deelilah

            “Nah, Ma,” he said.  “Got to give her a run for her money—I’ll catch you later.  OK?”

“Alright, then.  I’m going over to pick up your children.  They love Sunday School.”

            She waved, blew him a kiss, and drove away.  She wore a cheerful face, but Tommy knew how she felt. 

            Turnabout’s fair play, huh, Ma?   

            He didn’t really blame her for being upset with him, and he felt a twinge of guilt, sad about the botched marriage, and his kids, but he also felt relieved.  Right now he wanted to change the race car world.  He didn’t have time for his mother, and he sure didn’t have time for church. 

            The voices inside his head cheerfully agreed with him.  Yeah, man.  Get it while you can.  He pushed the image of his two small children out of his head, a boy, Sammy, age seven, and a girl, Betsy, age four.  Tommy patted the hood.  Yes.  He would change the race car world, alright.

            “And, by damn, I deserve to!”  He spoke to himself with trumped-up fervor.  Hadn’t the preacher said God would give him the desires of his heart?  He was pretty sure he’d missed something in the translation, but for now it suited his purpose.  Again the voices heartily agreed—yeah, man you deserve it.  He sat for a moment now basking in the warm sun and in the triumph of finishing his soon to be a famous race-car automobile.  But he couldn’t stop thinking about the kids he seldom saw and his ex-wife with whom he had wanted to spend the rest of his life.   

“Oh, brother; shoot; damn.”  The temporary pleasure he found in his accomplishment vanished into thin air along with the smoke rings he unconsciously exhaled.

“What’s it all about, Alfie?” he crooned, mashing the joint into the ground while at the same time lighting another.  He inhaled intensely, as if to pull the drug past his lungs and into his heart, trying to numb the pain that he refused to let go of.  But he held in the pain as surely as the smoke, sucked up so deep none of it could ever escape.

I love you, Tom—he heard Katie say. 

“That was a damn sight while back, huh Toots?”  He said.

I love you, son.

He heard his mother’s voice, but he didn’t believe her.

“Bunk,” he said.  “You never cared.”

God loves you, son.

“I could never get good enough for God to care, either.  “Two things, Mom,” he said to the air.  Tommy spoke to the air often.  “God doesn’t want me—just like you didn’t want me.  And I’m plum not ready to give anything up just yet.”

He wasn’t real sure what God wanted him to give up.  Well, maybe he was—but he sure damn didn’t want to.

            Today the air spoke back.  You’re right.  It’s their fault you have so bloody little—that you have an IQ of 130 but are in between $8.00 per hour jobs—that you got kicked out of the Marines for smoking marijuana—that you couldn’t get that computer job because you didn’t have a haircut, or decent clothes, or a car that ran.  It’s your parents’ fault because they divorced when you were ten years old—and your mother went to live somewhere else—and your dad paid more attention to his live-ins than he ever did to you.  It’s their fault, alright.”

            “. . . and if you wrap up in that warm blankie of self deception tight enough, nothing can ever hurt you again.

            “Shut-up!  Shut-the-blank-up!”  Tom grabbed his head and scrunched up as if to shield himself from an onslaught of unseen flying objects.  He slid back into the car and opened the glove compartment.  There he found a 38 revolver and pressed it against his burning face.  The cool metal soothed him, but when he caught his reflection, gun against cheek, he felt afraid.  The image was unfamiliar, scary, and he couldn’t recognize the face in the mirror.  Surely it didn’t belong to the little boy he remembered—the happy-go-lucky, Opy from the Andy Griffith show, kind of kid.  He related to Opy back then—Opy and Pa.

            Don’t leave, Daddy.  He heard Betsy cry as if she were sitting next to him.

            In his mind, the picture of Sammy with his head buried in Katie’s skirt broke his heart.

            Tommy pulled the heavy door shut and squared himself in the driver’s seat. 

            They don’t make them like this anymore.

            That was the voice of his father.

            He put the gun back into the glove compartment, pushed in the heavy Holly clutch, and turned the ignition key.  He revved the 405 engine.  With a low rumble, the car sprang to life.  It sounded cool—like the gun felt cool.  Tommy loved feeling of the power vibrating under him; so he sat there for a full minute, letting the energy infuse his being.

            “They don’t make ‘em like this anymore, he affirmed”

            Push the pedal to the metal, Martha—let’s see if angels can really fly. 

            He pressed down on the gas pedal. 

            The car responded eagerly, fairly jumping from 0 to 60.  The glass packs roared.     The voices roared to be heard above them, beginning to control him now.  

            He heard his mother say: Look for God, son . . . and He will find you. . .

            He heard his Katie: Why can’t you just tell the truth?  Any truth is better than lies.

            He heard God say: I love you, Tom.  I sent my Son to die so you could live.

            He heard the Devil say: This sucking life is too short to waste on church, or family-boring times, or helping the stupid masses.  Take the drugs, Tommy.  Drugs are good.  Drugs will make you forget—not feel.  Sell me your soul for the price of drug induced peace.

            And in the midst of the din he heard his own soul shout: God save me.  I am a fool and a coward.

            He turned onto straight open road and punched it, hard.  Eventually, the road led into the country, and though paved, it narrowed and the corners tightened.  Harvest was in full swing.  Combines crawled around gilded fields, gathering and sifting grain from chaff. 

            “Is this wheat or barley?” Tommy said.  “Oh who the hell cares, the wheat’s getting separated from the tares, isn’t it? 

            He remembered something like that from Sunday school.  “If it was me I’d get spit out the rear end of these monsters.”

            Semi trucks lolled in the summer heat, waiting patiently for their payload.  Sun-glittered dust floated on the air.  Green pastures rested at the foot of the grain fields, and horses, cattle, and sheep grazed on the lush grass and drank from a sparkling creek.  The scene was idyllic.  But as much as Tommy used to love coming out here and ride in the back of the wheat trucks, today he could care less.  He ignored the beauty surrounding him.  He merely sped up.  Coming up ahead was the long straight stretch he’d been waiting for, after that, just hills and curves.

            He reached forward to fiddle with the radio dials, difficult now, because the 65 Chevy, high on top-end torque, began to flatten out as the needle passed 100 miles per hour.  He gave up on the radio.  He didn’t dare take his eyes off the road.  Wheat, barley, peas, and yellow mustard blended into a golden blur.

            Well, nobody’d care if I ran it off the road anyway. 

            Yeah, Tommy, boy, the more bloody, the more mangled, the more mixed up metal and flesh, the better. . .

            Yeah, Tommy, just run this mother over the cliff!

            He could see the hill with the corner coming up, but he didn’t want to slow down.

            Then a loud thump—he knew he’d hit something.

            “What the hell?  What was that?” 

            Tommy braked hard, with all his might, cranking on the steering wheel at the same time, a maneuver he’d learned at the local race track.  The massive automobile spun around two and one half times before coming to a halt heading in the opposite direction from where it had come.  He pulled off the road and got out of the car.  He walked back to see what he had hit.  There on the side of the road, lying nearly in the ditch was a bleating broken lamb.  Its white woolen coat was a tangle of curls and blood. 

            Uncontrollable sobs rose up in Tommy’s throat. 

            “God, no, not this poor little lamb.”

            Hearing the clamor of machinery, he looked back up the road where he’d been heading.  A giant John Deere combine launched into view.  Poking from one wheat field to the next, it crowded between a clay embankment on one side and a deep ravine on the other.  It completely blocked the road.  He’d been on a collision course.  The lamb had saved his life.  He finally let the sobs out as he knelt down and began to wrap the little body, now quite still, in his shirt and placed it in the trunk.

            All the taunting voices in his head had stopped, and he heard only one, the voice of the Holy Spirit.  He died so you could live.

            The image of Jesus nailed to a cross, the Lamb of God, bleeding, innocent, and dying, flashed before his eyes.  His frozen heart melted and he heard only one voice. . .

 

Just as I am, without one plea,

But that thy blood was shed for me,

And that thou bidst me come to thee,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.