wind to be still. Only the one who was wilder than the wind and the waves could do that.

Teri stood and dusted off the seat of her jeans. She stretched her stiff legs and headed back to the car.
What a wonderful, spiritual morning, she thought
.

She felt spiritually exhilarated ever since the strenuous hike out of the crater. Scott had kept pace with the other guys at the lead, and Gordon had stayed behind with Teri. She had a hard time admitting to herself, let alone anyone else, that Gordon’s company had been the highlight of the trip. He had given her a lot to think about.

She also had thought about Dan’s comment that she and Annie had grown up in the fishbowl of ministry life and had become conditioned to live in a way acceptable to the people who were always watching them. It fit with the way Scott told her to stop apologizing and saying she was sorry all the time.

She found all this a lot to digest in a few days, especially on top of the pressing questions about her future. She had hoped to process some of her thoughts this morning, but now, here she was, leaving the beach with more questions rather than less. All she could think of was how much she wanted to talk to Gordon, to hear his pastoral counsel even if it did come across in crazy riddles. At least he helped her to think.

Back at the house, Teri scanned the church phone directory on the counter until she found Gordon’s number. She dialed it, not exactly sure what she was going to say. After eleven rings, she gave up.

Now Teri didn’t know what to do. Maybe she could talk things through with Scott. She tried his number, but his answering machine responded to her call.

“Scott, it’s me. Call me as soon as you can. I really need to talk. I know you said last night that you would be over this evening around five, but if we could get together before then, it would be great. Bye.”

All she could do was wait. The day inched along at a snail’s
pace. Close to five Scott called to say he was hung up and wouldn’t be able to come by. He didn’t give a clear reason.

“Did you get tomorrow morning off work so you can go to church with me?” Teri asked. She hated the twinge of a whine she heard in her voice.

“Ah, yes and no. I got off work, but I agreed to take some people sailing. It’s the only time they can go. I knew you would understand.”

Teri did understand. Perhaps she was too understanding. She also understood when Scott called Sunday afternoon to say he was too tired to come over and promised to see her Monday evening. She said she understood when he showed up late Monday, and she, Dan, and Annie were almost finished eating. Scott acted as if everything were just fine as he ate his warmed up dinner and talked over business finances with Dan.

When Teri finally had a moment alone with Scott, she was steamed.

“You realize, don’t you, that I’m leaving in three days.”

“Only for a week and a half. Then you’ll be back for good.”

“Maybe,” Teri said.

“What do you mean ‘maybe’? That’s what you promised me. You agreed to move here, remember?”

“It’s a huge decision, Scott. The last few days I’ve been really struggling with it, and I haven’t seen you or been able to talk with you. To be honest, I’m not convinced it’s the right decision for me.”

Scott tilted his head and fixed his gray eyes on her. Storm clouds seemed to appear in them. “What are you saying, Teri?”

“I don’t know.”

“Can I make it any more clear to you? I want you here. With me.”