by Tim Green
When they were alone Clark quietly said, "I'm sorry."
"No," she said, still scowling in the candlelight, "he's sorry." Then her face softened. "Can we forget about it?"
"Sure."
"I mean really forget it?" she said, then paused. "Most people can't, you know. People can't put the negative things behind them very easily. They seem to stick."
"I'm a Christian," he blurted out, looking at her closely to gauge her reaction. He was glad he had finally said it, that he had gotten it out. "That's, kind of, where everything starts for me."
"That helps you put things behind you?" she asked after a moment.
"If you don't think of your life as your own," Clark said eagerly, "if you give your life to God, then you trust that He'll take care of everything . . ."
"I've always been interested in religion."
"It's not just religion. It's giving your life over to God through His Son, Jesus Christ. Being a Christian isn't the same as being religious."
Clark was glowing now, excited, and Annie wasn't giving him any indication she wanted him to stop. She definitely seemed interested.
"A lot of people aren't comfortable talking about it," he told her.
"Why? It doesn't bother me," she said.
"It used to bother me ... I didn't want to think about it. It's like changing your whole life when you believe. It changes the way you think about everything. For some people that's harder than others. Some people, like our quarterback, Mitch Faulkner, they find their way almost without trying. Others need to be led by the nose. That was me."
"By your mother?"
"No, it was when my father died."
The waiter came and began to tell them about the menu. Clark looked at him impatiently. When he was gone, Clark told Annie everything that had happened. And as he spoke it seemed that it had been just weeks and not years ago.
Chapter 8
Along Highway 165, about seventeen miles from a town called Chinook Bend, a snow-encrusted school bus dropped Clark off, same as it did every other day. He shifted a canvas laundry bag full of football equipment over his shoulder and headed home. Today was the day the basketball coach swore he'd cut the locks off the lockers of the football players who refused to vacate their hallowed private locker room. The equipment had been waiting for this day in Clark's locker for over a month, and it stunk to high hell even in the cold. From the main road it was a half-mile walk in the dark and the cold, and a big wind was whipping down from the Crazy Mountains to the north. Clark tucked his nose beneath the rim of his scarf and leaned into a gust.
As cold as he was, by the time he reached the front yard he knew better than to go inside empty-handed. That could get you a wrench upside the head. He pulled back an electric blue tarp from the woodpile, sending a swarm of fat powdery flakes spinning off into the afternoon darkness. The days when it was light for twenty hours at a time seemed like another lifetime. Clark was only thirteen.
He secured the laundry bag to his back by crossing the strap on his chest like a bandolier and loaded his arms with wood all the way up until the rough splinters scraped against the underside of his chin. On the porch he stumbled. Logs thundered into the front door. Two sticks into his cleanup the door burst open and his father filled the frame. The older Cromwell surveyed the mess from behind his thick black beard, quickly deduced what had happened, and disappeared behind the door without a word. Clark reloaded, then braced one side of the pile against his knee as he groped for the door handle.
Once inside he quickly shut the door, then set down his wood one stick at a time into the bin beside the stove. There was no other source of heat in the cabin, and Clark knew that if they ran out of fuel in the middle of the night he would be the one groping in the pitch-black for more. He removed his backpack and assessed his father. In one corner of the cabin was his toolbench, and there he sat, hunched over the barrel of his .454, methodically ramming a cleaning rod in and out of its bore. Clark didn't have to be told that he was expected to be up by four and ready to go. He had been raised carefully over the years, and it seemed that the more Clark knew, the less his father spoke.
Clark knew that beneath the placid surface of his father's weatherworn face he burned with rage. He had always been a reticent man, but when Clark's mother took his sister and left for Portland four years ago, something seemed to have broken inside him, leaving him with less feeling for all people--including himself, including Clark. Although Clark could not say why, he was fairly certain that, in part, his father blamed him for what had happened.
His alarm went off the next morning at 3:50. His father never used an alarm, but without it Clark knew he could easily sleep until eight o'clock. There was something about the dreary fall and winter months that left him wanting only to stay tucked beneath his warm covers, at least until a bit of gray light seeped in through the frosted windowpanes. But when they were going for moose, Clark knew oversleeping wasn't tolerated.
Clark hadn't been struck in months, but he suspected that was only because he hadn't given his father a reason. That idea inspired him to jump out of bed in a way that could have been mistaken for excitement. The real thrill of hunting had dissipated over the years as Clark began to realize that they did it out of necessity and not for sport. To Clark, killing a moose was like pulling down trees with the horses, then cutting them up and stacking the wood. It was merely a chore to ensure survival through the winter.
There was a steaming stack of book-thick pancakes on his plate at the kitchen table. His father was already into his second cup of coffee, and his plate was clean except for a few streaks of syrup. Clark wolfed down his breakfast with unfeigned enthusiasm and cleared the table. By the time he'd finished, his father was mounted up and waiting for him at the bottom of the front steps. A high-pressure system had moved in from Russia and the stars were so bright that even without a moon Clark could see the shadows of two horsemen mimicking them as they crossed the frozen creek bed and set out toward the Crazies.
By two o'clock the skies had clouded over and they were onto the blood trail of a gut-shot moose. The animal had been hit shortly after eleven. Clark's father was visibly irritated at not having killed it. To Clark it was impressive that the beast had been hit at all. The shot was well over three hundred yards and taken across a perilous ravine, which was why it had taken them so long to get to the blood trail.
The wind began to gust in their faces and the clouds to churn like a slow-boiling stew. The weather made Clark shifty. Every couple of minutes he couldn't stop himself from glancing up. Even more unnerving was his father's apparent disregard of the coming front. The older man seemed maniacally intent on the trail of blood, and he had that look in his piercing blue eyes that reminded Clark of the times when he drank too much and would sit staring at the fire, violently whittling whole sticks of firewood into toothpicks. Clark never got hit then. His father was a good man and only beat him when he did something wrong. But when he sat there staring and whittling like mad it was like walking by the cage of a snarling Kodiak, scary even though you were safe.
Before too long they stopped on a high ridge that overlooked a large wood. As his father scanned the trees below, Clark watched the older man's expression through the bank of steam that rose from his horse's neck. The wounded moose had clearly headed for the woods, where it would probably lie down. Halfway down the mountain the track crossed an expanse of snow and ice that spanned a chasm whose bottom was indiscernible. The horses were in a trot now, but they pulled up short of the ice bridge so his father could survey the trail. The frozen span looked solid, but Clark knew that appearances could be deceiving. He also knew that his father was anxious to get to the wounded animal before the * light faded completely and the weather hit.
They were almost across when Clark's father stopped suddenly and looked back at their own trail. Clark looked, too, and saw clearly the black disk in the snow, one of the binoculars' lens caps, at the place where they'd stopped. Clark's father mutter
ed a curse and violently reined his horse back toward it. Prophetic words of caution logjammed in Clark's throat. The debris of so many broken important moments between them over the past four years since his mother left kept Clark from speaking to his father as a rule.
When the ice sheared, it was with the horrible shriek of Sty- rofoam being cut longways by a dull razor. Clark's horse reared, throwing him to safety, before plunging into the abyss that also swallowed his father along with a thousand tons of snow and ice.
Clark sprang to his feet and ran crazily up and down the length of the chasm perilously close to its lip. He screamed for his father until his voice was nothing. In a state of shock, he clumped down the mountainside, reaching the edge of the wood just as the heavy sky began to dump snow in earnest. As cold as it was, Clark knelt and stuffed a handful of powdered snow into his mouth. The tears and the walk had left him dehydrated.
No one would even think of looking for him until Monday, and it would take at least that long for him to make it home on foot. The snow would worsen too. The tent and sleeping bags were gone. He had some matches, but no ax to get enough wood for a fire that could last through the night. Elephant Lake was his only chance. He knew he was about five miles from the small round lake where they had often gone in the summer to fish for rainbow trout. There was a one-room cabin on the eastern shore. With the darkness and the snow, he had no idea if he could find it, but he had to try.
Within an hour's time he could see nothing. Snow swirled madly down at him in the darkness. He could feel it against his face and hear it whispering against the outer shell of his parka. He groped for an alternative to stay alive. If he found a big pine tree he could get out of the wind by burrowing under its branches, but he was afraid of freezing there without a fire. There was nothing else he could think of, so he pulled his hat down tight over his head and pushed on.
After another hour his legs began to tingle from the cold. They grew heavy. His fingertips were beginning to go numb. He suddenly entered another wood and the snow seemed to diminish, but the darkness was now complete. Nothing looked familiar to him. He sat down to rest, knowing he shouldn't. Tears welled fresh in his eyes as he wondered about dying. It seemed to him that right before she left his mother had spoken more about dying than about living. She wasn't afraid to die. He knew that from the defiant tilt of her chin when she'd bucked his father.
She had found God. That's what she said, anyway. She had found God. and God wanted her to go to Portland and take his sister away from life in rural Alaska. Before she left, Clark's mother had imparted much of her wisdom about God to him. He knew from her that the only way to God was through Jesus. He knew from her that you were damned to eternal hell unless saved by Jesus. He also knew that God could perform miracles, that he was alive, and that through prayer he could be convinced to intercede in the misery of one's daily life. But even though Clark had listened to his mother's truths, he'd done nothing about them. He just never got around to it. His father, he knew, hadn't bought a word of it. But his father was dead.
Clark didn't want to die. He knew that. He didn't want to go where his father was. He was afraid, but not of the hell his mother had talked about. Hell was something he couldn't imagine. He was more afraid of nothing. That was tangible. That was terrifying: simply ceasing to exist, ceasing not only to breathe and pump blood through his veins, but also to feel and think altogether, and losing any awareness of anything one way or another. Clark closed his eyes and spilled tears. He prayed to God. He promised. He begged. And when he opened his eyes he saw a light.
That's how he would describe it again and again when witnessing the glory of God during prayer meetings in the coming years. He saw a light and the light was a cabin. Not the Elephant Lake cabin, but a hunting cabin more than three miles away, one he never even knew existed. He remembered three bearded men in flannel shirts and the orange hue of a warm fire. He remembered the black spots on the ends of his fingertips. He remembered the smell of cooking meat. He remembered crying more than he was supposed to. But most of all he remembered the deal he made with God.
"It's true," he said, his eyes glazed from the remembrance, "and I remembered what my mother always said. It's true. It was a cabin. I never even knew it was there and these three guys were there on a hunt. . . It's really true."
"You keep saying that," she said. "I believe you, Clark."
Clark paused to consider her, then said, "You do?"
"Yes. I do."
"Sometimes people don't like to believe what they can't explain," he told her.
"But you explained it," she said. "You said it was a sign from God, that it led you to him."
"You're right," he said.
"Thank you."
He grinned at her. "So that's basically it. After that I stopped trying to control my life and just turned it over to Jesus Christ."
"You said God before."
"What?"
"You said God, that you turned your life over to God."
"Well, God and Jesus are the same thing. Jesus is the Son of God, but he's God. And the Spirit of God, too. It's the Holy Trinity. The three are really one."
Annie looked confused.
Clark said, "The best thing really would be for you to talk to someone who's more knowledgeable than me."
"You sound pretty knowledgeable to me," she said.
"But I'm not. I'm not a biblical scholar. I don't know the original translations or anything like that. Tom does. Tom is my mentor in Christ. Tom Huntington. He was a receiver for the Raiders back in the seventies. He runs a ministry for the team. He's studied the original Greek translations of the Bible. He explains everything a lot better than I do. I'd love for you to meet him."
"I'd like that," Annie said.
The waiter came and asked if they were ready to order. Annie picked up a menu and looked through it quickly. So did Clark.
"Do you see anything that looks to you like a steak on there?" Clark said, red-faced again.
"Something close," she said pleasantly, and ordered for them both.
Chapter 9
Conrad Dobbins strolled off the eighteenth tee with Jack Nicholson, James Woods, and Lou Gossett Jr. It was an L. A. day. The sky was cobalt. The air was dry and breezy, the sun bright. Dobbins talked loudly to Nicholson about his next movie and laughed derisively along with everyone else about the director's sexual preferences. As they approached the stone patio jutting from the clubhouse, Dobbins was acutely aware of the stares they drew. When a preppy-looking white kid wearing a blue blazer and Docksides without socks approached the group, Dobbins was delighted with his wistful inquiry.
"Are you Conrad Dobbins?" the kid asked.
Dobbins could imagine the ire of the movie stars. It wasn't that they needed another autograph hound, it was that he and not they was being sought out in this exclusive setting. It was really sports that owned Americans' hearts. And wherever sports was king, Conrad Dobbins was an uncontested prince. While the major figures of sports had changed over the past twenty years, it seemed that a good deal of them had been and were still being represented by Conrad Dobbins. That meant he was connected. After all, it was the ringside seats in Vegas for the upcoming Spinnicker fight that had led to this golf game in the first place. It certainly wasn't friendship.
"I'm Conrad Dobbins," Dobbins said with gusto. He glanced furtively at his compatriots to gauge the level of their envy. Every actor he'd ever known was remarkably insecure.
The young man held out a folded piece of white paper and Dobbins reached expectantly for a pen.
"You're gonna have to get me a pen, boy," Dobbins said imperiously.
"No, I'm sorry, Mr. Dobbins," said the young kid with what might have been a smirk. "This is a summons to appear in court. "Vfou're being served."
Dobbins let out an ill little laugh and went another thirty seconds at least before he realized that the kid was for real. It wasn't that Dobbins hadn't been served before. He'd been served more times than he'd been au
dited, and that was saying something. It was the insult of being served outside the clubhouse of the L. A. Country Club. It was unforgivable.
"You better hope we don't meet at the wrong place at the wrong time," Dobbins said under his breath. The liquid hate brimming in his eyes quickly wiped the smile from the kid's face.
"I'm--I just work for the firm," he said with an apologetic nod before bowing out of the scene.
Dobbins stuffed the summons carelessly into the pocket of his bright red golf pants and tried to get back to the business of being important. But the day was already tainted. Over drinks and lunch, he had that hollow feeling that everyone was looking at him and seeing right through. The condescending glint in the movie stars' eyes ate away at him like some fast-moving leprosy. Still, through it all, he kept his head up and maintained an endless banter, the same as he would have done if the kid really had just asked for an autograph.
It wasn't until he was ensconced in the passenger seat of his big Mercedes sedan that Dobbins began to vent. Invectives spewed forth like a ruptured sewer line. When the cursing slowed to a trickle, Zee, who was at the wheel, glanced at him ques- tioningly. Summonses and suits had rained down on Dobbins as long as Zee had been working for the powerful agent, but they'd always come from faceless entities, corporations, or government agencies. This was the first time to Zee's knowledge that a client had stooped to something as white as a lawsuit.
"Says I stole his money," Dobbins erupted suddenly in disbelief. "Stole his money!
"Gonna kill him now, Zee. Gonna kill that black-as-a-spade motherfuckin' no good pile of shit.
"Uh-uh," the agent continued, shaking his head. "Uh-uh. Can't let that pile a shit live. He lives, next thing you know, we got motherfuckin' brothers suing our ass every other day! Uh- uh. He's gonna die."
Zee silently agreed with a nod. There were plenty of former athletes whose money Conrad had handled loosely. Usually they could be disposed of with threats both veiled and direct. But Maggs hadn't gone away, and if he succeeded in a lawsuit, which he no doubt would, there would be others to follow. If every client Conrad had swindled suddenly sued him, Zee supposed there wouldn't be enough left over for him to get next month's wages. He chewed on the side of his mouth, contemplating just how he was going to kill Albert Maggs. It was always an interesting notion, how to kill someone. Zee liked to do it differently every time if he had the chance.
