By the time they were aloft, a soft silence had inserted itself between them. She was feeling fretful and lost, reliving the horror of the death and suffering she had seen the day before; he was facing the urgent need to make amends for how he had failed her. They flew southward until the majesty of Kilimanjaro rose out of the mist before them, and John settled the plane down in an open savannah. The rain had settled into a whisper of drizzle, falling onto grass that had turned impossibly green from the rains. Rivers thundered through grottos and rocky draws nearby, and lakes had appeared in the grassy valleys. Everywhere lush flowers bloomed, perfuming the air with their sweetness mingled with the scent of rainwater, while Kilimanjaro glimmered white and silver in the distance. As Sally Beth climbed out of the plane, she gasped at the wonder around her, from the shimmering, emerald grass at her feet to the towering clouds above her, and the glorious, nearly infinite, sparkling mountain beyond. Sally Beth inhaled the purity of the air around her, feeling her spirit being cleansed from the horrors of the day before.
John limped out to an acacia tree with wide, spreading branches, the white blooms drooping like wisteria, exuding a scent as sweet as mimosa. There he spread a blanket over the lower branches to keep out the rain and another on the grass, and together they laid out the small feast he had procured from the hotel kitchen. They both fell onto the food as if they had not eaten for weeks.
After the first flush of their appetite had been satisfied, John sat up, looking at Sally Beth with watchful, sad eyes. He began hesitantly. “Sorry about last night. This morning, I mean. I was insane with worry.”
“I know. It’s okay. Are you feeling better now?”
“Yes. I’ve told you how I feel, and that hasn’t changed. Will never change. Now will you tell me?”
The question took her aback. She was not quite sure how she felt. She loved him, that she knew, but she was not convinced of his love for her, and her soul was greatly troubled. People had died and they had been responsible, things were not resolved between her and God, and His silence was oppressive. How could she begin anything new unless she knew for certain His blessing lay over it? “I… feel… confused. And sad at all that has happened. All this death, the defeat of Alice’s army. I feel like you and I need to sort of fall back and regroup. Do some thinking, I guess.”
He felt his heart plummet. “Whatever you need. I’m here. I love you. I’ll wait; I’ll follow you; I’ll be here. But I won’t be apart from you. I can’t let you get away from me. I’d rather die than lose you.”
“It’s hard to think about love right now, with all that happened yesterday. You killed a man, John. Doesn’t that… hang over you, oppress you? Make you feel lost?”
“No. I only feel glad that I killed him because it means that you are alive. I would be oppressed and lost if you were not here. Does it bother you? You’ve seen plenty of death these last few weeks.”
“I know. And I have been at least partly responsible for three deaths. This man yesterday, and two more when the Ugandans took Priscilla and me. She killed one of them with just a knife, and I helped her. John, it haunts me. I was raised to believe you never take the life of another, and I’ve been putting my own life and the lives of people I love—basically what I want, what I think I need—above that. It’s hard to live with.”
He edged closer. “Pray with me, Sally Beth,” he said, taking her hand. She hesitated before moving closer to him, and they both bowed their heads.
“Lord,” he said, “we have been caught in a war, and we have taken lives, and we don’t know if You will forgive us for it. Ease our hearts, Lord, not just about what has happened, but about loving. Let Sally Beth know how much I love her, how much I am willing to do for her. Let me love her, Lord, and let her love me.”
Sally Beth glanced up, and she couldn’t help but smile at John’s heartfelt, but selfish prayer. Not me, me, me, she thought. What can I do for You? She lifted her eyes to the silver mountain before her just as the sun broke through the clouds, and an unbearably bright shaft of light shone down on it, glancing into her eyes and making her squint.
Beloved, it is that easy, came the Voice as clear as the air and the raindrops shimmering in the sun. It always has been. My Grace is as great as My Might.
She startled. “What?” she asked.
John repeated himself, “I’m asking for you to love me.”
His words were rich and sweet, like honey, falling into her ears as softly as her own thoughts. Subtly, quietly, she felt a shifting in her spirit, a lightening of weight as she lifted her eyes to the bright snowcapped mountain, as she thought of her own green hills and of Holy Miracle Jones. A flock of blue swallows winged their way across her line of vision. From somewhere nearby came a birdsong, and behind the song was a memory: Sally Beth, the man God has planned for you will run from you before he runs to you, and when he catches you, you will know what it means to be loved.
“How long do you think it will be before you can run, John?” she said. She liked the idea of him running to her. She was tired of chasing after him.
“I can hobble pretty fast now. If you run slow, I think I could catch you. Why don’t we take a little break from all this and run away together?”
“Where to?”
“I’ve heard that West Virginia is a beautiful place. A good place to raise a family. I know of a little farm where I could run a clinic, right next door to the most charming family. He’s a physician; they have four little girls who would play with our children.”
She shook her head. “That sounds lovely. But I just realized how much we have to do here first. I don’t think it’s time to rest, yet.”
He sighed, and then he laughed. “I don’t know why I ever thought loving you would make me lazy. But I have an inkling of what I’m in for. Marry me. Marry me right now. Then we can get busy.”
Get busy echoed the Voice. I have plans for you two.
Sally Beth laughed as the joy welled up, sudden as a cloudburst, spreading from her belly to her chest to her head, and in celebration, she lifted her face into the sun and the stunning clouds of light and let herself be enfolded in the sky’s embrace.
Epilogue
December 30, 1996, Nairobi, Kenya
Dear Mom and Dad,
I’m here! Tired as all get-out because we stayed up most of the night talking, and the jet lag is starting to catch me. The place looks amazing—the new school and workshop look even better than we imagined it, and John has added about 300 head of cattle to the program, so the new barns are full already. I can’t wait to get started, which is a good thing because John says he can’t take a break for a minute now that calving season is going full tilt. He says I got here just in time.
Sally Beth loves the books on tapes you sent. She had finished with all the Dickens you sent for Christmas and was hoping for more. War and Peace will be first—she said she’s always wanted to read it. She is as pretty and sweet as ever, and still wearing the craziest hats! They’ve gotten a lot glitzier now that the fashion design operation is going. There are about thirty women working full time, and they pretty much consider themselves rich. It’s amazing to see how much she has changed the lives of the poorest people here. One girl about my age has only been here for about six months, and she has real talent. Sally Beth says she’s going to take her to New York in the spring to talk to some retailers about her designs.
All the girls are a big help at the workshop so that Sally Beth can spend most of her time on the anti-FGM campaign. Annilee is a good manager, even though she’s only fourteen. She looks so much like Sally Beth it’s kind of hard to tell them apart. And both James and Carl look more like John every day. They’re both going to help with the calving this year. It’s nice to see them so grown up, but they’re still so much fun.
Since Sally Beth has cranked up the anti-FGM thing, Prissy has quit her job at the hospital to come help her. They had a run-in with some village elders who tried to get them to keep out of it, and John said it wa
s like World War III starting. Prissy told them that every time she operates on a girl who’s been cut, she wants to take her scalpel to every village elder who encourages it and do a number on them. Whew! I think those guys had better stay away from her. She is tough when she gets mad. So is Sally Beth, although she hides it better.
Alethia and some of her other “girls” came for Christmas, and their husbands, too. Alethia’s husband is a lot like her—very energetic and kind. They left to go back home today, so it was good to visit with them last night. By the way, did you know that Becky has been offered a professorship at Cornell? All of these ladies are amazing. They make me feel like a lazy bum for wanting to take a year off. But if I’m going to be a vet, I might as well take the opportunity to learn from the best.
I miss you guys already, and I can’t wait until March when you get here—nearly three months. John and Sally Beth are planning a safari down in Tanzania when you get here, and I can fly you down.
Lilly called last night. She’s covering the genocide in Rwanda—she says it’s really bad and she can’t wait to get away, so she’s going to go meet Howard in Paris while he’s there next week working on some big international deal. She’s hoping they’ll go to Tanzania after that to go trekking on Kilimanjaro, and if his schedule works out, they’ll drop in here for a few days to see me. It will be great. It’s been two years since I last saw them.
And speaking of Rwanda, Sally Beth and John probably are getting another child from the orphanage there. This will make a total of nine. Sally Beth is all excited, of course. He’s three, and she says three-year-olds are the best, except when she’s saying babies are the best, or ten-year—olds are the best, or… ha ha! John just says he’s glad it’s a boy this time because he needs some help in the fields. He made the mistake of saying it out loud so the girls all jumped on him and tried to tickle him to death. They all are so cute, and John is such a good dad. It goes without saying that Sally Beth is a good mom. They’re almost as good as you two.
Anyway, that’s a lot of news considering I’ve been here less than twenty-four hours. You won’t be hearing from me much for a while since I’ll be out riding the range with 400 head of cattle. Yippie! My love to all of you, and of course to Jimmy Lee, Edna Mae, Aunt Rachel and Uncle Wayne and the cousins and give big kisses to my baby sisters (only don’t tell them I called them babies), and tell them I miss them and can’t wait until Spring Break so they will be here for the big safari. I love you. Write!
Your son,
Blue
Author’s Note
The historical events described in this story are true. In October of 1978, Idi Amin, the brutal despot who called himself the President of Uganda invaded Tanzania, leaving in his wake a wasted countryside and thousands of raped, tortured, and murdered civilians. Those who were not killed were captured and sold as slaves. If you go to Google Earth, you will see the ruins of a church standing by the Kagera River in Tanzania, only twenty miles from the Ugandan border, destroyed by Idi Amin’s army the night of October 31 to November 1, 1978. This place caught in this war became the inspiration for my story about how Sally Beth’s uncomplicated faith and love are tested.
Alice Auma and her army are historical. Although I did not make them up, I did take some literary license by placing them slightly out of their time. Alice was Ugandan and she did lead a band of soldiers called the Army of the Holy Spirits, but she actually did not come on the scene until 1986. Born in 1956, she would have been only twenty-two-years-old at the time of the Ugandan-Tanzanian war: young, but not too young to listen to spirits and lead an army after the fashion of Joan of Arc.
Alice channeled several spirits, especially one dead army officer called Lakwena. Because the Acholi believed Lakwena was a manifestation of the Holy Spirit, Alice became the head of the Holy Spirit Movement. According to her biographer, anthropologist Heike Behrend, the movement appeared to be a blend of Orthodox Christianity, African witchcraft, and nature worship. I did not try to dress up Alice’s beliefs or actions to make her more “Christian,” nor did I point out flaws in her theology. I just let her stand as she stood in Uganda when she led the Army of the Holy Spirits across the war-torn landscape.
All of the information about Alice and her army mentioned in A Saint in Graceland are factual, including the most farfetched bits, such as the parts about “James Bond,” requiring new recruits to spit into a live chicken’s mouth, and the necessity of exactly two testicles, among other things. With such a character hovering in the wings, I couldn’t pass up telling her story. I like to think the few weeks of victory Alice enjoyed when she was twenty-two in this novel was just a prelude to the larger campaigns she led eight years later.
The character of Alethia Bagatui (and Sally Beth’s passion for helping children) was inspired by a living person. Katie Davis, a white, upper-middle class homecoming queen and class president, went to Uganda on a mission trip right after her high school graduation in 2006, and she is still there. She gave up her comfortable life, a college education, and the boy she had planned to marry to live in Uganda and formally adopt fourteen (at last count) little girls. She also founded and runs the Masese Feeding Outreach, a program that provides meals, medical care, and education to 1,600 children who might otherwise be forced to beg in the streets. In addition to all this, she began a vocational program to help adult women earn income to support their families by making jewelry that her foundation markets in the United States.
I decided to make Alethia of African descent with personal ties to the people of the region because the story of Katie’s journey from pampered prom queen to the mother and benefactor of Ugandan children is too extraordinary to be easily believed, especially in the historical context of this novel. Like Alice’s story, Katie’s is more fantastic than any fiction I could write. If you want to know more about her and the work she is doing, read her blog at katiedavis.amazima.org. Prepare your heart. This woman makes you realize what it really means to love and serve God.
It was emotionally difficult to research and write about the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM), or female circumcision, as, I expect, it was difficult for you to read about it. But I knew early on that if I was going to describe the horrors that led to Sally Beth’s spiritual collapse, I could not leave out this important cultural practice.
FGM is still common in all African nations. Westerners have been vocal about the brutality of the tradition for a very long time, and Africans have found their objections condescending and insulting. The story about the Finnish woman who spoke out against it being circumcised and murdered in her own home is true.
There has been some progress, although it is heartbreakingly slow. In May, 2015, Nigeria became the 26th African nation to criminalize or discourage the practice, but such laws have been largely ignored, superseded by generations of ingrained tradition, and FGM is still common in many African nations. Unfortunately, even while attitudes are gradually changing in Africa as native women begin to lead in the battle against mutilation (see desertflower.org), FGM is gaining in popularity among immigrant populations worldwide, including Europe and the US. (see Newsweek, 2/6/15. “Female Genital Mutilation on the Rise in the U.S,” by Lucy Westcott). At present, there are an estimated 130 to 150 million victims of FGM around the globe. Activists like Sally Beth and Priscilla have their work cut out for them, but thankfully, there are thousands of men and women who are working tirelessly to end this horrific practice.
About the Author
Deborah Hining is a firm believer in adventure and following the winding, sometimes messy paths that unfold before us. Before becoming an author, she has followed those paths to be a wife, mother, grandmother, and also actress, award-winning playwright, theatrical director, college instructor, and Certified Financial Planner (or as she calls it, Financial Fairy Godmother.)
Today, Deborah lives at Corinne’s Orchard, a small farm in Durham County, North Carolina, where she is surrounded by colorful, creative characters both
real and fictitious. You can find her most days working in one of the gardens, writing, chasing her grandchildren, and generally giving thanks for her abundant life.
Deborah is the bestselling author of several books, including A Sinner in Paradise, A Saint in Graceland, and In the Midst of Innocence.
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