I hope Santa filled your stockings and gave you everything you wanted this holiday season! It is my hope that your New Year is bright and full of promise, as You, Devoted Reader, deserve nothing short this side of perfection. With that being said, I am very pleased to announce that “Ledge: The Father Matthew Chronicles” will be completely finished and off to final edits by the end of this week, right on schedule! I want to thank each of you for your support and Devotion in the year of 2009, and I thank you, and am truly blessed to have you ringing in your New Year with me as we welcome 2010. You’re the best! I couldn’t do this without you!
Be on the lookout for some New Posts coming in the next upcoming weeks. Including my top 10 reads of the year, and My 2009 Year-end Review! Not to mention the December Wrap-Up! and other events that are coming specifically here to my website! Of course, Devoted Reader, I’ll naturally keep you involved with the publication process of “Ledge” right here on my website! You’re as much a part of my writing as I am. Each set of eyes that read these words are the muse of my inspiration, and thankfully, I know that I am in the best hands…Your hands!
With that being said, here is the final preview chapter for “Ledge:The Father Matthew Chronicles” Happy Reading, Devoted Reader, and my most sincerest blessings for a safe and happy New Year!
Best Of Everything,
John Braxton Sparks
Chapter 26
Hollow Glens, 1999
Time winds through the fabric of life as easily as thread in the eye of a needle. It fits us for a lifetime, and tailors itself by the moments.
Some may think my Father cruel and unjust. These judgments are planted in falsehood and buried deep on blasphemous ground. Make no mistake; my Father has a hand in all things. While not a King of tragedy, he will allow tragedy in his court like the follies of a jester.
You can’t have a rainbow if you won’t walk in the rain.
Edward and Isabella didn’t show Matthew how to walk in the rain. They taught him to dance in it. Their love and support allowed Matthew to flourish into the person he was intended to be. Their faith and their support gave Matthew a great home and a solid childhood. They taught him to love over adversity. They taught him that words can bruise as easily as any fist, and they taught him to love without restraint.
Through their love, Matthew prospered.
Through my Father’s grace, they loved.
Everything serves the will and mind of my Father.
Even those that will never look upon his face.
***
Eight eyes look upon him. Small circles that know hope and fear. Most are in his presence not by choice, but by volition.
Matthew doesn’t care. He’ll take them however he can get them.
He’s taller in his age now. Although his hair is still a tangled auburn forest, his eyes sparkle and dance in the light just like the legacy of his Mother.
At twenty-seven, he shares his Father’s height and his mother’s smile. The teenagers in the small room look up at him. To them, Matthew is like a six foot ladder, tall and slim, completely supportive.
And while their parents may force them to church, once they enter Matthew’s Sunday school class, the seconds fly by and the time is short and ends like the shifting sands in the vase of an hourglass.
A dark haired boy sits alone, opposite the bench of the other students. His eyes are empty circles that see everything but feel nothing. He traces his fingers over the oak of the table. He looks down at the knotted wood. To him, the air smells stale. Like the smell of urine in the stalls of his high-school bathroom.
He doesn’t pay attention.
The boy whose eyes are dark caves smiles in the morning air of Hollow’s Glens Holiness Church. It’s funny the incidental thoughts that dance across the ballrooms of the mind. He feels like Charlie Brown. In a class where the students are bored to the point of tears, hearing, wonk,wonk,wonk.
“Daniel, do have something you would like to say,” Matthew asks in a silken voice.
Wonk, Wonk, Wonk.
“Daniel?”
The boy looks at Matthew with a vacant stare as empty as his eyes. His hair is as dark as the clothing he wears that matches most of his given moods. His skin is as oily as his hair, and although it’s as fair as porcelain, it appears just as stained as tobacco.
“I didn’t say anything.”
Matthew smiles.
“I know, but you’ve been quiet all morning. I thought you might want to add something before we close in prayer.”
“Matthew, I got nothing to say.”
Matthew brushes off the early morning dust from his bible.
“Well then, Daniel, would you lead us in prayer?”
Daniel laughs.
“You want me to lead us in prayer. You’re the youth pastor, why don’t you lead us in prayer?”
Matthew matches his stare.
“Well, I could do that. But I feel like I’ve talked the whole time. I’m starting to feel like the Snoopy teacher up here. Come on, man! Help me out. I feel like I have “wonked” you guys out.”
Matthew is pleased to see a smile start to spread across Daniel’s thin lips.
“What’s the point? I don’t want to pray. Why talk to a God who doesn’t listen? Why talk to something, that if he is out there, has better things to do than listen to any of us? You have spent the last hour telling us how much God loves us. How he is always there for us? Where is there, Matthew? Because there isn’t here. I get so sick of this. Each one of us sitting in here thinks this is crap. Why am I the only one who has enough nerve to say what everyone feels anyway? This is crap.”
Matthew looks at the boy.
“Daniel, I see your fish hook and I’ll bite. I’ll not ask you to pray, if you can tell me why we shouldn’t. Is that fair?”
Daniel scoffs.
“Oh look, from Snoopy teacher to Dr. Phil. Let me tell you why we shouldn’t pray. I spent the past month on bended knee. I prayed while my mother was screaming her lungs out in her bedroom. I listened to those moans. Do you know, Matthew, what a scream really sounds like? How awful that sound is. A sound that bounces off the walls. It sticks in your ears like the claws of a cat in heat. It pulls and tugs, it rips and tears, and although you wish it would stop, it doesn’t stop. You don’t bleed from a wound like that. But you wish you did. Because that would make it real! That could be something you could stop! And God, do you want it to stop!”
Matthew clears his throat.
“That’s what a real scream sounds like. That’s what it feels like. It tears you into from the inside out. Just like an old, dirty, shirt. That’s what my Mom sounded like when she was dying of cancer. I’ll never forget it. No sir, not as long as I live. Screamin’ to the top of her lungs, that’s what she did! Begging for us to kill her because the pain was so intense. You see, the doctors couldn’t help anymore. There was nothing else they could do. But I thought God could. So, I prayed and she screamed. This went on for days. I listened to it. Even on into the night, her yelling would wake me up,” Daniel declared.
“She asked for anyone. My father; me. She begged us to kill her. You see the pain medicine plays out, and soon it doesn’t work. The body tunes it out like your favorite song on repeat. Eventually, you get tired of hearing it. It just goes on and on. I couldn’t take it. So I prayed. I prayed that God would heal her. Take it away, but he didn’t. She suffered and it still didn’t stop. It went on and on, until she finally died. Not one minute of peace was she allowed.”
A tear began to blur Matthew’s vision.
“So, pastor, you’ll excuse me if I don’t feel like prayin’ today.”
The class bowed their heads in silence.
“Tracey, would you pray for us?”
Tracey didn’t say a word only shook the blonde curls on her head like the way a mother who loses patience shakes a crying baby.
After the prayer, the bell rang.
“Alright, kiddos, class is dismissed. Remember I want each of you to pick out Bible verse for next week, and discuss what you think it means. Kim, we’ll start with you. Have a good week,” Daniel instructed.
The silence gave way to squeaks of folding chairs as the students made their way into the main room of the church house.
That’s when the gates of Heaven opened and Matthew heard the whispers.
“Daniel, can you stay for a minute?”
Daniel blew through the curtains of his thin lips.
“What?”
“Daniel, I’m sorry about your Mom. I mean it. It’s different for everyone. I can’t say that I know what you’re going through. But I can say that I’ve been there. I lost my Mom, too. I loved her very much, and I know it hurts. I can’t tell you it’s going to be okay, but I can promise it will get better.”
“Matthew, did your Mom scream?”
A vision of Emily falling down the stairs played like the reel of an old movie in his mind.
“No, Daniel, she didn’t, but I know a little bit about suffering. You can take that to the bank.”
Daniel closed his eyes and Matthew listened.
A tear raced down Daniel’s cheek and the teenage boy looked as innocent as the small child who sought refuge in the darkened corners of his childhood bedroom.
The whispers sang words in Matthew’s ears that only he could hear.
“Daniel, I have to ask you a question. You don’t have to answer it, but I promise whatever you say, I am bound by God never to repeat it. Is there more you want to tell me?”
Daniel looked down at his dirty shoelaces.
“Those screams were awful. I prayed that God would make them stop, but he never would.”
A vision filled Matthew’s mind as Daniel paused in his story.
Matthew saw everything. Just as Daniel began to finish his tale.
“My Dad was working late. Or at least that’s what he said. It’s hard to tell these days if at that time he was searching underneath the hoods of cars or underneath the skirts of any woman that he laid eyes upon. My Mom was alone. I had just come in from school and I knew that she had been crying.”
A vision filled Matthew’s mind. He saw Daniel at the bedside of his mother. Folding her fragile hands and looking into those lost eyes.
“Daniel, what did she say?”
Daniel cleared his throat.
“The room smelled bad that day. I didn’t know how long she had lain there like that. The sheets were stained. I could tell by that awful smell. I knew she had…soiled herself. She couldn’t help it. It was hard to tell if that was what caused that awful odor or if it was…her. She started to have that smell. You know, like the way a dead animal smells on the road in the heat of the sun. It was awful. I started to change the bedclothes when she grabbed my arm.”
Matthew saw this even before he said it.
“There were moments. Sometimes small, but they were there. Like she was getting better. Like she was my mom again. She looked at me and said…”
“Daniel, don’t,” Matthew finished.
Daniel looked in amazement.
“Yes! It was like you were there! That’s exactly what she said. She was pitiful and hurting. She said she couldn’t take it. That this was punishment because she wasn’t right with God. I told her I would pray with her, but she said she was passed the point of rescue.”
Matthew lowered his head.
“Then, she said, she had a favor to ask me. She told me that before she started hurting again that I could save her. She begged me to save her. She said all I had to do was…”
“Give her the last two pills,” Matthew finished.
“Yes. Boy, for a youth pastor, you’re good! She told me that would make it all stop! That that would set her free. She said that the pain was killing her and she couldn’t take it any more. She wanted out, and then she started that awful screaming again.”
Another vision entered Matthew’s mind. The boy in front of him, holding his ears as he walked softly to the old bedside dresser by his mother’s bed.
“Daniel, what did you do? Did you ask your mother if she wanted to pray?”
Daniel looked into the eyes of his youth pastor.
“No. I made the screaming stop.”
Then, Daniel made a mask of his hands and fell into Matthew’s embrace.
***
After the boy regained his composure, Matthew sent him out into the church house to hear the rest of the Sunday sermon.
On bended knee, Matthew prayed for Daniel and his mother.
Then he made his way into the church house.
The pews were full that Sunday morning. Every person from all walks of life fit together in long wooden seats like pieces of a giant puzzle.
Matthew took his usual spot among the church members in the first two pews.
I stood beside the wooden cross in the pulpit.
I had a birds-eye view of every person in the congregation.
Daniel took his seat in the very last pew by the heavy oak doors.
Sitting beside him was my fallen brother. His dark wings wrapped around him like soft satin in the gloss of the morning sun.
With his thumb and forefinger, Lucifer made the universal symbol for a gun.
I caught his stare as he pointed his fingers in my direction.
He smiled at me and blew through his lips as he made a sound.
Pooof.
(C)2009 by Lamplight Publications in care of John Braxton Sparks
