In no special order, folks stood up and shared Deborah stories. Unsurprisingly, Denver remained silent. I ended with a poem I had written for her on our anniversary. Pame walked through the crowd with a bucket of bluebonnet seeds and I watched as each mourner scooped out a handful and scattered it on the moist ground. Then the kids and I got into the Suburban and drove away, leading a procession of cars down the dirt road to the ranch house. Denver and the other pallbearers stayed at the site to lower Deborah into the earth with ropes. As I left my wife on the hilltop, I tried not to think about the shovels I had seen leaning behind a tree.
When
we let Miss Debbie down into the ground, I knowed it wadn’t nothin but her earthly body. But I still felt my heart sinkin right down into that hole. I knowed God had a plan and a reason why He took her. But I still didn’t understand why He gon’ cut off such a beautiful life while the whole world was crawlin with criminals and fellas like me that ain’t never done nobody much good.
After we got her casket down into the grave, me and Mr. Roy Gene and some other fellas picked up them shovels and started in. I hated the sound when that dirt thumped on the wooden coffin and showered down around it like an evil rain. Even though I knowed Miss Debbie’s spirit was with the Lord, I tried real hard not to think about what was inside that box. I was glad when all I could hear was dirt hittin dirt and not hittin that casket no more.
After we was finished, there was a fresh pile a’ red earth where the hole used to be. One a’ Miss Debbie and Mr. Ron’s friends had made a big cross outta cedar wood with the bark still on it, lashed it together with rawhide. Somebody used a shovel and pounded it in the earth up by her head.
And that was it. The place didn’t look no different than no other place on the ranch, ’cept for that big red scar on the ground.
After everbody went on to the house, I stayed up there with her, sittin on a bale a’ hay. Sometimes I talked to God, askin Him why. Even though I’d had a word or two from Him about His purposes, and even though I’d delivered them words to Mr. Ron like He asked me to, that didn’t mean I had to like it. And I told Him I didn’t like it. That’s the good thing ’bout God. Since He can see right through your heart anyway, you can go on and tell Him what you really think.
Since I knowed wadn’t nobody gon’ hear me, I talked to Miss Debbie, too. Out loud.
“You was the onlyest person that looked past my skin and past my meanness and saw that there was somebody on the inside worth savin. I don’t know how, but you knowed that most a’ the time when I acted like a bad fella, it was just so folks wouldn’t get too close. I didn’t want nobody close to me. It wadn’t worth the trouble. Besides that, I had done lost enough people in my life, and I didn’t want to lose nobody else.”
Well, it was too late for that. But I didn’t regret lettin Miss Debbie get close. Instead, I thanked God for her life and the simple fact that she loved me enough to stand up to me. That got me to cryin. I cried and cried out loud and told Miss Debbie that was the most important thing she taught me: “Ever man should have the courage to stand up and face the enemy,” I said, “’cause ever person that looks like a enemy on the outside ain’t necessarily one on the inside. We all has more in common than we think. You stood up with courage and faced me when I was dangerous, and it changed my life. You loved me for who I was on the inside, the person God meant for me to be, the one that had just gotten lost for a while on some ugly roads in life.”
I don’t know how long I sat up there on that hay bale. But it was mornin when we buried Miss Debbie and night when I finally got through talkin to her and went on home.
The
next morning, we held a memorial service at church, under strict orders from Deborah that it was to be a celebration. Denver planned to follow us there in his car and arrived in our driveway looking stylish in a dark pinstriped suit and tie. I got out of my car and gave him a long hug. I’d heard from a friend who had attended the burial service that when she left Rocky Top at twilight, she had seen Denver, still sitting by Deborah’s grave.
The church parking lot was already packed when we pulled in, and I had to find a parking spot like everyone else. Deborah had not wanted limos or anything else that would make it look like a funeral. Inside, nearly a thousand people had gathered, and for the next two hours, Deborah’s close friends and family shared memories of a life well-lived. Sister Bettie was among those who stood to speak.
Slender and soft-spoken, she walked to the podium and told briefly of how God had led Deborah to the mission, and how they had become sisters in Christ with a common goal to change the city. Then she looked down at Denver, who was seated in the front row, just in front of Regan, Carson, Daphene, and me. “Now, Brother Denver has a few words to say.”
Denver pulled out his handkerchief and mopped his head. Then he rose from his seat and walked slowly to the dais. I glanced at Carson and Regan, and we shared a smile as Denver’s ponderous gait made the climb up to the podium seem like a mountain trek.
Normally soft-spoken, Denver this day needed no microphone. In a rousing voice that grew louder and stronger with each word, he delivered a message about courage, hope, and the love of a woman.
“God has blessed me that someone would come to me that was concerned about me and not interested in whatever bad places I had come from. Ever since I’d known her, Miss Debbie offered for me to come to church here, but wadn’t no way I was comin
here
!” Denver said, smiling as the mostly white congregation laughed. “So she came and got me and brought me. I tried to stall at the door, but she said, ‘Come on in,’ and she walked in here with me just as proud. She was a real lady.”
As Denver told the tale of the white ladies and the retreat, laughter rang, and when he told how God had prompted him to pick up Miss Debbie’s torch, people cried. Regan and Carson, their own tears flowing, squeezed my hands, thrilled to witness this answered prayer and so proud of their mom, whose legacy was sealed by the powerful testimony of a man who’d survived some of the worst America has to offer, and trouble of his own making, a man whom we now considered a member of our family.
As Denver left the podium, I saw Roy Gene and our friend Rob Farrell stand and begin clapping. Then the entire congregation stood, and applause thundered through the church. For nineteen months we had prayed for and expected a miracle. Suddenly I realized I was staring one right in the face. A face that didn’t try to hide from me anymore. A face with eyes that were no longer angry and yellow, but clear and a powerful brown. A face that beamed a joyful smile when it seemed once to have forgotten how.
As Denver lumbered down from the dais, the applause continued. Regan, Carson, and I stood, tears streaming, and when he reached us, gathered him into our arms.
Never
one to leave details to chance, Deborah had told us that after she died, she wanted Carson, Regan, and I to take a trip somewhere—just the three of us. We were to leave right after her memorial service, she said, stay at least one week, and not talk about anything sad. She had issued these orders a month ago, on her last day in the hospital. That day, the four of us sat in her room and yakked about where we should go.
“Italy,” I suggested. “We can stay with Julio and Pilar in Florence. We’ll eat pasta, drink wine, and laugh over memories.”
“Too far,” Regan said, ever practical. “I want to float the Rio Grande and hike in Big Bend.”
Deborah liked that and Carson agreed, so it was decided: desolate Big Bend National Park in far west Texas. Per Deborah’s instructions, we packed the car the day after the service and were literally walking out the door when the phone rang. It was Don Shisler.
“Ron, can you come down to the mission right away?”
“Not really. The kids and I were just leaving for a week in Big Bend.”
“But this can’t wait. Can you stay by the phone for a minute? I’m going to have Bob Crow call you right back.”
Bob was a mission board member. I said I’d wait. Within a minute, Bob was on the phone explaining what he described as “the most powerful move of God in the 112 years of the Union Gospel Mission.”
Here’s what happened: Immediately after Deborah’s memorial service, a couple named John and Nancy Snyder approached Bob, saying they wanted to make a major gift and assist in raising additional funds to build a new Union Gospel Mission. The existing mission was aging and beyond repair, and it was Sister Bettie’s powerful testimony and Denver’s story of how Deborah’s love for him had changed his life that had stirred their hearts.
That news alone stunned me, but what Bob said next made my knees wobble: “Ron, they want to build a new chapel for the mission and name it the ‘Deborah Hall Memorial Chapel.’”
My throat closed and tears surged. I could barely squeeze out the words “We’ll talk it over during our trip” before hanging up.
Carson and Regan were elated about the gifts for the new mission, and we left for Big Bend with high spirits mercifully buoying our heavy hearts. We debated the chapel-naming issue as we barreled down the road in the Suburban, loaded down with boots and backpacks. All of us were positive Deborah wouldn’t want her name emblazoned on anything any more than she’d wanted the red Rolls-Royce boasting from our driveway.
If mission donors wanted to name the new chapel after someone, it should be Sister Bettie, we all agreed at first. Then from the backseat Carson threw in a monkey wrench. “Isn’t it usually the people writing the checks who get to name the place their money is going to build?”
We chewed on that for a minute, Regan staring out the window at the chaparral whipping by. “You know, Dad,” she said finally, “they didn’t ask us to name the chapel, just to give our blessing to the name they already picked out.” We tabled the subject for the duration of the trip.
At Big Bend, the Rio Grande meanders through the shimmering arroyos of the Chihuahuan desert, the jagged peaks of the Chisos Mountains towering above. We hiked the rimrocks and floated down the chilly river through narrow canyon cuts, sheer volcanic walls soaring over our heads into a vault of blue. It was a simple escape, clean and austere, a monastery of sky and stone.
The week passed slowly, blessedly free of the noise of living. I thought about Deborah, jumbled images flashing randomly through my mind as though someone had reshuffled our lives into some kind of anachronistic slide show. Deborah holding baby Carson. Deborah frail and dying. Deborah saying, “I do.” Deborah laughing on a ski slope. Serving meat loaf at the mission. Baking with Regan.
I thought about Denver, again random pictures. Denver’s words at the memorial service. My putting my hand on his knee at the Caravan. Denver with Mr. Ballantine. Denver praying by the Dumpster for Deborah. There would be, I knew, no catch-and-release.
When our time at Big Bend was up, we were ready to come home. And the moment we emerged from the desert into cell-phone range, I found I had a message from Don Shisler.
While
they was gone to the river, I prayed for Mr. Ron and Carson and Regan, that God would bring them a time of healin. There’s somethin special about a river, somethin spiritual that I believe goes all the way back to the river Jordan. Wadn’t no kinda trip gon’ make Mr. Ron and his kids feel better about losin Miss Debbie. But I prayed they would have a time of refreshin out there where there ain’t nothin but what God has made.
I knowed when they come back, I was gon’ have to get dressed up again. Mr. Shisler had done invited me to come to somethin he called “National Philanthropy Day.” He’d already invited Mr. Ron, said he left him a message on his cell phone to remind him. Miss Debbie was one of the folks they was gon’ honor. I wadn’t too happy to be puttin on a suit for the third time in a month, but I was all for participatin in anything that would let folks know what kinda woman the Lord had called home.
The mornin after he got back from the river, Mr. Ron come by the mission to pick me up. I had on a suit I had got at the mission store that seemed like it was brand-new. When Mr. Ron saw it, he smiled and said I looked like a million bucks, so I figured I done purty good.
They was holdin this National Philanthropy Day ceremony at the Worthington, a rich folks’ hotel on Main Street. When we walked into the lobby, there was about a million people crowdin around, waitin to go in through some big ole fancy doors that Mr. Ron said went into the ballroom where they was havin this shindig. We hadn’t been there but a few minutes when people I never seen in my life started comin up to me.
This one lady wearin a pearl necklace and a hat says to me, “I heard you speak at Deborah’s memorial service. What a
wonderful
story!”
“Denver, I want to shake your hand,” said a tall, skinny fella with a diamond stickin outta his necktie. “I’m so glad to hear how you turned your life around!”
On and on it went like that, with strangers comin up to me and callin me by my given name. I started to sweat. Mr. Ron just smiled and said maybe he should be my agent. When them ballroom doors finally did swing open, I thanked the Lord and hoped nobody’d be congratulatin me no more.
Now Mr. Ron had taken me to some fancy places, but that ballroom was prob’ly the biggest, fanciest one yet. Looked like somebody’d hauled in all the silver and crystal in Texas and laid it all out on round tables draped with dark red tablecloths. I sat down beside Mr. Ron and tried to act like I belonged there, but I couldn’t help starin up at the chandeliers.
Mr. Ron saw me grinnin. “What are you thinking about?” he said.
“I been seein this hotel from the outside for twenty years,” I said. “But I never figured I’d ever be on the inside.”
When I was still on the streets, I told him, I used to come down to the Worthington on the coldest nights and slip in behind the hotel where they had some of them big fans that blow hot air onto the sidewalk. I’d sleep on top of the grates to keep warm. One of the security guards took a likin to me. Just to be nice, he used to come by every now and then and kick me a little to make sure I hadn’t froze to death. Sometimes he’d even bring me some hot coffee.