A Man Inspired

by Derek Jackson

  “Oh, I am not wasting my breath,” Ambrose replied, shaking his head. “Not with you, my son. For the Lord God has sent you here just so you could listen to the words of truth I speak.”

  “That right?” Jermaine asked, thinking it quite harmless to play along for a minute. This was exactly the kind of guy he expected to find in a state hospital. Let’s see what you’re made of, old man . . . “You mean to tell me that God—in His busy schedule between keeping the planets all aligned and, oh I don’t know, keeping the sun from burning the earth and crazy dictators from starting the next world war—actually put all that more important stuff on hold and interrupted my life to get me here to listen to your crazy talk?”

  Ambrose raised an eyebrow. “My son, if you were not so sarcastic, perhaps you might have realized the prophetic vein in which you just spoke.”

  Jermaine held out his hands. “First off, let’s cool it with the whole my son thing, alright? This ain’t The Godfather, Don Corleone. And second, why don’t you just take a look around at where you are? You’re in a mental hospital, man! Nobody’s taking what you have to say seriously.”

  With tightly pursed lips, Ambrose forced a thin smile and proceeded to sit down in a folding chair underneath the room’s lone window. “I do suppose, Mr. Jermaine Hill, that you know a little about what it means to have people take your words seriously.”

  Jermaine couldn’t help his surprised expression. “How do you know my name?” he demanded.

  Ambrose calmly shrugged. “You are, as they say, a celebrity. In my estimation, I would think it more a surprise if I did not know your name.”

  Visibly taken aback, Jermaine struggled to keep his demeanor calm. He had not expected such a candid response from the man. “Oh. Well, well . . .” He didn’t quite know what to say.

  “My name is Ambrose Rivers,” the old man said, “pleased to meet you. No, no—you don’t have to get up.” He heartily laughed at his own humor, a throaty cackle that seemed to go on and on. “Perhaps you would like me to explain why I speak so loud?”

  “No. No, I don’t care why you think you need to be loud, to tell you the truth. Didn’t you hear what I said? Nobody around here cares about what you have to say.”

  “Hmm . . .” Ambrose rubbed his eyes for a second. “Might I ask you a question, Mr. Hill?”

  Jermaine shrugged, which in his present wheelchair-bound state, didn’t quite give off the same arrogance he was hoping for.

  “Did you care whether or not people listened to what you had to say?”

  “Actually, most of the time I didn’t care what anyone thought. But I wasn’t getting anything but praise and adoration from my fans, anyway. So obviously, they were listening to me.”

  “Listening and hearing are two quite different things, my son. Tell me, were you advising them with words of wisdom?”

  “I told them what they wanted to hear. It’s just human nature to want to feel good about yourselves, to want somebody to pat you on the back and tell you to reach for the sky and all that.”

  Ambrose shook his head. “Telling people what they want to hear is not a true definition of wisdom. For the Bible says that the Lord Himself gives wisdom; from His mouth comes knowledge and understanding.”

  Jermaine rolled his eyes, feeling a bit sorry for the man, whose wrinkly old brain was obviously stuck in his tired, outdated scriptures. “Don’t you know it’s those kind of statements that keep making people like you unpopular? No wonder people think you’re crazy. You and every other Bible-totin’, Scripture-quotin’ preacher who thinks he’s got all the answers.”

  Ambrose seemed not to be outwardly daunted by the accusation. “Ah, but the fact that we, as a human race, have these sorts of questions surely suggests that somebody should have the answers, yes? And who should that somebody be?”

  The question was rhetorical, but Jermaine somehow had the feeling that the old man was seeking a response.

  “Apparently, a lot of people are under the impression that you have them,” Ambrose added.

  Jermaine was silent, once more having nothing to say.

  THE LAST TIME Candace had set foot in Longview, Texas, she had been a little girl, just eleven years old. She remembered that she had come here then to attend her grandmother’s funeral—her father’s mother, whom she hadn’t been very close to. Not only had it been her first time to view someone who had passed away (Daddy, she looks like she’s sleeping!), but it had also been her first experience of life on a farm. And those unpleasant, eye-opening few days had probably been as good a reason as any why she had not since been back to her father’s hometown.

  Analee had suggested she and Candace stay in a hotel during that weekend—giving Harold some necessary time and space to grieve his mother’s passing with the rest of the Clark family.

  “No—we all are family,” Harold had firmly responded, even though he knew his brothers and sisters had never really approved of his high-maintenance, upper-class wife. “And we all are going to stay on my mother’s farm during this time of bereavement.”

  It wasn’t a large farm, just a few acres, but there had been more chickens, cows, and pigs than a young Candace could tolerate. And when one of the rambunctious, squealing little pigs had gotten loose and chased after her, it left her severely traumatized at the sight of pigs for years afterward. To this day, she still could not fully enjoy the taste of bacon.

  She had come back to Longview now, almost in a sense of desperation. For where else could she go? To whom else could she turn? Her fierce independence, inherited from her mother, had always been a source of great strength for her. She took great personal pride in the fact that she had traveled all around the world by her twentieth birthday, had her features published to glowing critical acclaim, and even had her book enjoy a stint on the New York Times best-seller list. And of course the Pulitzer was still out there, just beyond her grasp but squarely within the reach of someone so talented, headstrong, and ambitious. But her independence was also a masquerade; behind it she hid weakness. Because that dominating little character trait rendered her virtually all alone at a time when she needed comforting the most.

  “Sweetheart, you doing okay this morning?” Harold walked in the kitchen and gave his daughter a hug as she stood at the stove, fixing an omelet. “I checked in on you last night and you were tossin’ and turnin’ something good.”

  “I’m fine, Daddy. And you don’t have to check on me—I’m not so little anymore.”

  Harold gave a big humph as he sat down at the table and spread out his Longview News-Journal to go along with his regular cup of coffee. “You’re gon’ always be my little girl, and I’ll check in on you every night if I want to, even when you get to be as old as I am.”

  “Daddy!” She thought about throwing a dishrag at him. Nevertheless, she was elated at the ease with which they now seemed to be conversing.

  Harold playfully made a show of sniffing the air. “Candi, is you tryin’ to cook over there? Great smoogly-woogly, I didn’t think I would ever live to see the day you would be back here, and cooking breakfast no less. Your mother, God bless her heart, didn’t even do that!”

  “Relax, Daddy. I’m just making some omelets. And a word of free advice for you—normal and intelligent people don’t say phrases like great smoogly-woogly.”

  “I’s got a college degree just like you, young lady,” he said between sips of coffee.

  “Then that proves my point about small towns—you’ve been back here too long,” came Candace’s quick reply, sending her into a fit of laughter.

  “SO, SWEETHEART, you and that Jermaine Hill, there was . . . um, there was nothing going on between you two?” Candace and her father were sitting on the expansive porch, enjoying cool glasses of iced tea and watching the occasional car roll past them on the dirt road. Oddly enough, to Candace’s normal jet-setting life, the huge contrast of Longview’s slower pace was refreshing.

  She fingered the cool drops of condensation forming on the
sides of the Mason jar that was currently posing as a drinking glass. Then again, out here these were the regular drinking glasses. “No, there wasn’t anything going on . . .”

  “I see. So—”

  “ . . . yet.”

  “Yet?” Harold looked at her with a questioning fatherly glance.

  “Well, I . . . I was starting to have feelings for him. And I think he felt the same way about me. Or maybe not. I . . . I don’t know. I guess it used to be easier talking about this with Mom than you . . .”

  “I understand, Candi. You don’t have to, if you don’t . . . you know, if you don’t want to . . .”

  Candace sighed. “I’ve just had the worst luck with men in the past few years. It’s getting harder to read the signals anymore. I thought Jermaine liked me, but . . . but it wasn’t even supposed to be like that between the two of us, you know? I was on assignment, for goodness sakes!”

  “He was that charming, then?”

  “No, not at first. He had this wall up, you know? And I did my best to get past that wall because I wanted to really show everyone a side of him that no one else knew.”

  “Obviously, he really did have a side to him that nobody else knew.”

  Candace shrugged, biting back the words she wanted to say. But Jermaine wasn’t the crazy person everybody was making him out to be!

  “You know, sweetheart, I’ve had a lot of time to pray and think about things since I moved back here. Since your mother . . .” he let the sentence drift. “Well, anyway . . . praying has really been helping me, you know? Talking to God about the issues in my life. Reading His Word. The kind of things instilled in me by my own father that I just sort of drifted away from.”

  He reached over and patted his daughter’s hand. “And if it wasn’t for that spiritual reconnection, I don’t think I would be able to deal with life at all.” He was silent for several minutes. Then he looked at Candace and added, “You know, your mother used to pray every night before she went to sleep. Never said much too loud, but I saw her lips moving. And sometimes she would be crying quietly, trying not to wake me up. Did you know she prayed faithfully like that every night?”

  Candace blinked away some tears trying their best to roll down her face. There would probably always be things she never knew about her mother. “No, I . . . no. I didn’t know that.”

  Chapter twenty-four

  AMBROSE CONTINUED TO methodically pace the length of floor in his room, praying in a hushed voice but losing none of the fervor as when he spoke at a loud volume. His prayers, entire quotations of biblical scriptures as they mostly were, rolled off his tongue with the smoothness of butter melting on a hot country griddle.

  “There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them understanding . . . oh Lord, let Your light shine upon the blinded eyes of Jermaine, the light of the glorious gospel of Christ that opens the eyes of the spiritually blind . . . and the treasure that is in Jermaine—the excellency of its power comes from You, my Lord. So draw him to You with loving kindness and let him understand that his golden voice has been anointed only to speak Your words of inspiration . . . open his eyes, my Lord. Open his eyes . . .”

  Ambrose had not slept in three days, so intense was the mandate laid upon him to pray for this young man’s soul. He was equally humbled, yet honored to be chosen as a chief intercessor for Jermaine—a man who yet remained unaware of the highly precious gift he possessed. It was not merely an oratory gift; many people had been blessed with the ability to speak eloquently and make harmony from the spoken word. But Ambrose sensed Jermaine’s gift was far more substantial than that.

  But it could be so much more . . . he could be much more . . .

  “Lord, let him be more . . . Let him speak for You . . .”

  THE DREAM WAS coming back in Jermaine’s mind, more vivid now than ever. And it wasn’t just any dream, it was the same recurring nightmare that had plagued him since his college years. In the dream, Jermaine was in front of a huge crowd in the cavernous Pasadena Rose Bowl. He was the celebrated speaker of the hour, and as he sat on the stage that had been erected along the midfield line, he could sense the palpable excitement and expectation from the stirring crowd.

  “Jeeer-maainne! Jeeer-maainne!” they exuberantly cried out, over a hundred thousand voices unified to form one thunderous roar. All of them were anxiously waiting to hear the man with the golden voice.

  When his moment had finally arrived, he stood tall and proud and strode to the podium, pausing at length to bask in the unconditional acceptance of his adoring fans. It was a powerful adrenaline rush normally experienced by only a handful of rock stars or popular presidential nominees—hearing your name ceremoniously chanted over and over until such adulation approaches the status of worship.

  Jermaine had absorbed all of this with great pride—the love, admiration, and blind faith the crowd was vesting in him to excite and inspire them about life. With his trademark winning smile, he raised his hands and edged closer to the microphones. Then he opened his mouth—

  —and . . . nothing came . . . out.

  Momentarily stunned, he had tried clearing his throat. Wetting his lips. But to his horror, there was to be no sound proceeding from his voice box. Suddenly and quite shockingly, he had been rendered completely mute. The overflowing crowd, which moments before had been so vociferously alive, had since quieted down in preparation for hearing their beloved speaker. But as Jermaine continued to stand there, feeling more and more vulnerable with each passing second, confused murmurs now began rippling throughout the stadium.

  What was going on here?

  Beads of sweat popped out all along Jermaine’s forehead as his face took on a panicked, “deer caught in the headlights” expression. There was no place for him to hide, and no reasonable action he could presently take. For everyone was there solely to hear him. He had been brought to the apex of fame and power because of his vocal gift to motivate the masses. But without the ability and wherewithal to even make a noise with his mouth, what good was he? Without the one thing that had defined him and garnered him the esteem and reverence of millions, who was he?

  He was lost was what he was. Pitifully and utterly . . . lost. At this point in the dream, as always, it became harder for him to breathe. As he began to labor mightily for each breath, his knees started to wobble and buckle. The last thought before he would awake to sweat-soaked sheets was how hard it had been for him to breathe. To breathe!

  Mercifully jolted from his nightmare, Jermaine rolled over on his right side in the small bed, holding his head in the cup of his hands and gulping for each lungful of air. The ringing in his ears and in the center of his skull was not yet migraine level, but he found no comfort in that small detail. As he continued to lie there on the bed, slowly regaining his breath, two distinct fears began to rise strongly within him. For not only was he afraid of drifting back to sleep and reliving that traumatic experience, but he also was fearful of remaining awake in a reality not so far removed from that nightmare.

  Chapter twenty-five

  IT WAS ALMOST time, now. Bell could sense it, feel it. And in many ways, the old woman of faith embraced the divine transition. While most people feared death because of the questions of the unknown, Bell’s soul was anchored. Her heart was ready. With eyes made blurry by slow, streaming tears, she read once again in her large-print Bible the stirring words of the apostle Paul.

  “I have fought the good fight, I have finished the race, I have kept the faith . . .”

  She had not traveled to a lot of places in her life, earned a whole lot of money, or anything else that people would consider having lived a successful life. But she had worked her job honestly and fairly. And she had raised Jermaine like he was her son. Raised him as her son.

  I’ve kept the faith, Jesus. I’ve kept the faith . . .

  She was ready for her heavenly reward, but she still had the faith to believe there was a reward for her right now, as well. The fact that Jermai
ne had not died when he fell off that cliff encouraged her that there was still a chance. There was still hope for her son. And that would be her earthly reward—to see Jermaine saved and using his gift for the glory of God.

  I’ve kept the faith . . .

  THE NEXT FEW DAYS dragged by at an agonizingly slow crawl for him, made even worse because of his inability to sleep at night. His nightmare still haunted him—exploding with terror back into his consciousness every time he closed his eyes for any significant length of time. And with that nightmare came old, unresolved feelings of worthlessness because he was reminded of what might happen if his ability to speak was taken away.

  But it’s just a dream . . . I’m still able to talk . . .

  Yes, he still had the ability to talk. But what good was using his mouth to motivate others if he still remained unable to eradicate the depression weighing down his own soul?

  “I know about your dreams, Jermaine.” At the sound of the interrupting voice, Jermaine rolled his wheelchair around to find Ambrose leaning against his opened door.

  The nerve of this crazy old man . . . “What?”

  “I know about the dreams you’ve been having for quite some time now.”

  “Oh, yeah? Everybody has dreams, old man.”

  Ambrose shrugged and took a few cautious steps inside the room. “But you and I both know that it is only one dream, and it is quite unlike the sorts of dreams everybody else has.” He then proceeded to describe it in great detail—right down to the stunned silence of the thousands of spectators and Jermaine’s gasping for breath on wobbling, buckling knees. When he finished with the description he sat down on the bed, his face now eye level with Jermaine’s.

  “Did you know that God sometimes speaks to us in dreams?”

  Jermaine cleared his throat, forcing himself to look away from the man’s penetrating eyes. It was extremely unnerving—like Ambrose was staring right into the innermost depths of his heart. “Always bringing up God, aren’t you? Well here’s a news flash, Ambrose. People have dreams all the time. It’s completely natural. I don’t think that it means God is trying to say something to me.”