Where Heaven Begins

by Rosanne Bittner

  The last words were spoken with a strained voice, and by the time he was finished his shoulders were shaking in sobs. “That’s when I knew—” he groaned “—that there was no God. I’d prayed and prayed and prayed that we’d find them alive.”

  Elizabeth could not help tears of her own. Dear God, help me! Help me know what to say! Should she speak at all? Should she hold him? Here was a big, strong, brave, able, grown man who, since the awful death of his wife and child, had killed other men and likely slept with other women and drank and smoked and gambled and got into fights. Here he lay weeping. To think of what it must have been like finding his wife and child that way. No wonder he doubted God. No wonder he was so full of rage and hatred and revenge. And part of it was aimed at himself, thinking he might have been able to prevent what had happened. Surely his own undeserved guilt made it all worse.

  “I miss him so much,” he sobbed. “I miss my little boy…his smile…his little arms around my neck. I was his father. Fathers protect their sons!”

  Elizabeth leaned forward, putting her head in her hands, scrambling for the right words. Lord Jesus I pray that whatever comes out of my mouth will be Your words, not mine.

  Hesitantly she reached over to touch his shoulder, swallowing back a lump in her throat. “I can’t begin to tell you how sorry I am, Clint. If I can even come close to helping you feel the happiness you once knew with Jen and Ethan, I’ll be glad. But first you have to face the fact that…sometimes things happen that we can’t do anything about. A man can’t be in two different places at once, and nothing led you to believe that your wife and son would be in any danger that day. So the first thing you absolutely must realize is that none of it is your fault…none of it. No one on earth or in heaven above would blame you for not being there.”

  He took a deep breath and sat up, his back still to her. He reached over for a towel and wiped at his face and nose with it. “This is embarrassing.”

  “Embarrassing? Clint, you are grieving over the two most important people in your life and the awful way they died! There is nothing embarrassing about weeping over that. Sometimes crying can cleanse the soul.”

  He took several more deep breaths. “After they were buried—” He made a choking sound. “Putting my son in the ground like that…the hatred burned so deep inside me it’s a wonder I didn’t literally burst into flames. I wanted to get my hands on those men! I rode with the posse that went after them, and we found them. I…just lost it. The posse surrounded and disarmed them, got ready to take them in, but I started shooting…and kept shooting until all four of them were down before anybody could stop me. I should have been arrested myself, but most of those men with me were friends. They understood. Not one of them ever said a word. People were told they’d been killed in a shootout with the posse.”

  He ran a hand through his hair and took a rolled cigarette from the pocket of his jacket. He lit it and took a deep drag, ignoring the fact that it made him cough. “After that, killing just those men wasn’t enough. I didn’t know what to do with all the horrible guilt and sorrow—the terrible emptiness in my life. I packed only what I needed for traveling, went to the sheriff’s office and took down posters and left my farm to a neighbor who’d helped me track down those who’d killed my wife and son, and I left. I couldn’t stay in that house and see all the things there Jen loved, and see Ethan’s toys, not even one night. I’ve never gone back. I’ve done nothing but hunt and kill ever since then. And I left God behind with those graves. He failed me at a time when I needed Him most. Not only that, He failed my wife and my little boy. He let them suffer.”

  “No, Clint. There has been another power in this world ever since Satan was cast from heaven. Sometimes that power manages to weave itself into the hearts of men, like those who killed Jen and Ethan, and it uses such men to try to defy God and make people stop believing in Him. Then he finds a way into their hearts because they have stopped trusting in God.

  “I believe that’s what has happened with you. Satan is laughing right now at the fact that he’s taken a good man and turned him into a killer who hates and distrusts and thirsts for revenge against something intangible, something no amount of killings can satisfy. Satan takes joy in testing a man’s faith and cracking it. As long as you continue living the way you do, he will have won, and that’s not fair to your wife and child. They don’t want you to burn in hell, Clint. They want you to come and join them someday in a gloriously beautiful and peaceful place where you can forever be together. And most of all they wouldn’t want you to be suffering like this, blaming yourself, killing men, turning your eyes from God. If you live this way they died for nothing. Faith in Jesus Christ can set you free, Clint. Letting go of the past and giving it over to Him can rid you of the weight of your sins and sorrows. That’s why He gave the ultimate sacrifice, His own life, to forgive all sin.”

  Clint made no reply.

  Help me! Elizabeth pleaded again inwardly.

  “You just told me what it felt like to lose your son,” she continued. “Just think how God felt, allowing His only Son to suffer and die on the cross and doing nothing to stop that. He could have made sure none of it happened, but He knew it had to happen, to save mankind and show them the way to everlasting life. Clint, God sacrificed His own son to a terrible death for you…for me…even for the men who killed your wife and son. And He let you live for a reason. Only you will know deep inside what He wants for you, once you give all your sorrow over to Him and ask His forgiveness for the way you’ve been living.”

  He smoked quietly, then finally spoke up. “You’ve no idea how many times I’ve put a gun to my own head over the past four years,” he told her. “I could never pull the trigger. The one time I finally did—of course I was drunk—the gun didn’t go off. I checked it. Every chamber was full. There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, but it didn’t fire. That was about a year ago.” He finally faced her, his blue eyes bloodshot. “That’s when I knew, for just that moment, that God was still with me. I just wasn’t ready to acknowledge it or ask Him what He wanted. It’s only been since I met you that I’ve started thinking about that moment.”

  So open! This was far from the Clint Brady she’d known up until now. That opening to his heart was getting bigger. God was working His miracles.

  Elizabeth smiled. “Well, I’m glad I was able to do that much.”

  He leaned closer and planted a warm, sweet kiss on her lips. “Let’s just let it go at that for now,” he said then, resting his forehead against hers. “In the last four years you are the only person I’ve ever told the whole story to…the only one I’ve let myself break down in front of.”

  She moved her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. “It only makes you look stronger in my eyes. It takes a wise, strong man to admit the things you just told me, and not be too proud to cry out for help. Even Jesus Christ wept over the loss of a friend, and again in the Garden of Gethsemane the night before He died, begging God to change what He knew had to happen, and the next day He cried out to His father on the cross, ‘My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken me?’ Yet not a stronger man ever lived.”

  He moved his arms around her and hugged her tightly, again breaking into tears. Elizabeth breathed a sigh of relief that perhaps she’d said the right thing for once. Only time and reaching Dawson would tell. For now she could only hold him…and love him.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Every man according as he purposeth in his heart, so let him give; not grudgingly, or of necessity: for God loveth a cheerful giver.

  —1 Corinthians 9:7

  Elizabeth could see the anger in Clint’s eyes. The fees being charged for boats built at a sawmill at Lake Bennett were outrageous. Two more days of traveling had brought them here, where for another three days they camped with scores of others, all waiting for their boats. What irked Clint was knowing the owners of the sawmill had them over a barrel. If they wanted to continue their journey, they had to buy a boat
here, since traveling the swift-running Yukon River was the only way to continue.

  Elizabeth could hardly blame Clint for being upset. The special raft he wanted built was costing him three hundred fifty dollars, a fortune as far as she was concerned, even though it was different from the smaller boats being built for others who had no horses with them.

  The only other woman amid the campers was here with her husband. The couple stayed to themselves. Elizabeth felt sorry for them, as they appeared to have few belongings left. Their clothes were tattered, and they slept under a blanket made into a tent by tying rope between two trees and draping the blanket over it.

  Longing to visit with another female, Elizabeth had tried talking to the woman once; but the woman just hung her head, asking Elizabeth to leave because she didn’t feel well. Elizabeth had prayed for her that night, noticing the woman looked very thin and depressed, and that she and her husband hardly spoke to each other.

  This third morning Elizabeth sat by her campfire drinking coffee and watching Clint rearrange some of the supplies in preparation for loading them onto their raft the next morning. Other than “I love you,” and the usual necessary conversations of two people traveling together, he’d said nothing more about his past or his grief.

  Elizabeth sensed he still felt unnecessarily ashamed for showing weakness. She thought how it was too bad that men thought it humiliating to cry, for crying could be such a release sometimes. It had helped her get over her father’s death, and then her mother’s. Telling Clint that even Jesus had cried seemed to have helped, but he was back to pretending none of it had happened.

  Now she watched him lift ridiculously heavy baggage, probably to show off for her, and she had to smile. Clint Brady was one man who did not have to prove his masculinity. It radiated from every part of him, from his handsome smile to his calloused hands to the way his shirts fit him and the way he walked. Today was amazingly warm compared to the weather they’d experienced getting here, and he’d removed his jacket for the hard work. He’d trimmed his beard this morning and managed to wash, and she could see the handsome man she’d traveled with on the Damsel re-emerging.

  She in turn had scrubbed her face and neck and changed into the only other woolen shirt and pants she had packed. Next to a real bath, it felt good to at least wear clean clothes. However, these would have to last until they reached Dawson.

  She picked up her diary to continue her descriptions of daily events, becoming lost in her writing until she heard Clint talking to someone. She looked up to see the couple she’d prayed for standing there as Clint finished tying some rope. Clint asked them to step closer to the fire. Looking very humbled, his wife appearing to be near tears, the man and woman walked with him to sit down by the fire across from Elizabeth. Clint sat down beside Elizabeth, who smiled at the woman.

  “Hello again,” she said with a welcoming tone.

  The woman just nodded.

  “Mornin’,” her husband answered. “Name’s Hugo Pepper. This is the wife, Earlene.”

  Elizabeth guessed them to be in their early thirties. “I’m glad you decided to join us,” she told Hugo. “I haven’t seen another woman since leaving Skagway.”

  Earlene looked at Hugo as though urging him to go ahead with something he had to say. Hugo sighed, turning his attention to Clint. “I ain’t never done this in my life, mister, but…well, I noticed you forked out a lot of money for your raft.” He removed his hat, revealing straight, black, thinning hair. “Well, it’s like this. Me and Earlene, we have four kids back home in Seattle. She’s missin’ the kids so bad she can’t hardly stand it. We didn’t have much when we left there, except a dream to go to Dawson and maybe find gold and be able to go back and provide a better life for the kids.”

  He sighed again, hesitating.

  “Thing is,” he finally continued, “we’re already broke. Can’t afford a boat to take us any farther, and can’t afford the necessary supplies anyway, let alone what it would take to go on into the mountains and survive a winter there lookin’ for somethin’ we might never find. Earlene, she thinks…well, I think it, too…we think we ought to just go home. There’s others goin’ back, and if we stick with them we should be able to get back over the pass to Skagway before the pass gets closed up from snow. If we can just get that far, we can probably get by workin’ for others in Skagway. That way we could go back home come spring.”

  The air hung silent for a moment, and Clint gave Elizabeth a puzzled look. Elizabeth turned her attention to the Peppers. “Are you asking us to help in some way?”

  Hugo, his pants torn at one leg and his jacket soiled, rested his elbows on his knees and put his head in his hands. Earlene looked at Elizabeth pleadingly.

  “Yes,” the woman told her. “It’s hard for my husband to say it, but we’re desperate. We’ve been watching you and your husband, noticed him sometimes pray with you, so we…I thought you seemed to be Christian people, and that maybe…perhaps you could find it in your hearts to help us out. We just need a little money, something we could use to buy some supplies when we reach Skagway. And we—we need a few supplies for going back. Even just a sack of beans might do it…maybe a little coffee? We did manage to talk someone else into letting us have his tent. It was his partner’s, who’d died getting here, so the man didn’t want the extra baggage, but he wouldn’t give us anything else. It seems once men get this far it’s every man for himself. All Christian feelings go out the window.” Tears formed in her eyes. “I just want to get back to my children. It took this trip to make us realize that for all our dreams of getting rich up here, the best thing we can give them is love. They need their mommy and daddy more than anything else.” She broke into sobbing, and Hugo put his arm around her.

  Elizabeth looked pleadingly at Clint, and he rolled his eyes, his old distrustful self kicking in.

  “Look, mister, this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” Hugo spoke up. “Fact is, what we need more than anything is a horse. My wife, she’s got so weak I hate to think about her walkin’ all the way back. I’m scared to death she’ll take sick and die and never see her babies again.”

  Clint shook his head and rose. “No. No horse. They are too valuable.”

  Elizabeth saw the disappointment in Hugo’s eyes, mixed with feelings of embarrassment and shame.

  “Why don’t you go back to your camp so my…husband and I can talk about this,” she told the man. “I’m sure there is some way we can help. And please—” She poured coffee into two tin cups. “Take this with you. You both look like you could use a cup of hot coffee.”

  Hugo nodded, standing up and taking both cups. “We’re obliged, ma’am. Come on, Earlene. Let’s leave them be.” He glanced at Clint. “You’re better than the rest of ’em. I can tell.”

  He walked off with his wife, and Clint frowned at Elizabeth. “What the heck did he mean by that?”

  Elizabeth sat back down on the log they’d shared moments earlier. “Sit down, Clint. I don’t want them to hear us.”

  Grudgingly, Clint straddled the log, facing Elizabeth, who turned to meet his gaze. “You know what he meant, Clint Brady,” she continued quietly. “You’re a better man than most others here, a man who cares more about human beings than gold and possessions.”

  He closed his eyes in disgust. “How do you know they aren’t scamming us? There are plenty of con artists in places like this, you know.”

  “Don’t give me that, Mr. I-Can-Read-a-Man’s-Eyes Brady! You know they’re telling the truth. And did you see that woman’s face? That’s no con job. That’s a broken woman who misses her babies. And her husband is a proud man who loves his kids enough to crawl on hands and knees for them. That’s how asking for help feels to him. You can see that.”

  He leaned closer, talking quietly to be sure the Peppers couldn’t hear. “We need every ounce of supplies we have left. And God knows we need the horses! On top of that, they’re worth a good three hundred dollars a piece. If I give them a horse
, I never see it again or the money it’s worth! Men don’t just give horses away, for God’s sake! I’m not that rich, lady!”

  “That poor woman could die! God sent them over here, Clint. I know He did. He wants us to help them. And just think, one less horse will make the raft trip a lot easier and safer. I love those horses by now as much as you do. And don’t tell me you don’t want to give one up just because of its value. You’re attached to them, as well you should be, but human life is more important. Please help them, Clint. We can live on a little less food and with one less horse. We’re so close to Dawson. Once we get there things will be so much easier.”

  “Easier? Have you forgotten the stories we’ve heard? You’d better be praying your brother wasn’t one of them who died! What if he needs our help when we get there?”

  “God is taking care of Peter. I know it.”

  “Yeah, well, you think you know an awful lot about God, don’t you? God-this and God-that. That God of yours—”

  “Clint! You are very close to blaspheming! Please listen to yourself! How do you think we’ve gotten this far safely? Who do you think saved your life from pneumonia? And who have you already admitted brought us together in the first place? I see you get so close, Clint, and then you drift away again. The old, distrustful, angry, look-out-for-himself Clint returns to take over!” She folded her arms. “I want to help them. You do what you think is best. You’re the one with the money…and the supplies…and the horses…and the right to do with all of them as you please.”