The Heavenly Grille Café

by J. T. Livingston

  Stephen was grinning from ear to ear. “What a great actress she was; when I was a kid, I would pretend to be “Sport” – the son of the family Hazel worked for – did you know that she dropped out of school at the age of fourteen to pursue a stage career? Oh, and I even remember an interview she did once, around 1971, I think. She told the person interviewing her that she would rather have affection than admiration because affection was warmer and lasted longer. For some reason, that statement has always stuck in my head…” Steve shook the cobwebs from his brain and grinned at Martin. “What is Hazel doing sitting across from my daughter?”

  Martin laughed out loud. “Well, you may be right about her looks. I’ve never really thought about it, but now that I look closer at her, I do believe you are right. Our Bertie does bear a striking resemblance to Miss Booth. However, since you appear to be such an expert on the actress, then you must know that Miss Shirley Booth passed away... let’s see... on October 16, 1992. She was buried in Mt. Hebron Cemetery in Montclair, New Jersey. The last time I checked, that’s a long way from Monticello, Florida…”

  “Bertie?” Regina and Stephen asked in unison.

  “Ah, yes,” Martin replied. “Bertie is... how should I say... one of ours.”

  “She’s an angel?” Stephen asked.

  “Well,” Martin sighed, “She’s what you humans might call an angel, but, as you will learn when you return to your study of the hierarchy of angels, there are nine orders of angels. Let’s see…it’s been a very long time since I taught that particular class, but as I recall, they include the seraphim, the cherubim, the thrones, the rulers, the virtues, the powers, the principalities, the archangels, and…the regular angels. Bertie falls more into the realm of a regular angel’s assistant. You see, real angels, the angels that our Heavenly Father created Himself, have never held human bodies and souls; real angels were created by God when he created the Heavens. However, more importantly, real angels are totally and absolutely without sin, and trust me…our Bertie most definitely does not fall into that category.”

  “I’m not sure I understand, Martin,” Regina said. “Are you saying that Bertie is like us? She was a human…that she lived on earth? Oh my goodness…does that mean that we can return, too?”

  Martin placed a hand on each of their shoulders. “I know it is confusing, dear, but yes, Bertie began and lived life as a human. She actually died in 1911, run over by an automobile, she was. Yes, that was a long time ago, but…our Max, he’s the one sitting next to Bertie, is also an angel. He, too, lived life as a human, but his time goes a lot farther back than even Bertie’s. You see, Max was a true and noble gladiator during the Roman Empire era.”

  “This is fascinating. I’m almost afraid to ask,” Stephen queried. “What about the young man?”

  “Oh, yes, indeed! That would be Doug and…bingo…he, too, is one of us. This is actually Doug’s first earthly assignment.”

  Both Stephen and Regina clasped their hands in prayer, hope gleaming in their eyes.

  Martin recognized the look immediately and shook his head. “To answer your last question, Regina…no…it is not possible. I am afraid you cannot go back, at least not for quite a while. One of the stipulations for returning to earth on assignment is that you must have been dead for at least fifty years.” He fluttered his hands above his head. “But, that’s another lesson you’ll learn about in due time. The reason I have summoned the two of you here today is to let you know that, even though you cannot return to earth, you will be allowed to interact with your daughter, Amanda.”

  “I don’t understand…what do you mean?” Stephen asked.

  Regina looked at Martin as the answer suddenly came to her. She grinned at him and said, “Oh, I think I understand. You’re talking about Amanda’s dreams, aren’t you?”

  Martin nodded, pleased at Regina’s quick grasp of the situation. “Precisely correct, my dear. Amanda’s faith will be tested, for sure, but with the help of the café staff and your appearances in her dreams, we are hopeful that she will become a true friend to Miss DeVone, and be instrumental in bringing the young lady to Christ. It will be a test of Amanda’s faith.”

  Regina beamed with maternal pride. “Well, I have no doubt that Amanda will excel in this particular test. Miss DeVone is very lucky to have met our daughter today.”

  “Oh, please!” Martin mused theatrically. “You don’t really believe luck had anything at all to do with any of this, do you now?”

  Stephen listened and watched while his wife and Martin bantered back and forth. He sighed deeply and whispered…”Oh, I really do have so much to learn…”

  “Trust in the Lord with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding.”

  -Proverbs 3:5 (NKJV)

  CHAPTER 12

  Doug and Amanda Discuss Kris

  The Heavenly Grille was always closed on Sundays, much to the disappointment of the Monticello, Florida church crowd. Doug and Amanda sat together at the round, oak picnic table situated in the small wooded area behind the Heavenly Grille Café; it was the second Sunday since Amanda had first brought Kris to the café. They sat in amiable silence, enjoying the mid-morning sounds and sights of the array of birds, squirrels, and turtles competing for attention in the woods surrounding them. A large pitcher of Max’s delicious, iced lemonade-tea sat between them. The beverage was a favorite of customers and Amanda was a huge fan, too. She had tried to duplicate Max’s recipe for the tea, but had yet to perfect the exact measurements that resulted in the rich, robust flavors of tea married with the light, sweet tartness of homemade lemonade.

  It was the first week of August and even though the temperature was in the mid-nineties, a cool breeze waffled through the leaves of the old oak trees clustered behind the café. A small white picket fence separated the forty feet that divided the dense wood line from the café; the area between was blanketed with a wide variety of Florida-friendly plants. A celestial arrangement of autumn and holly ferns shared the small space with lavender twin flowers, bugleweed, caladiums, lilies, and Mondo grass. A small brook snaked along one side of the property. Amanda loved this spot almost as much as she had loved the tropical back yard her father had created in their Tampa home. The colorful, serene setting could have been one of the many captivating settings captured in Thomas Kinkade’s paintings; he was Amanda’s favorite modern-day painter. The more she soaked in the natural beauty surrounding her, the more the peaceful setting actually reminded her of Kinkade’s painting, “Beside Still Waters.” She had always wanted to own one of the artist’s oil paintings but had never been able to afford them; instead, her father had given her a small print of “Beside Still Waters” for her sixteenth birthday. The priceless print was still packed away in her car, along with most of her personal belongings, excluding clothing. She knew her living arrangements at the Heavenly Grille were only temporary, until she could find her own apartment, so she had not unpacked anything yet.

  Amanda closed her eyes, listening to the choir of birds perched high above in the old oaks, and stretched out her legs on her side of the bench. “This has got to be the best way to spend a lazy Sunday, huh, Dougie? It just doesn’t get any better than this…”

  Doug smiled at her. His mother was the only person, besides Bertie, who had ever called him Dougie. “Well, I’m not sure if you’re talking about having a day off from your hectic schedule, or whether it’s this fantastic tea. Which is it?”

  Amanda opened her eyes and grinned back at him. She lifted her hands high above her head and stretched. “All of it! This place… the tea…finding you, Bertie, and Max… EVERYTHING! I just feel so blessed to have ended up here. Hey, and not only that, but did I tell you that I have also found a fantastic church?”

  Doug winked at her. He knew that finding a church had been high on Amanda’s priority list. “No, you hadn’t mentioned that, but I did know you’ve been looking for one. I’m really glad things are working out for you, Princess; and, I’m really glad you’ve
found a church.” He cleared his throat and glanced down at the watch he only wore at Bertie’s insistence, after she had punched his shoulder and told him it would make him fit in. “Since it is such a fantastic church, maybe you want to explain why you aren’t there now?”

  Amanda pulled her knees to her chest and laughed. “Probably for the same reason you’re not, I guess,” she teased. “For your information, I went to the early-morning services. I like those better because then I have even more time to sit outside and enjoy all this! God, it’s all so beautiful…”

  “I know what you mean, Amanda. It is very serene…very peaceful here, isn’t it?”

  Amanda nodded and grinned. “Yep, for sure. Sometimes, it seems like…if I can just sit here for a few minutes, then all my worries and problems will – POOF - evaporate into thin air and be solved in no time at all.”

  Doug nodded and poured them each another glass of tea. “Speaking of worries and problems…what’s going on with your new friend, Kris? It sure seems like she’s had more than her fair share of problems to resolve. How is she doing?”

  Amanda sighed. It had been two weeks since she had brought Kris Devone to the Heavenly Grille. The dream – the one with her parents in it - had led her to believe that someone needing her help would waltz into the café. Instead, she had found Kris a relatively short, twenty-five miles away at Sam’s Warehouse in Tallahassee, and brought her back to the café. Max had called the police to report the theft of Kris’ car and purse by her boyfriend, Danny Raye; and, Amanda had offered to drive Kris back to her apartment. Amanda had even used part of her own meager savings, against Kris’ protests, to pay to have the locks changed on Kris’ home. It had taken a couple of days before the police found Kris’ car, apparently abandoned, at the Tallahassee Airport; her purse was still inside the car, albeit, void of any monetary contents or credit cards. The police had not yet located Danny Raye.

  “You know, considering everything that has happened to her, I think she’s actually doing pretty good,” Amanda said. “She’s a little nervous about things, especially with her due date only six weeks away. We never discussed it, but for a while there, I was afraid that she might be thinking of giving the baby up for adoption, but the more I get to know her, I don’t think there is any way she would ever let that baby out of her sight! She’s worried about money, too, especially since she had planned on using her savings to finish getting the things she needed for the nursery, and to be able to take some time off after the baby comes. But, you know what? Her boss, the man who owns the coffee house she works at…well, he must be a good man. He’s been a HUGE help. He schedules her all the hours she wants to work, and he’s told her that he’ll pay her salary for six weeks after she has the baby, until she’s able to go back to work full-time. Yep, he’s a good man, alright.”

  Doug nodded. “Sounds that way. She’s lucky to have him for a boss.”

  “For sure!” Kris agreed. “We found out that he had a daughter who would have been about our age, I guess. She died a few years ago, some kind of undetected heart problem, I think. I don’t know, but somehow, I have a feeling that, by helping Kris, he feels like he’s doing what he would have done for his own daughter, if she had lived long enough to have kids.”

  Doug nodded as he continued sipping his tea. “He really does sound like a good man. You did tell us that Kris has no family, is that right?”

  Amanda shook her head. “Nope, she has absolutely no one. Something we seem to have in common. I guess that’s why I’ve been thinking that we might be able to help each other out.”

  What do you mean?” Doug asked.

  Amanda shrugged. “I don’t know. We haven’t really talked about it, but I’ve been thinking that day care has got to be pretty expensive, especially on a waitress’s salary. I’ve been tossing around the idea of talking to her about us getting a place together, and work our schedules out to where one of us was there to take care of the baby while the other one worked. Does that sound crazy? I mean, we hardly know one another.”

  “Crazy? No…but it is a lot of responsibility to sign on for, especially for someone you just met. I commend you for wanting to help. She’s very lucky that you came to her rescue. I guess there’s no sign of the boyfriend yet?”

  “That scumbag? No, he’s probably hiding under a rock somewhere, spending all of Kris’ savings on booze and drugs. People like that, I don’t know... how could he just leave her like he did?”

  “I don’t know, Amanda, but I do believe that everything that happens to us in our lives is pre-destined, chapters written long before we’re even born. There is a reason for everything that happens to us, a reason for certain people to come into our lives. We may question why things happen but there’s a good chance we’ll never really know the answer. Besides, the answer may not be the most important thing for us to understand.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” Doug shrugged. “Having the answer to why things happen might bring closure to a situation, but it really doesn’t change anything that has already happened, does it? So, why should it matter to us WHY things happen? What difference would it make? We can’t change the past and we have no control over the future, so we shouldn’t expend too much of our thoughts and efforts on the WHY of things.”

  Amanda stared at him for a long moment before shaking her head. “You know, Dougie, if I still smoked, I think I would have to light one up after that load of malarkey.” She stood up and took a final gulp of tea. “But, what’s even stranger is the fact that... well, it almost makes sense, what you said. So, with that being said, I’m going to leave you to enjoy all this. By the way, where are Bertie and Max? They must have taken off early this morning for somewhere.”

  Doug stood up and took her empty glass from her. “They did leave early. They both have, shall we say... out-of-town business on Sundays.”

  “Which is a nice way of saying that it’s none of my business, huh? Okay, never mind, big fella. I’m off to visit Kris. I hate to leave you here all by yourself. Do you want to come with me?”

  “No thanks, Amanda. You go ahead, but let Kris know that we are all thinking about her. I’ve actually got some things to do myself.” Doug picked up the tray with the pitcher and glasses and turned toward the café’s back door.

  “Oh, don’t tell me, let me guess,” Amanda joked. “You’ve got some out of town business to attend to, right?”

  Doug offered a shy grin and winked back at her. “Something like that, Princess. Something like that.”

  CHAPTER 13

  Amanda Meets Officer Hall

  Amanda inserted a Patsy Cline CD into her stereo and rolled down her car window. She was definitely her father’s daughter because she never tired of listening to the artist’s distinctively soulful, country sound. The only other singer who had even come close to the quality of Patsy’s voice, in Amanda’s opinion, was Leann Rimes. A listener could get lost in the lyrics of their songs and in the melodic symphonies of their voices.

  It only took Amanda a few short minutes to reach the famous traffic circle in Monticello, a small northern Florida city established in 1827. One look at the pre-civil, war-styled architecture left no doubt in one’s mind as to why the downtown area had been designated a National Historic District. The beautiful tree-lined streets, old antebellum homes, and the 1890 Opera House were a steady reminder of the area’s proud southern heritage. The city had become infamous in 2003 when ABC-TV named it the “South’s Most Haunted Small Town.” The most haunted building in Monticello was thought to be the Palmer House. Some folks even said that Dr. Dabne Palmer, who was a physician as well as a mortician, could still be seen walking around his old office. John Perkins, the founder of the Monticello Opera House, had also been sighted, by credible witnesses, hanging around his famous theater. One of the town’s quaint B&B’s, the John Denham House Bed and Breakfast, was tagged to be one of the “Top Ten Places to Sleep with Ghosts” by USA Today. No, there was definitely no shortage
of ghosts in Monticello and the town’s history fascinated Amanda. As much as she had loved growing up in Tampa, she had always wanted to live in a small town, where everyone knew everyone else and nobody was in a hurry to get anywhere. It somehow made her feel less alone.

  Amanda slowed the Trooper as she approached the town’s Police Department which was located in the very center of Monticello, on Mulberry Street. There was not a single red light in the small town, whose population boasted less than three thousand, more than half of whom seemed to be regulars at the cafe. She recognized a police officer, standing outside the Police Department, as the one who had come to the café to write up the report of Kris’ stolen car and purse. She slowed her car even more, honked twice, and waved her hand at the officer who was now looking in her direction. She pulled into a parking space along the curb, turned Patsy’s wail on low volume, and leaned out the window. “Hey, there! Officer Hall, isn’t it?”

  The young police officer removed his sun glasses and walked over to the Trooper. “Yes, Ma’am,” he replied, “Can I help you?” The woman’s face looked familiar to him and it only took him a minute before he recognized Amanda. “Oh, hello, there. Miss Turner, right?”

  Amanda grinned at him and nodded. “You remembered? But, it’s Amanda, not Miss Turner.”

  Officer Dean Hall tipped his hat and flashed a lopsided grin. “I actually finished number one in my photo-memory class. It’s good to see you again, and under better circumstances. How is your friend...Miss De…Kris?”

  “Hmmm…” Amanda thought, “He does have a good memory…” She grinned at him. “She’s trying to pick up the pieces, kicking herself for giving that scumbag of a boyfriend a second chance, getting ready to drastically change her life by becoming a single mom... you know... all the usual, every day sort of stuff we girls have to deal with... all in all, though, I’d have to say she’s doing pretty good – a lot better than I would be in her situation, for sure.”