Damascus Road (19 page)

“Be right back,” I said.

I turned and walked away, walking for the pickup. I heard
the cellar door squeak and the running footsteps and spun, fist cocked, ready
to take him down. But it wasn’t Tom, it was Grace.

“That was rude,” she said.

“Which part?” I asked. “The part where I offered to get our
cars off the only main road for miles or the part where the farmer’s house
nearly blew up?”

Grace grabbed my arm and pulled me back to face her.

“Hey!” she shouted in my face. “I have never seen you like
that!”

“Like what?” My hackles were up.

“You were going to kill him,” she said. “You were going to
kill Tom.”

“You’re goddamn right. I was defending all of us,” I said.
“Tom wouldn’t hesitate for a second to kill every one of us.”

“I’m not talking about defending us. I get that. I’m not
stupid.”

Mentally, I checked the record and found that I had not in
fact ever said she was stupid.

“What then?”

“You were going to try to kill him no matter what he did,”
Grace said. “You were insane. I saw you. It was like part of you just shut
down.”

I got into the pickup and didn’t bother to wait for her. I
twisted the key and backed up. The front bumper was pressing against the tire,
but I was only going a few feet. I backed up and pulled the truck off the road.
When I got out, Grace was waiting for me, her arms crossed and hair hanging in
her face.

“I don’t have to justify myself to you,” I shouted over the
wind.

“You don’t seem to think you need to justify yourself to
anyone,” she said.

I had been walking to the Cuda when she said this, I turned
on her.

“I didn’t ask for this,” I yelled, jabbing a finger at my
chest. “I didn’t ask for Chris to die or Ellis or any of this. I don’t know
what to do, don’t you get it?”

She was startled by my reaction. I waved her off and kept
walking.

“Jim, wait!”

“I thought things would be better, you know?” I said. “Not
perfect, but better.”

I got in the Cuda and slammed the door, thankful to be
alone. That was until Grace got in next to me.

“Talk to me,” she pleaded.

“Nothing’s better,” I said. “Nothing.”

“What do you mean?”

I turned over the engine.

“I thought there was some meaning, some purpose in me going
to see my dad,” I said. “I thought that if I went to see Ellis that maybe
things would change for him. I tried to talk to him, but he’d have nothing to
do with it. When he died…when Ellis died, I have no doubt that he went to
Hell.”

“Oh, Jim…” Grace said. I could tell that she wanted to
dispute what I said, but recognized the truth when she heard it.

‘I was out of my head when it happened,” I said. “I did some
stupid things and got myself locked up. While I was in there, I started a
fight, begging the inmates to kill me just so I could see my dad again.”

I shook my head, trying to clear it.

“I’m just tired of fighting it, you know?” I said, staring
out the windshield. “If it weren’t for me, Tom never would have come after us.
Chris would be alive. Ellis would be alive. You would be dating… what’s his
name…”

She said nothing and for once, that was probably worse. I
sighed and let my shoulders slump. I turned on the headlights, and Grace
screamed.

There in front of us we saw the tornado moving forward,
broad and thick and howling in all its fury. It had been moving through the
sheets of rain, hidden behind the downpour until it was on top of us. For all I
could tell, it was marching up the road, headed directly for the car.

I dropped the car into reverse and hit the gas, backing up
as fast as I could. The twister leaned toward us, towering over the car and
advancing on us. It howled like a freight train, getting louder and louder. I
poured on speed, looking over the back seat to steer, keeping the car on the
road in a rapid retreat. I looked back and the tornado seemed to be only a
handful of yards from the front bumper.

“You told me you wanted me to get as close as I could to
this thing,” I said. “Is this close enough?”

Grace shrieked, and it cut through my strained humor. I let
my foot off the gas and cranked the wheel over, throwing the car into a reverse
180. I hit the gas and steered out of the slide, the tornado seeming to be
right outside of my window, the wind buffeting the car.

“Go down this road,” Grace said, pointing. “We should be
able to get away from it.”

The wind threw the car sideways, and I fought to keep it
from pitching over into the ditch. I clutched, shifted, and leaned on the gas.
Debris was flying as we tried to get away from the twister. Rocks and tree branches
swirled about the car.

Something hit the window beside my head, and the glass
exploded, covering me in fragments of glass that bit into my face, my neck. I
could feel them inside my shirt collar, only to be followed by the whipping
force of the rain.

“A little break…something…that’s all I need…” I muttered.

I tried to brush the glass off me, get it out of my ear, off
my neck. It was everywhere.

“Jim, look out!” Grace cried.

I didn’t see the power line whipping in the wind. I didn’t
notice that the pole was shifting from side to side until it was too late. I
didn’t see any of it, until the pole gave way and fell across the road,
blocking our path, showering the area in sparks as the power line came with it.

Something in me snapped. I had been able to hold so much at
bay. So many issues that I held back and categorized away. This power
line…somehow that was what broke me. I could have seen a way to escape, the
situation had been dire, intense, but not insurmountable. I could have overcome
it, if it were not for the power line in our path. It was the one thing that
cut off all other options. It closed the door on our situation.

My list of people that could be responsible for my current
predicament was short. I tried to listen to my friend, and he got killed. I
tried to talk to my father, and he died. I tried to rectify my situation with
my wife, and not only did she reject me, but I nearly got her killed, almost
got slammed by a rogue tornado and then, just when I thought that perhaps there
was a way out, a power line blocked our path.

I didn’t make those things happen.

Tom couldn’t even claim credit for those things happening.

The only person who could have orchestrated everything that
had occurred was God.

And I had enough of playing around the edge of that
particular issue. Apparently God had a problem with me. He wanted something
from me, wanted something from me, and I didn’t know how to get there from
where I was. So, God saw fit to slam me to the ground in some divine
intervention and show me the error of my ways. He did it with Job and destroyed
the man’s life to show him who was in charge. He even did it to the apostle
Paul on the road to Damascus. Changed that man’s life, turned him inside out,
turned him blind for a time and gave him a thorn in his side that He refused to
remove, just so that Paul could serve him better. He did that there on that
Damascus Road.

I had a bone to pick with God.

I threw the Hemicuda into a sliding stop so that we faced
the approaching tornado.

“Jim? What are you doing?” Grace asked.

“I’m finishing this.”

“Jim, what are you…?” she didn’t finish her question.

I threw my door open and got out of the car and began
walking toward the tornado. It was a massive coil of blackness from the ground
to the heavens, and somehow in that moment it represented nothing less than the
person of God.

"What do you want??" I screamed at it.

I lowered my head and walked into the fierce wind. It
whipped at my clothes and tore at my flesh, trying to tear me apart. The howl
of the storm was so loud in my ears that I almost didn't hear Grace's frantic
cries for me to come back.

The tornado seemed to stop its forward progression, though,
almost waiting for me as I approached. I pushed forward, staring up at it in
absolute defiance.

He had no answer for me. Or perhaps I wasn't even worth
answering. The only thing worse than absolute disdain for someone is apathy. In
that moment, I felt that He had ceased to care about me.

“What do you want from me?!” I screamed, my voice hoarse in
my throat.

The wind howled, drowning me out. I felt my shoulders slump
and my head hang. There was only one way to get the resolution that I needed.

I took a loping stride forward, then another, breaking into
a run. I ran for the tornado at full speed, arms pumping, legs pistoning. The
circular winds wanted to sweep me off my feet, but I only needed to be a little
closer. When I thought the timing was right and my purchase on the ground was
tenuous, I jumped into the maw of the beast and let the tornado catch me up in
its winds. My feet didn't touch the ground.

There are many people, I’m sure, who have thought that
something was a good idea at the time, only to find upon closer reflection that
it was the most ludicrous idea ever to be hatched upon a brainpan. I was
absolutely and without reserve, unable to articulate anything remotely close to
the existential dilemma of that thought.

All I thought of was that the wind was being sucked from my
lungs and that I was slowly being crushed like a beer can. I wanted to black
out, but there was no merciful end in sight. I was assaulted with flying
objects from nails to dirt to blades of grass that sliced over my skin in razor
thin cuts.

I kept expecting the big end, the coup de grace, but it did
not come. I should have known, I thought. I had lost count of the times that I
thought I was dead, only to be proven wrong in varying degrees of
disappointment. Instead, I felt myself spinning, tumbling, lungs aching, skin
feeling like it was slowing being peeled from my bones.

Whether it was real or oxygen deprivation, I would never
know. And to be fair, I didn’t care. All my questions and recriminations were
slipping from my mind, and the harder I grabbed for them to throw them in His
face, the faster they evaded me.

Be still… and know that I am God.

Had I heard that? Was I hearing things? How did I…

Be still, and know that I am God.

Was this possible? What about everything that happened with…

Be… still…

I allowed the thought to slip away, like a lifeline. I
abandoned any thought or concern for the things that I surrounded myself with.
The car…the people...even Grace…how I loved Grace and yet she couldn’t love me,
couldn’t see me as the man for her… it was all so impossible…I just couldn’t…

And know that I am God…

The voice merged with the sound of the tornado, deep and
strong beyond anything human. My skin prickled, and I felt fear’s cold grip
engulf me. It was not the terror of being threatened with disaster or death.
Instead, it was the realization that I was in the presence of something so much
greater than me. I was humbled. Tears formed at the corners of my eyes.

Something changed then. The tornado lost its perfect
circular funnel and then came apart, pieces of homes and cars and vegetation
falling in every direction. I was no different, and as the twister dispersed, I
realized that I was over fifty feet in the air, over a pond just off a farmer’s
plot of land. The twister completely dissipated, and I fell.

The water rushed up at me, and I had the chance to finally
draw a full breath and fill my lungs with life-giving oxygen. I pointed my toes
at the water and slipped through space. I hit the surface of the pond with such
a jarring impact that my body buckled and slid deep into the water. It was only
then that I realized that it was not in fact a pond, but rather a water runoff
reservoir for the property. It was built to be deep to allow for the rainfall.

I floated on the surface of the water, quickly losing the
battle to stay awake. Darkness closed in at the edges of my vision. I was face
down in the water, and I knew that couldn’t be good. Was probably bad, if I
really gave it some thought. I did not have the strength to roll over or to
pull my head up.

The blackness closed in until everything went dark and I
slid into it, still hearing those words in my head that quieted all the fears
that I had, all the accusations and angst.

Be still… and know that I am God.

My grace is sufficient for you…

I was dreaming, I was certain of it. Dreaming while
drowning? I didn’t really know, so I went with it. I was tired of swimming
upstream over every single thing. Dreaming then.

There was light in the sky and not rain clouds or funnel
formations. That made me happy. I didn’t need another tornado. I never told
Grace, but they scared me. I remembered being with my father, Ellis, as a young
boy, probably six or seven years old, and going camping with him. We saw a
storm coming, and he was adamant that we should be good soldiers and stand our
ground. It was only when we saw the funnel cloud start to drop that we
considered a strategic retreat.

But the clouds were gone now, and I was certain that I
wasn’t dreaming of my childhood, even though my heart seemed to be pounding so
hard in my chest. It was an oddly rhythmic syncopation in my chest, regular and
heavy, not the staccato panic of the adrenaline-infused anxiety.

Then I saw her. Grace. I found Grace. His Grace was
sufficient for me. Grace, my wife. And she put her put her lips to mine and I
closed my eyes, and suddenly, I could breathe. Sweet oxygen flooded my lungs,
warm and rich, not at all like the reservoir water.

The beating was back in my chest again, then Grace was back.
Her face. So concerned as she leaned over me. No, that wasn’t it at all. She
leaned back, intertwined her hands and pushed on my chest. She was the beating
of my heart. She was giving me CPR, and I was soaking wet, and my lungs ached,
and I felt the water inside me, bursting to get out. I pushed her back and
rolled onto my side and coughed out gouts of water. I tasted the muck from the
reservoir, and it burned my nostrils. I coughed and sputtered until I was
finally clear and then I laid back.