by Chris Fabry
The door opened and Callie peered into the darkness. She switched on the front porch lights and only one of them worked, but it was enough for her to recognize me. She came out in her bare feet with an umbrella held up high.
“Billy, what are you doing out here?”
Her voice was like an answer to prayer.
She looked close at my face, her feet squishing through the wet grass and mud. There was no way she could have distinguished the rain from the tears, but I guess if you love somebody, you can look into the eyes and see further down into the wellspring of life.
“What is it?” she said. “Are you going low?”
I gave her a sad smile and shook my head.
“Then what’s the matter?”
“I think I see now. What you were talking about. The dam over my heart. It’s broke. And I can feel everything washing away. Everything in the world.”
Her eyes went back and forth over my face. “Oh, Billy,” she said, and the kindness in her voice touched deep and the logjam burst. She gathered me in and hugged me tight through all the wet and cold, then took me into her trailer and made me take off my jacket and shirt and handed me a towel that I draped over me. The water just flowed from some cistern of the heart, like it had been trapped my whole life. I put my head down on her kitchen table and let it come, and she stood behind me and rubbed my back, crying herself.
“It’s all right. Just let it come on out.”
“I don’t mean to be this way,” I said through the tears.
“This is you, Billy Allman. I don’t want anything else.”
“Do you mean that?” I said, raising the towel and looking up at her.
It was her turn for the red eyes and puckered chin. She sat down and put her forehead on my back and just let go. “I mean it, Billy. I mean it with all my heart.”
If you would have asked me what our problem was before then, I would have said her problem was that she couldn’t love me like I was. She wanted somebody else. She couldn’t be satisfied with the man I had become. But right then I knew she wanted the real me. She’d seen glimpses from time to time, flashes. I had been in there, covered by the past and all the debris, and the flood that meant to kill me had done its work.
I told her about my meeting with Vernon Turley. I told her everything he did. I told her about the ghosts that haunted me, and as I dug deeper, I remembered things I hadn’t even told my counselor. Feelings I had and things I’d been through that had been locked tight. My counselor was right: getting this stuff into the light and telling the truth to myself and somebody else made a difference. Sometimes the biggest enemy you have is down deep in your own soul. It was there in that little kitchen that I began to feel the freedom he was talking about.
* * *
Three days later there was a story in the newspaper about the death of a beloved hometown gospel musician. It had Vernon Turley’s picture on an inside section and a story next to the obituaries. The community was mourning a great loss. He was taken too quickly, some said. Others mourned him like he was an angel God had given for a short time and then took from us. The cause of death was unclear. He had been in excellent health but had become moody in recent days and seemed troubled. Still, the family insisted his death was from natural causes.
27
The revelations about Billy’s past saddened me to the core. I had seen most of his life, except for the period when I was called away to service, and to think a person in some semblance of spiritual authority over him would take advantage of such innocence both sickened and disturbed me.
And I was astounded that a mere mortal like Callie, who did not have my insight and broader perspective, would pick up on his suffering and inner turmoil. Indeed, her love caused her to see more deeply. She did not let her own loneliness confuse her. She truly loved in a selfless way, and I was sure that her actions would pave the way of their future.
However, I could not help but take the logical trip past the choices of others and try to discern how I fit in with these events. You have heard of the angel who wrestled with Jacob. I know him personally. Now I was an angel wrestling with myself.
While this was happening to Billy, I was not only away; I had been called away. And I was told by my superior that things would need to occur. Why? For what purpose? If I had been present, I know exactly what I would have done to the man who abused Billy, and it would have taken all of hell’s forces to protect him.
But it was not the man and his choices that vexed me the most. Sin corrupts. Sin destroys. It brings death. No, what bothered me most was my own commitment to The Plan. I had spent most of Billy’s early life simply observing and, at times, becoming involved surreptitiously in minor incidents of protection I have not herein revealed. His first few attempts to drive were frightening in the extreme. There was an incident with wiring a station’s transmitter that might have turned deadly had I not been there, but these I saw as minor instances and the payoff from my constant attention. If The Plan was to have Billy become all he could be, why throw into his life something the Almighty knew would further complicate and stunt him as a person? Why allow this needless occurrence to taint his life and relationships?
As humans would say, it took my breath away. As a warrior, it made me angry. I wanted to inflict harm. It caused me to doubt my role in Billy’s life altogether. Why have my protection when it was pulled at the moment of a great trial? Are we, the ministering spirits, simply here to clean up debris?
All of my inquiring of my superiors and doubting of my assignments led me to one conclusion—that questioning the events divulged here questions the ultimate Sovereign upon whom all questioning rests. Each question mark on the back roads of the human condition eventually leads to Him. I am upset at evildoers and how they have confused and contaminated the earth with death. It should never have been this way. And yet, in the counsel of the Holy, there was knowledge that it would be this way. He knew the risk of love would demand a price. Life would require death.
I am not getting this down correctly, for I am not a scribe. I do not have eloquence that some do. I am a warrior. But in this warrior’s heart beats a desire to know why. That is the central question of all heaven and earth.
Why?
Knowing this struggle would continue, I was faced with a choice. It is the same, I suppose, as those on earth must make, though their eyes are veiled to a much greater extent than mine. But it is the same choice. Can I live with “why?” Can I exist with the inevitable questions that come when suffering awakens the soul? And if I do choose to live with that choice, how do I accomplish the task?
28
The church was almost full on our wedding day. We decided not to wait and plan a big to-do. We just invited anyone who knew us to come and be part of the celebration. Our counselors were there, and that made both of us feel good. We didn’t have much of a honeymoon because of the station, but Callie didn’t seem to mind. I promised her that we would go to Pipestem Resort State Park and do an overnight as soon as I could train somebody to babysit the station.
I had my hands full fixing up the master bedroom for Callie. We agreed to sell her place for what we could get for it and merge our disparate lives into my place. It was a tight fit for a while, and our first real fight was about whether or not to add on to the house. We’d been through enough counseling by then to know that we needed to really listen to each other, and by the time I got my head wrapped around what was in her heart—that she wanted to make a nest, a home, and not just a place to lay our heads at night—I came around to the idea. That’s why I decided, even before we got married, to build a new studio and shop in the back, separate from the house. That would give Callie the run of the home and me a place to do my work.
I traded out some spots with a local concrete company, and we poured the foundation before the wedding. We used the money from the sale of her home to start construction on the new building. I began with the control room for the board and microphone and then a separate roo
m for the transmitter and other equipment. On Callie’s direction, I designed a studio off to the right side where I could interview people if I wanted. I didn’t see much reason for it at first, but as things turned out, Callie’s dream was bigger and better.
Down the hall was my workroom, and I made it big enough to fit all my old radios and the trinkets I’d accumulated over the years. To save money, we didn’t run plumbing out there, and anytime I needed to go to the bathroom, I would just come into the house. We used a loan to finish off the building and to upgrade the music from tapes to digital files that I loaded into a computer. That was one of the things Callie wanted to see happen—moving away from me getting up twice every night to change the tapes. This way I could program the computer and even download programs to play from the Internet. It made things a lot easier and smoother sounding.
A funny thing happened to my blood sugar around that time, too. My levels evened out and I didn’t have so many highs and lows. It probably had something to do with a regular eating pattern, but I contend a loving wife is one of the best cures for what ails you.
* * *
It was a big day when I transferred all of the equipment from the house to the new building. A lot of it wasn’t finished and there was still that Sheetrock smell to the place, but we made a big deal out of it on the air and invited people to come to our grand opening and take a tour. A handful of people showed up, including Natalie, the little girl who had called and helped me locate Callie. Her grandmother, Mae Edwards, came with her. I learned that the little girl’s grandfather had died a few months earlier and the two of them were alone. I showed them through the studio, and Natalie asked a million questions about how everything worked. She was a real firecracker.
“I’ve been wanting to come see your station for a long time,” the girl said when she got away from her grandmother. “I ride my bike by a lot, and one time I peeked in your window and saw you talking on the microphone.”
“You should have just knocked on the door. I would have given you a tour.”
“My mamaw said I shouldn’t bother grown-ups when they’re working, but I sure do wish I could learn how to push all those buttons and make a radio station work.”
“It’s not that hard,” I said.
“Really?”
“No, I started when I was young, putting old radios together and such.”
Mae came over to us and asked if Natalie was being a bother, and I told her that she wasn’t a bother at all, that I appreciated the questions.
“She’s been talking about this all week,” Mae said. “She does these little recordings pretending she’s on the radio, and it’s just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.”
Natalie told me she had asked for two recorders for Christmas and how she used one player for the music and the other one to record her voice. It was a crude way of doing it, but it showed she understood the concept of radio. As the two of them walked out, I couldn’t help suggesting something. I don’t know if it was the Lord nudging me, but the way things turned out, I tend to believe it was.
“Natalie, how would you like to come by once a week and do an hour on the radio?” I said. “If it’s okay with your grandmother.”
She looked at me like I had offered her the keys to the Magic Kingdom. “You mean it? I could have my own show?”
“Sure. I could have you sit in the studio over there and I’d engineer for you. Then, when you get the hang of it, you could run the board yourself. It’s not that hard. But I have to warn you about something.”
Natalie’s eyes got big again, and I leaned down. “Once radio gets in your blood, you’ll never get it out. It’s just a fact. There’s something contagious about it.”
She nodded like she understood, but I knew she didn’t. Mae thanked me, and I told her to bring Natalie back the next Thursday and I’d promote it on the air. The girl asked what she should do to prepare, and I told her not a thing, that I would help her through it.
“What do you want to call the new program?” I said. “Might be better not to use your real name. Why don’t you come up with something catchy and then next week—”
“June Bug!” she said. “That’s what my daddy used to call me.”
“June Bug it is,” I said. “We’ll call it the June Bug Hour.”
She skipped down the driveway, almost flying like a june bug, her grandmother trying to keep up with her. Her hair was dancing in the wind and the lightning bugs were rising around her. It was like some vision of a perfect early summer evening. She looked back at the older woman and kept talking and gesturing and laughing. I wondered how Mae kept up with her all alone like that.
“That was sweet, what you did for her,” Callie said after they left. “You’ve got a way with children, Mr. Allman.”
“Don’t go getting any ideas, Mrs. Allman.”
* * *
The first June Bug Hour did not go the way I expected. Natalie was a natural, but she had written everything out and she stuck to the page like a fly on paper. She wanted “I’ll Fly Away” as her theme going in and out of the show, so that’s how we started. She told me all the people she’d invited to listen. Kids from her class and teachers and the pastor at her church and everybody on the prayer chain. The kid probably had a bigger audience than my morning show. Mae and Callie listened from the kitchen, and I could tell it meant a lot to the women, but honestly it was the highlight of my week.
Toward the end of the hour, I sat down beside the girl as we played a long tune. “Now this is the last song coming up before the theme.”
“Time sure flies when you’re on the radio, doesn’t it?”
“Sure does. Do you know how you want to end?”
She shuffled the papers that contained every word and thought and breath in pencil. She found the right spot and held it up. “Ready to roll.”
“Okay, but I want you to do something for me. And I want you to trust me. I’ve been doing this a long time.”
“All right, what is it? Should I put more oomph in my voice when I say good-bye?”
I took all of her papers from her and put them in a neat stack. “I want you to do this one without your script.”
She looked like I had just stomped on her little dog’s tail. “But I worked on that a long time. I can’t remember it all.”
“You don’t have to, Natalie. You have a great voice and there’s a lot of energy in your delivery. But the best thing about you and the thing people want to hear is right in here.” I pointed to my chest. “People don’t want to be talked at; they want a conversation with a friend, just like you and I are talking now. So don’t think of radio as a megaphone where you talk to a thousand people. You’re talking to one person. You’re making a connection from your heart to theirs. Just be June Bug.”
“But what if I mess up? What if I can’t do it? Maybe if I try this next week.”
Something welled up in her eyes and I knew exactly how she felt. The freedom was too much too soon. I put the pages down and smiled. “All right, we’ll try that next week. Now get ready; the song’s almost over. I’ll start the theme on your cue.”
I went back to the control room and through the glass watched as she sat up straight, her hair just touching her shoulders. She had the headphones on the lowest position I could get them and still they were too big. She glanced at me as the song ended and took a deep breath. I could tell she was just feeling the moment. When the on-air light went on, she glanced at the clock and then gently put the pages on the table.
“It’s five minutes before seven o’clock and sixty-six degrees in Dogwood. That’s gonna wrap it up for my very first June Bug show. I hope you enjoyed it. And I want to thank Mr. Allman for letting me have the time to come on here and play some songs I like. If you enjoyed it, then tell your friends and family about the station. I’ve told just about everybody I know. And if we all do that, there’s no telling how many people will listen to Good News Bluegrass.
“Mr. Allman said I should just
speak from my heart, and so that’s what I’m going to do. The last song I want to play is the first song we played—‘I’ll Fly Away.’ It means a lot to me because my daddy used to put it on every time I got scared. And you might think I like it because of the jumpy way it’s played—sometimes that can calm a girl’s nerves. But it’s not that. It’s what the song tells you deep down in your heart: One day, if you know Jesus, you are going to fly away to your real home. This old world is not where our treasure is. It’s up there. And I know that better now because my papaw is standing in the presence of his Lord and Savior right now, and I can’t wait to see him again and hug his neck and tell him all my mamaw and I have done since he left.
“Now I’m not saying we can’t have good things down here and have parties and stuff like that, but this song reminds me that no matter how good or bad things get, we have to keep our eyes on heaven. That will make us better people and more kind while we’re still on earth.”
She held up a little hand and waved it back and forth, and I started the Alison Krauss version. “Well, I hope you liked the first June Bug Hour, and please come back next week when we’ll have more great music for you. I’m June Bug. It’s three minutes before seven now and still sixty-six degrees; at least I think it is. Have a good night in Dogwood and thanks for listening. Here’s my song.”