Chapter Two
If I had been a praying man, the hours between eight and ten in the morning the next day would have been perfect for it. I awoke at eight to the sound of the garbage trucks at the dumpster outside, and went through the motions of showering and shaving and getting ready to face the day. The problem was that there was no day to face, nothing that would require my attention or effort. I could, if I was so inclined, clean the apartment, or get a haircut, or go on another fruitless run through Fort Worth distributing applications to employers who would never call me back. Unsurprisingly, I had no eagerness to do any of those things, so for two hours, I simply sat on my bed, looking out the window at the big, wide, beautiful world outside, breathing in and breathing out.
It was Danny who broke the monotony, thudding on my door a few minutes after ten. I think he was surprised to see me already awake and dressed, which offended me for a moment, till I realized that I probably wouldn’t be if the garbage trucks hadn’t awakened me.
“Hey, I’m going to go for a walk around downtown,” he told me. “I was hoping you’d come along.”
“You’re getting better at not phrasing things as a question, so that I don’t have the chance to tell you no.”
“Correct. So come on.”
I laughed to myself, stepping back in to get my shoes, when the phone on the kitchen counter rang. “Hang on,” I called to Danny.
I don’t know why I answered the phone; that was the first time it had rung since I moved in, and I knew it was probably just a telemarketer calling for my aunt. I still held out hope that perhaps it was the first fruits of a job application.
“Eli Radak,” I answered.
“Hi, Eli.” I was surprised to hear my mother’s voice.
“Oh, hey, mom. How’s life?”
“It’s good, Eli. Listen, I just called to let you know that we decided to borrow a little money from your checking account. We found a great lawn tractor on sale at the store down the road, discounted since it’s not lawn season right now, and we just couldn’t pass it up.”
“Mom, what do you need a lawn tractor for? We have a quarter of an acre. It takes thirty minutes to mow it with the push mower we have.” I was trying to sound calm, but I was furious at her financial foolishness, and equal parts angry and worried that she had plundered my already-beleaguered checking account to fund it.
“It’s just a good deal, Eli, and it’ll help us around the house with you gone.”
“I don’t have any money, mom. You have to put back what you took the next time you get paid.”
“Well, it might take a few weeks…”
“I don’t have a job. If I don’t have that money, I don’t eat. That’s not your money to take.”
There was a short silence on the other end. “I’m going to put your father on. He wants to say hi.”
My father’s gruff voice came over the line. “Morning, son.”
“Hey, dad.”
“How’s life treating you in Texas? Where are you working these days?”
“I’m still on the job hunt. I’ve put in about fifty –”
“You don’t have a job yet? What’s wrong with you?”
“Must just be a tough market. I don’t know.”
“Well look, you get it figured out. People are starting to ask how you’re doing down there and I’m not happy at what you’ve given me to tell them. I expect better the next time we talk.”
“I’ll do what I can, dad.”
“Enjoy Texas.”
“I have so far. Later on.”
I held the phone for a few moments, fighting the urge to break it over my knee, before setting it back in the cradle. Danny was waiting for me outside the door, pretending he hadn’t heard my end of the conversation.
“Who was on the phone?” he asked.
“Parents. They wanted a new toy for the yard, so they raided my bank account.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Don’t they both have jobs?”
“Yeah, but they don’t know how to spend or save. They’re always within twenty bucks of not having enough money every month. They get a raise or a bonus, they buy something new, so the money disappears again instantly. And now they’re pillaging my finances to pay for their stupidity.”
“Do they know you don’t have a job?”
“Of course they do, but they wanted the money. I told them to pay it back as soon as they can. Even if I were to get a job today, I still wouldn’t get my first check for a couple of weeks. I need to make it all stretch till I’ve got some income.”
“How much money do you have left?”
“Ah, well, I don’t know exactly how much my parents took. Maybe…” I did some quick math. “I dunno, a couple hundred dollars. Two or three hundred.”
Danny nodded, scratching his chin. “Alright. Well, let’s walk.”
We did, and I was grateful to have Danny’s conversation taking my mind off what had just happened. The air was brisk this morning, cold enough to see our breath as we took a left turn out of our building and moseyed toward the towers of downtown, which thrust into the December blue. Idly I kicked a rock down the sidewalk, while Danny watched, amused.
“What’s your favorite thing about yourself?” he asked abruptly.
His question threw off my stride, and I tripped over the rock, catching myself before I fell over. “What kind of question is that?”
“I’m just curious.”
“What does it matter?”
“If you really don’t want to answer it, you don’t have to. I just wanted to know.”
“Well, I don’t know. I’ve never thought about it before.”
“Alright.” I could tell that Danny was thinking through whether to say something else or just leave it alone. He opted for a quick change of topic. “I’m thinking about planning a hiking trip this weekend. You into that sort of stuff?”
“Yeah, sure. I grew up in the sticks, spent all kinds of time outside. I’m always down for stuff like that.”
“That’s cool. It won’t be a big group, probably just you, me, Elizabeth, maybe Jarrius if he doesn’t have to work. There’s a place about an hour west of here, Mineral Wells, where we can go hiking and bouldering.”
“Sounds great to me.”
“Hey, by the way, I read your paper about Lewis and Clark. It was pretty good. You said you wrote it a couple of years ago?”
“Yeah. I don’t know if I’ve gotten any better since then, but maybe.”
“Do you want to take a stab at an album review? I’ve got a couple CDs that the magazine sent me that I don’t plan on reviewing, and I can pass them to you if you want.”
“I’d really appreciate that.”
“Alright, remind me when we get back.”
We went a quarter-mile or so in silence, Danny staring up at the endless blue of the sky and me examining the buildings and shops along this stretch of road that I’d never walked before.
“Who was your best friend back in Indiana?” Danny asked, out of nowhere.
I chewed on the inside of my cheek. “Why do you keep asking these questions?”
“I’m just trying to get to know you, Eli. You’ve lived in my building for almost two weeks and all I really know is that you used to live in Indiana and you don’t have a job. And you seem to keep both Stanley and me at arm’s length. So if I had to guess at the answer to the question, I’d say that you probably didn’t have anyone that you’d consider a best friend. You didn’t see the point in letting people get close to you, so you kept to yourself and tried to handle everything on the inside.”
He might as well have known me my entire life; he couldn’t have been more right. I didn’t tell him so, but my silence, which was half anger, and half surprise, said all that needed to be said.
“You’re right,” I said finally. “That’s who I am. And I don’t understand why you and
Stanley are so insistent on not letting me be that person. I wish you’d stop trying to change me. I like who I am, and I don’t want to change.”
“Really?” Danny asked quietly. He stopped walking and I turned to face him, while his green eyes searched my face. “You don’t wish you had people who cared about how you were doing? You don’t think your life would be more enjoyable if you had friends who would celebrate the successes with you and help you through the failures? You don’t ever feel even a little bit lonely, and wish there was just one person who you hadn’t held at arm’s length, so you could tell them everything?”
“No,” I said quickly, but it was obvious to both of us that I was lying.
“Do you really want to know why we’re doing these things for you? It’s because we believe that’s the way the world should be. We believe that God made all of us to love each other, to treat each other like brothers and sisters. We were created to show that kind of love, and to receive it, as well. I don’t think any one of us was meant to be an island. We were made for community. And, as much as you might protest with your mouth, I’d bet any amount of money that you enjoy and appreciate the way that we’ve intentionally befriended you, tried to help you find a job, given you the chance to play in the band, and made you feel like you really belong in our building.”
I hadn’t realized there was a systematic reason behind the way they had been treating me. I thought they were just genuinely nice people, and by asking that question, I was hoping to corner Danny into admitting that he was a people person and I was a private person, and that we were each entitled to our own way of doing things. I had no idea how to respond to what he had just told me.
With a shrug, Danny started walking again toward downtown, and I fell into step beside him. “You want some coffee?”
“Sure.” We headed into a local coffee shop, where Danny ordered a black coffee and I ordered the chocolatiest mocha I could get my hands on. Back on the sidewalk, warm drinks chasing away the crisp chill, we strolled toward the tall buildings of downtown.
I wondered what Danny was going to say next, and indeed, part of me was very curious to hear more about this idea of community. It was so different from anything I’d ever heard that I wanted to probe it more deeply, examine it, test it, see if I could find flaws in it. I didn’t think my own self-sufficiency had worked out all that badly for me, to be honest. But I had to admit that Danny was right about one thing: I had been profoundly thankful for the friendship he and the others had showed me. That didn’t make him right, of course; it just meant that his ideas were worth hearing again.
Much to my surprise, though, all he did was make small talk. We walked around downtown, looking up at the tall offices and apartments ringing the one-way streets, without saying anything. I was glad for the silence, and the company; it sounded like a strange combination, but I appreciated that Danny didn’t feel the need to fill every waking instant with words. Eventually we turned and headed back toward our apartments.
“I’ll get back to you about that camping trip,” Danny said when we were almost there.
“Yeah, definitely.”
No further goodbyes were needed, and Danny went inside, while I lingered outdoors, enjoying the cool breeze. I was still thinking about the things he had told me, about the way people were made for community, and it seemed to me that I had heard something very important. I almost wanted to go upstairs and ask Danny if I could hear more, but I hesitated. Coupled with the eagerness was a lingering fear. It didn’t make very much sense, but it made enough to dissuade me. Instead, I went upstairs, where I found a handful of CDs slid under my door. I made a mental note to thank Danny and sat down to listen to them on the ancient CD player that my aunt had left behind.
The phone rang again, and I ran over to it, hoping that it would be my parents telling me they were putting money back into my bank account, or else someone calling to invite me to a job interview.
“Eli Radak.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. I was looking for Frederick.” Click.
I knew that I should be used to that kind of disappointment, but I still couldn’t reel in the feeling of helpless despair that tugged on my heart.
New Heart Church Page 9