My Foolish Heart

by Susan May Warren

  “Actually Ellie is the only full-time firefighter.”

  “I was the chief a few years back. But now I just run the EMS department and do fire investigation.”

  No wonder Dan had obeyed his wife and helped his son sit up straight, use his manners.

  “Is this your first coaching gig?” Dan asked.

  “I coached in the pro summer camps through college, but I got called up for the National Guard and went to Iraq right after I graduated. This is my first real job after . . .” He glanced at the kids. “After my injury.”

  A beat passed, and he took a breath.

  Ellie smiled at him. “You’re going to do a great job.”

  “How did you get hurt?” Ethan asked.

  “Ethan!” Dan said.

  “No, it’s okay.” Caleb smiled at the boy. “I was transporting some wounded back to base and we got hit with a roadside bomb. It blew up the truck and . . . hurt me.”

  Editing out his missing limb seemed the right move at the moment. They didn’t need to know the darkness of those hours he’d lain in the ditch, the fear that he’d be captured so deep that it could scour out his breath, the pain so overwhelming that he just wanted to sink into it and die.

  Until he’d cried out to God and discovered that God’s grace was deeper than his lowest moment.

  “We’re glad you survived, Caleb. I’m so sorry.” Ellie touched his hand. His wounded hand.

  He didn’t move it away, but neither did he clasp her grip. “Thanks.” He drew a breath, then looked at Dan. “So what can you tell me about Seb Brewster?”

  “He was the starting quarterback of the Huskies as a freshman. I remember him as young and cocky. But a nice kid. His mother used to attend church occasionally. His father drove OTR, would be gone for a week or so at a time. I do remember seeing him in the stands, though. They separated when Seb was in high school. Kid took it pretty hard. So did his father—he starting drinking. I remember Coach Presley praying for them in men’s Bible study. I think Seb spent a lot of time on Coach’s sofa.”

  Dan took a drink of his tea. Set it down. “Coach is a real prayer warrior. He might have been benched, but he’s still very much a part of the game. You should stop by the care center and meet him. He’s been praying for someone to fill his shoes—hasn’t found a coach he could endorse yet.”

  “I’ll do that, but I can’t imagine that he’d endorse me over Seb.”

  Dan said nothing.

  “Some apple pie, Caleb?” Ellie said. “Wendy made it.” She glanced at her daughter, smiling.

  “I won’t be able to run tomorrow,” Caleb said, now able to quip like that without a flinch. “But I wouldn’t be a Minnesotan if I turned down a piece of apple pie.”

  Wendy grinned.

  “What’s your coaching plan?” Dan asked as he handed Ellie his empty plate.

  “My plan is to focus on fundamentals. Teach them how to block and get off the line fast, how to get their head across the defender’s body and drive, not to be soft on the block.” Caleb smiled as Wendy brought him the piece of pie. “Yum.”

  “You’ll have to run a few extra laps with your boys tomorrow. Thanks, honey.” Dan leaned back as Wendy put a piece in front of him. Caleb noticed Dan’s piece was considerably smaller than his.

  “I called an early practice—6 a.m. It’ll be a conditioning practice. At least for the first few days. Later we’ll start to break out into positions. We’ll work on tackling, how to handle the ball, stance for the linemen. Only after we have the fundamentals down will we start running plays.”

  “You have a lot of work to do before the scrimmage.” Dan sipped his coffee. “Word’s gotten around. I think you’re going to have a pretty big turnout.”

  Caleb drew in a breath. Sometimes it did feel overwhelming.

  Not unlike learning to walk again.

  “They’ll be in pain, for sure. But I want to teach them to fight through it, control their bodies instead of their bodies controlling them. I want them to learn what it means to get back up and even see a part of themselves that they never knew existed. Be men, not boys, or at least on their way.”

  Ellie wore a strange look. She smiled and glanced at Dan.

  “Yes,” Dan said, “you need to meet Coach Presley. You just might be the guy to fill his shoes.”

  The words lingered as Caleb drove home, as he greeted Roger, who had clearly decided that he belonged on Caleb’s front porch, and let him into the house. Meet Coach Presley. Yes, he’d do that, maybe tomorrow after practice.

  He couldn’t deny the swirl in his gut at the thought of practice.

  Caleb stared in his bathroom mirror, trying out his coaching face. “The man with the most heart wins!” He said it loud, full, and his voice thundered through the house.

  From the sofa, Roger raised his head.

  Okay, so he didn’t exactly want the neighbors rushing in to check out the crazy new guy on the block, screaming at himself in the mirror.

  They had to learn to play with their hearts, with every fiber of their bodies. Sure, it sounded cliché, but Vince Lombardi said it first, and when was he ever wrong? Unless a man believed in himself and made a total commitment to his career and put everything he had into it—his mind, his body, his heart—what was life worth to him?

  Caleb ran water down his face, then shut off the light.

  Maybe he should focus more on God’s quotes. “This same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches.” He had; oh, He had. Caleb hated to ask for more.

  He knew in his gut that God had saved him that dark night, healed him, and sent him to Deep Haven for a reason.

  Caleb wasn’t going to let Him down.

  He sat on the sofa and positioned his legs so they lay the length of it. Roger lifted his head from his paws, got up, set it on Caleb’s knees. He toggled the dog behind the ears. “So now we’re friends?”

  Pulling his laptop from the floor, he connected to the Internet, found The Bean’s channel.

  “Welcome to My Foolish Heart, where we believe your perfect love might be right next door.”

  He’d caught the week’s recap of the show before it. He clicked on the link. My Foolish Heart, a talk show for hopeless romantics. He listened to the sultry-voiced hostess who called herself, appropriately, Miss Foolish Heart. Oh, brother. But The Bean would be on any minute.

  He rolled his eyes at the responses to what it felt like to fall in love.

  “It’s knowing you have someone to hold on to.”

  “Great response, TruLuv. Here’s hoping you have someone to hold on to. Go ahead, WindyCity.”

  “It’s knowing you’re loved . . . anyway.”

  Loved, anyway. If that were even possible. Ashley hadn’t loved him, not really. And after the dust cleared, he hadn’t loved her, either. They’d simply clung to each other through college because they both liked the glory. Sure, she said she’d stay with him after his injury, but he saw the pity in her eyes.

  He couldn’t be loved because of pity.

  No, he didn’t know what it felt like to fall in love. But he did know what he wanted.

  Someone who wouldn’t give up on him. Someone who didn’t love him despite his handicap but didn’t see it at all. Someone who believed in him.

  He let the show play as he went to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of milk. The hostess had moved on to a new caller, someone announcing her engagement.

  He stood in the doorway, listening, as the hostess gave a sort of high-pitched, tremulous laugh when the caller asked her to the wedding. Something about the hue of fear in the voice nudged something inside him.

  He sat down and turned up the volume.

  A commercial break, and she returned with an excerpt of yet another show. She solved the problems of a workplace romance and a long-distance relationship and headed off a would-be affair.

  And by the end, he’d become uncomfortably entwined by that soft, compassionate voice. Like she might
really care about the saps calling in. Thankfully, The Bean came on and knocked him back to his senses.

  What was a foolish heart, anyway?

  Roger whined in his sleep, his legs twitching. Yes, that happened to him sometimes. He dreamed of running, or worse, his leg itched.

  He turned off The Bean.

  “Rog, try and stay home tonight, huh?” Walking past his bedroom, he saw the neighbor’s light flick out. The summer wind, cool through his screen, drew him out onto the porch. He eased down on his front steps, stared at stars against the dark pane of night. The sky seemed so close, he wanted to reach up to heaven.

  You just might be the guy to fill his shoes. Yes, he’d like to someday have the reputation that Coach Presley had. But fill his shoes? No. He wanted his own pair.

  * * *

  If Issy could, she’d skip over Sundays and go right to Mondays. Not that life inside her house felt much different on Mondays, but Sundays seemed to bring to life all her limitations.

  She’d listened to Pastor Dan Matthews’s sermon on the radio and couldn’t push from her thoughts the image of watching him from the third pew, right side, the sunlight streaming in through the tall windows. Sometimes she could even see her father sitting beside her, his arm stretched out over the pew. Hear his rich tenor singing “Amazing Grace,” the occasional “Amen!” muttered under his breath.

  Yes, Sundays she missed him the most.

  She tried to assuage the pain by sitting in his recliner under the puddle of lamplight, his marked Bible on her lap. Sometimes she read his playbook, the notes he scribbled in the margins.

  Today, she simply tried to figure out just what Dan meant by his verse of choice. “This same God who takes care of me will supply all your needs from his glorious riches.”

  What was she supposed to do with that?

  The teakettle whistled. She got up, went to the kitchen, took out a bag of chamomile, and dropped it into her mother’s favorite cup, a souvenir she’d picked up in Germany during their twentieth wedding anniversary trip. Issy poured the water in, dunking the bag, the rusty brown bleeding into the water. Then she dropped the bag into the sink.

  Bless Lucy for the bag of groceries she’d left this morning, probably reaped from her own pantry, or Issy would be relegated to the half-eaten fish burger and the cold corn.

  “This same God . . . will supply all your needs . . .”

  Okay, He’d supplied food, but that wasn’t her real need, was it? She could barely look at Lucy’s kindness without weeping. What was she supposed to do with verses like “For I can do everything through Christ, who gives me strength,” or even, “Don’t worry about anything; instead, pray about everything. Tell God what you need, and thank him for all he has done. Then you will experience God’s peace, which exceeds anything we can understand. His peace will guard your hearts and minds as you live in Christ Jesus”?

  She didn’t know whom to blame for her failure, because she’d certainly spent hours begging God for peace. For strength.

  So that left her where?

  She picked up the cup, blew over the surface. From the living room, she could hear the replay of her show. Elliot always chose the best calls to replay on Sunday nights. She would take notes, sometimes checked into the forum, but not many discussions happened on Sunday.

  Now, she heard her voice as Pride invited her to her wedding.

  “Okay, Lauren. I’m so sorry, but I can’t come.”

  “Why not?”

  The why not hung in Issy’s mind even as the conversation continued. She winced at the tremble in her voice.

  She was tired of the why nots. Tired of sitting here every Sunday, listening to her church family worship from afar, knowing her father was probably listening too.

  She reached up to touch his picture on the fridge, the one with him and his championship team her senior year. He was being carried off the field, dripping wet from the water bucket, on the shoulders of his team. And beside him, also carried, Seb Brewster. They were looking at each other, their hands locked above their heads. In a way, Seb had been the son Coach Presley never had.

  “Daddy, I miss you,” Issy whispered.

  The worst part was, he lived only a mile away.

  Past the highway, over the hill, in a room facing the lake. But the care center where he lived on a breathing machine might as well be across the Pacific in Bangkok.

  Or in Napa Valley.

  At least they had the telephone. Their daily phone call kept their prisons from strangling them.

  She pushed open her cardboarded door, padded out to the porch. Night bathed the yard, the air cool, scented with pine and the heady fragrances of her hydrangea, her daylilies, the Pilgrim and tea roses.

  “Come . . . see me, Isadora. I miss . . . you.”

  His voice in her head, the memory of their conversation this afternoon, could turn her inside out. It wasn’t enough that he could only talk when his ventilator expired the air from his lungs, but the short bursts of speech, dying at the end, always sounded like the end of his life. Every sentence, every phone call, every day could be his last.

  “I want to, Daddy. I’m getting better. I am running around the block now and even to the coffee shop.” Okay, she’d only run there once and hadn’t gone in, but technically, she’d touched down in the parking lot.

  “Don’t let it rule . . . you . . .”

  It had taken all of thirty-seven seconds for Coach Presley to kick in, for her father’s go-get-’em tone to color his speech. She could almost see him pacing the sideline, yelling encouragement, his body more muscle than fat even at fifty, his dark hair containing just a touch of silver at the temples.

  “Try to understand, Daddy. It’s like, when I think about leaving the house, going into town, I can see what could happen. Every possibility. And then I start to feel this unraveling deep inside. After that, it’s not about what could happen, but rather me making a fool out of myself. Sweating and crying and losing my mind in front of the entire town. I did it once—”

  “Funeral. Everyone understood.”

  “I locked myself in the bathroom of the funeral parlor and they had to call the police to get me out.” Her voice pitched low, even as she sat on the sofa in the privacy of her parlor. “They had to sedate me. And hospitalize me for three days.”

  He knew this, of course, but he’d been fighting for his life in Duluth’s trauma ward at the time. Besides, how could he possibly know how it felt to hold her mother’s hand as she bled out, trapped in a burning car? How it felt to watch the EMTs haul her father away, gray and unmoving? How her world had dismantled right before her eyes?

  Her hand went to the scar on her forehead, raised but hidden by her hair. Just a scalp laceration. She’d been back home, walking into her empty house, by six the next morning.

  “I am praying for you. . . .”

  She flinched at that. “Please don’t talk to me about God. I know, I know—just ‘cast my cares on God.’ Believe me, I have—”

  “Honey . . .”

  “The thing is, I can’t figure out if I abandoned God, or if . . . well, if He abandoned me. But I’m broken, ashamed, and it feels like God is doing nothing to fix me. So, please, can we not talk about God?”

  Part of her wanted to yank her diatribe back, even now. But sometimes she just had to say it aloud, to acknowledge the truth. She simply didn’t matter to God. She’d embarrassed Him enough.

  “It kills me . . . see you trapped,” her father said softly, and she imagined him sitting on the side of her bed, brushing hair from her face with his big, wide-receiver hands like he had when she was seven.

  She wiped her cheeks, held her breath in.

  “I want to see you free, married . . .”

  “I know, Daddy. But that’s never going to happen.” After all, who would want her, a girl who could barely leave her yard? Talk about a ball and chain.

  “You win or lose in your head.”

  “Oh, Coach, love isn’t a football g
ame, you know.” But she grinned, and she could almost see his smile on the other end. Or wanted to. She gritted her teeth and gave up on wiping her cheeks.

  “Yes . . . every night, you coach . . .”

  “I give advice, Daddy.”

  “You’re a coach at heart.”

  Just like her old man.

  Now she sipped her tea, letting his words seep into her heart. Oh, she wanted to be like him. Storming out onto the field with the right plays, not letting defeat—or the fear of it—keep her on the sidelines. Believing in her players, seeing their potential, coaching them into strength.

  She should start with herself. Because if she couldn’t coach herself out of this dark place, how was she supposed to help others get over their fears, reach out with their hearts for love?

  She got up, turned off the back porch light, returned to the family room. Her show was just ending and even as she heard her voice calling out hope, in her mind she heard Elliot’s doom. You need to do something to boost ratings. . . .

  Please, God. Don’t let me lose the show, too. She stood there, staring out at the indigo darkness, the droplets of stars peeking through the canopy over the lake. Help me figure out a way to save the show.

  She closed her eyes, longing to hear something, feel something. To know the peace that Jesus promised.

  Instead, The Bean’s opening music played.

  Through the window, she saw the neighbor’s light flicker on; then he came out to the front porch and sat on the steps. Duncan—she should find out his real name—settled down beside him. Something moved inside her as she watched him run his hand over the animal’s head. Despite his wounds that gave him every excuse to be jaded, even angry, he seemed kind. At peace, in a way.

  If only she hadn’t blown that so badly, if she wasn’t so horrified by her own actions that she would make a point of never talking to him again, she might pray for another chance to meet him. In him she might have found someone who understood exactly what it felt like to be trapped inside something bigger than yourself.

  He might have even figured out how to be set free.

  6

  No man will respect you unless you respect yourself!