by Nancy Rue
“Well, that’s a good thing, because we’re headed for that new house right now.”
“What about my baptism?” Desmond said.
“Like I said, that’s where we’re headed.”
When we turned onto San Luis, cars lined the street on both sides. Owen drove all the way down to the other end of the block before he concluded there were no more parking places.
“I’ll turn around and drop you off,” he said as he pulled into the deserted construction site on the corner. “Then I’ll see if I can’t find a space over on—”
I didn’t hear the rest of his plan. A figure had caught my eye, someone standing beneath the skeletal framework of a building yet to be, hands in his pockets.
“Let me out here, Owen,” I said.
He stopped the car and looked at me yet again in the rearview mirror. “I’m not going to have you going all the way down this street on crutches.”
“You can wait for me, then,” I said. “There’s somebody I need to talk to.”
I refused his attempt to help me out and got the crutches untangled and under my arms. I heard him back the car out as I swung my way to Garry Howard.
He didn’t look up until I had almost reached him. A shock of white hair fell over his forehead, but it didn’t conceal the deep lines in his brow. I’d never seen the Reverend look unkempt and vulnerable. I almost wished I’d cleared my throat to give him a chance to recover his dignity. That must be why Bonner always did it.
“Are you here to say I told you so?” he said.
“No,” I said. “I’m just … here.”
He gave me a frail glance and returned his gaze to the half-framed structure. “I had a vision,” he said.
“I know about those.”
“Not just for the school. For Troy.”
“I’m sorry?” I said.
“I always thought I could get through to him somehow, help him be a better man. He did so much for us, I thought I could do that for him. I knew he had his flaws, but I thought I saw good.” The Reverend Garry bowed his head. “Foolish,” he said.
“I can tell you that there was good, once,” I said. “But evil cut to the root of the good somewhere along the line, and the flaw became tragic.”
“You were wiser than I was.”
“I didn’t come up with that. Anything remotely coherent that comes out of me is all God.”
I waited for the frown. The Bible quote. The insistence that if I would only come to church, I could be healed of such blasphemy.
He only gazed up again. I could feel the hurt etched in the long creases of his face.
“I don’t know what to tell my church,” he said. “They had such high hopes.”
“Tell them you feel God’s pain for Troy.”
He looked at me, startled.
“As long as we can still feel God’s pain,” I said, “there’s still hope for the church.”
“Big Al!”
I looked behind me at Desmond, who was hanging halfway out of the car window.
“I got to go get baptized!”
“There’s still hope, Garry,” I whispered.
I left him staring at his broken vision.
It wasn’t until Owen dropped us off in front of Sacrament House that I saw everyone was gathered not there, but across the street. Old Maharry Nelson, Bonner and Liz, India and Hank, Nita and Leighanne, and the man-HOGs in leathers had formed a circle on the front lawn. Ophelia sat willowy and quiet on a lawn chair. Zelda was beside her, looking awkward and dutiful. Hank was there too, whisking Desmond into the house that I could only stare at.
Blossoms of freesia and pinks festooned the porch railings and trailed down either side of the front path as if they’d been dropped there by frolicking flower girls. The late afternoon light made pink shafts across the communion table on the porch and cast the long playful shadows of my family on the grass.
“Hobble on over here, Al,” Hank said from the steps. “A little help, yes?”
“You don’t have to carry me,” I said to the platoon of HOGs who mobilized outside the car. “Seriously, guys.”
There was no stopping them. I was all but CareFlighted up the drive and inserted into a lounge chair. When they stepped away, I saw the pond.
Someone had scrubbed the slimy green into smooth white stone; that action had Mercedes’s MO all over it. Fungus-less water, rosy with sunset, filled the pond to its flower-lined brim, and beside it—a Tupperware pitcher, and a neatly folded pile of Harley-Davidson beach towels.
“Oh, my loves, a footwashing,” I said.
“No, Miss Angel,” India said. “A baptism.”
She nodded toward the front door, where four figures emerged, each in a black swimsuit that covered her cleavage and her midriff and every other part of her she had once shared with whoever would pay to touch it.
Mercedes, stately as a queen.
Jasmine, eyes lustrous, without a tear in sight.
Sherry, milky white. Pure.
And Desmond. Clad in black swim trunks and T-shirt and the cross Chief had given him, shed of the swagger and the fist bumps, but fully clothed in the shine of his latte skin.
From his black mama. And his white one.
The Sisters and their Brother knelt around the pond. Hank stood in it, shin deep, and invited each in her turn to join her. Each set herself on her knees in the water and bowed her head, while Hank poured from the pitcher, in the name of the Father. And of the Son. And of the Holy Spirit, whose presence whispered in the water and the light and the very air we breathed.
I listened with ears to hear as each of the Sisters touched us with her faith … “I feel like my past been finally washed away …” “I ain’t jus’ clean and sober—I’m clean and saved …” “I’m free. That’s all—I’m free.”
But when Desmond came up sputtering from dunking his whole head into the water, I could hear him with my very soul.
“I didn’t believe in no God when me and my first mama was on the street,” he said. “And then I did, ’cause of Big Al, and it seem like, okay, you believe and all this good stuff happen to you. I asked Mr. Chief, though—”
Desmond turned, still standing in the water, covered in gooseflesh, and my heart sank. He was looking for Chief …
Who was, indeed, there, parked in his wheelchair. With Kade at the helm.
“… ’cause I like to run everything by him, and he give me this cross to wear so when any bad stuff happen, I’d remember and still believe. Only, bad stuff did happen, real bad stuff, and I didn’t never wear it ’cause it didn’t stop more bad from goin’ down. That’s when I tol’ Big Al I wasn’t havin’ no baptism.” He paused for a second. Even my Desmond had to stop for a breath now and then. “They was always talkin’ about Jesus dyin’ for us and savin’ us, and I didn’t see no Jesus dyin’ for me and savin’ my—behind.” His grin for me was brief, before he swallowed and worked that troublesome Adam’s apple I loved so much. “Then today, I seen him. Not him—but I seen Big Al almost dyin’ to save me, even though I steal her Oreos and don’t tell her stuff, even though she already knows it, and it was like seein’ Jesus. And I knew I had to get me some a that.”
Just as she had done for each of the Sisters, India wrapped a towel around his shoulders and kissed one cheek, and then the other. That holy kiss that no one could give like India.
On the other side of them Kade stood behind Chief. The fading light erased the edges of the handsome man-features, softening his face into a little boy’s. A little boy not sure he should join in. The little boy I didn’t raise.
By my own choice. A choice that had made deceivers out of both of us.
Kade must have felt me watching because his eyes shifted from Desmond to me.
I’m sorry, they said.
“Time to party!”
Mercedes gave Desmond’s soggy Afro a smack. “We gon’ have communion, boy.”
“That’s what I jus’ said. Time to party.”
The group moved to the porch, where India was already lighting the candles of the Easter Even vigil to follow. Sherry knelt beside my chair.
“I’ll help you up there,” she said. “You need to stop banging yourself up, girl.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and pulled her toward me. “You heard how it happened,” I said.
“Some loser with a rap sheet tried to mow you and Desmond down.”
“It was Sultan, Sherry.”
Panic shot through her eyes. “Sultan’s dead.”
“We don’t know that anymore.”
“I know it.”
“How?” I said. “How is it that you know?”
“I told you before—just leave it alone.”
“I can’t anymore.”
I tilted my chin toward the porch, where Desmond was hanging one lanky arm around Liz Doyle’s neck and telling Stan the Man, “You can have bread, dude. Ain’t nobody here cut outta the body a Christ.”
Sherry’s face paled, until I could almost see through her to the scene she was once more burying.
“Do what you have to do, Miss Angel,” she said.
She got to her feet and went to join the others at the table. The fear had returned to her steps.
“Desmond says he’s going to stay up all night for the vigil.”
Chief eased his wheelchair over the tufts of grass and stopped beside me. I couldn’t look at him.
“He’ll be asleep the first hour, guaranteed,” I said.
“Classic.”
“Yeah.”
I imagined him tilting his head, creasing the tiny lines, looking through me the way only this man I loved could do. But I couldn’t make myself turn around and see it, and not be able to touch it.
“We’re a pair to draw to,” he said.
When I opened my eyes, he was so close his breath warmed my face. “If it comes to it, we can fight this out with our crutches.”
“What, Chief?” I said. “What are we even doing?”
“You know what you’re doing. You always do. I only know what I want to do.”
“Then why don’t you just do it?”
“Because I can’t put you in that position with God.”
Chief put two fingers on my chin and nudged my face toward the street. “Do you see that, down on the corner?”
All I saw at first was the skeleton of the school, now cast in black by the last of the sunset. As I looked, Garry Howard’s form took shape. He was still standing at the curb.
“The good reverend is looking at the position he’s in,” Chief said. “I can’t put you there.”
“Garry Howard didn’t go to God with his decision to accept money from Troy Irwin. That’s the position he’s in.” I turned back to Chief’s breath. “I’m not there, and you can’t take me there. I can’t stop heeding the Nudges and listening to the whispers and paying attention to the pain. God won’t let me.”
“So is God going to let you be with a man who didn’t get in the pond?”
“Would that be the God you told Desmond he should believe in?”
“The God I want to believe in.”
I couldn’t breathe. But I could say, “All we can do is ask him.”
“How do we do that?”
I moved closer, close enough to make it safe to close my eyes. I felt Chief’s hands in my hair and his breath on my mouth. And his kiss in my soul.
“Nudge?” Chief said into my lips.
“No,” I said. “Just joy.”
From the porch, Hank called out, “The Lord be with you.”
I put my hands on Chief’s, which were still holding my face. “And also with you,” I said.
You would think as a prophet, I’d know what God was doing with me.
For that moment at least, I did.
… a little more …
When a delightful concert comes to an end,
the orchestra might offer an encore.
When a fine meal comes to an end,
it’s always nice to savor a bit of dessert.
When a great story comes to an end,
we think you may want to linger.
And so, we offer ...
AfterWords—just a little something more after you
have finished a David C Cook novel.
We invite you to stay awhile in the story.
Thanks for reading!
Turn the page for ...
• Discussion Questions
• More about the Nudge
Discussion Questions
The following are a few thoughts to spur discussion with fellow readers or simply to ponder on your own. Should your conversation lead to questions for me, I would love to hear from you at [email protected].
Before I start to write a novel, I always form the question I hope to answer in the course of the story. The question for Unexpected Dismounts was, to put it in Allison’s terms: Now that I’ve found Jesus and know what to do with him, how do I know what Jesus is doing with me? After reading the book, what do you think is the answer to that question—not only for Allison, but for you?
I also have a key word—a mustard seed, if you will—from which the story grows. The word this time was feeling, which seems sort of vague until you think about it in terms of Allison’s having to feel something of what God feels in order to deepen her perceptions of what truly needs to be done. Do you think she got there? Do you ever get the sense that you and God are sharing an emotion?
And then of course there’s the scriptural basis, which was pretty much a no-brainer for this book:
Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet. I have set you an example that you should do as I have done for you.” (John 13:14–15)
How do you see that applying toAllison
Chief
The Sacrament Sisters
India
Officer Kent
Anyone else in the story
Got any footwashing you need to do?
The whole bathing of one another’s feet in obedience to Jesus’ instruction can be quite lovely on a Maundy Thursday evening. But when you go beyond the ritual and into the real dirt and grime of self-sacrifice, it’s a whole other thing. When does the nitty-gritty of it get to Allison? Force her to make tough decisions? Did you ever doubt that she’d go through with it? How about you? Are you backing off from the dirty water and the bunions at all? I gotta tell you, Allison convicted me on a few things …
This is a trilogy, which means there are still threads left to be tied up in book three, Too Far to Say Far Enough. Any thoughts on how Allison and Kade’s relationship will develop? How Allison and Chief will work out the faith issues that stand between them? What Desmond will be like as he turns into a teenager? What will go down with Troy now that the whole town knows he’s been a person of interest in a rape case? How the whole Sultan thing will be resolved? Will Allison return to the church? What’s next for the Sacrament Sisters? I’d be fascinated to know your thoughts, so don’t be shy about using that email address.
Beyond just plot development, what thoughts linger now that you’ve finished reading Unexpected Dismounts? Have you felt the Nudge recently? Have you counted the cost of heeding it? Do you share the quite valid fears of characters like Ms. Willa, India, and Reverend Garry Howard? Zelda? Ophelia? Are there baby steps you could take to conquer those?
And about those unexpected dismounts … which ones in your life have affected you the most? I
s it time to get back on and ride?
The Nudge
The whole concept of being Nudged by God to do something you obviously didn’t think up yourself has grown into more than a premise for a series of novels. Together with other Nudgees, I’ve formed a blog community called “The Nudge” (what else?), where we share the pokes and wild dreams and impossible projects we strongly suspect are coming from God. Please join us at www.tweenyouandme.typepad.com/the_nudge. You can also find me on Facebook (www.facebook.com/nnrue) and Twitter (@nnrue).
My Latest Nudge
If you would like to go deeper in discovering what your Nudges from God might mean for your journey, one or more of the following might be options for you:
Skype session or conference call for your book club or women’s group. Send me an email at [email protected].
Curriculum guides for six-week studies of The Reluctant Prophet and Unexpected Dismounts suitable for women’s groups and adaptable for individual use. Download free of charge at www.nancyrue.com.
I am available to lead women’s retreats related to the novels. Find more details at www.nancyrue.com. Click on Events.
Learn more about my books and other resources for teens at www.facebook.com/nrueforteens.
Photo by Joel Strayer
NANCY RUE is the author of more than one hundred books for adults and teens, including the Christy Award–winning The Reluctant Prophet and Healing Waters (with Steve Arterburn), which was the 2009 Women of Faith Novel of the Year. She travels extensively—at times on the back of a Harley—speaking to and teaching groups of women of all ages. Nancy lives on a lake in Tennessee with her Harley-ridin’ husband, Jim, and their two yellow Labs (without whom writing would be difficult).