Magnet & Steele (17 page)

Francine grabbed the sandwich away
from him and sneered, “Thanks, but I’m not hungry though. I just
want to enjoy this wonderful breath-taking view! Look at all those
stars!” She marveled, throwing her head back and gazing up at the
twilight. The sun had just set leaving a gorgeous array of
twinkling stars up above them in the early evening.

“It’s nice here, isn’t it?” He
asked, bending his body back and lying on his elbows in the
sand.

Francine looked behind her and lay
down with him in the sand. “It is nice, Ian, thank you for taking
me here.”

Ian smiled within, “You’re welcome.”
He then reached out for her hand and held it within his.

Francine held onto it for a few more
seconds and then released it quick to spring up to her knees to
stand back up. “Want to go for a swim?”

“It’s pitch black out there in the
water now, the moon is barely lit.”

“Yeah, I know, but that will be the
fun in it.”

Ian got up on his feet as well and
then wrapped his free arms around her backside, bringing her body
in, “First, a kiss.”

Francine pushed his nearing body
away, “You have to catch me first!” She challenged him, sprinting
away from him and hopping into the water. Step by high step, she
inched her way into the deep water and away from him. Not another
kiss!

October, 1971

Ian and Francine had a couple of
villagers over for dinner one night. Trying to convert the devote
Catholics was thwarting. Their religion was deep-rooted; ages and
eras had gone by with the Spanish culture reigning over everything
in general: their food, their language, even their names. Ian was
constantly disappointed and regularly frustrated. He thought in the
beginning that having the Lord bring him back to the Philippines
was going to be easy. That Jesus was going to make it effortless
for him, but he was wrong, Jesus was testing him, he realized one
day, seeing how much of a teacher he could really be.

There were a hundred chairs laid
out, a large tarp hung over a pulpit to protect it from the heat
and the sun’s rays. Ian was getting ready to address a sermon one
Sunday and Francine was in the back sitting on a chair, nervously
waiting for the soldiers and villagers to arrive; for anyone to
arrive, for that matter.

When word went out that an outreach
was being held in a nearby field, Ian became worried. This was his
chance, perhaps his last chance. Would anyone show?

Francine eyed a couple of citizens
sitting down on chairs a half an hour later and they opted to take
up the last two rows. Would they listen? Would it
matter?

She walked over to a nearby table
with a pitcher of water, and after pouring herself something to
drink, she walked back to her chair. She looked out from behind the
tarp again and to her disbelief; there were hundreds, no thousands
of people occupying the chairs now; sitting on the grass, the dirt,
rooftops, even in the palm trees!

It was hot, humid, and sweaty hot,
perspiration dripped off each and every forehead. Handkerchiefs
wiped away, pamphlets swayed repeatedly, blowing hot air onto
heated skin. People were starting to get restless and fidgety, some
even began to get up and walk away when Francine heard her husband
yell…

“HELL!”

With his hair partly wet and eyes
tired from too much reading the night before and his back sweating;
Ian continued to say, “A lot of you here are going to Hell.” He
paused to watch the people rush back to their seats for they were
intrigued now. People were always intrigued with the devil. “And I
don’t mean that in the cursing aspect of the word.” He
strategically went on, “I mean Hell…burning, fire, pain, anguish,
torture bearing Hell. And a lot of you here have first class
tickets! Satan is cheering you on, he likes when you sin, and the
more you sin, the more those doors open for you.” He stopped again
on purpose and turned the pages in the Bible. “In John, Chapter 5
it reads, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of
water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That
which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit. Do not marvel that I say to you, you must be born
again…”

He paused to wipe his brow and then
looked down throughout the crowd of people. Hundreds of faces were
enthralled now, staring up at him, conscious and aware. “God loves
you,” he stated lovingly, “…The Lord Jesus Christ wants you to do
something in your life. He wants to change your life. Sin brings
forth death, but the Savior brings forth life! Don’t you want to
live?” He stopped and turned another page. “There was a man over my
house the other evening; many of you know this man. He’s in the
government, he’s affluent and he was stubborn. He asked me, ‘do you
think that there’s more to life?’ He asks me! Me! If there’s more
to life; he’s got everything material, but he wants more. More to
life…”

Ian then looked across at the men in
the trees barely hanging on. “I said to him yes…yes, you’ve been
living my brother, you live, but haven’t experienced life. You will
never know the purpose, the meaning here on earth. He wants you to
devote yourself to Him. I continued on by telling this man what he
did not want to hear. I said to him, do you realize that when you
die, you will be standing before God? The man shook his head ‘no’.
He was considerate of me now; I caught this man’s attention. I said
do you believe that God’s going to overlook those sins of
yours?”

Ian turned to look at Francine and
his wife gave him a small smile. Ian changed his voice, changing it
deep as in a way to portray God: “Oh mister so-in-so, I see that
you’ve given a lot of your money to charity. You’re nice to elderly
people and you’ve never hit your wife. You’ve given jobs to those
who need them, and you’ve even fed the hungry. You’ve done
everything good, you were a good person. But mister so-in-so,
you’ve never given your heart to Jesus. I’m sorry mister so-in-so,
go from my sight for I know you not.”

Francine was speechless now and
wiped away the tears that had unexpectedly fallen down on her
cheeks. Barely turning her head, she looked around her; they were
all looking up at her husband now. Ian, her husband, she was so
proud to know him at that moment; to share him, to partake in his
life!

“Please join me, come stand with me,
if anyone here wants to know Jesus,” Ian stated next. And to his
surprise, or maybe his religious vision, crowds of villagers and
soldiers, almost everyone stood up and began walking towards the
front to accept Jesus as their Lord and Savior.

Several weeks later, the wealthy man
Ian brought to the Lord had a church built for him. It seated
nearly a thousand people, and it did.

*****

Inside her tiny kitchen, Francine
was making breakfast. This was her life now. One year, turned into
three years of living overseas and Francine was no longer holding
onto any desire to be with ‘what’s his face’, she called him now.
What’s his face was just a distant memory to her now in a lifetime
far and away in the states. What’s his face was just part of a
fantasy she had on a high school crush, and, like high school
crushes, they seem to fade away with time and only brought up when
someone else remembered them. Her life at present had been occupied
with days of helping the needy and counseling the other naval
wives, and helping out her husband’s constant toil. This was her
life now…this was her existence and Francine was finally at
peace.

Oil popped inside the frying pan
where Francine once cracked and opened an egg and poured it into
the hot pan accidentally taking a few shells along with the
yolk.

“Crap!” She yelled going for the
eggshell, not quite retrieving it and burning her finger on the
side of the hot metal. “Ah, crap!” She yelled again, sticking her
burnt finger inside her mouth on instinct. Running over to her
dinette set, she stuck her finger into the cube of butter that was
placed already on the tabletop for breakfast. With her finger still
in the melting butter, Francine quickly noticed the mail on top of
the table as well. She reached over to pick it up when her Filipino
maid peeked around the corner and rushed to her aid.

“Magandang umaga,” the maid
expressed, tilting her head down in submission.

“Good morning to you too,” Francine
smiled, through clenched teeth.

The maid looked queerly at Francine
with her finger still stuck in the cube.

“I had an accident,” Francine said,
trying to explain.

The maid just smiled and left back
around the corner. Francine then went for the mail and grabbed the
first letter. It was a bill and she tossed it aside. The second, in
Filipino, and put it aside for the maid to translate for her later
and the last, an ambuscade. Looking down at the return address, her
heart sunk into the pit of her stomach. It was addressed from Notre
Dame, Indiana. She got sick again, it was a sick feeling, not
knowing what was going to happen, just knowing that it
was.

“Shit,” she said under her breath,
“It’s from what’s his face.”

Sitting down with the unopened
letter in her hand, Francine took her finger out of the butter at
last and wiped it on the bottom of her shirt. She then slowly
ripped open the letter and read: ‘Dear Fran, how’s the Philippines?
I hear it’s quite different there. Did you hear that our parents
will be getting married? You’re coming to the wedding, right? I
can’t wait to see you, there’s a lot to talk about. First off,
Donna is pregnant…’ Francine then dropped the letter as if it were
on fire. A tidal wave of emotions came flooding back in one quick
punch. “God damn you Derrie!” She yelled down at the letter as if
it could hear her. “A baby, Derrie…a baby? Oh, why do you have to
keep coming in and out of my life like this? Why! I forgot all
about you! You were gone, outta my life for good! Damn
you!”

Francine then ran out of her cottage
as fast as her feet could take her and ran down the dirt road
towards an empty field towards the ocean. It felt like a knife, she
thought while clutching her stomach in constant pain. It felt like
a Goddamn knife being pushed into her heart as well! Damn him! Damn
Derrie to Hell!

Later that same evening, Ian and
Francine were alone eating dinner. Ian hadn’t bothered to take a
shower and was still dressed in his fatigues when Francine waited
until the maid left before she conveyed, “I’m flying back home
tomorrow.”

Ian stopped eating.
“What?”

“My mother is getting married,” she
quickly acknowledged, thinking that it was a good enough reason to
pick up and go.

“She’s getting married?”

“It’s all been kind of sudden,” she
jokingly stated.

“Really…”

“Yes.”

“And?”

“And…I miss them,” she said,
convincingly enough. “My mother and my sister, I’m flying back home
next week, as soon as I can get a ticket.”

“Bull-loney,” Ian finished, throwing
down his napkin after wiping off his mouth. “I know exactly who you
miss.”

Francine’s heart suddenly sunk a
little lower. “What are you talking about?”

Ian shook his head at her playing
the fool. “Damn it Francine! Why can’t I ever have you completely?
You’re my wife, aren’t you? Why do I have to keep sharing you with
this guy?”

Francine looked across at him like
he had three eyes in the center of his head. “What? I thought we
were talking about a wedding.”

Ian scooted back his chair and
stretched out the length of his legs underneath the table. “Do you
think I’m that stupid? Your mother wrote to me a couple of months
ago, asking for us to come to her wedding. I just chose not to tell
you because I’ve been waiting to see how long it would take for you
to hear from him. Until he told you that his father was marrying
your mother. I just wanted to see how fast you’d react.” He stopped
and then crossed his arms across his chest looking every bit the
Marine and not any bit a Man of God. “And just as I thought,” he
said, sarcastically, “He snaps his little fingers and you
react.”

Francine now had an argument. He
kept this wedding from her? “You mean my mother already wrote to
you? And you’ve been sitting on this news for months now? When were
you ever going to tell me?”

Ian uncrossed his arms. “When Hell
freezes over. I was making a point Fran!”

“Ian, that’s not fair, this is my
mother we’re talking about. Don’t you think I would of wanted to
celebrate this wedding with her?”