Broken: A story of hope and forgiveness

by Kevin Mark Smith



  BROKEN: a story of hope and forgiveness

  by Kevin Mark Smith

  BROKEN: a story of hope and forgiveness

  Copyright © 2012

  Kevin Mark Smith

  All rights reserved.

  Scripture quotations are from:

  The Holy Bible, English Standard Version® (ESV®), copyright © 2001 by Crossway, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

  or

  THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  The LORD is close to the brokenhearted

  and saves those who are crushed in spirit.

  —Psalm 34:18

  Prologue

  The sun was sinking fast in the western sky as Landon drove his worn-out navy blue Toyota pickup truck down a curvy, flat, and unpaved northern Oklahoma road. He slowed the truck down to a creep as he pulled alongside the front lawn of a modest yet shabby ranch-style home on the outskirts of Darkwell. The off-white paint of the home was peeling terribly, and the front door, once bright red, was faded and peeling in places, too. There had once been a screen door, but the only thing left of it were broken hinges and a latch. There was a garage, but it was just the single-car type, and it was now stuffed with unused overflow from the house—things no one wanted any more but no one was willing to part with, either—so its resemblance to other garages was in name only. The cars meant for a garage were instead stored under the relentless Oklahoma sun’s heat rays, which beat down on the home’s smallish paved but seriously cracked and crumbling driveway. There were two pre-‘70s era Chevy pickup trucks, an early ‘80s model Chevy Celebrity (which, though newer, was in much worse shape than the older pickups), and an inoperable 1978 Ford Crown Victoria that was now a dim shade of gray. Every space available in the driveway was occupied by American metal, which is why Landon was forced to park on the street.

  As his truck came to a stop, he heard the barks of the family’s German Shepherd/Labrador retriever mixed-breed mutts piercing the chain link fence that kept them corralled in the back yard, out of sight from the dirt road. Soon after, a cacophony of yelps, barks, and howls of the neighborhood’s other dogs prodded along by their noisier neighbors’ barks joined in the chorus.

  Landon hated where he was, especially this time of year. Northern Oklahoma was in the midst of a multi-year drought. With the onset of summer all signs pointed to yet another uninterrupted dry and very hot spell. It was the final few days of May, just before the already unbearable dust and rolling waves of the “new dust bowl’s” godless heat would really start to pour down from a typically cloudless sky, and gurgle back up from the reddish clay earth. At least it’s not west Texas, he reflected. But the last thought wasn’t enough to make him feel any better.

  It was a place of extremes; hot and dry most of the time. When rain did come, it usually brought with it horrific thunderstorms and a tornado or two.

  He glanced around the dimly lit cab of his pickup, a mechanically sound yet cosmetically trashed student car that he’d bought with money saved from various odd jobs the two previous summers. The interior was gunmetal gray. Its dashboard was chipped and cracked from years of harsh sun and its previous owners’ failure to use Armor All or some other vinyl or leather protectant. The cushioning foam underneath its once supple vinyl covering oozed and flaked between the cracks and pits. The seats had long ago ceased being finely upholstered canvas and were now covered with cheap Dallas Cowboys blue and gray seat covers his mom had given him as his high school graduation gift two weeks before.

  As he took inventory of his life, he realized that this worn out Toyota truck, with its new seat covers, was all he had in the world. “My life stinks!” he screamed within the solitude of the smallish cab of the truck. He thought he heard the side windows rattle from his yell and he hoped the rattle was just his imagination.

  He popped the truck’s floor-mounted gearshift into neutral, pulled the floor-mounted parking brake lever all the way up, and turned off the engine. Though he hadn’t yet pulled the key out of the ignition, he had begun reaching for the door handle.

  “No,” he said to himself as he jerked his hand away from the handle. “I’m not ready for those rednecks yet.”

  Instead of opening the door, he leaned his head back into the headrest, closed his eyes, and silently wished he were back in Enid, Oklahoma, in his childhood home. It was the same routine he’d followed every evening about this time of the day for the past week.

  His new routine had begun to wear on him already. He woke at the crack of dawn then threw on his work clothes without bothering to shower. His work clothes consisted of just three parts. Part one was three pairs of Wrangler jeans he’d bought just two weeks before, yet each pair already looked as if he’d owned them for years, with permanent grease and oil stains and a few holes here and there. Part two was a six-pack of white short-sleeved t-shirts he bought the same time as the jeans. They were unlikely to last the month since they were subject to the same wear and tear as the jeans, and they lacked the cowboy toughness of his Wranglers. And finally, the third part was one pair of steel-toed work boots, which were the only additions to his wardrobe that stood any chance whatsoever of making it through the summer.

  He pictured himself wearing the then worn boots to class in the fall. The thought of the perceived toughness they’d imbue upon him might attract a few girls brought the only smile on his face he probably revealed all day. Girls like bad boys.

  After girding himself up for battle in the oilfields, he would walk into the kitchen to pour a cup of coffee, scarf down a bowl of corn flakes, and hop into his truck for the ten-minute drive to the oil patch where the independent oil company his uncle worked for was busy drilling holes in the earth to take advantage of the recent run-up in oil prices.

  Once on the jobsite, the grueling work began. Landon was a gofer for the more experienced workers, which meant that he did lots of heavy lifting. He fetched, carried, and hauled tools that weighed anywhere from 1 to 100 pounds, and sometimes more. The workers would send him on errands to other wells, and such errands often resulted in twice as much heavy hauling as he already had to do. He would lift and tote hundreds of pounds of tools and equipment each day for the men in the patch before, during, and at the end of his runs.

  Still sitting in his truck with his eyes closed, he felt physically spent after working his sixth fourteen-hour day in a row. He wished he were a child of the rich, able to go to school, spend an allowance, and not worry about growing up until he had to.

  “I won’t survive this lousy job,” he huffed aloud.

  After five-or-so minutes of wallowing in self-pity, he opened his eyes, pulled the key out of the ignition, opened the truck’s door, threw his legs out the side of the truck with the rest of his tired aching body following close behind, and pulled himself up on his feet. He slammed the door shut behind him—he didn’t bother to lock it because there was nothing inside worth stealing. Slowly, he shuffled his fatigue-laden feet through the under-watered, crispy-fried yard of the house to its front door.

  Every muscle burned.

  Although the home was somewhat dilapidated on the outside (keeping it maintained was his uncle’s and his cousins’ responsibility, and the house’s exterior was obviously not high on their priorities list), the inside, which was his aunt’s responsibility, was well kept. The front door led into a decent-sized living room, which served as the family gathering place. A 40-inch big screen television sat in the place a fireplace would normally go. A longish sofa occupied the space to the l
eft of the TV, his and her recliners faced the TV, and a love seat took up space to the right of it. Bottom line: the entire room was arranged around the TV and Uncle Ted’s addiction to sports and cable news. Straight back from the front door and through a doublewide, door-less entryway was the kitchen, which was the only oversized part of the house. It had plentiful cabinet space, which was mandatory given Aunt Alice’s addiction to cooking fat-laden southern-style meals, mostly chicken with an Uncle Ted-grilled steak or hamburger thrown in once a week, usually on Sunday evenings.

  To the left of the living room was a hallway that led to the main bathroom and three bedrooms, all pretty small but at least big enough to hold two kids each, with one vacated by Ted’s and Alice’s grown-up girls two years before. It now served as Ted’s hobby room and Landon’s temporary living quarters. One of the bedrooms, the smallest one, was still occupied by Landon’s fifteen- and sixteen-year-old boy cousins, who spent most of their time somewhere else. The bedroom at the end of the hallway was Ted’s and Alice’s, and it had its own smallish master bathroom.

  As a veteran employee of Backwood Petroleum, LLC, and the supervisor of all field hands, including Landon, Uncle Ted usually arrived home about an hour before Landon. When Landon walked into the house on this particular evening, Ted was already reclined and watching a cable sports channel. He glanced up over his shoulder at Landon and chuckled. “So, college man, how was your first week?”

  I think I hate you, Landon thought as he shot Ted a look of utter and absolute contempt.

  Ted was a redneck (or, more accurately, a “roughneck,” the designation earned by oilfield workers), both literally and figuratively. His skin was red and leathery after decades of working in the oil fields in Oklahoma and North Texas, and he carried with him an extra fifty pounds of beer gut that only disappeared when he lay down in bed or in his recliner. He was also a big NASCAR fan who displayed model stock cars and fan memorabilia in his hobby room, which really irked Landon since the room was now his bedroom. He had grown to hate Jeff Gordon and Jimmy Johnson in just seven days, and he vowed to never again watch a stock car race. He might even buy an open-wheeled formula car model as a present for Uncle Ted on his last day as a guest in his home, a gift certain to irk the man (and one that would likely end up in the garage or perhaps the trash can!). He made a mental note to buy a model of Danica Patrick’s ride at the end of the summer; that would really make Uncle Ted mad.

  You should know how the week went, Landon thought sourly. You’re the one who worked me like a dog. Instead of making his feelings known, however, he bit his tongue; an odd mix of regret and gratitude at the opportunity his uncle had given him confused his thoughts.

  “Speechless?” Ted pressed.

  “No,” he huffed. “It went just fine, I guess.”

  It was a lie. It was the worst week he could remember, but he refused to acknowledge that his combat-hardened, Marine Corps veteran uncle had broken him. Regrettably, he couldn’t hide his exasperation as he shuffled behind Ted’s chair to his bedroom, slumped over with his head down, which brought an even wider smile to the old man’s face. Though he tried to avoid eye contact, he saw his uncle’s smirk and heard a clear, meant-to-be-heard “harrumph” as he walked past. His vain attempt to make his uncle think he had finally grown into a man had failed, he was certain.

  I know I hate you, he thought as he squeezed past the king’s thrown. How did I let Dad talk me into this lousy job? He continued his silent meditations as he increased the distance between him and Ted. Sadly, he knew the answer before he asked it.

  In rural Oklahoma, there was only one way to make $10.00-plus per hour straight out of high school in a short-term summer job—the oil patch. As he considered what his desperation for college money led him to do, whatever gratitude he once felt for Ted and Alice darkened into bitterness. Actually, he felt no bitterness at all for Aunt Alice. She was a saint; both for the kindness she showed him and the fact that she hadn’t divorced Ted after all these years.

  He opened the door to his room, walked inside, and slammed it shut behind him. The framed photographs of NASCAR drivers rattled with the impact. He stripped off his filthy work clothes and fell face down onto the bed, which was still unmade. He wanted to drift off to sleep for the rest of the night—and the weekend, for that matter—but he knew he couldn’t. To do so would mean Ted had won the battle of wills. After a brief nap, one void of any pleasant dreams or unpleasant ones for that matter, he sat up in the bed, stood, and slipped into his makeshift running outfit, one piece at a time. It consisted of a pair of extra-long workout shorts, an old t-shirt, and a worn-out pair of Nike running shoes. He bent down to touch his toes, stretching out his weary muscles, and left the room, walking back through the house and past his still-smirking uncle.

  “You’re still alive?” Ted asked, still facing the TV. “I thought you died in there.”

  “Funny,” Landon replied, quickening his pace to the front door. I can’t take this place much longer, he thought for the umpteenth time. As he grabbed the front doorknob and pulled it open he added, “I’ll be back in half an hour.”

  “Be careful,” a pleasant, feminine voice said from the kitchen, out of sight as the voice’s owner stood behind a partition just a few feet away from him. “And stay off the highway,” she added as he left the house and shut the door behind him. He’d heard the same thing every evening as he left for his jog, and he’d grown numb to it by now, yet...

  At least someone in that house cares about me, he couldn’t help reflecting on his loving aunt’s motherly comment as he transitioned from a walk to a slow jog, wanting to get off Ted’s property but not quite ready to start running. He again felt the pain of aching muscles, wondering whether he would even need physical fitness once his classes began three months later. Just work and sleep in the interim sounded like a better option and much less exhausting.

  By then the sky was pitch black with only an intermittent star shining through the moonless, partly clouded sky, telling him that far more time had elapsed than he’d thought while he napped in his bed, probably more than an hour. He looked at his rubberized digital sports watch to confirm his suspicion. It was 9:30 p.m. After the quick glance at his watch, he quickened his pace to a slow run, at least his nonathletic version of it—about a ten-minute mile pace, or just a little faster than a brisk jog. His muscles still ached, but the run felt oddly refreshing once his pace picked up. It was exercise on his terms, not evil Ted’s or anyone else’s.

  Landon was smart, though not very athletic. He was average looking—crew-cut blond hair, 5’6” tall and 140 pounds—but made up for his physical slightness by working very hard at everything he did. In high school he avoided areas of weakness to focus on what he was good at; when he put his mind and efforts to the latter, he was impossible to keep down. Indeed, if there was any one character trait that was the secret to his success thus far in life, hard work was it, and such hard work combined with his intellect had set him up pretty well, regardless of how worthless his current state of being made him feel. He was the first member of his family, including Ted and his redneck cousins, to graduate high school with honors, and the only one, he was certain, destined to earn a college degree. He wouldn’t be stuck working at the local Wal-Mart or barely making a living for twenty years farming infertile and bone-dry dustbowls like his dad had done. His dad’s hard work had only resulted in bankruptcy and his family’s ongoing state of poverty. No thanks. Neither would he break his back on oilrigs in some God-forsaken, dried-up patch of nothing on the fringes of Nowhere, Oklahoma.

  The Monday after graduating Enid High School, Landon had started his summer job in the oil fields working with his uncle and oldest cousin. After only one week of work, he managed to save almost every penny he made by staying with his relatives and living off whatever concoction his aunt put together. With a full-ride academic scholarship to Oklahoma State University and the $5,000.00 or so he intended to save from the summer job, he was on
the right track for a bright future—with the electrical engineering degree he was sure to earn at the end of that time, that is.

  Yet life is full of surprises, and his life was about to be invaded by a most unexpected event.

  As usual—at least as usual for the mere six days he had worked so far—he was exhausted, barely able to get motivated to go on his nightly jog, a habit he was beginning to realize might not last very long, regardless of good intentions. Indeed, part of him wondered why he bothered. Physical performance was not his forte, after all. A good book or an overly complicated crossword puzzle was more his cup of tea. Yet, after leaving the house he trudged on for the three-mile run that was sure to split his sides. He had read somewhere that the key to success was to “take your biggest weakness and make it your greatest strength,” so the athleticism or physical fitness he had lacked in high school would be conquered, and jogging was all he had time for at the moment—that and lugging heavy oil-rig equipment back and forth to worksites.

  Suddenly, his depressing revelations made his breath shallower and chest tighten up a bit, but he shook it off and forced himself onward.

  With all sunlight gone and the moon nowhere in sight, his night vision enabled him to just make out a dim outline of the path in front of him as his feet pounded the dirt and gravel on the shoulder of the road time and again. Indeed, but for the white t-shirt and the tattered remnants of the almost worn out, reflective vinyl on the heel of his shoes, he was virtually invisible to passing traffic as he bounced up and down with each step he took alongside Interstate 35 South. A little more than a mile into his run, he felt a growing, side-splitting pain reminding him of his poor conditioning.

  His favorite song, Rush’s “Tom Sawyer,” started playing on his portable music player, which made him forget about the pain momentarily. He huffed and puffed the first few words as his feet tried in vain to keep pace with Neil Peart’s vicious pounding on the drums. “A modern day warrior, mean, mean stride, today’s Tom Sawyer, mean, mean pride,” he wheezed alongside Geddy Lee, Rush’s lead singer. He then stopped singing and replaced the motivational lyrics with curses as he was forced to interrupt his rhythm to hop over an unexpected obstacle in his path. He saw it a few yards from the first northbound Darkwell exit off of Interstate 35, the highway his aunt told him to stay away from.

  “What idiot would dump his trash here?” he huffed, as he leaped over the mass, unable to hear his own words over the 100 decibel music still pumping into his head.

  It resembled a large, discarded trash bag in the dark of night. But the firmness of the so-called bag almost stopped his left foot as it drug just over the object’s surface, giving him second thoughts as to its true nature. He stopped jogging and turned back to inspect the dark mass of something. A black tarp was covering whatever it was.

  Probably fell off someone’s truck, he thought.

  Six months before Ted had salvaged a very nice leather recliner, the one he sat in each night after work, by conducting a similar inspection of a large crate sitting in the middle of westbound Interstate 40 just west of Tulsa. In just the few days he’d been staying with Ted and Alice, he’d heard Ted tell the story too many times to count, so he was not about to let such an opportunity slip by him. The thought of telling Ted that his luck had also taken a turn for the better made him smile. He grabbed the edge of the tarp and uncovered its secret.

  “Jeez,” he gasped as he realized what lay before him.

  It was a human body lying face down; a man, no doubt, but the darkness made it impossible to discern much else, such as age or height. He nudged the unfortunate hitchhiker’s side.

  “You okay?” he begged, praying that he would elicit some sort of response confirming that the comatose mass was a passed-out drunk and not something more sinister.

  The body groaned.

  Relief cleansed his darkest thoughts, eliminating the possibility that the worst-case scenario had not and hopefully would not occur. Whoever it was, at least for the moment, it was alive. He knelt beside the not-quite-dead person to see exactly what he had stumbled onto. He turned him over on his back. “Looks like alcohol isn’t the problem,” he said, as he noted the absence of the smell.

  Upon closer inspection—at least as close as the near pitch-black darkness would allow—the person appeared to be a relatively young man, probably no older than Landon, who had been beaten to the point of unconsciousness, or maybe hit by a careless driver.

  “Can you hear me?” he asked.

  The otherwise nonresponsive man let out another groan, but nothing more.

  After shaking the stranger’s shoulders for several seconds he stood up and looked back toward the oncoming traffic, hoping to wave down a car. He was in luck; a tractor-trailer rig was approaching as he jumped up and down, waving his arms like a maniac.

  PART I

  And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him,

  who have been called according to his purpose.

  —Romans 8:28