Hometown Legend

by Jerry B. Jenkins

  I was in over my head. “Well, I don’t know. I—”

  “Come now, son. Who could I help the most?”

  “Coach,” I said before thinking.

  She looked up and put down her pen. “And what would I do for him?”

  “Tell him what you told me, about him being a big influence on you.”

  She seemed to study me. “Let him back into my life, in other words.”

  I shrugged.

  “No, now you go on. You know what you’re talking about. But this has to be more than things said. We’re talking about a project here, something I do. I leave this place temporarily and I do something for someone else. Buster’s a good choice. But what do I do for him?”

  “Come to a game,” I said. “He’d love that. Rachel would sit with you. Bev too, when she’s better.”

  What was I thinking? Her face went blank and she picked up the pen again. “A game,” she repeated flatly, then finished her note. She didn’t look at me as she slipped the card into a small envelope. “That would be a mighty costly way to do something for Buster,” she said, still looking away. “You may send him in now.”

  I reached for her hand, thanking her for her time. But she just handed me the note.

  37

  Elvis was sitting on her porch steps when Rachel walked up. “You got time or you got homework?” he said.

  “Both,” she said. “Scoot over.”

  “Something’s not adding up with you,” he said in the darkness.

  “Still? I don’t know how to be more honest. I went from what you called ‘everything’s beautiful’ to the ugly truth.”

  He sat shaking his head. She waited him out. He began slowly, “It’s just that what you said about how you really reacted made sense. I mean, I don’t care who you are or how you’re raised, you can’t help but be that way when something so awful happens to you.”

  “Yeah?”

  “But now it’s been, what, like twelve years and you seem fine with it.”

  “I wouldn’t say fine,” Rachel said. “I’ve learned to cope. And let’s face it, Elvis, I have a lot of things going for me. My dad mostly, but my church, my friends—”

  “Hold on. That’s what I’m talking about.”

  “But, El, I can’t stay angry and scared and crazy because I lost my mom. Who can live that way? What kind of a person would I be?”

  “An honest one.”

  “No! If you think the ‘everything’s beautiful’ is the lie and what I suffered is the truth, you’ve got it wrong. Everybody’s got something they could be angry about. Maybe not losing a parent or both parents, but what kind of a world would we have if nobody ever got over it?”

  “You’re over it?”

  “No! I still have my days. And lots of times I have questions. But nobody but God wants to hear that. I can ask Him ‘Why me,’ and don’t think I haven’t. But I don’t expect Him to write it in the sky.” She deepened her voice. “Miss Rachel, I took your mama so you would be a grief counselor someday. I’ll make it up to you in eternity.”

  “Not funny,” he said.

  “I’m trying to make a point. I didn’t lose my faith in God, and I do feel like He’s bringing me along to where I’ll be okay.”

  “That’s what I don’t get. You still believe in God.”

  Rachel felt stupid. So that’s what this is about!

  “Nothing’s gonna change that,” she said.

  “Nothing?”

  She shook her head.

  “What if your dad died too?”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “Couldn’t take that, could you?”

  “Don’t be mean.”

  “No! I’m making a point now. What kind of a God do you believe in? Somebody who is supposed to love you but takes your mom away? Sometimes I think how dare you be happy and cheerful and a little Goody Two-shoes? Is it that much easier to lose only one parent?”

  “Wow,” she said. “You’ve got it bad.”

  “I grew up like you, you know, only worse.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We were Christians. The best little Christians you ever saw. Church every Sunday. People getting saved all the time. Is that what you are? Saved?”

  “Kind of an old-fashioned term,” Rachel said, “but yeah, I received Christ, was saved from my sins. Yes.”

  “We called it accepting Jesus,” Elvis said.

  “Same thing, I think. So you did that?”

  “No.”

  “Didn’t buy it? Didn’t like church?”

  “Actually I loved it.”

  “But you didn’t believe in God?”

  “I bought the whole package. I just never got saved.”

  “Why?”

  He shrugged and looked away. They’d come this far. He was driving at something.

  “What happened, Elvis?”

  He hesitated, then pulled a cheap wallet from his back pocket and removed the plastic photo insert. She leaned so the porch light shone on it. “That your dad?”

  “Yeah.”

  He was a good-looking man with short hair, prominent ears, and a toothy smile. “What’d he do?”

  “Mechanic. Huge football fan. Bears.”

  “And your mom, right?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Pretty.”

  “Yep.”

  “She work?”

  “Part-time. Grocery store and she did some people’s hair, but mostly just friends and at our house.”

  “She’s the one who named you?”

  “Didn’t have a clue what I’d go through, I guess.”

  “There’s other people named Elvis.”

  “Nobody you know.”

  “There’s that football player, the quarterback. And another singer. Costello.”

  “You know either of em?”

  “No.”

  “See?”

  He was stalling, but she didn’t want to push. “This your sister?”

  “I told you I didn’t have any brothers or sisters.”

  “That’s what I thought.” She stared at the picture of the dark-haired little girl, then turned it over. “Jennifer,” she read.

  “Jenny Lucas. She’s older now. Ten.”

  “Related?”

  He shook his head. “Foster sister I guess you’d say. Last people I stayed with ran a bunch of kids through their family, but she was the one who was there when I got there and still there when I left.”

  “Close?”

  “Used to be. Probably never wants to see me again.”

  Rachel froze. “You do something to her?”

  “I lied to her. Told her I’d get her out of there, take her with me when I left. Chickened out.”

  “You couldn’t have taken her, El. You’d have never got away with something like that.”

  “Tell her.”

  “Were they Christians?”

  “Said they were. Went to church. I didn’t believe it. The guy was a hypocrite. Nothing like my real parents.”

  He stuck two fingers deep into the wallet and gingerly pulled out a yellowed, crumbling newspaper article. He unfolded it and placed it in her hands as if it was his most prized possession.

  “Couple Killed in Crash; Son Spared,” it read. “GeorgeA. Jackson, 31, and his wife, Eloise W. Jackson, 32, of rural Kankakee Banks, Indiana, were killed on U.S. Route 30 Saturday afternoon in a head-on collision with an eighteen-wheel cab and tractor trailer. Their 10-year- old son, Elvis P. Jackson, was thrown from the vehicle but suffered only minor injuries.

  “Eddie Burns, 56, an over-the-road veteran and employee of Peak Cartage, Muskegon, Michigan, was uninjured and not charged in the incident. ‘Looked like they pulled out to pass before they saw me,’ he told police. ‘I didn’t even have time to hit the brake. I seen that little guy fly out of that car, and I never expected to find him alive.’ The shaken Burns said he had never before been involved in a fatal accident.

  “George Jackson was an auto mechani
c at …”

  Rachel swallowed and began to fold the paper. Elvis carefully took it from her and she covered her face with her hands. “Elvis,” she whispered, shaking her head. He put everything back into his wallet. She wiped her face. “Do you remember it?”

  “All I remember is following a truck and driving toward the sun. I don’t remember my dad pulling out to pass. You’d think I’d remember the sounds or something. We were on our way to a gospel singing convention, one of those all-night deals with the southern quartets.”

  “I love those,” she said.

  “I used to,” he said. “I’d try to stay awake as long as I could, but they always wound up carrying me out to the car and I’d wake up in my own bed.”

  Rachel leaned over and embraced him. “I can’t imagine,” she said. “Losing them must have been so hard.” He didn’t seem receptive, so she backed off.

  “Thing was,” he said, “I was just starting to get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “The Jesus thing. I had started asking a lot of questions and both my mom and my dad tried to explain it. I told them I wasn’t saved and they said they knew that but wanted me to really know what I was doing and understand. They said there was no rush and I said but what about all those scary stories about people who wait till it’s too late and then they get killed or something? My dad finally told me that if I understood grace and what Jesus did for me, I was ready. I should make a decision and go forward in church and pray and get saved. But they always had an invitation, an altar call, at the quartet concerts. I wanted to do it there. I wanted to surprise my mom and dad.”

  Rachel said, “Didn’t almost getting killed like that make you want to do it all the more?”

  Elvis stood and walked down the steps to the yard. He turned around, his hands deep in his pockets. “I was in the hospital. Our pastor came after church the day after the wreck and he and the doctor told me about my mom and dad. He started right in with how he knows I have this hope because I’m a Christian and God will see me through. I wanted to ask him what kind of a God takes a kid’s parents, but you don’t ask questions like that.”

  “Sure you do. Elvis, nobody expects a kid to go through that without grief and anger.”

  “The next Sunday the pastor told everybody I was brave, that I had cried, sure, but I was going to be okay. But, Rachel, the last place I wanted to be was in church where everybody kept saying I should be grateful I was alive, that I could be used to tell everybody how good God was. They said my mom and dad must have been so good God wanted them early. What did that make me? If there’s a God who takes little kids’ parents, why would I want anything to do with Him?”

  “So you don’t.”

  “I don’t want to put down your faith, Rachel. I mean, you’re really into it. But you’re serving a God who took your mom from you—or at least let her die.”

  “I didn’t say I understood Him, El. Who does?”

  “I don’t want to understand Him! If that’s how He is, I don’t want Him to exist. Guess I’m with those who say God didn’t create man. Man created God.”

  “So I’m a fool,” Rachel said.

  He shrugged. “Your beliefs give you some kind of comfort.”

  “Yours do the same for you, Elvis. God doesn’t run the world the way you want Him to, so you decide He doesn’t exist, and poof, He’s gone.”

  “I guess.”

  “One of us has to be wrong,” she said.

  “Why can’t we both be right? God exists for you because you believe in Him. He doesn’t exist for me because I don’t.”

  “Because that doesn’t make sense.”

  “And what does? God taking my parents the day I’m supposed to get saved? Having no relatives, none, who would take me? Sending me to foster homes where they pretend to be wonderful and they’re worse than no parents at all? Letting a little girl live in a place like that and sticking her with a guy like me who winds up dumping her just like everybody did me? You believe what works for you and I’ll believe what works for me.”

  Rachel stood and looked down at him in the yard. “How’s it working, El?”

  “What?”

  “How’s that working out for you?”

  He stared at her. “For a nice girl, you can be kind of mean, you know that?”

  “I’m not trying to be. You choose not to believe in God because you can’t make it make sense any other way. But it’s not working, is it?”

  “I’m not happy, if that’s what you mean. But I don’t expect to be. That way I’m not disappointed.”

  “You’re so disappointed you can’t stand it.”

  He showed her both palms. “Well, there you are. End of discussion.”

  “Don’t say that.”

  “I’ve got no more to say. Do you?”

  “Well, I was just wondering. If you really think stuff is only true if you believe it, why don’t you quit believing your parents are dead?”

  He looked at her like she’d lost her mind. Rachel was sinking. Why had she gotten into this? “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m just trying to get you to see—”

  “Either they’re really dead or they left me too.”

  “Elvis, forget what I just said. I’m not good at this.”

  “You’re right about that.”

  He walked away. Why was this so hard? Everything she tried made things worse.

  Rachel jogged to catch him. She reached for his hand, but he wrenched away. “Don’t,” he said. “Just leave me alone.” He jogged off, and Rachel felt she had failed again.

  38

  I patted my pocket on the way home from the rehab center. “Scuse me for a minute, Coach,” I said, pulling out my phone. I called Bev but talked low cause I wasn’t ready to make clear to Buster what was going on between us. “Just checking in on you, Miss Raschke.”

  “Oh, you are, are you? How’s my sweetheart?”

  “Fine, and you?”

  “Aren’t we formal? You on your cell phone?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Surprised you know how to use it. You’re with someone, aren’t you?”

  “That’s correct.”

  “Who?”

  “Coach Schuler and I are on our way back from visiting his wife.”

  “How is she?”

  “Fine, ma’am. More on that later.”

  “Tell me you love me.”

  “More on that later too. Glad to hear you’re doing fine.”

  “You rascal.”

  “Yes, ma’am, looking forward to your getting back to work one of these days.”

  “I’ll bet you are. I love you, Calvin.”

  “Thank you, ma’am.”

  “With all my heart.”

  “All right, then.”

  “I wish you were here so I could kiss you.”

  “Me too, ma’am.”

  “I want you to hold me and—”

  “Okay, then, Miss Raschke, I’ll check in on you again.”

  “When, Calvin?”

  “Bye, ma’am.”

  “When, Calvin?”

  “Sooner than you think. Bye.”

  The light was on in the front room when Coach pulled up to my house. “I’d better not find Jackson in there,” I muttered.

  “Hm?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I heard most of your conversation with Helena, you know,” he said.

  “I figured.”

  “Guess I should be encouraged.”

  “I’d say.”

  “Long road ahead,” he said. “But she’s worth it.”

  “Attaboy.”

  “She tell you she miscarried a coupla years after Jack was born?”

  “No.”

  “We never told anybody. It was a girl.”

  “I’m sorry, Coach.”

  “Tore me up, but it just about did her in.”

  “Never went through that,” I said. “But I understand it’s hard.”

  “Made her almost sm
other Jack. I was afraid he’d be a mama’s boy.”

  “Never seemed that way.”

  “No, but you can see why it was hard when he—”

  “Yeah. Sorry bout what I said to her about coming to a game.”

  “I was touched. You know me too well.”

  “But I wasn’t thinking, Coach. Expecting her to watch a football game that would bring back all those mem—”

  “You meant well.”

  • • •

  I found Rachel sitting on the ottoman, her head in her hands. I stepped over her and sat in the chair. “I hurt when you hurt, baby,” I said. “Talk to me.” She climbed into my lap and cried on my shoulder. We told each other about our evenings.

  “Well, we both seem to have the right idea,” I said. “But we don’t close so well, do we?”

  She laughed through her tears. “What am I gonna do, Daddy?”

  “Nobody’s gonna explain God. Best we can do is try to show what He’s like by doing what we think He wants us to.”

  “But can I show Elvis that?”

  “Sounds like you tried.”

  “I’m not gonna quit.”

  “I believe that.”

  • • •

  I’d had Ginny call every employee from both shifts to a meeting at the plant at 8:00 the next morning. Almost every one of em showed up. I was in a suit at work for the first time in years. We put the answering machines on in the offices and shut down the lines in the shop. Everybody crowded into one end of the old brick building. The stillness was so strange. I stared at men and women who came to work every day in sneakers, jeans, and T-shirts. Some of em had goggles hanging around their necks. The turners and stitchers wore adhesive tape on their fingers, even after years of building up calluses.

  “You know I don’t call everybody together for good news,” I began. “I could do that at the company picnic.” Man, I was looking into some pale, stony faces.

  Someone hollered, “Is this about Bev Raschke?”

  “No. She’s doing better and she sends her greetings. Early this morning I told her what I’m about to tell you, so let me get right to it. We lost our biggest account yesterday. Dixie’s done with us at the end of this season.”