Part One

“Mom, is Mickey going to heaven or hell?”

His mother turned away from her dinner preparations and stared at him. She was silent for fifteen or twenty seconds.

“Foy, you’re in third grade. You and Mickey. You young boys don’t need to be worrying about heaven or hell.”

“Yeah, but where is he going?”

“Goodness gracious, I don’t know.”

“Well what do you think?”

“Foy, I said I don’t know.”

“Well then just tell me what you THINK. Because what you think is always right.”

Foy’s mother exhaled loudly and turned, wiping her hands on her apron. She gestured to the kitchen table.

“Foy, sit down and let’s talk.”

Foy plopped into a seat, put his elbows on the table, and rested his head in his hands with one palm cupping each cheek. His dangling feet kicked back and forth in a nervous rhythm. His mother poured herself a cup of coffee and sat more slowly, watching him carefully.

“Foy…”

Her voice trailed off and she stared at him. She started to speak again but fell silent after two or three words. After several attempts, she gave up.

“You should talk to your father about this. He’s the preacher. He’ll tell you.”

She paused, searching for the right words.

“He’ll tell you what you need to know.”

Foy jumped out of his seat.

“Can I have a nickel to get a Grape Nehi?”

“Get one out of my purse. Just one.”

Foy darted over to the table by the back door where is mother kept her purse. In the bottom he found a nickel and shoved it into his pocket. He pushed open the screen door and heard it bang shut behind him, just as he leaped off the back porch into the dirt of their backyard. He opened the gate to the chain link fence and ran the fifty yards to the back of Bloys Avenue Baptist Church. He pushed open the back door and went into the church kitchen. In an alcove leading to a set of stairs that descended into the fellowship hall was a soft drink machine. Foy dropped his nickel in and punched a button. There was a rumbling sound and a bottle of grape soda punched a small door open and lay resting in the tray. Foy popped the cap off and took a big swig. He sat his soda on the table in the kitchen and ran down the hall toward the offices. The church secretary was a woman named Martin. Foy had known her all of his life and didn’t realize Martin was a boy’s name.

“Hello Foy,” she said pleasantly, while sliding a bowl of candy forward. Foy looked into the bowl. This week she had Hershey’s Kisses and Butter Mints.

“Neat-o,” he said, helping himself to two of each.

Foy heard his father talking on the phone. He walked into the pastor’s office.

“Hi dad.”

His father smiled, cupped a hand over the phone and whispered, “I’m on the phone Foy.”

“Yes sir. Sorry.”

He spoke into the phone. “Paul, hang on a second, okay?”

“What’s going on, son?”

“I came to walk home with you.”

“Good. Did you get a grape soda?”

“Yes sir”

Okay. I’m talking to Mr. Williams. I’ll be about 15 minutes.

Foy knew this meant 45 minutes to an hour. He went back into the kitchen, got a key from a drawer by the sink, and opened a large set of cabinets. He took out a bowl filled with gold stars that you licked and stuck to things, paper, scissors, fancy glue in an amber bottle with its own brush, a stapler, and a staple remover. He stapled sheets of paper together into a booklet and covered the insides with stars, ribbons, and drawings. He purposely used too many staples so he could pull out some with the staple remover, which he thought looked like a saber toothed tiger.

After half an hour he got bored, so he wandered back into his father’s office. Martin had gone home. Foy’s father was facing the back wall, still on the phone.

“Remember that the bylaws require us to…yes, exactly. After the Fall revival is our best time. October and November. So we should have good giving then. Yes. Yes. Yes, December is a good month always. Christmas and uh…yes, we can probably count on that.”

Foy walked softly to his father’s desk and opened the top right drawer. There was some change in an old baby food jar. He got a nickel and slipped back to the kitchen where he bought a second grape soda and drank it while he pounded away on an old typewriter. The ribbon was worn and faded to a dusty purple color, and the letters were barely visible on the page. Foy typed his name over and over, filling an entire sheet with it.

Foy looked up when he heard sounds from his father’s office that indicated he was getting ready to leave. Foy put the supplies back into the cabinet, locked it, and put the typewriter away. He put both soda bottles into the wooden bottle holder next to the soda machine, then sat expectantly. His father appeared a few minutes later, seemingly unaware of the passage of time since they had spoken.

Foy stood silently while his father checked some messages on a bulletin board, gathered his coat and briefcase, and turned out the lights. The two of them walked down the back steps together. Foy held his father’s briefcase while his dad loosened his collar and rolled up his sleeves. Foy ran ahead to a rocky patch of ground at the back of the church. Thirty yards behind the church property was the base of Sleeping Lion Mountain, the first in the chain of the Davis mountains. The view from the back of the church was the same as from the Davis backyard. Foy’s father walked over slowly. He clenched his right fist, laid his left hand on his right shoulder, and worked his arm in slow circles. Foy handed him five carefully chosen rocks. He bobbed them in his left hand, feeling their weight. He tossed one of them aside and stooped to pick up a replacement.

“That one’s a little too heavy to start with.”

While Foy watched, his father wound up with incredible grace, like a baseball pitcher, then snapped his arm forward. The rock shot out of his hand and zipped through the air toward a boulder that lay at the base of the mountain. His father started slowly, working out his arm. After eight or ten rocks, he was in his rhythm. Rocks flew from his hand, whistling through the air and bouncing off boulders with high-pitched clicks that sounded like pool balls colliding. Foy alternated between watching his father and heaving rocks himself. He ran forward, curling himself in an awkward imitation of his father, then exploding with spastic energy, hurling the rocks as far as he could. They travelled in lazy parabolas, thudding heavily to the ground instead of pinging off boulders like the ones his father threw.

After a time his father picked up his briefcase.

“Throw one really far.”

His father looked around and found a perfectly weighted and nicely curved stone. He shook it in his hand like a gambler shaking dice. Then he wound up and released it with all of his strength. The rock flew high and far, almost farther than Foy could follow with his eyes, finally landing in the far distance on the base of the mountain. His father smiled and so did Foy. They turned and headed home.

As they reached their back yard, just a minute or two later, Foy said, “There’s something I want to ask you about. Mom said I should ask you.”

“Okay.”

His father put down his briefcase and the two of them sat in metal lawn chairs that bobbed up and down. The chairs faced the chain link fence and the mountain behind their house. His father said, “Shoot.”

“Is Mickey going to heaven or hell? Mom said to ask you.”

His father nodded solemnly and looked out at the mountains.

“The revival preacher get you thinkin about this?”

“Yes sir.”

His father nodded again.

“It’s a hard thing to talk about, but it’s probably time we did. Now you know you’re going to heaven, right? Because you made a public profession of faith and asked Jesus to come into your heart last summer. I know you understand what you did.”

“Yes sir. I’m a sinner, but Jesus died for my sins and rose again. And I’ve asked him into my heart and been baptized.”

“That’s right. So you don’t ever have to worry about going to hell. Ever. Once saved, always saved. You’re expected to live like a good Christian, but you were saved. Don’t let anyone scare you about going to hell, because Jesus saved you and you’re going to heaven all right.”

Foy nodded solemnly. “Yes sir.”

“As for Mickey…”

Foy’s father paused. Mickey’s family had been a topic of conversation before. The Wallace family never went to church. Their yard was filled with junk cars, and it wasn’t clear what Mickey’s father did for a living. Foy’s father was always very kind to the Wallace family and had tried many times to share Jesus with Buddy Wallace, who respected Foy’s father but never took his words to heart. The whole family had been invited to the Davis home a number of times.

“Mickey hasn’t reached the age of accountability.”

“What’s that?”

“It’s the age at which a person becomes accountable for his sins. You know the story of Adam and Even in the garden.”

Foy didn’t even nod. Of course he knew the story.

“Well, they ate from the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Their eyes were opened and they knew they were sinners. Small children don’t understand that. So they’re not accountable. And if they die, they go to be with Jesus.”

“But even us small kids know what badness and sin are.”

Foy’s father turned and looked right into his eyes. “Well Foy, after this summer, you’re a man in the eyes of God. You’ve been saved. So you understand some things that Mickey doesn’t. And your family took you to church properly, so you know these things. But Mickey is still kind of an innocent child. ”

Foy nodded with great seriousness, glowing inside to be included in such talk.

“So Foy, you should pray for Mickey and his family. Mickey is safe for now, but perhaps you’ll share Jesus with him and be an instrument of God. It’s never too young to do the Lord’s work. I pray for the Wallace family all the time. Buddy and I are pretty good friends now. Maybe one day he’ll see the light. A real man takes care of his family, financially of course, but also spiritually. A man’s got to be a spiritual leader too. ”

Foy stared out at the mountains and thought of Buddy, laughing and drinking a beer while he and Mickey crawled around inside the junked limousine that sat in their yard.

“Foy, this is the hard truth that I said we couldn’t avoid. If Mickey grows up and doesn’t accept Jesus as his personal savior and make a profession of faith, yes, he will go to hell. I don’t like it. In fact, I wish it weren’t true. But that’s what the Bible says, and we can’t doubt the word of the Lord. But remember Foy that God is merciful. And I don’t think hell has fire in it. I think it’s just a place where God is not. If people choose to reject God, they will spend eternity away from God. And hell would be a very lonely place without God, who is the source of all love.”

“Do you understand?”

“Yes sir.”

Foy’s dad smiled and rubbed Foy’s hair with his hand. He stood up and began to move toward the house.

“Dad, you don’t like Mr. Wallace, do you? On account of him drinking beer and his yard is a mess and him not being a spiritual leader. When you asked him over to watch the Cowboys that Sunday that Mickey and him came over, that was just hoping to get him to make a profession of faith, wasn’t it?”

Foy’s father froze and his back stiffened. He looked at Foy and then sat back down. He turned his chair so that it was facing Foy’s chair. Foy got up and turned his chair as well.

“Foy, listen to me carefully. You can never do that. You don’t pretend to offer friendship to anyone for any reason. Never forget that our first calling is to be honest. Let your yes mean yes and your no mean no. And never bear false witness. I like Buddy Wallace just fine. And him drinking beer is just fine too. There’s no real sin it in, especially for someone who doesn’t know any better. We’re all sinners saved by the grace of Christ and not one man better than another. I would never feign friendship to win a sinner to Christ. That’s a sloppy way of doing the Lord’s work. It’s a shortcut. It might get you results, but ultimately that kind of thing comes to no good.”

“Yes sir.”

Foy’s father stood, then bent over and picked up a rock. He looked back toward Sleeping Lion Mountain. He lifted his chin sharply in the direction of a massive boulder. Foy’s eyes followed the vague gesture and he understood that his dad was going to throw a rock at the boulder. Foy’s father lifted his left foot in the air and pivoted his shoulders so that they ran in a line pointing toward the boulder. His right arm coiled back and for a moment he stood balancing on his right foot. Then he unwound smoothly. His shoulders turned and his arm whipped forward. The rock flew in a straight line and hit the boulder with a loud crack.

He turned and looked at Foy with a big smile on his face. Foy excitedly snatched up a rock of his own and hurled it toward the boulder. It fell short. The two of them stood in silence, looking at the boulder and the jagged base of the mountain. After a few moments, Foy’s mother appeared at the back door and called them in to dinner.

“Foy, who do the Cowboys play this week?”

“The Redskins.”

“Why don’t you check with your mother to see if it’s okay to invite Buddy and Mickey over to watch the game.”

Foy grinned and ran up the stairs to the back porch and in through the screen door.

sun and moon border

Part two is coming…soon. I haven’t started it yet. Probably next week.

rlp