Long Way Gone (9 page)

Dad said he and Jimmy could lead folks most anywhere. Sometimes he would start in the back, winding his way forward. Never even strumming a chord. He would just start tapping out a slow rhythm on the spruce top. Using the guitar like a drum. Dad knew every kind of music known to man and he could play most of it, but when it came to people who were hurting inside, he played old hymns. The simpler the better. Despite his common appearance, Dad was classically trained. He knew Bach and Mozart and Pachelbel, and while he loved their music and he had lightning in his fingers and he could fill the air with more notes than most could comprehend, he said when it came to people, less was more. Fewer notes. Less noise. Just a simple lead. He said, “You play too
much, too busy, and people will sit back and observe. Marvel in your talent. Play simple, and people will join in. Sing along. Which, by the way, is the goal. Our job is to put a song in their mouths and let them sing it back to us. That's all that really matters.” Then he added, “The great players aren't great because of all the notes they can play, but because of the ones they don't play.”

One day we passed a gas station with a bunch of velvet Elvises hanging over clotheslines. He nodded once. “Pop stars may set the world afire, but they come and go. They're a flash in the pan. So are their songs. But good hymns? They live past the people who wrote them. Hymns never die.” He looked down at me. “How many Grammys did Elvis win?”

I shrugged.

“Two.” He palmed the sweat off his face. “For what song?”

Another shrug.

Dad loved the history of music. And he loved to share it.

“In the mid-1880s,” he began, “a Swedish preacher named Boberg wrote and published a poem. No music. Just words. A few years later he attended a meeting and heard his poem sung back to him, attached to an old Swedish melody. Nobody really knows how or who put the two together. Then in the 1920s, a missionary named Hine had climbed into the Carpathian Mountains to minister when he heard—get this—a Russian translation of Boberg's Swedish poem attached to the Swedish melody. Hine was standing in the street preaching on John
chapter 3
when a nasty storm blew in, so a local schoolteacher housed him for the night. As Hine watched the storm roll through those mountains, he added what we now call the first verse. Next he crossed over into Romania and Bukovina, and somewhere beneath the trees and birds, he added the second verse. He finished the third verse after spending time with the Carpathian mountain dwellers and, finally, the fourth verse when he returned to Britain. The song as we know it ended up in the States at a youth camp in California in the early 1950s, where crusade team member George Beverly Shea handed it to a man named
Billy Graham. Then in 1967, a fellow by the name of Presley recorded ‘How Great Thou Art,' and the album went platinum.” Dad held up two fingers. “Twice.”

A couple minutes passed, and rain started pelting the windshield. The wipers tapped out a delayed rhythm. Dad started singing quietly. More for himself than anyone. “O Lord my God, when I in awesome wonder . . .” Words like those sang me to sleep more often than not.

I never did understand why Dad did the tent thing. The brick-and-mortar thing would have been a lot easier. A lot less work too. To make matters worse, he never took an offering. That doesn't mean people didn't give. They did. But Dad never asked. He wanted folks to give out of conviction, not manipulation. Given the piles of crutches that stacked up over the years and the empty wheelchairs, he could have made a pile of money had he wanted to and probably flown to and fro in his own plane, but I never once saw my dad pass a plate.

When it came to music, Dad said his job was to remind people of the words and let them sing. He was musically talented enough that he could have played lead or rhythm for just about anybody, but he always said he was just background. “Spotlight the song and give it back to people. Put it in their mouths. Songs don't belong to us. A song is a light we shine on others, not a light we shine on us.”

We'd been setting up the stage one day, and it was hot. We were resting. I'd gotten curious and realized that my father was unlike every other father I knew. “Dad, why do you do what you do? I mean, are you ever going to get a real job like other dads?”

He laughed. “I sincerely hope not.” He pointed to the front where people walked in. You could see the parking lot in the distance. “My job is to lead people from there to here. To walk them up and set them down in the presence of the One who can help them. Then . . .” He smiled. “Get out of the way.”

“Why?” I said.

“ 'Cause He's got what they need. Not me. People want to dress me up in a fancy suit and put me on TV.” He shook his head and pointed at the lights. “Those things have an odd effect on a man.” He sucked between his teeth. “But remember, diamonds are only brilliant when they reflect.”

I'd only recently become aware of money and success and how others seemed to have it and we didn't. “Dad, can I ask you something?”

“Sure.”

“Do I have an inheritance?”

He laughed. “Who you been listening to?”

“Well, I mean, will I have money one day?”

Dad took his time answering. “Yes, son, you have an inheritance.”

I smiled. I knew it. We were rich. Dad had been hiding it all along. He'd struck a silver vein somewhere on the mountain and he was just keeping it quiet until I got older and we could build a big house and buy a Cadillac.

Then he said, “I'm not leaving something
for
you. I'm leaving something
in
you.”

I didn't like the way that sounded.

M
y first significant memory of the impact of my father on other people and what he was actually doing with his life came when I was eight. Word about Dad had spread. People were driving from California to hear him, and he began looking for bigger venues. We hired four guys just to park all the cars, and we'd grown from one tent to five—tied in the shape of a cross with the center being the stage. Each tent could seat over two hundred, and on most nights every chair was full. Not only that, but folks who couldn't find a seat were standing four and five deep along the edges. Crowding in. Kids sitting on their fathers' shoulders. Moms nursing babies. Old folks in wheelchairs.

Evidently fire and brimstone are more palatable than most folks let on. So with growing need, Dad needed room to grow.

He used to go on long hikes by himself. A quiet time to think. A few miles south of BV, Dad found a high-walled canyon set against the base of Mt. Princeton that had piqued his interest. He pulled out a topo map and showed it to me. From the air it looked like someone had cut a piece of pie out of the side of the mountain. The thirty- to forty-acre section of flat ground, shaped like a funnel, extended out from rock walls that rose several hundred vertical feet. To someone like Dad, who communicated to hundreds, if not thousands, at a time, it created a perfect venue.

There was just one problem. Somebody else owned it. Wanting to show it to me, he hiked me past the umpteen No Trespassing signs and
we slipped up through the evergreens, through the national park that bordered our property, and to the ledge that overlooked the ranch below. A bird's-eye view. He pointed. “We'll put the stage back there where it narrows.” Another direction. “All the tents out here, parking over there, bring in the portable bathrooms over there.” He wiped his hands together like he was dusting them off. “Piece of cake.”

I scratched my head. “But, Dad, we don't own any of this.”

He waved me off. “Somebody does.”

That next week Dad approached the landowner, Mr. Tom Slocumb—a cattleman whose land had been in his family a hundred-plus years. Dad, Big-Big, and I drove across the cattle guard and parked out in front of the man's ranch house. Dad spoke to both of us. “Come on. If Mr. Slocumb doesn't like me, maybe he'll like you two.”

Dad knocked on the door, and a small, wiry man wearing a hat and spurs and a belt buckle the size of his head answered the door. He sized each of us up, spending considerable time studying Big-Big. He looked like he was not in the mood for door-to-door solicitation. “He'p you?”

Dad shook the man's hand and explained who he was and what he wanted. Mr. Slocumb listened while pushing a toothpick around his mouth with amazing dexterity. Every few seconds he'd flip the toothpick end over end and then shove it in either corner of his mouth, where it would sit motionless for a few seconds until his tongue started the whole process over again. Halfway through Dad's story, the man reached in his back pocket and pulled out a pouch of chewing tobacco. He opened it and began digging his fingers into it like he was tossing a salad. This was about the time I noticed he was missing the index finger on his right hand. Once he had the salad good and mixed like he wanted it, he raised a goodly sized wad of brown leaf tobacco into his mouth and packed it into his cheek. When he was finished, it looked like he was sucking on a golf ball. As he listened to Dad talk, one part of his mouth was flipping the toothpick end over end while the other chewed voraciously on the tobacco. I kept waiting for him to spit, but he never did.

When Dad finished, Mr. Slocumb looked at me, then back at Dad, then at Big-Big, then back at me, and finally back at Dad. He tipped his hat back slightly and hung his thumbs in his belt loops.

“Let me get this straight. You happened to be trespassing one day on my land, where I've posted more than two hundred No Trespassing signs, and you happened upon my pretty little meadow up yonder. And you thought to yourself, this'd make a great site for a preaching tent revival where you're gonna have a stage and some tents that will just magically appear. And this man here”—he thumbed at Big-Big—“who's bigger than any human I ever seen, is gonna play pianer while you—” He glanced at me, flipped the toothpick, and then stared back at Dad. “While you preach fire and brimstone to several hundred, maybe even a few thousand self-proclaimed and attentive sinners who are gonna miraculously appear with cars and picnics and umbrellers. And every one of them people, in order to get to your little revival, is gonna parade across my pasture here and then park on the grass that I intend to feed to my cattle before it snows this winter.”

He paused and swallowed. “And to top it all off, you're gonna do all this without passing no plate, without taking nothing from nobody and without talking once't about money or giving or how if they don't they's stealing from”—he pointed up—“the Lord.” He nodded. “That right?”

Dad nodded. “That pretty much sums it up.”

The man laughed. “Mister, you got bigger—” He glanced at me again. “Than my bull out yonder.” He rolled his eyes and turned to Big-Big. “Fella, what size shoe you wear?”

Big-Big never hesitated. “Fi'teen.”

The man sucked through his teeth. “I believe it.” Then he pointed at the drive toward the highway nearly a mile in the distance. “You see that sign in the distance? The one that's nearly as big as a drive-in theatre screen that you drove by to get to my house?”

Dad nodded.

“Well, in case you didn't read it, it says that this property, which
been in my family now for three generations, is being sold along with all my cows 'cause we ain't got no water.”

That didn't make sense to me, because winding through the man's property looked to be a rather large and very dry riverbed. I spoke out of turn. I said, “What happened to your river?”

“That's a good question. And I've asked the same thing many times myself.” He pointed to the riverbed snaking around and through his property. “That used to flow with the most pure water. Adolph Coors himself ain't got better water than that right there, and I reckon it's been flowing in that river since God squeezed it out of the mountain. But then some city slicker with a law degree done some digging in some law books somewhere and bought the land to the north of me.” He pointed. “And as it turns out, his water rights predate mine, so—” Another flip of the toothpick. “I'm screwed. And so are my cows.”

I scratched my head. “Where'd the water go?”

He waved his hand across the land toward the north. “Through his fields.” He turned toward the highway. “It joins the river 'bout a mile that way.”

My dad finished his sentence. “Leaving you high and dry.”

“Yep. So now my riverbed is dry and my cows is drinking mud and there ain't no hay in sight nor any hope of any. So I tell you what, Mr. Preacher Man. If you can fill up that dry riverbed and get my cows a drink of water, you can use my little medder up yonder for as long as you've got breath to preach. If not”—he held out his hand, palm up—“I need ten thousand dollars.” He smiled, revealing a mouthful of stained teeth. “Otherwise, you're SOL.”

A wrinkle appeared between my eyes. I looked at my dad. “What's SOL?”

He thought for a minute. “Sorta-outta-luck.”

The rancher nodded. “That too.”

Dad craned his neck, studying the back of the man's property where the riverbed wound toward the vertical cliffs. “You got a bulldozer?”

The man shrugged. “It's wore slap out, but I got one.”

“Can I borrow it?”

The man didn't even offer a response. He just looked at Dad and sucked on his tobacco.

Dad continued, “If I can get you some water, you'll forgo the ten thousand and let us use your meadow?”

“Mister, you gonna just snap your fingers and water's gonna all of a sudden appear?”

Dad shrugged. “That's one way of looking at it.”

The man's disbelief was palpable. “You gonna do what three years' worth of appeals and sixty thousand dollars' worth of attorney's fees couldn't do?”

Dad didn't respond.

The man considered Dad. “I tell you what, Preacher Man, you get my cows some water and I'll help you park the da—” He glanced down at me. “The cars. Otherwise—” He held out his hand again, palm up. “Ten thousand.”

Dad shook the man's hand. “Deal.”

The man raised a single eyebrow. “You gonna get me ten thousand dollars?”

“No.” Dad was staring at the mountain. “I'm gonna get you some water.”

Big-Big and me drove out of the driveway in the truck while Dad piloted the dozer. We followed him for two miles on the highway with our hazard lights flashing, 'cause he was bouncing down the road like a drunk snake while trying to get used to the steering.

Big-Big spoke through a smile. “I seen it all now.”

When we got to the T in the road, Dad sent us to town to fill up every five-gallon can we could find with diesel while he drove up to the cabin. When we got there two hours later, he was in full-on creek-construction mode. By evening on the third night he'd burned through a lot of diesel and had carved a four-foot-deep trench spiraling around our
side of the mountain. Would have made a great creek, had there been any water in it. When I asked Dad where he was going to get the water, he said, “I'm going to try and poke a hole in God's Cereal Bowl.”

On the fourth morning Dad and I walked back up to the rancher's front door and knocked. He met us in much the same way as he had before. Flipping a toothpick end over end.

Dad said, “Wonder if we might go for a drive?”

The rancher did not look impressed, but he obliged us, and so Dad drove us to the back side of the man's property where the dried-up riverbed of his once-flowing river met the granite cliffs of Princeton. As a crow flies, our property was only about a mile from the rancher's, but it took nearly thirty minutes on the road. As Dad said, you had to go around your elbow to get to your thumb.

Dad got out of the truck and started looking at his watch. Then he started walking the riverbed with his arms raised. The rancher leaned against the truck, crossed his arms, and eyed Dad with a bit of amusement. At 10:30 a.m., Dad counted off ten paces from the side of the cliffs to what happened to be the middle of the dusty riverbed, where he set down a small round stone. He was purposeful in setting it down and made sure the rancher saw it. Then he too leaned against the hood of the truck and crossed his arms. Casually, he said to the man, “How much you spend on your legal battle?”

Mr. Slocumb didn't even blink. “Sixty-three thousand, eight hundred and fourteen dollars.”

Dad nodded and kept staring up at the cliff.

When 10:35 came and left, the man waved his hand toward the river stones. “Maybe you should walk out there and dance. Sing a tune or something.”

Dad just kept staring at the cliff.

At 10:40, Mr. Slocumb said, “Mister, are you on the level?”

Dad shook his head. “Probably not, but—” He stared up at the cliff and smiled. “I know where to find water.”

As he was speaking, a rumbling sound occurred above us, followed
by a roar that sounded like a coming storm. I was standing in the back of the truck and I could hear it getting closer, so I moved around behind the truck, hiding behind the tailgate.

Seconds later a stream of water as big around as the front end of the truck shot like a cannon off the edge of the cliff, extending some eight to ten feet out from the rock wall, where it then landed directly on top of the rock Dad had set in place. The initial explosion carved out a pool in the sandy bottom, which, as the flow increased from up above, filled the riverbed to its banks.

As the water fell from above us, the man's mouth dropped open, chewed tobacco leaves spilled out, and his eyes grew big as half-dollars. He walked to the bank, stared up, then down at the water, then back up as tiny spray droplets landed on his face and shoulders. He did this several seconds as the roar of the now-raging waterfall landed on our ears.

When the water had reached the defined edges of the bank, it did what all rivers do. It began flowing downhill, following its natural course through the rancher's pasture and directly past his more than two thousand thirsty cattle. He stared in absolute disbelief at the cliff, the water, and then back up at the sixty-foot waterfall shooting onto his property. He stared for a minute, then two, as if he were waiting for it to stop as suddenly as it had started.

When it did not, he said, “Is it gonna keep doing that?”

Dad nodded.

Mr. Slocumb took off his hat, wiped his brow, and threw his hat down. “Well, I'll be a suck-egg mule! Preacher Man, you did it! You actually did it!” He started laughing and charged into the water, which rose to midthigh. He then walked against the current into the waterfall, opened his mouth, and held out his arms. The weight of the water on the man's back and shoulders pushed him down into the pool, where he rolled and frolicked like a dolphin.

Finally he stood up, splashing, laughing, and spitting. “There's enough water here to fill fifty thousand head, let alone two.” He raised
both hands to his mouth, drank several large gulps of water, spat with great delight, and then started dancing a jig.

I wanted to ask what happened to the rest of his tobacco, but never did. Given that the water temperature was subfreezing, he didn't stay there long. He walked to the bank, stepped out, picked up his crushed hat, and pulled it down tight over his head. Then, without warning, he grabbed my dad in a great big bear hug, which struck me as funny 'cause Dad was nearly half again as big as the rancher. Once he'd finished hugging him, he began shaking my father's hand with both of his.