The REIGN: Out of Tribulation

by Jeffrey McClain Jones

  Steve and Rodney looked at each other, then turned and followed Hubert through the front gate and up to the front door. He pointed out a loose board, which they each avoided with care, in the low light. Then he turned, as if remembering something. He reached up to Rodney’s face and said, “You have bad eyesight at night.” Then he touched Rodney’s forehead and it seemed to him that someone turned on a light. He could see more clearly in the low twilight than at any time since he was a boy.

  “Oh,” Rodney said. “Yes. That’s much better,” and he laughed.

  Hubert turned back to the door, he turned the knob and the door yielded. Inside, it was dark, of course, so Hubert touched the light switch and lights in the living room ignited. He walked through the room holding up his right forefinger. As he entered what appeared to be an office or den, he lit the lights in there.

  “Many years ago there was a feud in your family, Steve. These people were related to you, but you didn’t know it and your parents had forgotten. I think you will find this interesting,” Hubert said.

  He reached up to the bookshelf, behind where a desk had once stood, and pulled down an ancient photo album and a book next to it. Hubert blew the dust off of these and handed one to each of them. Rodney opened the book, which turned out to be a journal with dates from the nineteenth century. Steve opened the album to see pictures beginning around that same period.

  “These are your ancestors, Steve,” Hubert said, pointing to a photo of a stern man with a beard and no mustache. “This man was your great grandfather’s great grandfather, he was a preacher.”

  Steve didn’t know of any preachers in the family, assuming all his relatives had been atheists or pagans.

  “This is the man who wrote this journal,” Hubert said, pointing to the book in Rodney’s hands.

  “He will tell you there about your family and about his faith, about how he prayed for his family and even for their grandchildren’s grandchildren. He prayed for hours every day.”

  Steve stared at the man in the photo and began to slowly turn pages, reading the names and dates and meeting his ancestors. Rodney closed the journal, feeling odd about seeing it before Steve. Steve looked up at him, wonder and gratitude in his eyes.

  Rodney said, “Shall we head back? Emma will wonder what happened to us,”

  “Sure,” said Steve. To Hubert he said, “Thanks.” Then he thought a second and said aloud, “Thank you, God.” In return, he instantly felt a wave of elation and peace.

  Hubert and Rodney led the way to the door. Hubert waited for them to step out and turned the lights off. He closed the door behind them.

  Rodney caught Steve’s eye and gave him an impressed look.

  After they walked down the road a bit, Hubert said, “I will go now. I have done all I was sent to do. But I have one more thing to tell you, Steve.” He waited, as if receiving final instructions. “I know that you love the game of soccer, Steve. I need to tell you that, in what lies ahead, you should just keep playing into space. You know that you cannot beat your opponent in soccer simply by passing to where your teammates are already standing. You play the pass into open space. When you pass the ball, there is no one there, no defender and not even your teammate, but you trust that, if you pass to that open space, your teammate will run to the ball, control it and dribble or pass it forward. Your task now, and for much of your life, requires you to trust that what you do not yet see is more important than what you do see. Just keep passing into the open space and watch, as those who have been given to you as support and fellow travelers, will arrive just in time to carry forward what you have provided for them.” Then, with a smile, Hubert simply disappeared.

  Rodney looked at Steve and, without a word, they turned down the road.

  After a few seconds, Rodney’s voice mixed in with the bugs and birds. “That was amazing.” Then he joked. “Too bad that guy didn’t know anything about a real man’s sport, like football.”

  Steve laughed.

  As delicate and intimidating as the subject had seemed earlier in the evening, when Steve expressed his doubts about marrying Marney, the landscape had changed for him entirely during the walk with Hubert. He planned to tell Marney the next night about how he felt, just as Hubert instructed.

  “You want Emma and me to be around?” Rodney asked Steve, before he left that night.

  “No, not at first. I’m starting slow, it won’t be traumatic.”

  Rodney nodded and waved once to his friend, as Steve started up his little electric car. Turning, stepping onto the porch and through the screen door, immediately Rodney heard an unfamiliar voice in the dining room.

  Daniel sat at the table scooping up pancakes and syrup with a fork, listening to a young man of about twenty. The stranger was saying something about coastal restoration, in a tone fit for describing one’s beloved children. Rodney stopped at the end of the table, a half a dozen questions on his face.

  Emma returned from the kitchen and said, “Hello, Dear. This is Devin. You want some pancakes?”

  Devin had just stabbed and deposited a big bite of pancakes in his mouth. He smiled politely at Rodney. Not until he chewed and swallowed did he say, “Pleased to meet you, Rodney.”

  Rodney just stood there looking at the two young men and at his wife.

  “You should sit down and listen to this,” Daniel said. “I’ve been asking Devin about a bunch of the things I’ve been reading on the Internet, about projects that his people are doing. Some will take them a hundred years, but they don’t mind. Can you imagine working on the same thing for a hundred years?”

  Rodney had never seen Daniel this excited. Emma hadn’t seen him like this since he was eight years old, when he returned with his father from the amusement park in St. Louis.

  Still recovering from the walk and talk with Hubert and Steve, Rodney didn’t really feel like sitting and talking or listening, but he could tell that it was important to Daniel. Emma and Rodney exchanged a meaningful smile as he accepted a plate of pancakes. He could sense her satisfaction with his decision to stick around.

  “What kind of work are you doing,” Rodney asked, buttering his pancakes and looking at Devin in turn. The stranger looked ageless; mature and yet pure and clean-cut as a little boy after his Saturday bath. His golden hair hung in ringlets around his head, like a sculpture from ancient Athens. Nothing about his natural facial features would have distinguished him as extraordinary, but everything about the way he looked now made one want him to talk, just for the excuse to stare at him.

  “I’m cleaning up the highways and railroad tracks in this area,” Devin said. “That’s where Daniel and I met.”

  “Yeah, me stopping to stare at him fixing pot holes with his bare hands,” Daniel exclaimed with his mouth full.

  Rodney raised his eyebrows.

  “I don’t always do it that way, that was just today.” Devin grinned.

  “I always get the impression that you folks are having fun, no matter what you do,” Rodney said, remembering the little construction workers in Kansas City.

  “It takes children to enter into the Reign of God,” Devin said.

  Rodney nodded, the reference lost on him, but the point made.

  Emma was just sitting down. She asked a question that had been waiting such an opportunity. “Are there special jobs just for children?”

  Devin shook his head, took a drink of milk and answered with a triangle of white at each corner of his mouth. “Well, there isn’t really such a thing as age when you live forever, so we really are all children and all fully grown. We may look different to you, because you can only see our physical representation, our ‘Earth suits,’ we call them. For me, that’s just part of the fun of interacting with the mortals and the elements of the planet. This body is just the tool I’ve been given for working here a while.”

  “A while?” Daniel asked. “How long will you be working here?”

  “A thousand years,” Devin said.

  Everyone at th
e table stopped what they were doing. Emma slowly lowered the coffee cup from her lips. “A thousand years?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Devin said simply, “That’s how long we have to prepare the Earth for the Creator to come back to his creation. It’s like cleaning the place up, when you have a special guest on the way.”

  “’On the way’ in a thousand years?” Rodney said.

  Devin nodded.

  “Why does God need the roads all fixed up?” Daniel asked, quick to spot a conundrum.

  “Oh, the roads are for the Earth-bound people, so you can get more of your work done during the Reign.”

  “So, we’re preparing the planet too?” Rodney asked.

  “Yes,” Devin said, finishing his pancakes. He stood up quickly and took his plate and glass to the kitchen, returning to his seat in a few swift steps, his movements as effortless as a ballet dancer.

  “But you don’t really need us to help, do you?” Rodney asked.

  “Yes, we do. We’re counting on you,” Devin said sincerely.

  Rodney never suspected the immortals of lying to him, but he often felt as if they were editing the truth to fit what the mortals could manage. They clearly knew far more than he did, but they didn’t know everything, only what God told them, so Rodney didn’t assume that any answer so sweeping as the one Devin had just given should be considered the final word.

  With no warning, Devin stood up and stepped to the end of the table, standing next to Emma. He looked toward her belly and said, “Have you thought of what you will name him?”

  Emma turned and looked in Devin’s face. There she could tell that he knew exactly what he was doing, no careless word or insensitive question crossing his mind or falling from his lips.

  “It’s a boy?” she asked.

  “Yes,” Devin said.

  Rodney stood up and walked to the other side of Emma, looking at his wife and then at Devin.

  Devin continued. “This boy will be a great leader among his people. He will influence many generations on this planet. Consider this, as you make your plans.”

  For a moment, Rodney had felt perturbed that Devin revealed the gender of their child, when they had purposely decided not to learn the gender through medical imaging. He set that aside, however, and considered Devin’s rattling prophetic announcement about his son.

  Devin turned to Daniel and said, “He will need you to watch out for him when he is young and he will bless you when you are old.”

  Daniel raised his eyebrows, then seemed to accept his part, and said, “Cool.”

  Rodney, still fascinated with the operations and roles of the immortals, asked, “Is this why you really came here this evening?”

  Devin shook his head. “No, I just came to talk to Daniel. But, while I was eating, the Spirit of God told me this news and commissioned me to deliver it. It’s always an honor to deliver God’s word to people and this one seems a particularly important one. I’m sorry if it all came too suddenly.”

  Rodney put his left arm around Emma’s shoulders, absorbing the significance of Devin’s announcement. He nodded. “Of course, we’re surprised, but I guess you don’t need to apologize for that.”

  Bowing slightly, Devin smiled. “It was good talking to you, Daniel. I’ll stop around once in a while, if you don’t mind.”

  “Great, I’ll save up questions for you,” Daniel said. He stood up from his seat.

  Devin turned to Rodney and Emma and said goodbye to them, acknowledged their gratitude, and thanking Emma for the wonderful pancakes. “I’ll bring you some new food that I’m sure you’ve never eaten before, next time I stop by.”

  As Devin turned to leave, Rodney stopped him. "Devin, can I ask you a question. In the old days, angels used to deliver messages like this. Why do you get to do it now?"

  Devin looked at Rodney, as if assessing the motive behind the question. He said, "With so many available messengers on the earth, it's not necessary to reveal angels to you. Angels can be very intimidating." When he saw that this satisfied Rodney, he continued to the door.

  Daniel followed his new friend out of the house. Rodney could hear them talking about how Devin was going to travel, by flight or instant transport, as they walked away from the house. A minute later Daniel came back in the door alone.

  “That was so cool!” he said.

  Emma and Rodney nodded and smiled, though “cool” was not the word they would have used to describe the evening.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The high school opened at the beginning of September, with two hundred students from the area; about a third of the number that the school held before the war. The building and grounds looked magnificently clean, due to the supervising maintenance person, an immortal woman named Lyda. She stood five and a half feet tall, weighed no more than a hundred and thirty pounds and looked about forty years old. If she were a mere mortal, one would never believe how much she could do with that building and the surrounding lots and fields.

  Steve had walked into his classroom early one day, to find all of the desks stacked neatly, four-high, in one corner, as Lyda skated around the room polishing the linoleum to a marble shine, apparently with nothing but her socks.

  Marney had introduced herself to the superhuman janitor and learned that Lyda had sold real estate during the previous century and raised four children on her own. To mortals like Marney and Steve, it seemed a strange reward after such a life of hard white-collar work, but Lyda saw the school as her three dimensional canvas on which she created a work of art that no one could rival. As the students became acquainted with Lyda, they started coming to her for healing of minor injuries and heartaches.

  The Principal of the school was an immortal named Barney, who beamed joy and contentment. His qualifications for this job dashed to bits the expectations of mortal school administrators of the past. He literally understood the particular needs and abilities of each of the students in detail, and worked with the faculty to craft education plans tailored to each one of them. Nevertheless, much of the instruction looked familiar to mere mortals: reading, writing, history, math and science, taught through lecture, group projects and peer tutoring. However, much less learning time missed the mark than in past generations. Barney accomplished this by hand-picking the faculty himself, knowing the teachers as insightfully as he knew the students.

  One Monday, after the last class bell rang and the students vanished like dandelion seeds in a strong prairie breeze, Steve and Marney met with Nancy, another immortal assigned to the school. Nancy looked to be in her thirties, a pale round face and dark hair. Her eyes invited one into her emotional orbit immediately. No mortal ever sustained the welcoming promise of intimate connection, day in and day out, the way Nancy did, not since the first time Jesus came to the Earth.

  Nancy hugged each of them when they reached the center of her office, stopping to look each of them in the eyes, as she held their shoulders. Steve felt like it was her way of taking his emotional temperature, without a word exchanged between them. At her prompting, they sat together on the couch. She pulled a comfortable chair closer and sat down in front of them, close enough to lean forward and touch them on the knees, if she felt it helped make her point. Each time she touched him, Steve felt a small zap of electricity, which both invigorated and unsettled him.

  Once they were all seated, and had exchanged a few words of small talk, Nancy asked, “So Marney, are you really ready to do this?”

  When she made the appointment, Marney gave only the most general introduction to the sort of help she was seeking. But, she sensed, even during that introduction, that Nancy knew plenty already, without any need for lengthy explanations.

  Marney cleared her throat very delicately. Steve loved that tiny sound in her throat, which seemed to him a quaint expression of her restraint, even in such a small and common thing. The charm of that restraint included its contrast with her boundless artistic talent and her imaginative intelligence. Yet, of course, he had learn
ed that the shell of that restraint covered a shame-filled event that twisted modesty into a temptation to flee all intimacy. Such was the push and pull of their relationship, clinging and rejection combined into a confusing dance.

  “I know you can help me,” Marney said. “I’m just bracing myself, for going back to a place I never, ever wanted go back to, for anything.” Her voice shook. She stopped to take a deep breath and said, “I’m so scared.”

  Nancy helped her. “It’s one thing to be thrust into a horror that you didn’t know was coming, but it’s something else to voluntarily go where you know how bad it can get.” She nodded slightly, the perfect picture of sympathy, as if full of the visceral pain Marney carried, yet withstanding the vortex of tears that Marney’s pain invoked.

  Marney gave up her efforts at restraint. She exploded into tears and gasping sobs. Steve looked at Nancy for a signal about whether he should put his arm around Marney to comfort her. Nancy shook her head almost imperceptibly and he held back. Nancy handed Marney several tissues and Marney clasped them to her face, as she found no relief from the intensity of her anguish.

  Nancy scooted a bit closer, putting both hands on Marney’s knees. Steve could see Marney begin to vibrate as if she sat on an old-fashioned massage chair. She suddenly stopped sobbing and seemed to be transported into another dimension, as if she were vividly seeing something in her mind’s eye. After a few moments of wonder, what she saw terrified her. She began to scream and Nancy tightened her grip on Marney’s legs, which somehow transferred the emotional protection Marney needed at that moment. Her body appeared to hunker into a hiding place and her eyebrows arched, even as her eyes closed tightly.

  Steve wondered whether this state resembled hypnosis, with which he had very little experience. Whatever it was, he seemed to be an observer, completely disconnected from what Marney was seeing and feeling. He had to assume, nevertheless, that being a witness to this process had some long-term value. Watching was wrenching his insides to the point of nausea. Nancy seemed to know about this and briefly touched his knee, relieving him of the worst of his emotional vertigo. He breathed more regularly and prayed silently.