Intended for Harm

by C. S. Lakin

  And then . . . there was Joey. She had never known a child like him, so like young Samuel in the Bible, who heard God calling him at an early age, destined to become a great prophet in Israel. And why? Because Hannah had prayed fervently for a son, and had dedicated him to God in her heart even before he’d been born, just as Rachel had with Joey. Joey’s faith was unshakable and sure. Ever since he could talk, he spoke of God on intimate terms, as if he knew him as well as his earthly father. His was the simplest, purest kind of faith—but where had it come from? The Bible said God measured out faith, that it was a gift of his spirit. Joey’s faith, she knew, often put her own to shame. So many times when she worried over the children, Joey would lay a hand on hers and tell her God loved her and heard her prayers. How could he know this? Was he just saying the things he thought she needed to hear? A six-year-old? Not likely.

  And those hands. She never forgot the incident of the butterfly, as much as she sought to brush off the whole affair as of no account, but then Jake had cut his leg with the saw, and she had seen the blood—Joey’s hands drenched in blood and Jake and Levi both attesting to Joey’s touch, that in one instant the gash had closed up, leaving a faint scar, something no one could possibly do, not on their own power. She and Jake had spent more nights than she could count going over and over the incident, and they’d watched Joey to see if he might do something like that again, but as far as they knew, that was an isolated incident—that and the butterfly.

  What if there were other occurrences? Rachel never considered it, but maybe she would ask Dinah. She would know. Joey never spoke about it. You’d think if he saw he had such a gift, he would heal every scratch and cut and bruise. She had asked him about it, once. He only shrugged and said God told him to touch Daddy. Did he often ask you to touch someone, to make them better? she had asked. He shook his head. He’d only been, what, four years old? How could he understand how incredible his actions were? But maybe that was why God had given him that gift—he knew Joey’s heart, that he wouldn’t abuse it or claim it as his own. Joey gave the credit where it was due—to God. Still, it both befuddled and unnerved her. God had to have a purpose for Joey, something very important. He didn’t hand out gifts like that to just anyone or for no good reason. But what could that purpose be? She didn’t believe it was for the sole purpose of proving God’s existence to Jake. God didn’t need miracles like that performed to bring someone to faith, and Jake still didn’t believe. No, there had to be something else . . .

  Rachel looked up. Joey stood a few feet in front of her; she hadn’t heard him come out of the house, she’d been so deep in her thoughts, and he appeared as if he knew she’d been thinking about him, had unconsciously summoned him.

  “What are you doing out here, Mommy?”

  She smiled. Clouds shifted above, shone light down through the lattice and a ray hit Joey on the cheek. “Just sitting. Come here.”

  She opened her arms and Joey fell into them. His heart beat against her chest, a fluttering bird. Then he pulled back and looked at her.

  “Why are you upset, Mommy?”

  How does he know? “I’m not upset, sweetie. Just have something on my mind.”

  He pointed at her belly. “You mean the baby?”

  “The what?”

  Joey giggled. “Mommy! The baby that’s in there!”

  Rachel’s jaw dropped. “How . . . do you know I have a baby in there?”

  He laughed more and Rachel pulled him closer, studied his face.

  “Silly Mommy. I can see him.”

  “Him.” She shook her head. “You can see him . . .”

  “That’s Ben. My baby brother.”

  “Joey, how can you see him? He’s very tiny right now and besides—”

  “I just can. God is showing him to me.”

  Rachel sucked in her breath. God. Showing him. She could barely voice her next words. “What is he showing you? Will Ben . . . is he okay?”

  “Sure. But he looks like a peanut!”

  Rachel couldn’t help laughing. “Yes, he probably does! Can you see anything else?”

  Joey squinted at her belly, as if trying to see through her flesh, and it struck her—maybe she shouldn’t be asking, something telling her it wasn’t right.

  He looked up suddenly and met her eyes. She didn’t like the serious look that came over him, like a blind pulled quickly down over a window. Her heart thumped hard.

  “What? What is it?”

  “Something’s wrong.”

  “With Ben?”

  Joey shrugged, then he put his soft hand up against her cheek. “But he’ll be okay. God has a plan.”

  Rachel gulped. This was surreal; was she even having this conversation with her son, or was she imagining it?

  “A plan.” She was parroting him but couldn’t help it.

  Joey dropped his hand, looked around her garden, as if he didn’t want to answer.

  “What plan?” Rachel whispered, preparing herself for what was to come, feeling it like an onrushing train about to run her over, with her standing frozen on the tracks.

  He smiled. “To save his life.”

  He added: “That plan.”

  “Daddy, what are you making?” Joey clambered into Jake’s lap, wiggling to make a depression in the linen apron, a makeshift nest to hold him. Jake lifted his glasses off his nose, balanced them on his head. He turned to his son.

  “A bird—an eagle, with outstretched wings.”

  Joey chortled, and his laughter thumped in waves against Jake’s chest. “It doesn’t look like a bird. It looks like a hunk of wood.”

  “Well, it’s not finished. You have to envision it. See—these will be the wings. And here’s the beak.” He stroked his son’s silky curls, shimmering red in the waning afternoon light. “What’s this?”

  “Careful! It’s sharp—you’ll hurt yourself.” Jake removed the gouge from delicate fingers and held it at arm’s length.

  “Like a knife?”

  “Yes, but different. See—there’s a channel here that digs out the wood. You take the gouge and lay it against the surface, like this.”

  He sensed Joey’s concentrated gaze as he slid the tool across the grain of mahogany. A twist of aromatic wood spilled from the gouge and dropped to the grass in a delicate pirouette.

  “Wow, that’s neat; can I try it?”

  “You’re too young. Your hand might slip and you’d cut yourself.”

  “I wouldn’t!”

  “Anything that’s sharp can cut, can cause pain.”

  Joey’s face turned perplexed. “But sometimes you have to hurt someone for healing to come, right? Like when I scrape my knee and you have to put on that stinky yellow stuff.” His voice dropped, forcing Jake to lean closer to hear. “Sometimes you even have to die to allow someone else to live.”

  A chill skipped across the back of Jake’s neck. “What made you say that?”

  Joey didn’t answer. He only shook his head and looked at the sky, his gaze following something flying afar off.

  Jake sighed. “Promise me you won’t tell Mommy about this bird. It’s to be a surprise.”

  Joey lifted his head and met his father’s eyes; his irises had darkened as if a sudden storm had blown in. “But you won’t get it done in time.”

  “In time for what?”

  “Just in time, is all . . .” Without another word, Joey leapt out of Jake’s lap and ran across the yard, scattering piles of leaves as he made for the house, leaves that floated silently back to the ground, drawn by the gravity of slumber and decay. Jake yawned; when had he last slept? His neck ached from leaning over the workbench these few hours. He rubbed a knot on his shoulder.

  The screen door slapped twice and Jake lost sight of his son. He settled back in his chair and looked around. Rachel’s garden—with its towering hollyhocks and trailing vines—loomed large over him, entangling him in thought, sedating him with the fragrance of lilac and gardenia. Trumpet flowers hung like heavy fruit, ti
nged vibrant yellow, spilling trapped sunlight into the verdant enclosure.

  Jake loosed a sigh and picked up his woodworking tool. He turned the piece of wood first one way, and then another. With firm pressure, he pressed the tool against the grain of the wood, imagining the flesh of his eagle, Rachel’s eagle, coming to life under his touch. He thought of Michelangelo chipping stone to release the completed form of David encased in marble. The wood felt like butter as he dug deeper, coaxing the creature to life, envisioning feathers, the way they layered over skin and hugged the sides of the bird’s face.

  The gouge snagged and jumped from the wood to his left hand, carving a notch in the soft place between his thumb and pointer finger. Jake cried out as crimson blood gushed. How could such a tiny cut bleed so much? He pressed a clean rag against the cut, then froze. Blood had dripped onto the eagle’s unformed head; red rivulets slid down its face like tears.

  Before he could explore the unsettling feeling this sight gave him, noise erupted from the house. He heard Rachel’s voice, her tone meant to calm Simon. Followed, as expected, by defiant shouting.

  Jake shifted on his stool. The rare sense of peace he had been enjoying this Sunday afternoon detonated in a flash of harsh sound. She needed to rest, not get upset, not in her condition.

  Anger flared as Jake’s mind looped through recent arguments. Anger at Rachel’s stubborn faith, at her dissembling explanations in these early months of her pregnancy. She hadn’t planned to tell him until later, but Joey knew, and he pointed at her belly one morning after breakfast—that was all it took for Jake to understand. His fury exploded, but he mouthed words in the vacuum of space, opinions sucked out of his mouth unheeded. He snorted. He may as well be mute since everyone around him was apparently deaf.

  He set the carving down on the small outdoor table and packed up the few tools he’d laid out. After snapping the latch on the box, he strode toward the house.

  Then, under the lattice archway, he stopped.

  The air grew thick, as if entangling time in a net so that it could no longer move forward. Jake’s attention arrested, he spun back to look at the garden, which was bathed in a surreal glow of light. A heady presence enveloped him, in the midst of the profusion of plants, something more alive, more keenly felt. Someone.

  “Who’s there?” Jake whispered, then chided himself for his unprovoked unease. Exhaustion. Worry. Lack of sleep. Those had to be the culprits of his unleashed imagination. He let out a tight breath, shook his head. But when he started to walk again, his feet wouldn’t listen. A feeling came crawling over him like an army of ants, tingling his skin, working its way beneath skin and through bones to some unrecognizable place deep in Jake’s body. A barrage of images exploded in his mind—a frenzied burst of pieces of his life splattering on a screen before his mind’s eye, replaying the many choices he had made—both wise and foolish, and the people who had hurt him—and the people he had hurt.

  Jake’s knees gave way as the march of memories pounded him, as he puzzled—at first frightened, then fear crumbling into curiosity—for he sensed a lack of judgment behind the intent of these reminders—reminders of who he was, where he had come from, the paths he had taken, the choices he had made. In an instant of time his childhood whooshed by, leaving Jake with a pain that resembled a chiseled hole in his gut. Yet, as he looked upon his father and mother, watched Ethan torment him, layers of anger peeled away, the way a magazine’s pages will curl and turn to black ash, one after another, in the heat of fire. Something shifted in his heart, and the anger and hurt burned away as well, leaving Jake with a wholly unfamiliar sensation. At first he thought it pity. Or perhaps sorrow.

  Stripped of those scabs of hurt, the memories lay in a different skewed light, one that softened and blurred, maybe even erased. Almost an understanding, that those who had hurt him hadn’t meant to, that it was only his perception, his sense of worthlessness and insufficiency that made him a victim to their barbs. Whereas now, distanced and impartial, he saw their pain, their suffering, their unmet needs. His father’s bitterness and arrogance masking a cold, unaffectionate childhood. His mother’s clinging and judgment only coating her fear of loss and need for love. Ethan’s brutality a veil hiding his jealousy and insecurity. Even Leah’s face showed a young girl wanting so much for her parents to hold and love her and always they turned away.

  Jake’s head throbbed as he knelt on the bricks, the weak sun shining like a spotlight on his life. He sensed his focus pulling back like a retracting camera lens, then widening out to encompass an entire world of hurt. A world so lost, wandering, broken, hopeless. The weight of the corporate pain of every human who lived and had ever lived stared Jake in the face, and despair rushed at him, too much to bear. He broke suddenly, sobbing and weeping, swept away in this incontrollable anguish, unable to even mouth the word why.

  And then—the all-consuming sense of presence returned, and along with it a rush of comfort, calm, peace. Jake sucked it up like a man desperate for air, not wanting to feel that horrible pain any longer, a pain he finally recognized as a terrible aloneness, as if he were the only human left on earth, as if he had lost everything he had ever cherished, ever needed.

  “Who . . . who are you?”

  The awareness that flooded Jake nearly caused him to faint. There was no way to put into thought or word the sweeping sensation of love that came pouring into him, into that dark secret place in the core of his body. He only knew it was love in its purest state—untainted, unselfish, a higher love than humanly possible. Humans could never love like this; even the most holy and perfect human love, such as the way Jake loved Rachel, paled against the waves of this love, potent, unassailable, intractable. Yet, to Jake’s astonishment, this sensation was also personal. It was embodied by someone.

  Jake’s resistance hit the wall, the impenetrable wall standing miles above, stretching out in every direction, a wall of love both binding and energizing the entire universe, the spark igniting stars and forming galaxies and infusing life into every living thing in the world. He had never considered before what the spark of life consisted of, how it worked, how life could be defined, but now he knew. Knew with every atom in his body as surely as he knew he was alive. The word God was too small a word to encapsulate this reality. God was a word people threw around to mean so many disparate things, but never this! But, this had to be God—not just a force or power or emotion, but . . . intention.

  Jake’s jaw dropped as he looked around him as if seeing the world for the first time. It was so clear now. How nothing had come about by happenstance or accident or a random compilation of events—not even the disjointed affairs of his life. He could see intention in everything. In the silent unfurling of a leaf, of the clouds drifting on their appointed altitudes in the sky above him. In the blind earthworm beneath his feet, steadily aerating the earth unknowingly. A blindfold had just been torn from his eyes, one that he had no idea he’d been wearing his entire life.

  It was not a voice that spoke to him, for he knew God would never bellow out of the sky to garner his attention, but rather it came from within him, from that hidden place that had been sealed up like a stalwart fortress, out of sight, undetectable. Yet, now, with the gates thrown open and the drawbridge down, he marched in and encountered the divine. And it was both breath-taking and life-giving. He’d always imagined God to be out there, the way they taught in church and books—God high above on his throne, looking down at humans as if insignificant ants he could crush with his little toe. This he never expected—God within, as well. Not a God who might choose to love but a God comprising love, the very definition and source of love in its purest form.

  And now instead of asking “Who are you,” the words that wheeled in his mind were I know you. Yet, he couldn’t tell if those were his words spoken to God or God’s words being spoken to him. Or both.

  How could he resist such a presence? And why would anyone want to?

  As he sat there on his knees in Rachel’s ga
rden, tears still rolling down his cheeks of their own accord, he felt like he had just arrived home after an interminable journey, like waking from a nightmare where you wander lost for eternity. As simple as the words had always seemed to him, now their simplicity only emphasized simple truth. I once was lost but now I’m found, was blind but now I see. He now understood faith wasn’t about doctrine or denomination or even belief. Faith was about letting go, giving in, surrendering. About tearing down walls of perception built by bricks of pain cemented with the mortar of hurt and loneliness, and letting truth in.

  The thing that blew Jake apart was the realization that he had contained this understanding within him all along; he’d just had to get to a place of willingness and release to experience it. Experience him, God. Although he knew this was only a first step. Now, he thirsted with all his spirit for understanding; like a deer panting for water, his thirst for knowledge ached. In the space between the inhale of one breath and the exhale of another, a hundred questions formulated.

  All the while, as he mulled these things over, he sensed God waiting. As if standing next to him, watching—not with judgment but with adoration. The way he himself would often gaze upon Joey, caught up in a moment of awe at the reality of his existence. The way a father so in love with his son would gaze. Jake felt this love emanating from the world around him, but not from creation but from the Creator, who filled every molecule of space. He had never felt so loved before, and it both broke and healed his heart in one fell swoop.

  God, he said in that deep hidden place, help me. Help me understand.

  Without words, he got his answer. He dried his tears with his sleeve and stood, feeling strength infuse his limbs, although still weak as if recovering from a long debilitating illness. He felt complete and whole in a way he now knew he had always longed for, but never knew he’d had such longing.