“What? Louder! I can’t hear you! There’s something – crackling or something – on the line. What?” The static ceased as did every other sound. I hung up and dialed. No tone. No anything. Maybe the landline would be better. I walked into the kitchen, muttering to myself and picked it up. It was silent. Maybe it was the storm. Beyond the window glass I could see the trees bending in the greenish sky, branches lashing one way and another all at once. The rain had determinedly increased since the storm had begun nearly an hour ago, and the angry sky was gradually changing daylight to dark.

I jumped at a cannon-fire rumble as lightning flashed just in front of the window. The lights in the living room and kitchen went out at once. I knew flicking the switches would accomplish nothing. I flicked the switch.

It was my way, I admitted maybe for the first time in my life, flicking a light switch back and forth. If something wasn’t the way I thought it should be, I always tried to fix it even when I knew the likelihood of my changing things had somewhere near the same probability of the Kardashians going into hiding.

The truth was I’d always lived my life on the basis of possibility rather than probability. That was the reason I’d been on the gymnastics team in middle school. It was the reason I had graduated from high school even though I could tell my science teacher thought dark thoughts every time I entered his classroom. And it was why I was here in the first place. A relationship, one I valued beyond reason, had soured and, after more than a few unsuccessful, unreasonable attempts on my part to force it back to what I believed it should be, I had run away. At twenty-eight I had actually run away.

I’d known about this old run-down place for many years. It had been my uncle’s old house, one he’d lived in and died in. That he’d actually been dead a week before anyone knew it was something we didn’t talk about. No one in the family wanted the house and no one in the world wanted it either, so it had sat alone and ignored for the eleven years since he’d been gone. It was four miles beyond the edge of a dying town: one of those towns that has a gas station; a church with twenty pews, one for each parishioner and a few to spare; a bar with the same customers every night; and no police force.

I’d been here exactly one week, arranged for the utilities to be turned on, a surprisingly easy thing to do, and had unpacked all my earthly belongings. And swept. I had swept the building from bottom to top to bottom again. There was a lot of dirt. I’d been in the process of changing my mailing address when the phone had gone dead.

I hadn’t gotten a job yet, the nearest job being the factory ten miles south, but I wasn’t in a hurry. I had some money stashed away. It was in a manilla envelope under the silverware in a drawer in the kitchen.

As I stood peering out the window, I heard a creak; but it was different from the storm-related creaks and groans the old structure had been emitting for the last half-hour. I turned my head slightly and squinted into the dark.

to be continued…

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A fine mist fell, illuminated by the lights surrounding the football field. It was the beginning of the fourth quarter and the game had been one of those contests that was a battle from the very start. The stands were packed, faces tense, as the teams hustled back onto the field from a timeout. The tight end ignored his pulled muscle, the halfback rolled his right shoulder and the quarterback breathed slowly and deliberately, anticipating the snap. From the sidelines their coach called to them a phrase they repeated to themselves at every practice and every game. “All In!”

The student stood looking over the faces of her philosophy class. The professor was a persuasive fellow, likeable, handsome, and hateful of Christianity. First she had made an effort to gently question a few of his barbs. He was not one to back down, though, and the class had continued day after stressful day until it had reached the week of their final presentations. She didn’t know what made him think and feel so strongly, but he did. A few times she had asked herself if it was worth it to refute someone who appeared to be as immoveable as a boulder. Then she asked herself how she could sit and watch the face of Jesus be spit on one more time. As she took the podium, she whispered to herself, “All In”.

The mortar fire had been relentless. Company C had been reduced by a third, but the little town must be protected at all costs. They would keep defending while ten men drove out of the opposite side of the town and looped around to approach the aggressors from behind. They pushed every thought from their minds but one: All In.

They asked her one more time. Refute your faith in Christ or be whipped and hanged. Leave your children motherless, your husband a widower. Such a simple thing. Merely words. She looked back at her captors and said, “I will not”. The prayer she had prayed over the brutal weeks and months echoed in her mind. All In.

He laid on the bed, his breathing difficult and rough. He’d known this was coming as had his family. He’d known, but all the knowing didn’t make it easier, didn’t make it better. He’d lived his life as a Christian. He was by no means even close to perfect, but he was redeemed and that counted for everything. One other thing kept him calm and determined and curious. What was it really like on the other side of the curtain called mortality? He looked at the faces around him. Then he smiled and with his final breath said, “All In”.

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The painting in front of which the two children stood was awash in colors of black and rust, with splashes of red, and was a montage of well-drawn images. In the center stood a man, his foot on a copy of the Constitution of the United States of America. He was dressed in a shirt embroidered with many words, among them, “women’s rights”. He was smiling and waving to five happy men with turbans on their heads as they flew away to freedom. His back was to a woman being lashed one hundred times by a man resembling the ones flying to freedom. A noose hung slightly ahead of the woman. Her small child and newborn baby, held back by others, watched the scene. Over two hundred school girls sitting silently and guarded by soldiers with guns also watched.

In the upper left side was a scene of an embassy, lying in charred ruins. Four skeletons lay at its base. Slightly below that scene were guns, many guns with legs, running fast and furious toward a Mexican sombrero. One dead man in uniform lay between the guns and the sombrero.

Giant forms and tax records had been molded into iron gates to restrict some citizens from moving freely. A pregnant woman with hair the color of snow, each strand banded with jewelry that spelled ‘fear’ was giving birth to cameras and listening devices so numerous that they spilled out of the birthing room, down the hallway, and out the doors of the hospital where she lay. A picture of the hospital she had wanted to use instead hung from her limp hand. A giant eye in the corner of the frame seemed to follow onlookers, in this case, the two children, regardless of the angle from which they observed the painting.

A school building was marred by graffiti, with CC in bulging, garish letters. Tests were stacked neatly on each desk, while textbooks lay scattered on the school rooms’ floors. The school’s entryway held a picture of a gun with a line through it. Two dots on the top and a half-circle on the bottom made it into a happy face.

Reporters in a busy newsroom stood against a wall while a few important looking people looked through their phone records and emails, patiently crossing out whatever did not suit them.

Throughout the painting in small, nearly imperceptible drawings, was something else. Sprinkled all throughout the scenes was something like golden dust. Tiny images though they were, they drew the children’s eyes to them. A soldier stood stick straight, talking to the few who would listen. A woman bent down to help some fearful children and gave them sweet pieces of fruit with wrappers labeled ‘truth’. Some people were on their knees, their hands lifted in prayer. There were many, many images of many small, good things. It seemed, almost, that the painting pulsated with the golden dust; the tiny pictures growing more numerous and larger at times, then fading again to their infinitesimal size.

And the two children watched while the museum visitors around them toasted the great building’s success.

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Hundreds crowded the steps and spilled onto the sidewalk, waiting. It was opening day at what was touted as the finest art museum in the Midwest. The Museum of Artwork and Vision, MAV, had been six years in the making; from the first meeting of ideas, to argumentative meetings regarding design, to the ground breaking, to more meetings filled with debate, to the final MAV committee private tour. As opening day visitors paused in front of everything from hand thrown pots to busts to paintings, two children wandered from one room to the next. Their steps led them in an arbitrary tour of things that held little of their interest until they stopped in unison in front of a painting. Small and hung in an obscure spot, it had garnered little attention from most in the crowd. It, however, held the twins with an unaccountable pull, as though they could not move from their spot had they wished. The two understood, in that fuzzy place between mind and heart, that the story behind the painting was one that could change a life. The story had at the very least changed the lives of the ones who lived it, the ones who were in the small painting hung in an unimportant spot in one of the finest museums around.

to be continued . . .

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How it caught his eye, he didn’t know. He bent down and picked it up. It was a misshapen stone about 2 inches in diameter. It was the dark gray of river rock, but on one side silver, red, and blue stripes ran up and down along its surface. He turned it over; but no, it was just the one side where the stripes covered the otherwise dark gray. He put it in his pocket and looked at the sky.

The sun would be setting within the hour, he guessed. The air was already becoming that tempered color of dusk, a subtle dimming of light and warmth. The day’s brightness had gradually left and with it the cheeriness that sunshine brings. He’d been on the river for two hours doing more strolling and thinking than fishing. It was good out here, away from the pressures of committees and expectations and people needing him. Out here it was the way everything should be; slightly rugged and sparkling and colorful. Out here it was real.

The mayflies would be swarming soon. Trout would race toward them, flashing their colorful God-given Joseph coat and splashing in their leap to catch the flies. Then fishing could begin in earnest.

He cast out. It was a good one. He would have a trout or two or more to take home and show off and fry up. There it was! The familiar tug; the fight for life at one end and for food and satisfaction at the other. He pulled and played with the fish until it was close enough to net. With a practiced hand he unhooked his fish. Just as the splash of the trout sprayed him, he heard it.

The leaves of a bush rustle in a variety of ways. A spring breeze only slightly moves leaves in a playful whisper. The wind that stirs before a storm is faster. It’s urgent, a warning. This was neither. It was the sound of someone approaching. But, no. Not someone. The sound was too brash, too heavy.

He spotted it then, the dark brown coat, the swaying posture. The bear looked at him across the river that was suddenly more narrow than a minute before. Snout to the air, it sniffed. There was no way to remove the fish scent that touched his waders and permeated his hands. If he threw the fish to the bear it would be a short time before the bear came closer for more. Slowly he let the fish slip from his hand back to its home in the river.

Fishing was over for the night. He would give the other fisher extra room by his absence. He moved quietly and as quickly as he dared, making his way back to his truck, back to the people who needed him. That was real, too, after all.

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Her hands shook a little as she tore open the envelope. She hadn’t expected a letter at all and had only hoped she wouldn’t get a phone call from someone in charge telling her to come and get Chase early. But here it was. And there was his signature.

Dear Grandma,

Thank you for making me go to camp. I’m sorry for that thing I said before I left. Everyone is really nice and I have a couple of guys I hang around with.

At first I was mad and wanted to make trouble and I did. I blamed another kid and we both ended up being talked to. The group leader who talked to us is actually pretty cool. We talk sometimes.

I love everything here. The food is great, especially the lunches. The cook is kind of cute. Don’t tell anyone I said that.

Canteen is fun. Rec is great – I’m awesome. Classes and vespers are really good. Fireside is my favorite.

We drew a target on that one boy’s leg and tried to hit the bull’s eye with spit balls while he was sleeping. He never knew! It was really funny!

I actually read the Bible you sent with me sometimes. I’m going to keep on doing that when I get back. At least I’m going to try.

I know I don’t say it, so I’ll say it now. I love you, Grandma. Thank you for taking care of me.

Your Boy, Chase