The Calling: chapter 2

As the chill crept back in the Michigan air,  the sky went from gray/blue to gray to a dirty gray that swallowed the wispy clouds and intensified the light and heat that wafted up from the campfire.  If the campers in the area were actually campers, they might have had marshmallows or hot dogs pierced on a stick and hovering over the orange licks of flame, instead most loaded boxes of canned goods and duffle bags into the back of a beaten Chevy Blazer while the remaining three sat at a nearly rotted picnic table covered with  checkered cloth.

Martha, one of the three, occasionally lifted up a steaming coffee cup to her lips, judged the temperature, then set it down again, waiting for the brown liquid to turn from scalding to just hot.  She listened as the introduction was made.

“This is Ben.  Went to high school together.  Him a freshmen when I was a senior.  You know, got into some trouble.  Nothing big.  Hear tell, he was seeking something.  He’s a seeker like someone you always say is valuable.  We can use him.  So I brought him to you.”  Rudy Baker smiled meekly.  He was one of the group’s most loyal members and to nominate someone was a way to show his commitment to growing the flock.

Martha finally sipped her coffee tentatively at first, then took a good gulp.  At 52 years old, she labored to keep time with the mission.  Revolution appeared to be a young woman’s job.  Over time, she failed to notice the bitterness of the drink.  Only now, she needed twice as much to keep her caffeinated.  But it will be worth every moment of lost sleep very soon.

The young man in his early twenties traded glances with Rudy across the table, as if unable to speak.  When he finally smiled, she noticed, he had the facial features of a giant cherub, smooth and round, capable of great joy, in one instant and utter distain in the next.  He crossed his broad flannel-covered arms and uncrossed them, meeting Martha’s stare then shying away.  The picnic table moaned under the heft of the large kid as he fidgeted.

“Boy, you know who I am?”

“Just what Rudy say.”  The boy finally looked at her face for more than a second.  Long enough to notice the loose skin along her jaw line, her full cheeks, and sad eyes.

She felt him staring and reached up to smooth out here shoulder-length brown hair.  She wondered if it needed fixing.  “And what did my Rudy tell you?”

“Said something happened.  Something bad.  And now God talks to you.  He rescued you.  Now he tells you stuff.  You’re like an apostle or something.”

Well that was simple enough, she thought.  Like someone told him one second and he believed it the next.  She had worked so hard and done hard things to convince people and this boy wanders in with a pieced together version of her story and a desire to serve, just like that.

“Do you believe it’s true?” she asked, searching his eyes.  “The story.”

“Yes, mam.  Though I haven‘t heard it all.  Sounds good.  See, my Daddy, he isn‘t well and . . .”

“You want him healed?” she interrupted.  She glanced in Rudy’s direction, now sure whether to admonish him for bringing Ben into the fold tonight, of all nights, or to praise him for presenting her with another opportunity shore up the flock, whether it included baby-faced Ben or not.

Now it was Martha’s turn to cross her arms.  In a voice a little louder than her speaking voice, she asked, “Remember the story when Jesus fed thousands with just a little bit of bread and fish?”

Ben nodded quickly, but the blankness of his expression told her that there was nobody home.  The nod was what she wanted and he was eager to provide it.  Either he was manipulating her or he was simple cattle, not uncommon in these parts.

“Well, the people loved it so much that they stayed the night, hoping for more in the morning.  Well, Jesus was gone in the morning.  He wasn’t there to give them free bread and fish.  But that is what most of them wanted, instead of the truth.”

Martha noticed that the truck loading had slowed and the rest were listening.

“We don’t give out free bread around here.  We don’t offer truth here that promises everything, but costs nothing.’ she said with a clinching and wave of her pudgy white fist, followed by a chorus of “amens” from behind her.  She smiled at the response.

Baby-faced Ben, a goofy grin plastered on his face, brought his pineapple-sized fists down onto the wooden planks of the picnic table.  The boards snapped upon impact.  The checkered cloth tore and Martha’s coffee cup slid downward through the hole and shattered against the stony ground beneath the table.  For a moment, he looked worried.  But that moment passed with a burst of laughter and more shouts of “amen”.

Rudy explained, “Brother Ben can get a little carried away sometimes!”

“That he can.  That he can.”  Martha said, “Brother Ben, please join us and learn to follow the one who is greater than yourself.”  She, then, reached across the broken table and pressed he fingers against his forehead.  “May you experience this as a calling from the Lord. And your kin be healed if it is your will.”

Once she pulled away from his forehead, she lightly stroked his hair and felt his cheek gently with the back of her hand.  “You should know why we are here.  What got us here.  Everyone.  Please. Gather round.  This will prepare us for tonight.”  They held hands as Martha recited her story one more time.

“Now, on the day that changed my life, ten years ago, I arrived home from the store with two big bags of groceries . . .”



Martha Lutz shuffled the brown paper grocery bags to one arm and reached into the purse hanging from her shoulder.  It was a large purple bag, stuffed with items that she swore she needed at all times, but rarely did.  Usually, Lucas would beat her to the door, swinging it open hurriedly, winning the unofficial race that accompanied her arrival from every shopping trip.  He was kind that way.  Always willing to help.  But her fingers were faster, it seemed.  One of the bags shifted in her grip and she raised a knee to catch it as she finally grasped the door key with two fingers and shoved it into the lock.

She assumed that Lucas’s tardiness had something to do with him and Melanie staying up past midnight watching movies.  Sleepy heads.  The previous night, Martha had stood, with her arms crossed, in the shadows of the kitchen, as she watched them, like two peas in a pod, huddled together on the living room couch.  His long slim body ran the couch’s length and the petite seven-year-old perched on his thighs, ram rod straight, wringing her tiny hands in anticipation, as they watched a small Asian man take on a room full of goons with the kung fu.

She let the scene run through her mind again.  The quickness of the smaller man.  The power.  He seemed know what was going to happen before it did, because he had a counter move for every attack.  But of course he did, silly.  That’s because it’s choreographed.  She sighed as the scene ran on.  Finally, with all his foes vanquished, the little man found his girlfriend cowering in the corner of the room.  He walked to her, but didn’t’ see the last thug rush him from behind.  But he did see him.  Without turning his head, he reached out grabbing a wooden chair with one hand, and turned like a lightning bolt and smashed it against the bad guy’s noggin.  End scene.

With the door finally open, Martha shouldered her way through.  Still on the verge of spilling her bags, she hopped up a step into the kitchen and shoved them toward the counter where they landed with a thud.  Immediately relieved because she saw a can of corn pressed against the beginning of a tear in the brown paper.  “Paper or plastic, huh.  Guess I better git plastic next time.”

“Better for the environment too, I hear.”  The voice came from the dining room adjacent to the kitchen. 

Martha looked and discovered a man leaning against her dining room table.  Almost sitting on her table.  “Oh, hello.”

“Hi.”  The man wore white shirt with a dark jacket.  His tie was loose around his neck.  He sweated.  He made a show of tapping a pack of cigarettes against his palm.  Newports.  “Yeah, new to the neighborhood.  Bill’s the name.  Lucas let me in.”

Martha tended to her groceries, letting the man’s words hang in the air.  “There something you need help with?”

“Hammer, yeah.  My tools still packed.  Nice to meet you  . . .”

“Martha,” she answered as she unloaded a bag and carefully folded it flat.  “And, friends of ours know that we don’t’ allow smoking here.”  She realized that she sounded a little put off, but the man, though keeping his distance, made her skin crawl.  Maybe it was the way he tilted his head when he spoke or the way he seemed to drill her with his stare, as if she was being pinned to corkboard and dissected in a biology class.

Martha called for her husband.  Then she sang, “Melanie, I’m home.”

The stranger threw a glance into the living room.  He had a view of her in the kitchen in one direction and Martha knew that in the other direction he would see Lucas’s chair.  He smirked and wiped some hair from his forehead, cigarettes still in hand.

“Lucas.”  She left the groceries on the counter.  The can of corn finally tore loose from the bag and rolled across the surface. Martha glanced at it, but her real concern was with her husband.

The man remained loose in his posture as she approached.  Their eyes met and she saw a certain cockiness in him.  He was overly comfortable.  Her proximity did not threaten him. A man very at home with himself.  He believed he belonged there.  Martha started to wonder if she did.  She put on a small friendly smile as she rounded the corner into the living room.  Bill met it with a darkened stare.

Thick plastic crackled under her sandals.  A clear rectangular sheet was spread across her beige carpeting.  An awkward lump, wearing a familiar flannel bath robe, lay in the center of the room. Lucas.  Eyes open, his neck bent at an uncomfortable angle.  There was a quarter-sized red hole by his temple that dripped blood onto the covered floor.

She stopped short of her husband’s body.  Her knees weakened and she caught herself by placing her hand on the top of the end table, nearly knocking the shaded lamp, a wedding gift, onto the floor.  In the polished fake gold base of the lamp, she saw a blurred reflection of movement.  He was behind her.

A small, cold stick of metal pressed through her short brown locks and into the base of her skull, causing her shoulders flex and rise.  The weapon nudged her forward.  “On your knees,” the man said.

“Where’s Melanie?” she asked, trying to flatten the panic from her voice.  But then, worried that even mentioning her daughter’s name endangered her.  Another movie ran through her mind.  One that showed little Melanie revealing herself from a hiding spot at the sound of her name and the evil man whirling around with the gun and shooting her dead.

“Did you really think we wouldn’t find you?”

The pressure of the gun barrel against the back of her head relented, but strangely, she could feel it hovering behind her.  A cold black snake waiting to strike.

“Knees,” he said again firmly. 

“Oh, Lucas,”  she whispered, but did not lower herself to her knees.  Determined to dictate the terms of how she left this world, she might have even straightened up a bit in defiance.  She whispered to herself a prayer.  She barely had time to wonder if God heard her when---

Bill jabbed the gun forward, this time, punching the soft skin of her neck.  “Knees! NOW!  I will . . .”

It would be weeks before she could adequately describe what had happened without coughing, mixing her words, and tearing up to the point that it would take hours to recover.

With speed and precision that she didn’t know she had, Martha rotated her body smoothly to her left.  The intruder was so close that she struck his weapon with her left elbow as it sliced through the air.  Then, with her right hand, she grabbed the neck of her wedding gift lamp and, like a windmill of fury, brought it crashing down on the man’s cheek with one powerful motion.

The killer fell to the floor like a wet sack of flour, half his body stretched into the kitchen and the other half into the living room.  Blood ran from the gash of torn skin around his shattered cheek bone, like the juice from a squashed tomato.  His eyes were wide open, blinking quickly at first, then slower, as if they were old light bulbs slowly burning out.  Then, finally, they stayed shut.

If this were a movie, the heroine might have knelt down to feel for a pulse on her attacker.  Or maybe take a step back and admire her handy work.  But this wasn’t a movie and the “handy work” made Martha wretch.

“Melanie! It’s ok!”  She turned her body to block the child’s view of the scene.  “Stay where you are, dear.  I’ll come to you.”

Martha marched down the hall, shoving a door open to the television room.  She poked a head in to scan for her daughter.  Empty.  Same in the bathroom.  She pulled open the cupboard doors below the sink, a reliable hide n’ seek spot.  The master bedroom was undisturbed.  Closet empty.  Under the bed.  Nothing. 

Melanie’s room was at the end of the hall.  A pink door.  Multi-colored beads hung from the door frame. She remembered how she pestered Lucas to hang them just right.  But they never were “just right” enough for her.  Her little fists pressed into the waist of PowerPuff Girls sleeper.  Her smooth face then pinched and serious as she said, “No.  Like this.”  And she would make an elongated swooping motion with her arms that neither parent could ever understand.  But they kept trying.

“Melanie,” she said as she stood outside her bubblegum-colored bedroom door, hoping to God to hear that little voice.  She watched for shadows passing under the door frame.

Martha burst into the room.  The bed, still unmade, held only her pillow and favorite blanket, decorated with a tangle of swans and bunnies with the ever-present pink background.  Martha threw the sliding doors of her closet open and pushed dresses and shoes and books from one side to the other.  “Melanie!  It’s ok!  I am here, baby!”

Still breathing heavily, Martha stood in the center of the room.  Her eyes scanned the walls and bookcase then fell to the floor.  She could not get control of her heart rate.  Weeping, she put her hand up to her chest and pulled it back, moist with sweat.  Sitting on the floor in a half-circle were five of her little Melanie’s stuffed animals, cup and saucer beside each one, mid-tea party, waiting for her return.

She didn’t remember picking up the gun.  She just knew that the long tube screwed onto the end of the barrel made its weight so uneven that she needed to grip it with two hands.  When she pulled the trigger, the weapon sounded more like a spit than a bang.  Pfft.  Most of the noise came from the man on the floor as he howled and grabbed his wrecked knee.  Blood oozed between his fingers.

“Tell me where she is!”

Tears in his eyes, the killer choked back his cries when Martha swung the gun toward his other knee.  “Lady, you think they tell me that?  You’re nuts.”

Pfft.  She fired at the floor next to his leg.  He instinctively rolled away from the shot.  He lost his grip on his knee and it twisted ever so slightly but caused him to howl painfully just the same.

“God! Lady!  Please!”

“Don’t you dare bring God into this.  You don’t know God,” she scolded.  “The taker of children.  The murderer of fathers.  Don’t know my God!”

The next bullet found the center of his forehead . . .




The group didn’t say a word after Martha finished.  She heard one of the women wimper a little, some sniffles.  The men stood stoicly, some wringing their fists, others slowly shaking their heads.  Martha used her sleeve to dab the corner of her eye, a practiced move. 

“So that is why we are here.  There are people out there,” she pointed into the dense forest, “pretending to be God.  And by doing so, they are trying to replace Him with the unrighteous, the hateful, sad, and the fallible.”

Martha rose from the picnic table, reaching out to the campfire with her hand.  She slowly walked around pit of flames, feeling the heat and she glanced at each of their faces as they watched her.  “You, nor I, can let this happen.  We must recover what has been taken.”

Just then, a gunshot rang out within the forest.