Unbreakable x
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chapter four | chapter five | chapter six | chapter seven | epilogue
Keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace; and let none give way to a prejudicing spirit, which leads into secret whisperings, backbiting, and such like evil and pernicious fruits, ... when the evil spirit prevails to draw out of Zion's gates, and out from within her walls of salvation Oh! what deplorable work and havoc will it make ... as it prevails and increases in strength, it will appear as a roaring lion, seeking whom it may devour and swallow up.1
x.
The time has come, the Walrus said.2
xi.
No disrespect, but I'm not exactly a believer.
You will be.3
In Lawrence, Kansas, the dead center of the American Dream, in 1885 a huge oak tree springs up in a cemetery overnight. Nobody can explain it. It doesn't keep them from trying. They would have changed the name to Oak Hill Cemetery, just in case, but there is already a cemetery in town with that name.
It starts to get a reputation. Soon the whole town is convinced that every major tragedy they have faced has either happened there or happened directly because of it. Eventually, they sacrifice the tree to faith and build a church where it stood.
It doesn’t help.
Sixty-nine years later, a surveyor-in-training for a suburban housing development manages to add to his list of failures by omitting an environmentally protected, heritage oak tree from the parcel plans filed with the county appraiser’s office. Before anyone can fire him, he quits, moves to Illinois and never comes back. But that’s beside the point. Probably.
Unbelievable. It’s Kansas, says the foreman, taking in the sight of the tree with a yellow ribbon around it, nearly enveloping the side of a two story framed house, like two skeletons side by side in the dead of winter. He removes the cigar from his mouth and points with it, how do you miss a tree like that?
The following spring, a young couple buys the house and moves in, ready to start a family and make a home.
They have two sons.
xii.
On Earth as it is in Heaven4.
As it is in Heaven, so it must be on Earth.5
John's eyes snap open before he even realizes that he's awake, and his heart pounds as he stares up at the ceiling. That tree is going to need trimming again. It scratches and scrapes in the blustery wind at the panes of glass and he is certain that they are going to shatter any minute from the onslaught, but as John sits up and comes around, the night is quiet. The limbs are only still threads of darkness behind the lace curtains.
Mary sleeps quietly beside him, exhausted from the stresses of dealing with a four-year old and a baby at the same time. When she's asleep, she's the most beautiful creature John has ever seen. He doesn't want to wake her.
John slips from their bed quietly and makes the rounds, checking on Dean first, then Sammy. He moves down the stairs still trying to shake away the scattered, overlaying images from his dream.
Late night TV doesn't offer much in the way of relief from war flashbacks, and he finds himself gazing through the screen instead of watching as Kirk Douglas's Colonel Dax leads his men to battle. He'd hoped the night terrors would fade. Truth was, they were never so bad after the war.
He frowns, turning the images over in his head, trying to remember. Mary - they'd started with Mary. The night her parents died. Things are still fuzzy, like important puzzle pieces are missing from ten years ago, but the nightmares kicked up then, that much is sure. Well, better him than her.
Images from the war reach out from the shadows on these kinds of nights. They wrap around his family, paint his wife with wounds a guy should only ever see in battle. John settles down into his ragged armchair and drifts back off to sleep to the staccato sound of gunfire. He isn't worried about his angels, sleeping peacefully upstairs. As long as he's around, nothing bad is going to happen to them.
xiii.
I'm not unfaithful. I've never been.
You will be.6
That’ll be ten forty-one, a female voice says, and John looks up from thumbing the bills in his hand. Small ornaments hang from a tacky garland behind her head in red and green. He wonders how long ago those colors were chosen for this time of year - red and green - and by whom, and whether or not it even matters to anyone who isn’t in his line of work.
Sir, she says, but it doesn’t reach him. The timbre of her voice only jars the reflections, round dancing bombs of blood and splinters and broken glass. One spark and everything could go up in flames.
Sir is that all?
He should probably get the boys something else. God knows when he is going to make it back to Jim's and Blue Earth again and the prospect of leaving them alone through another holiday in yet another dingy motel room is creeping up on him fast. This is not his idea of a real Christmas. But this might be the hunt that puts Mary to rest and he can't go home, not until it's over.
The register rings in the silence and answers for him: you get nothing else for your boys here.
Chapter I