"The teacher may bind these children to his or her heart by the love of Christ abiding in the soul temple as a sweet fragrance, a savor of life unto life. The teachers may, through the grace of Christ imparted to them, be the living human agency—be laborers together with God—to enlighten, lift up, encourage, and help to purify the soul from its moral defilement; and the image of God shall be revealed in the soul of the child, and the character become transformed by the grace of Christ." 20
Richard Wagoner sat at his desk pouring
over the calculations from his weekend observations. He had worked
all weekend, skipping several Monday morning classes in order
to finish his preliminary findings. He felt a certain sense of
elation, the way he imagined Columbus must have felt upon discovering
land after his long voyage of exploration from the old world to
the new. But what had he discovered? An ordinary astroid, certainly,
similar in composition to the others in the astroid belt, but
its velocity and orbit were distinctively different then those
other stable asteroids.
Over the weekend, as he worked, often cursing
his lack of access to the university computer which could make
these calculations at the speed of light, a conviction began growing
in his mind that this particular astroid would pass within a very
short distance of the earth, perhaps within the next several months.
How close and how soon, he could not tell with the precision he
desired, only a computer could reveal that information, but he
was sufficiently certain of his findings to brave the ire of the
dean over missing class.
Leaning back in his chair, and closing his
tired eyes, a thrill of expectation and discovery overwhelmed
him. Just how close would this astroid come to the earth, certainly
within the orbit of the moon, and, perhaps even closer. Then a
nagging doubt troubled his heart. What if it came too close? What
if it actually struck the earth? And what if there were other
asteroids in its wake? Would they also impact the earth or pass
so close as to adversely effect, perhaps, the climate or orbit
of the earth?
It would take weeks of serious study to
answer these questions. He hoped to lead the team effort that
would chart the course of Wagoner 1 before announcing their findings
to a startled world. He believed its closest approach would occur
shortly after New Years day, 2001.
* * *
Monday arrived with no welfare check in
the mail. Blanch Fonteneau met the mail man on the steps of her
apartment house, eagerly scanned the assorted advertisements and
first of the month bills, but did not see the familiar envelope
containing her check, the one that she was entitled to receive
because of her medical disability.
Blanch was angry and frightened. The local
news broadcast that very morning had announced the long expected
fact that the state would not issue the anticipated welfare checks
for another week or ten days.
In hundreds of thousands of homes in Chicago
and throughout the state, angry, but for the most part, worried
welfare recipients conversed with each other, while a growing
hysteria and panic swelled among the ranks of the poor. Where
their worst fears to be realized? Was the economy really that
bad? They didn’t care, they didn’t care about any excuse
the politicians could offer. No rational explanations of complicated
financial problems disturbed their growing anger and resentment;
they wanted their money and they wanted it now.
Blanch sat on her davenport fidgeting slightly,
watching television for the next newscast. How could she live?
How would she pay the rent, buy new clothes for Celeste, afford
her medication?
The phone rang. It was her neighbor in 17-B.
“You get yours,” she asked without preamble?
“No,” Blanch fairly shrieked into
the receiver.
“What we goin’ to do,” she
asked with palpable fear in her voice?
“We going march, that’s what we’re
going do. Get your coat and lets go,” she peremptorily ordered.
The crowd in front of city hall was swelling
by the moment as worried and angry welfare recipients from all
areas of the city and even the suburbs gathered to vent their
rage and fears.
From her position, at the back of the crowd,
she could see a small knot of people on the steps conversing animatedly
with several men in suits and ties whom she supposed to be city
officials. Arms waved, heads shook, feet stamped, fists were raised,
faces glowered and reddened on both sides. Others joined the group,
several women pushed their way to the front, waving empty purses
in a futile gesture of anger. The suits and ties retreated several
steps toward the front entrance which was guarded by uniformed
police men.
The mood of the crowd grew angry and sullen.
Shouts were heard from the front, police appeared on the steps,
forming a solid phalanx between the protesters and the entrance.
The suit and tie bunch looked worried. Hurried conversations were
exchanged with a uniformed officer who spoke on a radio.
People pushed and shoved to get closer to
the action. Blanch stood on her tip toes to see what was going
on. She couldn’t hear anything except curses, angry words,
and crying from hundreds of babies and small children in strollers
or strapped to the back of their mothers.
A man rushed the steps and was stopped by
two uniformed officers who rudely pushed him back. The crowd yelled
its discontent and booed the police. Sirens were heard approaching,
but Blanch was too intent upon the scene on the steps to notice
the rising temper of the crowd.
Two other men emerged from the crowd and
attempted to join the conversation but were again intercepted
by police and forced back. Anger boiled among the women and men
standing around her.
“Why won’t they let them be heard,”
someone yelled?
“Let them through,” another woman
screamed.
racists, pigs,” some children hollered.
The crowd grew sullen and resentful, pushing
and shoving each other to get a better view. More police appeared
on the steps. Wooden barricades were hastily erected. At the sight
of these impediments, the crowd seemed to gain a frenzy of excitement.
They could see their money disappearing as suits and ties vanished
behind the barricade and a double phalanx of uniformed officers
confronted the crowd.
“Its our money,” someone screamed.
“We gotta have food, give us our money,”
another mother, with two babies in hand, shouted to the backs
of the retreating suits and ties.
More shoving and shouting. Blanch was now
fully caught up in the angry, ugly mood of the crowd. She felt
angry and helplessness, resentful and afraid at the same time.
They were taking away her money, her medications, her very livelihood.
She screamed her defiance and rage and struck out in blind anger.
“Watch what your doing,” a man
shouted at her, “you almost hit me.”
“Get out of my way,” she retorted.
Overwhelmed with anger, she lashed out again.
So confined had the crowd become that she struck a woman in the
head, knocking her to the ground, her three children screamed
in terror as they clutched their mother, who, thinking the unfortunate
man had struck her, threw herself at him, clawing and scratching.
Several people attempted to pull her away but were, instead, pulled
into the fray as other women, babies, children, and even men flailed
out in all directions. Feeling threatened, sensing the panicked
mood of the crowd, they fought what they supposed to be an unprovoked
attack.
Pushing and shoving, swaying back and forth,
Blanch’s little knot of protesters caught the attention of
the police who rushed into the crowd to quell the disturbance
before it got out of hand. Stepping on toes, the police elbowed
their way through the crowd. Children cried. Resentful protesters,
angry at what they supposed to be police brutality, struck out
blindly in all directions, knocking children down and several
elderly men, who yelled in fear and terror at the possibility
of being trampled to death.
More police arrived, swinging their night
sticks in a futile effort to quell the growing disturbance. The
suits and ties retired into the building and closed the doors
which only infuriated those in the front who had not as yet noticed
the disturbance behind them. Impulsively, they rushed the barricades
and were driven back. They pushed and shoved. Those behind them,
who were also intent upon securing their money, pushed back. Panic
swelled, as several unfortunate mothers, sandwiched in the middle
of the crush, screamed their fear. People, in other areas of the
crowd, sensed the rising fear and panic but didn’t know what
was happening.
As the mood of the crowd shifted from nonviolent
protest to anger, more police arrived. Realizing that something
terrible was about to happen, those nearest the outskirts of the
crowd and also nearest the officers rushed toward them for protection,
fleeing from the panicked mod. The newly arrived police, wearing
protective gear, sensing that a riot was immanent, mistook this
mad, headlong flight as the riot they feared, and lashed out with
their night sticks, thrusting their shields into the faces of
those running from the scene.
The first tear gas canister was fired. Waves
of panic flowed through the crowd as they head screams coupled
with sirens and the acrid smell of gas. Swelling and heaving,
like the billows of an angry sea, the mod surged left, carrying
Blanch with it and encountered more barricades, night stick yielding
police, and clouds of tear gas. Stumbling, blinded by gas, coughing,
gagging, choking, panicked, frightened, trying to escape, every
way the crowd turned, they encountered police, and tear gas. Hemmed
in, every avenue of escape blocked, the crowd exploded in fear,
anger, and bewilderment.
An officer, seeing a fear crazed man, yielding
what he supposed was a weapon, drew his revolver and fired into
the crowd. His shot was immediately answered by others, for many
of the protesters had come armed, anticipating, and, indeed confidently
expecting a conflict, for they intended to use the occasion to
foment civil unrest and disorder for their own purposes. More
shots were fired, a bellow of fear and rage swelled from the mob
who broke into numerous bands of angry protesters, seeking to
strike back at an invisible enemy they could neither see nor identify.
Children went down in the malee. Old men, seeking only redress
for their missing checks, tottered and fell beneath the feet of
women and babies. The blinding gas caused hundreds to loose their
sense of directions and many were trapped in a blind alley which
soon filled with gas and smoke from a smoldering trash fire. Suddenly
flames erupted as one, bent upon his own agenda, threw kerosene
onto it.
Fire trucks roared into the frenzied mod,
showering them with powerful jets of water. Store windows were
smashed. Burglar alarms sounded. Chards of glass flew through
the air cutting and maiming dozens of people.
Rising clouds of smoke from several fires,
combined with the remnants of tear gas, and cold jets of water,
sent the now thoroughly fragmented and disorganized mob into a
dozen different directions. Those bent on mischief ransacked a
coffee shop, broke into a jewelry store, and a gun shop. More
shots could be heard. Screaming sirens punctuated the thunder
of a thousand voices. Glass shattered. Bricks pelted both police
and demonstrators. Chunks of concrete were hurled indiscriminately,
injuring innocent bystanders who emerged from a office buildings
for their lunch break into a city gone berserk. Brief case yielding
men and mini skirted secretaries in high heels walked into a full
blown riot and fell before the storms swirling through the streets.
Cars were set on fire. A bus crashed into
a curb then smashed into the corner of a building when the driver
attempted to avoid several fleeing children. The gas tank ruptured.
Instantly a huge ball of fire engulfed his vehicle and ignited
the front of a clothing store.
The panic spread by word of mouth from street
to street. Business men, intent upon lunch, were caught up unexpectedly
in the general frenzy. Screaming demonstrators, joined by bewildered
men in suits ran through the corridors of officers, pursued by
police who were intent upon restoring order. In their mistaken
zeal, they attacked the elite of the business community. Unlike
the demonstrators, those men, having spent hundreds of hours working
out in sports clubs, were fully able to defend themselves. The
resulting fist fights between police and suited business executives
would make the news all over America as shocked people watched
those who made the laws and those who enforced them fighting with
fists, guns, shields, briefcases, potted plants, anything that
came to hand. Fighting for their lives, both police and business
executives, with an admixture of demonstrators and provocateurs,
filled the streets of central Chicago with carnage and suffering
well into the night, before order was restored and the fires quelled.
Blanch returned to her apartment well after
midnight, exhausted, shaken, and more terrified then ever to find
Celeste tearing her clothes in rage and anger.
“Where’s my money,” she screamed
even before Blanch could close the door. “I want my money.”
* * *
Alite’s face took on a somber expression
as she related the incidents of the abortion. “My mother
insisted that I should abort the baby, I might shame the family.
She never asked my opinion, if I wanted to keep the child. The
first doctor, she consulted, said I was too far along with the
pregnancy, it would be dangerous, but she insisted that Dad find
another doctor who agreed to perform the procedure. Thanks mother,”
she said sarcastically, “apparently my life was worth less
then the shame that might result to her when my pregnancy became
know.”
Alite sighed, then continued her narrative
as Clerisse and Ansel Lerfervre listened sympathetically.
“Dad found another abortionist who
worked out of his own home. It was illegal, in those days, to
perform any abortions, but mother would have her own way. Dad
acquiesced to her will. They dropped me off in a back alley while
they waited in their car several blocks away.
“Just before the abortionist placed
the mask over my mouth and nose and the ether took effect, I remember
promising to serve God if he would keep me alive. I didn’t
know anything about Him, it was probably the first time in my
life that I prayed, and my promise was foolish, but I needed someone
just then.”
Clerisse nodded her understanding. In the
silence that followed Alite’s recital of her first experience
with the Lord, the two couples could hear the reassuring sound
of the ticking wall clock. Muted traffic noises penetrated through
the open windows of the double wide. People, in a hurry, passed
by, unaware of the tragedy in the life of Alite nor the goodness
of God who heard and answered his daughter’s prayer. Intent
upon their business, they traveled the highway, concerned with
their own private lives, loves, or longing hearts.
“I survived and promptly forgot about
my promise to God, but I will never forget the baby that I killed
that morning. It took a long time before I forgave mother her
cynical disregard of my life.”
Clerisse excused herself to check on the
dinner preparation while the mood in the room lightened perceptibly.
Ansel stretched and yawned, not unsympathetic to Alite’s
feelings but unable to think of anything to say.
Clerisse resumed her seat and inquired of
Skipp, “you were mentioning that the Lord gave you a vision,
won’t you tell us about it.”
Alite and I were married in 1972. I was
a sophisticated collage graduate,” he said with a smile in
his voice, “and she was a single mother with an eight year
old, inquisitive boy who never stopped pestering me. We bought
a house in Lansing, acquired a car, a swimming pool in the back
yard, a fist full of debts and a bundle of marital problems.”
Alite laughed. “Tell them about our
discussions of evolution.”
Skipped frowned. “Having just graduated
from collage with a Bachelor of Science degree, I thought I was
something.”
“And I thought he was full of hot air,”
Alite laughed good naturedly.
“Having grown up in a minister’s
family, I thoroughly understood the Bible. If pressed, I could
find Genesis and the Revelation, but anything between these books
was a mystery.”
“He was irritated to discover that
I knew more about the Bible then he did,” Alite interjected.
“He couldn’t believe that God actually created the earth
in six literal days, or that Noah and his family found shelter
in the ark or that God, after the millennium, would bring New
Jerusalem down from heaven to this earth and make this planet
the center of his Kingdom.”
Skipp smiled ruefully to Ansel, as Alite
enumerated his Biblical ignorance.
“Well, we had some long drawn out conversations
about religion in those early days,” he chuckled
“I convinced you, didn’t I,”
she inquired sweetly?
“You convinced me, honey,” he
laughed. “Growing up in a minister’s family had little
relationship with a knowledge of the scriptures or of God. Things
weren’t going well for us and I was getting discouraged.
We were in debt, I disliked my job, and Alite and I were in almost
daily disagreement over how to handle Anders who was growing rebellious
and getting out of hand.
“One afternoon, I was walking down
the hallway of our house toward the bedroom when God gave me a
vision. I lost sight of my surroundings and saw only a vista of
total blackness with a foggy area in the center. In this area,
I could discern three shadows, three figures stood close together,
as if they were holding hands. The central figure was taller then
the other two. I did not see or hear anything, and in a moment,
the vision faded to be replaced with a supernatural feeling of
hope where only moments earlier there existed desperation and
hopelessness.
“As I said, I heard no sound or voice
but as I continued walking toward the bedroom, the Lord impressed
upon my mind, a simple truth, ‘if you keep me between Alite
and yourself, I’ll keep you together. Its been 27 years since
we were married, and God has kept his promise.”
Clerisse and Ansel registered no expression
on their countenances but listened intently as Alite picked up
the narrative.
“We believe this vision has a future
application. In his vision, we were totally alone, except for
God. Our life experience, over the last quarter century, has born
out the reality that the real intention of this vision was God’s
way of forewarning us that we would live our lives devoid of human
companionship other then each other and God.
“If this was a prophecy,” she
continued, “it certainly has been fulfilled. We have no friends
and scarcely any acquaintances. I talk with my daughter every
few days, we still converse with Phoebe and Richard and occasionally
we talk with Lauren and Joe from Rogersville in Tennessee, but
no one calls, or visits, or writs, or makes any attempt to maintain
a social relationship with us. This we attribute to our handicaps.
Without each other, we are quite alone.”
Clerisse and Ansel remained silent. Neither
Skipp nor Alite could read their expressions. A moment later,
without comment, Clerisse announced the dinner hour. Ansel unfolded
himself from his favorite chair while Clerisse served the meal.
Conversation shifted to more pleasant topics.
