Jeremiah stroked the scars without looking. Soft yet rough at the same time. The years had mellowed their harsh lines but not purged them completely. A different pain subjugated all others.
“You don’t have anything to eat down here, do you?” he asked Ben.
“There’s plenty,” Ben answered, “although Zedekiah’s apparently unwilling to share.” He bobbed his chin at Jeremiah. “The wrist still bothering you?”
Jeremiah stopped rubbing the scars. “Yeah. Sort of. It’s more out of habit than anything.”
“That was a pretty bad night for you.”
“I’ve had worse. I bet you have too.”
Ben half-shrugged. “I’ve had my share of tough times, I suppose. Haven’t we all.”
“What was your worst moment?”
“I’d have to think about that,” Ben said. His mind drifted into the corners. Darkness, like that on a starless night in the country, descended over him. His feet grew cold, wet, swelling up from the ever-present mud which seeped into his boots. The thin, damp jacket couldn’t keep the chill from soaking his bones. A bullet lay in the mud beneath him. Air and blood leaked out of his lungs through the hole the bullet created. He sucked in the damp, murky air but it wouldn’t satisfy. Thoughts turned to Victoria and slowly evaporated, old photos faded by distance and time. “I have a candidate.”
“Westminster?” Jeremiah guessed.
“Westminster.”
“A student found you if I remember correctly.”
“Most had left days before the Russians overran the college. She stayed to finish an experiment for her graduate thesis. Brave girl. If they had found her ….”
“You made it all the way to the top of the hill. It still amazes me how you managed to climb it with one lung and a shattered pelvis.”
“It was do that or die. I almost did anyway.”
“What was her name?” Jeremiah asked.
“Nancy,” Ben said without hesitation. “I maintained contact with her until she died a few years later. Glioblastoma. She was barely coherent the last time I visited her. The cancer had spread to most of her brain by then. I remember how sad I felt, how awful that this wonderful person would lose the bulk of her life to that dreadful disease. Looking back, I see it as a mercy … so she didn’t have to bear the weight of this horror.”
“She’s with the Lord?”
Ben nodded. “As best I can tell. You never know a person’s heart.”
“But you can tell the tree by its fruit,” Jeremiah finished.
“Yeah.” He laughed. “You really like that saying, don’t you?”
“In an ironic sort of way.”
“How’s that?”
“It was one of Immerson’s as well. I appropriated it from him, gave it the meaning it was supposed to have.”
“You never liked him. Not that I blame you. Neither did Victoria, especially after all he did to you. I bet it made you happy when he passed away.”
“I didn’t celebrate his death, if that’s what you mean,” Jeremiah said. “I don’t celebrate the death of anyone who doesn’t know the Lord, considering what waits for them. Admittedly, it was a weight off my shoulders. Temporarily anyway.”
“I suppose you’re right,” Ben said. “To be honest with you, though, I might have felt good when I heard the news. It happened right after Nancy passed away.” He paused to reflect. “A lot can happen in a few years.”
“Sounds like you’re referring to something in particular.”
“After that night on the plaza, the country went downhill. Fast. It was as though you were our last chance. That God placed you as a final warning to the nation, knowing full well no one would listen.”
Jeremiah let his eyebrows rise and fall but didn’t respond otherwise.
Ben continued. “When they rejected you that night, they rejected God and followed the course of their own heart. They put you in the stocks because they couldn’t do it to him. That was their way of rebelling, their attempt to punish him for placing laws which stood in the way of their desires, their ambitions. Kind of pathetic when you stop and think about it. Even more so when you realize what happened when God stepped out of the way and gave them what they wanted. Isn’t that what always happens when we’re left to our own devices? We fall. We destroy everything good. We can’t help it either. It’s not that God punishes us when we walk away from him. It’s that life is only found in him. It’s not punishment or pettiness on his part that causes the destruction. It’s simply a fact of nature, of the design of the universe. There is no life without him or without his son.”
“He started slowly too. With his correction, that is. His discipline was for our good, designed to bring us back to him. Gentle at first, hopeful even. But we didn’t want it. The stubbornness of our hearts, the need to be in control, to be our own gods pushed us further away each day.”
“You warned them too. Over and over. Yet we became deluded. How did we reach the point where we believed the lie over the truth? How could we not see the truth right in front of our faces? We were in a car driving ten miles an hour as we passed the sign which said ‘Bridge out ahead.’ Our response was to press the accelerator. We all knew the gorge waited for us. How could we not? We saw our brothers to the north drive into it, the flames as they slammed into the bottom. But this vision, this mirage of our own making beckoned us forward. ‘There’s no canyon up ahead,’ it whispered. ‘It’s your imagination. God just doesn’t want you to be happy.’ Is that the stupidest thing, or what? He doesn’t want us to be happy? Of course, he does, and he knows how! Just listen to him! Who’s smarter, him or us?”
“We had a chance to slam on the brakes too, but we kept our foot on the gas. Even as we went off the cliff, the rocks approaching faster and faster, we looked around for some sort of rocket booster to hasten our destruction, to make the destruction even worse, all the while believing we were on the right path while you shouted at them from the top of the cliff.”
“The worst part is how they dragged us down. If they wanted to destroy themselves after all you told them, so be it, but they had to throw their chains around us and haul us into the abyss with them.”
“Eventually, everyone gave in. The people who should’ve fought back, should’ve spoken up, shut their mouths and let the evil win. What were they afraid of? Losing their lives? They clung so hard to things that didn’t matter that they destroyed their lives and their children’s lives in the process. ‘He who loses his life for my sake will find it.’ Doesn’t he say that? Didn’t we believe him?”
“How many people besides you stood up for the truth? A handful at most. Victoria, of course. She never lost her voice. Andrew. Uriah. How much did they sacrifice?” He paused to remember. “Uriah’s loss hit me hard. You too, as I recall. He was the only other witness who equaled your candor, your passion for speaking the truth. Obedient to God in all things. Jehoiakim’s advisors hated him. Not as much as they hated you, but it was close. He didn’t have the same protection as you, yet he never shied away from standing up to the people in charge. And I admire him for that. I admire him tremendously. But what they did ….” His face swelled a bright crimson. “How they treated that man of God, I don’t know if I can ever forgive them.”
Ben took a few deep breaths, allowing the anger to disappear into the artificial light of the nearly empty room. Jeremiah waited one last moment to ask a question he had wanted to ask for many years.
“When did you know?”
“When did I know what?”
“That I spoke God’s words and not my own.”
A wind howled outside. Ghosts, spirits moaned as the wind rushed down the ventilation pipes and into the space where Jeremiah huddled with Ben. The lights flickered a few times. An angry conversation passed through the closed door of the conference room. The same comments, the very excuses Ben had heard President Jehoiakim use now came out of the mouth of his successor. Twenty years and nothing had changed. Nothing would change without a divine intervention the people didn’t want. Nevertheless, it came.