Before the Storm (14 page)

music in our ears. Suddenly, I felt nearly overcome with the

miracle my life had become. I lived in one of the most beautiful places on earth, in a round house like something out of a

fairy tale, with a man whose love for me was matched only by

mine for him. I thought of the tiny collection of cells inside

me that would become our baby, how soon the globe of sky

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above us would be mirrored by the globe of my belly. I thought

of how our child—our
children
—and our children’s children

would someday lie on this beach and watch the same stars and

hear the same waves. And suddenly the thoughts were too

enormous for me to contain any longer. Overwhelmed, I

started to cry.

“Hey.” Jamie lifted his head. “What’s the matter?”

“I’m happy.”

He laughed. “Me, too.”

I leaned even closer to my husband. “And I’m pregnant.”

I could barely see him in the darkness, but I heard his sharp

intake of breath. “Oh, Laurie.” He opened his blanket and

pulled my cocoon inside his, planting kisses all over my face

until I giggled. “How do you feel?”

“Fantastic,” I said. And I did.

He looked down at me, touching my cheek with the tenderness that I’d come to love in him.“Our whole world is going

to change,” he said.

He had no idea how right he was.

The next morning at ten o’clock, thirteen people including Jamie and myself, arrived at the Free Seekers Chapel for

its first service. Four were friends who had helped Jamie build

it. Four others were acquaintances, and the last three were

strangers, curious to see what was going on inside the five walls

of the diminutive building. I was a bit curious myself. Jamie

had said little about his plans for a service. I’d wanted to sew

him a stole. I’d make it different than any other I’d seen, bright

with blues pulled from the sea and sky.

“Thanks, Laurie,” he’d said when I suggested it. “But I don’t

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want a stole. I don’t want anything that sets me apart that much,

okay?”

I understood.

The small chapel smelled of new wood, a delicious smell I

would always associate with the promise of my young marriage

and the life I carried inside me, and I breathed in deeply as we

moved into one of the pews.

We waited a few minutes, then Jamie stood up in his jeans

and leather jacket. He cleared his throat, the only giveaway that

he was nervous. When he spoke, his voice echoed off the

walls and the pews.

“Let’s talk about where we experienced God this week,” he

said.

No one spoke as he took his seat again. The sound of the

sea was muted by the double glass of the windows. In the

silence, I heard one of the strangers, a man wearing a thick red

flannel jacket who was chewing tobacco, spit into the blue

plastic cup he carried. We sat there quietly for what seemed

like minutes.

The first time I’d heard Jamie describe God as an
experience

instead of as a
being,
it scared me. It felt somehow blasphemous. Yet, slowly I started to understand what he meant.

Something awakened in me, pushed the big man in robes out

of my consciousness and replaced it with a powerful feeling

hard to put into words.

I remembered the night before, lying on the beach with

Jamie. I stood up suddenly, surprising myself as much as him.

“Last night I was lying out on the beach watching the stars,”

I said. “The sky was beautiful and suddenly a…a happiness

came over me.” I looked down at where my hands clutched the

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back of the pew in front of me.“That’s not the right word. Not

a strong enough word.” I chewed my lower lip, thinking. “I felt

overwhelmed
by the beauty of the world and I felt…a joy that

wasn’t just on the surface but deep inside me, and I knew I was

feeling…
experiencing
something that was outside of me.” I

didn’t think I was explaining myself well. Words were so inadequate at expressing what I’d felt the night before on the

beach. “I felt something bigger than myself last night,” I said.

“Something sacred.”

I sat down slowly. Jamie took my hand and pressed it between

his palms. I glanced at him and saw the smile I loved seeing on

his face. It was a small smile, one that said
everything is right in

our world.

Another moment passed and then the man chewing tobacco

stood up. “So, we supposed to say when we felt God’s hand in

something?” he asked.

Jamie hesitated. “It’s an open-ended question,” he said.

“You’re free to interpret it however you like.”

“Well, then, I’d say I experienced God when I laid eyes on

this here church for the first time this morning,” he said.“I hear

about it over to the Ferry, hear how a crazy young fella thinks

he’s a preacher made a five-sided church outta concrete and

clapboard. And when I got outta my car and started walking

’cross the sand and saw this—” he waved the hand holding the

blue cup through the air, taking in the five walls and expanse

of windows “—when I saw this out here…well I felt it. What

you talkin’ about, missy.” He looked at me. “Something good

and big come over me. It’s a feelin’ I wouldn’t mind havin’

again.”

The man sat down. I heard Jamie swallow. I could always

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tell when Jamie was moved because he would swallow that

way, as if he was swallowing tears.

Silence filled the little room. I wanted someone else to say

something, but Jamie seemed unconcerned. Finally a woman

got up. She was about my age—twenty-two—with very short

blond hair.

“My name’s Sara Weston,” she said,“and I think I’m the only

person who lives in North Carolina who doesn’t go to church.”

A few people chuckled at that.

“I moved down here because my husband’s stationed at

Camp Lejeune,” she said, which explained her accent. I wasn’t

sure where she was from, but it wasn’t North Carolina or

anyplace else south of the Mason-Dixon Line. “Everyone’s

always asking, what church do you go to?” Sara continued.

“And they look at me like I’ve got two heads when I say I don’t

go. To be honest, I don’t like church. I don’t like all the rituals

and…I don’t even know if I believe in God.”

I heard Jamie whisper,“That’s all right,” though I was certain

no one could hear him but me.

“Sorry.” Sara let out a breath, giving away a touch of anxiety.

“I’ll try to keep this positive. Usually when people ask me what

church I go to, I just say I haven’t decided yet, but then they

always want to take me to
their
church. Now, I’m going to tell

them I go to the Free Seekers church.”

She sat down, blushing, and the man in the flannel jacket set

his cup down and gave her a short but hearty round of applause.

The next Sunday, there were seventeen people inside Free

Seekers…but there were also seventeen people outside, and

one of them was Reverend Bill from Drury Memorial. He was

preaching through a bullhorn, saying that Free Seekers wasn’t

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really a church and that Jamie Lockwood was a heretic and

blasphemer and his tiny congregation was full of atheists and

agnostics.

Inside, Jamie said, calm as ever, “Let’s share where we experienced our own personal God this week,” and people began

to stand and speak and it was as though no one could hear what

was going on outside.

Finally Floyd, the man with the red f lannel jacket and

blue plastic cup, stood up. “I have a mind to go tell that man

to shut his trap.”

Jamie didn’t budge from his seat. “Imagine how threatened

he must feel that he’d come here and try to disturb our

service,” he said. “Let’s treat him kindly.”

Reverend Bill became Jamie’s nemesis. He tried to shut

Free Seekers down by attacking it on all fronts. It was in an area

not zoned for a church, he argued. Jamie was a fraudulent

minister. The building itself was a blight on the unspoiled landscape near the inlet. I stayed out of it, worried that Reverend

Bill had several legal legs to stand on. I don’t know how, but

Jamie wriggled out of every possible attack. Perhaps the

Lockwood name was enough to offset any wrongdoing. Where

Reverend Bill
did
succeed was in turning his own small congregation against us. Jamie Lockwood and his followers were

heathens. That bothered Jamie, whose intention was never to

cause friction, never to force people to take sides. His vision

was one of peace and tolerance. As he’d once said himself: pie

in the sky.

I was four months’ pregnant when Miss Emma and Daddy L

kicked Marcus out of the house. He’d dropped out of college

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before he could flunk out, but he was working in construction and Jamie was upset by his parents’ decision.

“I don’t understand Mama and Daddy,” he said to me one

morning at breakfast. “Marcus already feels like the second-

class son. Getting kicked out of the house is only going to make

him feel worse.”

I poured milk onto my granola. “Let’s take him in,” I said

simply. “There’s plenty of work for him on the island and

we’ve got room. We can help him get on his feet.”

Jamie stared at me, his spoon midway to his mouth.“You’re

utterly amazing, do you know that?”

I shrugged with a smile. “You’re just rubbing off on me,” I

said.

“I thought of having him live with us for a while, but I was

afraid to ask you.” Jamie rested the spoon in his bowl. “I know

he can be a pain. You already have to put up with a lunatic

husband, and with the baby coming and everything…” His

voice trailed off then, and he shook his head. “I’ve always been

the golden child,” he said.“I love my parents, but they’ve never

treated Marcus the same way they treated me.”

“He could never measure up to you.”

“I’ll feel better if he’s with us and we can keep an eye on

him.” Jamie leaned across the table to kiss me. “Maybe we can

straighten him out.”

“Maybe we can,” I agreed.

But that was not what happened.

THE SECURITY LINE AT THE WILMINGTON airport was

longer than I’d anticipated for six in the morning, and I was

afraid I hadn’t allowed enough time to make our plane. Andy

slumped against me as we waited, and I could hardly blame

him. We’d gotten up at 4:00 a.m. to make the six-thirty flight

to NewYork, but everything had taken longer than it should

have. Getting Andy out of bed took fifteen minutes alone.

Changing his routine was always dicey. I nearly had to brush

his teeth for him and when I turned my back, he’d crawled into

bed again. The cab had to wait for us in the driveway. I told

myself we’d be fine. We were only going to be in NewYork a

couple of nights so we had no bags to check. Still, it was nearly

six by the time we reached the security line.

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We were due at Rockefeller Plaza early the following

morning for our appearance on the
Today
show. I knew what

I wanted to say about FASD, and I’d done enough speaking on

the subject over the years that I knew I could get the information across quickly without seeming didactic or preachy. That

was my goal. I also needed to mention the Drury Memorial

Family Fund. Dawn had asked if I could get them to air the

Internet address for the fund so viewers could make contributions. I promised I would try.

We were nearly to the security checkpoint. Finally. I nudged

Andy, who was still leaning against me, his eyes closed.

“Come on, sweetie. Let’s start taking our shoes off.”

He bent over and untied his tennis shoes. “When did I go

on a plane before, Mom?” he asked.

“When you were little.” I kicked off my pumps and bent

over to pick them up. “You were two or three. We flew to

Florida to visit your grandmother who was spending the

winter there.”

“Grandma Emma, right?”

“That’s right.”

“I don’t remember her.”

“You were little when she passed away.” We’d reached the

conveyor belt and I slid him a plastic bin. “Put your shoes and

your jacket in here.”

He dumped his shoes in the bin. “Why do we have to take

our shoes off?”

That was the sort of question I had to answer carefully. If I

said anything about a bomb or terrorists, he’d fixate on the

threat and the flight would be sheer misery.

I hoisted our carry-on bag onto the belt.

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“They have to make sure we’re only carrying safe things

onboard,” I said.

“I saw the sign.”

“What sign?”

“That said don’t carry guns, liquids and all those things.”

“Right.”

The conveyor belt swept the bins into the X-ray machine.

“Bye-bye shoes.” Andy waved after them.

I smiled at the bored-looking security guard standing next