The Heart Reader

by Terri Blackstock

  the

  Heart Reader

  the

  Heart Reader

  TERRI

  BLACKSTOCK

  © 2000 Alive Communications

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Thomas Nelson. Thomas Nelson is a registered trademark of Thomas Nelson, Inc. in association with the literary agency of Alive Communications, Inc., 7680 Goddard Street, Suite 200, Colorado Springs, CO 80920.

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or other—except for brief quotation in printed review, without the prior permission of the publisher.

  Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Version (NIV). Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.

  This novella is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  ISBN 0-8499-1651-8

  Printed in the United States of America

  02 03 04 05 BVG 6 5 4 3 2

  Contents

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  At this, the man’s ears were opened, his tongue was loosened and he began to speak plainly.

  MARK 7:35

  1

  The dream came on a Sunday night, after an afternoon of golf and an evening of watching politicians debate on cable. Like some divine hand, it seemed to grab Sam Bennett by the collar and pull him under. As if he were trapped in front of a huge movie screen, he saw a woman in a tiny room with a tin roof and a dirt floor, searching desperately for something. She grabbed things down from cupboards, off of shelves, turned things over, removed the cushions from her couch, searched behind doors and under rugs. It was a frustrating dream, one that seemed to have no end, until finally, Sam saw a coin, carelessly dropped in the corner of the room. The woman in the dream saw it at the same time, and she fell on it and snatched it up and began to weep with joy.

  One lousy coin? he thought. Why would she be so excited over one lousy coin? Restlessly, Sam turned over in his sleep and buried his face in his pillow. The words of his pastor’s sermon earlier that day played over and over in his mind. Words about reaching a hurting world. About hearing people’s spiritual needs. He hadn’t even listened that hard when the preacher had uttered them, but now they came back to him like recorded phrases that reeled around and around and around in his head, refusing to leave him until they sank in.

  And then he heard the voice, the voice that woke him as it reverberated through his mind with holy power. “Ephphatha! Ephphatha!” He sat upright in bed.

  The word vibrated through him, though he didn’t know its meaning. It was Hebrew, he thought. Or, perhaps, Greek. And whose was the voice?

  He was wide awake now, drenched in a cold sweat, and he was trembling. Kate, his wife, lay next to him, undisturbed. Quietly, he got out of bed and stumbled through the house. He went to the kitchen sink and splashed water on his face, then headed for the comfort and refuge of his recliner. It was four o’clock in the morning, too early to be up, yet he couldn’t go back to sleep. It wasn’t the dream that disturbed him so much, but the voice. It had had such power, such authority.

  Ephphatha! What did it mean? Now that he thought of it, he was sure the voice hadn’t been a part of the dream. He had only seen the woman, the coin in his sleep. No, the voice had the authority of God. Could the Lord have spoken to him tonight? But why would he speak in another language? Why would God utter something that so disturbed his spirit, something resonating with importance, but something he wasn’t able to understand? Was it some kind of sign, or was he just losing it?

  He took a deep breath and tried to shake the cobwebs out of his brain. The thought of going back to bed and facing more of the same was out of the question, so he finally put on a pot of coffee. After it had brewed, he poured a cup, then sat there sipping on it, trying to decide if the dream was something he should give more thought, or if he should dismiss it altogether.

  Did it have something to do with the sermon he had yawned through yesterday? John, the pastor, had been waxing eloquent about the lost sheep. Something about leaving ninety-nine to go after one.

  Sam had been more interested in the second hand on his watch. He’d figured if John didn’t wind down soon, there would be a ridiculous line at every restaurant in town.

  Was that why he’d had the dream? Did that word, Ephphatha, contain some kind of rebuke about listening in church? Now that he thought about it, John had been on a roll yesterday. By the end of the sermon, his face was reddening and he was leaning over the pulpit, shaking his hands to make his point. Sam hadn’t seen John that worked up since he’d given his life to ministry during their sophomore year of college. Back then, John had often gotten red-faced and loud when he tried to change the hearts of Sam and his friends. Sam had hoped it wouldn’t mean that John would give a long, drawn-out benediction, then have them sing all four verses of the final hymn, while the Presbyterians got to the restaurants first.

  “Have you ever considered what God hears in the hearts of people?” the pastor had asked. “What spiritual needs cry out to him? What if we could hear with God’s ears?” Then he had looked around the sanctuary at the faces one by one. His eyes had met Sam’s, and Sam tried to look more awake. He felt guilty when he saw disappointment cross over John’s face.

  “Most of you don’t even hear with the ears you have,” the pastor said in a duller voice. “Your ears are clogged up, and you can’t hear the most obvious things. So there are people with needs out there just crying to be met, yet so few of God’s laborers are going out to rescue them. If you want to hear, if you want to truly see, come to the altar now. Get on your knees and ask God to use you.”

  If God was mad at him now, Sam thought, it was because of his attitude yesterday. Sam had checked his watch again. He remembered thinking that if anyone went to that altar during the first verse and ripped out a quick prayer of commitment, they might still get out of there by twelve. If no one came, they might wind down after the second verse. But after the second verse, the pastor had nodded to the choir director to keep the song going. He said that he knew there was someone out there who felt the Holy Spirit calling, and he didn’t want to close the service until they did their business with God.

  Sam had actually considered going himself, just to wrap things up.

  When no one responded, the pastor finally gave up and brought the service to an end. Sam hadn’t wasted any time grabbing his wife’s hand, making his way out of the pew, and pushing through the crowd to the exit door. He hadn’t given the sermon another thought.

  Now he tried to sort back through the points in that sermon. Was there something there about lost coins? Had John mentioned that unknown word? Had all of it somehow gotten snagged in his consciousness, even though he couldn’t remember it now?

  He was still trying to understand the dream when Kate got up some time later. “You’re up early,” she said.

  He sipped his coffee. “Couldn’t sleep.”

  “Was I stealing the covers?”

  “No. I just had some dreams.”

  “Bad ones?”

 
He shrugged. “No, not really. Just weird stuff. You know the kind. Something’s lost and you can’t find it.”

  “I have those dreams,” Kate said, her sleepy eyes widening. “I’m running through the airport to catch a plane, but I can’t seem to make the gate. Or I’m in college and I’m trying to get to my final exam, only I haven’t been to class all semester and don’t know where the room is. Or I have to speak to a room full of people, and I look down and realize I’m still in my pajamas—”

  “It wasn’t like that,” he cut in, irritated. “It was a little scarier.”

  “Scary? Why?”

  He frowned. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

  She considered that for a moment. “I have scary dreams sometimes too. The ones where someone’s about to hurt me, but I can’t scream.” She poured herself a cup of coffee, then remembered another one. “Or the one where someone’s throwing matches at me, but I can’t put them out . . .”

  He gazed at his wife. “Kate, have you thought of getting psychiatric help?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who couldn’t sleep last night. I slept like a baby.” She brought the cup to her lips.

  “I want to be useful.”

  He frowned at the out-of-context comment, then decided that she meant it in regard to his dreams. “Don’t worry about me.” He got up and stretched. “Guess I’ll go take my shower.”

  By the time he had showered and dressed, he was feeling a little better. The dream was just a dream, he thought, just a collage of images and phrases that he’d heard in the last few days. The preacher’s message, something they’d talked about in Sunday school, maybe something he’d overheard subconsciously. It didn’t matter. It had all mixed together in some kind of virus of thoughts, and his brain was just coughing it up as he slept. There was nothing to worry about.

  2

  After he’d taken Kate to work at the hospital, he parked in front of the diner across the street. Kate wasn’t a breakfast eater, but he liked the works. Years ago, when they still had children at home, they had settled into a routine of drinking coffee together in the mornings, then going their separate ways. Now, when she headed for the hospital at seven, he headed for the diner to eat breakfast.

  Still a little more unsettled than he wanted to admit, he went into the diner and took a seat at the counter. The popular place was loud with barely controlled chaos that always got his adrenaline pumping. In the front, irritable waitresses yelled orders to each other, and occasionally Sam could hear Leon, the cook in the back, let out a stream of curses that made Sam consider swearing the place off. But he always came back. Nowhere else could he get his eggs cooked exactly right.

  He picked up the newspaper someone had left on the counter and scanned the headlines. Janie, his regular waitress, looked distracted as she approached him. “Morning, Sam. You’re a little early today.”

  “Yeah,” he muttered without looking up, “I had trouble sleeping.”

  “A little rest could change my whole life.”

  Now he looked up at her. She looked tired and had circles under her eyes and wrinkles he hadn’t noticed before. He wondered how old she was. Forty? Forty-five? “Yeah? You can’t sleep, either?” he asked.

  She frowned and gazed across the counter. “Huh?”

  “What you said about rest.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Sam, all I said is that you’re here early this morning. You sure you’re all right?”

  He stared at her for a moment. Hadn’t he heard her say something about rest? He shook his head. “Whatever. I’ll take the usual.”

  He watched, perplexed, as she went to yell his order to the angry cook.

  The voice of the woman sitting two stools down from him distracted him from Janie. “Gravity’s just gonna let go of me, and I’m gonna go flying out into the universe.”

  Amused, Sam glanced over at her. “That’s a new variation on the ‘stop the world I want to get off’ theme.”

  Startled, the woman looked up at him. “What is?”

  His grin faded. “I’m sorry. I thought you were talking to me.”

  She touched her hair with a shaky hand. “I didn’t say anything.”

  “Oh,” he said, “sorry.” He forced himself to look back down at the newspaper. After a second, he heard the voice again.

  “I’m gonna hurl out into the universe and no one will notice I’m gone.” He looked at the woman again. She had tears in her eyes, and he knew without a doubt that the hopeless words had come from her.

  He cleared his throat and leaned toward her. “That time . . . were you talking to me?”

  She looked annoyed. “I wasn’t talking to anyone. I’m just sitting here minding my own business.”

  He was getting aggravated. Who was she trying to kid? He was positive he’d heard her. “You didn’t say anything?”

  “No!”

  Janie came back with his breakfast just as the woman belted out the denial. “Sam, you’re not causing trouble with our other customers, are you?” she asked with a wink.

  He shook his head. The woman was giving him the creeps. “I must be hearing things. Look, I think I’ll go sit at that table.”

  Janie nodded, so he stuffed the paper under his arm, grabbed his plate and coffee, and moved over to the empty booth in the corner. He set his coffee down and slipped into his seat and began to eat. The place was filling up with nurses and medical students from the hospital across the street. Normally, he saw the same faces every day, but he rarely spoke to any of them.

  “There’s just no point,” the man at the table next to him said.

  Sam looked over his shoulder. “In what?”

  The man shot him a look. “Excuse me?”

  “You said there’s just no point. In what?”

  The man looked shaken. “Uh . . . I must have been thinking out loud. Guess I’m farther gone than I thought. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” Sam said. “No biggie.” He started to eat but the man spoke again.

  “If I could just have more than a ten minute conversation . . . have somebody really listen . . . be heard . . .”

  Sam looked up again, starting to get angry. What was this guy’s problem? Why did he insist on pouring his heart out to Sam? But the man wasn’t looking at him—he was staring down at his plate. The words were still coming, but his mouth wasn’t moving.

  “Everybody’s always in a hurry. Nobody has time.”

  Slowly, Sam began to realize that the man wasn’t speaking. Neither had the woman or Janie . . . He wasn’t hearing audible words or voices, although they sure sounded that way to him.

  He sat back hard in his booth. What was happening to him? He knew he wasn’t still dreaming. He was wide awake—the coffee even burned his tongue. Everything was normal, except for those voices.

  Abandoning his plate, he rushed out of the diner and headed back to his car. A woman with a long red braid was standing near it, waiting to cross the street. His hands trembled as he sorted through his key chain for the key to open his car door.

  “I am my past,” the woman said.

  He turned around. Once again, he realized she hadn’t spoken the words aloud.

  “I’ll always be what he turned me into. I’ll never escape it.”

  He stood there for a moment, stunned, listening to the voice that seemed to come from nowhere. He saw tears glistening in her eyes as she watched the cars whiz by, and he knew that what he’d heard was something inside her—deep down.

  Was he losing his mind?

  “Abuse is such a clean, sterile word,” she went on, and he realized that the preoccupation she seemed to have with waiting for a break in the traffic was really the despair she thought no one could hear.

  She glanced his way, and he thought of approaching her, saying something like, Your past hasn’t set your future. There’s Jesus Christ. He can change everything.

  But instead, he panicked and got into his car. What if he botched it up? What if she looked at him as one of t
hose Bible-thumping fanatics who went around shoving their beliefs down people’s throats? What if he made himself look stupid? Or worse, crazy?

  Finally, she crossed the street, hurrying between cars, no longer waiting for a break in the traffic. He heard tires screech and a cab driver cursing, but the woman vanished into the crowd on the sidewalk. Sam sat frozen behind the wheel, marveling at her lack of regard for life . . . or death. The next time she crossed the street, would her desperation plunge her into even greater danger? Would her death wish be granted?

  And how had he heard her desperate thoughts?

  He sat, paralyzed, behind the wheel. His head was beginning to ache, and tears filled his eyes. His hands were trembling too badly to get the key into the ignition.

  He looked at the clock. It was time for him to head for work. If he could just get behind his desk and bury himself in business, he could forget this bizarre morning.

  Finally managing to start the car, he pulled out into the traffic and drove the three blocks over to his office building. He turned into the parking garage and found his own space with the sign that read “Sam Bennett, VP, Simpson Advertising.” He got out and breathed in the crisp morning air, hoping it would cleanse his brain of this insanity and enable him to function.

  He got onto the elevator and spoke to Jimmy, a young man with Down’s Syndrome who ran the elevator nine hours a day. “Hi, Jimmy,” he said.

  “Hi, Mitter Bennett. How are you today?”

  He looked down at the floor, waiting for Jimmy to push the button. “Fine. Just fine.” As they rose to the thirteenth floor, he heard Jimmy’s voice again.

  “Wish I’s a real person.”

  He looked up and saw that Jimmy was sitting on the stool, staring at the numbers as they changed. Sam’s heart ached at the simple words he had heard. “Jimmy?” he asked.

  “Yes sir, Mitter Bennett,” the young man said.

  “You are a real person.”

  “Yes sir, Mitter Bennett.”

  Confused, and not certain now whether he’d really heard Jimmy or not, Sam stumbled out when the doors opened. Behind him, Jimmy called, “Have a good day, Mitter Bennett.”