The Heaven Trilogy (24 page)

“Morning, Bill,” she said. “Let’s walk for a minute before we talk. I need to warm up.”

“Sure.”

That’s what he said.
Sure.
As if this were just one more day in a long string of days in which they had climbed from bed in the dark to meet for an edge-of-dawn walk. But he wanted to ask her what on Earth she thought she was doing. Walking like some marathoner in a knee-length dress and socks hiked above her calves. It looked ridiculous. Which made him look ridiculous by association. And he had never seen her take such bold strides, certainly not without a noticeable limp

He shoved the thought from his mind and fell in. He was, after all, her pastor, and like she said, she needed shepherding. Although, at the moment, he was following more than shepherding. How could he be expected to feed the sheep if it was ten feet ahead of him?

Bill stumbled to catch up. Not a problem—she would begin to fade soon enough. Until then he would humor her.

They walked three blocks in silence before it began to occur to Bill that Miss Knee-Socks here was not fading. If there was any fading just now it was on his end of things. Too many hours behind the desk, too few in the gym.

“Where we going, Helen?” he asked.

“Oh, I don’t know. We’re just walking. Are you praying yet?”

“I didn’t know I was supposed to be praying.”

“I’m not sure you are. But as long as I am, you might as well.”

“Uh-huh,” he said. Her Reeboks were no longer shiny and white like they had been a week earlier. In fact, they were not the same pair because these were well worn and the other had been almost new. Her calf muscles, flexing with each step, were mostly hidden by a thin layer of fat that jiggled beneath the socks, which encircled her legs with red stripes just below her knees. She reminded him of a basketball player from the seventies—minus the height, of course.

Her fingers hung by her side, swinging easily with each stride.

“You ever wonder why God used a donkey to speak, Bill? Can you even imagine a donkey speaking?”

“I suppose. It is rather strange, isn’t it?”

“How about a whale swallowing Jonah? Can you imagine a man living in a fish for three days? I mean, forget the story—could you imagine that happening today?”

He dropped his eyes to the sidewalk and studied the expansion cracks appearing beneath them every few feet. “Hmm. I suppose. You have a reason for asking?”

“I’m just trying to nail down your orientation, Bill. Your real beliefs. ’Cause lots of Christians read those old stories in the Bible and pretend to believe them, but when it gets right down to it, they can barely imagine them, much less believe they actually happened. And they certainly would balk at such events happening today, don’t you think?”

She strode along at a healthy pace, and he found himself having to work a bit to match her. Heavens! What had gotten into her?

“Oh, I don’t know, Helen. I think people are pretty accepting of God’s ability to persuade a whale to swallow Jonah or make a donkey talk.”

“You do, do you? So you can imagine it, then?”

“Sure.”

“What does it look like, Bill?”

“What does what look like?”

“What does a whale swallowing a full-grown man whole look like? We’re not talking about chomping him up and gulping down the pieces—we’re talking swallowing him whole. And then that man swimming around in a stomach full of steaming acids for a few days. You can see that, Bill?”

“I’m not sure I’ve ever actually pictured the details. I’m not even sure it’s important to picture the details.”

“No? So then what happens when people start imagining these details? You tell them the details aren’t important? Pretty soon they toss those stories into a massive mental bin labeled ‘Things that don’t really happen.’”

“Come on, Helen! You don’t just jump from a few details being unimportant to throwing out the faith. There are elements of our heritage we accept by faith. This doesn’t necessarily diminish our belief in God’s ability to do what he will— including opening the belly of a whale for a man.”

“And yet you balked when I told you about my vision of Gloria’s death. That was a simple opening of the
eyes,
not some whale’s mouth for a man.”

“And I did come around, didn’t I?”

“Yes. Yes, you did.”

She let it go with a slight smile, and he wondered at the exchange. Helen walked on, swinging her arms in a steady rhythm, humming faintly now.

Jesus, Lover of My Soul . . .
Her favorite hymn, evidently. “You do this every day, Helen?” he asked, knowing full well she did not. Something had changed here.

“Do what?”

“Walk? I’ve never known you to walk like this.”

“Yes, well I picked it up recently.”

“How far do you walk?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. How fast do you think we’re walking?”

“Right now? Maybe three, four miles an hour.”

She looked at him, surprised. “Really? Well then, what’s three times eight?”

“What’s eight?”

“No. What’s three
times
eight?”

“Three times eight is twenty-four.”

“Then I guess I walk twenty-four miles each day,” Helen said and grinned satisfactorily.

Her words sounded misguided, like lost birds smashing into the windowpane of his mind, unable to gain access. “No, that’s impossible. Maybe a mile a day. Or two.”

“Oh, heavens! It’s more than a mile or two, I know that much. Depends on how fast I’m walking, I suppose. But eight times three
is
twenty-four. You’re right.”

Her meaning caught up with Bill then. “You . . . you actually walk . . . eight hours?” Good heavens! that was impossible!

“Yes,” she said.

He stopped dead in his tracks, his mouth gaping. “You walk
eight hours
a day like this?”

She answered without looking back. “Don’t fall apart on me, Pastor. My walking is certainly easier to accept than Jonah and his whale.”

Bill ran to catch up. “Helen! Slow down. Look, slow down for just a minute here. You’re actually saying you walk like this for
eight hours
a day? That’s over twenty miles a day! That’s
impossible!’’

“Is it? Yes, it is, isn’t it?”

He knew then that she was pulling no punches, and his head began to buzz. “How? How do you do it?”

“I don’t, Bill. God does.”

“You’re saying that somehow God miraculously allows you to walk twenty miles a day on
your
legs?”

She turned and lifted an eyebrow. “I should hope I walk on my legs. I would hate to borrow yours for a day.”

“That’s not what I mean.” He was not laughing. Bill looked at those calves again, bouncing like a stiff bowl of jelly with each step. Apart from the socks, they looked plain enough to him. And Helen was asserting that she was walking twenty-four miles a day on those damaged knees that, unless his memory had gone bad, just last week favored hobbling over walking. And now this?

“Do you doubt me?”

“No, I’m not saying I doubt you.” He didn’t know what he was saying. What he did know was that a hundred voices were crying foul in his mind. The voices from that bin labeled “Things that don’t really happen,” as Helen had put it.

“Then what are you saying?”

“I’m saying . . . Are you sure you walk a full eight hours?”

“Walk with me. We will see.”

“I’m not sure I can walk eight hours.”

“Well, then.”

“Are you sure you don’t take breaks . . .”

She lost it then, right on the sidewalk in front of Freddie’s Milk Store on the corner of Kipling and Sixth. She pulled up suddenly and planted both hands on her hips. “Okay, look, mister. You’re the man of God here! Your job is to lead me
to
him, not away from him. Now, forgive me if I’m wrong, but you’re starting to sound as though you’re not sure anymore. I’m walking, aren’t I? And I’ve been walking for over a week—eight hours a day, three miles an hour. You don’t like it, you can go ahead and put your blinders back on. Just make sure you look straight ahead when you see me coming.”

He dropped his jaw at the outburst. Heat flared up his neck and burned behind his ears. It was at times like this that he should be prepared with a logical response. Problem was, this was not about the logical. This was about impossibilities, and he was staring one right in the face. Which made it a possibility. But in reality, he already knew that. His outer self was just throwing a fit, that’s all.

“Helen . . .”

“Now, I also had some trouble with this at first, so I’m willing to cut you some slack. But when I give you simple facts, like
I walk eight hours a day,
I don’t need you analyzing me like I’m loony tunes.”

“I’m sorry, Helen. Really, I am. And for what it’s worth, I believe you. It’s just not every day this kind of thing happens.” He immediately wondered if he did believe her. You don’t just believe some old lady who claims to have found kryptonite and discovered that Superman was right all along—it does work! On the other hand, this was not just some old lady.

She studied him for a full five seconds without another word. Then she
humphed
and marched on deliberately.

Bill walked beside her in silence for a full minute, unnerved. A hundred questions coursed through his mind, but he thought it better to let things settle. Unless he had missed something here, Helen was claiming that God had empowered her with some kind of supernatural strength that allowed her to walk like a twenty-year-old. A strong twenty-year-old at that. And she was not just claiming it, she was showing him. She had insisted he come and see for himself. Well, he was seeing all right.

She strode by him, step for step, thrusting each foot out proudly like Moses strutting across the desert with cane in hand.

He glanced at her face and saw that her lips were moving. She was praying. Prayer walking. Like those mission teams that went overseas just to walk around a country and pray. Break the spiritual strongholds. Only in Helen’s case, it was Kent who would presumably benefit.

This was happening. This was
really
happening! Never mind that he had never in his life even heard of, much less
seen,
such a thing, this was happening right before his eyes. Like a hundred Bible stories, but alive and well and here today.

Bill suddenly stopped on the sidewalk, aware that his mouth hung dumbly open. He closed it and swallowed.

Helen walked on, possibly not even aware he’d stopped. Her strides showed not a hint of weakness. It was as if her legs did their business beneath her without her full knowledge of why or how they operated. They just did. Her concern was praying for Kent, not understanding the physics of impossibilities. She was a walking miracle. Literally.

Doubt suddenly felt like a silly sentiment. How could you doubt what you saw?

Bill took after her again, his heart now surging with excitement. Goodness, how many men had seen something like
this?
And why was it so hard to accept? Why so far out? He was a pastor, for Pete’s sake. She was right. It was his job to illuminate the truth, not doubt it.

He imagined his pews full of smiling church members.
And today, brothers and sisters, we want to remember sister Helen, who is marching around Jericho.

His bones seemed to tingle. He skipped once to match stride with Helen, and she looked at him with a raised brow.

“You just pray while you’re walking?” he asked, and then he immediately held out his hands in a defensive gesture. “I’m not doubting. I’m just asking.”

She smiled and chuckled once. “Yes, I pray. I walk, and I pray.”

“For Kent?”

“For this crazy duel over Kent’s soul. I don’t know all the whys and hows yet. I just know that Kent is running from God, and I’m walking behind him, breathing down his neck with my prayers. It’s symbolic, I think. But sometimes I’m not even sure about that. Walk by faith, not by sight. Walk in the Spirit. They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall walk and not grow weary. It wasn’t literal back then, but now it is. At least it is with me.”

“Which suggests that the whole business about Kent is real as well, because now it’s not just visions and things in the head but this walking,” Bill said. “Do you know how unusual that is?”

“I’m not so sure it’s unusual at all. I just think I’m unusual—you said so yourself. Maybe it takes a bit of unusualness for God to work the way he wants to work. And for your information, I knew it was real before this walking thing. I’m sorry to hear that you thought my visions were delusional.”

“Now come on, Helen. Did I say that?” He frowned and turned sideways so she could see his expression.

“You didn’t need to.” She set her jaw and strode on.

“Can I touch them?” he asked.

She scrunched her brow. “Touch what? My legs? No, you can’t touch my legs! Heavens, Bill!”

“Not
touch
touch them! Goodness!” He walked on, slightly embarrassed. “Are they warm or anything. I mean, can you feel anything different in them?”

“They buzz.”

“Buzz, huh?” He looked at them again, wondering how God altered physics to allow for something like this. They should bring some scientists out here to prove a few things. But he knew she would never allow that.

“What do you mean by
duel?
You said this was about a crazy duel over Kent’s soul. That’s not exactly out of the textbooks.”

“Sure it is. The books may use different words, but it all boils down to the same thing. It is war, Bill. We do not wage war against flesh and blood but against principalities and powers. We duel. And what greater prize than a man’s soul?” She faced forward deliberately. “It’s all there. Look it up.”

Bill chuckled and shook his head. “I will. Just for you, Helen. Someone’s got to make sure you don’t walk right off the planet.”

“So that’s your idea of shepherding?” Her eyes twinkled above a smile.

“You asked for it. Like you said, it’s my gift. And if God can transform your legs into bionic walkers, the least he can do for me is give me a little wisdom. To help you walk.”