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.