Word of Honor

by Terri Blackstock

  They wouldn’t get them all out, he thought. It was impossible. But he supposed that even those in the parking lot would be blown up. The statement would be loud and clear. And the people who heard would understand, and perhaps their eyes would be opened.

  He took off from the side of the building and headed through the cars, trying not to run so he wouldn’t call attention to himself. But he had to get out of here quickly.

  Then he saw the car pulling into the parking space in front of him, and the black woman getting out. Two little white children climbed out of the backseat, and then he saw a woman he recognized. It was Debbie Ingalls. He couldn’t miss her with that skinny face and those big eyes. Jerry had shown her picture to him every time he had come to visit him over the last few years.

  Suddenly, he began to remember Jerry’s words back at the jail, about how the covenant reached out to his family, how Frank had already violated it once. He had promised Jerry that he hadn’t meant to hurt Debbie and the kids, that the fire bomb had just been a warning. Jerry trusted him.

  Now he didn’t know what to do. The women passed him without recognition, and were heading to a side entrance. Apparently, they hadn’t seen the activity of the police at the entrance doors. He watched as the two women and children headed toward the hospital, and he wanted to yell out that they couldn’t go in there, that they were evacuating because there was a bomb, that they needed to get as far away from there as possible.

  But if he did that, the communist pigs he was trying to defeat would descend on him. He looked down at his watch. There were only twelve minutes left. He looked back at Jerry’s family, and saw the two little kids holding hands and skipping beside their mother.

  Jerry’s kids.

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t break his covenant with Jerry. It meant too much. It was too binding. They had sealed it by walking through the flesh. He had carried Jerry out on his back, between the dead and bleeding bodies, had gotten Jerry to the helicopter…And then there had been that explosion, that surprising blast that seemed to come from nowhere, and then darkness…

  Jerry had been there when he’d come to, weeks later. They had hugged and wept together, and Jerry had promised to fulfill the covenant just as David had done for Jonathan. Frank had promised, too.

  “Frank, things are gonna be all right, man. In this life or the next…You and me, we’re brothers. We take care of each other, man. And I’m trying to take care of you.”

  Jerry had uttered those words just hours ago. They were covenant words. And they weren’t one-way. That covenant that was so strong between Jonathan and David, between Abraham and God, between Christ and his church…that covenant that he had taught Jerry to honor…He remembered the import of it, and he knew that he couldn’t keep the covenant if he let that bomb go off with Debbie Ingalls in the hospital.

  Without another thought, he took off running back to the truck. He had to go the long way because new police cars were filling in nearby. He went around the hospital, dripping with sweat, and came up behind the cars with the flashing lights. He reached the truck and got back into it, and looked down at the timer. There were ten minutes left.

  He tried to think how to stop it, how to break the connection, how to make the clock stop ticking…but he didn’t have time to figure it out. Instead, he bent down and hot-wired the car again, started the engine, and backed out.

  Chapter Seventy-Nine

  Larry Hampton ran back into his son’s room. Pete saw him and reached out to him. He went to the bed, unabashedly, and threw his arms around his little boy and began to weep over him. “Pete, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry…”

  The child clung to him with his weak little arms, and tears rolled down his temples. Larry wiped them away and looked up at Pete’s grandmother standing at the side of the bed. “Hello, Thelma.”

  “Hey, Larry,” she said.

  “I’m so sorry,” he told her, choking back the tears. “About Mary. And about…everything.”

  She nodded and smiled at the joy on the little boy’s face as he held his daddy. “I know,” she whispered. “The main thing is that you’re back, and Pete needs you so much right now.”

  He wept at the sweetness of that forgiveness, and realized that grace wasn’t just a word they threw out in church. It really existed. And now it had meaning for him.

  A frazzled nurse rushed in. “We’re evacuating the hospital,” she said. “I’ve got them bringing a gurney in here for Pete, and we’ve got to keep his ventilator attached.” As she spoke, she began disconnecting the cords that weren’t vital. Her hands were shaking.

  “We don’t have to wait for the gurney,” Larry said, picking Pete up. “I’ll carry him, and his grandmother can carry the ventilator and the IV, can’t you, Thelma?”

  Thelma looked worried. “Well, yes. But what’s going on?”

  “It’s a bomb threat,” the nurse managed to get out. “Probably nothing, but we have to be safe.” She disconnected the last of the cords and unhooked the IV bag. “Hold it up above him. And take the stairs. Hurry, please! Head for one of the ambulances so you can plug him back in. If he goes into respiratory distress, give him mouth-to-mouth.”

  They obeyed quickly.

  Stan was trying to help Celia down the stairs with one arm and holding his baby in the other, when he heard Aunt Aggie shouting over the people in the lobby. “You don’t let me go back up there and get my great-great-niece, you gon’ wish you never been born, you.”

  Celia was pale and breathing hard, and Stan scanned the room for a free wheelchair as he yelled to Aunt Aggie. “I got them down, Aunt Aggie. Celia needs a wheelchair.”

  Aunt Aggie looked tremendously relieved, but much older than she had just hours before. She grabbed a wheelchair out of a nurse’s hands and helped Celia into it. Stan handed Celia the baby and pushed the wheelchair out the doors as Aunt Aggie ran along beside them. He saw the people clustered around the outside of the building, but they weren’t far enough away to avoid a blast. “Out there, Aunt Aggie,” he yelled. “All the way across the parking lot.”

  He was running with the wheelchair, weaving between parked cars, trying desperately to get to the other side of the parking lot as orderlies ran by with patients on gurneys and IV poles rolling beside them. He saw Dan and Jill already on the other side, each pushing a wheelchair of a patient who couldn’t help himself.

  Cops tried to direct the flow of people, but they were ineffective as panicked loved ones fought to get patients out of harm’s way. Stan knew he needed to help, but he wasn’t going to turn back until he knew for sure that his wife and baby were safe.

  And then he heard a scream and turned around. He saw the bread truck driving through the people, forcing them to leap and dive out of his way. The driver had a shaved head, but as the truck passed, Stan saw those eyes that he had seen in the pictures of Frank Harper…

  “Aunt Aggie, stay here with Celia!” he cried, and he started to run after the truck. He heard feet running behind him, and Dan caught up to him.

  “That’s him!” Dan cried. “That’s Frank Harper!”

  The truck bobbed and wove through the cars and the people, not slowing at all but picking up speed as it got closer to the parking lot exit. But there were two police cars blocking the way. Stan ran as fast as his legs could carry him, knowing that his child’s life and his wife’s life and the lives of all the people in the parking lot and still making their way out of the hospital depended on it. He saw the truck slow down as it reached the blockade, but then it picked up speed in one last burst, and crashed the front fenders of the two squad cars, breaking through and skidding out of sight.

  Stan pulled out his badge and flashed it at one of the stunned police officers. “I need your car!” he said, breathless.

  The cop didn’t say a word as Stan jumped into it. Dan got in on the other side, but Stan didn’t have time to make him get out. He jerked the car in reverse, and his tires squealed as he turned it around
and began chasing the truck. It was a mile up ahead of them, sliding around corners and grazing cars as it drove. It headed toward the highway, then opened up, burning rubber as Frank Harper stood on the accelerator to reach the truck’s maximum speed.

  “You can catch him!” Dan yelled. “That truck won’t go that fast!”

  They were gaining on him, narrowing the distance between themselves and the truck. “He’s done something!” Dan yelled. “There’s a bomb back there, all right. He’s trying to get away as fast as he can. He knows it’s about to go off!”

  Stan prayed silently that Celia and the baby and Aunt Aggie and Jill were far enough away from the building, but his heart told him they weren’t. He had the sudden urge to grab the automatic rifle from behind his head and start shooting until Frank Harper was down.

  Suddenly, three police cars came out of a side street and flew out in front of him. “Look out!” Dan cried.

  Stan slammed on brakes and slid sideways, out of control, trying to avoid hitting them. He spun and hit a telephone pole head on. Air bags blew out, knocking them back against their seats.

  Stan punched the side of his door, furious that the New Orleans police had almost killed them. He would report them, he thought. He would make sure he had all of their badges.

  “You all right?” he asked Dan.

  Dan opened his door and saw the truck pull onto the highway. “They’ve caught up to him!” he yelled.

  Stan leaned out his open window and saw that the truck was surrounded by the cars, with one on either side and one behind. The highway cleared of cars as drivers pulled off to the side.

  But the truck just kept on going. Frank Harper wasn’t going to be stopped.

  Chapter Eighty

  Frank Harper ignored the cops chasing him down the highway. He glanced back at the timer, and saw that there were only fifteen seconds left. If he hurried, he could get far enough away that the hospital wouldn’t be harmed…far enough so that Debbie Ingalls wouldn’t have a scratch, and Jerry wouldn’t think of him as a covenant-breaker…

  Ten…nine…eight…

  He realized that it was too late for him to get out of the truck, too late for him to stop and run far enough that he could escape the explosion. He realized it was a sacrifice he would have to make. A sacrifice worthy of the covenant it represented.

  Three…two…one…

  Bright, hot darkness closed over him, knocking him out, out, out into some other dimension…and Frank was hit with a clarity he hadn’t seen in years.

  And then there was the light, beckoning for him.

  Chapter Eighty-One

  They heard the bomb from the parking lot and every station inside the hospital and the stairwell and the elevator shafts. Jill felt as if the earth had shaken as people threw themselves on the ground to escape the blast. Debbie Ingalls was running through the parking lot when she heard the explosion, and she threw herself over her children. Celia screamed and threw herself over their new baby. Larry threw himself over Pete on the ambulance’s gurney. Aunt Aggie marched out into the parking lot, raising her fist at the fireball that had threatened to destroy her family, and yelling at it as if it was some part of Frank Harper rising into the sky.

  Panicked, Jill made her way to Celia. “Where…where is Dan? Where did he go?”

  “He went with Stan,” Celia cried. “They were following that truck.”

  Jill couldn’t even voice her fears. “Celia, they were…where the explosion…”

  Celia looked in the direction of the black smoke filling the sky. “No,” she said. “No, they weren’t. They couldn’t be.”

  “They were!” Jill cried. “I saw them get in a squad car. They chased the truck out of here.”

  “No!” Celia cried. “No, they couldn’t have. They didn’t go that way, Jill!”

  “Yes, they did!” she screamed. “They did!” She scrambled to her feet and started running in the direction she had seen them go, not knowing how far they were or how close she could get or what she would do when she got there. All she knew was that she had to get to Dan. She had to find him and know…

  And then she saw a police car turn onto the road leading to the hospital, heading toward her, and she began to run faster, faster…

  “Jill!” Dan jumped out of the backseat of the car and bolted toward her. Jill almost collapsed as he swept her into his arms and held her in a crushing embrace.

  “Keep driving!” Stan told the officer who had picked them up. “My wife is over there!”

  As the car drove past, Jill cried, “I thought you were in the explosion! I thought you were…”

  “I’m not,” he said. “I’m here. We’re both here. We’re still here.” He was crying, too, and holding her with all his might. “I thought he was trying to get away from the explosion, but he was taking it with him. The police that were chasing him…they went up in the blast.”

  “Why?” Jill asked. “Why would he do that? Why would he drive away?”

  “Only one reason I can think of,” he said. “Because God is still in control.”

  Chapter Eighty-Two

  The wedding took place at Calvary Bible Church, and two-thirds of Newpointe turned out for the occasion. Mark and Allie had seen to it that the church was filled with every kind of flower in bloom. It was a celebration, not just of a marriage between two beloved people in Newpointe, but of life itself, for so many of the attendees had come so close to death.

  Jerry Ingalls was still in jail awaiting trial for holding Jill hostage, but Jill hoped that the judge would be lenient in sentencing him. Yes, he would serve time for his stunt at the Flagstaff, but she hoped her representation of him and her own testimony at the sentencing would cause the judge to make it a light sentence.

  She had spent time with Jerry in his cell after the explosion and Frank’s death and had seen the grief that had overcome him at the news. When he learned that his own wife and children had been at the hospital, and that she had passed Frank without recognizing him in the parking lot, he told Jill that he knew why Frank had driven the bomb away. It was that unending covenant between them, that promise to protect even their families.

  But even in his grief, he seemed glad that his friend was no longer tormented by the illness that had plagued him for years. Jerry had latched on, instead, to the faith that Frank Harper had before his brain had been damaged, to the fruit he had borne, to the witness he had been. Jerry clung to the hope that Frank was at peace, living in the promise of the covenant that had held him like a dearly loved child…even when he had been unable to hold it.

  As Jill and Dan exchanged vows, they remembered the gravity of the covenant into which they were entering. When they exchanged rings, Nick told their friends and loved ones that it was like the ancient ritual of exchanging robes, symbolizing the merging of their identities and all their possessions. When they exchanged vows, he told how serious and holy and binding the covenant was under God, and how they were bound to love and protect each other, care for each other’s families, and fight each other’s enemies. When they kissed, he told how their union made the two become one. When he announced “Mr. and Mrs. Dan Nichols,” he explained that Jill’s taking of Dan’s name was another way of identifying herself with him, just as we all take the name of Christ when we enter into covenant with him. When they cut the cake at the reception, Nick explained how the exchanging of the pieces of cake, each fed to the other, was the same as the old covenant custom of eating something that represented the covenant partner, just as communion represented our eating of Christ’s body and drinking of his blood, to remind us of the new covenant. Then Nick led the guests, and the bride and groom, in partaking of that communion…the ultimate covenant meal.

  And he declared the Lord to be at the center of Jill’s and Dan’s marriage.

  As the tears of understanding gave way to joy, and the reception grew more festive around the bride and groom, Nick saw Issie Mattreaux slipping from the room. Quickly, he cut through the crowd
and caught her in the hall. “Issie?”

  She turned around, and he saw that she was crying.

  “Are you all right?”

  She nodded. “Yeah. Sure. I was just…moved. That was the most beautiful wedding I’ve ever seen. All that stuff about the covenant. I’ve never heard any of that before.”

  “I’m glad you like it. It was all Dan’s and Jill’s idea. I’ve never really thought of tying it all together in a wedding ceremony like that.” He took a few steps closer to her and saw that the tears were still rolling down her face. “Are you sure that’s all?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “I just…get a little teary-eyed at weddings.” She breathed a laugh. “You know how it is. It’s always somebody else’s wedding…”

  He chuckled. “I have that feeling myself sometimes, believe it or not.”

  She shot him a doubtful look. “You? I thought you were all philosophical about your bachelorhood.”

  “Not always,” he said. “Sometimes I think I’d like to have a companion. A helpmeet.”

  “Where do you get these words?” she asked on a laugh. “I’m still trying to figure out all that covenant stuff. No new concepts just yet, huh?”

  His smile faded into a pensive frown. “Are you really trying to figure it all out, Issie?” he asked. “Because if you are, maybe we could go have a cup of coffee and talk about it.”

  She looked at him as if she didn’t trust him. “You aren’t planning to get me cornered and beat me up with a sermon, are you?”

  “No, not at all,” he said. “I just want you to understand it. Besides, my work is done here. It wouldn’t hurt me to commiserate with another member of the ‘always the bridesmaid’ club. Who knows? We might just cheer each other up.”

  Issie shot him a grin, and he counted it a personal victory that she wasn’t crying anymore. “Okay,” she said. “Let’s go.”