ANGELS AT WAR

CHAPTER 9

CRICKET KARR AND THE ROCK STAR

CRICKET

CONFESS YOUR TRESPASSES TO ONE ANOTHER, AND PRAY FOR ONE ANOTHER, THAT YOU MAY BE HEALED. THE EFFECTIVE, FERVENT PRAYER OF A RIGHTEOUS PERSON AVAILS MUCH. (James 5:16)

“That was TMI, wasn’t it?” Sully asked with a look of concern.

I couldn’t help laughing after wearing a look of astonishment. “Well, yes. But that’s okay.”

He had just described kissing my sister in his dream, complete with detailing drool on his arm.

But my astonished expression was more in regard to what he said before about his guide up the mountain calling himself Jack Querida. Coincidence? The angel in my own dreams had called himself Querida, minus the Jack, as well as minus the lumberjack appearance.

“What did you mean when you said, ‘Sully, you’re almost there?’” he asked with a very inquisitive look on his face.

“Well, Sully, it wasn’t actually me in your dream. It was your mind imagining me.”

“Yeah, right,” he said with a frown, looking away for a few seconds. Then he looked back at me. “I guess what I’m getting at is, can you interpret it? You seem close to God.”

“Well, I don’t think I can interpret, but a couple things you mentioned are in the Bible. Two things you mentioned as a matter of fact. Me telling you about a narrow road and only few make it, and seeing your wife again at the second coming of Jesus and the resurrection.”

I showed him from the Bible. Matthew 7:13-14, as well as 2 Thessalonians 4:16-18.

“Wow!” he exclaimed and sat back pondering for a minute. Then he shifted directions within his dream. “There was something more disturbing in my dream than the way it ended.”

A pained expression spread across his face. “At the bottom of Poppy’s tombstone, in my dream, there was a name. Jesse Parker.”

I recalled the name from when Violetta and I watched Sully’s biography. “He was like a father figure when you were a teenager.”

Sully nodded, still wearing the pained expression. Then he laughed without humor, shaking his head. “He was both the best and worst person during my early teenage years.”

“Your biography painted him very favorably,” I said.

He nodded again. “Those that take the liberty of telling about my life only know the public side of my relationship with Jesse. They see a wonderful man that helped and mentored a troubled youth who had no father. What they don’t know is the secrets that only me, him, and Poppy knew. Now possibly you might know.”

“Why do you say possibly might know?”

“Because I don’t know if I’ll be able to find the words. Like I said, he was the best but also the worst. Until Poppy, he was the most important person to me besides my mother. He came into my life when I was thirteen. He taught me music, the guitar in particular. He was a physical trainer, and he worked out with me. He was a mentor, big brother figure two or three times a week for two years. But then when I was fifteen, something changed.”

Sully broke eye contact with me and began to chew his lip. I supposed this was the crossroad of whether he could tell me why his mentor was also the worst. I gave him space. He looked at me and said, “Let’s just get on with what you wanted to show me about the Bible. You know, why you can supposedly trust it and what not.”

I was a little discombobulated by our conversation thus far. But poor Sully. I myself was  troubled by his dream, and he is the one that experienced it. He was the one that had a difficult aspect of his youth resurface in his night vison.

But I did not pry. He would tell me if or when he was ready. I showed him a study guide from Amazing Facts ministries entitled ‘Is There Anything Left You Can Trust?’ I told him he could easily find more study guides online on numerous subjects absolutely free. Of course with his money, I don’t think free was a concern.

There were twelve subjects discussed in the study guide we looked at. I like to keep Bible studies at no more than an hour so one does not get too overloaded trying to process information. So we only got through about a third of the lesson, due to plenty of discussion. The topics we looked at were: What does the Bible say about itself? How did Jesus demonstrate His confidence and belief in Scripture? Do Bible prophecies confirm inspiration? Can we expect scientific statements found in the Bible to be accurate?

“That was really interesting,” Sully said after I closed our study with a prayer. “You exceeded my expectations.”

“Well praise God!” I said cheerily. “Do you now have more faith in the Bible as your guide in life?”

“Big step that way Cricket, big step.” Then he studied me intently for several seconds. “Would you mind if I told you about Jesse and me?”

“Of course not,” I shrugged.

“The thing is, you have to keep it to yourself, top secret. So do you promise to not tell a soul?”

“I promise. But if it is this troubling to you, maybe you better keep it to yourself.”

“No,” he blurted. “Things are twisted in my mind. I need to talk to somebody I know is close to God and doesn’t just have some title with their name.”

“Okay,” I shrugged, feeling humble that he saw me that way. Then my toes curled. I got a clear vibe that this Jesse fellow violated him somehow, someway when Sully was an adolescent.

“So, like I said,” he began. “Jesse and I bonded over music, and we worked out together, you know, weight lifting programs and what not. As a matter of fact, it was at a workout in his garage when our relationship took a dramatic shift. I had just done a set on a weight bench. It was hot, I was wearing only shorts, and kind of jokingly I struck a bodybuilder pose as I looked in a mirror.

“I noticed Jesse looking at me with this super serious expression. He said, ‘Sully, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. You’re really becoming quite the man!’ He tossed me my shirt and asked me to put it on. Then he told me to have a seat. He said what he had to say I needed to keep to myself; it was something not even his wife knew.

“He told me he was bisexual. That his high school sweetheart was a guy and they had been in a secret relationship. When they graduated, his boyfriend went into the military, and a year and a half later was killed in Afghanistan. He often wondered if it was some kind of punishment.

“I told him that was ridiculous, and being open minded, I told him I didn’t think any different about him after his revelation of being bisexual. Although I was in fact rather surprised. He never did anything inappropriate with me up to that point or gave me any indication he was, you know, bi.

“For the first time, he told me he loved me. Although it felt a little weird hearing this, I told him I loved him too. This really sad smile came onto his face and he said, ‘I hate to do this Sully, but I’m not gonna be able to get together with you anymore.’

“Now his revelation about being bisexual did surprise me, but you know, to each his own. But suddenly ending our friendship? That stunned me! I asked why. I didn’t care about his private life. He said over the last few months, inappropriate desires for me had been getting stronger and stronger, and he needed to keep his distance from me.

“I didn’t know what to say. He wasn’t making a play on me. I wasn’t gay, or bi, or whatever, so I wasn’t about to suggest, ‘hey let’s just get it on.’ So I got mad. I told him it wasn’t fair. Told him he was selfish, even though he had spent hundreds of hours teaching me, talking with me, training me. And boy had he trained me in a certain way without me even realizing it. He played me like a fiddle.”

Sully leaned back in his chair, took a deep breath as he put his hands behind his head, and sighed.

“What do you mean he played you like a fiddle?”

“Well, long story short, the next couple weeks were tormenting. I missed him big time. I dreaded the future without him. I read things, looked at things. I thought, what’s the big deal? I could fool around with a guy. Jesse was nice looking, and in great shape. Shoot, I don’t have a girlfriend I figured, it might be kind of fun.

“Sixteen days after our last get together, I called him. In a nutshell, I told him I was willing to fool around. He turned me down. I pleaded with him. He said I was too young. I said but I’m giving consent. He said the age of consent in Arizona was eighteen, and I was fifteen. I grew up outside of Phoenix in case you didn’t know.”

“I remember hearing that on your biography.”

“I continued to beg him and he relented. But he told me we needed to be very, very careful and keep it top secret. So, we resumed our friendship, but now there was a very different dynamic. It was meeting Poppy, my future wife, that eventually got me away from him.”

“I still don’t understand what you meant by he played you like a fiddle,” I said.

He chuckled and said, “You are so astute spiritually, but pretty naïve carnally. Don’t you see? He manipulated, groomed me even, to the point that it was actually me that not only asked, but begged him to turn our relationship into one of, shall we say, an intimate nature.”

“How did Poppy get you away from him?” I asked.

“I was extremely shy around girls. My perverse relationship with Jesse only added to this big time. The weird thing is, because I could sing, play guitar, and I suppose was pretty good looking, chicks dug me. Then when I shared a science lab table with Poppy our senior year of high school, my life radically changed.”

“What was different about her than other girls?”

“She had this brightness in her personality, not unlike you,” he smiled fondly at me.

I felt like I blushed. “Do I?”

“You sure do. Anyway, at first I was quiet around her, just like other females, even though she always tried to have dialogue with me. Although she was bright like the sun, I noticed that sometimes a dark cloud enshrouded her. She was broken herself and she saw it in me. One day after the bell rang, she grabbed the crook of my arm. She says, ‘you need to get away from that guy I saw you with the other day.’

“I couldn’t help expressing an astonished expression when she said this. She looked at me with such compassion and nodded knowingly. She said, ‘you’re wondering how I know? Let’s just say like can detect like.’ She began to walk away and this time I grabbed her by the crook of the arm.

“We got together, talked, and we just clicked. We rapidly became soulmates. She confided that she had been sexually abused by her stepfather. She and I started seeing each other, and it wasn’t long before, this time, I ended the friendship with Jesse.

“It was ugly. He pulled every manipulative trick out of his hat. But Poppy gave me the courage and the words of what to say. I threatened telling of our relationship to the powers that be and that did the trick. He disappeared from my life, and this time I was okay with it.”

“You never saw him again?”

“I saw him in passing a few times, but we never talked. A year later I heard that he and his wife divorced. But a few months after Poppy passed away, I looked him up.”

“What for?”

A menacing look came into Sully’s eyes. “In the aftermath of her death, I was angry, confused, and lonely. I was also on a lot of substances.”

“What did you say to him?”

“I asked him if we could get together.”

I recalled Sully saying Jesse’s name was on Poppy’s tombstone in his dream. What did that mean?