Snow Day

by Billy Coffey

  Nothing. At first, anyway. But after that, a faint twinkle in her eyes. Not of surrender, but of agreement.

  “Come on,” I said. “You know you want to.”

  For a moment, I thought I had lost her. But then, just when I was about to thank her for her time and walk away, she leaned in close to me.

  “Merry Christmas,” she said, almost in a whisper. Then she did her best to hide the smile that was bubbling onto her face. It was a wonderful smile. A beautiful smile.

  A Christmas smile.

  “Thank you,” I said. “And a Merry Christmas to you, too, ma’am.”

  I turned around and walked toward the doors. As I passed the old man handing out the shopping carts, I patted him on the back and gave him a “Merry Christmas,” too.

  “Huh?” he said.

  I walked out of the store and back to my vehicle. The snow had begun to taper off a bit, and the clouds had begun to thin. Even the sun hinted that it might peek out, giving me hope that if one storm could ebb, then so could another.

  I checked on my bread and milk and other things, which were doing quite nicely in the cold backseat. After a few minor adjustments to the radio and the heat, I pulled out of the parking lot and headed for home.

  It had been a pretty good trip, all in all. We had our requisite bread and milk to see us through the storm. Josh had a Superman costume for Santa to bring—who, I found out, was alive and well and driving a Chevrolet truck. I saw someone from high school I hadn’t seen in years. I learned a lesson from an old man with a skillet. And there were Charlie and Helen, who taught me a thing or two about beauty and love. Add to all of that the fact that I had just struck a blow against the evil of modern culture, and I was having a pretty good day.

  Real good, as a matter of fact.

  Yep, things were looking up.

  A postscript is called for here. The next year, the store initiated the return of baby Jesus to the season. No more assurances of blandly happy holidays for its customers. Out were the generic songs and nonoffensive quasi-salutations. In were the carols and “Merry Christmas.” It seems I was not the only one to protest.

  10

  The Two-Lane Road

  I knew who it was the moment his truck crested the hill about a hundred yards in front of me. Bobby Barnes. Had to be. No one else in town drove a jacked-up red Dodge, and no one around here looked that mean from that far away.

  I figured I had about twenty seconds to decide whether to acknowledge him or not. The etiquette was muddy. I had known Bobby since childhood. I knew his wife—I guess that’s ex-wife—Carla, and both of their boys. Bobby was a friend. Old Bobby, anyway.

  But the guy coming over the hill wasn’t Old Bobby anymore. He was New Bobby now, and I didn’t care much for version 2.0.

  Fifty yards away brought him close enough for me to make a positive identification. I could see his trademark blue baseball cap and Uncle Jesse beard even with the sun bouncing off the snow. Should I wave, just out of courtesy? I didn’t know. Old Bobby would want a wave. Old Bobby would already be flashing his high-beams and swerving in and out of my lane just to get my attention. New Bobby, though? He might swerve over into my lane and not swerve back, hoping that somebody somehow got hit. That was New Bobby.

  So maybe I should just do nothing. Just pass him like a stranger. Because that’s what we were now. Just two people passing on the road, me going one way and him the other, both on the two-lane and through life.

  But that didn’t seem right, either. I wanted to believe that Old Bobby was still in there somewhere. That time and circumstance hadn’t completely killed him. It might take some life-changing event to bring him back, something like what had changed him into the person he’d become. And maybe it could also be something as small and incidental as a wave on a snowy December day from someone he once knew.

  Twenty yards away. Time to make my decision.

  This is so stupid, I thought. Just do it or don’t.

  No, I corrected myself. This wasn’t stupid and it wasn’t a simple matter of either doing or not. This wasn’t just a wave. This was reaching out to someone who had gotten himself lost. Yet reaching out to someone, even with such a simple gesture, may do more harm than good. Especially when you do not want to be reached. At all.

  Ten yards.

  Reaching out won the mental toss. I threw up my hand and waved, even shook it from side to side a little just in case he didn’t see me. Bobby drove past with both hands firmly attached to the steering wheel.

  Maybe he didn’t see me. Maybe he was just concentrating on navigating through the snow.

  Maybe. You never know.

  The present consensus around town was that Bobby Barnes was going to hell. Even Bobby agreed. “I’m Bobby Barnes, and I’m going to hell” was how he introduced himself to the strangers who brought their vehicles into his shop for repair. Some didn’t really know how to take that. Others thought it was just about the funniest thing they had ever heard. “Well, welcome to the club!” was what a customer once replied. They both had a good laugh over that one.

  It wasn’t that Bobby was an evil man. Nor did he deny God His existence. He was just a man who had been turned around in life, which happens to a lot of people. Sometimes it’s a gradual turn. Other times, a hard one. Bobby’s was so hard that the pull made him let go of most everything that mattered to him.

  I had met Bobby during a summer Bible school over twenty years earlier. Summer and school were two words I did not care to put together. Throwing Bible in there didn’t make things any better. But I went, mostly because Mom wanted me out of the house and around other kids. “It’ll be good for you,” she said.

  She was right. Bible school was okay. Not so much the sitting in church and learning Bible stories part. The playtime part. Hide-and-seek especially. You haven’t lived until you’ve played hide-and-seek with thirty kids.

  It was a very democratic process. All kids took a turn being It whether they wanted to or not. There were varying opinions as to the value of hiding rather than seeking. Me, I didn’t like hiding. Hiding was boring. It was rare that I could go more than a few minutes without either laughing or getting the jitters, both of which would get me found in short order.

  I loved being It. I loved the seeking. It felt better to wander about and look than to be cooped up in the same old place and quiet. And I was good at it, too. I always found everyone except Bobby, a feat that was considered perfection. In most games of hide-and-seek, finding everyone was considered the only way to win. Not for us. Finding everyone but Bobby was good enough. It was universally accepted that Bobby Barnes was the best hider in Bible school, and several of us considered him the best hider in the history of the universe. Nobody ever found him in the four years he was at Bible school—a record that exists to this day, at least around here.

  Everyone wanted to know Bobby’s secret, but he kept mum for years. “A magician never reveals his tricks,” he’d say. But when we were pretty close friends he confessed to me. His secret was that he always hid in the cemetery. A brilliant tactic. No kid in his right mind wants to go in the cemetery.

  As good as he was at hiding, though, Bobby was bad at seeking. He would take his required turn being It, count to fifty, and then wander around, doing the absolute minimum before calling, “Olly olly oxen free!” and ending the game. It was a confidence booster for the younger kids who hid in the obvious places. The more experienced players, however, felt cheated. They knew Bobby never tried. All he ever wanted to do was go hide again.

  Hiding was “his thing,” Bobby would tell me. But not seeking. Definitely not finding. Even Bobby admitted he couldn’t find water if he fell out of a boat.

  His parents began accompanying him to church on Sundays. Bible school had a good effect on their boy, and they were curious as to what Jesus could do for them, too. And as it turned out, Jesus could do quite a lot. They were all baptized on the same Sunday a few months later. Bobby’s father began teaching a Sunday school
class about a year after that, and his mother chaired the visitation committee.

  Bobby soon found his niche in the church, too—mission trips. He took his first trip to a Native American reservation out West, which lit the unexpected fires of wanderlust. He was gone for a week every summer after that. Sometimes closer to home. Many times not.

  He opened his own repair shop after he graduated from high school. He could fix a vehicle almost as good as he could hide, and maybe better. Transmissions, motors, brakes, anything. If it was broken or squeaky, you took it to Bobby. He was happy then, as happy as I had ever seen him, and it showed. “I’m doin’ my thing,” he told me once while fixing a busted gauge on my truck. “I love doin’ my thing.”

  One sunny April morning, in limped a dying Toyota Tercel driven by the prettiest little lady Bobby had ever seen. Her name was Carla, and she was late for work. Bobby told her that she had a busted alternator and it would take a while to fix, but he would gladly give her a lift. She gave him her phone number as a thank-you. Everyone thought they made the perfect couple, and they were right. Bobby and Carla’s wedding was a thing of beauty.

  Bobby wanted to continue his mission work, and Carla was more than willing to tag along. They would close up the shop for a few weeks every summer and strike out into the world to spread the gospel. Africa. Bolivia. Russia. Brazil. Ireland. The two were unstoppable. The only thing that slowed them down was the birth of their twins, Matthew and Mark.

  The boys had just turned six when Hurricane Katrina blew through the Gulf Coast in 2005. Carla had family in Mississippi. They managed to get out in time, but their house was destroyed.

  Katrina shook Bobby. Like the rest of us, he bore witness to the aftermath every evening on the news and via reports from Carla’s family. He decided it was up to him to do his part. God would want that. God would expect that.

  One Sunday before the sermon, Bobby asked the preacher if he could say a few words.

  “I know you’ve all been watching the television about what’s going on down in New Orleans,” he said. “They’ve finally started getting some relief in there, and the government’s asking anyone who wants to help to head on down. Carla and I have talked about this, prayed about it, and we’ve decided to take the family down there for a while. I think God’s calling us to do this, and I’d appreciate all the prayers and help you could give. The Lord has shown us what He can do in our lives. I think those people down there need to know what He can do in theirs.”

  Bake sales and car washes ensued. Special collections were taken. Donations were given by local businesses. A few weeks later, the Barnes family was on its way to the Big Easy, which by then was the Big Disaster.

  That was the last I saw of Old Bobby.

  They came back three months later. I saw Carla one day at the bank soon after they had returned. She said the trip was hard on them all, but Bobby especially. “He’s so sensitive, you know,” she said. “Something happened to him down there. I don’t know what. He’s not the same as he was. He won’t talk about it, either. I’ve tried. But it’ll all come out sooner or later. Bobby can’t let stuff simmer inside him for too long before he lets it all out.”

  She was right.

  A few Sundays later the Barnes family was in church again, and once again Bobby asked the preacher if he could share a few things before the sermon began.

  “I just need to get something off my chest,” he told the congregation. “I’d like to talk about our trip to New Orleans for a minute.”

  He looked at the floor and shuffled his weight. “I thought it would be a good experience for my family. That it would show us what God was really like, you know? And boy, it sure did. You people wouldn’t believe what it was like down there. You can watch all the television you want, but it don’t matter. You just have to be there. You just have to see it for yourselves.

  “Carla and the kids, they had it pretty good. They stayed in the safe part of the city, you know, tending to people and fixing meals and such. They did a good job. I’m proud of them.”

  Carla and the boys smiled.

  “Me,” he continued, “I had the dirty work to do. I thought I’d be going down there to fix things up, you know? But there wasn’t much left to fix, really. It was mostly just stuff to clean up and tear down.

  “Going into the houses, that was the worst. It was horrible. One guy found a body that was all bloated and green and had been chewed on by gators and Lord knows what else.”

  There was a small gasp from someone in the back. Carla sent a pleading look to Bobby from her pew, but he simply shook his head.

  “No,” he answered her and everyone else. “I gotta tell you what it was like. It’s important. That’s the truth. That’s the way it was. People cryin’, walkin’ around like they’re zombies because their hearts were gone and their minds had just shut down because they couldn’t handle it all.

  “I saw parents who couldn’t find their children. They didn’t know if they were on a bus to Houston or somewhere out in Lake Pontchartrain. I talked to kids who had watched their mommies and daddies get swept away by the water and the wind. And I… couldn’t handle it. I mean, I just couldn’t.

  “I’d sit and pray and ask God what I should do and say. But down there in that hell, He didn’t talk or do anything. There was nothing. And I would pray and pray, I would beg for Him to show me why this all had to happen. But I got nothin’. No words. And I started to feel squeezed, you know? Like God was just squeezing me and squeezing me tighter. And I just couldn’t take it anymore.”

  Bobby paused for a moment, gazing out to the congregation. “I prayed to God that this trip would change me and my family. I can’t speak for them, but I can say it sure changed me. I went down there to show those poor people what God could do. I didn’t need to do that, though. They’d already seen what God could do.”

  Carla looked up at her husband. A look of panic flashed across her face.

  “We talk a lot in this church about how most of the bad things in this life are because of us or the devil or something. That might be true. We all live in a fallen world, no doubt about that. But Katrina? That wasn’t us. We didn’t do that. That was God. God made that storm, and God killed those people.”

  Carla’s concerned look was now mirrored on every face in the church.

  “Me,” he said, “I can’t sit here anymore and sing about what a friend we have in Jesus. Those people didn’t have a friend in Jesus. And I’m sure all those kids would rather have their mommies and daddies back than have a friend in Jesus. Am I wrong?”

  He looked at the congregation, then at the preacher. No one answered.

  “Am I?”

  Carla began to sob.

  “I can’t worship a God that does stuff like this to people. We have enough to deal with on our own, you know? I still believe in Him, I guess. But I can’t worship Him. I can’t tell people God loves them, because I don’t know if He really does. But I’ll tell you what I do know. I’m not coming here anymore. I’m puttin’ my Bible away. I can’t read it. I’ve tried a couple of times, but every time I start I just see that body pulled out of that house or those kids cryin’ for their parents or those parents cryin’ for their kids. I can’t speak for Carla or the boys. But I gotta do my thing, and this is it.”

  With that, Bobby Barnes stepped into the aisle and walked out of church for the last time, leaving his sobbing wife and his two sons alone in their pew.

  Some in the congregation began to cry, Bobby’s mother among them. The preacher stood up and walked to the podium to speak. No words came.

  Months passed, and Carla hung on as long as she could.

  She was sure Bobby would find his way back. “He’s so sensitive, you know,” she would repeat to everyone who asked. “He’ll work it all out. He has to.” But by then he was New Bobby, and there appeared to be no going back.

  The most immediate changes were visible at the shop. The marquee sign out front was changed from Life is short, pray h
ard to Oil Change $28.95 State Insp $10.00. Gone as well was the picture of Jesus knocking on a door that had hung over the cash register. “He can knock all He wants to,” Bobby told a customer one day. “Ain’t nobody home anymore.” He even started opening on Sundays from ten to three. He didn’t have anything else to do, he told people, so he might as well do his thing.

  Carla took the boys and left soon after that. She knew by then that the family would never be the way they were. She felt horrible about it; part of her felt that God wanted her to stay, that maybe she would be the one to bring Bobby back again. But as much as she tried to convince her husband to come back to church, Bobby tried just as hard to keep her away from it. He would hide the car keys on Sundays so she and the boys wouldn’t be able to go. He began drinking and threw her Bible in the trash one night after an argument. In the end, Carla felt as if she had to make a choice between her husband and her God.

  Carla married again last year, a nice man who loves her and treats Matthew and Mark like his own. She’s happy now, as happy as anyone’s ever seen her. But living in a small town like Mattingly means that ex-husbands will often run into ex-wives, and Bobby and Carla are no different. I’ve seen them in the grocery store and at the gas station, and I can tell that Carla will always love Bobby. Both the old and the new.

  Bobby’s business trailed off a bit once word got around about what happened. It bounced back, though, once everyone figured out that New Bobby could fix a transmission just as well as Old Bobby could. The eventual destination of his eternal soul became a secondary consideration to how well he could use a socket wrench. People generally have enough to worry about in their own lives. As for what’s going on in someone else’s, well, that’s their business. We all make our own choices in life. We’re all just trying to get by.