Dawn's Light

by Terri Blackstock

  She sniffed. “I appreciate your finding him and arresting him. At least he can’t hurt anyone else.”

  Mark’s chest was heavy as he followed the grieving father out to the van. He felt that burning feeling again — that sick feeling of unrest. There was no way to assuage it now. His work was done. He’d gotten Tharpe behind bars and notified the victim’s family.

  If only he could do something for Beth.

  He didn’t get in the van. “I’m going to take off now, if it’s okay,” he said to Wheaton.

  “Sure, son. You need a break. Go home and get some rest. Want me to give you a ride?”

  “No, that’s okay. I’m going to the hospital, and it’s not that far.”

  Wheaton slid his hands into his pockets. “Thanks for helping me do the dirty work. And look after Kay. Make sure she doesn’t pop into the department anymore. She probably needs a doctor to sedate her.”

  Mark knew she didn’t need anything of the sort. What Kay needed was for her daughter to wake up.

  SEVENTY

  KAY’S OUTBURST AT THE JAIL HAD NOT MADE HER FEEL BETTER. When she came back to the hospital, Doug tried to calm her. The pressing weight of stress was getting to them all, so Doug asked Craig to take the family home. Deni stayed at the hospital to sit with Beth.

  Kay refused to leave, but Doug insisted.

  “Doug, I’m not going. I’ve prayed for a miracle, and I expect it to happen. I want to be here. And even if it doesn’t happen tonight, if she’s at all aware, she’ll know I’m not here. What if she needs me?”

  “She loves Deni, too. Deni will be here. But you’re exhausted, Kay. You have to come home and rest. There might be even tougher days ahead. We need our strength.”

  Kay finally agreed, but only after explaining it to her comatose child.

  As they drove, her heart raced at the thought of what she’d done at the jail. She hated Clay Tharpe. She had never hated anyone so much in her life.

  She didn’t like that consuming emotion. It burned inside her like acid, its poison seeping through her cells and altering her organs. Her heart wouldn’t stop sprinting. Her stomach rebelled. Her lungs seemed constricted. Her head ached.

  Thankfully, Craig went back to work after dropping them off. The four of them went into the house, and the boys scattered to their rooms. Kay collapsed on her bed.

  “Are you okay?” Doug asked, standing over her.

  “Who cares if I’m okay?” she asked. “It’s Beth who’s not.”

  “You won’t be any good to Beth if you don’t take care of yourself.” He sat down on the bed next to her, started to massage her shoulders. “You want to talk about what happened?”

  “I told you what happened. I wanted to look into the face of the man who did this, so I did.”

  Her face was buried in the pillow, but she felt him lying down next to her. She was cold, but his strong hand on her back was warm. It brought her comfort, though she didn’t want it. “Well, I wouldn’t have recommended it, but in retrospect, it was a pretty gutsy thing to do.”

  She had expected him to chastise her. She turned to her side facing him. “It wasn’t gutsy. I snapped. If I could have gotten to him, Doug, I might have killed him.”

  “I know the feeling.”

  She rolled to her back, rubbing her eyes. “I might have gotten him killed, anyway.”

  “How?”

  She looked at the ceiling. “I incited his cell mates to hurt him. I told them he attacked a child.”

  Doug was silent for a moment. “And what did they do?”

  “I don’t know. They were yelling at him, cursing, when the sheriff took me out. Tharpe looked so smug and safe in there. I wanted him to fear for his life and know what it is to have someone attack you. To have his head smashed against something.”

  Doug stroked her arm. “I know.”

  She pictured what might have happened after she left. He had probably been cornered, intimidated, terrorized, injured. Did he feel like a tough guy now? Did he still feel like he had the upper hand? Did he know even an ounce of the fear that Beth had felt that day?

  Her joy at the possible outcome struck her. Shame came in its wake, indicting her for her hatred, for her violence, showing her something ugly and terrible about herself.

  Her shoulders began to shiver, her arms to tremble, as the realization fell over her. Look where her thoughts were taking her. Look what she had become.

  “Oh, dear God. What have I done?”

  Doug sat up. “What do you mean?”

  Kay got off the bed, stepped into the shadows, and turned back to her husband. “I’m like him.”

  “No, you’re not. You’re nothing like — ”

  “Yes, I am. I have the capacity to do what he did. I tried to do it today by inciting others to do my dirty work. But it was murder. I had the same violence in my heart that he has.”

  “You did it out of righteous anger. He did it for pure evil.”

  “I did it for vengeance. But vengeance belongs to God.” Sorrow mingled with her shame.

  Doug pulled her back to the bed and held her tightly. She knew he wasn’t judging her. He was trying to help her with the olive press that was crushing her.

  She thought of Tharpe in that cell, without a moment’s peace, staying awake all night, afraid to close his eyes for fear of what might happen. Maybe Wheaton had moved him to a different cell.

  “Clay Tharpe felt he had a reason for attacking Beth, and that reason was evil. But I could have done the same evil for a reason that was just as compelling. I worked it out in my mind. I premeditated it, just like he did.”

  “Kay, if that’s what happened, then pray about it. I’ll pray with you.”

  She closed her eyes, and tried to do that, tried to humble herself before the God of the universe. How would he answer her prayers for Beth if she had such hatred in her heart? “I can’t,” she whispered. “I’m so angry at God!”

  Doug kissed her and slid his hand through her hair, to the back of her neck. “God can stand to have you beating against his chest. He can handle your despair.”

  “What about my guilt? Can he handle that?”

  “He did already, when he became flesh and walked among us. Christ died because we have the capacity to murder if given the right motivation. He died because we can be consumed with our own vengeance. He died because he loves us anyway, and he didn’t want the disease of sin and hatred to kill us. He wanted us to be free.”

  “He did the same thing for Clay Tharpe,” she said bitterly.

  She could see in Doug’s face that he didn’t like that any better than she did. “Yes, he did.”

  She looked into his eyes, searching for answers. “He wants us to pray for our enemies. But I can’t, Doug. I can’t do it. I can’t even pray for myself.”

  “Yes, you can.”

  She squeezed her eyes shut, and felt as though God, her Father, picked her up and held her against him. She squirmed and kicked and beat against him, but he held her tight, anyway. She forced herself to pray for Clay Tharpe in high-pitched, halting words. “Lord, I know I’m supposed to forgive . . . but I need time. The best I can do right now is to ask you to undo the damage I did in that cell. Give them the wisdom to move him to a cell by himself. Let your vengeance be the one that prevails in this . . . not mine.”

  Doug picked up when she could go no further. “Father, we ask that you bring Clay Tharpe to repentance. Show him his need for a savior.”

  They lay together, bound in prayer, listening for God’s voice. But there was only silence, and a momentary peace that lay over them like a goose-down blanket, comforting them into a shallow sleep.

  SEVENTY-ONE

  DEAR DENI,

  I had to go back to work. There’s so much to do, and I’m not helping anybody by sitting here. Just know that I love you and I’m praying for you. I spoke to Beth’s doctor about the medications he can’t get, and I’m going to do my best to get them here, as well as find an MRI or CT
scanner. It’s the least I can do for my future sister-in-law. I love you, baby. Send someone for me if there’s a change. I’ll be back as soon as I can.

  Love,

  Craig

  Mark read the note Craig had left behind and felt his throat closing up with anger. Future sister-in-law? Baby?

  Deni’s eyes rounded with hope, and that made him even angrier. “Do you think he’ll be able to do that? Get the drugs that could help her, I mean? And the scanners?”

  Leave it to Craig to make promises he couldn’t keep. “The drugs are possible, I guess. But as for the scanners, I doubt it. Anything they had before the Pulses would have been destroyed. And without electricity and computers to build new machines — ”

  “Well, he wouldn’t say it if there weren’t a possibility, would he?”

  Mark shrugged. “He said Beth was his future sister-in-law. You tell me.”

  She took the letter back, read it again. “Oh, that.”

  “Yeah, that.”

  He couldn’t hold it against her. She was so distracted by Beth’s coma, so tired and tense, that he couldn’t blame her for not flaring up at the suggestions in Craig’s letter. But he could do something about them.

  The next day, Mark decided to head by Craig’s office, to talk to him about arousing the Brannings’ hope with promises to save the day. Craig may be important, but he wasn’t that important. And while Mark was there, he might just talk to him about the terms of endearment he used for Deni. She wasn’t Craig’s baby.

  She was his.

  At least, he hoped she was.

  Craig’s office was crowded with employees now, everyone engaged with a sense of purpose, bent over tasks and hurrying from one place to another. A cheer went up, and Mark saw his archrival standing at a telegraph machine with several others who were clearly celebrating something.

  He crossed the room. Craig spotted him, and his smile faded a little. “Mark, what is it?”

  Mark should have realized Craig would think he was there about Beth. He quickly put that fear to rest. “Nothing. No change.” He glanced over Craig’s shoulder. “Am I interrupting something?”

  “Oh, yeah,” Craig said, his smile returning. “We just got a telegram saying the power grids that cover the White House and the Pentagon are back up. And we also got the areas around three of the Gulf Coast refineries back up.”

  Mark couldn’t believe it. “Seriously? I didn’t think it would happen that fast.”

  “They’ve been working on it the whole year of the Pulses,” he said. “Our teams were able to black start some of the distribution plants.”

  “So how long before ours will come back on?”

  “Sooner than we thought, I hope.” He shook a few hands of his coworkers, then turned and led Mark to his office where it was quieter. “So what brings you here?”

  “Your note.” The muscles in Mark’s face were rigid.

  Craig sat down in his executive chair, put his hands behind his head. “Yeah?”

  Mark looked down at him. “I don’t think it’s wise to make promises you can’t keep, about getting scanners and drugs that aren’t available.”

  “I wasn’t making false promises,” he said. “I truly do intend to try. It’s complicated, because there are solid-state components to all of those scanners. But I’m thinking that MRIs might be available first, since their main components are magnets. The president and his family will be the first to have it available, so I’m sending telegrams to some of my colleagues in the Senate building, to see if they can tell me if any scanners were preserved anywhere, or what company might be working on rebuilding those things. If I can find that out, maybe we can get an idea of how long it’ll be. I’m also asking Senator Crawford, my old boss, to check with some of his drug company lobbyists who live in Washington to see how we might get the drugs Beth needs.”

  “Sounds like a long process. Beth may not have that kind of time.”

  “I’m doing the best I can,” he said. “Maybe God will be with us.”

  Mark slid his hands into his pockets. Maybe Craig could deliver. It didn’t really matter who saved the day, as long as someone did.

  He suddenly felt ashamed at his jealousy. Then he remembered the way Craig had referred to Deni. He thought of bringing it up, but it seemed useless . . . petty. Deni wasn’t Craig’s “baby” unless she wanted to be.

  “I’d really appreciate your prayers,” Craig said.

  Mark shook free of his thoughts. “Yeah. Of course.”

  “I feel a real sense of urgency to do everything I’ve been tasked with, and I want to do my best for Beth. I feel like I’ve been put here for such a time as this.”

  He’d been reading the book of Esther, Mark thought. No one had challenged Craig to, and he hadn’t been forced into it. He was staying in the Word on his own. Maybe Craig really was a brother in Christ.

  Mark swallowed his pride. “Hey, since yesterday was so crazy and we didn’t get to do our Bible study, let me know if you ever want to start it back up. I promise it won’t be a clash of the egos this time.”

  “Maybe when things get back to normal.”

  Mark couldn’t help his relief that Craig was noncommittal. Maybe Mark would have time for the Lord to dig out the weeds in his heart before that time came.

  Mark left the office praying that Craig would have the influence to help Beth and to get their power back on soon. Before, he’d considered the restoration of their power something that would make life cushy again. But now it could be a matter of life and death.

  SEVENTY-TWO

  THREE DAYS LATER, MARK SHOWED UP AT CHURCH. IN SPITE of Beth’s condition, Doug had decided to preach. He marveled at the strength of Doug’s character to fulfill his role as pastor while suffering himself. It spoke volumes to all who were there. Brad had even come with his family to support Doug — a rare occurrence.

  Even the wind seemed to silence as Doug began to speak. “I wanted to come and lead you in worship today, because . . .” His voice faltered, and he looked down at his Bible, as if trying to compose himself. Mark watched, wishing he could help as Doug fought his trembling lower lip. “Because God is worthy of worship, in bad times and good . . .” His voice broke off, and he looked at his Bible again.

  Mark thought of going up to take over for him, but what would he say? The people who’d come didn’t need a sermon. What they needed was to undergird their brother in Christ in prayer. He stood up. “Doug, why don’t you let us pray for you today? Just let it be a prayer service.”

  Doug’s tears fell as he nodded. “Good idea,” he managed to say. “My family would appreciate that very much.”

  Doug wept as they gathered around him and lifted Beth and the family up in prayer. Over an hour later, when all had made their petitions to God, Mark looked up to see Brad standing on the outskirts of the small crowd, tears running down his own face.

  As the crowd broke up with hugs and whispered encouragement, Mark crossed the grass to Brad. “I know it meant a lot to Doug that you came today.”

  Brad nodded and wiped his face. “I just don’t get it.”

  “Get what?”

  “How y’all maintain your faith when such horrible things happen. If prayer works, why hasn’t it? Of all families, why wasn’t this family protected?”

  Mark’s mind went blank. He wasn’t prepared to answer. He stood there dumbstruck, silently praying that God would give him words reasonable enough to reach through Brad’s intellect. “We maintain our faith because we know there’s more. That this life isn’t all there is.”

  Brad locked his gaze on him, as if he wanted to believe, but couldn’t.

  Mark thought of telling him about the sufferings of Christ when he took on flesh, that Christ intercedes for us, understanding the pain of our suffering. But Brad was a lawyer; his mind wouldn’t be satisfied with that. Arguing Scripture with him wouldn’t work when he didn’t believe in Scripture. Telling about Christ’s intercession wouldn’t work when Brad
didn’t believe in prayer . . . or in Christ, for that matter.

  “We believe that there’s a plan. That all things work together for good for those who love the Lord and are called according to his purpose.” He realized glumly that he had quoted Scripture. He pressed on, trying to make a case that could stand up in Brad’s court. “Brad, you know I’ve had my own share of suffering.”

  Brad’s eyes softened. “Yeah, you have. And you still believe.”

  “Because it’s not just about this life. God has taken me through everything he’s taken me through to make me who I am. The horrible stuff that’s happened has made me depend more on him. He’s always come through.”

  “Come through?” Brad asked. “You call this coming through? Everything that’s happened with your family? This, with Beth? That doesn’t look like coming through to me.”

  Mark realized he was losing this argument. Mentally, he kicked himself for not being more prepared. He was supposed to be ready for these questions. Why hadn’t he rehearsed them in his mind?

  “We’re not in charge, Brad. God is. Those of us who believe trust that he’s working out our lives according to his plans. It’s not always easy. Sometimes life just stinks. But we can hang on, knowing that someone bigger than us is in charge.”

  “That wouldn’t give me any comfort,” Brad said, “when that ‘someone’ allows cruelty. When good people are on their knees begging for relief, and nothing happens.”

  “We don’t believe that nothing happens.”

  “Then you’re kidding yourselves.” With that, Brad crossed the street and headed home.

  Mark let out a long sigh and watched him leave. Under his breath, he muttered a prayer of apology for handling things so poorly.

  THAT NIGHT, AS MARK WALKED THROUGH THE JAIL FEEDING THE prisoners, he saw that Clay had a few bruises that Mark hadn’t given him. Clay’s cell mates had taken Kay up on her suggestion. Wheaton had moved him to an otherwise empty cell for his own safety.