Far Country

by Malone, Karen

  Reverend Graham shrugged. “Probably not today,” he said truthfully. “Many things will have to change.”

  “Now that’s an understatement. It will take an act of God.”

  Reverend Graham allowed a twinkle to enter his eye. “Then it’s our business to expect God to Act.”

  Bitter disappointment dragged at Steve’s heart. He could see no way to claim his rights as Gracie’s father that wouldn’t end up destroying any hope he could have of a loving relationship with his daughter. Lee Ann and Richard would fight him, and they would see to it that Gracie would grow up hating the man who was trying to steal her from her loving grandparents. He had no choice but to leave it in God’s hands, but at the moment, acknowledging that truth felt more like failure than victory.

  “I know that God can choose to act at any time, but is it blasphemous to request an early resolution?” He said dully.

  Reverend Graham laughed mirthlessly. “Let me teach you a greek word. KAIROS. It means ‘when God’s time has been fulfilled.’ You can ask God for anything, just know that it will happen when HE decides it is time.”

  “God’s time.” Steve said flatly.

  “Kairos.” Reverend Graham affirmed.

  “What do I do in the meantime?”

  “Wait. Pray. Trust. Pray some more. And believe. Believe that He will act.”

  Steve sat quietly with his head bowed for some time. Reverend Graham waited silently. He had the impression that Steve was gathering his strength for the coming trial, and he knew that Steve would need every bit of strength he could gain. Of all God’s tests, doing nothing was among the hardest to obey.

  At last Steve raised his head and looked at his mentor. Reverend Graham saw a resolve in Steve’s eyes that surprised him. Steve smiled bleakly.

  “Okay then. Pray and wait. God’s time. Expect victory.” He exhaled noisily. “I got the message.” He smiled wanly at Pastor Graham. “Thanks for talking me through this. You are right, I don’t like this, but I don’t see that I have any other choice. Not if I love her.”

  The two men stood, and Reverend Graham hugged Steve with great affection. “God’s already done great things to get your attention, Steve, so keep your eyes open. I don’t think He’s anywhere near finished with you yet.”

  “Maybe I should be praying that He doesn’t wait another five years for the next hurdle,” Steve quipped, trying to sound more positive than he felt at the moment.

  For a long time after Steve had left, Robert Graham pondered the things that Steve had told him. He suspected that Steve had it right, and that their one moment of indiscretion had also been a moment of wondrous creation.

  Imagining the bittersweet moment of being handed a living breathing miniature replica of the daughter who could never again speak or laugh or even know that she had born a child, Reverend Graham sank to his knees at the alter in praise of the One who had saved a small life to bring hope and a second chance to Sarah’s brokenhearted parents, and perhaps, a sense of purpose to a New Believer...

  He wondered if the Bolton’s could ever find it in their hearts to acknowledge Steve as Gracie’s father. Could they learn to forgive and love Steve as they once had loved him? Privately, Reverend Graham thought that five more years might be cutting things a bit tight.

  Robert also gave thought to the story that the Bolton’s had put out about Gracie’s parentage and the mysterious cousin in Memphis. He wondered whom he could contact there to check on the facts of the story. There had to be some way to verify the birth…

  Suddenly, he smacked himself on the forehead. Idiot! If Sarah Bolton had given birth to a daughter in Wilmington, then it would be a matter of public record! He supposed that he could take a drive down to Wilmington sometime this week and do some poking around without raising any red flags. He would bring Hester. She always enjoyed walking through the shops downtown…

  Ch 22

  Love Letters

  Steve held the composition book in his lap, unsure of how to begin. He was sitting on the beach at Topsail Island, their destination on the night of the accident that had taken Sarah away from him forever. For some reason, this felt like the right place to come today.

  Steve watched the waves crash in lazy slow motion on the beach, and gloried in the feel of the salty breeze and blazing sun. He wanted to remember this day forever. In some strange way, he felt that he was beginning his life again.

  He had just left Reverend Graham’s office, where his pastor had given him the news. There was a record of a birth on file in Wilmington. Sarah had given birth to a child – their child! - On February 5th.

  When Robert Graham had told him the news, Steve had collapsed in the chair and cried, huge wracking sobs. Tears of great sadness for Sarah and for the child she never knew she had given birth to, but mostly of thanksgiving, that there was still, miraculously, a small part of Sarah in the world, living and laughing and wonderfully alive and perfect..

  I have a daughter! Sarah and I have a daughter! He could barely contain the joy he felt in his heart each time he said those words. And for now at least, that knowledge was going to have to be enough.

  Steve knew Reverend Graham was right. As much as he wanted to get to know Gracie, it was more important that Gracie was safe and happy now. He had to believe that his chance would come one day. Please God, let it be sooner than later!

  What would Gracie think, though, when she found out that her father lived only a few blocks away, maybe even remember speaking to him once, but that he had never been involved in her life? Would the Bolton’s tell her the truth about him, or would she think that he had never wanted his daughter?

  There would come a time when Gracie would want to know who her father was, though, and her grandparents would not be able to stop her from searching for him. He wanted her to know that he loved her, loved her enough to stay away from her. So he had bought this notebook. He could write her, at least, and when the day came, she would know that she had been in his heart from the day he had first heard her name.

  He bent over the notebook, the pen clenched firmly in his hand.

  Dear Gracie…

  Ch 23

  The Longest Day

  May faded into June, and the warm North Carolina spring sank into the sweltering heat of July. Steve’s knee steadily improved under a regime of indoor exercise and diving trips with Beth. Steve did not forget Deborah’s warnings about the blonde nurse, but nothing Beth said or did seemed to have an ulterior motive. Still, the thought that David and Beth MAY have been together at one point was enough to cool any romantic ideas he might have had about her. Besides, as he had told Chuck, why complicate things, when he expected to return to Hanging Rock in a few more months?

  In the meantime, Steve had been fortunate to fill a temporary position at Hammock’s Beach State Park, a few miles away in the town of Swansboro. There, he manned the office, did lots of paperwork, issued camping permits for Bear Island, and conducted summer classes for youth groups. It was pretty tame by his standards, but the sunsets were still spectacular, especially when he watched them from a kayak on the inter-coastal waterway.

  Now when he watched the red orange ball drop toward the horizon in its bed of purple and gold clouds, he thanked God for the moment that filled his soul with peace, and prayed that soon he would be able to share the moment with Gracie.

  “In your time, Lord,” he prayed grimly, willing himself to stay away from the little girl and allow the Lord to have control of his future. In the long days since the first week of June, Steve’s journal to Gracie had grown by many pages.

  Now, late in July, Steve waited on the dock at Hammocks Beach, preparing to greet and escort the latest group of children from the ‘Summer Fun’ program. It was the third group this week, and the youngest. Steve was hoping that this younger group would prove an easier group to work with. The 10 to 12 year olds had proven pretty rowdy. By the end of the three hour trip, their counselors were looking frazzled and exhausted. The pre-teen bunch
had been a handful too. Steve had even had to break up a hot and heavy make-out session behind the snack bar between a young couple who didn’t appear to be more than thirteen years old!

  As the white activity bus pulled up and began unloading its contents, Steve’s eyes widened slightly. The children were so small, many literally had to jump from the bottom step of the bus to the ground. He consulted his clipboard. “Chipmunks,” he muttered. First and second graders, then. At least, he observed, they appeared to be more obedient than yesterday’s pre-adolescent hooligans!

  Each child lined up behind their counselor and waited while the adults completed the head count and were ready to lead their charges to the dock. They were cute, he thought, all wearing tennis visors that they had clearly decorated themselves, and a wide variety of sunglasses. Steve greeted the twenty or so children with a friendly smile, and talked briefly about the ecology of the inter-coastal waterway. He described the different kinds of wildlife and birds that they were likely to see during their ferry ride and the walk across the island to the beach. He finished by letting them handle and guess the names of the large shell collection he kept on hand for visitors to examine.

  As the sun heated up the wooden dock he could see that the children were becoming fidgety, so he led them down to the ferry, and stood by the gangway to help hand the littler children and nervous grownups into the boat.

  “Hi, Mr. Steve! Look – I got my cast off!”

  Startled, Steve looked down into a pair of huge gray eyes. Her long black hair was pulled into a ponytail and she was grinning up at him as if the meeting in the doctor’s office had only been yesterday morning. “Gracie?” He breathed her name, hardly daring to believe that he was holding her little hand in his!

  Her grin widened, if that was possible, pleased that the big man remembered her. “I knew that was you! But I wasn’t really sure until now, because of your ranger clothes. I didn’t know that you were a ranger.”

  “I’m glad your cast is off,” he told her gaping at her and at a loss for words. Then she was gone, taking a seat under the awning and slipping on the small life preserver as the counselors handed them out to the children.

  It wasn’t until the next child in line, tired of waiting for Ranger Williams to help him, jumped into the boat and nearly fell, that Steve recalled himself and apologized to the little boy. Quickly, he helped the rest of the children into the ferry, then assisted the last counselor as she stepped gingerly down into the mildly rocking boat.

  More agitated than he could believe, he took his sit near the wheel house, barely listening to Captain Fletcher as he introduced himself, and reminded them to stay seated once the boat started moving.

  The captain replaced the mike and threw the idling engine in reverse. The little ferry lurched away from the mooring, and into open water toward Bear Island. Walter, the 1st mate, picked up the mike and pointed out the sights as they passed, from a long line of brown pelicans moving across the sky to a snowy white egret standing one legged in a patch of marsh grass.

  From his seat, Steve watched Gracie as she chatted happily with the other children around her. Once she glanced over her shoulder and waved gaily in his direction. He smiled in return, his stomach doing flip flops. Reverend Graham had found the birth certificate at City Hall in Wilmington, but he needed no piece of paper to recognize the impudent carefree grin and laughing gray eyes as belonging to the love he had lost so long ago. He watched her hungrily, memorizing her every move and every turn of her head.

  All too soon the ferry docked on the Island, and the children trooped off down the trail that led to Hammocks Beach. Steve led the way, mechanically pointing out various tree specimens and the huge osprey nest just visible in a dead pine tree near the shoreline. The children trailed after the adults down the long path that led to the far side of the island, until they came out of the trees and stood before the huge sand dune that marked the beginning of the beach. The sound of waves crashing on the sand just beyond their sight revived them. With shrieks of joy, they ran helter-skelter past the counselors and over the top of the sandy hill to the wide stretch of beach on the other side.

  The adults hurried up the slope in their wake, and Steve trudged carefully behind them, mindful of how a misstep on the unstable dry sand could send him into a world of pain and an even more prolonged recovery time. He had rarely crossed over the dune to the beach this summer, figuring it wasn’t worth the risk, but today he would have crossed all the dunes at Kitty hawk to spend more time near Gracie.

  As he cleared the top of the dune, Steve paused and checked out the scene below. It was low tide, and the waves were mild. The children had shed their sandals and sun visors as they ran down the slope to the beach, and many were already splashing and running through the shallow water. Gracie was in the thick of things, racing a friend along the edge of the waves.

  A youth counselor of about nineteen or twenty paused beside Steve, keeping a wary eye on the frolicking youngsters. “It always scares me when we take the kids to the beach,” she fretted. “So much can go wrong. I’m terrified one of them will go out too deep and get sucked into a rip tide or something.”

  “They make me pretty nervous, too,” Steve agreed. “But so far this summer we’ve only had to go after one kid.”

  “Really?” She asked apprehensively. “What happened to him?”

  “Oh, he wasn’t really in physical danger,” Steve assured her with a short laugh. “He just couldn’t resist swimming out into the breakers and doing a little body surfing on the incoming waves. We nabbed him in the shallows and cut the entire trip short. Believe me, he was not a popular guy with his group!”

  The girl giggled in amusement. “I guess not!” She agreed scanning the beach. Suddenly she tensed, and skidded down the dune. “Justin!” She called sharply. “No throwing sand, sweetie! Stop that immediately!”

  Left alone, Steve made his way down the dune also, strolling along in Gracie’s general direction. He stopped some distance away, willing himself to remain separate. In a very real way, the air around him seemed to thrum with unseen possibilities. Steve was certain that God had heard the prayers of his heart, and that he might be about to experience the real meaning of “God’s Time”, if he would but trust in the Lord to make the next move. And so, he waited.

  A moment later, he was literally shaken out of his reverie by a youngster tugging on his trouser leg. Steve glanced down. Several children watched him excitedly as the little boy held out a nearly undamaged conch shell. With an effort Steve admired it and told the children its name. Encouraged, several other children presented shells for his inspection, until one little girl held up a shark’s tooth nearly an inch long. That find sent nearly all the children running off to search the water’s edge for other newly uncovered treasures. Steve glanced around and saw that, instead of being drawn into the group around Steve, Gracie had moved farther away from him down the beach, and his heart sank a little. She appeared to have forgotten him completely! And he had been so certain that God was about to act. Why would God bring her this close to him, and not do something…! Frustrated and more than a little disappointed with God, Steve limped back to a shaded area near the snack shop, and watched Gracie from a distance, feeling forgotten and abandoned.

  After lunch, Steve pointed out that the tide had turned and was now coming in. Would anybody like to help build a sand castle? Eager hands reached for the plastic cups Steve handed out to use as shovels, and nearly all the children helped to create a huge pile of sand. The children worked hard to square up the sides of the sand pile, while the adults worked to create a crenellated battlement around the top. Then they set to work digging an impressive moat, and decorating the top and sides of the sand castle with pretty shells and clumps of seaweed.

  By the time the water began to pour into the deep moat, most of the kids had lost all interest in the castle’s fate and had returned to splashing in the waves. Steve, however, watched idly as the outer rampart crumbled from the re
lentless assaults from the incoming tide.

  Suddenly, unexpectedly, Gracie appeared at his elbow. Despite the sunscreen and little visor hat, her nose was a slightly sunburned, and her pony tail was falling out.

  “Looks like you’ve had a good time,” Steve observed smiling.

  “The best!” She agreed happily. She watched now as another wave bit into the castle wall.

  “It won’t be long now,” Steve said.

  “The wall broke,” Grace said, frowning. “We’ve got to fix it!” In a moment Gracie was on her knees, scooping up great handfuls of wet sand and patching the breaker wall.

  “Come on!” She commanded Steve, who hadn’t moved. “Help me!” She cried impatiently.

  Steve sighed. “Gracie, you can’t stop the waves. It will just wash away again.”

  “Not yet,” she insisted. “Not if you help!” Steve started forward, knowing that the effort was futile, but unable to tell the child no. Then he caught sight of a large piece of driftwood that had washed high up on the beach during a recent storm.

  “I’ll be right back,” he promised, and hurried to grab the twisted old branch. He dragged it back to where Gracie was doggedly piling more sand in another breach. “Here,” he said, shifting it in front of the castle. “this will strengthen the wall.’

  Gracie’s eyes lit up. “Yeah, that will help a lot!”

  Steve dropped to his knees beside Gracie, and together they scooped sand around the driftwood branch, and re-dug the moat. The breakers split as they hit the driftwood wall and for the moment, the castle was safe.

  Gracie surveyed their efforts with satisfaction. “We saved it!” She cried happily.

  “For a little while, at least,” Steve amended, leaning back on his arms and stretching out his stiff knee. “A perfect example of why you should build your house on a rock instead of on the sand,” he said, half to himself.