“Grace!” I slurred loudly. “Grace!”
Eventually I came to the spot where I thought the Heck house should be. It was gone. Either they had moved and taken their whole house with them or I was lost. I stopped to catch my breath.
“Grrraccce,” I mumbled. My stomach was beginning to act up.
I turned around a few more times to see where I had come from. But each direction looked identical. The beautiful forest of Thelma’s Way had become a mirrored fun house—I could almost see myself in the endless maze of trees. The low clouds seemed to rumble even lower, bringing Mother Nature’s ceiling down. The sun was beginning to sink behind it, coloring the sky purple.
I was really lost.
I decided to climb to the top of a nearby hill and see if I could spot any houses or help. My mind was so goofy by now that I could barely put one foot in front of the other. I began to see things, and hear things. Trees shifted on me, and the ground bristled like a shivering dog. I tried to pray, but my mind was too muddled. I should never have left my companion. I tried to pray out loud, hoping that vocally I could pull it together. I reached the top of the hill and looked down. There were no houses in sight, but I could see someone walking. It took me a few moments to figure out who it was. It was Paul, striding across the landscape. He was the answer to my prayers.
He could help me back. We didn’t get along, but certainly he wouldn’t leave a sick man out to die. I stood at the top of the hill and waved my arms. The sun was setting behind me.
“Pauuuullll,” I tried to say. “Pauuuuull.”
Paul stopped and looked around. He put his hand to his eyes and gazed up at me. Then his face filled with fear. I probably looked ridiculous in my mother’s nightgown, but he didn’t need to be rude about it.
“PaIif eig eiitdkfeeeeffL,” I tried to say, no longer able to construct words within my sick head.
Paul dropped the walking stick he was carrying and fell to his knees.
“Who are you?” he yelled back.
“Elllfienfld wilfjiggged,” I answered.
He was trembling like crazy. His tiny, poorly arranged features ticked and popped. I could feel the sun setting behind me, and I looked down to see my oversized nightshirt rippling in the wind. The thin material my mother had used to construct it was glowing in the sunset, the fancy neck ruffle dancing about my head.
“Pawwl,” I tried to explain.
“What have I done, great messenger,” he yelled in fear.
“Paul I swump wa deee lop don.” My tired tongue mangled the words as they came out.
“What do you wish of me?” he screamed.
“What?” I yelled.
“What do you wish of me?”
It suddenly hit me like a cannonball to the temple—the setting sun, my glowing nightgown, Paul shaking like watery Jell-o during an 8.8 earthquake. Paul thought I was something other than I was. It was too much. I couldn’t resist egging him on.
“R-r-repent!” I managed yell, amazed that I could get the word out clearly.
Paul held his skinny hand to his heart and let his big mouth gape. His chest was heaving.
“Repentafgr,” I yelled again, feeling dizzy and rather full of myself.
I could see Paul begin to sob, his thick hair bouncing as he trembled. He really believed I was some sort of messenger. As much as I was enjoying myself, I couldn’t keep up the charade.
“Paul, it’s muflelf,” I said, my tongue tangling again. I waved my hands and began to approach him.
Paul wasn’t about to let a heavenly visitor get hold of him. He stood up and took off running.
“Paul!” I yelled, running after him.
I couldn’t let him get away. I would never find my way back on my own.
“Pawwwul.”
Paul ran like crazy, looking over his shoulder every few seconds. I tried hard not to think of anything but catching him. If I started focusing on how tired I was, or how sick I felt, I knew I would fall to the ground in exhaustion. We ran around through a stream, and then back up another hill and down into the meadow. I knew right where I was. I should have just stopped and waited for somebody else to come along. But I kept running. I think I was too sick to rationally realize that I could give up. I wanted to let him know it was just me.
He crossed the meadow, jumped down onto the bank of the Girth, and pushed out across it on a raft. I too crossed the meadow, still yelling after him. I jumped down onto the bank of the Girth and hopped onto a small raft that was lying on the shore. I pushed off and into the current. I knew in an instant that it was a mistake.
The Girth was moving swiftly this time of year. I paddled as well as a sick man could.
“Paul!” I tried again, realizing now more than ever that I needed his help. “Paul!”
I was running out of time. The river had pushed me past the meadow and beyond our place, water lapping up over the lip of my raft. I watched Paul make it to the distant shore. He didn’t even waste a second to look back; he just kept on running. I paddled like crazy, but I was weak and my paddling was wimpy. In a few seconds Thelma’s Way was behind me, the Girth having carried me past its border. The water became more and more rapid, rocky growths sticking up from the river’s floor and teasing the water into a fury. My hand slipped, and my paddle dropped away. I was smack dab in the middle of the river.
Desperate and foolish, I jumped off my raft and tried to swim to shore. It was no use. The rapids had become higher and the water swifter. My tired legs and arms turned to mush. My body froze in the cold whipping water. The river dipped a few more times and then leveled out. For a moment it was flat and slick, dragging me along smoothly with speed. I watched the shoreline.
A horrible noise entered my head—a low roar that gradually began to get louder, piercing my heart and shaking my sick head sober.
Hallow Falls.
The roar increased. I struggled frantically to swim, my long wet nightgown feeling heavy and restrictive. I pulled it off over my head and pushed it away. I thrashed at the river. It was no use; I was going to go over the falls. I couldn’t see it up ahead, but I knew it was there.
Hallow Falls was an eighty-foot drop. The previous summer, Elder Jorgensen and I had hiked down to it on one of our P-days. I remember being in awe of its massive weight. Looking up from below, the mist seemed to drift for miles. I had taken some pictures and sent them home to my family. How ironic that they would already have seen the scene of my violent death.
The roar became so loud that I felt my heart would stop. I made a couple more futile attempts to swim away from what was coming. I prayed like I had never prayed before. If God could part the seas, surely he could push a missionary upstream. I thought about all the things I had done wrong, and all the many legitimate reasons God had to not help me. I kept praying.
It was no use.
The Girth River pushed me along, impatient for my demise. The fear in my gut permeated my bones and seeped out of my mouth as I screamed. Then, with one giant push, I was thrust over the falls and into the air—flying through the sky, my arms flailing, the river below racing up to smack me.
I blacked out before I ever hit bottom.
39
Pulled and Prodded
I opened my eyes to see the back of Roswell’s head.
He was pulling me through thick trees. I was in a red wagon, dressed in some tattered jeans and a plaid shirt.
Suddenly I remembered the falls. I grabbed my head to make sure it was still there. I wiggled my arms and legs to test them out. Everything seemed to work.
Roswell looked older than when I had last seen him almost two years ago, before his supposed translation. If he was what a resurrected body looked like, I wanted no part. His head was puckered. His skin was gray.
I had to be dead, because I no longer felt sick. In fact, I felt pretty good. My head was clear, and my body felt healthy. I figured one of two things must have happened. Either the falls had killed me and I had made it to heaven, where a
translated Roswell was the only friend or family member who had come to meet me at the veil; or the falls had killed me but I hadn’t deserved heaven, so it was me and Roswell in outer darkness forever. Either way, things didn’t look good.
“Where are we?” I asked Roswell.
I startled him. He jumped, dropping the wagon handle and cursing.
“You ain’t supposed to get conscious yet,” he informed me, holding his wrinkled hand to his skinny chest.
“Sorry,” I replied.
“Just great,” he ranted. “Now what the heck am I supposed to do with you?”
“Do with me?” I asked. “What do you mean?”
“You seen me,” he ranted. “You know I ain’t been translated.”
“Oh, that,” I said coming to the realization that I was still alive. “I knew that weeks ago.”
“You thought you knew that,” Roswell corrected.
“I knew I knew it,” I said, still sprawled out in the wagon. “Your cousin Stubby told me. He also told me you stole the Book of Mormon.”
Roswell muttered something about his cousin under his breath. It didn’t sound complimentary.
“What happened?” I asked, rubbing my head.
“To what?” Roswell questioned.
“To me.”
Roswell took out his pipe and stuffed it.
“Found you in the river,” Roswell puffed. “You’re lucky them falls didn’t kill ya. I seen ‘em do worse. I dressed you up with some of my better threads. I’ll need ‘em back,” Roswell insisted.
“So you saved me?” I asked, bewildered at the thought.
“Well, I couldn’t just leave you there. Took you to my private fishing shack and tried to wake you up. I got tired of staring at your quiet face. So I decided I’d better take you home.”
“How long was I out?” I asked.
“Three days,” he snickered.
“You’re kidding,” I said, jumping out of the wagon. “Three days?”
Roswell grunted.
“My companion’s probably going ballistic,” I moaned.
“Look, kid,” Roswell retorted, “we all got problems.”
“I’ve got to get back,” I insisted. “Right away.”
“I was taking you back,” Roswell pointed out. “But now that you’re alive I think I’ll let you find your own way.”
“You can’t,” I snapped. “I don’t know where I am.”
“The forest is tricky,” Roswell lamented.
“Take me back and I promise I won’t tell anyone I saw you.” I was prepared to barter.
Roswell thought about this for a minute.
“How ’bout we make a deal?”
“What kind of deal?” I asked.
Roswell sat down on an old tree stump. I sat back in the wagon.
“I’m tired of living all hidden up,” he said. “Sick of having to keep myself tucked away. I’m a person’s person. Like my neighbors to be curious about my doings. Found out I don’t make myself very good company. I’m stubborn. Can’t talk myself out of anything.”
Roswell paused to puff.
“I’m a simple man—no skeletons in the closet, no demons to conquer,” he continued. “Makes for lousy conversation.”
“What about your brother?” I asked, begging to differ about the skeletons.
“I didn’t kill Feeble,” Roswell insisted. “My dear brother found out from Stubby that I’d taken the Book of Mormon and started having a fit. He began saying silly things like how honesty and integrity were more ’portant than money. Feeble found me out just two days before he passed on. He teased me with that dumb little statue. Kept saying I was an embarrassment to the family. He even said he was going to turn me in. I couldn’t take it.” Roswell paused to rub his eye. “I told him I was leaving and he chased after me.”
We were both quiet for a moment.
“It wasn’t much of a chase,” Roswell finally said. “Feeble had a heart attack about ten steps into it. Figured I’d better hightail it out of there if I didn’t want any questions asked. So I hid up in my fish shack. I was eventually going to show my face, but I overheard Sister Watson talking about me being translated and all. Me, translated,” he laughed. “It sounded so regal, I decided to stay hid. I’m a proud man,” Roswell admitted.
“So why’d you steal the Book of Mormon?” I asked, staring at him and wondering how a proud man could wear two different pieces of plaid clothing.
“Had to steal it,” Roswell replied. “I’d made a bet with Clove Timpleton in Virgil’s Find that his newborn red cow was the heifer of prophecy. Turns out she was just dirty from birth. Washed up to be almost white.”
I tried not to look dumbfounded.
“Take me back,” I said, suddenly wary of Roswell’s company.
Roswell made an offer. “You tell folks that I descended in a cloud from heaven to save your life, and I’ll take you back.”
“No way,” I protested. That was too much to ask.
“You gotta give me something,” he whined.
“Okay,” I reasoned. “You come into town with me and I’ll tell them you saved my life.”
“And . . .” Roswell prodded.
“And,” I continued, “you make up the rest.”
That seemed to satisfy him, at least for the time being. We hiked for about an hour before I could tell where we were. I got back into the wagon, and Roswell wheeled me into town.
“Elder Williams, Elder Williams!” Sister Watson had spotted us. She was sitting on the porch of the boardinghouse. The meadow exploded with folks popping like popcorn. My buttery family. Roswell pulled me right up to the porch, a small cloud of dust puffing up as the wagon came to an abrupt stop. Sister Watson threw herself down by me, kissing my forehead.
“Crazy boy. Foolish kid.”
President Heck was the next to maul me.
“Where? How? I can’t believe it!”
Teddy practically cut off my circulation as she hugged me tightly, and Nippy nodded so violently that I became concerned about her head remaining attached to her body.
“We thought you was dead,” they all said. Everyone was so happy to see me that they hardly even noticed Roswell. He just sort of stood there looking like he always had, content not to be the center of attention for the moment.
President Clasp came out of our cabin and ran up to greet me. I could tell he wasn’t sure if he should hit or hug me, not that he would have really done either. He and Elder Herney had been in the process of packing up my stuff. I guess they and about forty law officers from all over the state had spent the last three days combing the forest of Thelma’s Way. They had almost given up.
I called my family from the boardinghouse to tell them I was okay. My mom cried with joy. My father guardedly gushed. As soon as I hung up, President Clasp informed me we were leaving. This was it. He wanted both me and Elder Herney out of Thelma’s Way. In a whirlwind we collected all of our stuff and briskly hiked out of town towards Virgil’s Find. It happened so fast I barely had time to register what was going on.
My transfer had arrived, and the timing couldn’t be worse.
I didn’t want to leave. It was too sudden. I didn’t even get a chance to properly say good-bye. I was just whisked away. Folks lined the path as we made our grand exit. These people were my family. I had endured and endeared them for the past two years. I scanned the crowd for a glimpse of Grace.
Salvation was out of sight.
Everyone stood there staring at me as if I were their son going off to war.
“God bless,” Toby Carver said aloud, his Ace bandage waving in the air.
People followed us for a few steps, and then they slowly turned back. They would cope without me. I hoped the same of myself. I scanned the trees the rest of the way, hoping to see Grace.
From Virgil’s Find we took a big van back to Knoxville. President Clasp tried to lecture and love me into understanding. I understood all too well. I spent the night in a real bed, in a r
eal house, in a real town.
I couldn’t ever remember being more uncomfortable.
40
Knocks-Ville
The Last Day
I spent the final month of my mission in Knoxville, serving with an Elder Jones. We had a baptism, and I learned what it was like to spend six hours a day tracting in a suburban neighborhood. Elder Jones was probably the best elder I ever served with. He had a better sense of the gospel and a real sense of purpose. He lacked some of Elder Jorgensen’s raw enthusiasm and wasn’t quite as endearing, but he was solid.
This last month in Knoxville, I had been amazingly homesick for Thelma’s Way, and Grace. My time had seemed too short there. I kept telling myself that I was just overly emotional because of how I had been ripped away. I knew, however, that my attachment to Thelma’s Way was due to far more than a bad sendoff.
As I packed my bags to leave the mission field, I thought long and hard about all that I had been through. This was it. I had made it the entire two years. I was considerably more melancholy than I had anticipated I would be.
At the beginning of my mission, I had thought constantly of how great it would be when I was finally able to fly home. To be done. I had imagined myself on the plane smiling over how fulfilling my time had been and how wonderful it would be to see Lucy and my family again. Now, as I packed to go home, the approaching plane ride seemed frightening. Every mile I soon flew, I knew, I would feel more and more distanced from the people I loved in Thelma’s Way.
I met a lot of great people during my last month in Knoxville, but it wasn’t the same. These people used Saran Wrap only to cover food, and Ace bandages were applied no more than once. Gatherings were civil and predictable, stripped of soul and commotion.
I closed my suitcase, looked around the room, and walked out to the van. We would be at the airport in no time.
My mission was over.
41
Justification
Southdale in late October is a funny thing. People are so busy prepping themselves for the upcoming holidays that they fail to have any fall fun. The wide streets are cluttered with cars driving back and forth to this and that, for which and whatever. Things are busy but as empty as the once-bushy trees.
All Is Swell Page 20
