Deadline

by Randy Alcorn

  “I have won for both of us, Jake. In the defeat that bloodied my hands and feet and side, there is victory for you. In the defeat that now bloodies your life you have entered into the victory I bought with my blood. I have redeemed you, my son. Heaven will be the place of our eternal celebration. Welcome to my family. In losing to me you have won the battle for life.”

  And Jake, for one wonderful moment, knew that the dream was not a dream, or that if a dream, it was much more. It was a dream with a life of its own. A dream that had reached out to him from another place and touched him in a way that would leave him never the same.

  Jake gasped, bolting up wide awake, as if he had not just been asleep, but held in sleep, and was now abruptly released. He was soaked. Certain he was dripping with his own blood, he grabbed for the reading light, but it wasn’t in the right place. He found himself instead pawing a lamp, then grimacing as its brightness harpooned his eyes.

  No, it wasn’t blood. He was dripping with sweat, panting and exhausted. Why was he in the living room? And fully clothed? It was a dream, Jake thought. It was, and yet it wasn’t. As his heart began to calm from the great leap from one world to another, some of the dream’s vivid details began to leave him.

  He looked at the clock on the VCR. 3:38 A.M., December 26. He’d never gone to bed. He’d fallen asleep reading in the recliner; he vaguely remembered turning off the light as he drifted into unconsciousness. He started to sit back down on the recliner, then instead slipped down on his knees in front of it.

  He went back to his thoughts and prayers hours earlier when he’d read Finney’s letter, and the book by Lewis, and the verses from the Bible. His thoughts went again to his friend Hyuk, who had failed to protect his mother, wife, and child. Though Hyuk was not to blame, Jake finally admitted that in his case there was no one to blame but himself. He had been given the job of loving and protecting and leading his family. In failing to do so he had betrayed them, and also betrayed the one who had created him and assigned him the duty he had shirked. He would have died for his buddies in Nam, yet he had failed to live for those to whom his obligation was greatest, those who had needed him the most.

  Only a coward would make a baby pay for his mistake. He confessed his sin of abortion. Only a liar would cheat on his wife and leave her. He confessed his sins of adultery and divorce. Only a selfish fool would fail to be there for a daughter who needed him. He confessed his sin of desertion. Only an ingrate would turn away from a mother who had made untold sacrifices for him. He confessed his sin of dishonor and neglect. Only a sinner would reject the truth and resist God’s grace to stubbornly live his own way. He confessed his sin of willful unbelief.

  No amount of rationalization made it right to abandon and neglect and violate sacred promises to those it was his duty to love and defend and care for. He’d been wrong, dead wrong, and he knew it. No excuses. He didn’t have the goodness or the power to live right, and for the first time, he knew that too.

  Jake, who’d never even admitted to his mother he’d smoked out in the tool-shed, now admitted far greater offenses to God. He took full responsibility and asked for the power to live right. There was relief in the confession. He wasn’t good enough to do life on his own. He no longer had to pretend to be.

  In a place far away, yet very close, an old friend applauded and raced around wildly, hugging men, some whose names he didn’t yet know, and angels who marveled at the depth of human emotion. He yelled triumphantly and heralded the good news, incredibly wonderful good news. Finally, he fell on his knees in ecstatic praise, but soon was on his feet again, celebrating in uninhibited and unrestrained rejoicing, of the sort that no one who has spent his life confined to the dark world can begin to understand. Joining him were cadres of angels, rejoicing with him in a miracle that had never lost its wonder … rejoicing that one more child of Adam had become a child of God.

  Janet and Carly had been at Jake’s apartment three hours, since 6:00 in the evening. It was a cold, white New Year’s Eve day, but none of them had felt so warm in years. They’d been engrossed in conversation, telling stories of the old days, including family camping disasters that now seemed hilarious, but which Janet and Carly reminded Jake hadn’t amused him at the time.

  “Was I really that grouchy?”

  They looked at each other, smiling like a couple of Cheshire cats, and at the same moment said, “Yeah, you really were.” They giggled like school girls.

  “Why do I feel like you’re ganging up on me?” But he didn’t really. What he felt was something refreshing and startling, something old and yet very new. Something that brought into sharp focus what he’d been missing the last three years. Something connected directly with the events of the previous week, the dream and the things he’d said on his knees on this very living room floor.

  “I hate to say it, but we’ve got to go,” Janet’s voice hinted she wanted to be talked out of it.

  “So soon?” Jake asked, his disappointment obviously genuine. Janet was astounded. To feel wanted by Jake seemed so … foreign.

  “How about I run out and get that gallon of milk so we can have some hot chocolate first?” Jake asked. “Mom always made us hot chocolate on New Year’s Eve.”

  It sounded so childish, so vulnerable. So unlike Jake. He didn’t notice, but Janet did.

  “Come with me, will you, Carly?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  “Want to join us, Janet?”

  “No thanks, you two go. I’ll stay where it’s warm. How about some eggnog too? That’s what we used to drink on New Year’s Eve.”

  “Great. Eggnog it is.”

  “Button up your coat, sweetheart.”

  “Yes, mother dear.” Looking at Jake, Carly added, “If it wasn’t for Mom I’d never think to button my coat when it’s twenty degrees outside!”

  “That’s what mom’s are for,” Janet said only half jokingly.

  As Jake opened the door, a drift fell inward and white powder blew into the living room. He shut it and looked at the surprised faces. Champ, always hanging around the front door, had several snowflakes still on his snout. All three laughed.

  “What in the world,” Jake muttered, and went to the window. “It must have snowed four more inches since you came. It’s a whiteout. I can’t even see down the street.” He turned on the TV. Regular programming had been interrupted.

  “The snowstorm is crippling the city. No public transportation is operating. Cars have been abandoned in the middle of main roads. Visibility is almost zero. The word is, if you’re warm and you have food and you don’t absolutely have to travel, stay where you are!”

  Carly and Janet looked at Jake.

  “Well,” he said, “we’re warm, and we have food. And you don’t absolutely have to travel, do you?”

  “We don’t want to impose Jake.”

  “No problem, You two can have the bedroom, and Champ and I’ll sleep out here on the couch. It’s comfortable. He’ll love it.”

  “Looks like this is turning into a New Year’s party,” Carly said brightly. “But I’ve got a bag in the car I need to bring in.”

  “I’ll get it,” Jake said.

  “I’ll go with you. This is fun.”

  With the streetlights reflecting brightly off the white blanket of snow, they walked out what Jake guessed was the pathway from the apartment to the sidewalk, laughing because they had no clue what was grass and what was pathway, and it made no difference. Impressive snow drifts pinned down the car, and they were almost wading now.

  Jake managed to get into Janet’s car from the least impeded access, the front passenger side, and reached over into the back of the car. He grabbed the bag, pulled it out, and turned and asked, “Is this all you wan—”

  A snowball hit him right in the mouth. He could feel the cold on his teeth. Only ten feet away, but hard to see her expression in the whirling snow, was the perpetrator, stooped over and quickly making another snowball.

  “Hey, wait a minute.
I’ve got a handful of—” Another shot to the face.

  “Where did you learn to throw like that?” Jake asked with unfeigned admiration.

  “Five years of softball, third base,” came Carly’s reply, immediately followed with a shot that skimmed Jake’s right ear.

  Jake remembered the softball, but didn’t remember her being so accurate. Throwing down the bag, he said, “Well, this is where my combat experience will pay off, young lady!”

  As he stooped over to scoop up a handful of snow, he felt another snowball whack him on the shoulder. “Hit four times before I even load up,” he muttered. “This was an ambush.” This girl’s as good as Doc or Finney ever were.

  With two packed projectiles in hand, Jake let loose and barely missed Carly. “You’re a smaller target.”

  “That’s your problem,” and just as she said it Jake’s second snowball hit her in the throat, dropping down inside the front of her coat. Jake laughed uproariously and taunted, “You should have listened to your mother and buttoned that top button, young lady!”

  He stooped for more ammo and before he could look back up, she was on him, knocking him off balance and pushing him to the ground, face first.

  “Hey,” he cried out with feigned indignation. “This was outlawed at the Geneva Convention.”

  He reached out and pulled her right leg out from under her and she fell backwards into the deep snow. Deep enough, Jake knew, there was no danger of injuring her or the baby.

  “Well, that should be outlawed. Knocking ladies on their keisters, I mean. Pregnant ladies!”

  “Well, ladies don’t usually attack their elders.”

  They both sat for a moment in the snow, catching their breath and laughing, then realizing how cold it was.

  “Truce. Time to go in.” Jake got up and extended his hand to Carly. She took it, then wrapped her legs around his and knocked him back down, laughing like Jake hadn’t heard in years.

  “You are vicious!”

  By the time Jake could get up, Carly had grabbed her bag and was half way to the front door. When he got within a few feet of the door, he heard her latch it, just like he would have done.

  This girl has great combat instincts.

  Jake pressed his head against the door and pounded, yelling, “Open this door or I’ll call 1–800-dad-abuse.”

  “Sure. I’ll open the door. All you have to do is say, ’I surrender. Carly wins.”’

  “Like Winston Churchill, I will never give up … never, never, never give up.”

  “Then you and Churchill will never, never, never get in!”

  Jake heard through the door two females laughing uproariously. He smiled broadly.

  He explored his options, but the spare key was hidden under a rock buried under the snow, and it just wasn’t worth the dig in the icy cold.

  “Okay, I surrender. Carly wins. She doesn’t fight fair, but she wins.”

  The door opened wide, and Jake, with clumps of snow falling from him, jumped in before she could change her mind.

  “Jake, you’re a mess!” Janet cried.

  “Hey, wait a minute, it was your daughter who…”

  “I couldn’t believe he’d attack me like that, Mom. Throwing snowballs at a helpless young girl.”

  “Helpless? You should have seen her. She could win the Cy Young Award!”

  “She beat you, huh Jake?”

  “Yeah, she did.” Jake laughed. “Actually, she beat me bad.” And he couldn’t have been happier.

  Janet was kneeling in front of the fireplace, just starting a fire.

  “Change your clothes and get dry, you two. I found some cider. I’ll heat it up. It’ll do just as well as chocolate or eggnog.”

  “Great idea, Mom. But what do I change into? Nothing in my bag but shoes and socks.”

  “I’m sure your father has lots of clothes. You’re good at improvising.”

  “Getting into Daddy’s closet? This could be fun.” Carly was in Jake’s room in an instant.

  “Take anything you want, just let me get first grab. You owe me that much after kicking my tail out there. I’ll change in the bathroom and you can have my room.”

  As Jake changed his clothes, he felt a childlike excitement he hadn’t felt in years, many years. He came out to the smell of warm cider and popcorn and the crackle of a fire. That was Janet—in ten minutes she’d transformed Jake’s apartment into a home.

  While Jake sat down by the fire, Janet joined Carly in his bedroom. They came out modeling two outrageous outfits, both with overbig flannel shirts, Janet in fishing hipwaders and Jake’s huge clod hoppers, and Carly topped with a Mets cap and rounded out with battery-heated hunting socks she thought were hilarious. Champ barked and barked and nibbled at the girls’ feet, his way of joining in. Jake picked up a flashlight and shined it all over the room, sending Champ crashing into everything pursuing the light, as if he really thought he could catch it. They laughed until they wore out from laughing.

  Janet went to bed first, partly because the warmth and laughter had made her contentedly tired, partly because she wanted Carly and Jake to have more time alone. A couple of hours later she got up to use the bathroom and saw two shadows in front of the fire, close to each other, talking softly. It was nearly one in the morning.

  After Janet went back to bed, she didn’t close the door all the way. She could just make out the words coming from the living room.

  “I had the weirdest dream the other night,” Carly said. “Want to hear it?”

  “Sure,” Jake said, smiling as he thought of how much she was like Janet, who’d always relished recounting her dreams to him, even though he’d usually not been interested.

  Muffled laughter came from the bedroom. They looked at each other and smiled, realizing they had an eavesdropper.

  “I just hope your dreams are half as interesting as your mom’s always were,” Jake said loudly.

  Carly poked her head up over the couch and said, “Mom, I’ll try to speak up so you don’t have to strain to hear us.”

  More laughter, as if muffled by a pillow, made its way from the bedroom to the living room. Then Janet came out and joined them. The springer spaniel’s tail wagged frantically. A dog takes his happiness from the happiness of the people around him. Champ had never been more happy.

  The daughter told her dream. And then the mother told a dream of her own. And then both listened breathlessly as the father told his.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Ollie and Jake couldn’t meet for lunch, so they arranged a midafternoon walk in the downtown park blocks. It was warmer than it had been for weeks, and the snow melted as they walked. Ollie jumped right into the topic at hand.

  “When we first started talking this anti-abortion possibility I sent a note to Jeb Larson—he’s our best arson detective. Well, he’s been buried in other stuff and finally uncovered my note. Came in this morning and gave me the skinny on all the abortion clinic incidents in town. Boy, did I get an earful.”

  “More suspects?”

  “It wasn’t what I expected.” Ollie eyed a bench and sat down, Jake next to him. Then he paged through a manila file folder.

  “Jeb’s got this big file of newspaper clippings. He copied a few of them for me. Here’s one—Los Angeles, 1988: ’Prochoice activist Frank Mendiola pleaded guilty to charges of telephoning a series of bomb threats to local abortion clinics. He says he made the calls to arouse public sympathy for abortion rights and to motivate the media to come down with a harder line on people who harass the clinics.”’

  “The guy who did it was prochoice?”

  “Yeah, and that’s just the beginning. Here’s another one in Concord, California, where a Planned Parenthood abortion clinic was burnt down. The first few clippings quote all the Planned Parenthood people blaming the anti-abortion groups, milking it for all it’s worth, and I guess you can’t blame them. But here’s the other clipping, from a month later, when police arrested David Martin, who lived across th
e street from the clinic. He admitted he set the fire because he was ticked off’ at prolife protesters and hoped they’d be blamed. Jeb says, the guy got his wish. His buddy in arson down in Concord, the one that sent him the clippings, tells him most people still think the prolifers did it, even after the case was solved.

  “Here’s one in Redding caused by a portable electric fan. And here’s a couple done to cover burglaries. Jeb says some of these are just accidents or random arsons—I mean lots of hamburger joints burn down but nobody assumes it’s done by vegetarians and animal rights activists.

  “Now here’s a classic, Portland back in 1985. Package bombs were sent through the mail to three abortion clinics and a Planned Parenthood clinic. Major bad press for the anti-abortion people, attempts at court injunctions against them, the whole deal. But the case was quietly solved. The perp was a guy named Batson, who was caught only because a bomb he was making exploded and took off part of his arm. The evidence tied him to the package bombs and another abortion clinic bombing. He was convicted and went to prison. Turns out he had no connections at all with the prolifers. Know what his motive was?”

  “No.”

  “His girlfriend had gotten an abortion without his knowledge. He was taking revenge on the people he says ’killed his baby.’ Interesting, huh? Then there’s a clinic bombing in Florida they linked to organized crime.”

  “Organized crime?” Jake jumped at the term.

  “Yeah, it’s not real clear, but the mob wanted in on the action, or was already in on it. They wanted kickbacks, sold protection. They were on this clinics payroll, and somebody didn’t cough up the dough. So, good-bye clinic.”

  Jake grabbed the opportunity. “Ollie, do you think organized crime could be in on Doc and Finney’s murder?”

  “What?” Ollie looked at him strangely. “You been watching The Untouchables or something?”

  “Just wondering.”

  “Seriously, where’d you come up with that idea?”

  “Nowhere, really. You said anything was fair game when it came to suspects.”

  “Well, I draw the line at Al Capone and Frank Nitti.”