by Bart Tuma
John pulled a small leather bound book from his back pocket. He handed it to Erik. It was a Bible.
“You might want this to answer a lot more questions,” John said. “It’s just the New Testament and Psalms, but it’s small so you can always have it close by.”
“I can’t take this. It looks like you’ve had it a long time, and it has all your notes in it.” Erik added as he thumbed through it. He made to return it.
“I have had it a long time. It’s time for me to get a new one, and it’s time for you to have one close by. Just do me one favor, Erik? I’ll meet you next Sunday at 10 o’clock at New Life Center. Until that time, read my gift to you, which is actually His gift to all of us.”
“Thanks, I’ll see about meeting you next Sunday.” Erik still felt reluctant to commit to anything. When he had opened the Bible, he saw John had marks and note on almost every page. Erik felt like he had a cheat sheet for his high school exams. He knew he needed every answer he could get.
Erik left John in the cashier’s line. Small as the town was, Erik had never met John, but many people in line clearly knew John. It was obvious they had just come from church. Those are his type of people…and I guess now I am, too.”
Chapter Six
John quickly moved to the now considerably shorter line to pay his bill. Through the diner windows he saw Erik get into his pickup and John worried. How much can one kid take? He’ll need someone to help him so he doesn’t get lost in his problems again. Christ will surely help, and that help also needs to be from a mature Christian.
John knew how hard it would be because he had been the same as Erik not that long ago. He remembered the exact day he met Christ.
On that day John walked into a church not to pray, but to get a handout. He, too, had looked like a harvest bum, but at the time John was a bum, a hobo. He had just arrived in Fairfield early in the day in 1969. He hadn’t picked Fairfield as a destination; no one would. John rode the freights, not as a paying customer, but as one who had found an open door on an empty boxcar and jumped aboard. John was hungry when the freight stopped in Fairfield, so he slid off the car and looked for the nearest church for a handout.
It wasn’t unusual for such visitors at the New Life Center. Fairfield was located on the Great Northern train tracks that were the main route from Minneapolis to the Port of Seattle. The train traffic brought its travelers, not from Pullman cars but from empty freight cars. These men were the rejects of society; the ones who couldn’t make it within the main stream. John was one of them, but God still beckoned.
His life, and that of the other hobos, was the life of the big freights with four locomotives that could take twenty minutes with their seemingly endless line of boxcars to pass through Fairfield. As the trains slowed to pass through town, it was easy to see those open cars with men’s legs dangling out the side as they sat staring at nothing. To the kids of Fairfield, watching by the siding, these men were exciting. These men were foreign travelers who were free to come and go as they pleased and the kids would fantasize of the exciting trips they would encounter.
The reality of John’s life wasn’t a fantasy. It was the life of a person who had to search for every meal in trashcans behind restaurants or at soup kitchens. It wasn’t a life anyone would fantasize about or choose to live. It was a life reserved for those who had left their lives and their hopes behind. No one knew or cared about these men.
When John had hopped the freight days before in Seattle, God knew his name and cared to follow him. All of the bums had a story; most were fiction. John’s was true and known by God. John’s story began in the Vietnam War. Most of the people of Fairfield would never hear the stories of what John saw. John was so determined to leave that hell behind that he would not repeat its misery. Later, a few people came to know John had served two tours of duty in Vietnam.
He arrived in Vietnam early when many in the States weren’t even aware there was a place called Vietnam, let alone a war. He stayed through some of the fiercest battles. But he never would tell how it felt or how it looked to be part of such chaos.Only those who fought by his side could relate. At first, John didn’t talk about the war because he couldn’t. After meeting Christ, he didn’t talk about it because he felt the Lord had done such a miracle of saving and healing him from that hell that it would be an injustice to take anyone there in stories.
John was neither a wino nor a dropout. The war had left him beat up, much like Erik, so he hit the trains as a bum with nowhere to go. By the time he got to Fairfield, he knew the fine skill of panhandling and the rituals of soup kitchens. Usually, if the church had such a ministry, they would have food, but the food would come with a price. The price was not dollars the vagrants would not have, but a lecture on the greatness of God and the need for salvation. John knew the ritual well and would bide his time to get the food.
At New Life Center it was different. They invited him in, set real dishes, not paper plates, before him and let him eat in peace. They had noticed a tear in his shirt and asked him if he would like a different one from a collection the congregation had contributed. It almost seemed to John the people felt it would be an honor if he would take one of their shirts. It wasn’t like they were doing him a favor. It was his favor to them. Somehow this attitude confused John about the reason he was there. He was there to get some food and be gone. Suddenly, he felt he was part of their lives.
When John asked the pastor when the sermon would be given, the pastor looked surprised. “I’m sorry. I don’t have a sermon prepared. I’m not sure I know what you mean.” What John meant was that his experience with the church had always come with strings attached. “We’ll do this for you, but you have to do this and be this way and listen to that.” Here, there was simply giving as if it had already been given to them.
They had even offered to let John wash up in the restrooms and use a new toothbrush and comb they put by the sink. After he was done, John didn’t leave. He stayed to hear their lives and then to hear the story of their Savior’s life. He had gotten off a freight train because of hunger, but he didn’t realize the food he would receive during those days would make him never hunger in emptiness and loneliness again.
The pastor of the church, Pastor Hodgson, had been in Fairfield long enough to know its people. He knew they would quickly brand John as a hobo, and that distinction would never be lost. He was a man who wasn’t concerned about where a man had come from, but where he was going. He made sure the people of Fairfield would only know that John had come from the West Coast and that the railroad had brought him. John had worked for the engineering corps in the Army building bridges and temporary camps. It was natural for him to become a carpenter. It was only a matter of days before John looked just like a native Montanan.
Fairfield was a town that knew everything about what every person did in town. They didn’t know or care about what happened in the world outside of Fairfield. Fairfield was its own universe and life outside of it really didn’t matter. So it was an easy place to start a new life. They would never know the other life of John that had ended when he hopped off the freight.
John quickly became part of the community. He was strong and knew how to work, and that was what people respected. The Lord had found a place for him long before he knew the town and His touch healed John of many of the scars he had received during the war. The greatest miracle in his life was that the Lord could take a man completely demolished by the misery of war and heal him so that his hard heart was a soft cushion for others and his faith a strength to many.
John could talk to Erik about the simplicity of Christ because the simple touch of His hand had touched John. Those people who knew him now would never guess the hell and mess his life had passed through, and that was fine with him.
It was because John knew his own past that he said a prayer for Erik as he drove away. John’s healing had come quickly and his transition to the life of Fairfield short. He didn’t know if the same would be true of Erik
since Fairfield had already formed their opinion of him. Besides, John had the wounds of several years at war. Erik’s wounds were a lifetime of abandonment. It might not be as easy for Erik. A hardened heart is harder to heal than a mind damaged by the images of war. War is terrible, but a heart is life.
Chapter Seven
The drive from Fairfield to the Cooper’s farm took twenty-five minutes. The drive always seemed too long and tedious to Erik. At the same time he had driven the route so many times that his mind responded to every chuckhole and dip in the road without any conscious awareness. It was a good time to continue his thoughts. There were still many questions, but they seemed to all come from the last statements John had made: “Christ loves you. He loves you more than you know.” He thought of the past when he drove this road with his dad.
He remembered the usual times of quietness. Although they were both in the car there would be no conversation. There was a certain comfort in knowing his dad was there, but he also wished they could actually talk. The topic of conversation wouldn’t be important. Just to be recognized would be nice. As the fields of grain and occasional farmhouse passed the windows, Erik never knew how to take the silence. Was his dad just not a talker? Were his thoughts of his work all too consuming? Was Erik just a kid who didn’t warrant comments or concern?
Typically, Erik had avoided these thoughts whenever they crept into his mind. Today, as were many things, was different. The thoughts of his dad still stung. His questions were still many, but now there was another reality. Now he knew that there was Someone who cared. God cared for him, and as he spoke with John, John also seemed to care. What John said made sense. Maybe his dad hadn’t ignored him out of indifference. Maybe his dad was so caught in his own despair and sense of abandonment that it was impossible to reach out to a kid.
He also thought of his mom. This hurt was deeper than that which he felt towards his dad. He remembered her abandonment. He had never found an answer to how anyone could be so cold hearted as to simply leave her child. Even after the talk with John, the feeling of brokenness toward her existed. The only reason he knew there was a difference today was that he continued to think of her instead of quickly wiping any thought of her away.
John had mentioned the love and forgiveness of Christ was meant to be extended to others through his followers. John had explained that since Christ had forgiven him, Erik would have to forgive others. John said that people could and would hurt you, but that you needed to depend on Christ for His healing power. Regarding his mom, this wouldn’t be easy.
It wouldn’t be easy, but Erik began to see it as a necessity. It was a necessity, not because John had talked about forgiveness, but because his mother was his only tie to a real family. He could talk about forgiving his dad and carry out that process, but that would all happen to an empty stage. His mother was alive. She was someone he could stand in front of and begin to show how Christ had changed him. She was alive and real and, to make his move to Christ tangible, it only made sense that this would be the starting point. He didn’t know how successful his attempt would be after so many years. As the pickup left the blacktop and entered the gravel road for the last six miles to the Coopers, Erik formulated a plan to start that process.
But then his mind switched to the Coopers. He had always known they cared. They had always tried to show how much they cared. At the same time it was hard to accept their efforts. First of all there was the matter of the land and farmhouse that he lived in with his dad. Uncle Henry got it when his dad died. His dad’s farm was always too small to be profitable. He tried leasing land, but the lease was too costly and drove him deeper into debt.
When he died the bills were more than the land was worth. Henry agreed with the bank to pay the bills and take the land. His plan was to one day give that land and all of his land to Erik. Henry never told Erik his plans. He wanted to wait until Erik had learned to love the farm as he did. Later Erik found out Henry struggled for years to pay those bills, but he got more land, and land was king to a farmer.
And the farmhouse he and his dad lived in. The house was a wreck and it never kept up once his mother left. The sheds around the house were even worse, but they sat on five acres of futile farm land. They sat empty for seven years, falling apart even further, and doing no one any good. No one told Erik. No one asked Erik, it was just one of many things hidden from Erik. One day Uncle Henry hired workers to tear down the house and sheds. The workers got the lumber from the house and Henry plowed the land into crops. No one would even have known there was a house there after the crops took over. Erik dreams were the only place that house would be found.
It was only by chance years later that Erik drove by the place and found out what happened. That was the day he moved out to the bunkhouse.
Erik knew they hadn’t taken him in for the land. Erik rationalized they had little choice but to take him. Land or no land Erik had no place else to go, and his aunt and uncle had to take him.
Erik thought back to the early years with his aunt and uncle. He had felt as if he were a stranger in their house, no matter what they did to make him feel included. He remembered as a kid he would sneak away as if he were a runaway. It’s hard to be a runaway when you were twenty-five miles from town and too young to drive. He would go down to an old tin culvert on the road to Fairfield. The culvert was big enough for him to sit in and escape. The culvert was only yards away from the farmhouse, but in its closed space Erik felt far away.
It was in this culvert that he began his dream life. The feel of cold tin against his back took him far away from the farm. In the culvert he couldn’t see the land except the hole of light at both ends. The ribbed metal looked as if it were a different world of an exotic vehicle. The different world of this place allowed him to dream.
Erik would dream for hours. He would fall into self-pity as he thought of how unfair the world was to him. When the self-pity turned to a cloud of depression, he turned to his dreams. The dreams were of his dad and his love for Erik. In the culvert he could almost feel the cool breezes by the mountain beaver dams. His dreams never contained the amount of fish he caught or the big one that he landed. The only figure he could see was his dad. In the culvert his dad hadn’t left him, and he was almost close enough to touch.
His dreams took him to another world, a much better land.
He was surprised when he came back to the farmhouse after his attempts of “running away”. The Coopers seemed as if they had never even realized he had left. Erik never knew how long he stayed in the culvert. A watch was not necessary for a kid on the farm. To him, his dreams were so enveloping he imaged himself gone for days. He didn’t know if he should feel hurt that they didn’t miss him or hurt that his world was so different from theirs.
It was these dreams that he would carry into his teens and then early twenties. That culvert was his escape, and he remembered those times as he drove to the farm now. It was time to move beyond a hollow dream in a hollow tube. It was time for him to talk to the Coopers as if they were his family. They were the only family he had and he knew he had hurt them too long. It was time for a change, more than just a night in a pickup or a talk in a church. John said the simple task of the Christian was to love God and his neighbor. It was time he made that a rule to the Coopers and thanked them for their love.
The rest of the trip home was short, with only the sounds of meshing gears and roaring motor. Just the idea that Erik thought of this trip as going “home” made him realize that he really had changed. Now that his decision was made, the sooner it was carried out the better. The pickup sped up even when the road went from blacktop pavement to gravel, and as he turned into the Cooper’s farm he was going so fast, the tools on the seat slammed hard on the opposite door and Erik could feel his rear tires sliding in a fishtail on the loose gravel.
He drove to the main house rather than stopping by the bunkhouse to clean himself of last night’s fight. As he walked towards the house he pulled hard on his shirt
in an attempt to straighten any wrinkles.
Both his aunt and uncle met him at the door. Their concern was evident on their faces. “Erik, what are you doing? You just about took off the front gate. Did you forget where you lived or something? Slow down.” Henry spoke first.
Mary spoke nearly simultaneously. “Erik, what’s going on? We didn’t know what to think. We didn’t know if we should call the police or just get mad at you. Why didn’t you call? And what’s happened to you,” she continued without even a breath. “Your face is all swollen and cut and bruised.”
“Fightin’, is my guess,” Uncle Henry answered before Erik could begin.
Erik stopped the volley of questions “Please, just let me talk. It’s been a long night, but I want to explain.”
They moved aside and followed him a little bewilderedly into the kitchen.
Erik sat at the table and stared at his hands gripped together, and wondered how to put words to something so personal. How could he explain what happened without them judging him, and thinking this was just another one if his dreams? He still didn’t know exactly what had happened, and he didn’t know if they would understand or not. They were godly people, but did they know his God or just a church?
“I know I look terrible, but don’t look at me,” he began. “Last night, something happened. I talked to God last night.”
“What did you talk about? Uncle Henry asked.
Erik looked back to his hands when he heard this question. He suddenly felt uncertain.
“I told Him that I needed Him and that I know I had turned my back on Him for too many years, but I didn’t expect Him to care about me ‘cause I’d never cared about Him.”
“And did God talk to you?” His uncle asked.
“No, He didn’t, but, yes, He did. I mean, I didn’t hear a booming voice or anything, but I could almost feel Him hold me like to say its okay.”
