'Til Grits Do Us Part (49 page)

I threw myself to the ground in a patch of weeds, breathing hard, flies buzzing anxiously nearby. Ray was a good shot. A really good shot. I started to wonder if Amanda escaped after all or if Ray had taken care of her for good.

He shouted, and I heard a flailing of brush as he positioned himself and leveled his gun at me.

Not this time, Ray!
I took off across the pasture again.
I'm not about to be another Amanda Cummings!

A shallow ridge curved just to my right, flanked by a tall, tree-covered hill that sloped down to meet me. If I could make it to the ridge, right before the flat knoll where cows lazed, I'd be sheltered.

The ridge stood a good distance away, but I didn't run every day for nothing.

I swerved around a patch of some kind of weed cows apparently didn't like, jumping two cow pies like hurdles, and ran hard. The wind threw my hair out of my eyes as I scrambled up the incline, which glimmered with patches of yellow dandelions. And I threw myself headlong toward the ridge.

Three quick explosions reverberated in fast succession:
POW! POW! POW!
The cows looked up nervously.

And as my feet hit the ground, I felt something wham me in the side, like a giant two-by-four. I landed hard and rolled onto my back.

But when I felt around on the grass, I didn't find a two-by-four. Just grass and a stray, dried cow pile. A lone bee buzzed over some clover as one of the cows looked up at me, chewing its cud and blinking long eyelashes like the photo in Meg's portfolio.

I scrambled down the slope, surprised to find that my legs and arms had turned all rubbery. My footing gave, and I slid headlong into the grass.

An engine rumbled in the distance, and through blades of stubby grass I saw Ray slam his car door. He squealed off, swerving out of sight.

I started to pick myself up, gasping for breath, when I felt something warm leaking out my side. I looked down in disbelief at the lower half of my shirt—stained bright red. Spreading slowly, like a scarlet flower opening.

I pressed my hand to my side, not understanding. Held up my palm, now smeared with blood.

Ray Floyd just shot me
.

R
eality set in when I began to shake, knees buckling beneath me. I felt cold all over, and a strange stabbing throb crept into my side.

This can't be happening
. Pain clawed at me, filling my abdomen and roiling in my stomach.

My cell phone. I dug it out of my messenger bag and tapped out a number with shaking fingers. I pushed all the wrong buttons, and a pizza guy answered.

“Hello?” I cried, fumbling and dropping the phone again. Its shape was unfamiliar to me, too new and sleek. And my hands wouldn't stop shaking. When I managed to get the phone up to my ear, he'd hung up on me.

“Hello? Pizza guy? Anybody?”

A dial tone. My palm was sweaty with blood, and the phone slipped again, down a rocky decline and out of reach.

My breath came faster, and a panicked hysteria settled over me. I shouted for help, my voice ringing off the hillside and into silence. A couple of cows looked up.

I can't believe this! Of all the stupid places for Ray to take a shot at me!

I coughed, and the grass turned red. For a second I hated the color red. I eased down through the rocks and managed to grab my cell phone then crawled forward toward the distant barbed-wire fence on my hands and knees.

What if Ray comes back for me?
I paused, exhausted, and wiped the sweat out of my eyes. My legs didn't cooperate when I tried to stand.

My shirt was soaked now, and I felt light-headed. Pain pounded through my side so that I strained for breath.

You're going to die
, whispered a panicked voice, tense with adrenaline.
In the middle of a cow pasture in Nowhere, Virginia
.

Leave it to me, Shiloh P. Jacobs, to die in a stupid cow pasture with two heifers—one brown and one spotted—chewing a clump of weeds. The indignity infuriated me. I half expected Tim and Becky to pop out from behind one, cackling and slapping their knees.

I tried to sit up, holding my middle, and hyperventilated when I saw my blood.

I screamed for help until my throat ran hoarse and then sank there, terrified, in the grass.

“God!” I sobbed. “Can't You send somebody? I don't want to die here!”

A lone hawk sailed overhead, sealing the image of vastness, and disappeared silently over the ridge.

All at once I heard my cell phone ring somewhere in the grass, absurdly out of place, as if the pizza guy had called to confirm my order.
Well, good luck delivering anything out here
.

My senses were leaving me. I reached over and managed, after three tries, to press the C
ALL
button. “I'd like a stretcher,” I quavered, teeth chattering. “With cheese.”

And I rested my head on the grass next to the phone while somebody yelled. The voice whined like a pesky mosquito, demanding my location. I swiped at it, groaning in agony.

“I have no idea!” I needed quiet, not shouting. My head throbbed. “But please don't let him shoot the llama.”

My white shirt dripped, staining my jeans. I looked down and felt sick, feeling my last bit of panic ooze out like my blood.
Oh, God, Oh, God…
I thought, unable to move my lips.
I guess this is it
.

I remembered Mom's funeral. The scent of lilies, and the piles of gladiolus and wreaths.

“She loved you,”
said Dr. Geissler.

My body seemed to seize up, racked with pain, and my lungs convulsed. I coughed hard, unable to stop the warm flow I felt in my side. An odd sense of peace rushed over me.
So this is how it feels to die
.

This is how Mom felt, kneeling in the grass all alone, calling out for Stella. This is how she died, and how she sang her last song
.

I thought of the wedding and of Adam….
Adam
. A bitter regret stabbed through me, but it passed quickly, like a needle through numbed flesh. At the edge of my blurred vision, little pinpricks of darkness closed in slowly.

I, Shiloh P. Jacobs, am going to die
.

I no longer felt the ground. I seemed to be floating, losing touch with the sensation of earth, but rough blades of grass still poked me in the cheek. I couldn't explain it, really. I tried to move my arms through empty space, but they flopped against hard soil.

A blanket wrapped me. Cradled me. Exquisitely warm. My side still throbbed, making me cough and cry out, but I felt something else: the strange and powerful presence of God like never before.

“Do not be afraid. I bring you good news that will cause great joy for all the people. Today in the town of David a Savior has been born to you; he is the Messiah, the Lord.”

It seemed odd, lying there in the nebulous grass, that people only quoted this verse at Christmas. It was beautiful. Maybe the most beautiful verse I'd ever heard.

I blinked up at the gray sky, remembering my lies. My plagiarism and years of arrogant running from God. The way I'd shoved Mom away. The words I'd spoken and the sins I'd committed, piled high over twenty-five years.

And the grass of another hill, two thousand years ago, that ran red with the blood of that same Savior so I could have peace with God.

“Forgiven,”
I imagined God saying, punching a big stamp over my long list of sins.
Forgiven! Forgiven! Forgiven!

I have been forgiven so much!

I felt weightless, free, like the low clouds overhead, passing over the sun, and I choked back a sob as I thought of Mom. Her changed life and her powerful words. Her shining faith, which had passed itself—ironically—to me. And now I would die young as she had. Following in her footsteps until the end.

And for the first time in my life, I felt proud.

“Do not be afraid…. Very truly I tell you, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”

The verses came faster and faster, reverberating through my head like thunder:
“The body that is sown is perishable, it is raised imperishable; it is sown in dishonor, it is raised in glory; it is sown in weakness, it is raised in power…. Death has been swallowed up in victory.”

A swell of joy surged through me, a sparkle of something alive and eternal, and I felt the weight of my old guilt fall away at last.

This
is what Mom felt!
This
is what she found in her last moments: the Savior's hand tight in hers, taking her home for good.

No fear. No loneliness. No racking sorrow or regret. All joy! All hope! For death has been swallowed up in victory!

“Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me…”

For You are with me!

My eyes landed, full of tears, on a tiny yellow blossom buried in a half-chewed patch of stubble, and I remembered what Becky said about bouquets. The cut stems of freesia and roses in her hands, dripping.

A sacrifice, she'd called them.
“They lived and bloomed, jest like they were made to do. And when it was time to go, they gracefully said yes.”

“Yes, Jesus!” I whispered, shivering. “The best thing I've ever done is say yes to You.”

“Do not be afraid! I bring you good news that will cause great joy!”

“Do not be afraid!”

Somewhere in the distance I heard the impossible grumble of…a tractor? Coming closer, its strident rattle blaring in my ears. The bellowing of cows as they lifted their heads. Agony that made me cry out and pray aloud, begging for relief. Choking coughs.

The tinkling of ethereal music, layer upon layer, and the brilliant love of God as the pasture and throbbing pain faded into darkness. Hands that felt like Mom's brushing back my hair.

“Do not be afraid!”
His voice came tender, full of joy, in words that weren't spoken but felt. I couldn't see Him, but I knew His warmth and life like my own breath. Ragged now, shallow.

“I'm not afraid, Jesus!” I whispered, raising my arms toward heaven. Or maybe I thought I did, since I couldn't seem to move. Nothing worked right anymore. I tried to speak, but my mouth was full of dirt and dry grass. The roar of a tractor engine deafened my ears.

“Do not be afraid!”

And that was the last I remembered.

I
opened my eyes and looked down at the unflattering hospital gown and blankets. Tubes ran from my arm up to an IV bag, and a bandage stretched across my elbow where I'd skinned it in the gravel. A drain tube ran from my stomach under the blankets. Monitors beeped. I wiggled my toes, surprised to see them move at the end of the bed. And then I saw him—just a foot away. Adam leaned in a chair, sound asleep. Hair disheveled and face in his hand. Stitches grinned from a gash on his forehead.

I held up the blankets and peeked at the bandages covering my abdomen, touching them gingerly with my fingertips. I groaned as I painfully shifted my weight, trying not to think of the stitches that would have to come out of that wound.
It's going to be a long time before I run a marathon or look good in a wedding dress—that's for sure
. Wedding. Adam. My mouth fell open. He's alive? He's not… ?

His chest rose and fell with breath. I reached over and pressed weak fingers to his wrist, feeling warm blood pulse through his veins.
He's alive!
A miracle. I turned my own hand over in the light, gazing down at my silver engagement band. The veins pumping blood to my fingers and toes. A second chance at life—no, a third because I'd already been given a second chance when I asked Jesus to forgive my sins and change my heart forever.

I didn't care if I got married in Tim's hunting jacket. I was alive and so was my groom.

And there on my bedside table lay my Bible. I reached for it clumsily, dumping it upside down with splayed pages, and finally hauling it onto the bed. I paged through Genesis intently, looking for the story of Abraham and Lot.

“Shiloh?” Adam said groggily, jumping from his sleep and leaning forward. “You're awake?”

“He never knew,” I blurted. My hands shook, and I smushed one of the pages.

He cradled my free hand between his, careful not to jostle the IV tube. Tears danced in his eyes. I'd never seen them so red, puffy from lack of sleep. But neither had I seen them so happy either.

“Shiloh, what are you looking for? You've been—”

“Abraham.” I frantically scanned the lines of type and pointed. Shoved the Bible at Adam. “He never knew God answered his prayer.”

“What prayer?”

“For God to save Lot. All the Bible says is that Abraham prayed, and the next morning he stood looking over the smoke of the burning city. Lot fled after the angels rescued him, and he lived in the mountains the rest of his life. So Abraham never knew God had answered his prayer.”

Adam's blue eyes bounced from the Bible to me.

My tears spilled over as I remembered Mom's journal, and Adam sponged my cheek with a tissue. “Just like Mom never knew. About…about me. That I'd be okay, and I'd find her God.”

Adam's eyelids fluttered closed, and he placed his cool palm on my forehead, brushing back my bangs. “But she trusted God anyway, just like Abraham did. Even if she never got to see it.”

Adam put the Bible down and carefully wrapped his arms around me. I pressed his face to mine—soaking up the supple warmth of his skin, rough with a hint of stubble, pulsing with life. He kissed my cheek, his lips soft and tender. I turned my face toward him, basking in the sensation of his breath on my skin.

“Your mom made her peace with death.” He pulled away to look me in the eyes. “The police opened her last two letters for evidence, and they let Becky and me take a look.” His eyes reddened with fresh tears. “Wait 'til you read them. They're beautiful. She'd lost all her fear.” He sniffled. “And she left you the lyrics.”