Night Light

by Terri Blackstock

  “And as I prayed about that and cried out to God, he brought some children into my life.”

  He glanced down at the Gatlin kids, thankful they were still here. Kay had found their packed bags under the bed this morning, and they’d had to do another song-and-dance to keep them from leaving. Sarah was coloring on a piece of paper on the front row, and Luke was almost asleep. Joey and Aaron sat side by side, mirror images of one another, arms crossed like sentinels guarding their deepest secrets. Their faces were red in the hot sun.

  “And these children led me to a place I needed to see. It was an apartment complex called Sandwood Place, not far from this neighborhood, and what I saw there made me realize that we in Oak Hollow, who before the outage, were the haves who towered above the have-nots, had not changed our status. This was a surprise to me, because I believed that we were in poverty.

  “But then I went to Sandwood Place, and I saw people starving because they can’t grow food. I saw children stealing just so they could eat. I saw people having to walk over a mile to get water. I saw sewage backed up and garbage stacked on itself, festering and breeding rodents and insects. And I started to understand how rich I truly am, even without electricity, even without computers and cell phones and cars. Even without a running refrigerator or a telephone. I’m rich because I live in a beautiful home with lots of rooms and lots of comfortable beds. I’m rich because my family is intact and they’re all here with me. I’m rich because Oak Hollow just finished working together to dig a well, and now we have clean water. And I’m rich because, before that, I had a lake that was meeting my needs.”

  His eyes grew intense as he stepped closer to the crowd and leaned in. “And I’m rich because I know the God who holds all of this in the palm of his hand, the one who provides for me and guides me. And this morning when I was reading the Psalms, I came across Psalm 105, verse 19. It said, ‘Until the time that his word came to pass, the word of the Lord tested him.’ ”

  Doug looked up at the congregation. “You see, God made it clear to me weeks ago when my own daughter was missing — ” he glanced at Deni — “that he had created the Pulses for a purpose. He’s doing a mighty work with all the suffering and all the inconvenience, and it’s going to have the results that he wants. But in the meantime, he’s testing us, and as we’ve all found out, God doesn’t work on our timetable.

  “And so I started really asking what my test was in this. And I realized that it had to do with loving my neighbors as myself. So today, I’m asking each of you for your help. I know of one apartment complex in town where people are suffering, and I have to believe there are many more. In Oak Hollow, we figured out a way to dig a well, and some of us are growing food, and we can do even more if we co-op. Digging up our front and backyards will give us acres of property that we could till and cultivate and grow food on. I’m going to present it to the neighborhood and see if we can’t arrange a co-op. But I think while we’re doing that, we — as the church — need to reach out and give a helping hand to those people who don’t have those resources. And it might mean getting our hands dirty, and it might mean extra sweat, and it might mean that we take time away from our work for our own survival to help them. That’s what the Lord is showing me.”

  He paused as a low mumble started up, people whispering to each other, some frowning as if they didn’t want to be asked to do anything else.

  But he went on. “Now we have twenty families here. About half of us are kids, but that leaves thirty adults. I’m suggesting that we get together, and as a church, go to that apartment complex. We start with that one area and try to clean up the garbage, try to educate residents on how to dispose of their garbage when there aren’t any garbage trucks running. Heaven knows, if Eloise hadn’t educated my family, we’d still be piling the garbage up in our backyard. Educate them on composting, teach them to recycle, help them clean up the backed-up sewage in their bathrooms. Show them ways around their problems. It can be done. We can change their quality of life with a little muscle and a lot of sweat.”

  He couldn’t tell from their faces whether they were with him or not. He sure hoped he’d gotten through to some of them.

  “My family has already agreed that we’re in. Who will go with us?” He waited, hoping for everyone there to raise a hand. But there was a long pause.

  Finally, Stella Huckabee spoke up. “Doug, there’s just not enough time. Already, we’re doing everything we can to survive ourselves. We don’t have time to go digging up somebody else’s garbage. And if we’re going to survive winter, we have a lot of hard work to do now.”

  “I’m not suggesting we spend hours and hours a day there. Maybe one day a week, or maybe just a couple of hours a day. We were able to take time out to dig a well. Why can’t we do this?”

  “Because,” Hank said, “you’re talking about people who don’t want to help themselves.”

  “How do you know they don’t want to, Hank?”

  Doug saw Aaron look over his shoulder at the man. His face grew harder.

  “If they wanted to, they would have done it by now.”

  “Hank, what do you suggest they do? If they have no place to grow food, if they have no place to get jobs, if they have no place to get water, what else can they do? Yes, some of them are stealing to get by, and there are people looting and stealing things that have nothing to do with survival. But let’s not paint the whole group with that brush. I don’t think any of us should provoke God by saying we would never do the same things.”

  Andy Honeycutt looked troubled. “Doug, I want to do what God wants us to do, but this is something new to me, and I want to make sure before we do this that we’re not just throwing our labor down the drain. I mean, what if we go and clean up all their garbage, and then a week later it’s all right back where it was?”

  “It’s going to take some patience and some time,” Doug said. “There may be some people there who don’t want to do for themselves, but there are others who are seriously trying to survive and doing everything they know how to do — but it’s not enough. There are a lot of people in that apartment complex who worked hard for a day’s pay before the outage. They don’t have any place to go now to get a paycheck. The Bible commands us to help our brothers.”

  “They’re not our brothers,” someone said. “That place is full of drugs and crime. It was that way before the outage, and it’s got to be worse now.”

  “Not all of them are dopeheads,” Aaron muttered. “They’re not all losers. Some of them are good.”

  Doug heard the defensive edge to his tone. His voice was gentler as he answered. “They’ve had the same wake-up call we’ve had. Maybe God has gotten their attention just like he got ours.”

  “He hasn’t even gotten the attention of everybody in Oak Hollow,” someone shouted. “There are only twenty families here, Doug. If he’d got their attention, this whole lot would be full.”

  Sweat dripped down his temple, despite the breeze sweeping across the water. Looking across the lake, he saw people working out in their gardens. Someone nearby was hammering. A horse-drawn wagon full of produce for sale was circling the neighborhood, the clop of the horses’ hooves gentle in the quiet morning.

  Doug opened his Bible. “In 1 John 3:17, we’re told: ‘If anyone has material possessions and sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?’ We’re commanded to show mercy, as God has shown us mercy. And that means we have to put our faith into action. If Jesus were still walking the earth and saw those people struggling, do you think he would turn his back on them? They’re not going to find God when they’re struggling so hard they have to look up to see the bottom. I’m just telling you, if Christian people go and show them how to live and teach them what to do, and help them find food and water, then maybe they’ll see something different in us, and want what we have. What difference does Christ make in our lives if we’re not willing to do that?”

  There was silence as his congregat
ion stared back at him. He met Aaron’s pensive eyes, and hoped the kid knew how hard he was trying. But Aaron looked like he was waiting for the punch line.

  “Maybe after the disbursement,” Hank said, “ when we’ve each got a little cash in our hands and we can buy some of the things we need, maybe when they have some cash in their hands, that would be the best time for us to start helping them. Maybe we can just work toward that.”

  Doug didn’t like it. He was ready to help them now. But the disbursement was just a few days away.

  “All right,” he said. “Meanwhile, I’m going to be doing what I can to lay the groundwork, but I’m going to need commitments from you people. I want you to go home and seriously examine your hearts and ask God what his will for you is in this. He’s provided for us, and now we need to help him provide for someone else.”

  “God is the creator of the universe,” Max Keegan said. “He doesn’t need our help.”

  “No, but he wants to bless us,” Doug said, “and this may be the way he’s going to do it.”

  thirty

  THE WOMAN STANDING AT THE DOOR LOOKED FAMILIAR, BUT Kay couldn’t place her. “Can I help you?”

  “Yeah. I was looking for the Gatlin kids. Somebody said they were at this address.”

  “And who are you?”

  “I’m Edith, their next-door neighbor over at the apartments. I heard about what happened to their mom and stuff, and I wanted to make sure they’re all right.”

  Now she remembered. Edith was the woman who’d told them in the apartments’ parking lot about the kids being alone — the neighbor who had done nothing to help them all those weeks after their mother vanished. “Oh … how are you?”

  “Okay, considering I had to hitchhike and got a ride with some sweaty old man with a horse and wagon. I woulda been better off walking.”

  “Maybe so,” Kay said. “It’s not that far if you cut through the woods.”

  “Whatever. It was worth it, because I was just so worried about those sweet kids.” Something about her description of them didn’t ring true. The woman Jeff had met at the apartments that first day had shown no love for them.

  “Well, they’re fine.” Edith tried to come inside, but Kay blocked her.

  “Can I see them?”

  Kay searched for an out, but realized she didn’t have one. The children were in the backyard helping Doug build a coop for the chickens they hoped to buy on Disbursement Day. The Gatlin boys had tried to get out of it, but Doug had managed to get them to anyway. It had turned into quite a task, requiring them to tear down their own wooden fence for the lumber.

  The belligerence of the Gatlin children had been something Kay and Doug had struggled to tolerate for the last few days. It was difficult getting them to do anything, and because of their reluctance, Logan had been dragging his feet on every task he’d been assigned to. Their youngest child had been complaining more than ever that there was nothing to do that was fun, how he needed his video games and television. He and Aaron had formed a bond when they discovered each other’s love for movie heroes, from Rambo to the Terminator to the X-Men. Kay and Doug tried to allow them time to play each night — the Gatlin boys had probably not had the chance to do that in a very long time. But tonight Doug needed more help.

  “I’ve missed those little tykes,” Edith said in a saccharine-sweet voice. “I just want to see their cute little faces and let them know I’m thinking about them. That little Sarah is as cute as they come.”

  Kay refrained from rolling her eyes. “They’re out back building something.” She led her through the house and to the open back door.

  “Aaron, Joey, Luke, Sarah, you’ve got a visitor!”

  Aaron looked out from around the coop and saw Edith in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

  “Aaron!” She crossed the patio and hugged him. Aaron stood stiffly in that hug, a troubled look on his face as if he didn’t trust her. Kay’s antennae went back up.

  Doug dropped the fence boards he was carrying across the yard and set his hands on his hips, as if bracing himself.

  Kay looked at him. “Doug, this is Edith, from the apartments. The next-door neighbor.”

  He nodded.

  Sarah sat a few feet away, clutching her baby doll and sucking on her thumb. Edith reached out for her, and slowly Sarah slipped out of her chair and came toward her.

  The woman hugged the child. “Poor little thing. I heard about what happened to your mama and my heart just broke. All this time, her laying out there, and there we were, looking all over for her. I’ve been crying since I heard.”

  She let Sarah go and didn’t bother to hug the other two. It was just as well. They hung back, just out of her reach, frowning. Kay pulled out a chair at the patio table. “Would you like to sit down?”

  The woman ignored her. “I don’t want you four to worry now,” she told them. “I plan to do everything I can to help you. That’s why I came here. I woke up this morning thinking what I could do to help you, and all of a sudden it just hit me. I thought, I can let them come live with me!”

  Doug crossed the yard then. “Can we talk inside?”

  Edith stood her ground. “I came to talk to them, not you.”

  Aaron just stared at her. “You don’t even like us. You used to cuss us out fifty times a day. You didn’t even get along with our mom.”

  “Okay, so I’m not perfect. But I’ve changed, you know? I’m trying to do better with my life. And I just got to thinking that you and me, we’re so much alike, and we could help each other. And this preacher guy I’ve been going to, who’s helping me to learn to do better, he told me I need something to be responsible for.”

  Kay almost laughed. She wanted to tell this woman to get a cat — that the “preacher guy” certainly hadn’t meant that she needed to take in four children.

  Doug cleared his throat and glanced at Kay, as if asking her why she’d allowed this woman back here. “That’s nice. But it won’t be necessary. We’ve offered them a home here until we can locate their relatives, and so far, we’ve been able to provide for them pretty well.”

  “No offense, but they don’t even know you,” Edith said. “You just kind of came in and swept them off without giving them a choice. I just want them to know that they do have a choice, and if they want to come back to the place they’re used to, they’re more than welcome to come and live with me.”

  Kay set her teeth. “The judge has given us temporary custody of them, but thanks anyway.”

  Edith’s face hardened, and she didn’t look like she was going to budge. Kay’s eyes met Doug’s, and she wondered if he was going to have to bodily remove this woman — who weighed all of ninety pounds. Kay could probably take her herself.

  As quickly as she had that thought, Kay mentally kicked herself. What was she doing? Planning to fight the woman? Had she gone insane?

  Yes, she felt like she had. The stress was so great, and her fatigue so heavy, and the emotional distance so great between her and Doug because they were so busy …

  Edith hadn’t finished with her spiel. “Now you kids know you don’t have to stay where you don’t want to stay. You have options.”

  Kay’s lips stiffened. “Edith, I think it’s time for you to leave.”

  “Not yet, lady.” Her tone was defiant. She turned back to Aaron. “You know, you probably have a lot of rules and stuff here, kid. But if you come live with me, I’m not into rules. I just feel like people should get along with each other, you know? Besides, Aaron, you’re almost grown up. Shoot, you’re more mature than half the guys I’ve gone out with. You don’t need anybody telling you what to do.”

  Now she’d gotten Aaron’s attention. Kay saw the change on Aaron’s face, the lifted chin, the heavy lids as he peered up at the woman.

  “That’s enough.” Doug took the woman’s arm, urged her toward the street. “It was nice of you to come by and say hi, but the kids are busy right now.”

  The woman shook free
of him, and turned back to Aaron. “What do you say, Aaron?”

  “I’ll think about it,” he said.

  Kay wanted to throttle her. “No, he won’t think about it! They’re staying here. The judge put them in our custody and we’re going to take care of them until their family is found.”

  “Their family doesn’t care about them,” Edith said. “If they did, they’d be here. They wouldn’t have let them starve like they have. Besides, these kids know me better than anybody else. I’ve been their next-door neighbor for the past year.”

  Kay grabbed her arm, taking over the physical removal herself. She pulled the woman back through the house and to the front door.

  “You can’t make them stay in this prison,” Edith said, her voice getting louder. “Those kids have never done anything they didn’t want to do. They’ll be out of here before you know it!”

  Kay opened the front door and put her out.

  “At least they know now they have a place to go!”

  Doug reached around Kay and slammed the door. Kay watched out the peephole as the woman descended the front steps, still shouting over her shoulder. Kay turned back to Doug. “Can you believe that?”

  “You shouldn’t have let her in. What were you thinking?”

  She might have known he would blame her. “What would you have done? She acted all worried about them after hearing about Jessie.” She looked down at the children who had followed them into the house. “Aaron, I want you to forget all about her invitation. She didn’t take care of you when she had the chance. She could have helped you anytime after your mother disappeared, but she didn’t.”

  “We took care of her,” Joey said bitterly. “She was always taking our water and our food. No wonder she wants us back.”

  “That’s what I figured,” Kay said. “Don’t you worry. We’ll keep her away if I have to have her arrested.”

  Aaron just kept staring at the door. “She wasn’t that bad, Joey.”

  Kay wanted to scream. “Aaron, you’re fine here, okay? Everybody’s fine. You have plenty to eat, all the water you need, a clean place to live. You don’t have to steal to get by. And you don’t have to go back to that place for freedom. That was a prison, not this!”