Gate (9781441240569)

by Stouten, Dann A.

  It was in this stall, where an old Volvo now sat covered in dust, that I rebuilt the motor of the first car I ever owned, a black Triumph TR2 with two white racing strips that ran across the hood and trunk. I bought it from a guy who’d raced it, and when I got it, it had the number three piston sticking out of the side of the block. Piece by piece I took the front end off the car, sequentially numbering each piece with masking tape labels as I went. Dad came out and saw the parts scattered around the barn floor and bet me a hundred dollars that I’d never get it running again. He’d have won the bet if Herby hadn’t come to my rescue. Herb came over every night after supper for three weeks and helped me put it back together with a used short block I’d gotten from the junkyard.

  For a time I was lost in the nostalgia of the place and wondering why I’d kept my distance from Ben and the barn. Then without warning he came sliding out from underneath the old Volvo that was parked in stall number three. It was a dark khaki–colored 1962 544 with red-ribbed leatherette interior. The design of the car was totally retro, and it looked like a ’46 Ford coupe that shrunk when it got caught in the dryer. Ben looked up at me from the creeper and said, “Hey bro, Dad called and said you might drop by. I’m glad you did. You know more about these old ones than I do, and I could use some help.”

  He told me that he’d taken the vintage Volvo in on trade from a guy who’d had it parked in his grandfather’s garage since 1973. He said it ran when he drove it in there but it didn’t start now. Ben confessed that he probably put too much money into the car but had fallen in love with it. It reminded him of an old ice racer we use to have, and I said that I agreed.

  “These things are built like a tank,” he said, “and that little fourbanger tractor engine will run forever.” He was hoping to restore it for Easy and said he thought it would make a great high school graduation present for him. “Can you imagine being on campus your freshman year driving a chick magnet like this old Volvo?”

  “I don’t think Easy is going to have any trouble attracting girls,” I said, but I had to admit it would make a sweet ride. “You could trick it out with chrome wheels and custom paint.”

  “I’m thinking about maybe keeping it original,” he said, “but first I’ve got to get it running. I put in some fresh gas, got a new set of plugs and points sitting on the bench, and I’m charging the battery, but when I tried turning it over earlier I don’t think it was getting any gas. I’ll bet it’s got something to do with those Zenith-Stromberg carbs. They always were a little touchy. You want to take a look?”

  “Sure,” I said, “but you might have to have Dave come over if you really want it done right. I was always better at dolling them up than tuning them up.”

  “I’ve got complete confidence in you, bro,” he said. “I’m going to slide under here and finish putting new oil and fuel filters on this thing, and while I do, why don’t you tackle the electrical stuff?”

  “Sounds like a plan,” I said as he slid back out of sight.

  A half hour later he crawled back out, grabbed the keys off the bench, and slid awkwardly behind the steering wheel. I could tell his leg was bothering him, but before I could ask about it he said, “You feather the butterfly on those carbs, and I’ll try to breathe a little fire in this beast.”

  It took a little coaxing, but after a few misfires and some sputtering, the old Volvo was humming like a sewing machine. Ben hollered in delight as he revved it a few times and then shut it down. Then he ran around to the front of the car where I was standing and swallowed me up in a big bear hug.

  “You and I always did make a great team,” he said, still holding me close, and almost whispered the words, “Whatever happened to that?”

  It was a rhetorical question. We both knew what happened. The accident and its aftermath had driven a wedge between us.

  “I know it won’t be easy,” Ben said, “but I think we’ve got to talk about this. At least I know I’ve got to talk about it. This is the elephant in the room every time we get together as a family, and I’m sick of dancing around it. You know as well as I do that it’s been eating us both up, and it’s got to stop.”

  “I’ve been talking to Pastor Bill,” he continued as he let me go and looked me in the eye. “He’s been helping me see things a little clearer. He said that if I’m going to really give my life to Jesus, then I’ve got to give him all of it, and that includes the stuff between us. Then last week as he was about to break the bread he said that communion was a feast of forgiveness, and that the opposite was just as true. Unforgiveness is a meal in itself. We feed off our anger, and our resentment, and our disappointment, and the more we taste it the more we want. Before you know it we’re licking our lips imagining the sweet taste of revenge. The problem is that rather than satisfy our hunger, it eats us up inside, and when the meal is over, bitterness and guilt have picked the meat off the bones of our souls. And that’s where I’ve been for too long.

  “I know the accident wasn’t your fault, and I also know how much I let you and Dad down in all this. Oh, you tried to hide it, but you couldn’t. You guys are both lousy liars, and that night in the hospital it was all over your face. Everyone knew that I was never going to be what I could have been, and I couldn’t deal with it. I was horsing around. I was showing off for the girls on the beach, and I lost my footing. I slipped.

  “It wasn’t your fault. It was an accident, but at the time it was easier to blame you than it was to accept the blame myself, so that’s what I did. Then after that, anytime anything else happened, I just kept blaming you. In my mind all of my problems were your fault. If you hadn’t brought that boat up there that day, if you hadn’t turned when you did, if you would have done something different, then everything would be different now. Believe me, I threw myself quite a pity party at your expense, and you wore my guilt like an overcoat.

  “My whole life, whenever I fell down or messed up, you were always there to catch me, or to cover for me, or to make things all right, and this time you weren’t. So right there in that hospital room I started blaming you. I decided that you owed me. You were going to have to pay, and I was going to see to it. Blaming you became my crutch.”

  “It’s all right, Ben,” I said. “You had good reason to be mad, and hey, the truth is, I’ve always blamed myself for that day too.”

  “I know you have,” Ben said, “and that’s just wrong. The only thing more wrong was me letting you do it. I should have stepped up and taken this like a man, like you would have done if things were the other way around. But I didn’t. Maybe it’s too late, maybe you can’t forgive me for what I did, but I hope you can because I can’t live with the guilt anymore.”

  “It’s all right—” I said again, but Ben interrupted me.

  “No, it’s not all right,” he said, “and you saying it isn’t going to make it so. I’ve got to clear the air about this, and you’ve got to let me. I feel bad enough that Dad had to step in and bail me out with the bank, but I’ve got to do this with you. So let me finish talking, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Here it is, Sky,” he continued. “My whole life I’ve looked up to you. In fact, I wanted to be you. Whatever you did, I did. It was like I was your shadow, but I always knew that I was never quite good enough. When we were kids you were always bigger, always stronger, always smarter, and you always knew just what to say. You were like Dad, only younger. Everyone knew that he was so proud of you, and I wanted that. I envied that.

  “The only place I got that kind of respect from him was on the athletic field. When I played baseball, or football, or basketball, Dad noticed. Athletics was the one thing I could do better than you. Hey, you said it, Dad said it, everybody said it: ‘You’re a natural!’ It came easy to me. I loved sports, and I loved the attention I got even more.

  “All I ever really wanted to do was to make Dad proud of me, and football was my ticket. For the first time in my life, I was the favorite. I was the one he talked about to his frien
ds, and I liked it. But then that day in the hospital everything changed. I looked in his face and all I saw was disappointment, and it hurt. It hurt big time, and I’m only now starting to come to grips with that.

  “Looking back, even then I knew this was my fault. The problem was, I wasn’t ready to face it. I needed to hide from it for a little while. There was a side of me that didn’t want to blame you, but there was also a side of me that did. So for a while those two sides waged a war inside my soul, until finally the darker side won out.

  “You were my crutch, and I’ve been limping through life ever since. You know it’s true and I do too. Ever since then we’ve had this chasm, this unresolved anger between us, and it just keeps popping up over and over again. It’s like that Whac-A-Mole game down at the arcade. We push it down and it pops up somewhere else.

  “I guess what I’m asking is, do you think there’s any way that you can forgive me, Sky? I know it’s a lot to ask, and I also know that it’s going to take some time, but the only way I could see for this to get better was for me to come clean and to tell you how sorry I am. I didn’t mean to drop all this on you at once, but once I got started it was kind of hard to stop. I guess what I’m really trying to say is that I want my brother back.”

  By now Ben and I were both crying. Tears chased down his cheeks and mine, and then he said again, “I’m sorry, man, I’m so sorry,” and with that his voice trailed off into an uneasy silence.

  I knew it was my turn to talk, and I didn’t want to leave him hanging there, but the problem was, I didn’t know where to start.

  “Ben,” I said softly, “I really don’t know what to say. Of course I forgive you. I had no idea that you felt this way. Listen, like you said, it was an accident. And as for you letting me down, if anything the opposite is true. I think I let you down. If anybody needs to apologize, I think it’s me. This was more my fault than yours.

  “I was trying to look like a big wheel to you and your friends. I wanted you guys to think I was cool, so I drove up in a Mercedes dragging that MasterCraft. I never should have brought that boat up there in the first place. Dad was right. You guys were elite athletes. You were in training. You had your whole life ahead of you. You should have been focusing on football, not girls and water-skiing. And yes, I knew you blamed me for some of this, but I blamed myself more. So thanks for having the guts to be so honest, Ben. You have no idea how much hearing you say that has lifted a burden off my back. But if we’re making confessions, then it ought to go both ways. I’ve got a few things to say too.

  “The truth is that I rather enjoyed the role of rescuer. It inflated my ego. Every time you called needing my help, I’d slip into a phone booth, put on my cape and costume, and rush right over to save the day, like Superman, and if someone noticed, so much the better. Every time I’d hear someone say, ‘You’ve sure been so good to your little brother, you gave him a job, you set him up in business, you’re always there for him, he’s lucky to have a brother like you,’ my head would swell a little more. If I was your crutch, you were my cross.

  “I had a little bit of a messiah complex going. I could play the martyr as long as someone was there to notice. Metaphorically at least, I’d drag you through the streets on my back, looking as brave and as Christlike as I could. And if anybody asked, I was always ready to tell the story. ‘My poor misguided brother messed up again,’ I’d say, throwing you under the bus, hoping that someone would nominate me for sainthood.

  “If we’re going to be honest about all this, then I’ve got my own apologizing to do too. This little game of ours was a two-way street, my brother, and like you, I played my part with a certain amount of willingness.”

  “So what you’re saying is that if I can find a way to look past your black heart, maybe we can be brothers again?” Ben said with a grin.

  “Yes,” I said. “At least that’s a place to start.”

  “Well then,” Ben said, “why don’t we start by working on this old Volvo and see where it takes us?”

  “I’m in. That sounds like a plan to me.”

  “Since you’re feeling so guilty,” Ben added, “why don’t we run down to Vitale’s and you can buy us a pizza? Then we can come back here and get back to work on Easy’s car.”

  “What makes you so sure that’s the kind of car Easy’s going to want?”

  Looking over at the 544, Ben said, “What’s not to like? It’s simple, it’s reliable, it’s good-looking. If he takes care of it that thing will last forever. In fact, I’ll bet that’s the kind of car they drive in heaven!”

  “Not exactly,” I said.

  “What do you mean by that?”

  “Let’s go get that pizza and I’ll explain it to you.”

  ———

  Somewhere in our conversation that night, Ben and I started to be brothers again, and the next day when Carol and the girls got home from Chicago, I told them about our talk.

  “Your mother would be so happy,” Carol said. “It’s what she wanted more than anything else.”

  “I know,” I said. “Believe me, I know. What mattered most to her was family, and knowing that some of us were struggling with each other broke her heart.”

  We talked for about a half hour, the girls showed me some of the things they bought in Chicago, and then after the girls went home Carol said, “I thought you were going to go up north to check out that cottage?”

  “I did,” I said. “It’s a long story. Why don’t we make some lunch and go out on the deck, and I’ll tell you all about it.”

  At first I was hesitant to tell the story. I hemmed and hawed around for a while, hoping not to have to tell her everything, but no matter how hard I tried, little by little, she pulled the story out of me. “There’s something eating at you,” she said. “I can tell. You don’t have to talk about it right now if you don’t want to, but I want you to know that when you’re ready to talk, I’m ready to listen.”

  I nodded my head in agreement and held my tongue for the next couple days. Then that Friday we took a long drive together, and little by little I told her what happened. Of course she believed it, because she believes in me. The same thing was true of the girls. Dad and Sharon wanted to believe, but it was a little more of a struggle for them.

  “If you say it happened,” Dad said, “I’ll believe you, but you know, sometimes dreams can seem pretty real.”

  “It wasn’t a dream, Dad,” I said.

  For another couple of weeks there was a tug-of-war going on in my heart, but then one night Ben and I were out in the barn working on Easy’s 544 and he tipped me over.

  “You’ve got to tell the story,” he said. “You can’t keep something like this to yourself; it wouldn’t be right. Whether you want to tell it or not really doesn’t matter. God wants this story told, and he gave it to you to tell.”

  That was three years ago now. Since then Ben and I are more open and more honest with each other than we’ve ever been. We’re both better people because of it. Iron sharpens iron. So reluctantly, cautiously, with his encouragement, I’ve even written some of the story down, and doing that has had a profound effect on me. It may not change the world, but it’s certainly changing me.

  Nowadays I work at spending less time on the things that don’t matter and more time with the people who do. Evidently, it’s more noticeable than I thought. People tell me that there’s something different about me, that some kind of change has taken place, a subtle shift in my attitude and values, and all I can say to them is that visiting heaven will do that.

  I’m not saying that I’ve got it all figured out—I don’t. I still struggle with things like hunger, poverty, injustice, violence, natural disasters, and of course death, but life doesn’t seem as random as it once did. I have hope. I know God, and I know he’s working things out in ways that I might not understand. So when I don’t have all the answers, I can put my trust in the One who does. At least I try to, but honestly, I’m still a work in progress. Roz was right: God�
��s not done with me yet.

  But I’ve been given a gift. I was sent ahead to scout the way. I’ve had the chance to peek over the horizon and see the great beyond. I’ve tiptoed up to the line between life and death and caught a glimpse of the unknowable mystery. I know with absolute certainty that the best is yet to come. So even if you’re not quite convinced about my story, keep your fork! Something better is coming.

  the benediction

  Each Sunday I close our church service with words that express my hope for anyone who hears them. I want to let them serve as a benediction for my readers as well.

  May God’s seeking comfort find you.

  May his loving arms bind you.

  May his might protect you

  And his wisdom direct you.

  And may the joyous love of Jesus Christ

  Be with you and those you love

  Now and forevermore. Amen.

  Dann A. Stouten is senior pastor of Community Reformed Church in Zeeland, Michigan, one of the fastest-growing churches on the West Michigan lakeshore. After a highly successful career in the auto industry, Dann returned to school and earned his DMin in narrative preaching. This is his first novel.

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