As I got closer, I could see my car sitting in the far corner of the lot with the door open. Someone had pulled it out of the mud, washed it off, and parked it next to the row of rusted rural route mailboxes. The top was down, the keys were in the ignition, and there was a piece of paper under the windshield wiper that I assumed was the tow bill. Instead, it was a note that said, “Look inside the mailbox.”
When I glanced back at the row of old mailboxes, one of them had my name on it. Hand-painted in weathered black block letters it said DR. SCHUYLER HUNT. Tentatively, I looked inside. There I found a brown manila envelope with Ed McMahon’s picture on it. It too had my name on it, and stamped in red it said, “You may already be a winner!”
There’s something reassuring about getting mail, even if it’s only the electric bill. It says someone’s thinking about you, someone cares about you, you matter, and we all hunger for that. Insecurity is the common thread that links humanity. I had left the cottage because I’d felt uncomfortable, but getting the letter had the opposite effect.
Insecurity is the common thread that links humanity.
Carol had sent me on a few wild goose chases in my life, but this was a little out there even for her. Still, somehow she must have known that I’d be a little uncomfortable with Michael and the old man, so she sent the letter to soothe my worries. I held it for a moment and then broke open the seal. Inside was a picture of the cottage that I’d just left, and below it was written, “The path goes in two directions. One is safe and well-traveled; the other holds the answers that you seek most. Either way, the choice is yours.”
For what seemed like an eternity, I stood by the mailbox. Looking down, I realized that there were indeed many footprints heading off in front of me. As I turned around, only my footprints were left in the sand behind me. A voice in my head said, Don’t be a fool—take the safe path. Those others couldn’t all have been wrong. It didn’t make sense. Why should I be the one to break from the pack?
But then again, I’ve never been one to play it safe. I’ve spent my life ignoring the warnings, speeding up on yellow, and rushing headlong into a challenge. In fact, that’s always been a problem for me. I have a hard time letting things go. When I was a kid, my dad always told me to go for it, to throw caution to the wind, to run at a problem instead of running away from it, and it’s become second nature to me. I guess I could say that it’s probably my father’s fault.
———
On my first day of school in seventh grade, I left the house with fifty cents in my pocket, hoping to buy the school lunch. Why I wanted to do that is a wonderment to me now, but at the time, not carrying a brown bag lunch seemed like a big deal.
Some people play it safe, and some people speed up on yellow.
When the lunch bell rang at eleven fifty, Rodney Williams asked me if I had lunch money. When I told him I did, he demanded that I give it to him.
Did I mention that this was Rodney’s second trip to seventh grade and that he’d spent two years in third grade as well? That meant the two of us were on the opposite ends of puberty. He was big, strong, and hairy, and I—well, let’s just say that I wasn’t.
Not being all that streetwise, I tried to explain to Rodney that if I gave him my lunch money I wouldn’t get a sandwich. “If you don’t give it to me, I’ll give you a knuckle sandwich,” he replied, holding up a fist the size of a softball.
Needless to say, I didn’t eat lunch that day.
That night I told my dad what had happened and explained to him that I needed a dollar for lunch—fifty cents for my new best friend, Rodney, and fifty cents for me. Although he sympathized with my dilemma, Dad said that I would only be getting fifty cents for lunch and that I had two choices: I could hit Rodney as hard as I could in the nose, or I could go hungry.
“If I hit him,” I said, “he’ll kill me.”
“If you don’t, he’ll eat your lunch every day,” Dad replied.
I lay awake that night worrying and wondering what to do. I even prayed that Rodney would be sick or not very hungry. Evidently God wasn’t listening, because when the lunch bell rang at eleven fifty, Rodney made a beeline for my desk.
He said what I knew he’d say. “Have you got your—”
Bang! I hit ol’ Rodney as hard as I could, and he went down like an elevator. He banged his head on the radiator, and when his head hit the tile floor, it sounded like someone dropped a bowling ball.
What did I do? What could I do? I jumped on top of him and pummeled him in the face until the science teacher, Mr. Pulte, pulled me off and dragged me down to the principal’s office.
The principal’s name was Elmo Wiersma, and he looked like an Elmo. He had receding black curly hair, high cheekbones, and a long, pointy nose with bifocals balanced on the end. I soon learned that Elmo had zero tolerance for fighting.
“What possessed you to hit poor Rodney?” he asked.
“My dad told me to,” I explained.
“Listen, young man, I’m in no mood for games! If I don’t start getting a straight answer, I’m going to suspend you for three days and call your dad.”
“Go ahead and call him,” I replied.
And he did.
The conversation started off pleasant enough. “I’m sorry to bother you, Mr. Hunt, but your boy is in my office for fighting, and he says you told him to.”
For a moment there was an awkward silence, followed by a “Hmm” and an “I see,” after which Mr. Wiersma got a pained look on his face. “But that’s no reason to return violence for violence,” he said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to suspend him for three days. I have no other choice.”
I don’t know what my dad said next, but ol’ Elmo’s face got as red as a tomato, and I heard him say, “Well, Mr. Hunt, if that’s the way you feel, then he’s suspended for the whole week.” And he hung up.
When my dad picked me up from school, we went out for ice cream, and he said, “We don’t need to share this with your mother, right, Scout?”
“Right!” I answered.
When I went back to school the next week, Rodney confronted me just like my dad said he would.
“You better watch your back!”
Inside I was terrified, but I said what Dad told me to say: “You want a little more of what you got before?”
Rodney looked at me for a minute, turned, and walked away saying again that I’d better watch my back, but I could tell that he was more afraid of me now than I was of him. It seemed I’d developed a reputation. From then on, everyone said I was either crazy or tough. No one was quite sure which, but either way, they didn’t want to mess with me anymore, and I ate hot lunch all year.
After that, I didn’t have much use for playing it safe, and whenever there was a problem, I ran at it, not away from it. So like I said, it’s probably Dad’s fault.
———
The Bible says that before they were kicked out of paradise, Adam and Eve talked with God in the Garden. There within the gates of Eden, each afternoon, in the cool of the day, they asked their questions, and God answered. We don’t know what their questions were, but we know what ours are, and my guess is that many of them would be the same. Why questions, and when questions, and even how questions.
We all have questions we’d like God to answer, and maybe that’s what eternity is all about.
I’ve always had lots of questions, and I don’t think I’m alone. I think there’s a part of each of us that was born homesick for Eden. Like Adam and Eve, we want to walk peacefully among the lilies, the leopard, the lion, and the lamb and get our questions answered. I can’t imagine how long it would take to answer all our questions, but maybe that’s what eternity is all about.
Back at the mailbox, curiosity won out over fear, and I found myself slowly retracing my footsteps back toward the cottage.
As I got closer, I noticed what I’d missed before. The sign above the entrance said ANGEL’S GATE.
Yes, I thought to myself. That confirms it. This i
s the place I read about on the internet.
I wished that Carol could see it. The house itself was old but well-maintained. From the outside, it looked more like a home than an inn. It was a large saltbox with a carriage house attached to the back. The grounds were well-kept, surrounded by flowers and fruit trees and a large, towering pine.
The building sat atop a slight knoll, with stone steps cut in the hill on the front side. A brick walkway went out through the gate and led down to the lake. I was admiring its beauty and haunted by a lost memory that perhaps I’d been there before, when suddenly I realized that Michael was standing beside me.
“You have a way of sneaking up on people,” I said. “Where’d you come from, anyway?”
He ignored my question and opened the gate, and together we walked up the path. As we went through the kitchen door, he said, “Like Ahbee, I’m always around, even if you’re not looking for me.”
Ahbee interrupted just as I was going to ask Michael what he meant by that.
“I’m so glad you decided to come back.”
“Did I have a choice?” I asked.
“Of course. You always have a choice. I simply tried to help you make the right choice,” Ahbee answered.
“I’ll bet you’re the one who put my name on that mailbox, aren’t you?” I questioned.
“Yes,” he answered. “I knew your name before you did, and I also knew you couldn’t resist looking inside. You’ve always been more curious than cautious.”
“And the letter?” I asked. “Did you and Carol come up with that?”
“No, she had nothing to do with it. This is strictly between you and me.”
“Look,” I said, frustrated. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but it seems to me that you both know a lot more about me than I do about you. So why don’t you guys quit fooling around and fill in some of the blanks for me?”
“Oh, you know us much better than you think!” Ahbee said. “That’s part of your problem. You’re overthinking this. It is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“If that’s true,” I replied, “then either you’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get me here, or this is all some kind of a weird dream.”
“Would you be more comfortable if it was a dream?” the old one asked.
“No. I just want to know if this is real or not.”
“Oh, it’s real all right,” he replied. “As real as a root canal, probably the most real thing you’ve ever done. And parts of it will be painful, but in the end you’ll be better for it.”
“That’s right,” Michael chimed in. “No harm will come to you here, I can promise you that, and you’re free to leave anytime you want.”
“Well, if this is so real and so wonderful, then where in the world am I?”
“Like I tried to tell you before,” Ahbee continued, “think of this as a little taste of heaven on earth. Time has no meaning here. This will be like a seamless gap in your story.”
“My story?”
“Every life is a story,” Ahbee explained. “Some people think their story is predetermined. They imagine that every line of the script of their lives was written by someone else. They have no choice, no responsibility. They’re simply actors in the play, part of a predestined plot. Others see themselves as the author. They imagine that they are in charge of their own life, the master of their fate and the captain of their soul.”
“So which is it?” I asked. “You seem to have this figured out, so tell me—is life a matter of choice, or is it predestined?”
“It’s a mixture of both. The problem is in knowing where the one drops off and the other begins. Each life is a story in time, but not all stories are the same. For example, some people, older people, often want to stop time. They live in the past, and their story always begins with the words, ‘Once upon a time, a long, long time ago.’
“For others, for the very young, it’s the opposite. They want to speed up time. They’re in a hurry to get on with it. For them the story is always about tomorrow, and it always begins, ‘Someday.’ Sometimes they’re so concerned about tomorrow that they can’t enjoy today.”
Ahbee continued. “Everybody’s story is a drama unfolding in the moment. Often, when they get written down, the stories begin with the words, ‘It was a dark and stormy night,’ for the times most people remember are the times of mystery, tragedy, danger, and uncertainty. But everyone’s story has both ups and downs, triumphs and tears, moments of clarity and times of uncertainty. Time is both your friend and your enemy.”
Slowly I slumped into one of the kitchen chairs, trying to make some sense of what they were saying, and that’s when I realized that the clock on the stove had no hands.
Time is an unrenewable resource that should never be wasted.
“Time may not mean anything here,” Michael said, “but it means everything in your world. It’s an unrenewable resource, and it should never be wasted. Even now, time is winding down there. We’ve always been very clear about that. The prophets of the Hebrew testament and the writers of the new one have all said that the world was designed with a beginning, a middle, and an end. And Ahbee has always said that when it’s over, he will bring you to himself. Meanwhile, it’s my job to go back and forth as his messenger and to be the keeper of the gate.”
That’s when it hit me. Everything fell into place. DeAngelo—this guy thinks he’s the archangel, Michael!
“I didn’t know angels sold real estate,” I said.
“You made that assumption on your own,” Michael replied. “All I said was that I was Ahbee’s agent. Over the years, I have been called many things: his messenger, his agent, his angel, his gatekeeper. It’s all the same to me.”
“What do you mean, ‘gatekeeper’?” I asked.
“Since Adam broke the relationship with Ahbee, I’ve been under strict orders. No one enters paradise except by invitation. Of course, most come through the front gate; their invitation is for eternity, and it’s written in the blood of the Lamb. But some, like you, are invited by Ahbee on a temporary visa. You come through my gate, the angel’s gate, the back door of heaven.”
“I didn’t know heaven had a back door.”
“There are a lot of things you don’t know,” Michael said. “But hopefully, some of that will change over the next few days.”
I must admit that I didn’t really believe a word of it, but I was intrigued by it all.
Michael was wearing faded blue jeans, a crisp white shirt, a black corduroy jacket, and a pair of brown penny loafers.
“You don’t look like any angel I’ve ever seen,” I said.
“Really?” Michael asked. “And just how many angels have you seen? Remember the night when you crawled into that sewer pipe that ran under the road over by Redeemer College? You were eleven at the time, and you couldn’t resist chasing after that green speckled frog. You kept stretching out your arm, reaching your way into the pipe until you were good and stuck. You couldn’t go forward or backward, remember? Little by little, fear had its way with you, and you began to panic.”
For a moment Michael leaned back in his chair with a smirk on his face, and then he went on with his story. “You shouted, ‘Help me, God! Send your angels to save me!’ And that’s exactly what he did. Of course, one angel was more than sufficient, and the task was given to me. Even now, you distinctly remember someone tugging on your leg, but when you turned around, I was gone. We angels are a little bashful,” he explained. “We don’t show ourselves unless Ahbee tells us to.
“No,” Michael continued, “as far as I know, you’ve never actually seen an angel. Even the afternoon of the accident.”
“How did you know about that sewer pipe?” I asked. “I’ve never told anyone about that. And if you’re suggesting that God was there at the lake the day of Ben’s accident, then why didn’t he do something? If there was ever a God-forsaken day, that was it.”
“Never in your life have you been God-forsaken, not even for a minute. Even
in the midst of tragedy, Ahbee is with you. He doesn’t always keep you from falling, but he’s always there to help you up when you do. As for the details of your life, they are meticulously monitored and recorded, and they can be recounted at any time.”
“You are amazed that we know about the night a frightened boy cried out in fear, or the afternoon his brother cried out in pain,” said the old one. “But I tell you, you will see things that are much more amazing than that if you decide to stay.”
Much of the pain and suffering of our world is the result of poor choices.
“Do I have a choice?” I asked once again.
“You always have a choice,” Michael replied. “Ahbee wouldn’t have it any other way. Much of the pain and suffering in your world is the result of poor choices, but he never forces anyone to do the right thing.
“He leads, he warns, he influences,” Michael continued, “but he never makes anyone do anything. The conspiracy is not our doing, I can assure you of that.”
“What conspiracy?”
“We’ll talk more about that later, but first things first. For now, let me show you around.”
“Later?” I asked. “I thought time had no meaning here. Besides, Carol will be home in a few days, and she’ll be worried if I’m not there.”
“Don’t worry,” he said assuredly. “You’ll be home long before she is. Besides, like I said, time doesn’t matter here, but for your sake, we’ll divide your stay up into day and night. And yes, it’s fun for us too. It reminds us of how those began, but that’s also a story for another time. For now, let’s take a walk.”
God never forces us to do the right thing.
Michael led me through the room where he had entered before. What I thought was a parlor was in fact part of a U-shaped living room that wrapped around three sides of a huge Rumford stone fireplace. The stairway mirrored the shape of the room, circling around the back of the fireplace, and ended at the second floor. The west end of the room was a library of sorts. It contained a table, a lamp, and an old, comfortable-looking leather chair, all of which sat on a beautiful Persian rug. The archway and the west wall were lined with bookshelves, floor to ceiling.
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