What Difference Do It Make?

by Ron Hall

  “It damn sure could!” Daddy said, smiling mischievously.

  David’s eyes widened. “How?”

  “Ronnie could’ve dropped me off at a wild sex party!”

  We all cracked up.

  Looking across the street, I saw Mama and Daddy’s neighbor of fifty-seven years emerge from her little clapboard house to see what was going on at the Halls’ place. I stood up and walked over to greet her.

  Louise, a former hairdresser and reformed smoker, had blue hair and a gravelly voice that reminded me of a frog speaking through a bullhorn. Pushing ninety herself, she still went down to the senior dance at the VFW every Monday night. During the years of my parents’ physical decline, Louise faithfully took them loaves of fresh-baked banana nut bread.

  I met her in her yard. “Louise, I brought Dad home for probably the last time,” I said, nodding toward the group on the front porch. “You’ve been such a sweet friend to him and Mama for all these years. I want you to know how much I appreciate it, and if there’s ever anything I can do for you, you just let me know.

  I’ll do anything you ask.”

  Louise broke out in a sly grin. “Ronnie,” she rasped, “there is one thing you can do.”

  “You name it.”

  “Well, you can let me run my fingers through your hair,” she said with a wheezy giggle. “I ain’t touched a man’s hair since Frank died in ’76!”

  I laughed and bent over at the waist. “Get after it, Louise!”

  She reached out and got a double handful and, squealing like a schoolgirl, started rubbing both sides of my head like she was shampooing one of her weekly customers back in her salon. I laughed till I cried. Then she went over and told my Daddy good-bye.

  Earl held court on the porch for a couple more hours, spinning tales and reminiscing as the afternoon sun turned the air gold. Around four o’clock, he fell silent for a few minutes. Then, in a somber and final tone, he announced, “I’m ready to go home.”

  “Does that mean you’re ready to die?” I joked.

  “Hell, no! I’m ready to go back to the nursing home and take a nap!”

  Just after midnight, a ringing phone roused me from sleep. “Your father took a long nap this evening, and when he woke up, he tried to escape,” the head nurse told me. “He made it about ten feet; then he fell.”

  His left femur was shattered, she said, and he had busted his head open, had a nasty cut above his eye. I didn’t feel guilty, but I did wonder if it would have happened if I hadn’t contributed to his delinquency.

  “We’ve called 911 and are sending your father to the hospital,” the nurse told me.

  During a four-hour surgery, doctors at Harris Methodist Hospital inserted a steel rod into Daddy’s leg. At the time, I wondered how much good it would do and whether they might be unwittingly aiding and abetting future escape attempts. But Dad did not awake from the anesthesia that day. Or the next. When he didn’t wake up on the third or fourth day, I knew Earl Hall had made his last prison break.

  Regan and Carson had come, and we all prayed over Dad. We gave him over to God and reminded Him that Daddy had prayed the sinner’s prayer once and that we thought he had meant it.

  Tears spilled down my cheeks, and I felt something for my father that I hadn’t felt since I was a little boy—real love.

  On the fifth day, the ICU doctor came in and after examining Dad told us he only had a few hours left. The kids and I kept praying, sending him home with messages to heaven.

  At about three o’clock on the fifth afternoon of his near-comatose slumber, Earl Hall suddenly awoke. I stood up and grabbed his hand. “Dad, we nearly lost you! Your oxygen level dropped below what it takes to live.”

  “Well, that’s a damn lie!” he said, instantly Earl again. “I knew exactly what I was doing—just resting. Hell, I feel fine. Now, take me home!”

  Three days later, Daddy’s oxygen count fell again, and I was there to tell him good-bye.

  Two days later, we buried him in Mt. Olivet Cemetery in Fort Worth, in a plot he’d owned for forty years. At his funeral service, friend after friend of Daddy’s surprised me by coming up to tell me how proud he was of me.

  “He said you were a famous author, like that John Grisham fella,” one of his old buddies told me.

  Even if I’d seldom heard such words of parental pride from Earl Hall’s lips, I’m glad he thought them in his ornery old heart. At that moment, I vowed never to withhold kind words from the people I love. And I was glad I had found a way to love and honor my daddy on that front-porch afternoon, sipping good whiskey and smoking Romeo and Juliet cigars.

  27

  Ron

  My New York partner, Michael, had called and asked if he could come see Deborah, and was on his way down. I had tried to discourage him and others from coming during these last weeks. Deborah had wasted away so that she barely raised the sheet that covered her. Her eyes had faded and seemed cruelly suspended in sockets of protruding bone. I wanted everyone to remember her as the beautiful, elegant woman they’d always known . . .

  But Michael pressed, and . . . I said yes. Jewish by birth, he was not a particularly religious man . . . When Michael pulled up to the house at around 10:00 a.m., Mary Ellen and I were in the bedroom with Deborah, singing along to a CD of Christian songs, some of Deborah’s favorites . . . The moment Michael stepped through the door, the song “We Are Standing on Holy Ground” began to play: “We are standing on holy ground, and I know that there are angels all around.”

  As the song washed through the room, Michael looked at Deborah, then at Mary Ellen. “We are on holy ground,” he whispered. Then as though someone had kicked the backs of his legs, he fell to his knees and wept.

  In early 2009, my partner, Michael Altman, gave a copy of Same Kind of Different as Me to Howard Godel, another prominent New York art dealer, who read it and passed it along to his wife, Melinda. The couple had a friend, Erin Cortright, who could relate to Deborah’s story better than most.

  In August 2008, at the age of fifty-two, Erin found herself inexplicably short of breath. She went to see an internist, who x-rayed her chest, pronounced her lungs clear, and sent her home with an inhaler. But a few weeks later, while hiking the hills amid the bell towers of Tuscany with Nate, her husband of twenty-two years, Erin felt a weakness she had never known.

  In the middle of a dirt road alongside a sun-drenched vineyard, she stopped and looked at Nate. “Something’s wrong with me.”

  Back in the States, the diagnosis was not good. Erin had acute myelogenous leukemia (AML), a rare form of the disease for which there is no known cure.

  In October, Erin checked into a hospital for a series of chemotherapy treatments. Doctors had told her that chemo is effective in a small number of AML cases. In Erin’s case, it wasn’t. In January 2009, doctors transferred to her to Calvary Hospital, a hospice facility where she would wait to die.

  “When I first got there, I was really sick,” she remembers.

  “There was one night when I had multiple infections, a 104-degree temperature, and internal bleeding. I didn’t know if I was going to make it.”

  The hospice doctor and chaplain told Erin’s husband to make sure her affairs were in order and to tell anyone who wanted to say good-bye that they should do so that night.

  But Erin kept on living.

  Two months later, during a visit in March, Howard and Melinda Godel gave Erin a copy of our book. Erin read of Deborah’s strength, of her faith in the face of death. And Erin felt a kinship with Deborah. Like my wife, she wanted to see her son graduate from high school and college. She wanted to see him get married. She wanted to meet her grandchildren. But none of that was going to happen. Instead Erin was winding up her last days on earth, leaving behind a husband and son.

  “Some might wonder how could someone in my position read a book like that?” Erin says. “Some might think it odd for someone to even give me a book like that. But I found it comforting. I could relate to it
completely. I found it inspiring that Deborah put everyone else in her life first. I felt that if I met Deborah, her cup would never be half-empty but always half-full.”

  When she finished reading the book, Erin realized that there was actually a good chance she would meet Deborah—in heaven. Though she had survived her brush with death in January, doctors assured her that nothing had changed. The chemo had failed, and the leukemia was still in charge. One doctor told Erin that AML patients typically live only two to four months after chemo failure.

  “The night I finished the book, I remember praying that Deborah would be the first person I saw when I got to heaven,” she says. “At the same time, I was concerned about my husband. He was going to be going on without me. I wanted to talk to Ron and see if he was okay, see how he was managing.”

  In April, when Melinda and Howard visited again, Erin told them how much she’d liked our book.

  “We’re going to see Ron Hall’s partner at an art show tonight,” Melinda said. “Maybe he can put you in touch with Ron.”

  And that’s how it happened that, within a day or so, I had Erin Cortright on the phone.

  I started off the conversation asking about her illness, how she was feeling, that sort of thing. Erin answered me politely but quickly fast-forwarded the conversation. “I don’t want this call to be about me,” she said. “I know what’s going to happen to me, and I’ve accepted that. I’m at peace with it. Now I want to talk about you and Denver. I want you to tell me everything you’ve done since Deborah left earth and went to heaven because I’m going to be going there soon, and when I get there, I want to tell her everything!”

  I have no idea whether our loved ones watch us from heaven, keeping up with our earthly lives the way some folks keep up with their daily soaps. Since the Scripture says that in heaven there are no more tears, I tend to think the souls up there can’t see the people down here. I don’t see how they could watch our tragedies unfold and not cry over them. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if they could only see the good parts?

  Holding the phone, I sat in my bedroom at the Murchison estate, looking at a credenza filled with framed photographs that seemed sharply divided into two eras—With Deborah and Since Deborah. There were pictures of Deborah with Carson, Deborah with Regan, Deborah and me posing at some resort or another, having had no idea when the picture was snapped that soon death would draw a line across time.

  So even though I didn’t know for sure, I liked the idea that in Erin I now had a link to what Denver calls “the other side.” A messenger who was not only willing but also eager to get there and fill my wife in on whatever she might have missed.

  “I want to know about Denver,” Erin said first. “Are you two still friends?”

  I chuckled in an “if you only knew” kind of way. “Yes, we’re still friends, still roommates, traveling all over the country, telling Deborah’s story. Tell her I didn’t catch and release him!”

  “And the mission,” Erin said. “What’s it like now? Is it everything Deborah dreamed of?”

  An unexpected flash of pleasure warmed my veins as I remembered our first trip to East Lancaster and the vision Deborah had.

  I had pulled into the mission parking lot, wondering how quickly I’d be able to pull out again, but Deborah suddenly spoke in a tone that you learn to recognize when you’ve loved someone for years, a tone that says, “Hear me on this.”

  “Ron, before we go in, I want to tell you something.” She leaned back against her headrest, closed her eyes. “I picture this place differently than it is now. White flowerboxes lining the streets, trees and yellow flowers. Lots of yellow flowers like the pastures at Rocky Top in June.”

  Deborah opened her eyes and turned to me with an expectant smile “Can’t you just see that? No vagrants, no trash in the gutters, just a beautiful place where these people can know that God loves them as much as He loves the people on the other side of that tunnel.”

  I smiled, kissed my fingertips, and laid them against her cheek. “Yes, I can see that.” And I could. I just didn’t mention that I thought she was getting a little ahead of herself.

  As usual, I was wrong. When Deborah and I first visited, I told Erin, we entered a rundown building filled with good-hearted people like mission director Don Shisler and Chef Jim. People who faithfully ministered to the homeless, doing the hard work of rescuing lost souls, making do with what God had provided to that point. Chef Jim died of cancer before he could see the memorial chapel that bears Deborah’s name, the new men’s center, women’s center, and free medical clinic.

  The clinic has revolutionized care at the mission because it includes a mental-health division. As Denver mentioned earlier, Don estimates that up to 70 percent of homeless people suffer from varying degrees of mental-health issues. Before the clinic, the Union Gospel Mission lacked the capacity to offer these folks any meaningful on-site help. Now volunteer counselors and psychologists can intervene directly and also refer those with chronic mental conditions to agencies that can get them on the path to healing.

  The clinic was spearheaded by Dr. Alan Davenport. Alan and his wife, Mary Ellen, were our closest family friends and, throughout Deborah’s illness, our staunchest supporters.

  “You probably remember reading about them in the book,” I said to Erin.

  She said that she did. Then, like a reporter with a fast-approaching deadline, she popped her next question. “What about Sister Bettie? I just loved her in the book. How’s she doing?”

  I met Sister Bettie before I met Miss Debbie. She ain’t no nun or nothin like that. We call her “Sister” ’cause she’s a real spiritual woman . . . When she’s talkin to you, she’ll lay a hand on your arm like she’s knowed you all your life, like maybe you was her own child . . .

  Sister Bettie lives at the mission, but it ain’t ’cause she don’t have nowhere else to go. A long time ago, she lived in a regular neighborhood. But after her husband died, Sister Bettie felt the Lord tuggin on her heart, tellin her to spend the rest a’ her life servin the homeless. She sold her home and everything she had except for a little bitty Toyota truck, and she asked the folks at the Union Gospel Mission could she set up housekeepin down there.

  It didn’t take long ’fore most a’ the homeless folks in Fort Worth knowed Sister Bettie. She’d go to restaurants to ask em for their leftovers, and stores to ask em for socks and blankets and toothpaste and such . . . She never carried no purse with her, just whatever she had to give out that day and her Bible.

  “Sister Bettie’s perking along just as sweet as ever,” I told Erin. “She still calls me all the time. She still prays with me about Deborah.” Well along into her eighties, Sister Bettie still hauls her old bones out on the streets every week to love on some of the grubbiest people you will ever meet, smiling under her cloud of white hair, her blue eyes twinkling like sun on the sea.

  Erin pressed on: “Did your kids get married?”

  “Oh, yes,” I said.

  “Who did they marry? Will Deborah know them when I tell her?”

  Deborah would know Carson’s wife, Megan, I said. Before she died, Deborah had hoped Carson would marry Megan and had given Carson a strand of pearls for his bride to wear on their wedding day.

  As for Regan, Deborah always worried about her attraction to vagabond nonconformists and was sure Regan would wind up marrying some hippie snowboarder from Vail who wore his cap backward and worked in a T-shirt shop. Instead, I told Erin, Regan had followed in her mother’s footsteps and married an investment banker. Except that Regan’s pick, Matt Donnell, came from a West Texas ranching family instead of the smelly side of the tracks in Haltom City.

  “Tell Deborah that Regan and Matt have two daughters,” I said to Erin. “Griffin is three, and Sadie Jane is a year old.”

  “What about Carson and Megan? Do they have kids?”

  My heart caught in my chest. “Yes, they have one child, a daughter.”

  I flashed back to the day she was born. W
hen I walked into the hospital room, Carson placed a tiny bundle in my arms. I looked down at her tiny features—eyes closed; lips a faint whisper of pink; sweet, round head covered with the barest breath of hair, like the soft surface of a peach.

  “Dad,” Carson said, “welcome the newest Deborah Hall to the world—Kendall Deborah Hall.”

  I stood there and cried and wished my wife could be the one to hold her namesake.

  But now, at least, Erin could pass on the good news about all Deborah’s granddaughters . . . and about the fulfillment of so many of her dreams. Dreams for our family, yes. Dreams for Denver and for the mission she cared so much about.

  My wife had foreseen that Denver, a man the world would call foolish, would be wise enough to change a city, Fort Worth—and he did. She had predicted that Denver and I would be friends—and we were. But not even Deborah could have foreseen all the amazing ways that God has used our experiences to change people’s hearts toward the homeless across the country and around the world.

  Wrapping up another miraculous phone call generated by Deborah’s story, Erin said, “Is there anything else you want me to tell Deborah when I see her in heaven?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Tell her Ronnie Ray says hello, that I miss her, and that I’ll see her soon.”

  About the Authors

  RON HALL is an international art dealer whose long list of regular clients includes many celebrity personalities. An MBA graduate of Texas Christian University, he divides his time between Dallas and his Brazos River ranch near Fort Worth.

  DENVER MOORE currently serves as a volunteer at the Fort Worth Union Gospel Mission. He lives in Dallas, Texas.

  LYNN VINCENT is the author or coauthor of seven books and a senior writer for WORLD magazine, where she covers politics, culture, and current events. She lives in San Diego, California.

  It begins outside a burning plantation hut in Louisiana . . . and an East Texas honky-tonk . . . and, without a doubt, in the heart of God. It unfolds in a Hollywood hacienda . . . an upscale New York gallery . . . a downtown dumpster . . . a Texas ranch.