Chapter 6

If you ever drive Interstate 15 between Vegas and LA, you will know there is a shitload of absolutely nothing. You hit Barstow eventually, a town that advertised as a shipping hub for the grandiosely named Inland Empire. Frankly, driving into town, I think the only reason it was still alive was the Marine Base.

Still, something about the town had put an itch behind my eyes and I got off the interstate to look for something to eat while I tried to figure it out. The exit I took spit me out on the historic Route 66!

There were a dozen restaurants right as you get off, a baker’s dozen if you count Jack in the Box, but they were all chain places I had eaten at before. None of them really tripped my trigger so I drove slowly down Route 66, which was also Main Street. When I spotted a Denny’s, I wondered how Melissa had fared and how her little boy was doing.

Almost across the street was a likely sounding place called Jenny’s Mexican Grill and, from the parking lot, I could see a couple of auto parts places down the road, somewhere I wanted to stop anyway, so I pulled in.

When I got out of my truck, I noticed a man, woman and two small girls, all looking like they had been sleeping rough. That was a term I picked up in Las Vegas. Driving around with Paul and Milly, they taught me a thing or two, let me tell you! Las Vegas has a record number of homeless people.

Some come to Vegas from other places, liking the year-round warm weather and hoping the largess of the tourism trade will rub off on them. Others come to Vegas flush and end up on the street. Still others come hoping to find work, to change their luck. Whatever reason, a lot of them are sleeping on the streets or, as Milly put it, living rough.

As I rounded the truck and stepped up on the sidewalk, I could hear the woman urging her man to ask me something, but he was holding off.

“He’s not local! Look at his truck, it’s got Tennessee plates. He’s not going to have any work for me.”

At first I was just going to pass by, but the look on the face of the older of the two girls was tragic, indeed. It was as if she really wanted to cry but was holding back, knowing it was useless.

“Hey folks! My name is Luke, and I am just passing through, but I do really hate eating alone. I was wondering if I could talk you into eating with me. I know it is an imposition, so I would be more than happy to pay for your dinner. I just don’t want to sit by myself with no one to talk to.”

I wasn’t sure if it would work. The man obviously still had his pride. He would see through it right away, so would the wife, but the children probably wouldn’t. Hopefully wouldn’t.

“Daddy, can we? Please?” the youngest whispered while I pretended to be deaf.

I could see the father was leaning the other way so I crouched down and looked him in the eye.

“Honest to God, mister. I have no other motive than wanting to see those girls get a good meal. If you want, you don’t even have to sit with me, I’ll pre-pay and you can get your food to go.”

He stared at me for a moment, then nodded, a sad smile on his face. “Thanks, mister. We’d love to have dinner with you.”

The two little girls gave a cheer and even the mother gave a little cheep, making the father smile for real this time and shake his head.

“You heard the nice man, let’s go get some dinner.”

Inside, the lady at the door looked askance at the family, but I waved my hand and got her looking at me.

“They are my guests,” I said quietly but firmly. She nodded her head and smiled, grabbed five menus, and led us to a table.

There was happy chatter and giggling from the girls as they chose what they wanted. I had them add on two small sundaes for afterwards when mom started getting worried about prices.

“Now ma’am, if you are going to be picky, I’ll add a couple of milkshakes too. Maybe a whole cake!” I teased. She got the point though and seemed to relax a bit.

After we ordered, and while we waited, the girls had fun coloring in the pictures on their placemats while the adults chatted.

Terry and Dolores Chapman were from Austin, Texas, originally. They moved out to California three years before when Terry got a long-haul trucking job out of Barstow.

For two years, life was good and they were putting money away in the hopes of someday owning their own home. Then tragedy struck. The company had been doing something shady, hiring drivers who were willing to haul loads of questionable legality. One of the drivers had been caught and spilled his guts. Next thing everyone knew, the DEA was raiding the warehouse and shut the whole place down.

Just like that, Terry was out of work and, because he had worked for the company who had been all over the news, no one would trust him to drive their trucks. It was all he knew! He had been a truck driver in the Army for four years, then got out and got his civilian license.

Delores had worked part time all along as a cashier at the local supermarket, but her salary was barely enough to pay for childcare and put a few dollars into the house fund each week.

It didn’t take them all that long to burn through their savings and they were at the point now where they were out of options. Terry was asking anyone and everyone for work, any kind of work. They just needed to save enough for them to go back to Texas, to write California off as just bad luck.

The talk took a short hiatus when the food arrived. We all dug in and just enjoyed dinner. I got a T-bone almost as big as my plate and a big ol’ baked potato. Terry got the same and Delores got a filet with a lobster tail. I had to practically twist her arm to get her to order it when I saw her looking at the picture.

“Do you have family back in Austin?” I asked, once I had mopped up the last of the juice on my plate with my third roll. I was stuffed! I could see that the rest of them were as well. I had kept ordering more sides and more rolls and even more deserts until they were all as full as they could handle.

“My parents. They live on Social Security and Momma, bless her heart, keeps offering us money, but she can’t afford it. She has that big old house where we could stay, and Daddy said he has a job lined up for Terry. It won’t pay much, but it will be enough to get by on until things pick up.”

“You folks got a car?” I asked, sipping at my coffee and looking out through the big window at the parking lot.

“Yes, I have a four-door pickup but it is not in good enough shape to make it to Austin, even if we had money for gas. I thought a dozen times about selling it but every time I asked around, the money I would have gotten wasn’t much more than scrap, and not even enough to get us bus tickets.” Terry sounded about as down as a fellow could be. Delores still looked at him like she had faith though, that somehow the man she loved, the father of her children, would make it okay again.

“If you folks will pardon me, I have to visit the little gent’s room.” I said, giving Terry the eye. Hey, girls do it all the time, so maybe I can do it this one time. I wanted to help, but I didn’t want to kill that look in Delores’s eyes.

Thankfully, Terry got the hint and he followed me around to the other side of the room where the restrooms were located.

“Terry, look, you don’t know me and you would be right to be suspicious, but I want to help. I am not asking for anything at all, okay? I just want to help. I see how those little girls look at their daddy and trust him. I see how your wife still loves you to death and is certain that, somehow, you will fix everything. I don’t want to see any of them lose that, it’s too damned precious and hard to find. Will you let me help you?”

Terry was red faced, but he was looking back over at the table, at his wife and children. When he turned back to me, I knew he would let me.

“Good! Listen, you are from here. When we leave here, you are going to lead me in your truck. We are going to the Greyhound station. I am going to buy tickets for you and your family, and pay the freight for whatever you have that you need to take with you. In return, you sign over the title to your truck and I will donate it to a charity in your name. Any preferences?”

Terry looked shocked, but quickly told me that St. Paul’s Episcopal was where he and his family attended church. They had an outreach meal program but didn’t look down their noses, he added.

I was skeptical about giving anything to a church, but it was his truck and I had asked.

I had pulled out the roll from my left front pocket. There was twenty-five hundred there, the rest was in my truck. I handed it to him.

“Just put that in your pocket, Terry, don’t you even worry about it. It is just some walking around money. Meal money for your trip, maybe buy some coloring books or something for the girls so the trip isn’t too rough. You just take care of them, okay?”

“I can’t wrap my head around it, why are you doing all this, Luke?” Terry asked plaintively.

I looked over at his family. “I lost my family. My whole family was killed in an accident on the day I graduated high school, Terry. That was just this past May. Family is important and yours, well, you have a great family.”

Terry’s truck was an aged Ford that was smoking pretty bad, but he made it to the bus station okay. It took about an hour to get everything they wanted to keep, pictures, papers, some beloved toys, boxed up and ready to ship.

As luck would have it, they only had about an hour to wait, so I sat with them and we chatted about happier times. The girls were excited to be able to go see their grandparents and Dolores was smiling wider than I had seen so far. Even Terry seemed younger and taller, like a great weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

One by one, I manufactured a chance to hold hands, shake hands, give a hug or whatever it took. They were all pretty healthy, but this trip was turning out to be even more important than they realized. Dolores was pregnant.

I thought about that for several minutes before deciding it was none of my business. If they decided to keep the child or to abort it, it was up to them and I wouldn’t take that from them. They had a support system in place back in Austin, so they wouldn’t be running scared when they figured it out.

Still, it did bring up something I was going to have to think about in the future. Did I even have a stance on issues like that? Right now, I would say no, but only because it had never been something I needed to think about! What about euthanasia?

I shook my head, banishing those disturbing topics until later, and rejoined the conversation.

When their bus arrived, I got kissed from all three of the ladies and even got a hug from Terry.

“Bless you, Luke from Tennessee. I want you to know that someday, some way, I will pay this forward in your name.”

I stood there and thought about that as they finished loading the bus, and waved them on their journey as the bus pulled out of the station.

Having someone feel beholden, even if I didn’t want them to, was something I couldn’t control. That whole paying it forward though, that was a nice thought.

I had outsmarted myself, being all noble and stuff. Now I was at the bus station, by myself, with two trucks!

St. Paul’s wasn’t that far away. The bus station was on Route 66, but on the other side of the exit I had taken when I came into town. St. Paul’s was the other direction, back towards where we met and a block off of Main street.

I am not sure what I expected, really. Perhaps a gothic revival style structure like my father’s so-called church. Maybe a sandstone building with a steeple and steps to climb. What I got was a building that looked like it used to be a real estate office.

On one side, a sign proclaimed “St. Paul’s Episcopal Church” and on the other, “St. Paul’s Academy”. It wasn’t until I drove past and turned around to come back that I realized the ugly building was probably a school now. The Church itself sat back from the road a bit and looked like a proper little church, though in miniature.

The building was a brick A-frame structure with a secondary A-Frame over the entrance. It was ... cute, if you can say that about a church. It looked like a church would look if you built it with Legos.

I parked behind the Academy portion and walked around to the front but, when I got to the front doors, I found myself strangely reluctant to enter. I stepped back and looked the building over again, wondering why I was even bothering. Terry would never know or care if that truck really went here, right? They were on their way to their family and a home back in Texas.

I guess I had been standing there, or maybe pacing, for a while because a voice behind me caught me by surprise.

“Is it because you are afraid or is it because you don’t believe?”

I spun around and a short, portly man with hair like Friar Tuck, just a halo around his head and above his ears, stood with his head cocked and a warm smile on his face.

I shrugged. “I don’t honestly know. It is the past, certainly, and the present. It is what that cross up there represents in my life,” I admitted. For some reason, I liked this man. He had an open and honest face and he seemed truly sincere.

“Well, I am William Kant and this is my church, for now anyway, and I can promise you safety inside. Or, if you like, there are some nice benches under the trees over there, we could sit outside and you could tell me why you came to St. Paul’s today,” the man said quietly, waving his hand towards a stand of trees that had been planted alongside the building. There, around the base of each, were some wrought-iron benches with wooden slat seats.

“Actually, my business won’t take long. A family your church helped, Terry and Delores Chapman and their daughters, they were able to get back to Texas. In fact, they left, just an hour ago, on a bus for home. He left behind his truck since it needs too much work to make it back. He asked me to give it to the church. I have the keys and a signed title, plus he wrote down what he wanted and signed it so you know for sure. Anyway, it is at the bus station since I have my own truck and couldn’t drive both.”

The man looked at me for a long minute, curiosity practically oozing from his pores.

“You knew them well? Well enough that he entrusted you with what was probably his last valuable item, other than his family, of course?” he probed gently.

“Well enough. Can you send someone to drive the truck back here? It is not in bad shape, depending on how much the motor needs,” I said, getting back on track and away from personal questions.

The man smiled and shrugged, as though to say he had tried.

“I’ll come with you. Give me just a second to let my wife know that I am leaving.”

On the short trip back to the bus station, the priest tried again.

“So, where are you from? You sound like you are from the southeast part of the US. Georgia, South Carolina? You never told me your name and I feel kind of odd saying ‘Hey you’ all the time.”

I tried to be nice, deflecting his questions with my own about his church, the town and so on. It lasted until we hit the parking lot and I turned to the priest before I shut the truck off.

“Look, you seem like a nice guy and if I had met you on the street, I probably would have liked you, but your connection with the church is enough to make my skin crawl. I have very little trust for, or patience with, men who claim to speak for God. For any god. I mean no personal insult, but I don’t want to get to know you or have you know me.”

There was a look of almost unbearable sadness on his face. He shook his head, not in negation, but acknowledging the futility of it all.

“I am sorry. Not for anything I have done, or who I am and what I believe. I am sorry that someone who claimed to be a man of God hurt you so badly, cut you so deeply that you instinctively distrust all of us, no matter the denomination. Unfortunately for the world at large, I run into similar cases all too frequently and while the Lord asks us to forgive, my wish is that the monsters who do this suffer the same fate in hell.”

He took a deep breath and scrubbed his hand across his face.

“I will not trouble you more. If you will consent to follow me back to the church to make sure I make it, I am all too familiar with that rattletrap Terry drove, I would appreciate it.” He reached out his hand and, without even thinking, I shook it.

It was like touching a live wire. If shaking hands with Sam had been a static shock, then shaking hands with the Episcopal Priest was grabbing a live wire from a power pole.

In my head, I could see his entire body all at once, even down to the cellular level. I could see that he liked fatty foods a little too much and, if he kept it up, he would eventually need a bypass. Or three. He had plaque buildup in other places as well, opening him to threat of strokes. He had an old injury in his left knee that probably bothered him sometimes. The scar tissue around an otherwise healthy tendon was sure to cause twinges. Other than that, and a single cavity, he was in good shape.

That was all pretty usual, even if it did happen all at once this time. What was really unusual was that I was in his ... mind? His psyche? His soul? I couldn’t read his thoughts, but I could sense that this man had some real regrets in his past, but that he was a good man who truely believed in the God he preached. His faith made him a man of considerable power. While our hands were connected, I felt like I could do anything.

With almost an afterthought, I told his body how to scrape those arteries clean, and do it safely, and then did the same with the scar tissue in his knee. I had the white blood cells kill the bacteria in his cavity, but you can’t regrow teeth.

All of this happened in the span of two or three seconds. A clasp of hands, a single shake and release.

If I looked anything like the Priest sitting next to me, I had a stupid expression on my face and looked stunned. Somehow, I knew that he had felt that connection as well.

“Luke. My name is Luke Samuel Mason and my father was the Right Reverend Jeremiah Mason, a man who preached hellfire and damnation in the afterlife, and who did his damnedest to create that here on earth,” I told him, as sure as I was of anything in life that there was something going on that involved this man.

When we got back to the church, William ‘Call me Bill’ Kant directed me to a small house that sat on the other side of the Academy building. Inside, I met his wife, Abigail, who was about his height and was the perfect companion for this man. She was cheery and bustled around the kitchen with purpose, getting us a snack and something to drink.

When we were all seated in the living room, Bill brought up the elephant in the room. Even Abigail could sense the tension, but not the cause.

“Luke, what was that? I felt it too and it was unlike anything I experienced before. What, well, not frightened as I am certain that no harm came from it but, concerned maybe? What concerned me was that I felt no religious link. What there was, what occurred, was not of the church, but not inimical either.”

He was fumbling, stumbling around blindly, trying to figure out what happened and define it, put it in a labeled box so he could understand it.

“Bill, I don’t know what it is, for certain, or where it came from. Tell me what you felt when we shook hands. Think back, tell me what you experienced,” I asked, leaning forward. I was curious what he had experienced and how it compared to what others have said.

He sat for a moment, obviously gathering his thoughts.

He turned first to his wife. “Luke here was very distrustful of religious men, that’s his story and he can tell it if he wants, but I told him I understood and wouldn’t push him. I offered my hand to shake and he took it. What we are talking about is that we both felt something ... I hate to say this, but it was transcendental, in the non-physical meaning and maybe even in the spiritual meaning, but not religious, which is what has me all a-flutter.”

Abigail looked surprised and turned a more critical eye on me, but didn’t say anything or react beyond nodding that she understood.

Bill turned back to me now that he had brought his wife up to speed. It was a thoughtful thing to do and spoke well of him.

“Luke, I felt ... it was a shock, almost electrical, as if I had grabbed a live wire. Not painful, but I felt like my whole body locked up for a second to two. During that short time, I felt like you, or something, was looking at me as a being. Looking into every cell, every thought, every memory...”

“Look, I know you don’t necessarily believe in God, with a capital G. You are not a non-believer, but not a believer either. If I had to label you, I would call you a skeptic. I do, however, have a strong faith in God. I have felt Him in my life, felt His guiding presence and, in a very real way, I owe my life and my happiness to God. I tell you this so that you understand that I didn’t feel God in our connection.”

I was, despite my initial antipathy, fascinated and gestured for him to proceed.

“I did feel, I don’t know how to describe it. I felt spiritual, felt powerful, felt like there was something coming, something I could do or help with. I felt a very real connection to you, and a desire to help you.”

“This is all amazingly similar to what I felt,” I told him, grinning at his expression of relief. I think he expected me to scoff. I was pretty sure that this was supposed to happen, but damned if I could explain why.

“Bill, no, William Kant and Abigail Kant, I have some things to tell you, but I have three requests. Not demands, but requests. First, that you not speak of this to anyone. Not your fellow church goers, not your therapist or even your confessor. Second, that when I need to leave, you will not try to stop me or slow me in any manner. It is important that you realize I will have to go at some point. Lastly, and you will understand when I demonstrate, I want no witnesses to what I do. You two will know, so that would be okay, but no one else can observe.”

Bill was looking alarmed, Abigail just looked skeptical, as if she thought Bill was being taken in by a scam artist.

“Please, trust me for one minute, no harm will come from this,” I said, and reached out, offering my hand to Abigail.

Her touch was nothing like Bill’s, but there was power there as well. She was recharging energy of sunlight to Bill’s lightning bolt, but she had strength in her beliefs.