The Reunion (10 page)

A
few minutes past quitting time, Aaron Miller was in his storage room. He’d just put up all his tools, put the ones on chargers that needed it. At lunchtime, he’d gotten Billy Ames to agree that Aaron could come by after work, and they’d take another stab at visiting the wood deck, Aaron’s little hiding place on the river. But he needed to get over to Billy’s trailer right away. At this time of day the sun was already setting, and it would be totally dark in an hour. Didn’t need to give Billy another reason to fear.

Once again, they’d be accompanied by Tess, Heather’s mostly golden retriever. Only now, she was Billy’s dog. On a trial basis, anyway. But knowing how sweet she was and how much Billy needed the company, Aaron felt pretty certain the arrangement would become permanent.

As he hurried toward Billy’s trailer, he thought about the tearful farewell, when Heather had to leave Tess in Billy’s care. When Aaron first asked Billy about it, Billy had flat-out refused. But he’d softened right up when Aaron said what would happen if they had to bring Tess back to the animal shelter.

“You mean they’d put her to sleep?” he’d said. “A dog as pretty as that?”

“Good chance,” Aaron had said. “From what Heather told me, Tess was just two days away from getting that needle when she picked her up. They just don’t have the room to keep all the dogs folks drop off.”

“They wouldn’t put Tess down, would they? Seems like a fine dog.”

“You and me both know life ain’t always fair.”

After that, it wasn’t hard to get Billy to consider a trial basis. Aaron promised he’d help Billy however he could, but from what Heather had explained, Tess was pretty low maintenance. Aaron had checked in on the both of them the last few days, and Billy had no complaints. In fact, Aaron had never seen him smile so much.

Tess just had a way about her. If Aaron had even a little extra room in his storage room, he’d have taken her in himself. Of course, Sue wouldn’t have approved, so this worked out for the best.

He’d turned down the path that led to Billy’s trailer when he saw Mrs. Irene Hamlin wrestling with her screen door, right there on the corner lot. She was making quite a racket. Aaron wasn’t worried about the noise so much as about Mrs. Hamlin toppling to the ground. She was in her late eighties and barely got around behind an aluminum walker. He ran up to help her. “Let me get that for you, Irene.”

“It’s been sticking lately,” she said. “I know it’s not locked, but it won’t open.”

“Let me take a look.”

She backed her walker off to the side. “I was just out here enjoying this nice weather on my chair, then figured I better get in before it gets dark.”

Aaron jerked it a few times, lifted it a little, and the catch broke free. “You shoulda called me or Sue. I’d have fixed it for you real quick.”

“Well, you’re always so busy, and it wasn’t acting this bad till now.”

He opened it wide for her then stood out of the way. “I’ve gotta get with a fellow now a few trailers down, and I don’t have what I need to fix it. Are you going to need to get out here anymore tonight?”

“No, once I’m in, I’ll be in for the night.”

“Well, when I’m done with my friend, I’ll go back to my place and get some WD-40 and a few tools. That’s all it needs, some oil and a few adjustments. Should be good as new.”

“Thank you so much, Aaron. But it can wait till morning, or even anytime tomorrow.”

“No trouble,” he said. “Won’t take me ten minutes.” He stood there to make sure she got in okay. A few months ago, he’d built her a nice ramp so she could get up in her trailer better. Well, safer anyhow than those old metal steps. He watched her as she made her way up. It still made him nervous, the thought of her falling backward before she reached the top.

Irene was such a sweet lady. She and her late husband, Moe, had lived here for years. Aaron had forgotten how long. Moe had actually passed away a year before Aaron got here. But Aaron almost felt like he’d known the man from all the stories Irene told. As she made it to the top, she turned and said, “Well, if you’re set on fixing it tonight, I’ll leave this porch light on for you, so you can see.”

“Thanks, Irene. Appreciate it. So will you be having Thanksgiving here this year or with your family?” He wished there was some way he could talk her into moving in with them instead of living here all alone. She’d mentioned they brought it up all the time.

She made it through the doorway. “I’ll be in Tampa with my kids and grandkids again. I don’t much like the drive down there, but I do enjoy the company. But I told them, if I’m coming down there, I need somebody to drive me back home the next morning. Can’t leave my cat shut up in this place by herself all those days. And of course, I’m already bracing myself for another round of them pressuring me to move down there for good.” She looked around a moment at all the stuff on the screened porch and the property just beyond it. “But I don’t want to leave here. It’s the last place me and Moe were together.”

She looked out toward the front. “We’d spend almost every evening sitting out on those chairs under Big Bertha there, sipping coffee till sunset, watching everyone walk by.” She and Moe had named the huge, ancient oak tree on their corner. Its thick limbs spread all across their trailer, covered almost the entire lot in shade. “So how about you?”

How about him? No chance Aaron would spend Thanksgiving with family. “I’ll probably be eating Thanksgiving down at the church again. That’s my tradition. Around one, I serve Thanksgiving dinner at the street outreach center in the old downtown area, then around four I head over to our church and eat with a bunch of folks in the social hall.”

Which reminded him, he better get over to Billy’s. “You have a good evening, now.” He closed the screened door. She waved and closed the trailer door.

One of his goals was to try and talk Billy into joining him this year for Thanksgiving. He knew it wouldn’t be easy. From one of the many opinions Billy had already shared, Aaron knew he wasn’t too fond of church, church people, or, as he put it, “the man upstairs.”

A
aron walked up the ramp leading to Billy Ames’s trailer. Before he even knocked, he heard Tess barking on the other side of the door. Then the hum of Billy’s scooter. “All right, girl, I know you’re excited we got company,” he heard Billy say, “but you need to back up. That you, Aaron?”

“It’s me.”

The door opened. There sat Billy in his scooter, Tess smiling, beating him with her tail. “I was beginning to think you changed your mind. Gonna get dark before long; you still think we have time to do this?”

“Now’s the best time,” Aaron said. “We’ll get to see the sunset. It’s either now or first thing in the morning.”

“Then we better go now,” Billy said. “I ain’t a morning person.” He had Tess on a leash. Not that she’d run off; it was just park rules. As Billy rolled down the ramp he said, “Aren’t we going to get eaten alive by mosquitoes?”

“In the summer it’s bad. But it’s been nice the last few weeks when I go. We should be all right.”

They rolled along toward the back of the property, same way as before. Only this time, it was pretty clear Tess and Billy had become fast friends. She walked right beside him. Every few steps, she looked over to make sure he was all right. He talked the whole while, mostly telling stories about things Tess had done that he found amusing.

When they got to where the pavement gave way to grass, Billy didn’t even pause. He just rolled that scooter right up and past the nature trail sign.

Aaron stepped onto the walkway. “It’s not far to the deck from here.” He walked a few feet and looked back. Billy had paused at the ramp, gave it a look of concern. But Tess walked past him, straight onto the deck till she got to the end of her leash. Billy didn’t even let the leash get tight. He revved the scooter up and followed.

“If we’re quiet through here,” Aaron said, “we could start to see some wildlife.” He looked up. The deep blue sky overhead gave way to a dark orange, then shifted toward lighter hues of pinks and reds as he gazed toward the west. Clouds blocked most of the sun, just inches above the horizon. But Aaron didn’t mind; clouds at sunset gave God more canvas to paint on. “Isn’t that something?” he said quietly to Billy as they walked along. Billy didn’t answer. Aaron looked back. The expression on Billy’s face said plenty.

They wound their way through the wooden walkway till they finally reached the deck on the Suwannee. Here the beauty of the sky was joined by the sky’s reflection off the water, as well as an amazing variety of palms, cypresses, and oaks. As if on cue, an osprey came swooping past them downriver, then soared overhead, disappearing a few moments later over the darkened tree line.

“Nothing to be afraid of back here, is there, Billy?”

“No. This is . . . very nice.”

Billy sat in silence a few minutes. Aaron realized it was the longest span of time they’d been together that Billy hadn’t filled with chatter. Aaron looked down at Tess; her gaze was focused on Billy. Billy kept his right arm around her shoulder, and she sat there next to him. Finally, Aaron worked up the nerve to talk about the thing he wanted to get to. “There’s another place I’d like to take you sometime soon.”

“Oh, where’s that?”

“Where I go to church on Sunday.” He was talking quietly. Out here on the deck, it seemed fitting.

“I don’t have any way to get to church.”

“Well, our church has a bus that picks up people who need rides. And a special bus for folks in wheelchairs. I’ve seen quite a few vets on that bus. You can tell by the clothes some of them wear and their baseball caps. I’d ride in that one if you’d go with me.”

“You know I don’t like church or church people, Aaron.” He was looking straight ahead. “I don’t even believe in God, not really. I wonder, considering how your life has turned out, how you could believe in him, either.”

Aaron wished he knew the right thing to say. He wasn’t any good at this sort of thing. “The way I see it, I don’t have a choice.”

“Course you have a choice. That’s what makes us different from the animals. Why the world’s so screwed up. Humans got the power to choose.”

“What I mean is,” Aaron said, “if there was no God, then who saved me? Because somebody sure did. I didn’t save myself.”

Billy looked up at him. “What do you mean, ‘saved you’? That’s just a dumb cliché religious folks say. ‘Are you saved? You need to get saved.’”

“It may be a cliché,” Aaron said. “And I don’t know about anybody else’s life. But I needed saving. I got no doubts on that.” He leaned up against the wood rail. “I was a mess when I got back from Nam. Some guys seemed to snap out of it, at least to where they could function. For some reason, I never could. I was all tore up inside. The guilt, for one thing, was killing me. All those terrible things we did. Didn’t matter that we were just following orders, or doing things that had to be done. Those were the dumb clichés, you ask me.” He released an involuntary sigh. “Horrible scenes would just keep replaying in my head. I took all the drugs and booze I could, trying to shut them down, find some peace. But nothing worked. Years went by. Couldn’t keep a job. Lost my family. Wound up out on the streets.” He looked down at Billy. “I sank to the bottom and stayed there, Billy. Should have been dead at least a dozen times.”

“So . . . how’d you get out?”

“That’s the question, isn’t it?” Aaron said. “I was stuck, all right. Then about this same time back in ’87, I went to a Thanksgiving dinner at a church. Course, I did that every year. Figured I could sit through one more preacher sharing about God’s love if it meant a good turkey dinner with all the fixings. But something happened that year, can’t explain it. For some reason, everything the man said made sense, like God was saying it all to me. Something broke in my heart, like some kind of drain opened and all the crud poured right out of me. That’s why I love Jesus, Billy. Ain’t a cliché for me, being saved. If Jesus didn’t exist, then who saved me back in ’87 from all that emptiness? And who’s saved me at least a hundred times since then?”

He looked back toward the sunset. The sun had fallen below the horizon now. “Truth is, I need him every day. ’Bout just as much.”

T
here was a big splash in the water. Aaron turned in time to see a largemouth bass zipping away. Tess stood up and pressed her head through the railing to get a better look.

“So, Jesus . . . or God, is like your crutch,” Billy said.

Aaron was a little surprised. Seemed Billy wanted to keep talking on this subject. “I guess so,” he said. “But talk about using a cliché. People always talk like anyone who turns to God just needs a crutch. As if their lives were going so well on their own.” He looked at Billy again. “Everybody’s weak, Billy. Nobody’s got their act together. They just act and talk like they do in front of other people. Somebody who says they need God, to me, is just being honest.”

Aaron thought he better wrap this up since Billy was starting to get edgy. He looked up at the sky. “See, I’m wondering how people can see all this beauty and
not
believe in God. That doesn’t make sense to me.”

“But look at what he’s done to me!” Billy was getting more than a little edgy. “Look how my life’s turned out. I got nothing. I never had nothing. And now my life is over, and I still got nothing. I hate him.”

“The Bible says only a fool can believe there is no God. Hating him at least gets you one step up from that.”

“So how come you don’t hate him?” Billy said. “Except for the fact you still got legs, you’re as bad off as me. Worse in some ways. I never had a family. You had one and lost it. I never lived out on the streets like you did. At least I’ve had a disability check come in every month, sorry as it is. It’s still better than what you have. And look at you now, you still got nothing, living in that old garage back there. I can at least afford that stinkin’ trailer.”

Some of what Billy said stung a little. Especially the part about Aaron losing his family. “Sounds like you got at least a few things you should be grateful for.”

“What? No, you’re missing the point.”

“The point being . . . I should hate God like you do?”

“That’s right. What good’s he ever done for you, or for me?”

Aaron thought a minute. It was some question. He could hardly believe Billy asked it. Like he just lobbed a softball right over the plate. “He sent his Son Jesus to earth, Billy. Let him die on the cross to pay for all the bad things I done and all the bad things people done to me. I may have lost everything, but God didn’t take them. Not the way you mean, anyhow.”

“Then who did?”

Aaron smiled.

“What are you smiling at?”

“I said almost the exact same words back in ’87, after years of living on the streets, totally strung out on drugs and booze. I had nothing, lost everything. Didn’t see a way to ever get any of it back. I only believed in God long enough to hate him.”

Billy looked at him like he didn’t know what to say. “So . . . what happened?”

“I was eating my Thanksgiving dinner after that preacher got done. I was talking to this young man at least half my age. It wasn’t as if he’d said something no one ever said before. Maybe it was just my time to hear it.”

“What’d he say?”

“He asked me a question. He said if I had a teenager that was about to go out with his friends, and I loved him and worried about what might happen to him, I would tell him all these things not to do, so he would stay safe. And then if he went out and ignored everything I said, did whatever he wanted and whatever his friends talked him into, and they got into all kinds of trouble, would my son blame me for everything that happened to him?” Aaron let the question sit out there a moment.

“Guess he wouldn’t,” Billy said.

“Who should he blame?”

“I guess himself, maybe his friends.”

“Why shouldn’t he blame his father?”

“I get your point.”

“That’s what I was doing back then. What you’re doing now. Most of the people who blame God for everything never even try things his way, so how can they blame him when it all goes wrong? But they do. I did. For years, till eating that meal. That day, the lights came on. And I saw that all I ever did was do things my way, my whole life. And all it ever did was get me in trouble and more trouble. That young man went on to explain the mercy God had for me, even though I hated him. The things Jesus did to make it right. That’s why I’m inviting you to church, Billy. So you can hear about this stuff for yourself. I’m no good at explaining this sort of thing.”

Billy sat there a few moments. Aaron couldn’t read him. Tess seemed to know he was a little tense. She leaned on him, laid her head on his knee.

“You don’t gotta come to church with me, Billy. I’ll still be your friend. And if you want me to, I’ll stop asking.”

Billy looked down, past the legs he didn’t have to the wooden deck. “No, I don’t want that.”

“You don’t want to come, or you don’t want me to keep asking?”

“You can keep asking.” He looked up at the water and the tree line across the way. “As long as you’re not too pushy.”

“Was that pushy just now?”

“A little bit.”

The three of them stayed put a few minutes more, no one saying anything. Aaron finally suggested they get back before it got too dark. As they stepped off the deck, down the ramp, and onto the grass, Billy said, “I suppose I might even go with you to that church. Maybe not this week. But someday.”