BLACK SABBATH

CHAPTER 21

SEVEN SALLIE

OH, THE DEPTH OF THE RICHES BOTH OF THE WISDOM AND KNOWLEDGE OF GOD! HOW UNSEARCHABLE ARE HIS JUDGEMENTS AND HIS WAYS PAST FINDING OUT! (Romans 11:33)

            “Seven watch where you’re going!” my wife bellowed just as I veered our Subaru Outback back onto the dirt road after putting the passenger side wheels a couple feet onto the grassy shoulders.

            Inga had just stunned us by informing Zella and me that she had become pregnant as a fifteen year old girl. The impregnator happened to be the guy we were looking for in northern Minnesota. In my surprise I had glanced over my right shoulder at Inga, who was sitting in the back seat.

            This inadvertently caused my hand on the steering wheel to move along with my head. Or as my cousin Brock once called it after I got us into some trouble as teenagers, that lump  attached to my neck. His assessment may have proven correct, because my words caused my wife’s lovely dark brown eyes to produce daggers and her lovely lips to purse as if biting a lemon.

            “Did you abort?” I had asked.

            “Seven, that was crass,” Zella scolded. Then her countenance turned compassionate as she aimed it at Inga. “You don’t have to answer that.”

            “No, it’s okay,” Inga replied quietly and looked out of her window for a few seconds before admitting. “I kept him but then lost him.”

            “You mean you miscarried?” Zella gently asked.

            “No,” her voice croaked. “Jackson sort of became my boyfriend. We supposedly tried to be careful when it came to, you know, intimacy. But, well, I still ended up with a bun in the oven. He took me to some relative of his, I think it was a relative anyway. I never did understand what she was to him, an aunt, a cousin, I don’t know.”

            Inga shook her head and gazed thoughtfully out of the window again.

            “You don’t have to recount your situation, Sweety,” my wife told her.

            Yes she does, I selfishly thought. I want to know what happened.

            “No, I want you guys to know what happened. I want you to know what Jackson was like, even though I don’t understand him myself. Let me say this though. If Jackson Bronx has avoided the plagues, that is the biggest surprise to me of anyone. By far! I believe he got me pregnant on purpose. He… He…”

            Inga put her face in her hands and began sobbing. She spoke into her hands and her words, though muffled, were clear enough. “I don’t want to see him. I don’t understand why we were sent here. What do I say to this man I despise, even if he did somehow repent. He must have. He had to have. How else…”

            Inga paused. “Repent from what?” I asked.

            My wife’s leg twitched and I perceived that she wanted to kick me. “Seven, give her space. Did you forget to take your Genius Juice this morning?”

            “No, I took it.”

            “Could have fooled me.”

            “Sorry, Inga,” I said.

            “It’s okay,” Inga replied meekly. My heart ached for her. I was used to seeing her bold and feisty. It hurt seeing her so broken. But then her feistiness came back with a punch as she angrily declared, “Jackson groomed our baby for a satanic sacrifice.”

            “What!” Zella and I said at the same time. Then I only added to my wife’s ire by adding, “And you let him?”

            “No, I did not let him!” she barked heatedly. Then her demeanor shifted to solemn and she spoke with a monotone voice. “Benjamin wasn’t even a month old. Jackson and that witchy woman came and took him out of my arms as I was nursing him. They had two goons with them. Jackson, just as cold as could be, said ‘it is time for us to make our offering to the master.’

            “I was dumbfounded and demanded to know what he was talking about. Just as pleased as punch, that witchy woman, everyone called her Jezzy, explained about the satanic ritual. I went historical, but the two goons grabbed me. One of them put something over my face. It was a rag with chloroform or something.

            “The next thing I knew, I woke up in some woods behind this big mansion type house where I had my baby. Why they didn’t kill me I don’t know. But I got outta there with only the clothes on my back and hitchhiked back to town. That was a nightmare in itself. I don’t want to go into that right now though.

            “But when I finally get to the cop shop, the police acted like I was just a crazy lunatic. I guess I can’t blame them. And I guess that’s why the goons didn’t kill me. They knew the police wouldn’t believe me. But the police did let me use their phone to call my sister. And that was the beginning of us becoming homeless vagabonds.”

            “Wow, no wonder you’re not looking forward to facing Jackson,” I said.

            “Ya think,” Inga snapped. “Sorry. It’s just that I don’t have a clue how I am supposed to behave. I mean, am I really supposed to forgive the man that killed my baby. He was even the father of the child. I can’t fathom how that depth of evil avoided the plagues thus far.”

            “I don’t know what to tell you, Honey,” Zella said. “The only thing I can say is Jesus asked for forgiveness for those who tortured and killed Him.” (Luke 23:34)

            “Yeah,” Inga said meekly as she folded her hands in her lap, chewed her lip and gazed out of her window.

            A couple minutes later, GPS announced we were there. We already knew that as all six of our eyes were trained on a log cabin type house. It looked like something from a century or two ago. It had a small eight by ten foot porch with two rocking chairs.

            “Seven, why don’t you go knock on the door?” Zella petitioned.

            Why me! My mind shouted, yet I forced my actions to nobility. “Okay.”

            I tried three times, but no one came and I heard nothing inside. The cabin was on a bit of a hill, and the back side was twice as big as the front. There was a large deck supported by ten foot tall four by fours. About fifteen stairs jutted to the side of the structure.

            I heard low voices coming from the deck. With heart pounding I placed my foot on the first step, then the second step, then from my voice box came a greeting, “Hello?”

            The talking stopped and a twenty something year old man appeared at the top of the stairs. Thankfully he returned my greeting, albeit cautiously. “Hello.”

            He had sandy blonde hair and blue eyes looked at me through wire rimmed glasses. My first thought was that this couldn’t be Jackson. Inga described him with black hair and dark eyes. There were four deck chairs. Three were empty, but one was occupied by an older woman who appeared to be in her seventies.

            The sandy haired man held a Bible in his hand. With a friendly, but careful tone he asked, “Can I help you?”

            “I’m looking for a fella by the name of Jackson Bronx,” I told him.

            He looked stunned and took a step back. “May I ask why and who you are?”

            I chuckled nervously. “Well, it’s complicated, and might sound farfetched.”

            “Try me,” he said almost as a challenge and with narrowed eyes.

            “My name is Seven Sallie, I…”

            “Thee Seven Sallie?” the older lady broke in with an air of excitement as she arose and stood by the sandy haired man. “The legendary broadcaster?”

            With a little bit of a bow and a hand on my chest, I replied, “Yes ma’am, it is I.”

            My mind’s ear heard my lovely wife say, ‘Give me break.’ It was definitive enough that I even turned to see if she was behind me. She wasn’t. I also wondered if I should explain to this nice lady that my little head bow and hand to the chest was spontaneous, and that my mock humility sprang from praise actually making me uncomfortable.

            This wasn’t always the case with me. When I was a secular broadcaster with a syndicated show on hundreds of radio stations, I was full of myself. But after my Christian conversion, I began mocking my old self. I occasionally joked that I was a legend in my own time. Then my wife would finish my statement by declaring that I was a legend in my own mind. This usually garnered a laugh from the company we kept.

            The converted me enjoyed the tranquility of not taking myself so seriously. The born again me (John 3:3-7), the new creation I became (2 Corinthians 5:17), enjoyed true peace giving God the glory rather than myself.

            “Okay,” the sandy haired man said matter of fact, clearly not as impressed with me as his older companion.  “Nice to meet you, Mr. Sallie. But why are you here then?”

            “I’m with a young woman named Inga Likas. She…”

            “Inga Likas!” he interrupted with wide eyes. He definitely was more interested in Inga rather than the venerable Seven Sallie.

            “Yes, also known as Inga…”

            “Cognito,” he interrupted again.

            “Right, so apparently you know her.”

            “Of course I do.”

            “Okay, great,” I replied, frowning as I wrapped my mind around this second guy. “So do you know where Jackson Bronx is?”

            “You’re looking at him.”

            I looked to my right and to my left. Inga described Jackson as having black hair and dark  eyes. This guy in front of me had sandy blonde hair and blue eyes. “I’m afraid I don’t understand. Inga described you as having black hair and brown eyes.”

            “When I knew her, I dyed my hair and wore colored contacts,” he said quickly, then grabbed my forearm and asked excitedly, “Is she here?”

            I looked at his hand on my arm and he pulled it away. “Sorry.”

            “No problem,” I replied. “Yeah, she’s around front.”

            He went down the deck stairs two at a time and I followed. Inga and Zella were slowly roaming around the front yard. Their heads swiveling as they took in the woods that surrounded about an acre of lawn. Inga froze as Jackson approached her.

            “Inga!” he said with open arms as if to hug her.

            She took a couple quick steps back and ordered, “Stay away from me.”

            He put up his hands in a surrender gesture.

            The front door opened and an eight or nine year-old boy ran to Jackson. “Papa, Aunt Holly said Inga was here.”

            My eyes went from the boy to Inga. I never saw a more stunned face in my life. Her jaw hung open, as did my wife’s. Then my gaze returned to the boy, and I took in his wide, expressive arctic blue eyes, Inga’s eyes, as they trained on her. Then my jaw dropped when I heard him ask Inga, “Are you my mom?”