The children spilled out of the bus, took over the yard and house, and devoured everything set before them. NJB offered them soft drinks and sports drinks, but they preferred plain tap water, and that was what they got. The more noise and commotion they made, the jollier he seemed to become. Even the newborn’s hungry wails didn’t seem to phase him. He confessed to Mama Prophecy that he missed having kids around the place. After the barbecue, the children took pails and baskets out back to collect cones, ferns, moss, birch bark, moose nuggets, and other raw materials for their crafts. The adults relaxed on patio chairs and talked late into the night, too late to set out on the road again.
“Tell you what,” NJB said. “Why don’t you stay here tonight. I have more than enough room.”
Famous last words. The Prophecys parked the bus in the backyard for over a month. They had the run of the house. NJB would leave after breakfast and not return until dinnertime. Sometimes he’d be away for days. He never discussed what he did for a living, and Poppy never asked. He kept the fridge and pantry stocked with high-end food and never asked for reimbursement. He didn’t bar Crissie Lou from the carpets or sofa and didn’t seem to mind when the girls totally rearranged his furniture. On the contrary, he bought Crissie Lou her own dog bed and special treats, and he told the girls he loved the new furniture arrangement. He was helpful in finding Proverbs a street druggist who could sell him his Prednisone tablets by the thousand. And not once did he behave inappropriately with any of the girls or Mama.
But for all his good qualities, NJB was a deeply flawed man. His speech was still laced with obscenities, though he claimed to be cleaning it up. He drank a six-pack of beer, starting the moment he returned from work. Two whole cupboards over the fridge were devoted to bottles of hard liquor. There were New Scientist magazines in the bathroom; a 54-inch flatscreen TV (137 cm) in the living room and smaller ones in all the bedrooms; and a gold-plated, pot-bellied Buddha incense holder on a shelf in the hall where you couldn’t help but see it (until Poppy covered it with a towel). Nevertheless, a messenger was a messenger, and Poppy was willing to cut him some slack until the message was delivered.
The inevitable, divisive crisis came one afternoon when Poppy walked in on NJB in his home office showing Corny and Proverbs how to set up Facebook accounts on his computer. Poppy waited in the doorway until Corny managed to pull his eyes from the hypnotic screen long enough to see him there. He elbowed his brother, and both boys tried to melt away. But their father had them blocked in the room, and before he let them pass, he told them to tell Adam to start packing up the family. It was time to be moving on.
“Moving on?” NJB said when he and Poppy were alone. “You found a destination to move on to?”
Poppy shook his head.
Silence filled the room. It was as if some unseen switch had been flipped and both men were listening for the rumble of distant engines. For Poppy it was just the latest stab in the back by someone he’d let through his defenses.
But NJB wasn’t so willing to throw in the towel. “Uh, Prophecy,” he said with a classic Jeff Bridges look of puzzlement. “I’m not sure, but I’m guessing I just did something wrong?”
“My boys, all my children, know to stay away from computers. I told them a million times. There’s public computers at the library, and when they ask me if they can use them, I say no. So what do they do? They trick you into showing them. I don’t blame you, Jeff. You didn’t know better. But they did, and I’m very disappointed in them. I’m going to have to punish those two. Very disappointed.”
“Now, hold on a minute, Prophecy. I’m not trying to tell you how to raise your kids, but what’s wrong with computers? It’s impossible to function nowadays without one. I didn’t show them any dirty sites. I was showing them garden variety social media.”
Poppy stared blankly.
“Do you know what that is? Myspace? Facebook?”
“It’s new names for old vices.”
NJB nodded his head. “I suppose that’s one way of looking at it. I’ve heard that people do get addicted to Facebook. Even more get addicted to games, and I admit I showed them a couple of game sites. My apologies. I won’t do it again.
“Still, if you let me put a bug in your ear, Prophecy. I’ll show you what the internet could do for you. For your knick-knack business.”
Despite himself, Poppy said, “What do you mean?”
“In a word, my friend, I mean e-commerce.” He began opening a number of bookmarks on his browser. “I’ve been watching how you go about your business, you know. Seems like the whole family pitches in to make all those little gimcracks, some of which are really good by the way, and then the whole family pitches in to sell them at the fair, flea markets, and Christmas bazaars, right? But I’m guessing there’s not enough flea markets in all of Alaska to keep the family’s head above water. Am I right?”
Poppy was noncommittal.
“How’d you like to be able to sell your stuff anywhere in the world from the comfort of your easy chair?” He pushed one of the chairs to Poppy. “Come on, Prophecy, sit down and I’ll show you just how all this works.”
As a matter of record, Poppy Prophecy didn’t sit down for anyone. It was only because he was waiting for a sign and NJB was the designated messenger of that sign that he bent the rules at all and sat in front of the Devil’s TV.
TAKE A LOOK at this,” NJB said. He brought up a page of search results for “praying hands figurines.” Praying hands came in bronze, glass, wood, and plastic from all over the world.
“Except for one or two,” NJB continued, “none of them can hold a candle to the ones your son Adam carves from birch.” He opened another page of nativity sets. “And your Christmas mangers are second to none. I gotta tell you, Prophecy, you could do big business on this one site alone, and there are hundreds more just like it.”
The two men stayed up all night. NJB used a couple of Adam’s figurines to set up a vendor’s account on Etsy. He lit the figurines with reading lamps and shot them with his phone. He wrote heartfelt product descriptions and set prices Poppy thought were way too high. He helped Poppy set up Gmail and PayPal accounts and showed him the online portal to the family’s credit union. Even as they were setting things up, someone purchased a pair of praying hands.
“What do you mean?” Poppy said.
“Just what I said; you sold a figurine. Someone in —” he pointed to the monitor. “Mrs. Angela Purnell in Warwick, Rhode Island, purchased it and paid to have it shipped by second-day FedEx. That’s one of the shipping options we set up. See here? All you have to do is confirm the sale, and her money goes to PayPal and from there to your savings account. Tomorrow you go to the FedEx pickup point and ship it to her. Oh, look, you just sold another. Maybe we should raise the price some more.”
It took a few moments for the situation to sink in, and when it did, Poppy said, “You’ve got to be kidding me. This is the internet?”
APPARENTLY, THE MESSAGE Father God sent NJB to deliver involved e-commerce, the last thing in the world Poppy expected to learn from the man knocking on their bus door. But it was probably the most important message Poppy could have received at that juncture, aside from a destination. And now that the message was delivered and received with an open mind, it truly was time to move on. Fifthmonth was half over, and the Alaska winter loomed just beyond Seventhmonth. But move on where? Again Poppy called the family together in prayer, even as they packed to go. Though they were soon ready to depart, they lingered at NJB’s for another week. Meanwhile, NJB helped Poppy incorporate HIS CREATIONS as an Alaska LLC. NJB took him into Anchorage to window shop for a laptop and the means to charge it in the bush. But Poppy was still reluctant to buy. It was bad enough he was learning to use a computer; how could he justify spending the last of their cash on one of them? Yet, without a computer, how could he run the business he had just set up? It was a moral dilemma, and Poppy Prophecy hated moral dilemmas.
One evening after dinner, NJB sa
id, “Ever hear about McHardy, Alaska?”
Poppy had seen the name on a map. They’d taken the Edgerton Cutoff during their year of rambling, but they never got closer to McHardy than Denny Lake.
NJB described the town of McHardy, its community and surroundings. It sounded like the sort of unpeopled place Poppy had been searching for, especially the part about the footbridge. The following day, Poppy and Adam took the Dodge on a quick scouting trip, and a week later the family was camped out in the parking lot at the end of McHardy Road.
On the morning the caravan departed NJB’s house in Palmer, NJB distributed gifts. For each of the children, from baby to adult, there was a musher’s hat, all of them blue. They were sewn by a company up in Fairbanks and were good to about a thousand degrees below zero.
For Mama P there was a Nook ebook reader already loaded with several dozen Christian romances including Redeeming Love by Francine Rivers, Short-Straw Bride by Karen Witemeyer and Love Comes Softly by Janette Oke.
For Poppy, well, Poppy’s gift was wrapped in Father’s Day wrapping paper. With a wink, NJB suggested he open it later, in private. “The only thing I’m gonna tell you is it’s not a computer.”
It was and it wasn’t a computer. It was a Samsung Galaxy smart phone that NJB had loaded with all the apps HIS CREATIONS LLC would require to operate from the middle of nowhere.
LL5 1.0
THE RHYTHM OF the road put all the passengers to sleep, including Poppy. Wallis was less than an hour away when Proverbs stomped on the brakes and the bus went into a skid. Poppy opened his eyes just in time to see the moose that Proverbs had barely avoided hitting. He clung to the rail as his son quickly brought the ungainly vehicle back under control. But instead of continuing on, Proverbs turned off the highway in Sutton.
“What’s wrong?” Poppy said.
“Nothin’, lord, but the road is icing up pretty bad.”
Proverbs pulled into the lot of a convenience store, and the pickup rolled in behind him.
“Tell him I want my phone back.”
“Yes, lord.”
The boys quickly mounted heavy chains on the bus tires. Proverbs brought his father a styro cup of coffee, a local newspaper, and his phone. It began to snow in the darkness: big, wet flakes that twinkled in the sodium lights of the gas islands. It was after 6:00 p.m., and most of the headlights on the highway were coming from Anchorage. Poppy dialed NJB’s number, but his call went to voicemail, and then a soulless voice said the mailbox was full. So Poppy called one of the churches in Wallis he was planning to impose his family upon. But the pastor begged off on account of they were already hosting a high-school basketball team from the bush village of Ningaluk that was in town for a tournament, and who quite filled up the fellowship hall. The other church he called rang and rang and never picked up.
Poppy sipped his coffee and browsed the newspaper by the light of the convenience store sign. It was last week’s issue of Palmer’s Frontier Guardian. Sixteen tabloid-size pages of want ads, public notices, police blotter, and opinion masquerading as news. On page three, a half-page advertisement caught Poppy’s attention. It depicted a family he knew. He’d met them at the state fair last summer during the run-up to the fall election. Rex Lawther had run for State Senate from District E. And lost, apparently. The ad headline, in large brush script, read: Thanks for Your Support. Next to the family portrait was a graphic of an ancient scroll with tattered edges, and inscribed on the scroll was this message:
Friends
Change of Seasons Greetings!
It was a long and grueling bitterly fought election season. The votes are in, have been counted, recounted, and certified that we lost by 54 votes. With God’s grace, this loss will be only a temporary setback. I will keep my website at www.rexlawtherforsenate.org, so please check it from time to time.
For now, we are blessed to turn our attention from the political season to the sacred one. May God bless you and your family as you celebrate the birth of our Savior, Jesus Christ, and anticipate the opportunities of the coming New Year.
Thank you for your prayers and encouragement. I strive to justify the faith you put in me.
Rex Lawther
Poppy examined the photo again. It was a traditional sitting, as it should be, of Mr. Candidate in the center, surrounded by wife and kiddies. Moses would recognize that sitting. In this case, Mr. Candidate’s wife was youngish, fit, and trim, and there were only two offspring, dull-looking, one of each kind, in their late teens.
The gracefully losing candidate himself was a former high school football champ who once upon a time led the East Wallis Hornets to state championship. Considerably heavier now in all his flesh, and turgid in all his juices, he gazed earnestly from the frame. Big fat face like aged soft cheese, this Rex Lawther.
Proverbs climbed into the bus and started the engine. “Might as well gas up,” he said as he backed into the service island. “Know where we’re spending the night, lord?”
“Yes,” Poppy said, “I do.”
LL6 1.0
THE LITTLE TOWN of Wallis started life as a gold miner camp on Lake Lola, forty miles by trail (64 km) northeast of Anchorage. It remained an obscure outpost, not even meriting a civic motto for seventy years. Everything changed in 1971, when the state completed the George Parks Highway. The Parks ran through Wallis on its way from Anchorage to Denali National Park and on to Fairbanks in the Interior. It quickly became the most heavily traveled highway in the state. Sleepy Wallis was suddenly on the map. It soon eclipsed neighboring Palmer and grew so rapidly that it earned not one but two civic mottoes, one for each direction of travel. For motorists driving south to Anchorage, Wallis was “Almost There.” To those heading north, it was “Last Whiz for 200 Miles.”
LL7 1.0
RORY LAWTHER WAS in the shop behind Greatland Action Sports helping Jerry, one of their mechanics, to uncrate and assemble the shipment of twenty new Arctic Cat snowmachines. He’d come over right after school and hadn’t taken a break yet. None of them had. It was so close to Christmas the place was absolutely crazy. Sleds, trailers, helmets, clothes, posters — everything was flying out the showroom doors. Christmas 2012 was stacking up to be their best season since the beginning of the Great Recession.
Rory’s phone trilled. It was his mom. “I can’t reach your dad,” she said.
“You try the office?”
“Of course I tried the office!”
She sounded a little more tense than usual.
“Find him and tell him to call me right back. No, wait. Don’t hang up. Take your phone to him and put it in his hand. I’ll hold.”
“Is something wrong, ma?”
“No. Yes. No. Just do what I said.”
Rory wiped the grease from his hands. Jerry said, “You calling it quits, chief?”
“Naw. I’ll be back. I just gotta go see my dad.”
“You tell your dad I need a dinner break. I get a dinner break, or else.”
Halfway out the door, Rory paused to ask, “Or else what, Jer?”
“Or else I quit, and I mean it this time.”
“I’ll tell him.”
“You do that.”
In the showroom, everyone but his dad was waiting on customers. He asked Sadie if she’d seen him, and she shook her head without even slowing down.
George was showing Mr. Randolf a 2013 Arctic Cat Bearcat 5000XTGS, the new top-of-the-line, high performance long track. Lani Randolf, Mr. R’s daughter, was in Rory’s class at East Wallis High. Mr. R caught Rory’s eye and waved him over.
“Yes, sir?”
“Do me a favor, Rory, and don’t tell Lani about this, all right? It’s a surprise.”
“No, sir, I won’t say a word. And nice surprise, by the way.”
“Thatta boy.”
When Rory went past the check out counter, Melissa said, “I’m putting together a McDonald’s order. You in?”
“Yeah, thanks. A Big Mac, fries, and a coke. Get Jerry two of everything.
And supersize them.”
“Will do.”
In the office Rex was on the phone stabbing computer keys and fumbling with files on his desk. “No, no, not B. ‘E,’” he said. “‘E’ as in Elephant. ‘O’ as in . . . ‘O’ as in —” He covered the mouthpiece and said, “Quick, what starts with an ‘O’?”
“Obama?”
“Very funny.” He uncovered the phone and said, ‘O’ as in Okay. That’s right. Elephant Okay three-one-seven-five. Say it back to me.”
Rory held up his phone and showed him the display.
“Tell her I’ll call her back.”
“She says it’s an emergency.”
His dad rolled his bloodshot eyes, took the phone, and juggled the two calls together. “Who? . . . Say again? . . . That’s right . . . All of them? . . . Yes, I need five complete sets ASAP . . . No, I didn’t tell him . . . Well, yes, but that was last summer . . . Send it overnight. I know, I know, but it was your screwup in the first place. My customers are . . . what good are trailers without tongues? You tell me that! . . . Yes. Yes. That’s what I’m trying to . . .”
Rory sat in the bookkeeper’s chair and leaned all the way back to stare upside down at the wall of plaques and citations that his dad had collected over the years. Rotary, the Wallis Chamber of Commerce times seven, the 2009 Special O Ski Tournament (There’s an O!), the Iditarod Organizing Committee, the Arctic Cat Dealership Association, and so on and so forth.
When his dad finished both calls, Rory asked him what was going on with Mom.
“Remember that family?”
“What family?”
“The one with all the kids and the bus.”
Rory jerked up straight. “The Prophecys?”
“Yeah, that one. They just pulled into our drive. Seems I invited them to camp in our yard if they ever needed to.”
Upon This Rock Page 9