It was quiet for a long time.
“Pa,” I said finally. “I want you to know how sorry I am.”
“Don’t think nothing of it, Zack.”
“I had no right to say the things I did. I’m sorry, and I apologize. I hope you’ll forgive me, Pa.”
“I appreciate it, son. ’Course I forgive you. You got my apologies too. Some of what you said was right—I ain’t been the best pa to you. So I need you to forgive me too.”
Everything Hawk said about broken mirrors flooded through me.
“You’re my pa, anyhow,” I said. “So I don’t reckon you gotta do it all perfect. Nobody can do that. I’m just grateful to God that I got to be your son.”
“Thank you, Zack,” said Pa. “Those words mean more to me than you can ever know.”
We stared straight ahead for several more minutes, not saying any more. I knew both of us had tears in our eyes. And then I told him just briefly about the accident and how I’d managed to stay alive.
“I hope you can meet Hawk someday, Pa,” I said.
“I’d be honored to,” said Pa. “Can’t think of anything I’d rather do than shake the man’s hand and tell him thank you for taking such good care of my son.”
“You and he’d like each other, Pa.”
“I like him already, son.”
Again it was quiet a minute.
“Well, let’s go see Nick,” said Pa at length, slapping his arm around me again.
We left the barn and walked up the creek. On the way, he told me everything he’d been doing at the mine.
We spent the whole rest of the day together, him telling me about the mine and Sacramento, me telling him about Hawk and Nevada. We both got a lot of things said that we ought to have said years before. Most of all, when the day was over, we’d both apologized for a dozen more misunderstandings, and I don’t think either of us had any more doubts that we loved each other. It was sure a day I’ll never forget as long as I live.
By the time evening came, it felt almost like I’d never been gone.
Chapter 59
Family Reunion
Dinner that night was something special!
Pa treated me like a guest of honor. I had a hard time not thinking that I didn’t deserve it. But everybody was so happy about me being home that I couldn’t keep them from making over me. It was embarrassing, but it felt good too.
Everybody was there, like Pa had told Almeda and Corrie. There was food and laughing and singing and more of Alkali Jones’s tall tales than any of us could have swallowed in two weeks.
I was having a great time. But I’d catch myself every once in a while remembering something Hawk had said or something that had happened, and it would make me thoughtful for a few seconds right in the midst of all the celebration.
Everybody kept coaxing me to tell everything that had happened since they’d last heard from me. I wasn’t especially anxious to relive the bitterness of what I’d been feeling when I left home, as wrong as I now saw it had been. But then when Pa and Corrie told how they’d come looking for me and what a narrow escape they’d had with the Paiutes themselves,1 well, that perked me up enough to start up my story right from there without having to dwell on the past.
So I told them about my first months riding for the Express and then what had happened the day when I suddenly found myself face-to-face with the band of unfriendly Paiutes. Everybody laughed so hard they cried when I told them about how I’d remembered Rev. Rutledge’s sermon. Alkali Jones’s hee, hee, hee! was nearly one continuous cackle!
“I even tried what you said you couldn’t do, Reverend,” I said. “I stopped laughing long enough to close my eyes and count to ten. I thought that just maybe they would go away, that it was just a bad dream. But when I opened my eyes again, they were still there. And I still had to do what you said in your sermon—either go through them or around them. But I gotta tell you, Rev. Rutledge, I found myself wishing I’d paid better attention that day at church, because I thought maybe you had said something else that I just couldn’t remember!”
“No, that was it, Zack, my boy,” said Rev. Rutledge, wiping his eyes. “Through them or around them, that’s all I said.” He was still chuckling as he spoke.
Then I continued on, telling them about the accident, then about waking up in one of Hawk’s caves, then about Hawk himself.
I told them a lot of what had happened during the months—things I’d learned, how I’d grown up. Tad was most interested of all in the caves. He always had liked those places, even after our own mine had fallen in on him.
“How many caves does Hawk have?” he asked in astonishment.
“I don’t know, Tad,” I said. “I don’t suppose I ever stopped to count. Eight or ten maybe. We’d store different things in different places, use them at different times—that is, if a bear wasn’t occupying one.”
“Zack!” exclaimed Almeda.
“It only happened once,” I said, laughing.
“What did you do, shoot it?” asked Rev. Rutledge’s wife.
“No, Hawk doesn’t like to kill unless he has to, unless it’s life or death. No, that time we took sort of a backwards approach to your husband’s advice. We stood out of the way and let the problem go down the hill past us!”
“Sounds like you owe the man your life, Zack,” said Pa.
“I owe Hawk more than my life.”
“How do you mean?” asked Rev. Rutledge.
“He taught me how to live, how to survive, how to see things most people never have a chance to see, and never would see if it was stuck right in front of their noses.”
I told them the way Hawk would teach me to see. But it was just stirring up too many other emotions to say anything about Demming and the Paiute trouble and Laughing Waters. So I didn’t bring that up.
The house fell real quiet after I was all through.
“A remarkable-sounding man, your Hawk,” said Almeda.
“Best friend I ever had,” I admitted.
And again it was silent.
“Actually, I reckon that ain’t quite true,” I said. “He’s the one who helped me see I had an even better friend than him and had for a long time.”
“Who, Zack?” asked Becky.
I didn’t answer her directly, but kept talking about Hawk.
“Once he began to find out about my background, and I began to tell him about all of you and about Miracle Springs—what my life had been before he picked me off the mountainside—he started trying to make me use my extra set of eyes to see inside myself. He helped me see a lot of things I never saw before, things about all of us, this family of ours, and . . .”
I hesitated.
I’d been speaking real soft, and suddenly I was afraid I was about to start crying. It wasn’t easy saying these things with so many people listening. It would have been a lot easier not to say any of it. But I reckon this was the moment Hawk had told me about, when you found out whether or not you had the courage of true manhood.
I took in a deep breath and continued on.
“Mostly he helped me to see,” I said, “a lot of things I’d never seen or understood about me and Pa. Once Hawk realized how it had been when I left, he asked lots of questions. He probably knows you about as good as any man alive, Pa, even though the two of you have never met. He told me some things about myself that weren’t too pleasant to hear, even though I knew they were true. He’s a straightforward, honest man, and I knew I could trust him. So I had no choice but to believe him. I had to look at myself, at some of the foolish things I’d done, like running off half-cocked and blaming things on Pa that I had no right to blame on anyone.”
Again I stopped and took in a deep breath.
This wasn’t easy! No wonder men didn’t usually dig around down inside and let folks see what was inside them. Hawk was right. This did take more guts than facing someone trying to shoot you!
“He made me look down inside myself,” I went on, “just like he’d al
l along been making me look at things in nature. He made me look at my anger. He told me that I’d never be a man until I learned what anger was supposed to be for. He said I’d never be a man until I learned to swallow my pride and come back and say I was sorry. ‘Only takes half a man to be able to live out in nature all by yourself, Zack,’ Hawk told me just before I left. ‘So now,’ he said, ‘it’s time you learned to be a whole man. It’s time to take the half you learned out here and put it to use being the other half.
“‘Don’t make the mistake I did of never going back. I learned a lot of things. I know how to live in the wilds. But in a way I’m still only half a man. It’s too late for me now. I drifted too long and too far. Now my own people are gone. But it’s not too late for you, young Grayfox.’”
“Grayfox . . . who did he mean? Was that you, Zack?” asked Tad.
I smiled.
“Yeah, Tad, it was me.”
“Why’d he call you that?”
“For a while, that was my name up there.”
“It sounds like an Indian name, Zack,” said Almeda.
I smiled again.
“Yep,” I said, slowly nodding my head. “That it was. Given to me by the Paiutes.”
“Why? What does the name mean?”
The long silence that followed was all full of memories for me. How could I possibly tell them all that had happened with Demming and the Paiutes and Laughing Waters and being given my new name? That would take another whole evening. It was all I could do to tell Hawk’s part of it!
Besides, whenever I thought of Laughing Waters, which I did every day, I felt strangely quiet inside. I didn’t know if that was part of the story I wanted to tell just yet . . . or keep to myself.
At last I sighed deeply.
“It’s part of the long story about the quiver,” I said. “Maybe even longer than this one.”
“Please tell us, Zack,” implored both Tad and Becky at once.
“Someday I’ll tell you all about it,” I answered with a smile.
“Why not tonight?”
“I can’t tell you now.”
“Why?”
“I’m not sure it’s finished yet . . . and I gotta get to the end myself before I can tell you about it.”
1. See Sea to Shining Sea, JOURNALS OF CORRIE BELLE HOLLISTER, Book 5.
Chapter 60
Pa’s Eyes to See
The next morning I was up early.
Pa came upon me outside where I was standing with a washbasin beside the creek and holding up a mirror to my face with one hand—a broken one at that!
“What in tarnation you doing?” he exclaimed.
“Shaving off my beard, Pa,” I said.
“What in thunder for?”
“I figured if I’m going to come back to civilization, I ought to look civilized. Besides, I figured you’d want it off.”
“Well, you figured wrong. I like it!”
“You do?”
“Sure I do. Makes you look like me when I was your age.”
“You want me to keep it?”
“Well, it’s up to you, son. But I sure think a man’s beard looks good on you.”
“Okay, Pa,” I said with a smile. “I’ll keep it.”
Pa turned and walked a few steps away, then stopped and glanced back around at me. His eyes had a twinkle in them. If I didn’t know better I’d think he was the fox.
“Hey, Grayfox,” he said, “who’s the young lady you didn’t tell us about last night?”
“What?” I exclaimed
“You heard me plain enough.”
“How’d you know?” Right then I was mighty glad for that beard! I could feel red crawling all over my cheeks.
“What do you think, son, that I don’t know that look in a young man’s eyes? I been in love a coupla times myself, you know. So . . . what’s her name?”
Pa had eyes to see too!
“Laughing Waters,” I admitted sheepishly, staring down at the ground.
“Indian?”
“Yeah . . . the Paiute chief’s daughter.”
“I can’t believe it!” exclaimed Pa. “My son smitten over an Indian princess. She pretty?”
I didn’t answer immediately. I had to stop to think, even though Laughing Waters’ face was hardly ever out of my mind.
“I . . . I don’t know, Pa,” I said. “Her eyes are as pretty as I’ve ever seen. But I don’t know if she’s what other folks would call pretty.”
“You gonna see her again?”
“I plan to, Pa . . . I sure plan to.”
He grinned at me, and then we turned and walked back toward the house.
A Personal Word
from the Author
It is considered somewhat unusual for a writer, especially a novelist, to intrude himself personally into his work. But this is a very personal book for me. Therefore, I hope you will forgive a few intimate words from an author to his readers.
This is not a book only about growing into manhood. I hope many girls, young women, and grown women have enjoyed it, too. For this is a story for boys and girls, women and men. It is about discovering personhood, discovering who we are. All of us—male and female—have to discover our unique identity and personhood within the context of our own masculinity or femininity.
Zack, and the men who read his words, have to discover what being a man means in their lives. We men are notoriously noncommunicative, and we have an extremely difficult time becoming comfortable with the inner worlds of thoughts and emotions—especially within ourselves, as Zack discovered. We tend to make what we call independence an idol, thinking there is no greater goal in life. How wrong we are!
So we men have much to learn about the nature of the true manhood God intended for us.
Women, likewise, have different points where inner eyesight will help them see the pockets of independence within them. Corrie and the women who read her words have to discover what being a complete woman means in their lives.
The principles of personhood, however, are universal. What Corrie has learned about herself in the other books of this series applies equally to men and women. So does what Zack has learned about himself.
There is one aspect about the discovering of personhood which is uniquely masculine.
God is our Father.
All of us must, therefore, at some time in our lives, come to terms with that Fatherhood in order to be whole and integrated sons and daughters of God. As we strive to do that, however, our own earthly fathers stand directly in the middle of the path.
That’s why Zack’s story and his struggle are so important and so universal. Men and women must all experience something of that same struggle, for earthly fatherhood is indeed a “broken mirror” in its reflection of heavenly Fatherhood.
The whole range of human family relationships—fathers and sons, fathers and daughters, mothers and daughters, mothers and sons—come into and are contained within the all-encompassing Fatherhood of God. Wholeness in all such relationships is the destination we journey toward on the road that also leads to fruitful, contented, integrated personhood in one’s relationship with our heavenly Father.
Zack’s story, I hope you see, is but one small window into a much larger story—a story in which each one of us, you and me, are the main characters, the real-life adventure of learning to see and hear what God has to tell us about himself.
The mirrors of example we all look to are broken. Never forget that. But just the fact that mothers and fathers exist means that God’s Fatherhood cannot help but be built into the relationships they have with their sons and daughters—if only we allow God to develop our inner eyesight to see it, whichever side of those relational fences we may be standing on.
If you are interested in reading more that I have written along these lines, may I suggest two novels, Robbie Taggart, Highland Sailor and The Eleventh Hour. Both are listed along with my other books at the back of this book.
I hope and pray you enjoyed the story o
f Zack “Grayfox” Hollister and that you will continue reading in the JOURNALS OF CORRIE BELLE HOLLISTER series. If you know a young man or woman whom you feel would benefit from Zack’s story, but who is unable to afford it, please write us at [email protected]. We will do what we can to see that he or she obtains a copy.
God bless you!
Michael Phillips
About the Author
Michael Phillips is a bestselling author of a number of beloved novels, including such well-known series as SHENANDOAH SISTERS, CAROLINA COUSINS, CALEDONIA, and THE JOURNALS OF CORRIE BELLE HOLLISTER. He has also served as editor of many more titles, adapting the classic works of Victorian author George MacDonald (1824–1905) for today’s reader, and his efforts have since generated a renewed interest in MacDonald. Phillips’s love of MacDonald’s Scotland has continued throughout his writing life.
In addition to his fifty published editions of MacDonald’s work, Phillips has authored and coauthored over ninety books of fiction and nonfiction, ranging from historical novels to contemporary whodunits, from fantasy to biblical commentary.
Michael and his wife, Judy, spend time each year in Scotland but make their home in California. To learn more about the author and his books, visit fatheroftheinklings.com. He can be found on Facebook at facebook.com/michaelphillipschristianauthor/. To contact the Phillipses or join their email family, please write to: [email protected].
Books by Michael Phillips
Fiction
THE RUSSIANS*
The Crown and the Crucible • A House Divided • Travail and Triumph
THE STONEWYCKE TRILOGY*
The Heather Hills of Stonewycke • Flight from Stonewycke • Lady of Stonewycke
THE STONEWYCKE LEGACY*
Stranger at Stonewycke • Shadows over Stonewycke • Treasure of Stonewycke
THE SECRETS OF HEATHERSLEIGH HALL
Wild Grows the Heather in Devon • Wayward Winds
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