The Gate (16 page)

In later years, DL would tell anyone who'd listen that I was a major, the rank he thought I'd earned in the Salvation Army. In his mind, anybody who'd gone to graduate school automatically got commissioned as an officer like the preacher at the rehabilitation center. I'd try to correct him, but he didn't listen. It annoyed me. “I'm not in the Salvation Army, DL,” I'd say. “I'm a psychologist.” But he kept saying it.

Then one day when we were out getting him a haircut, he told me that he called me Major because I reminded him of Major Metts. Metts was his hero. He was one step below God. I realized then that in DL's mind, I was his protector, the one who watched out for him. So I stopped correcting him.

———

“What's for dinner?” DL asked, bringing me back to the moment.

“Why are you asking me?” I replied. “I thought you'd be making me dinner like everyone else.”

“Not this time, Major,” he said. “You're the chef tonight.”

Actually, the idea of making dinner sounded good to me. At first I thought I'd make bread and milk. It was a Jacobs thing. You fried up pork fat in a pan, added whole milk, salt, and pepper, and after it thickened, you would dunk stale bread in it. I know—it sounds awful. But trust me, if you were raised on it, it was a little taste of heaven.

“What are you hungry for?” I asked.

“Something I used to have at the mission. Surprise me. You know what I like.”

That made it easy because there wasn't much DL didn't like. But the more I thought about it, the more I leaned toward chicken
soup. The mission made great chicken soup “like Ma used to make,” DL would say.

Sometimes when DL said “Ma,” he meant Grandma Jacobs, and sometimes he meant my mother. Fortunately for me, they used the same recipe. It started with a roasting chicken. The trick was to slow cook it in a stockpot on top of the stove for hours. Then when it was falling off the bones, you took it out of the pan and pulled the meat off the bone. Half of it would be reserved for sandwiches or something, and the other half went back in the pot with the broth. Then you'd add vegetables, seasoning, and rice. The problem was, it took all day, and I didn't have that kind of time.

But when I walked into the kitchen my time concerns evaporated. Ahbee had already done the grocery shopping for me. A stockpot was already simmering on the stove.

I looked under the lid and found a roasting chicken falling off the bone. Chicken soup is a combination of what the recipe calls for and what's in the house, so as always, I improvised a little. Along with the other ingredients, I added long grain wild rice, mushrooms, and a small bowl of corn that had just been cut off the cob. Under a towel on the table I found a loaf pan with dense, dark, grainy bread dough of some kind rising inside.

God knows our thoughts before we do.

It was getting dark by the time we sat down to dinner. We pulled up a couple of chairs at the little table in the kitchen, and I ladled the soup into some large bowls that I found in the cupboard. DL sliced the bread and I buttered a piece for each of us. Then he prayed in a soft, gentle voice, “My Father, you welcome us to your table with grace, love, and forgiveness. Thank you for this meal and for this time we have together. Amen.”

We sat at the table and talked well into the night about people from the past, and finally DL said, “I've got to get going, little
brother. I only have one headlight, and I never did like driving after dark.”

God has a special place in his heart for lost sheep.

My mind went back to a night years before when we'd all been at my mom's for DL's Christmas. It was a cold December night, and the roads were dusted with freshly fallen snow. DL had left about five minutes before us, but within a couple miles we caught up to him. He was hunched over the steering wheel, creeping along in the right lane as if the road were covered in ice.

DL had run into a fire hydrant a few weeks before, and his right front headlight tilted up at a thirty-degree angle. The light reflected off the falling snow, and Carol said that it looked like he was shining for angels. As we passed, he was talking to himself and waving his arms wildly. He was on his way back to the Lighthouse Mission, and I was struck by the irony of it all. One headlight pointed the way down the road to the mission, and the other pointed the way to heaven; either way, somehow he'd find his way home, because God has a special place in his heart for lost sheep. That night, to our surprise, this one made his way back to the mission.

As I walked him out to the car, I must have had a pained look on my face.

“What's wrong?” DL asked.

“I guess I never thought that anyone would drive a Vega in heaven,” I explained. “I feel bad, because it's such a bucket of bolts. You shouldn't have to drive that!”

“I could drive any car I want,” DL replied, “but material things don't really matter much here. What matters here is people, and every time I get in this car, I think of you and Ben. You bought it and he kept it running. Anytime anything would break, I'd bring it by the lot and he'd always help me out. And when I'd leave it would always be with a full tank of gas and a twenty sticking out of the glove box. You gave me whatever I needed; he gave me my
dignity. Besides, I'm driving this car for your sake, not mine. It's what I have for you:
we were put on earth to serve, not to be served
.”

DL explained. “Remember what Josh said: ‘What you've done to the least of these my brothers, you've done to me.' If you divide the world into two groups of people and you called one the most and one the least, you'd be numbered among the former and I'd be in the latter. There's a gap between your group and mine. That's not your fault, and it's not my fault either. It just is. There's an inequity to life. It isn't always fair. As my namesake once wrote, ‘Sometimes fools ride horseback and kings and princes go barefoot.' There will come a day when that will no longer be true, but it's true enough today on earth, and no one can deny it.

We were put on this earth to serve, not to be served.

“What I'm trying to say,” DL continued, “is that Ahbee doesn't expect you to correct every wrong or confront every evil, but he does expect you to correct and confront some, at least the ones he puts in your path, and you did that for me. There is no question that you were my lifeline. When I had no place else to turn, I could always turn to you. Those little acts of service from you and Sharon and Ben kept my head above water. You were your brother's keeper, or in this case, you were your uncle's keeper, and I'm eternally grateful for that.

“But I have a question for you: Who took my place? Who are you keeping now? Who needs you the way I needed you? Like I said, there's a gap between the most and the least, and what you have to ask yourself is, ‘Am I filling the gap?' ”

His question hung in the night air as he hugged me good-bye and drove away. I walked back inside and found Ahbee and Michael sitting at the kitchen table.

“Are you okay?” Michael asked. “You look like a man with a lot of questions.”

“There's just so much I don't understand,” I said, pulling a chair up to the table.

“For all your understanding,” Ahbee said, “there is much you will never understand. Mystery is part of life; it's in your DNA; it's part of being human. I did not force you out into the world. There was a time when humanity knew only good, but then Adam chose to add the knowledge of evil to the human storehouse of wisdom, and it's been confusing for all of you ever since.”

Ahbee paused for a moment so my thoughts could catch up with his, and my mind went back to Mrs. Johnson's Sunday school class. There on the flannelgraph a naked Adam and Eve stood behind strategically placed fig leaves and were about to bite into an apple. I remember as a young boy wanting to yell, “Don't do it!” but it was too late. Mrs. Johnson then put up a picture of Adam's face. He looked guilty as sin, and he had apple juice running down his chin. I looked up at Ahbee as if to say, “I'm with you,” and he continued to explain.

God wants to share so much with us, if only we'd listen.

“In the beginning Rae, Joshua, and I wanted to share everything
except evil
with you all. Other than that there was no limit to the potential of your knowledge. But with evil came limitation. Restrictions were put in place, certain things were locked in a vault called Eden, and Michael has stood guard at the gate ever since.

“Have you ever seen someone put a drop of India ink into a pitcher of water? Immediately it pollutes and permeates every drop. Evil is like that. In an instant it swallowed knowledge in a murky cloud of uncertainty. But that does not mean that there will not be learning. Humans are always learning.

“I want to share so much with you, if only you'd take the time to listen. Things that will eliminate disease, fight poverty, and help you stand up to evil. But knowledge, in and of itself, is neutral. It can be used for good or for evil. Only the heart of the person who holds an idea can control that. My hands are tied. It's part of the promise I made a long time ago in Eden. Of all the gifts
I've given you, the most precious is the freedom to choose, and choose you must.”

My mind was reeling with it all. I was on information overload, so finally I said, “Right now, I choose to go to bed.”

“Sleep well,” said Ahbee. “Tomorrow we'll talk more, but remember: each day life is full of choices. Do I have jelly on my toast or peanut butter? Do I go to work or stay home with my sick daughter? Every choice is fraught with consequences. The mystery unfolds around you like the flowers in a spring field.

“I am forever revealing mystery, but not all mysteries. The secrets of life, death, love, and the meaning of it all must be pursued like a lover. Mathematics, science, and technology are tools, but in and of themselves they will always fall short. Without a spiritual compass to guide you, you'll always be groping in the darkness. That's what the Bible is for—a compass for the course of life.”

When evil men plot, good men must plan. When evil men burn and bomb, good men must build and bind.

Martin Luther King Jr.

W
hen I came downstairs the next morning, Josh and Michael were sitting at the dining room table drinking mugs of strong, black coffee.

Knowing I'm not a coffee drinker, Josh said, “Sit down, Scout. I'll get you a Coke.”

I watched as he did, and once again I was caught off guard by his willingness to serve.

Our conversation was light, mostly about the beauty of the day, and I waited for one of them to invite me to go with them. But an invitation never came.

I could smell biscuits baking, and Josh got up every once in a while and tended to something frying in the kitchen. “What's for breakfast?” I asked.

“Oh, Josh set the menu this morning,” said Michael. “It may be foreign to your palate at first, but don't knock it till you've tried it!”

A wide-mouthed jar of yogurt had already been set on the table, and next to it was a small ceramic bowl of granola and another with fresh blackberries.

“You're always safe with the yogurt,” Michael said. “And the biscuits are warm and wonderful. Ahbee got up early and baked
them before he left.” Just at that moment, Josh came in with a platter of biscuits the size of baseballs and a mess of golden brown fish filets that he had hand-battered and then panfried.

“Buttermilk bluegills,” said Josh. “They're my favorite.”

“What?” I asked, perplexed.

“Oh, he's just pulling your leg,” Michael explained. “As a boy, Josh would often have fish and flatbread for breakfast. It was that or goat cheese, sliced tomatoes, and green olives. So sometimes we have breakfast with a Mediterranean flair. He dips the bluegills in buttermilk and then breads them in buckwheat pancake flour. Josh likes them best with goat cheese and sliced green olives, but I'd recommend the biscuits and honey instead.”

I'm not a big fan of seafood, but Josh's bluegills were remarkably good. Feeling adventurous, I tried the goat cheese and green olives with a slice of tomato on my biscuit, but I was with Michael: I preferred the honey.

I cleared the dishes after breakfast and offered to clean up. “I'd appreciate that,” Josh said. “Michael and I have some errands to run.”

Josh poured himself another cup of coffee, and the two of them went out the back door, got in Josh's truck, and drove away.

Uncertain of what waited for me, I washed the breakfast dishes, then went out on the front porch. The sun was just coming up, and the orange and yellow streaks of color danced across the ripples of the lake. The stillness of the morning was striking. Simon and Garfunkel were right: there's something about the sound of silence. It's peaceful.

I looked back through the door and stared at the words that were carved in the mantel of the fireplace. “Peace I leave with you. My peace I give to you.” I realized that I'd let my life get so overscheduled that I hadn't made time for God. I decided that was going to change, and peace settled over me like a warm blanket. I hadn't felt this peaceful in a long, long time. There was no rush here, no schedules or deadlines, no sense of urgency.
Perhaps that's what's the matter with most of us, I thought. We're in such a hurry to get where we're going that we don't take the time to appreciate where we are.

Life can get so overscheduled that we don't make time for God.

Suddenly I had a moment of clarity. It dawned on me that if we don't know where we are, we can't know where we're going. It's like when you go to the mall looking for a particular store and you come across one of those kiosks with a map. They list all the stores, and they have a big red arrow that says, “You are here.” Otherwise you wouldn't know if you should go left or right or turn around. And life is like that too. A lot of people are on the wrong road, they're headed in the wrong direction, but instead of turning around or stopping to ask for directions, they just try to run faster and faster. I know because I was right there with them. But somehow being here had helped me to slow down, to get my bearings, and to redirect my life toward the things that really matter.

The morning spilled into afternoon, and I was so engrossed in thought that I failed to notice a car quietly pull up the driveway—a silver Mercedes SLC with blue leather interior. The wire wheels and wide tires were aftermarket, but everything else was stock. It was a 4.5 liter, dual overhead cam, ram air V8, stealthy quiet at idle but a rumbler when you put your foot into it.

“Hey, pard!” a familiar voice called out.

“Al!” I exclaimed. “Al, it's so good to see you!”

———

Al Roth had been my boss and then my business partner when I was in the automobile business. I started working for him at Precision Cars while I was in college, and he said I was a natural. In a matter of months I was his top salesman, and I loved it. Al had a bell on his office wall, and whenever anyone sold a car, they got to ring it. Soon I was ringing the bell more than anyone. If it was the first sale of the day, Al would say, “Every time the bell
rings, an angel gets his wings,” and then he'd whip out his wallet and give you a twenty dollar bill as a bonus.

A true friend never holds you back.

Everybody knew that line from an old Christmas movie, but Al had adapted it. He never got tired of saying it, and I never got tired of hearing it, because we both knew it was the sound of money. Later that year, when I won Volvo's national sales award, he was the one who talked me into taking a job with their district office in Chicago.

In his younger days, Al had followed a similar path, taking a job with Mercedes-Benz and working his way up to vice president of their American operation before buying the dealership.

“This is a real opportunity for you,” he said. “I'm going to miss you, but you can't pass this up.” A true friend never holds you back, so Al sent me packing.

It was on his advice that I took that job, and it was on his advice that I left it to buy the local Volkswagen dealership with him. Who your friends are often determines what you do, and Al was a true friend. He was the major stockholder and the money, but he would say that I was the energy. In those days I ran full tilt, wide-open, all day long. It was a good partnership, better than most. He let me run things pretty much on my own, and being young and cocky, I made more than a few mistakes. But I made him a lot of money too, so he was always gracious and always coaching me.

When Al's wife, Jane, learned she had cancer, we merged his Mercedes and Volvo dealership into our Volkswagen dealership so I could keep an eye on business and he could keep an eye on Jane and the kids. We kept the name Precision Cars, and for the next five years we were partners.

Then, a few months after Jane died, Al came to the office and said, “It's just not any fun for me anymore, Sky. I always said when it stops being fun, I'll stop doing this, and now's as good a time
as any. I want to sell out, and if you want to buy it, I'll cosign your loan at the bank.”

For a while I tried to talk him out of it, but his mind was made up. That night I went home and announced to Carol that we were going to be rich. To my surprise, she was less enthusiastic than I thought she'd be.

“I thought eventually Al was going to come back to work and you wouldn't have to work so many hours anymore,” Carol said.

Who your friends are often determines what you do.

Then Carol asked me the question that changed our lives forever. “Come here,” she said, walking down the hall to our daughter Kate's room. “When's the last time you held her in your arms during the day, other than on a Sunday?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “It's been a while, I guess.”

Kate was just over a year old, and Carol was pregnant with Kelly, and I don't know if it was God or the hormones talking, but her question stopped me cold. “Don't you think we ought to at least pray about it?” she asked.

“Sure,” I replied. “We can pray, but I can't think of one good reason that God wouldn't want us to do this. Besides, my brother Ben, your brother Gary, and my cousin Dave all work for us. What's going to happen to them if we leave?”

“They'll be okay,” Carol said. “Gary's the sales manager and Ben's the top salesman. Anyone who buys that place would be a fool to let them go. And Dave's an A mechanic. He can get a job anywhere he wants. You opened the door for them, but they walked through it. Each of them has earned everything they've got.”

Inside, I knew she was right. Gary was the new car sales manager not because he was my brother-in-law but because he was good at it. He was detail oriented with a head for business, and he was great with people. The employees and the customers all liked him and respected him. If something came up and I wasn't there, they'd ask Gary.

As for Ben, he'd found a home in the car business. He knew cars, he knew people, and he was smooth as whipped cream. If he wasn't selling cars for me, he'd be selling cars somewhere.

Dave was young. I hired him right out of high school, but he was as good a wrench as we had. The kid had a future in the car business with me or without me, and that was simply a fact. Carol was right: they'd all be fine. I wasn't thinking about them as much as the money and the perks.

“I don't know if this is the way I want to live the rest of my life,” Carol said.

“I don't know what to say to that, Carol,” I said. “I think the way we're living is just fine.” At the time we were living in a house we designed and built in the woods on a hill overlooking the Thornapple River. Carol was driving a Porsche convertible. We were living the dream—at least, we were living
my
dream. It was a life of big cigars and motor cars, and I thought it was about perfect, but I said okay, if she wanted me to, I'd pray about it.

When you discover that everything you always wanted isn't enough, it's time to check your priorities.

The problem is that when you ask God what he really wants you to do with your life, he usually tells you, and a couple years later we were living in a small two-bedroom house in Grandville, eating government cheese, and I was going to grad school. Like my momma always said, “Be careful what you ask for—you're liable to get it.” This wasn't exactly what Carol had in mind that night when she quizzed me about Kate, but over the years, we've come to believe that it was what God had in mind. Still, there are days when memories of the car business still call to me, and seeing Al brought it all back.

Al was short—five foot six—freckled, bald, and leathery from years of smoking. When we started in business together, he was about the most honest man I knew, a real straight arrow. If he
said it was so, trust me, it was so. You'd have thought he was a devout Christian, but he wasn't. He had a bad taste in his mouth for Christians, particularly my tribe of Dutch Reformers. Before I came along, he had been in business for a while with a guy who kept a big King James Bible on his desk. The problem was that he was as crooked as a stick, and eventually Al decided that “you Dutchers” must be reading a different Bible than the one his momma read to him. “God's okay with me,” he'd say, “but I don't have much use for churches or preachers.” If there was a Christian conspiracy, he wasn't going to be a part of it, so for a time he opted out of organized religion.

If you don't feel very close to God, maybe you need to ask yourself, “Who moved?”

When Jane died, Al suddenly had a need for a preacher, but he didn't know where to find one. I called Howard Schipper, and he came with words and compassion that looked to Al like Jesus, and after that, little by little Al started to reconnect with God. He even went to church once in a while. But he never had much use for the institutions of religion. When he heard that I had decided to become a psychologist and go into Christian counseling, he sent away to some diploma mill for a mail-order clergy card, and he'd tease me with it. “I don't know why you're wasting your time going to school,” he'd say. “For two hundred dollars I can get you hooked up in ten days. Besides, most people don't need counseling as much as they need a swift kick in the pants!”

He was just trying to get under my skin, but now that I've done this for twenty-five years, I'd say he was more right than wrong.

A couple years after Jane died, Al ended up back in the car business again. He put Ben in the building we owned on South Division, and whenever I'd see him, he'd always say, “There'll be a spot for you here whenever you come back to your senses.” I didn't, but I came close a few times.

He and Ben would go to the dealer auction a couple times a week and buy late-model European stuff. They liked VWs and Audis, but once in a while they'd pick up a Volvo or a Benz. They liked to buy cars that were a few years old with high mileage so they could keep the price point down. Often they were able to buy three-year-old cars with 75 or 80 thousand miles for about half the price of a new one. Then Ben would touch up the scratches and spoon out the minor dents, and after a good cleanup they were ready to go on the lot. Ben had an eye for color too. A lot of reds and blacks and silvers, but never telephone green or Baptist-preacher blue. Their clientele was mostly yuppies and housewives, and Ben knew what they liked.