The glasses returned to Ben’s nose a minute after he pulled them off. Age had finally caught up to his eyes, the balance between vanity and needing to see starting to tip in favor of sight.
“Do you believe in angels?” he asked as the glasses slipped off once more.
“Of course,” Jeremiah said. “The Bible is clear about their existence.”
“Sorry. I should have said, do you believe angels walk among us, talk to us, like they did with the prophets and Joseph and all of those other people we read about?”
“It sounds like there’s a story behind the question.”
Ben tugged at his lower lip. A memory played out in front of him. “I thought an angel talked to me once. Saved my life, in fact. He wore fatigues and carried a rifle in his hand.” The memory interrupted him. “Come to think of it, I never saw a rifle.”
“When was this?”
“My first week of combat, outside of Philly. A couple months later, we retook the city. Mel and I hitched a ride on a tank. I remember that distinctly. Mel sitting on the turret chatting it up with the gunner. I took a turn on the gun. The driver kept banging on the inside to get me to move my feet. Apparently, they were blocking the optics. Not like I could hear him through all that steel. The driver finally popped his head out of the hatch and cursed me like I was the neighbor’s dog. Didn’t stop even after he saw my lieutenant’s bars. Mel enjoyed it more than he should have. I was in too good a mood to worry about it.”
“A good mood in a warzone. Not something I would expect anyone to say,” Jeremiah let slip out.
“There were tough times, don’t get me wrong, but by the time we hit the outskirts, the war was all but over. General Elnath’s forces hit the Russians from the west. The airstrikes decimated the enemy’s positions along the eastern front. President Josiah led a few missions himself. Took some flak in his shoulder and was back out the next week. It was the war that really cemented his place in the people’s hearts.”
“He was a good man,” Jeremiah said.
“That, he was.”
“You worked with him, didn’t you?”
“For a little more than a year near the end of his last term. Fourteen months and ten days, if you want to be precise. I had just made Major. Actually, I was going to resign my commission, but they offered the promotion to keep me in.”
“You were a good officer,” Jeremiah noted.
Ben shrugged it off. “They were desperate to keep people. The Chinese wanted to take on the Russians again and were advancing through the southern plains. The army needed every man they could get.”
“The Chinese wanted nothing to do with us. All they asked was for safe passage through the Shenandoah.”
“In hindsight, we should have let them have it. You knew it all along.”
“President Josiah wasn’t a perfect man,” Jeremiah said, “but he did a lot of good.”
“Most people don’t see it that way.”
“History is written by the ones left alive.”
“Even back then,” Ben said, “I don’t recall him receiving much support. Except from the military, of course. We would’ve followed him anywhere. And we did.” He tapped the ground next to him one finger at a time, like a pianist running a slow arpeggio up a major seventh chord. “The rest of the country seemed to hate him. Or tolerate him at best.”
“His decisions earned him a lot of enemies.”
“Kind of like you.”
Jeremiah quickly arched his eyebrows and let them drop, an understated acknowledgement of a glaring understatement. “But found him favor with God.”
Ben let out a half-chuckle, as though a full one would convey blasphemy. The temple of his glasses twirled in his hand. “Why did they hate him so much?”
“Where should I start?” Jeremiah said. His arms folded over his chest. A single finger raised itself. “For starters, he didn’t listen to them. Nearly all of his advisors were against his plans.” A second finger joined the first one. “Then, there were the plans themselves. There wasn’t much uproar when he designated Christianity as the official religion of the country. Not as much as I thought there would have been anyway. He got a little pushback when he required all public schools and universities to mandate a Bible course as a graduation requirement. People were actually happy when he cleared out the mosques and temples.” He paused, staring at nothing, and let the silence linger. “I think the ban on casinos and strip clubs set them off. That and his crackdown on the media. Admittedly, that mainly aggravated the journalists. Not that they could do anything about it. Their impotence, the lack of influence they craved. The fact that no one would listen to their lies anymore.”
“I always thought the last straw was when he criminalized abortion.”
“That was certainly a factor.”
“You know, if I’m being honest, when I was growing up, I didn’t have a problem with abortion. I wouldn’t have had one, of course.”
Jeremiah looked him up and down. “I never thought it would’ve been possible.”
Ben’s cheeks curved in disgust. “You know what I mean.” He renewed his original course of thought. “I was a live and let live kind of guy. It’s not right but it’s not my place to tell you what to do kind of thing.” The confession broke off to give him a chance to choose his words. “It was Victoria who convicted me.”
“How so? What did she say to convince you?”
“She didn’t really convince me. She convicted me.” The arpeggios increased intensity. “We were talking one night, and the subject came up. She mentioned she was against it, which caught me off guard.”
“Were you dating at the time?”
“We were recently married, actually. I asked why and she just said she would never do it. I kept pushing, trying to see what she believed – trying to convince her she was wrong is probably more accurate. Asking her what ifs. What if the baby was deformed? ‘No.’ What if your life depended on it, say if you needed chemo to kill off a brain tumor? ‘Then, I would die.’ I saved the coup de grace for last. What if you were raped and you became pregnant? This is what she said, her exact words. ‘You would love the baby as your own.’ Not she would, but I would. It was a command too. I had never heard that type of conviction before. Somehow, I realized, not consciously yet, but still realized that hers was the only correct stance on the issue. My own opinion changed not too long after.”
Jeremiah studied Ben’s face. A few more wrinkles than before creased his eyes. All these years knowing him and there was still so much more to learn.
“You were put to the test with Ged, weren’t you?
“Victoria hung tough.” Ben yawned. “It feels like I haven’t slept for days.”
“You probably haven’t.”
Ben pulled down on his head to stretch out his neck muscles, switching left then right. “Do we think we’d be in this mess if Josiah was still president?”
“I’d like to think not,” Jeremiah replied, “but I doubt he’d still be president. No one can last that long in politics without becoming a casualty of some sort.”
Ben’s expression showed he agreed with the sentiment but not the specifics. “Josiah was different.” He let the simplicity of the statement carry the weight.
“He was a man of strong principles,” Jeremiah agreed. “Flawed, as we all are, but fierce in his devotion to the living God. My dad used to tell me about some of the meetings with the advisors. Got to see some of it firsthand too. The subtlety with which they tried to influence Josiah, deceive him so that he’d turn from the truth. Dad called them a den of vipers, with one of them being the head snake. Josiah saw through them, though. Most of the time.”
“I can only begin to imagine the pressure he was under to cave. Glad he didn’t, though. It gave us a few good years at least. You saw this coming, didn’t you?”
“He told me it was.” Jeremiah’s heart sunk. “And there was nothing I could do to stop it.”
“In the end, we make our own choices. Which reminds me, you never answered my question.”
“What question?”
“Why did they hate him so much?”
“I thought we spent the last fifteen minutes discussing it.”
“Not the things he did.” Ben sighed deeply. “The results. The blessings we received as a nation because of what he did. How the crops grew in abundance. Everyone with overflowing cupboards. The rain falling in its season. Do you remember the rain?” He didn’t wait for Jeremiah to answer. “How we stood against the world’s powers and kept them in their place. While the rest of the world bowed, we stood tall. Knees bent before God but backs unbent to the nations. All this and we gave it up. We had no excuse. Everything occurred just as it says in the Bible. ‘And when you and your children return to the Lord your God and obey him with all your heart and with all your soul according to everything I command you today, then the Lord your God will restore your fortunes and have compassion on you.’ I know the blessing was spoken to Israel, but it held true for us. ‘But if your heart turns away and you are not obedient, and if you are drawn away to bow down to other gods and worship them, I declare to you this day that you will certainly be destroyed.’ The curse fell on us as well. Yet, they didn’t listen. We didn’t listen. How could we have been so full of hate, so blind to our own foolishness that we desired the curse more than the blessing? Why would we believe the lie and not the truth, especially when we saw the results of both?”
“For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe is condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the judgment: the light has come into the world, and people loved the darkness rather than the light because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come to the light, lest his works should be exposed. But whoever does what is true comes to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that his works have been carried out in God.”
Ben had read the passage a hundred times. For the first time, he allowed the words to pierce his soul. A sigh shuddered through him.
“Thanks for looking out for me all these years,” Jeremiah said. “I wouldn’t have made it without you.”
“That’s what friends are for. Besides, you gave as good as you got.”
“It seems I did most of the getting.”
A thin smile crept over Ben’s lips. Jeremiah continued.
“I often wondered if I was doing the right thing, you know.”
“Why’s that?”
“I never had any success. At least not any apparent success. As far as I can tell, I didn’t change a single mind.” His thoughts faded into the distance. “I saw disaster looming from so far away. The bridge out ahead and the train heading around the curve. They were going so slow that I could run along beside them. I told them I came from up ahead, that I had already seen dozens of other trains fall into the canyon, but they just looked at me like I was crazy.” He turned to Ben. “I don’t doubt him, not anymore. I used to. It’s just … I thought there would be fruit. Like at the end of the parable. He who hears the word and understands it bears fruit and yields, in one case, a hundredfold, in another sixty, and in another thirty. What does it say about you when you achieve nothing?”
“You held firm to the end. That’s all he asks of us sometimes.”
“Yeah,” Jeremiah said. “I suppose so.”
Ben rubbed his chin. “Do you think he’ll recognize us?”
“I don’t follow.”
“Josiah. When we die and go to heaven. Will he know who we are?”
“I suspect we’ll find out sooner than later, old friend.”
Ben laughed. “I noticed you emphasized the old.”
Jeremiah smiled with him. “Well, we are, aren’t we?”
“We’ve lived a full life.” Ben paused. “I’m ready to go, you know.”
“When it’s your time, you will.”
Ben let the words sink in. He rubbed the back of his hand. “Do you remember that day?” he asked.
Jeremiah didn’t have to ask him which day he meant. “Yeah. I remember that day.”