Along the way, he had noted several large farms, their rickety fences lining the roadside. Here and there, cows and horses huddled in groups, grazing on thinning,

grassy knolls. Restless and impatient, he ran his fingers through his thick, black hair, then reached down and turned up the volume on the radio. At the sounds of a familiar country tune, he began humming along with the radio until his cell phone started vibrating. He yanked it from his pocket, flipped open the cover, and spoke a hurried greeting.

“Danny, where are you?”

He should have known his sister would inquire after him before the day was done. “Hi, Sam. I’m not far from Oakdale.”

“Well, I miss you.” It was hard to ignore the pouty tone.

“Already? I just left this morning.” He forced a smile. Lately, it took a lot for one to come naturally.

“It doesn’t matter. Things are not going to be the same around here without you.”

“Things have not been the same for a long time, Samantha,” he corrected.

Had it really been more than a year since his life took a sharp, screeching turn? Even now, the past memories tangled with his present senses.

“That’s true, but did you have to move away? These things take time, Danny, and the constituency did give you six months to rest up and collect yourself,” she said.

Collect myself? Is she kidding? Six months had barely been enough time to shake off the numbness before reality set in. He swallowed down an angry retort.

“We’ve been over all this, Sam. It’s for the best.”

“Leaving your congregation was for the best?” she asked.

“Sam…”

“Folks were just starting to heal. I don’t think you gave it enough time.”

Sam was nothing if she wasn’t forthright about her feelings. Of everyone in the family, she’d been the most adamant about him sticking it out with his congregation.

Did she think this last-minute conversation might convince him to turn around? It was almost enough to make him chuckle.

“I did what I had to do. Hanging around wasn’t doing my parishioners any good.”

“Do you know that for sure?”

He heaved an enormous sigh. “I was their pastor, Sam, but I was the one who needed shepherding.”

“God uses imperfect people all the time.”

“Maybe so, but a church needs strong leadership. What kind of pastor stands in front of the pulpit Sunday after Sunday and offers nothing more than a few babbling words? Shoot, Sam, even I had trouble following my sermons.”

Samantha giggled. “I have to admit, they were going from bad to worse.”

“There you have it,” he murmured, mindlessly reading passing billboards.

“I was kidding.”

“No, you weren’t. Did Mom put you up to this phone call, by the way?”

“Nope. In fact, she told me to leave you alone.”

“Smart woman.”

A tiny pause silenced Sam for a moment. “When are you going to stop blaming yourself for the accident?”

At her question, he tightened his grip on the steering wheel. “Who said I was?”

“It’s pretty obvious, although why you would is a mystery to me. You weren’t even with them when it happened.”

“Precisely. That, my dear, should explain my guilt.”

“So, you’re saying if you’d been with them it wouldn’t have happened? That’s silly. And what about this? If you’d been driving, you might all be dead. That was a treacherous storm.”

“I gotta hang up, Sam. I’m getting closer to town.”

“Dan, answer me this,” she persisted.

“What?” He gritted his teeth against his growing perturbation.

“Besides blaming yourself, do you also blame God?”

He sighed. “I am so tired of talking about this.”

“Just answer me.”

“I don’t know.” Some things were just too hard to put into words.

“Shall I discount all your past sermons about trusting God even through the tough times? I still remember you preaching at John Farhat’s funeral. You looked straight into his wife’s eyes and said, ‘We would never see the stars, Ellen, if God didn’t sometimes take away the day.’”

A ball of guilt formed a tight knot in his chest. How many people had he hurt in his leave-taking? Worse, how many had he led astray? “Let it go, Samantha.”

“I suffered, too, you know. I lost a sister-in-law and a precious niece. And think about Mom and Dad….”

Her voice drifted off as Dan watched the road ahead. “Gotta go, Sam. I’ll call you soon.”

He clamped the cover of the receiver down hard and stuffed the thing back in his pocket, then quickly yanked it back out, opened it up, and hit the off button.

Oakdale City Limits

Dan breathed deeply when he passed the familiar landmark. He’d visited Oakdale only briefly before, but something about its tranquil setting brought a sense of peace and belonging. Its rambling old oaks, fields of wild flowers, ageless pines nestled on faraway hillsides, and timeless brick homes surrounded by flower beds held a kind of idyllic appeal.

He passed an ancient cemetery and instinctively slowed, its sight only adding to his pensive mood. Cemeteries did that to him.

Andrea… Her name shot out of nowhere.

He pushed the accelerator. “God,” he muttered, “what were You thinking? Taking my family away from me was a rotten trick.”

Dan flipped the turn signal at the entrance to Oakdale Arms Apartment Complex, his new stomping ground—at least until he got a grip on himself. He saw the large moving van sitting in the parking lot. It contained a minimum of furniture, enough clothes to get by, and only those memorabilia that wouldn’t cause undue pain. He’d already made payment to the moving company, and the driver had said he would be back for his truck in a couple of days. Moving companies didn’t often operate that way, but since the driver was an old friend, he’d made special arrangements.

Dan parked the car, got out, and stretched. Oakdale looked like a nice enough community—quiet and pleasant, with a friendly aura. Its appeal was almost tangible. Maybe this would be his answer to finding some much needed peace.

He would go into the apartment he’d leased, then make a call to his old high school friend who’d offered him the construction job. He took in the sights and smells around him, felt the warmth of the summer sun on his back, and believed in his heart of hearts that he would find answers right here in this lovely little bedroom community on the outskirts of Chicago.

A hair-raising scream roused Callie May from her sleep-drugged state at precisely six fifty-six on Sunday morning. “Nooo,” she groaned, burying her head beneath her pillow. Hadn’t she just closed her eyes five minutes ago? Just give me another hour, Em. But as the screams rose in decibels, she surrendered to the fact that her eight- month-old baby was hungry and needed attention.

On her way to the nursery, she adjusted the thermostat. Early sun reached its spindly fingers through the half-drawn blinds, sending shafts of light through the kitchen window. Looks like another sunny day, she mulled. Too bad she couldn’t say the same for her spirits.

Emily’s pouty sob gave way to instant smiles when Callie walked through the door. “You’re a stinker, you know that?” she chided while lowering the bar on Emily’s crib and lifting the baby into her arms.

“Waking Mommy when she had just fallen asleep.”

Emily smeared a wet, warm kiss across Callie’s face, making Callie chuckle in spite of herself. “You think you can win me over with your kisses?”

After a hasty diaper change, Callie hoisted the baby on her hip and headed for the kitchen. “Ba-ba-ba-ba,” Emily chanted along the way, oblivious to her mother’s less- than-chipper mood, her recent “B” sounds coming out in an attempt to say “bottle.” Of course, Callie’s father begged to differ. “She’s trying to say ‘Grandpa,’” he claimed.

Pulling open the fridge door, she spotted a bottle of formula and snatched it off the shelf, then pushed the door shut with her hip. “Cold or hot?” she asked, holding the bottle under the baby’s nose. Emily reached for the bottle and steered it to her mouth. “Guess that answers that,” she said, tipping Emily back in her arms while the baby suckled.

As she reached for a mug for tea, a sudden racket in the hall outside her door sparked her interest. Yesterday, someone had started moving into the vacant apartment across the hall, but she’d been too self-absorbed to pay much attention. Now, however, she found herself padding across the room for a peek through her peephole.

At first, she saw nothing through the tiny hole in her door. But then, a tall, strongly built man emerged from the apartment, large crate in hand. He looked to be about her age—perhaps in his mid- to late-twenties. He paused just briefly, as if pondering something, giving her a chance to study his handsome, sober face with its clear-cut lines, generous mouth, and thick crop of black hair. An unexpected shiver scampered up her spine.

Even through the tiny opening, she sensed his angry mood; she saw it in his crinkled brow and clenched jaw.

He looks mad enough to spit poison. Who is he?

A squirming Emily forced her away from the door. She told herself that the man was of no concern to her, and not to mind his dark and dangerous appearance, never mind that her marriage to an abusive man had ended mere days ago and she was feeling vulnerable.

She had enough things to worry about without adding a dodgy-looking character into the mix.

Dropping into a soft chair, she gathered her baby close and blew out a loud breath. While Emily finished off the last few ounces of formula, Callie leaned back and closed her eyes. If the stranger held down the noise, she might be able to catch a few more winks before getting ready for church.

“What? You’re pregnant?” he screamed. “You finagling witch!”

An angry fist shot out and hit her square in the jaw, knocking her to the floor. Pain seared her face like fiery talons while a gasp of air pushed past her lungs. She skidded across the hardwood floor and slid up against the wall.

“Don’t hate me, Thomas. I—I didn’t mean for it to happen. Please…”

“Shut up!” he ranted, reaching for a fistful of her hair and yanking her head around till it snapped. “You’re gonna get rid of that mistake in your belly, you hear me?”

The urge to retch consumed her. Mistake? Timidly, she raised her face to him.

“I—I can’t do that.”

“You can and you will,” he wailed, pulling her hair until it nearly ripped from her scalp. She screamed with pain. Sneering, he dropped his hand and tramped to the door.

He wrenched his coat from its hook and pushed his arms through the sleeves. “I’m going out! I can’t stand the sight of you!”

When he slammed the door behind him, she lowered herself, exhausted, into a rumpled heap on the floor.

Her own sobs and the beads of sweat that dotted her forehead were what roused her from the nightmare. It wasn’t the first time she’d dreamt it, and it was unlikely to be the last. Shaken but relieved, she swabbed her brow with the back of her hand. Thomas was in Florida. She was in Illinois. The marriage was over—as was the abuse. Now, if she could just rid herself of the terrifying memories.

The alarm barely penetrated David’s sleep. He fumbled with the unfamiliar hotel clock, found the button, and pressed.

Ten minutes later, another alarm blared at him from across the room. Although he had set it himself, he threw back the covers and stamped toward the sound, slammed it quiet, then burrowed back into his pillow.

An hour later, morning sunlight through the sliding glass door played on his face. He opened one eye. Outside, aspen and birch leaves filtered the light. A swallow flitted by. He sat bolt upright and looked at the clock beside him.

Already 6:30! He only had one day here, and now he had wasted the best hour.

David had wanted to rise before dawn, to inhale these surroundings as the trees and lake became visible. He loved rising at dawn to see the sunrise and feel some control over his day, though he hadn’t done so in years. Now the sun was already bright in a blue sky.

He felt little control over his life these days. The communications company where he worked had downsized, firing half his colleagues. Maybe he’d be next.

To make matters worse, he felt betrayed by his boss, Frank, who had persuaded him to give up a very good job to take his current position. Now David realized Frank had known all along that his company was in trouble, that David’s strengths would enable him to function with fewer people. It was particularly galling that Frank had lured him not with money but with a mission he knew David believed in—providing hope to mentally ill children. David cared deeply for children and had been willing to swallow a reduced salary. He had accepted the deal but now would have to do the work of at least two people and as a result had come to detest Frank.

Twisting his body toward the window and putting his feet on the floor, he reached over to pick up a photo of his wife, Marcia. It was his favorite—she was looking out from under a beach umbrella with an impish grin. At least Marcia wouldn’t let him go.

David stood, ran his fingers through his reddish brown hair, pulled his jeans on, and buttoned them over his flat belly, the result of careful eating and no-nonsense workouts. He had always brought passion to whatever he did and drove himself to be self-disciplined and to make a difference in the world. He inserted the coffee bag into the cabin’s little Black & Decker coffeemaker and filled the carafe only halfway. Lately he wanted his coffee stronger and stronger. He felt like he had been an ice skater pumping full-bore through life and gaining speed but had suddenly hit a line of dirt and crashed.

Marcia had arranged this cabin for him. “Get away—at least for one day,” she had said. “Go up north this Sunday. Take all day in the woods. Decompress!”

Thank goodness for Marcia. He hated making her feel bad; he wanted to match her enthusiasm for life as he always had. But Frank’s treachery and David’s own career slump made his drive and dreams of significance seem a farce.

The two mugs of black coffee were just enough to wash down the big sweet roll he had bought the night before. Now he was wired, but he sat quietly, staring at the woods and lake. His parents had often brought him here as a child to explore this lake and the trails through the woods. Now he longed for that uncomplicated joy, for the solitude and wonder of sighting a hawk floating above or being startled by the warning snort of a deer. Once he had come upon a doe in a meadow with two speckled fawns, one nursing at her side. He had scarcely breathed as he watched until the fawn pulled away and all three walked slowly into the woods.

Finally David slid open the glass door and walked down to the lake. At water’s edge he watched five seagulls skimming the surface, rising, plunging, soaring in their spontaneous choreography. Two mallards dipped toward the lake and gracefully hit the water.

In that instant, magnificent music erupted into David’s world, resonating throughout his body, music of unknown instruments lifting and inspiring. At the same moment he saw the blue sky shattered by a kaleidoscope of colors and vivid images pulsing from horizon to horizon. On the lake, shimmering, cascading light illumined the waves, reflecting purples, magentas, and greens.

A sliver of something like joy rippled through him and then evaporated. Fragrances filled his nostrils, odors he found so delightful he involuntarily breathed deeply to capture more.

All this happened in a moment and was gone. The extraordinary phenomenon that was forever imprinted on his memory was over in a moment, leaving every sense of his mind and body jolted, tantalized, drawn into the strange, celebratory dynamics, as if his entire being was made for them.

A few years before, David had happened to look out his window during a storm just as a bolt of lightning had struck a nearby tree. It had sheared off half the trunk, and David had been stunned at both the blinding light and the force—like a giant sledgehammer of light that had slammed into his yard.

Now, standing at lake’s edge, he felt the same extreme of force, but far more than a sledgehammer of white light. It had captured the sky with colors and shapes and had reverberated like cannon fire. Yet like the lightning hitting the tree, the mysterious phenomenon was over in seconds. What had it been? Could it actually have lasted just moments, all that grandeur, all that force and image and fragrance already vanished?

He looked around. All was as it had been. No broken trees. No breaks in the lake’s perimeter. Just clear sunlight shimmering on the waves. He scanned the sky. Only a few white clouds in the expanse of blue. He sniffed the air. Nothing but the scent of pine. He looked behind him to the hotel. No one in sight.

He stood on the sand by the lapping water for long moments, letting all the elements of those extraordinary seconds flow through his consciousness.

As he slowly sat down on a bench, the shapes and sounds and emotions still resonated in his trembling body. He could make no sense of what he had just experienced. He felt like a man on a raft in rapids, plunging and spinning through waves, spray, rocks, and logs, not knowing what might befall him next. At the same time, nibbling at the deep pools of his angst was a wondrous elixir of the scents and sounds and images . . . and a tantalizing element of peace.

The mallards flew off. The gulls had settled across the lake, five white, bobbing specks on the waves. Yet the serenity around him did nothing to soothe his inner turmoil. What was happening to him? He looked down at the white pebbles of the manicured walk beside his feet. Everything was perfect, lovely, “decompressing”—yet within him, a maelstrom of weariness, confusion, and desires.

David trudged the pebbled walk to the resort office, his eyes probing every bush, brick, and branch. He picked up a fat pinecone and felt its perfect ridges in his hand. Everything was the same as when he’d awakened this morning, yet in some strange way, his world had changed.

In the office he asked the woman at the counter, “Did you hear that loud sound out at the lake? About half hour ago?”

Cocking her head and scrunching her angular features, the woman looked up from counting restaurant receipts. “Nope.” She looked back down, her fingers still working the receipts.

“It was a strange sound,” he said, “and a huge flash of colorful light. Someone must have heard or seen it.”

She shrugged.

He watched her moving fingers and squeezed the pinecone till he felt a little stab of pain. “I was hoping someone besides me had heard it.”

“Sonic boom!” The hearty voice from behind startled him, and he whirled around to face two older men lounging in captain’s chairs. They wore flannel shirts under battered fishing hats. “Happens up here, young fella,” one of them declared.

The man was sitting back in his chair, eyes on David as if to appraise this city boy. His authoritative tone rankled David.

Despite himself, David put a sarcastic edge on his response. “Not a sonic boom! I’ve heard sonic booms. And there were brilliant, strange lights.”

The man edged up in his chair as if savoring this new development. “Strange, eh?” He turned to his companion. “Hear anything or see anything strange, Ed?”

Ed, heavyset and sunk in his chair, smiled, shook his head, and said, “Naw, Pete. Not today.”

Both men looked at David with amusement. David squeezed the pinecone in his hand so hard he could feel it etching little ridges in his palm. Turning his head toward the woman, David saw she had set aside the receipts, her full attention on the little drama, mouth crinkling toward a smile.

Disdain. The old man’s face was eloquent in showing his contempt, with just a trace of triumphant grin. His expression reminded David of an action movie scene he remembered: the hero, with that same look of disdain, had silenced a bragging Nazi youth, staring him into humiliation.

This old guy with the same look was no movie hero. He was pudgy and looked a little like David’s boss. In fact, the man reminded David far too much of Frank, and he felt rage growing in his chest. He thought of all sorts of cutting responses, yet he sensed more verbal jousting would most likely result in his being humiliated even more.

David looked over at the woman at the desk. Her smile masked a hint of gloating satisfaction. She slightly raised her eyebrows as his eyes met hers and then, maddeningly, she winked at him.

Instead of responding, he turned abruptly and stepped outside. Halfway back to his cabin, he flung the pinecone in a high arc toward the lake.

Copyright © 2008 by Harold Myra. All Rights Reserved.