intensity. “Oh no. You need to tell me everything, and right now. You know as well as I do that it is not me who has arranged this moment, but it is the Lord.”
“I know. Want a cup of coffee?”
“Yes.”
“In the summer of 1975 I completed my master’s degree in forestry at Washington State over in Pullman, but I didn’t want to stay on the brown side of Washington. I wanted to be in the forest, with the evergreens and streams and fish. Not many people were going into the forestry service then so there were plenty of job opportunities on the Olympic Peninsula. This was before hiking trails, climbing, and outdoor adventure were multimillion dollar businesses. Very few people came out to the forest in those days except to poach and cut illegal firewood. So, one of my first jobs was essentially as a guard at the southeast entrance to the Olympic National Park. The closest city to live in, as you know, was Sydney and I had been raised going to church and so I landed at Sydney Community Church in the fall of 1975.
“By Christmas I had already found myself the elected youth director. You know how churches are—the first set of young legs that walk through the doors and shows any kind of life usually get nominated pretty quickly to work with either youth or the children.”
Butch flagged with his hand as he sipped the very hot coffee, “So your job with the youth wasn’t a paid position. You were the volunteer youth director.”
“That’s right. Back then churches were lucky to have a pastor they could pay, much less other staff. In those days we viewed church as something we did ourselves, not something we paid others to do for us. It was a simpler age.” Ransom paused and sipped his coffee. “I’m not saying it was a better age, but it was simpler. Sometimes simple is cruel and harsh.”
“Did you like youth ministry?” Butch asked.
“Oh sure. It was wonderful. That is where I met Gerry. He was in a similar situation as me because he’d just moved back to Sydney after completing dentistry school. We taught the youth boys and had such a great time. Gwen and Penny taught the girls.”
Butch choked on his coffee. “Gwen, as in Mrs. Gerald Land?”
“You didn’t know that Gerry met Gwen while we were all teaching in the youth department?”
“No, I didn’t. I thought they were already married when they came to Sydney and I didn’t even know that Gerald, or I guess Gerry as you call him, ever taught youth. He doesn’t strike me as someone who has that type of temperament.”
“You,” Ransom pointed at Butch, “just don’t know Gerry that well, then. But anyway, we taught together and things were going along great. Eventually, as you’ve probably figured out, Gerry and Gwen became an item and it sort happened that Penny and I became very comfortable with each other and, I suppose, it was destiny or fate but we became an item too. It all happened so quick, a real whirlwind romance I guess, that the exact dates of when what happened are hard to remember. I do knowthat by Easter we were all paired up in to two happy couples who spent most of our time together.”
“How do you know it was by Easter?”
“Well, Easter of 1976 came in mid-April, April 18th if I’m correct. Well, there was a heavy snow up in the Olympic Mountains that week that kept me tied up away from church and Penny was angry at me because I wasn’t there to practice the musical for Easter Sunday morning. That was what caused us to break up. She broke up with me over the phone on Good Friday.”
“I bet that was awful,” Butch said. Where was all this headed? He was ashamed that it sounded boring and he couldn’t see where these pieces could possibly fit together into the letter he’d discovered or Gerald Land’s fear.
“It was awful.” Ransom winked. “But I came down out of those mountains early Easter Sunday and we made up at church that morning as all four of us sang our Alleluia’s in the choir. That was the day that I learned all resurrection doesn’t have to wait until you’re dead.
“So things were good through the spring and into the summer. In July, yeah, July, I was promoted from guard to the hatchery and it gave me enough of a raise to be able to buy a house. In August, after we got the kids back from youth camp down in Oregon, I asked Penny to marry me. I took her on a hike up to Mt. Walker and we ate a picnic, then we talked and talked. The sun dipped beneath the western horizon and the last flickers of light flashed across the mountains, shimmering on the patches of leftover winter snow. In the east the stars were coming up over the Cascades and Seattle was glowing like diamond. In that moment of twilight I dropped to one knee and asked her to marry me. She said yes without even a moment’s hesitation. It was one of the happiest days of my life.
“She wanted to get married the next summer, the summer of 1977. I didn’t want to wait that long, as you might guess, but I was willing to wait for her, and besides it gave me time to get the house ready. She was only 20 years old but more mature than her age. Her father died somewhere in Southeast Asia when she was 11 leaving her mother and her sister to fend for themselves. Her maturity gave her the wisdom to want to slow us down and take our time. It was one of her most enduring characteristics. But as it turned out, we should have followed my plan.”
Ransom Rainey broke his narrative and sipped his coffee, held the drink in his mouth and then swallowed hard. He was coming to the difficult part of his story so Butch prayed for him silently. “Lord, give Ransom the strength to get through what is obviously a tender subject for him. Help me to hear it with sensitive ears. In Jesus’ name. Amen.”
As the “Amen,” slipped through Butch’s mind and into the ethereal realm where sincere prayers dwell,Ransom Rainey began to speak again. His words were deliberate and had the feeling of being rehearsed. “In mid-September, when all the kids had gone back to school and the summer programs were winding down, we were at church one Friday evening for a final game night with the kids. Some of the other young and unmarried people came too. I don’t remember why, but they were there. There was no such thing as a single’s class or a single’s ministry, but we all were pretty good friends. Or at least, that is what I thought.” Ransom ground his teeth.
“There must have been about eight of us 20 somethings there, and one of them was named Edward Barnes. Edward was popular in the church. He had shocks of short curly blond hair, a strong face, and slender build with muscular arms. It didn’t hurt that his daddy was the wealthiest man in the church and Edward could sing really good.”
Butch interrupted. “Is that Barnes any relation to old Buster Barnes? Buster died before I came to Sydney, so I never met him but I know the Barnes Prayer room is named after him.”
“Yes.” A snarl formed on Ransom’s lips.“His daddy gave the church $50,000 in 1983 for sanctuary renovation. That is when they named the church prayer room after him.” He sipped his coffee, as did Butch, and continued with his tale. “After the teenagers all left that night, all of us adults stayed behind and cleaned up, and then we all piled into cars and drove to Tacoma to watch a late movie. We saw Smokey and the Bandit and got home pretty late. I dropped Penny off, kissed her goodnight and went home.
“She lived with Gwen in a small two bedroom rental house, but Gwen,” his voice quivered, “Gwen did not go to her house that night. She spent the night with one of the other girls that had gone to the movie with us. The two of them planned to get up early in the morning and go blackberry picking, but Penny wasn’t interested because I couldn’t go. I was supposed to drive Saturday to Forksand not come back until late Sunday evening. Penny didn’t want to go pick berries without me, so she planned to just sleep late the next morning and stay home.”
Ransom winced and said, “Edward Barnes came to Penny’s house about an hour after I left, around 2 in the morning. Penny said he knocked on the door so quietly and politely that she figured he needed help, that something was wrong. Penny was kind and sweet like that—she’d help anybody in trouble.”
Ransom hesitated, gathering his thoughts.
“She l
et him in and he talked for a moment. She said he talked about church and the movie and then he talked about how lonely he was. He was drunk. He put his hand on her arm and pulled her to him and kissed her. Penny slapped him across the face and told him to get out and that he should know better because everyone was aware of our engagement. He ignored her and kept grabbing her and groping her. She pushed and fought and clawed but he was too strong. He beat her up. Then Edward Barnes raped Penny right there on her very own bed. When he was finished, he left her house. Penny laid there in pain, afraid, and in tears all night. She stayed there in shock in that bed until Gwen found her about 4 the next afternoon. She helped her get cleaned up and treated the black eye, bruises on her wrists and around her hips. She tried to get Penny to call the police, but Penny didn’t want to call the police. Most people didn’t report those kinds of things back then. Gwen did, however, convince Penny to call me. The problem was, I was deep in the Olympic forest and far away from the phone. By the time the message got to me it was nearly 11 at night. I didn’t get back to Sydney until sometime around 5, just around sunrise. I spent the morning at Gwen’s and Penny’s just holding her tight and promising that I would
The Land Begins to Heal Page 4
