HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 7

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 7

PENNY

THE HEART IS DECEITFUL ABOVE ALL THINGS, AND DESPERATELY WICKED; WHO CAN KNOW IT? (Jeremiah 17:9)

            “Hey,” my assistant Abby said with a breathless grin as she breezed into the clinic. “Did you have a good weekend?”

            “It was okay,” I replied. “I’m going to guess you had a good weekend.”

            I hadn’t seen Abby this happy in more than a year. Ever since the twenty eight year old’s fiancée ended their relationship the previous autumn, she had been depressed. He did this right after she discovered she was pregnant. I had thought him a creep, but her friendship with Arlo brought to light an interesting twist to the conception of her baby daughter Lindsey.

            She giggled. “Yeah, I had a really nice weekend.”

            “Oh yeah, what’d you do?”

            “Well, Arlo Aldo went to church with me Saturday,” she said breezily.

            I felt myself go rigid. A few nights previously, he and I had talked for a couple hours. I felt like we bonded, and I even told him as we parted that if he wanted to do something this weekend to give me a call. He very cheerfully said okay. But apparently he chose to spend time with my pretty, decade younger assistant. Was I jealous? I think I was, but why?

            “Oh yeah?” I replied, purposely appearing disinterested.

            “Yeah,” she said with more giggles. “Then yesterday he came out with my little rock climbing group. He had never done it before, but he was a natural. All those muscles aren’t just for show.”

            “That’s nice,” I said, leafing through some papers, and pretending to be looking for something as we talked. “So do you have a thing for Arlo?”

            My normally plain Jane redheaded assistant had an air of sexiness about her and looked cute as she crinkled her nose. “I think I do. He’s so handsome and rugged, yet gentle.”

            Oh well, lost at love again… What was I thinking? Lost at love? Arlo and I had one lengthy conversation with occasional, mild flirting.

            “So when are you gonna see him again?”

            “I don’t know,” she replied with a shrug. Then her bubbly demeanor dissipated. “Truth is, I think I’m more interested in him than he is me.”

            “Oh yeah, why’s that?”

            “Well, as he put it, the ink isn’t dry on his divorce yet. Plus he treated me more like we’re pals rather than, you know, mutually romantically interested.”

            “I see,” I replied, hopeful that all wasn’t lost with Arlo and me. But then something dawned on me. If Abby and I were secretly and not so secretly competing for the same guy, how would that affect our working relationship? She was the best assistant I ever had. Oh well, I’d cross that bridge later, and hope that it wasn’t rickety.

            Two days later I was invited to a small gathering at our family’s church to listen to some of the songs Eli and Ethan’s band had been practicing. Of which, Arlo played bass. I decided to do something I rarely did and wasn’t very good at. I made myself look girly.

            I didn’t want to overdo it. I didn’t want to be obvious. A little mascara to enhance my big brown eyes and a little lip gloss to sensualize my lips. I had pretty fantastic legs, if I do say so myself, so I dug out one of the two shorter skirts I owned. It was denim, and I forgot how high it was above the knee. I tugged it down, but it didn’t help much. I put brown penny loafers on my feet and wondered if anyone would comment on Penny wearing penny loafers.

            I spotted Arlo’s bass guitar in a stand down in the church basement where the band had been practicing. But I saw no Arlo. Everyone else was there. Then I heard a toilet flush behind me. Then water running in the sink. Then paper towels departing from a dispenser. Then the restroom door flung open, and the happy hulk emerged.

            “Hey, pretty Penny in penny loafers,” he grinned. I couldn’t help grinning back, even though I tried not to. So it took all of three minutes for someone to make a ‘Penny in penny loafers’ comment. I knew I should have worn pumps, or even my old cowboy boots.

             “You clean up nice,” he added.

            This is where I exposed one of my biggest flaws. That was speaking before thinking, rather than thinking before speaking. “Yeah, but do I look as good as Abby up on a rock in spandex athletic pants?”
            His grin grew bigger. “That wasn’t horrible to look at.”

            “You know, to lust after a woman is committing adultery with her already in your heart.”

            “I’m not married anymore, so I no longer have a covenant with my eyes,” he said, quoting Job 31:1.

            “Is that right?”

            “That’s right, so I’m gonna go ahead and admire your surprisingly shapely legs too.”

            “Surprisingly?”

            “Yeah. For a girl that tries to dress like a guy, I would have guessed your legs would be hairy.”

            “I don’t try to dress like a guy. I just don’t put a whole lot of effort into being feminine.”

            “Well you should. You’re lovely to behold when you do.”

            I snorted a laugh. “You call this effort? You should see me in me my blonde wig, leather skirt, and black stockings with heels.”

            “Okay,” he said eagerly.

            “Too bad, I hate heels.”

            “Hence the penny loafers,” he said, and then frowned. “Do you really have a blonde wig?”

            “I do. But it was given to me as a joke. I’ve only worn it once. Why do you prefer blondes? I don’t know that you’re even a gentleman.”

            “Actually I don’t, but you in a blonde wig would be a curious sight. You in a leather skirt and stockings would be an even curiouser site.”

            “I don’t think curiouser is a word. Besides, it’s character that counts, not appearance,” I declared, and then felt a wave of hypocrisy as the marriage I wrecked flashed into my mind.

            “Very true,” he agreed. “And to be honest, as a fairly new Christian, and a brand new single man, I’m still figuring out the boundaries of appropriateness when it comes to admiring attractive females, and admiration crossing over into lust.”

            There were around forty or fifty people milling about. Eli interrupted numerous conversations as he directed the band to assemble and begin play. They were fantastic!

            Afterward, Arlo and I went to an old fashion café. He had a piece of cherry pie with vanilla ice cream. I had a strawberry shake. With my penny loafers and white ankle socks passing as bobby socks, it seemed like we were on a fifties style date. Was it date? I certainly felt like a teeny bopper when I couldn’t help asking, “So, do you like Abby?”

            He shrugged. “She’s a nice girl.”

            “I know she has a major crush on you.”

            He stopped a fork full of pie halfway to his mouth. With raised eyebrows he replied, “She does?”

            “Can’t you tell?”

            “Well, I mean, we do get along pretty good. And she’s nice looking. But I’ve only been divorced for about two minutes, so I’m not ready for a relationship.”

            I felt both relieved as well as disappointed. Did I want a relationship? A relationship with Arlo Aldo? I do know I wanted to go to bed with him. But would he be willing? I wasn’t a committed Christian back then. When I went out on a date, which was becoming more and more infrequent, it was usually with someone I already knew. Therefore, we usually ended up in bed. But Arlo seemed to take his faith very seriously. If he kept what he referred to as the Biblical Sabbath, I highly doubted that he would be willing to fornicate.

            Arlo continued about Abby. “Besides, as you know, she has some issues. And I have enough of my own right now.”

            “By issues, do you mean her daughter Lindsey? I know with her family belonging to a conservative church and all, it was difficult for her to have a child out of wedlock.”

            “Actually, her family was pretty cool. It’s the guilt she still feels over her fiancée.”

            “Guilt over her fiancée? Don’t be ridiculous! After four years together, he knocks her up and then immediately dumps her just weeks before their wedding.”

            “He’s not the father,” Arlo blurted, and then his eyes got wide, and he put delicate fingers to his lips. I would have giggled at the sight if the subject matter wasn’t so serious.

            I felt an electric chill throughout my entire body that somebody with Abby’s character would cheat on her fiancée. Then I felt hurt that she had apparently confided in Arlo, but not in me. Abby had only worked for me not quite two years, but I felt like we were pretty close friends.

            “So Abby told you this?”

            “Nope,” he said, shaking his head. “I met her former fiancée’s brother at her church. I think he thought Abby and I were an item. He took me aside and warned me that she was a cheater. He also said her former fiancée let everyone think he was the deadbeat to save her from disgrace. He said he also left town due to his own undeserved disgrace.”

            “I don’t believe it!” I said. “Sweet little, God fearing Abby not only cheated, but let the betrayed take the fall.”

            “Please keep this between you and me,” Arlo said. His eyes looked somewhat panicked. “I promised him I wouldn’t tell, but I let slip figuring you already knew. Trust me, I can tell by things she’s told me that she plans to set the record straight. She told me she had been backslidden for years and had things she needed to own up to. I’m betting what I just told you is part of it.”

            “I’ll keep it to myself, I promise.”

            “I hope this doesn’t make you think less of her. I believe she’s repentant. I think she’s just seeking God’s grace and working up the courage to come clean.”

            “I have my own skeletons, Arlo. What you just told me only makes me feel for her.”

            We drove separately, and out in the parking lot, grinning, he stuck out his hand to shake. I opened my arms and said, “I think we can do better than that.”

            As we broke away from the hug, I went on tip toes and made to kiss his cheek. Only I missed on purpose and kissed half of his mouth. I could tell it took him by surprise, and he made a joke of it, saying, “Mmm, strawberry.”

            Aiming wide innocent looking eyes that weren’t so innocent, I invited. “If you like the taste, have some more.”

            “Don’t mind if I do,” he replied, and lowered his face to mine.

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 6

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 6

ELI

THEN GOD BLESSED THE SEVENTH DAY AND SANCTIFIED IT, BECAUSE IN IT HE RESTED FROM ALL HIS WORK WHICH GOD HAD CREATED AND MADE (Genesis 2:3)

            I was about to take a drag off of my cigarette, for I still smoked in 1999, when there was a menacing laugh and a sharp flick of a finger in front of my face. Instead of my lungs filling with toxic, nicotine laced smoke, I watched my Kool filter king sail off of the back porch I was sitting on. I was at a bed and breakfast where I was now residing after one night in a hotel. The cancer stick sailed into the leafy grass below.

            “Eli, you dog!” Arlo laughed. “You told me you quit smoking.”

            Laughing and rising from my lounge chair, I hugged the only person I considered family at that juncture of my life. But I was excited to share with him about the family I hoped I was gaining.

            “I did quit,” I squeaked, because he was hugging my so tight. “But then I always seem to restart.”

            Arlo looked better than ever, tan and fit. I hadn’t seen him in months. In our band, ‘The Sons Molech,’ Arlo played bass guitar, and his stage persona was similar to the Marvel comic book character Thor. With his long blonde hair, and a physique like a bodybuilder, he played the part well.

            “I thought your flight was coming in this evening,” I told him. “I was planning on picking you up.”

            “I took an earlier flight, and I rented a car,” he explained. “I don’t want to bother you or anyone else for a ride while I’m here.”

            “I’m hoping you’ll be here for a while,” I grinned. “We need a bass player.”

            He frowned but smiled. “Let me guess, your, um, reunion with your son is going well?”

            “I don’t know that it’s called a reunion when we only met a few days ago,” I explained. “But yes, your prayers were answered. Turns out Ethan, my… son, is a singer song writer, and his wife is a very good drummer.”

            “That’s fantastic!” Arlo grinned. “I can’t wait to meet them.”

            “Hey! How about tonight? They’re throwing a birthday party, but I told them I couldn’t stay long because I was picking you up at the airport.”

            “You’re cutting out on your own birthday party for me?” He smiled sheepishly and gave my upper arm a friendly punch.

            “No, it’s for my… granddaughter.”

            “Wow, that sounds weird! Your granddaughter. And she was born on your birthday?”

            “Yep. She was born the day I turned thirty five.”

            “Man, you Alderson’s start young.”

            “Yeah, so young we don’t even know we had kids.”

            “And I suppose nobody knows it’s your birthday as well?”

            “I’ll announce it at the end of the party. I wanted this to be Crystal’s day, and not overshadowed by me.”

            “Good idea,” Arlo said, then his eyes widened. “Fire!”

            He vaulted over the deck railing and began stumping on about a five foot wide circle of burning leaves in the lawn ignited by the cigarette he flicked from my lips. I put a hand on the railing, but thought better of vaulting, and trotted down the six steps into the yard. I also thought better of dancing in the flames and grabbed a nearby watering can. The pail of water extinguished the flames quicker than Arlo’s foot maneuvers.

            “Wow, I hope Mrs. Mendelbright didn’t see this,” I said, looking up at the large Victorian house.

            “Who’s Mrs. Mendelbright?”

            “The proprietor, or landlady if you prefer.”

            Arlo laughed. “That’s a good one.”

            “What is?” I frowned.

            “Mrs. Mendelbright.”

            “What’s so funny about that? She’s a sweet little lady. I don’t want her to think I’m riff raff.”

            “You mean you’re not joking?”

            “Joking about what? We just set her lawn on fire. Actually you did.”

            “So you don’t know who Mrs. Mendelbright is?”

            “Of course I do, she owns this place.”

            “No, I mean the Mrs. Mendelbright I’m talking about,” Arlo tried to explain. “You know ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ right?”

            “Of course, but I can’t say I ever watched much of it, though.”

            “You don’t know what you’re missing, it’s a classic,” Arlo said and then frowned. “So you don’t know who Mrs. Mendelbright is then?”

            “Of course I do, she owns this place.”

            Arlo laughed. “Truth is stranger than fiction. Andy Griffith was the sheriff of this quaint little town of Mayberry. He had this squirrely deputy named Barney Fife. In this one episode, Barney got kicked out of the room he rented from a, get this, Mrs. Mendelbright. He was kicked out of his room for cooking in it against the rules. He burned his food, and she smelled it.”

            “Quick, lets cover this black circle with leaves.” I instructed after hearing his story.

            “Just think if Mrs. Mendelbright discovers this burnt circle and finds out about the band you used to be in,” Arlo laughed.

            “That’s not funny,” I replied, even though I laughed. Then in all seriousness, I said, “I think she has a room available if you want to stay here.”

            “You know, I think I will. I get along well enough with my parents, but it’s just not the same as when I was a kid.”

            “So the old saying is true, you can’t go home once you’ve left.”

            He didn’t seem to like this idea and pointed back and forth between us. “Look, we’re home, ain’t we?”

            “I lived here a little more than a year, and couldn’t wait to leave, so this is hardly my home.”

            “Then what are you doing back with seemingly no timetable to leave?”

            I frowned. “I don’t know, maybe finding a home.”

            He chuckled. “Let’s go see Mrs. Mendelbright about a room.”

            “Nice,” Arlo said as he looked around his room. “It’s like staying at a grandma’s house instead of the hotels we’re used to.”

            “Mrs. Mendelbright makes a great breakfast if you get up in time.”

            “I take it you don’t get up in time?”

            “I’ve never fully gotten away from rock star hours, but she always seems to have a huge homemade muffin available for me… I really hope she doesn’t see the burnt spot in her yard.”

            “Don’t worry about it. I told her.”

            “You what!”

            “My conscience bothered me,” Arlo shrugged. “Like I said, don’t worry, she laughed about it. She even complimented you for not smoking your cigarettes in her room.”

            “Probably laughed it off because your biceps are bigger than my thighs.”

            “I wouldn’t hurt a woman.”

            “She doesn’t know that.”

            “Actually I’m hurt by your insinuation,” Arlo said, placing gentle fingers on his chest. “I won her over with kindness and charm, not intimidation.”

            “Kindness and charm?” I chuckled. “That’s probably how the serpent beguiled Eve.”

            Arlo grinned from ear to ear. “You’ve been reading the Bible I gave you.”

            “Yeah,” I shrugged. Then sensing a sermon was forthcoming, and not in the mood, I said, “Hey, let’s get to that birthday party. Help me load up her presents.”

            “What’s in this box?” Arlo asked as he and I retrieved it out of Mrs. Mendelbright’s garage.

            “A battery powered Jeep. It’s even pink. I also got her a rocking horse. Oh, and a guitar, how could I forget that?” I laughed.

            “Kind of overkill, don’t you think?”

            “Well, I got the rocking horse before I saw the little pink jeep.”

            “How about you let me have one of them?”

            “It’s not your birthday yet. Besides, you’re too big for all of them.”

            “I meant for me to give to your granddaughter. You shouldn’t be so overindulgent.”

            “Okay, how about the rocking horse?”

            “Perfect. A rocking horse from Uncle Arlo.”

            “Great Uncle Arlo.”

            “Awe, you think I’m great?”

            “Sure I do.”

            The party was at Penny’s veterinarian clinic after hours. When I saw the kids were getting pony rides, I selfishly thought it would overshadow my jeep. But I was wrong, she loved it! She was so excited, it also got her past her shyness around me. She actually hugged me and kissed my cheek. For the first time I felt overwhelmed by feelings of love.

            I couldn’t stop a tear from leaking. So this wonderful feeling turned into mortification as two dozen pairs of eyes watched the former macho rockstar Eli Endor weep over the affection of a little girl. But Ariel quickly approached me, wiping her own tear, hugged me, and whispered. “Don’t be embarrassed. That was one of the sweetest things I ever saw.”

            On a different note, I unwittingly witnessed the beginnings of what would turn out to be a complicated love triangle. I immediately noticed a chemistry between Penny and Arlo when they were… would it be introduced or reintroduced? I’ll go with reintroduced, because of the first words out of Arlo’s grinning mouth as they shook hands were, “Gone for a swim lately?”

            I noticed Penny’s lips purse, not in anger, but suppressing her own grin in reference to his throwing her into a lake more than two decades ago. Then she shot back with her own jab. “Taken any steroids lately?”

            “That’s below the belt, young lady, I’ve worked hard for these guns. I’ll admit that I’ve ingested some unhealthy chemicals in my time, but never for artificial muscle growth.”

            “His physique looks pretty natural to me, Pen,” One of Abby’s vet assistants piped up, and then blushed.

            She was a handsome redhead with pretty green eyes. Abby, like her boss Penny, appeared to be a tomboy. I initially wondered if she and Penny were more than coworkers. But I discovered that day by the way she looked at Arlo, that Abby was definitely into dudes. They also had something unique in common.

            “I noticed your cap says, ‘Amazing Facts’,” Abby said to Arlo, referring to the baseball cap he was wearing backwards that advertised his favorite Christian ministry. His blonde ponytail hung behind the bill. “Are you a Sabbatarian?”

            “Yes I am,” Arlo said happily.

            “Me too,” she responded with delight.

            They began a conversation, and I witnessed Penny giving them sideways glances. After their discussion ended, I asked Arlo what a Sabbatarian was.

            “It’s someone who keeps the Biblical Sabbath,” Arlo replied.

            “All Christians go to church on Sunday, so what’s the big deal?”

            “Most, not all. The Biblical Sabbath is actually the seventh day of the week, not the first.”

            “How do you know that?”

            “Cause the Bible tells me so. Starting with Creation in the book of Genesis. God blessed the seventh day and set it apart as a permanent memorial of Creation. It’s also part of the Ten Commandments, the one part of the Bible that God personally wrote.”

            “Well, why do most Christians keep Sunday?”

            “Sunday keeping really took off when Constantine made Christianity a legal religion in the fourth century. When he did, pagan beliefs became merged with Christian beliefs. This led to the dark ages. I’m sure you’ve heard that?”

            “I have, but I don’t know exactly what it is.”

            “It was a period of over more than a thousand years where Christians were persecuted if they didn’t follow the Papacy. The dark ages officially ended 1798 when Napolean’s General Berthier basically arrested the Pope.”

            “Are you really Arlo Aldo, bass player for ‘The Sons of Molech’?

            “Not anymore, old buddy. By the way…”

            “Guys, come get some birthday cake,” Ariel’s voice invited.

            “We’ll talk more later,” Arlo said.

            As I mingled, chatted, and took bites of cake, I heard playful banter between Penny and Arlo. But some of it being playful is questionable. This is the last bit I heard before a big splash.                               Penny asked Arlo, “How come you don’t have any tattoos, but your old bandmates were covered in them? Are you afraid of needles or something?”

            I wasn’t covered with tattoos, but my left arm was pretty much sleaved with various wild animals, skulls, and guitars. Izzy and Kyle on the other hand were almost entirely covered with ink. Izzy even had one on his face.

            “You don’t put bumper stickers on a Lamborghini,” Arlo said happily.

            “But what if it isn’t a real Lamborghini, but kit car?” Penny asked with wide, innocent eyes.

            “That’s it!” Arlo declared as he scooped up Penny in his arms and marched to a pond.

            She squealed and laughed, but as Arlo was about to toss her into the pond, Abby came up behind him and tickled his ribs. He jerked, convulsed, and dropped Penny. Then the two women working in tandem, shoved Arlo into the pond causing a big splash.

            He took it in good humor until I told him. “I don’t know how you’re getting back to the B and B. Because you’re not getting into my car looking like a swamp rat.”

            Penny gave him a ride home. It was warm for late October, and they sat on that back deck where Arlo tended to start fires. They talked for two and a half hours, and a different type of fire was started.

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 5

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 5

PENNY

I SPEAK IN HUMAN TERMS BECAUSE OF THE WEAKNESS OF YOUR FLESH. FOR JUST AS YOU PRESENTED YOUR MEMBERS AS SLAVES OF UNCLEANNESS, AND OF LAWLESSNESS LEADING TO MORE LAWLESSNESS, SO NOW PRESENT YOUR MEMBERS AS SLAVES OF RIGHTEOUSNESS FOR HOLINESS (Romans 6:19 NKJV)

            I’m sure I was more nervous than both father and son as they met for the first time. It was forefront in my mind that I was the one responsible for this encounter. Whether it went well, or if it turned into a dumpster fire, it was my letter that I sent to Eli several weeks ago that ultimately caused this meeting. This weighed heavily on my mind.

            This period of my life found my walk with the Lord weak, and my faith feeble. Nonetheless, as I watched Ethan and Eli lock eyes for the first time in my sister’s living room, my lips silently pleaded. “Please, oh please, Dear Lord, let this go well.”

            Eli appeared to be cool as a cucumber. What an odd phrase. What’s so cool about a cucumber? Anyhow, he smiled that smooth smirk of his and extended his hand to his son. “Ethan, it’s very nice to meet you.”

            Ethan just stared at him as if in awe. I silently muttered, “Take his hand, Ethan, don’t blow him off. Please don’t blow him off.”

            Eli cleared his throat and slowly withdrew his hand. Then Ethan grabbed it and chuckled nervously. “Sorry… It’s just… I’ve wanted to meet you ever since I found out you were… You know.”

            “Yeah,” Eli replied a little breathless. “I came as soon as I realized the possibility.”

            “I wrote to you six years ago,” Ethan told him matter of fact.

            “I didn’t see it,” Eli replied quickly. “Or if I did, I figured it wasn’t legit.”

            “What made you think Aunt Penny’s letter was legit?”

            Eli looked at me and a wave of anxiety flowed through me that I felt through my whole body.

            “Well, this may be TMI,” Eli said with an uneasy smile. Then he proceeded to explain about getting a vasectomy when he was only twenty years old. He explained about numerous accusations of fatherhood over the years that he laughed off. But my phrase ‘A Penny for your thoughts’ had caught his eye. He saw the one possibility with my letter that he could in fact have fathered a child.

            “So,” Ethan said hesitantly. “You traveled all this way just to meet me?”

            “I did.”

            “The man who took your place wouldn’t walk across the street to see me,” Ethan said bitterly. This statement caused Ariel to take her eyes off her son and his biological father for the first time. She looked at her feet as if in shame. But she was between a rock and hard place. She already had two daughters with her first husband before he started treating Ethan like dirt.

            “I’m sorry about that.”

            “It’s not your fault,” Ethan shrugged. They stared at each other for a long moment. Then Eli looked past him and asked, “Who are these lovely young ladies?”

            “Oh, this is my wife, Amy,” Ethan introduced. “And this sweet little girl hugging her leg is our daughter Crystal.”

            “Nice to meet you, Amy,” Eli said, shaking her hand.

            “Likewise,” Amy replied with a smile. “Crys, can you say ‘hi’ to Daddy’s… I… don’t know what I should, you know, refer to you as.”

            “Eli’s always worked just fine,” he told her with a warm smile. Then he went to one knee and offered his hand to Crystal. “Hi there, Crystal. You sure have a pretty name.”

            She ignored his hand and shyly buried her face into her mother’s thigh for a few seconds. Then she pointed at Eli and said, “He looks like Daddy… Only old.”

            Everyone laughed at this. Then Ethan crouched by Eli but spoke to his daughter. “You know Great Grandpa Frank, Sweety? Eli is his son.”

            Eli’s head turned so fast to face Ethan I was concerned he’d get whiplash. “You know my father?”

            “After I found out you were my bio dad, I looked him up. We sort of developed a relationship. I try to see him every couple weeks.”

            “Why wouldn’t he have told me I have a son?” Eli said with a frown.

            “He said he tried to contact you, but you never returned his calls.”

            “Has it been more than six years since I talked to him?” Eli said to himself.

            “Seven,” Ethan told him. “He’s told me that you two don’t get along very well, and that’s why you’ve never gotten back to him.”

            “I’ve traveled a lot,” Eli tried to explain. “Time sure can get away from a person.”

            “There’s something else you should probably know,” Ethan said. “Since I hit off with, well, my grandpa, your dad, I had my name legally changed from Smothers to Alderson when I turned eighteen. I hope that’s alright with you.”

            “Of course, of course,” Eli replied happily. Then seeming somewhat jealous, he asked, “So you and Frank get along pretty well, huh?”

            “Yeah,” Ethan nodded happily. “He cried when I asked him if I could change my name to Alderson… I mean happy tears, he was touched.”

            “He cried? I’ll be dogged. I didn’t know he had tear ducts. I should probably go see him.”

            “He’d like that.”

            “He would?”

            “I guarantee it.”

            “He was pretty angry and disappointed with my occupation. I even tried to win his approval by paying off his house. But he said he wouldn’t take a dime from a sick devil worshiper.”

            “Can I ask you question?” Amy asked Eli.

            “Sure, ask me anything you want.”

            She winced and asked quietly. “Are you a really Satanist?”

            “No,” Eli replied, adamantly shaking his head. “But the leader of the band I was in for a lot of years was. So for a time, I guess you could say I dabbled on the fringes by association.”

            “That’s a dangerous thing to dabble with,” Ariel pipped up.

            “Trust me, I know,” Eli admitted. “I’ve had night terrors to prove it. You really do have to be careful who your friends are.”

            “Can I ask you something?” Ethan said.

            “Absolutely.”

            “If you got a vasectomy when you were only twenty, you must have been pretty adamant about not wanting children. So why are you interested in me?”

            “I was dead set on being a musician, on traveling the world. I didn’t want the obligation of children, and I knew I wouldn’t be a good father… As for my interest in you, time has a way of changing people. A twenty year old doesn’t make the wisest life choices. I don’t know if my procedure was even legal. It was something I wanted done, and our band’s manager greased palms, so to speak.”

            “So if you had to do over?”

            “I’ve never been much of a rearview mirror guy The past is past, ain’t nothing you can do about it. I view life like a chalk board. You mess up, erase it and move on with a fresh start.”

            “In my belief system as a Christian,” Ethan said. “We call it repentance.”

            Then seeming to want to change the subject, Eli said, “I understand you play guitar.”

            “Yeah I do. I’m okay, I guess, not like you though.”

            “He’s fantastic singer,” Ethan’s wife Amy spoke up.

            “And he writes songs about God, love, and sacrificial living,” Ariel piped in.

            “Yeah, you write songs?” Eli asked enthusiastically.

            “Mostly about God, love, and sacrificial living,” his mother repeated.

            “I heard you the first time, Ariel,” Eli said patiently, although his jaw seemed to clench. “And I’m glad. I wouldn’t want anyone to follow the dark path I took.”

            “So you do regret it?” Ariel asked.

            “Like I said before, I’m not a rearview mirror guy.”

            “Why would you be?” I blurted. “You became rich selling Satanism.”

            His eyes winced when he glanced at me. But it was a look of pain rather than anger or defiance. Then he spread his hands in defeat. “I’d like to tell you I’d do things different, but I can’t time travel. Hindsight’s always clearer than foresight, right? There’s nothing I can do about it now.”

            “Yes there is,” Ariel practically barked. “You can publicly repent and accept Christ.”

            “I’m not beyond that Ariel,” Eli told her. “Just so you know, I asked Arlo to pray for me before I came to this meeting.”

            “Really?” my sister said meekly. Then she got demanding again. “Well, you could also help our son get his songs exposed.”

            “Mom! Aunt Penny!” Ethan ordered. “Give the man a break. I just met him fifteen minutes ago!”

            “It’s okay, Ethan,” Eli said gently. “I’d be glad to do whatever I can to help you. I’d really like to hear you sing and play, if you wouldn’t mind.”

            “I’ll get his guitar out of the car,” Amy said.

            A couple minutes later, Eli and Ethan sat across from each other. Eli looked eagerly at his son. But I could see a nervous tremor in Ethans hands, and I felt my toes curl. He handed the guitar over to Eli and look of surprise came onto the rock star’s face. “Would you play something first?”

            “What should I play?” Eli asked hesitantly.

            “Just don’t play something from your band days,” Ariel said.

            “Band Aid?” I inquired, wondering what the little strips for minor injuries had to do with this.

            “Band days,” Ariel said slowly. Big sister putting little sister in her place.

            Eli strummed the instrument, making sure it was in tune. Then he launched into a fast  Spanish flamingo style of play that made all of our jaws drop open.

            I recalled more than two decades earlier Eli was in the high school jazz band. At a school assembly, they performed, and Eli had a solo that was anything but jazz. He played, arguably, the most famous hard rock guitar solo of all time, Van Halen’s ‘Eruption.’

            He played it flawlessly. You would have thought Eddie Van Halen himself was there  playing it. The whole assembly of between three and four hundred students became silent. Not that you could hear much else with the riffs coming out of the amplifier. As the last notes reverberated through the auditorium, a collective roar of cheers drowned out the fading guitar, and Eli Alderson became a school legend.

            But he was also a polarizing figure in some ways. Mothers, including our own, didn’t want their daughters associating with this good looking, wild, long haired rocker. As for the guys, some thought he was the coolest thing ever and wanted to hang out with him. While others were jealous and wanted to beat him to a pulp.

            Eli would once again become a polarizing figure in town these twenty some years later. Only this time it was centered in the church community as he worked on music with Ethan and what was known as the ‘Praise Team’ at my family’s church.

            Then fuel was added to the fire when Eli’s former bandmate, and former Cedar Rapids resident, Arlo Aldo showed up. He had a six foot, ridiculously muscled frame, capped off with long blonde hair and dreamy blue eyes. Although now a devout Christian, he brought added controversy. He also brought turmoil to my personal life.

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 4

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 4

ARLO ALDO

HE WHO DOES NOT TAKE UP HIS CROSS AND FOLLOW AFTER ME IS NOT WORTHY OF ME. HE WHO FINDS HIS LIFE WILL LOSE IT, AND HE WHO LOSES HIS LIFE FOR MY SAKE WILL FIND IT (Matthew 10:38, 39)

            “Arlo, I need you to pray for me,” Eli’s voice said into my ear, via the telephone.

            First I felt an adrenaline rush, fearing something was wrong with my dear friend and former bandmate. Then I felt hopeful. Over the course of two years I had tried to witness my faith to Eli. I was certain he dealt with the same nightmares and demonic harassment I had since leaving our satanic rock band, ‘The Sons of Molech.’ Anyway, this was the first time he had actually asked me to pray.

            “What’s going on, Eli? Are you okay?”

            “I am doing great. So far anyway.”

            “Hang on, I’ll come right over.”

            “Ah, I don’t think that’s possible.”

            “Why?”

            “I’m about two thousand miles away.”

            “What? Where?”

            “Iowa.”

            “Iowa! What are you doing in Iowa?”

            I had grown up in Iowa. It’s where Eli and I first met when we were seniors in high school. He only lived there a little more than a year. I had never known him to purposely return there, other than a handful of times when our band was on tour. But to him it was just another stop on the schedule. He had lived with his dad and stepmother during his seventeenth year of life. But he didn’t get along all that well with his dad and talked to him only once a year at the most.

            “Is your dad okay?” I inquired.

            “Huh? Oh… I don’t know. I haven’t seen him.”

            “What do mean you haven’t seen him? What on earth are you doing in Iowa then?”

            “You’re not gonna believe it.”

            “I already don’t.”

            He laughed, and I felt relieved. Whatever he wanted prayers for must not be too terrible.

            “Do you remember Ariel Grobstick?”

            “How could I forget her?” I replied as an image of her in gym class wearing short gym shorts popped into my head. Then I shook it off. I had been a happily married Christian and had made a covenant with my eyes not to lust after other women. (Job 31:1).

            But now my yearlong marriage was over. My former wife, the person who was instrumental in pulling me out of the occult and into Christ’s loving and forgiving arms, had left me because I had gone too deep into the Bible. That coupled with the handsome man who convinced her I was a fanatic. For they married just days after our divorce was finalized.

            But although single, I was only a few weeks from forty years of age. So it seemed inappropriate for my mind’s eye to focus on a seventeen year old girl sitting cross legged in gym class wearing  short shorts. Even if she was currently my age, I hadn’t seen her since we were teenagers.

            Ariel came from a religious home and although she was a knockout, who looked like she could be on the show ‘Charlie’s Angels,’ she didn’t date much due to parental restrictions. But I seem to recall another vision of her standing by her locker, hugging textbooks as her long dark hair flowed over her shoulders. She was gazing dreamily into the eyes of Eli, his own dark hair flowing over his shoulders.

            “Well, it seems I knocked her up right before you and I went west seeking fame and fortune.”

            My mind was grappling with this. Knocked her up? Slang for impregnation. “Are you saying Ariel birthed a child of yours?”

            “And raised.”

            “So you have a twenty something son or daughter?”

            “Yes, a twenty two year old son and a granddaughter that’s four or five… What was that clatter?”

            “Sorry, I dropped the phone…. So have you met them yet?”

            “Not yet. I just met with Ariel and her sister.”

            “I don’t remember Ariel having a sister.”

            “A little Tomboy named Penny.”

            “Penny… Penny. That doesn’t ring a bell.”

            “You know that smart mouthed chick you threw into the lake that time?”

            “That was Ariel’s sister! She was a cute little gal.”

            “She still is, and a doctor of veterinarian medicine to boot.”

            “Now that you mention it, I should have seen the resemblance… So that’s what you want prayers for? This brand new fatherhood situation.”

            “Yes indeed. I don’t know how much a 22 year-old is gonna want to know a father he never met.”

            “I’ll be glad to keep you in prayer. How long are you staying out there?”

            “If we hit it off, probably a couple weeks.”

            “Maybe I should come out for a couple weeks. I haven’t been home for quite a while.”

            “Should you do that when the school year isn’t over for Brenda?” he asked, knowing my now ex-wife was an elementary school teacher.

            “We haven’t talked for a while, have we?”

            “It’s been at least a few months. I guess because we don’t work together anymore,” he laughed.

            “Brenda divorced me.”

            “What! Why? What’d you do?”

            I chuckled with no humor. “I developed a closer walk with God through a deeper study of the Holy Bible.”

            There was a pause, and I wondered if I was doing the right thing confiding my relationship woes with him. I believed Eli was still wrestling with spiritual darkness, and I didn’t want what happened with Brenda and me to be a stumbling block.

            “I’m afraid I don’t understand, Al,” Eli said. Everyone in the inner circle of our band called me Al. Al being short for my last name. “Let me get this straight. You became a more hardcore Bible believer, and Brenda left you for that?” Eli used a profane word before he continued. “You met her while she was protesting one of our concerts, waving a sign that says ‘Jesus saves.’ To my limited understanding, it doesn’t get any more hardcore than that.”

            “Well, she also had a little help from a guy she used to teach with. She remarried him before the ink was dry on our divorce settlement. But that’s beside the point. We still would have had an issue with one Biblical doctrine in particular.”

            “Oh yeah, what was that?”

            “I discovered this ministry called ‘Amazing Facts.’ They proclaimed the Biblical Sabbath was Saturday rather than Sunday. I started discussing my findings with not only other church members, but her pastor as well. The man who married us. He actually got mad and asked me to stop attending if I was going to rebel.”

            (Amazing Facts has a web site called Sabbath truth that explains the Bible Sabbath.)

            “Let me get this straight. You were kicked out of a church for discussing the Bible.”

            “To be fair, I wasn’t kicked out. I was asked not to come if I was gonna cause trouble.”

            “Once again, discussing the Bible, in church, is causing trouble?”

            “Not conceding that he was right, and I was wrong, despite little scriptural evidence on his part. The more Bible texts I shared, the angrier he got.”

            I heard Eli snort in disgust. “That’s why I steer clear of religion malarky.”

            I instantly felt like I made a mistake. “Look, we may have disagreed, but that pastor is good man. In my zeal I may have gone about it in the wrong way. Maybe he’ll take a look at what I showed him. He does lead his congregation well in doing the basic Christian virtues. Helping the homeless, initiating clothing and food drives…”

            “Protesting rock concerts,” Eli interjected.

            “Hey, it turned my life around.”

            “Yeah, it got you married for two minutes and then broke your heart.”

            “Well, even the Bible warns that life isn’t gonna be easy.”

            “Yeah, so what’s the point?”

            Once again I felt like a bad witness for Christ. “Look, I’ve gotta close on the sale of my house, and get stuff in storage until I find another place. But I’m coming out there as soon as I can. We’ll talk more then about what’s been happening with me. It sounds like I need to catch up on you as well. Big time!”

            “I’d go say ‘hi’ to your parents,” Eli said. “But you know they blame your bandmates for leading their sweet innocent baby boy into depravity.”

            “Well, they have someone new to blame now in Brenda.”

            Four days later, high up in the sky on my way to Iowa, I felt happy and hopeful on multiple fronts. For one, I hadn’t been to my hometown in quite some time, and I longed to see my family. Then there was Eli, my brother from another mother. When I had hung up with him the other night, my eyes welled with tears of frustration. I felt like my witness did more harm than good. But then my phone rang ten minutes later. It was Eli with a quick word that changed my mood.

            “Hey, what’s up, E?”

            “Just wanted to say thanks for praying for me. I’m pretty nervous about meeting my son tomorrow… That sounds weird to say.”

            “Sounds weird to hear,” I replied. Then after a slight pause, I said something I should have said after our previous, more lengthy conversation only ten minutes earlier. “I love you, brother.”

            “Love you too, man, can’t wait to see you.”

            “Same here.”

            This time, my eyes welled with happy tears. I was going home. Little did I know then, after traveling the world multiple times, I was going to find the love of my life where I grew up!

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 3

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 3

PENNY

THEREFORE SUBMIT TO GOD. RESIST THE DEVIL AND HE WILL FLEE FROM YOU. DRAW NEAR TO GOD AND HE WILL DRAW NEAR TO YOU (James 4:7,8)

            My sister looked stunned as she stared at Eli. I’m sure I looked stunned as I stared at my sister.

            “Elijah?” Ariel had said with a baffled tone in her voice. “Eli Alderson?” Then she spoke a little more heatedly. “Or should I call you Eli Endor?”

            Eli didn’t speak, but he looked at me as if for direction. I felt my jaw clench in irritation that he looked more amused than concerned. “I can explain,” I tried.

            “Can you?” my normally even keeled sister said with a low angry voice. She folded her arms abruptly and I noticed her hand trembling. What had I done!

            “You see… I…. Well, you know… It’s like this.”

            “Oh, okay, I understand now,” my sister said sarcastically. Sarcasm from my meek, sweet, lovely sister was something you rarely saw. Her next words included something I never heard from her lips before. Profanity. “Just what in the (blank, blank) are you doing here, Eli?”

            As people began to look over their shoulders, the amusement left Eli’s face. But he was still amazingly calm. He even reminded me of an old time movie star as he stood.  With a charm that at the time I cynically wondered if it came from the devil,  he said, “Please Ariel, I mean to cause no trouble. If my presence here bothers you this much, I will start heading west as soon as I eat my supper.”

            Then something amazing happened. Ariel’s angry concerned demeanor transformed right before my eyes. Despite her long salt and pepper hair, and the beginnings of crow’s feet at the corners of her eyes, she morphed into that dreamy teenager that let this goodlooking charmer create my nephew Ethan in her uterus.

            Ariel sat next to me in the booth. Roxy, our waitress, approached with a side salad for me along with a glass of ice water. She also had a side salad for Eli, but his glass of ice was tainted with Coca Cola. Roxy smiled at my sister and asked, “What can I get you Ariel?”

            “Oh… Just a cup of tea, Roxy.” Then she looked at Eli with a neutral expression. “I’m sorry I overreacted, but what in fact are you doing here?”

            “Like he said, he’ll go back home,” I piped up. “I think that would be best.”

            Ariel turned a cool gaze onto me. “Obviously he is here because of you. So what did you tell him?”

            “I didn’t tell him anything… I wrote to him.”

            “Like I said,” Ariel spoke slowly, as if to a child. I guess I will always be her baby sister. “What did you tell him in the letter you wrote to him?”

            My tongue felt like it was stuck, so this compelled Eli to speak in my behalf. “She told me I had a son and granddaughter. I wanted to see if that was true. But as much as I want to see them, I don’t want in any way to make you uncomfortable or disrupt your life.”

            “How unselfish for a satanist,” my sister replied casually.

            “I’m not satanist, and I never was,” he responded. Then he frowned as is he doubted his own statement.

            “Is that right?” Ariel asked. “So what was all that music you created all about? The pentagrams, goat heads, and demons on your album covers? The sex, violence, and paganism you promoted?”

            “I wrote melodies and riffs. Izzy wrote the lyrics and created the image.”

            “Melodies?” Ariel said with a sarcastic snort. “So, you just wrote guitar parts? You didn’t wear gothic makeup and point like this as you played a guitar solo with one hand?”

            Ariel did what I believe was known as a satanic salute as she pointed with her index finger and pinky. It was an odd sight to see on my deeply religious sister.

            “I was playing a role,” Eli defended. “Eli Endor was like a character in a play. My legal name is still Alderson.”

            “You played a role alright. During a time of desperation in my life, my son found out you were his sperm donor. Then he tried to emulate that so called character you played.”

            Eli’s face froze, and he actually looked horror stricken for a moment. “Ariel, I’m truly sorry. Not only for your son, but for the role I played with God knows how many impressionable souls.”

            “God? Souls?” Ariel asked, not mockingly but with an inquisitively arched eyebrow.

            “I’ve thought a lot about my past life over the last year or two.”

            “You mean you’re regretful?”

            “Yeah,” he shrugged.

            “So your mouth said ‘yes,’ but your shrug said ‘no.’”

            Eli chuckled. “Let me put it this way. I’m regretful for the use of dark spiritual imagery. But on the other hand, I enjoyed not having a nine to five job.”

            “And also making a truck a load of money,” I piped up.

            Eli glanced at me for a second and then turned a thoughtful gaze back to Ariel. Just like as a kid, I felt jealousy over the way Elijah Alderson looked so adoringly at my sister rather than me. Nothing had changed. My pretty, feminine sister pulled her long braided ponytail over her shoulder, and her delicate hands with manicured fingernails began to gently stroke it.

            I looked at my hands with my nails cut short  to better minister to animals. Then I ran one of them through my short brown hair with blonde highlights. The short pixie style was due to convenience. My sister’s subtle makeup enhanced her pretty features. Would it do the same for me? Her eyes, which looked identical to mine, looked all the more adorable due to the long mascara enhanced lashes.

            Even the way we were dressed. Her tight turtleneck revealed an alluring, ample chest. My loose flannel covered my smaller, but perky chest. Her tight black leggings revealed the fact that she stayed fit. My jeans were worn and ripped, but wasn’t that hip? Even our footwear. My dirty, well-worn cowboy boots, compared with her cute pink running shoes. Forgive me, but I was a little jealous.

            “What did you mean by your son trying to emulate me?” Eli asked.

            “He took up the guitar, and grew his hair long,” Ariel replied. “Thankfully his sweet, mostly wholesome girlfriend steered him away from the occult garbage.”

            “Is he good?” Eli asked.

            “Yes, he’s a fine young man. He has made some mistakes, sure, but he’s a truly good guy.”

            “I meant is he good at guitar?” Eli asked.

            I couldn’t help my guffaw. Both of them looked at me, and Eli seemed to know the reason for my outburst. “I already assumed a son of Ariel’s was a good man. But my guitars have always been the love of my life.”

            “So your regrets,” Ariel asked cautiously. “Does that mean that you’re not in the band anymore?”

            “I don’t know how closely you followed ‘The Sons of Molech.’ But we are no longer a band. Two are dead, and Arlo Aldo became a devout Christian. You remember Arlo?”

            “How could I forget?” she asked with a slight edge to her voice. “He’s the one that talked you into going west to start a band, right after I gave in to, you know.”

            “Gave in to what?” Eli asked, and I marveled that he couldn’t read between the lines.

            “You know,” Ariel repeated, but this time she blushed. “The thing that created Ethan.”

            “Ariel,” he said breathlessly. “It was a two way street. I tried to resist you.”

            “I know,” she acknowledged, then redirecting the subject. “So Arlo became a Christian.”

            “He did. And he takes it seriously.”

            “And you?” Ariel asked with an arched eyebrow.

            “I don’t know what I am.”

            “Do you know Jesus?” Ariel asked.

            I felt my toes curl. Although I considered myself a Christian at the time, I wasn’t nearly as devout as my sister. I was considered the bold one of us two. Yet it was she that would talk to total strangers about Jesus. But it’s hard to talk to people about faith when your own walk has been crooked.

            Although Ariel had relationship problems, it was I who had a relationship infidelity. For I was the catalyst that ended a marriage, as well as a career. Although I confessed my sin and repented, it left me forever tainted.

            “I’ve never met Jesus,” Eli said cynically. Then with utter seriousness he added, “But I have met the devil.”

            “How did that work out for you?” I piped in.

            Eli smirked. “He’s a roaring lion, seeking to devour. But he sometimes gives you the world first to lure you into the lion’s den.”

            “Jesus is the only way out,” Ariel smiled warmly, taking his hand. He returned his own warm smile, and it caused the green eyed monster to pinch my cheek.

            Why did I feel this way? Eli was just a schoolgirl crush for me, and he fooled around with my sister, not me. Plus, as tainted as I still felt for committing adultery, Eli had probably been with hundreds of women, done tons of drugs, and no matter the degree of his intentions, he had made some sort of pact with the devil that clearly affected him. Did Arlo Aldo truly get victory in Christ after his own involvement with a prominent satanic band?

            “I believe you when you say that,” Eli replied to my sister. “Arlo’s been beating me over the head with a Bible. He has repeatedly told me Jesus is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. Also that He stands at the door and knocks, and I just need to let Him in.”

            “Why haven’t you?” Ariel asked.

            “A side of me wants to. I guess the door’s stuck.”

            “Keep reading the Word and praying, and the door will get greased.”

            Eli gave her hand an extra squeeze, and Ariel put her other hand on top of their already joined hands. I thought about pulling them apart. I thought about reminding her that she’s married, although my sister would never cheat despite the fact that her and her husband’s intimate life was permanently altered due to his paralysis.

            “So Ethan came out of his rebellious faze?” Eli asked.

            “Not before he got his girlfriend pregnant when he was only seventeen.” Then she leaned in toward him and with a low conspiratorial tone. “Like father like son.”

            Now she was calling Ethan his father!

            “Oh!” my sister jerked excitedly and dug in her purse for a wallet. “I have pictures. Penny, would you be a dear and switch places with Eli?”

            The year was 1999, and there were no smart phones, so Ariel pulled out her oversized wallet and began to show him pictures of his son and granddaughter. Our food arrived and Eli became so absorbed in looking at the offspring he never knew he had, he let it get cold.

            I had somewhat lost my appetite. I didn’t understand why. I slowly nibbled my food as I watched my sister and her former hedonistic boyfriend huddle together in shared delight.

            “Man, he’s a goodlooking guy,” Eli enthused.

            I couldn’t help snorting. “That’s pretty narcistic since he clearly resembles you.”

            They both looked at me. Eli gave a quick casual glance, and then turned back to the pictures. Ariel frowned and shook her head. I was troubled. Somehow Eli had won her over her, and I didn’t know what to think. Should I be happy? Should I raise caution flags? Then what I both feared and longed for happened.

            “Do you want to meet them?” Ariel asked.

            “Sure, if you think you’re ready. If you think Ethan would be ready.”

            “Yes I do, I truly do. But how about tomorrow? I’ll talk to him tonight, so he can have time to get his head around it. I’m sure he’ll want to meet you, but don’t get your hopes up either.”

            “Great!” Eli declared. Then he looked at me with an air of satisfaction.

            What had I done! My night of intemperance with a bottle of wine and a pen had brought a devil worshiper into our midst. For I feared Eli Endor still held Eli Alderson captive.

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 2

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 2

Eli

BE SOBER, BE VIGILANT, BECAUSE YOUR ADVERSARY THE DEVIL WALKS ABOUT LIKE A ROARING LION, SEEKING WHOM HE MAY DEVOUR (1 Peter 5:8)

            As I sat in one of Penny’s examination rooms, I felt like I should be putting on one of those gowns that leave you feeling cold and exposed as you patiently wait to get poked and prodded by medical staff. But this was a veterinarian clinic, and although many people thought of me as an animal, I was in fact human.

            My humanity also was becoming impatient when my instructions from Penny to ‘wait in here for a minute’ surpassed the twenty minute mark. When the wait hit twenty two minutes, I had entered into full impatience. I was beginning to rise when there was two raps on the door and Penny burst in. “Come on, we gotta go before Ariel gets back.”

            The white medical coat she had been wearing when I first arrived was gone. She was wearing a light blue flannel shirt, faded jeans, and cowboy boots. Her dark hair was cut into some type of pixie. About a month previously, I had cut my long black hair to something eerily similar to Penny’s. It was the first time since I was seventeen that I didn’t have hair well past my shoulders.

            Penny was as cute as I remembered, but now all grown up. Yet she still seemed every bit the Tomboy that she was as a teenager. Of course maybe that was due to finding her at work tending animals. But she wore no makeup and had no jewelry, and  her current wardrobe was more masculine than feminine.

            I followed her as she walked briskly through the clinic and out into the parking lot. She bit her thumb, looked around, and then declared, “Shoot!”

            “What?” I replied.

            “I don’t know what to do, or where to go,” she said, looking at me as if I might have an answer.

            “I don’t know what to tell you,” I said, showing her my palms. “All I know is you don’t want me to see Ariel just yet.”

            “Are you hungry?”

            “Sure.”

            “Follow me, there’s a great place just a few miles from here.”

            I got into my candy apple red 1969 Shelby Mustang convertible. She got into a gravel dust covered Toyota Tacoma. I think it was dark blue, maybe black. It didn’t occur to me to ask if we were taking a dirt road or something. Thankfully it was all highway as I followed her to a town called Shellsburg.

            We entered a cozy café that was very much country themed. Without waiting for a hostess, Penny led us to a booth. Not long after, a voluptuous blonde waitress, around fifty, and wearing a lot of makeup, put a menu in front of both of us. “Hi, Doc Penny.”

            Then she said to me, “And associate.”

            “Hey Roxy,” Penny greeted, and I smiled to myself. If ever a name fit a person’s look.

            She smirked at Penny, winked and walked away. Penny had a frozen expression for a few seconds, then groaned and put her face into her hands, saying, “What was I thinking?”

            “What’s wrong?”

            “Bringing you here.”

            “What’s wrong with me?” I asked. But I’ve traveled the world. I knew small towns. “I’m normal. I’m not decked out in leather, and wearing goth makeup.”

            “You’re anything but normal.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?”

            “Never mind,” she said, gazed at me for a few seconds, sighed. “I don’t have much of a social life. On the rare occasion I do go on something like a date, it’s usually in Cedar Rapids.”

            “Is this a date?” I asked with an arched eyebrow.

            Her eyes widened, and she actually blushed. “No, no, no! But, you know, well, it could look like it. I thought it would just look like we were having a business meal… But then Roxy had to go and wink at me. Maybe it was just because you’re so… Never mind.”

            “Because I’m what?”

            “Never mind.”

            “Some host you are, insinuating that I’m hideous.”

            She snorted a laugh. “You were definitely hideous when you were in that creepy band.”

            “But not now?”

            “Let’s just stay away from this, okay?”

            There was a moment of awkward silence. Then I made it even worse. “So are you divorced?”

            Her reaction reminded me of the fifteen year old Penny, making me smile despite the awkward tension. She sneered and said in snotty tone. “No, I’ve never married. But why would you assume I was divorced?”

            “Well, you just said you don’t have much of a social life, and you mentioned occasionally going on dates. That coupled with your last name being Baldwin now, rather than Grobstick.”

            “Baldwin is my mother’s maiden name. I took it not long after my dad left my mother for a girl not much older than Ariel. Plus, meaning no offense to extended family, I’ve never been crazy about the name Grobstick.”

            “Are you and your date ready to order, Pen?” Roxy asked as she seemed to suddenly reappear. She looked at me and winked.

            “This isn’t a date,” Penny corrected, trying to smile with innocent looking eyes.

            I found myself gazing at Penny. She was in fact beautiful. Her Tomboy appearance couldn’t hide her large doe like eyes and sensuous lips. What made her even more stunning was how natural it was without trying at all. A boy’s haircut, no makeup or jewelry, and a flannel shirt that was at least a size too big.

            Her large round brown eyes were intense as they gazed at Roxy. Her small nose crinkled a little with what I perceived was disgust.

            I tried to help her out by explaining. “We’re old friends from high school. I used to date her sister.”

            Penny glared at me with a tight smile, then back to Roxy as she pointed out the window. “I’m looking to buy his Mustang.”

            “But she probably can’t afford it.” I replied. “It’s not only a vintage Mustang, it’s a  Shelby.”

            Roxy shrugged as her smile faded. She was just trying to be playful, teasing Penny, but I think she perceived that she was causing trouble. “So what’ll you have?”

            “The usual,” Penny suggested.  It turned out to be a grilled cheese sandwich, tomato soup, and a baked potato. I got a burger and fries.

            “Let’s cut to the chase,” Penny said. “I was out of line writing you like I did.”

            She bit her thumb and wore a concerned look as she was apparently looking for something to add.

            “What are you getting at?” I asked. “You don’t want me to meet my son and granddaughter now?”

            “No, I mean, not necessarily.”

            “Well what then?”

            “I need to feel Ariel out on the situation, and I don’t think she’ll be very happy with me.”

            “Didn’t you say my son wrote to me a few years ago?”

            She sneered. “Stop calling him your son! You didn’t raise him! You were just a sperm donor.”

            I was quite taken aback by her outburst, and it must have shown.

            “I’m sorry,” she said, touching my arm. Then she rubbed her temples and winced. “It’s just that it was already a long, stressful day; and then you just show up out of the blue.”

            “Well, I’m sorry, Penny,” I told her mildly. “Do you want me to turn around and go back to California? Cause I will, I don’t want to cause trouble.”

            “Is that what you want?” she asked with a frown.

            “No, I’m asking if that’s what you want? I was under the impression that meeting my… Ariel’s son was likely a favorable thing to be doing.”

            She sighed and looked at the table. “You see, Ethan writing to you six years ago was something I had helped him do. Ariel wasn’t happy with me then, so I suspect she would be even more unhappy now.”

            “Were you the one that told him about me in the first place?”

            “No, that’s why I figured Ariel wouldn’t mind him getting in touch with you.”

            “If she doesn’t want me in his life, then why did she even tell him about me?”

            “Her first husband wasn’t very good to Ethan… At all. As a matter of fact, verbal abuse turned into physical abuse. That was the main reason they divorced. But since she had two kids with him, the family was stuck with him in their lives. His ill treatment hurt Ethan’s self-esteem to the point that Ariel told him he wasn’t his real father, so he wanted to know who, and that’s when she reluctantly told him that you were his father.”

            “I think you mean sperm donor,” I said flatly.

            She eyed me cooly, yet a smile played at her lips. “Anyway, she regretted the cat getting out of the bag.”

            “Why?”

            “Why?” She asked with wide eyes, as if it were a stupid question. And it was, I knew what was coming next, just not word for word. “Mr. Hail Satan. Need I say anymore?”

            I waved a dismissive hand. “I didn’t take that stuff seriously.”

            “Is that right?” She asked skeptically, folding her arms as if in challenge.

            I looked out the window. I didn’t mean it to be, but my statement was a lie. True, I told myself I wasn’t serious when we ‘sold our souls for rock and roll.’ Even when we achieved success shortly after that fateful night when Izzy led us in a strange ritual. I believed our success had to do with my guitar playing, and our spooky stage gimmicks. I never would have went along with a satanic ceremony without being influenced by the other guys.

            “So everybody thought that her husband was the boy’s father?”

            “Yes, and you can call him Ethan.”

            “Even you didn’t know that… Ethan was my… biological son.”

            “I suspected, but Ariel began seeing Dan not long after you left town.”

            “Wait a minute. Dan. As in Dan Smothers?”

            Penny nodded.

            “She married Dan Smothers! That big idiot that strutted around like he was Hulk Hogan.”

            “One and the same.”

            “And she had kids with him?”

            “Two daughters that he treats like gold. Two little angels that can’t do anything wrong. Yet Ethan couldn’t do anything right in his eyes. He treated him like garbage.”

            “So what is this about some altercation between Ethan and his two stepdads. So apparently Ariel remarried?”

            “She did. To a good man, a decent man who was good to all of her kids.”

            “So what happened in this altercation?”

            “Hannah, Ariel’s oldest daughter was drunk at a bar on her twenty first birthday. One bar tender called Ethan and Doug. Doug is Ariel’s second husband. And another bar tender called Dan.”

            “Let me guess, Dan was drunk.”

            “Yes, but still coordinated enough to be violent. Hannah slid off of her barstool and tried to run. Ethan grabbed her arm to stop her. Dan yelled for him to let go of her while at the same time sucker punching him in the side of the head. The blow not only knocked him out, his head bounced off of the floor. He ended up in a coma for three days. So Doug charged Dan even though he’s easily a hundred pounds lighter. Dan flung him like a rag doll, and the corner of the bar severed his spine. He’s paralyzed from the neck down.”

            “So what happened to Dan? Is he in jail?”

            “He’s free on bond until his trial on multiple assault charges.”

            “So what’s Dan’s attitude, is he remorseful?”

            Penny shrugged and snorted sarcastically. “Oh he’s sorry all right. But how much of his repentance is regretful over the injuries he caused, and how much is sorrow for being in trouble, only God knows.”

            “That’s right, only God knows,” I said as our eyes locked.

            We stared at each other for a long moment. Then as if reading my mind, she attempted to clarify. “It’ just a figure of speech.”

            “Is that all?”

            “Yes, that’s all.”

            “You don’t believe in God?”

            She snorted a sarcastic laugh again. I got the feeling she had done this a lot throughout her life. “Do you believe in the devil?”

            “Yes I do,” I replied, looking her right in the eyes.

            She returned my gaze with a look defiance. “You just told me a minute ago that you didn’t take your band’s satanic imagery seriously.”

            “I didn’t. Some of my bandmates did, though. In the end, I saw demon possession up close and personal. It’s real, and it’s nothing to mess with.”

            Her sarcastic frivolity was gone. She eyed me carefully before asking, “Do you believe in God?”

            “Yes, I do.”

            Her sarcastic attitude began to inch back with a little smirk that played at the corner of her mouth. “So is Eli Endor, lead guitarist for ‘The Sons of Molech’ a born again Christian?”

            I wanted a smoke in the worst way as I inhaled the smell of coffee and fried foods, and I sighed. “I can’t claim that at this point. But I want to be.”

            “So what’s holding you back?”

            “It’s complicated.”

            Penny actually looked sympathetic before she said, “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”

            “So you’re still a Christian then?”

            “I’m agnostic.”

            “But you grew up in a religious household.”

            “So did you.”

            “Hardly. My mother raised me. I just had to spend a little over a year with my hypocrite father until I graduated high school.”

            “What happened to your mom?”

            “She was into witchcraft and herbology. She got caught selling a plant known as marijuana. She did two years in prison, so I got sent to live with my dad. I almost dropped out of school to focus on music. But I was smart enough to realize that there were a lot of talented musicians that never made it past the club scene.”

            “A woman’s voice other than Penny’s said, “Elijah?”

            I looked into the lovely face of Ariel, formerly Grobstick, formerly Smothers. I didn’t know her current married name at that point.

            Ariel looked like she had just seen a ghost, and Penny looked like she just witnessed a bad accident.

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES – CHAPTER 1

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

HEAVY METAL MIRACLES

CHAPTER 1

ELI

FOR WE DO NOT WRESTLE AGAINST FLESH AND BLOOD, BUT AGAINST PRINCIPALITIES, AGAINST POWERS, AGAINST THE RULERS OF THE DARKNESS OF THIS AGE, AGAINST SPIRITUAL HOSTS OF WICKEDNESS IN THE HEAVENLY PLACES (Ephesians 6:12)

            My name is Elijah Alderson Jr. III. But most people know me by my stage name, Eli Endor, which is a play off of the Witch of Endor. I was the lead guitarist for the band ‘The Sons of Molech,’ which was of the genre of dark heavy metal music. I am a recovering rock star. I am also a recovering alcoholic, drug addict, sex addict, smoker, basically a sinner to the power of extreme. I had sold my soul for rock and roll, as did my three band mates.

            How did that work out you may ask? In Matthew chapter four, you can read about Satan offering Jesus the kingdoms of the world. He refused, while we accepted. Life was carnal bliss for several years. Then imperceptibly we all got to the point where we were beyond empty.

            What is beyond empty? I don’t know, I’m still figuring that out. But I can tell you this much, it’s the things I mentioned in the first paragraph. An addiction to various harmful things, like chemicals, sex, money, and fame. Not one of them ultimately gives you peace.

            What makes it especially bad is when you seek out and submit to dark spiritual forces for so called success. We were all occultists on some level. We were all Satanists to some degree. We all embraced what Allister Crowley taught: do as thou will shall be the whole of the law.  

            How did that work out? Well, not well. Kyle Cobra, our drummer, was so intoxicated one evening, he choked on his own vomit and died, just like his idol John Bonham of Led Zepplin fame. Izzy Iscariot, our lead singer, and lead Satanist, died violently by his own hand. As a matter of fact, he severed his left hand using an ax, then managed to slit his own throat. Was he demon possessed? I believe so.

            The death of my bandmates frightened me into a life change. Ironically, attempting to free myself from the sins that held me captive, put me face to face with the demons that held me prisoner. I thank God for my third bandmate, bass player extraordinaire, Arlo Aldo… He died too… But he died to self in the Biblical sense. (See Romans 6:8-11). When he died, his life was then hid with Christ. (Colossians 3:3) The physical life he now had in Christ was more abundant. (John 10:10).

            Would you believe Arlo met the love of his life at one of our concerts? She was with a group of Christians outside of the arena. They were handing out Bibles and literature to our fans. Ironically, most rejected the free material they were handing out. Yet they had paid good money for a ticket to hear loud raunchy music about sex, violence, death, and the devil.

            So Arlo, in a sense, was the first to die. He left the band, died to selfishness by taking up his cross and following Christ. (See Matthew 16:24-26) Thus becoming a born again Christian. At the time, I was bummed. We had been best friends since we met when we were seventeen year olds. But before we could replace him in the band, Kyle drank himself to death, and then Izzy committed self-murder three weeks later.

            Arlo did his best to convert me to his new lifestyle. Like I said, our band, Arlo included, participated in occult rituals for our band’s success. In other words, we sold our souls for rock and roll. Just like the 1976 Black Sabbath album entitled ‘We Sold Our Soul For Rock and Roll’ states.

            I told him it wasn’t possible to be a Christian, that he had sold his soul and achieved the success per the agreement. But Arlo insisted that Jesus bought back his soul, and that he’d do it for me. I have to admit, I was impressed with Arlo’s positive lifestyle change. However, for a couple of years I resisted.

            I don’t understand how Arlo turned his life around seemingly overnight. For me it took years. It was as if I allowed the demons that held me captive to be in negotiations with the Savior, who was offering me the best gift known to humankind. My only explanation is found in Jerimiah 17:9. ‘The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked; who can know it?’ We’re all different, and we’re all given a measure of faith. (Romans 12:3).

            I received a significant letter just a couple weeks before I turned forty. It was to be the last ingredient the Lord used in His recipe for buying back my soul. Ironically, I almost pitched this letter that drastically changed my life.

            Due to my rock star status, I have received thousands of fan letters over the years. I rarely read them myself. But the personnel who did would only share the letters of special intrigue with me. For example, letters that contained provocative photos, or the couple dozen claiming I had fathered their child. These parenthood claims induced a sarcastic laugh. I had never wanted children. So at the age of twenty, already achieving rock star status, and still very immature, I had acquired a vasectomy.

            It had now been a few years since our band was disbanded. Along with no band activity, came decreased fan mail. So I read what correspondence I received myself. I hadn’t been accused of fatherhood for half a decade by the time I was in my late thirties. So imagine my surprise when I get this letter claiming I was not only a father, but a grandfather. It also mentioned some type of accident and medical bills. I figured somebody was just trying to scam money.

            After reading the letter quickly, I was about to file thirteen it when something caught my eye. It was in a P.S. It caused a shiver up my spine. It said, ‘A Penny for your thoughts.’

            I had this girl that was a friend when I was seventeen. Here name was Ariel Grobstick. To me she seemed as pure as the wind driven snow. She was wholesome, lovely, innocent, and a virgin. I loved to just be with her, watch a sunset, and discuss the meaning of life. I had no intention of stealing her virginity. My sights were one hundred percent focused on musical success. I did not want a relationship at all, and I didn’t want to hurt her.

            Anyway, Ariel had this pistol of a fifteen year old sister. She was smart as a whip. Whereas Ariel would smile at me with adoration, Penelope, AKA  Penny, would eye me cooly and with suspicion. I resented it, for I had no ill intentions with her sister. When it came to females my senior year of high school, I had more admirers than the quarterback. But in the end, Penny seemed to know me better than I knew myself.

            So a few times when I encountered Penelope, I would hand her a penny and say, ‘Penny for your thoughts, young one.’ She would glare at me, throw the penny over her shoulder and say something like,  ‘I think you’re full of yourself, Adonis.’

            I looked at the return address. It was from just outside of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. A little city called Vinton. The letter head was from a veterinarian clinic, and a Dr. P.A. Baldwin. Could the P stand for Penelope or Penny? I didn’t know of any Baldwins. Could it be a married name?                                 Although I had lived in Cedar Rapids, Iowa for only a brief time during high school, I had kept in touch with no one from there, except my father and stepmother with whom I had lived with for sixteen months. But I had never returned.

             Not long before we graduated high school, Ariel and I became spontaneously passionate one night despite my not wanting to violate her. For the first time in my early romantic endeavors, and the only time pre-vasectomy, I had intimate relations without a prophylactic. So, for the first time, a parental claim appeared as though it could be. And I do say could be… legitimate.

            The correspondence also gave a not so subtle hint about parental neglect. But how do you neglect something you don’t know you have? Something you don’t even have access to? Like the salvation of Christ I was so willfully ignorant of for so many years? I decided right then and there to go on a road trip. I would give Penny a penny for my thoughts in person.

DR. P.A. (PENNY) BALDWIN DVM

            “Penny,  there’s a guy in the lobby to see you,” my receptionist told me.

            I was washing up after surgery on a Corgi and spoke over my shoulder. “Jill, you know I’m doing surgery all day. If he needs someone to see his pet, squeeze him in with Jenny.”

            “He doesn’t have a pet.”

            “If he’s a salesman, just send him away. I don’t have time.”

            “He’s not a salesman.”

            “Well, what is he?”

            “He’s a gorgeous man that just pulled up in a vintage Mustang.”

            I walked briskly to the lobby of my clinic. I didn’t have time for any interruptions, but if this person didn’t have a sick pet, or wasn’t a salesman, I wanted to know the reason why he wanted to see me.

            At first I thought Ashton Kutcher was standing in my lobby. After all, he was from the area. Then a surge of adrenaline raced through my body when I recognized the man. It had been over a month since I wrote him a letter after I had acquired a belly full of wine. Yet as cool as I could be, I marched up to him very businesslike and offered my hand. “I’m Dr. Baldwin. What can I do for you?”

            “You can give me a Penny for your thoughts,” he said with that same sexy smirk I hadn’t seen in person in twenty plus years.

            My normally quick wit was hidden somewhere in the panic I felt. I had no business telling Eli that he had a son and a granddaughter. But I happened to know that his biological son, Ethan, had written to him when he was sixteen, not long after my sister Ariel had told my nephew about his true parentage. Ethan received no response. This angered me, and apparently the resentment hid in my psyche for years. Then it came out of hiding after Ethan’s injury, and my own bout with intemperance.

            “And you are?” I responded, playing dumb.

            “I think you know that I’m Eli Alderson,” he replied, his smirk growing more annoying.

            “Oh, you mean the dead beat dad.”

            “I’m no dead beat dad. I’m not even convinced that I am someone’s father, yet here I am to find out. I had no clue about any possible child of mine until I read your letter.”

            “What about the letter your son himself wrote you six years ago?”

            “I have no recollection of any such letter.”

            “You mean you don’t recall someone telling you that they were your son?”

            “I’ve have received numerous letters claiming such a thing over the years, but I’ve had reason to not take them serious.”

            “Is that right? May I ask why?”

            “In terms you will understand, I had a form of castration when I was twenty.”

            I snorted a sarcastic laugh. “I may be a vet, but I am familiar with human medical procedures. So what makes you think my claims were legit?”

            “What makes you think I do?”

            “You’re here, aren’t you?”

            “Let’s just say I thought your claims were possible, and since I am not a dead beat dad, I want to find out for sure.”

            “My claims are not only possible, they’re factual.”

            “Okay then,” he said, spreading his arms. “So, I’d like to meet my son and granddaughter.”

            A chill went up my spine and I slapped a hand to my forehead. I sucked in a breath. “Can I ask you a favor?”

            His eyebrows raised at what I supposed was my sudden appearance of meekness. “Depends on what it is.”

            “After Ethan’s injury, I was distraught and wrote you that letter in haste. I have no idea how Ariel, in particular, will respond to your presence here.”

            “You mentioned medical expenses. What’s going on? What happened?”

            “Ethan, your biological son, was in an altercation with his two stepfathers a couple months ago. That’s all I have time to explain for right now.”

            “Is he is okay?” Eli inquired casually.

            Did he really care? “The short answer is yes, for the most part.”

            “What does ‘for the most part mean?’”

            I looked at the time and felt my pulse quicken. It was almost three. Not only was I behind on the day’s schedule, my sister would be here any minute to walk her two dogs. I had been keeping them ever since her first husband paralyzed her second husband from the neck down during the altercation that gave her son a traumatic head injury. Ariel stopped by daily at approximately three o clock to walk her dogs. What timing!

            “Look, Eli, I truly am glad you want to make things right, or whatever. But I’m super busy. Can I put you up in a hotel until I have a chance to talk to Ariel and Ethan?”

            “What did you mean by ‘or whatever?’” Eli asked, casually crossing his arms, indicating no urgency to leave.

            “Listen, I…” My heart stopped. Ariel’s little light blue Chevy Spark pulled up in front of my clinic. “Eli, Ariel is here. Quick, come in the back. Please.”

            I took him by the hand and led him into an examination room. Despite the awkward situation, I smiled to myself. I was walking hand in hand with a guy I had both despised and had fantasized about when I was a girl.

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL – EPILOGUE

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

EPILOGUE

July 1989 to Present

BEHOLD, CHILDREN ARE A HERITAGE FROM THE LORD (Psalm 127:3)

            It was strange having Cat for a housemate, especially as I went through the grieving process. But it was such a blessing having her there! It was both sad and wonderful to hear little Debbie follow Naomi’s lead by calling Cat Mommy.

            Cat did something in raising our girls that some would not approve of. I myself didn’t approve at first. What she did was not tell the girls who was birthed by Becky, and who she herself gave birth to. She didn’t want one to feel favored over the other due to biology. But she did sell me on it with one simple point.

            “As sinners, we are all adopted into God’s family,” she explained.

            As I dwelt on that, I came to like what she was doing. Plus, she also suggested giving them the option of them knowing when they reached a certain age.

            When Cat first moved into our three bedroom condo, we were platonic roommates. I had my room, Cat had hers, and the girls shared the third. But as the wounds of my grief began to scar over, living with a woman I was extremely attracted to started to wear on me more and more.

            Unbeknownst to me, Cat had the same thing going on, but she didn’t show it until three days after the first anniversary of losing Becky. I came home to find her in her old Hooter’s uniform. My jaw dropped as she spread her arms open and grinned. “What do you think?”

            I plopped on the sofa, put my face into my hands. “Cat, you’re killing me!”

            “Hey now,” she scolded, placing her hands on her hips. “I may have gained fifteen or twenty pounds since I last wore this, but I think it distributed pretty well.”

            “Tell me about it. It’s also snugger than I remember.”

            “So you think I’m fat!”

            “No, no, no!”

            “I’ll have you know, muscle weighs more than fat. I may be a little heavier now, but I’m firmer and in better shape.”

            “I’ll say.”

            “You’ll say what?”

            “I’ll say it’s getting harder by the day to live in such close proximity to you.”

            “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked with a hurt look on her pretty face.

            I stood and gripped her shoulders. “Catlina, you have to marry me!”

            “Is that a demand?”

            “Yes!”

            “Well then, I guess I have no choice but to marry you.”

            “Do you mean it?” I asked happily.

            “I do,” she smiled. “Pun intended. But wouldn’t you like me to agree willingly?”

            “As in free will?”

            “Exactly,” she replied with a grin. Then she put her hands on my shoulders and pushed downward. I got the hint.

            I went to one knee and taking both of her hands in mine. “Catlina Clutterbuck, would you do me the honor of becoming my wife?”

            She knelt in front of me. “Yes, I would be honored, most honorable Mr. Burl. But you have to promise me one thing.”

            “Anything, my Princess, just name it.”

            “A little brother for little Debbie and Naomi.”

            “I’ll do my best. But what if we end up with nine more sisters for little Debbie and Naomi, and then your biological clock stops ticking?”

            “We’ll just have to keep going through the motions and hope for a miracle, kinda like Sarah and Abraham. Are you willing to do that?”

            “Am I ever!”

            Pastor Kenny Clutterbuck, Cat’s brother, had recently transferred to a church near Milwaukee. Forgive me Cheese Heads, but as a member of the Chicago Bears football team, I didn’t want to be married in Packer territory. So Cat and I got hitched on August 19, 1990, at an outdoor chapel in a park on the North Shore, with Lake Superior in the background. I also bought us a nice little acreage just outside of Two Harbors where we lived during football’s off season.

            Ten months after marrying, and not quite a year after promising to give our girls a little brother, Joseph Kenneth Burl joined our family. Nineteen months after that, Benjamin Loyd Burl was added. Two boys for the price of one promise. Over the course of the next ten years, we adopted two more girls and two more boys. We were a big fun filled family that shared lots of love and laughter.

            During the 2004 football season, I injured my right knee making an actual football play. Although a punter for sixteen seasons, I recorded four tackles, threw two touchdown passes, and ran for two touchdowns during my playing career. But it was my fourth tackle that ended my career.

            After having knee surgery on my kicking leg, and being only a few years from forty, I didn’t even try a comeback, I simply retired. It was wonderful! I had more time with my family, and I also drew close to God like never before. When my three oldest children decided to be baptized, I joined them.

            Cat was the first to hug my dripping wet body. There was a huge smile on her face as tears ran down her cheeks. She had been praying for years that I would take my relationship with Christ to the deepest level. She even let me know that she had guilt over my football career interfering with my walk with the Lord. For it was she that talked me into trying out for my college team.

            I had thought this guilt ridiculous. For it was my football career that gave our family no financial concerns. But when I retired, in my thirties mind you, I also took up painting again. I also talked Cat into painting again with me. We began doing Biblical themes. They became quite popular. After twenty years, and over a hundred paintings in circulation, I surpassed my total income as a Chicago Bears employee.

            I actually enjoyed it when Cat gloatingly gave me a big ‘I told you so. God has ways to take care of us, Mr. Golden Leg.’

            “It’s not a golden leg anymore, it’s an olden leg.”

            So, now back to where I started this tale of two loves. It had been thirty five years since Becky passed away. My daughter had asked me to tell her about the eighties, and the two women I was in love with. I had kissed Debbie on the forehead.

            But before I started, I looked to my left and noticed Naomi staring trance like at Becky’s tombstone. My two oldest daughters were now thirty-six years old. Although tempted a few times, they had never asked who Becky birthed and raised for their first year of life.

            Cat and I always paid our respects in remembrance of Becky once a year by visiting her gravesite. There was a big lilac bush behind the cemetery in an adjoining park. Becky had loved lilacs, so Cat always picked some fresh flowers from the bush to put on her grave.

            Since the girls had been adults, there was only a half a dozen times we all went together. Debbie always became sentimental, talkative, and inquisitive. Naomi always became wistful, quiet, and sad. If they knew the truth, I always supposed their behaviors would be the other way around.

            Cat came walking up to me and our girls. She had a bouquet of lilacs in her hand. She handed one of the flowers to Debbie. “Here, Sweety, you always loved the smell of lilacs.”

            “Thanks, Mom,” Debbie grinned, sniffed the flower, and put an arm around her sister. They nodded at each other. Then Debbie said, “Dad, before we get you to reminisce, we feel the time has come. Naomi and I want to know.”

            Cat and I looked at each other. Cat bit her lower lip, then smiled wistfully and shrugged. “Why don’t you do the honors, Honey.”

            I couldn’t speak, so I simply put my hand on Debbie’s cheek. Both daughters drew a breath and Debbie put a hand to her chest. The sisters looked at each other. Then Debbie looked at Cat, but Cat was staring at her daughter’s feet, much the same way Naomi had been staring at Becky’s tombstone.

            “Mom,” Debbie called. Then Cat looked up and into her adopted daughter’s eyes. Debbie stepped toward Cat and hugged her protectively. “I’m sure Becky would have been an excellent mother. But I love you with all my heart, Mommy!”

            “Oh!” Cat gasped. Then with a croaky voice she said, “I love you with all my heart too, my darling Daughter. You’ll always be my little Debbie.”

            Then the four off us were in a group hug. All eight eyes wet with love and remembrance.

THE END

            WRITER’S NOTE: Next week I will be starting a story called ‘Heavy Metal Miracle.’ It is the tale of a famous guitarist who finds redemption and love after years of sex, drugs and rock and roll. His biggest surprise is finding out he has a teenage son by a girlfriend from his youth.

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL – CHAPTER 16

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 16

Sunday, June 25th to Friday, July 7th 1989

A TIME TO KILL, AND A TIME TO HEAL (Ecclesiastes 3:3)

            Cat was healing nicely two days after being stabbed twice in her abdomen, and having the side of her neck sliced. Thirteen stitches it took to close up the wound just below her head. Thankfully it wasn’t quite deep enough to do internal damage.

            That Sunday morning was the first since her emergency surgery that she was able to speak coherently. Becky and I waited outside her room while two detectives finished talking to her. We both thought her conversation with them would tax her too much to say very much to us. But not for the first time, I underestimated Cat.

            “Hi, guys,” she said happily with a wince. Then she asked, “How’s Naomi?”

            “She’s just fine with your grandmother.” Becky smiled warmly. “How are you?”

            “Oh, I can’t complain. I’d be dead if it wasn’t for Kickypoo.”

            My eyebrows raised. Both for her using her old term of affection for me in front of my wife, and also crediting me for her being alive. I looked at her I.V. and realized there had to be morphine or some other narcotic that quelled her pain, but also made her loopy. She explained the second thing that made my eyebrows raise when I asked, “How am I the reason you’re alive?”

            “The self-defense you taught me when we were an item.”

            “Really? How?”

            “When my attacker attacked me,” she said. Then she giggled, coughed, choked, winced, and drew a deep breath.

            “Cat, maybe we better leave you to rest,” Becky offered.

            “No, no, no, don’t go,” she whined, childlike. “I’m okay.”

            “You’re sure?” I asked.

            “Yes… Now like I was saying. When this masked creep grabbed me, my first instinct was to resist. That’s what got me stabbed in the gut. Then he tackled me and tried to slit my throat. I turned my head, and that’s when I calmed some and went with the flow. So when he went to slash my throat…”

            Cat groaned, closed her eyes, and clutched her bed sheet. As much as I wanted to hear what she had to say, I felt like she needed to rest and be quiet. I was about to say as much when a nurse walked briskly into the room. She said, “Oh, I see you have visitors. I’m Jenny.”

            “I’m Becky,” Becky said. Then I said, “I’m Loyd.”

            She didn’t recognize me as only a mildly famous punter in the NFL. But unfortunately, she thought she knew who Becky was.

            “You must be Catalina’s mother,” Jenny said cheerily. Then her face fell when Becky said no rather tightly. The nurse stammered. “I, um, I mean, Catalina told me just this morning that her only sister was, um, deceased.  And, well, you two look so much alike. Cousin maybe?”

            “Coincidence,” I said, and the two loves of my life looked at me skeptically. I don’t think I lied, but it did occur to me after my statement that the similarities between Becky and Cat were no coincidence. For I was first drawn to Cat because she resembled Becky, and both women knew it.

            The nurse quietly went about her duties taking Cat’s vitals. I felt bad that the mishap took the wind out of her sails of cheeriness. When she left, Cat continued the play by play of her attack.

            “Even though he had stabbed me in the stomach when he grabbed me and tackled me, shock and adrenaline must have kept the pain at bay. I was on my back, and he was on top. He came straight at my throat with this huge knife. Using his own momentum, which you taught me, Kickypoo, I knocked him to the side. And although the knife sliced the side of my throat, it didn’t go directly through my Adam’s apple. All the commotion got the attention of Riley.”

            “Who’s Riley?” I asked.

            “The retired police officer that was camping in her yard,” Becky answered.

            “Riley!” Cat croaked, then began to whimper.

            “Riley walked right into the killer’s knife,” Becky whispered. “Sliced right from the stomach into the chest. DOA at the hospital. The creep got away.”

            A big problem was Riley’s killer and Cat’s attempted killer was still at large, and it wasn’t her stalker, who was the obvious suspect. For he had as fool proof of an alibi as you can get. For the fool was in the county jail at the time of Cat’s assault.

            Since Cat had no other known enemies, it was a head scratcher for the detectives. But it turned out that the killer had the wrong woman. His deceitful heart that was desperately wicked was filled with jealousy, rage, and lust. Two types of lust, blood and sexual.

            Cat wiggled and squirmed in her hospital bed, anxious to be released. Both Cat’s and Becky’s daughters, who were both my daughters, were being watched by Cat’s grandmother. A third child of mine was in growing in Becky’s womb. We had yet to tell Cat, but now that she was doing so well, we broke the news.

            “That’s wonderful!” Cat responded enthusiastically. Too enthusiastically, for she winced in pain right after her face lit up with delight.

            “Easy, girlfriend,” Becky soothed, touching her leg. “I better call your grandmother and make sure our girls aren’t giving her too much trouble.”

            Becky turned to exit the room and go to the lobby for a pay phone. This was still many years before cell phones, and Cat’s room didn’t have a phone in it. Before Becky went through the door, she turned, took a few steps toward me, and gave me a quick peck on the lips. Then she mouthed, “I love you.”

            Feeling uncomfortable with this display of affection in front of Cat, I responded by simply tapping my heart. She squeezed my hand in understanding as we smiled at each other.

            “Be back in a few,” Becky said cheerfully as she briskly walked out of the room.

            But that was the last time I ever saw her alive.

            Remember Bruce?

            I’ll keep this short and sour, because it is anything but sweet. Bruce was deranged. He kidnapped Becky as she was talking to Cat’s grandmother on a pay phone. He did a poor job of hiding the gun he tried to conceal under Becky’s right arm. Yet he did a good enough job that he managed to leave the hospital before the security could stop him.

            Although security were able to give the police a description of his car, they failed to get his license number. So when the authorities finally discovered his vehicle at a secluded park, they also found Becky’s mutilated body in the back seat. He had raped and stabbed her multiple times.

            His corpse sat in the front seat. With a gun in his hand, a bullet in his forehead had exploded out the back of his head. Although he was right handed, the gun was in his left because Cat had broken it during their scuffle, when he apparently thought she was Becky.

            It turned out that he had been staying in an apartment across from ours in the Chicago suburb where we lived. He had been stalking Becky. When she went to stay with Cat for a few days, ironically because Cat had a stalker, it seemed to be the perfect opportunity to satisfy his depraved heart.

            Sadly, my wife’s brutal murder made me a household name. I was only a mildly famous football player. Yet it was this crime against Becky, rather than my athletic prowess, that garnered me fifteen minutes of worldwide, unwanted fame.

            I didn’t know that grief could make you physically ill. It especially tore me up when our daughter called for “Mama.” Thankfully, little Debbie had become very familiar with Cat. She stepped up to the plate big time and began mothering my motherless daughter. She also made me the most generous offer of my lifetime.

            It happened right after the funeral no less. The ceremony signifying the ultimate end to this carnal existence.  We were riding in the limo directly behind the hearse, taking Becky to the spot where she would be risen during the resurrection. With my mind weary with grief, fear and anger, Cat looked at me with her lovely green eyes bloodshot from weeping. She declared, “I’m gonna come stay with you in Chicago.”

            “Huh?” was all my dumbfounded tongue could respond.

            “I’m gonna be Debbie’s nanny,” she told me, rather than asking.

            “For how long?”

            She shrugged. “As long as it takes. Debbie needs a mother.”

            I stupidly thought she meant until I found someone to remarry. “That could take a long time. Right now I can’t even fathom getting married again.”

            She snorted a non-humorous laugh. “That’s not what I meant, Loyd.”

            She paused, put a hand on my knee, and fresh tears ran down her cheeks. “Don’t take this the wrong way, I don’t mean this romantically. But I love you very much, Loyd. You’re a special guy, and the father of my daughter. I don’t want you to be alone in this. And I want to be a mother figure for little Debbie. I love her with all my heart, and she’s my daughter’s sister as well.”

            Cat put her face in her hands and sobbed and groaned. Her sobs were for emotional pain. The groan for her physical. My own eyes were blurry with tears as I rubbed her back. I didn’t know how her generous offer was going to work out. But it was the first instance of healing the gaping wound on my heart. At that time I not only was taking life one day at a time, but one minute at a time. Just breathe.

            I became angry with God for quite a while. Nothing made sense. Unlike Job, I blamed God foolishly. But God’s compassion never fails, and His mercies are new every morning (Lamentations 3:22, 23). I eventually saw the light.

            In hindsight I can see how God’s generous Spirit was working in Cat to help and comfort me. For it was her influence that opened my blind eyes, seeing that God was the only hope in a fallen world.

            I took comfort, just like the scripture says, knowing that the next thing Becky would realize as she now rested in peace, was the second coming of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ, when the righteous dead will be caught up to meet the Lord in the air, and from that point on, to always be with Him. What a wonderful promise! (1 Thessalonians 4:16-18)

            I also marveled, later in reflection, that something with such a painful ending, spawned a new beginning.

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL – CHAPTER 15

Posted on by Johnathan Embers

LOYD BURL AND THE HOOTER’S GIRL

CHAPTER 15

Sunday May 8th  1988 to June 23rd 1989

TO EVERYTHING THERE IS A SEASON, A TIME FOR EVERY PURPOSE UNDER HEAVEN (Ecclesiastes 3:1)

            Becky and I didn’t waste any time. A week after she agreed to marry me, we were married on a Sunday morning by Chester, the minister of her friend with whom she had been doing Bible studies. He was a Seventh Day Adventist pastor, so the empty church held plenty of room for all ten of our small wedding party.

            Our honeymoon was postponed because I had to report to the Chicago Bears training camp. I made the team! I also made minimum wage for the NFL. But this was pretty good coin if you compared it to your average nine to five job. On Sunday September 4th, my Chicago Bears beat the Miami Dolphins. My first NFL game!

            The next day, September 5th, Catalina Clutterbuck went into labor. Thankfully, by air, Two Harbors Minnesota isn’t all that far from Chicago. Also thankfully, I had an excellent employer that chartered me a flight getting me to Two Harbors just in time to see our healthy baby girl born! My first child!

            To my surprise, Cat birthed our daughter in her grandparent’s home. However, her grandmother was a midwife. She also had another woman with her who was also a midwife as well as a nurse. Our daughter weighed eight pounds, four ounces. We called her Naomi Bella Burl. Naomi was one of Cat’s favorite female Bible characters, and Bella was after her grandmother.

            On Saturday, October 1st, Becky gave birth to our daughter. Her first child, my second. Here’s an interesting side note, to me anyway. She was 33, I was 22, she was born in ’55, me in ’66, our daughter in ’88. Our baby girl weighed seven pounds, seven ounces. We named her Deborah Bonnie Burl. Deborah was after Becky’s favorite female Bible character, and Bonnie was after her mother.

            Some in the Chicago Bears organization had raised eyebrows when their punter needed to briefly leave to see his baby daughter be born, one month after he needed to leave to see his baby daughter be born. I felt blessed, as a rookie no less, to be able to see my children come into the world during the football season.

            Thankfully, Deborah arrived on a Saturday, and we had a home game Sunday, in which we beat the Buffalo Bills. Becky was living with me, in the bonds of marriage in Chicago. This birth was more convenient than flying up to the north shore of Minnesota to see Naomi’s entrance into the world.

            After getting married, Becky kept up her Bible studies and became a dedicated follower of Jesus. I say to my shame, that my football career kept me from taking Bible truth as seriously as my wife did.

            So when she was baptized on June 25th, 1988, by Pastor Chester, the minister who married us, I was in attendance, but did not go down into the watery grave myself. It would be a decade and a half before I fully understood the concepts behind baptism, and the significance of being raised to newness of spiritual life as you are first dunked, and then pulled up out of the water as if resurrected.

            Another event happened to delay my spiritual growth. A year after Becky was baptized, the mother of my daughter was brutally murdered. The thing that took a while to click was her spiritual condition. The other mother of my daughter finally got through to me that the next thing the mother of my daughter would realize is the second coming of Christ as he was resurrected from the grave.

            Eventually I would see this parallel between baptism and the resurrection of the righteous. For we are made righteous when we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior and choose to follow Him. This would lead to my own baptism, along with my two oldest daughters and one of my sons. Baptism is the way we honor Christ’s resurrection.

            I wept that day, after I came out of the watery grave. Mostly overjoyed at fully accepting Jesus into my life. Oh, I had always fancied myself an upright, moral individual. And I was not ashamed to classify myself a Christian. But by the time I was baptized, I had advanced from an admirer of Christ to a follower.

            There was another element to my tears. As I hugged the mother of one of my oldest daughters, I remembered the deceased mother of one of my oldest daughters. You see, in the year before the untimely death, the two mothers of my oldest daughters had become close friends.

            To this day their bond amazes me! Satan wanted to use their human nature to make them jealous enemies. But Christ put the Kingdom of God into both of their hearts, and they became spiritual sisters. They took joy in their daughters being half siblings. So when one of them perished from this planet far too early, the other ended up raising her daughter as her own.

            This is the part of the story that I haven’t looked forward to telling. I often have wondered how much Becky and Cat’s friendship had played a role in the violence that occurred toward the end of June 1989.

            I had been at Chicago Bears training camp, honing my skills as a punter, and a holder for the place kicker. On Monday, June 22nd, Becky, our daughter, and our daughter’s sibling that was in the twelfth week fetal stage had driven up to the north shore to visit Cat for a couple days. Cat shared a bungalow with a girlfriend from church north of Two Harbors.

            It was a little bit isolated, and Cat’s roommate was going to be gone for a couple days, as she and her fiancée were attending the funeral of his father. I was little ill at ease with Becky’s insistence to go stay with Cat. You see, Cat had acquired a stalker.

            There was a restraining order against the obsessed, unhinged young man. Also, a retired police officer from Cat’s church was staying in his camper on the half acre lot where dwelt Cat’s house. Although I was tickled that the two loves of my life were friends, this was one co-mingling between the two that made me anxious. I said as much to Becky.

            “Why do you feel the need to do this?” I pleaded with Becky. “Cat insisted that she’s fine.”

            “Listen, Puntypooh,” Becky said with smile, using her private nickname for me. “I think at this point, I know Cat better than you.”

            “How can that be?”

            “Girl talk,” she replied a little flippantly. “Anyway, I get the clear vibe that she doesn’t like the idea of staying alone for a few days. But knowing Cat, she’s stoic and brave. Plus, she’s not alone since that cop she knows is staying on her property in a camper.”

            “That’s right, in a camper.”

            “Besides, P.P., you…”

            “Don’t call me that, you know I don’t like it.”

            She giggled. “Okay, Puntypooh.”

            I wondered if Cat told her that she used to call me Kickypoo during their girl talk.

            “Look, you’re away at training camp all week. I’d like some company myself. Plus, sitting on Cat’s porch, gazing through the trees at Lake Superior, and chatting the afternoon away is more desirable than being alone in our condo with only our baby to talk to. As much as I love her, Debbie isn’t a good conversationalist.”

            “Alright, alright,” I said, waving my hands in submission. “But you be careful.”

            Famous last words! The next day, I got a call that put my heart right into my throat.

            “Loyd, oh Loyd!” Becky’s voice sobbed hysterically into the phone receiver.

            The adrenaline surge I got felt like it might cause the top of my head to blow off. “Becky, what is it!”

            “Cat’s been stabbed several times!”