Delroy’s back and arms and legs ached from the unfamiliar exertion. Back on Wasp, he kept in shape, playing pickup basketball and handball with the other officers and enlisted. Three times a week he went through the weight machines. Five times a week he jogged Wasp’s landing deck. Sometimes he jogged in the morning, starting before daybreak and ending when the sun crested the eastern skies, seeming to come up out of the sea or from whatever landmass that lay to the east of the ship.
But he’d never before dug a grave.
Or dug one up, he amended silently. He took a fresh grip on the shovel and thrust it deep into the earth again. Sweat covered his flesh under the slicker and his wet clothes. Thankfully, the chore also warmed him against the cold chill of the night.
He swept the shovel aside and dumped the latest load atop the hill of dirt that was slowly but surely turning to mud. The drowned earth under his feet sucked at his boots as he shifted.
The hole was three feet by three feet so far, and nearly as deep. The work had gone quickly, but his reserves were going just as quickly.
Emotion further exhausted him, growing stronger and stronger the deeper he went, wearing him out even more quickly.
Relentless, he thrust the shovel back into the grave. The blade struck an unyielding surface with a clank.
Delroy’s heart leaped into his throat as he realized that he might have already reached his son’s casket. Many graves weren’t truly six feet deep. He froze. His stomach churned, filled with acid, and a rancid taste coated his mouth.
“God help you, Delroy,” he whispered to himself. “Are you ready for this?”
Terrence had died in the Middle East five years ago, his squad ambushed by terrorists the U.S. Marines had gone to disenfranchise from the local populace that had kept them hidden. The wounds Terrence had died from had necessitated a closed-coffin ceremony.
Delroy had never gotten the chance to say good-bye to his son properly, never had the chance to kiss him good-bye one last time. But he’d also been spared the harsh sight of seeing Terrence dead. All Delroy had seen was a flag-draped coffin that scarcely seemed big enough to hold his boy who had been so big in life.
Raw pain surged through the chaplain anew. Just when he had decided that he had never before hurt so much in his life and surely couldn’t ever hurt that much again, the thought of seeing his son’s badly maimed corpse hit him with the unstoppable force of a battleship under speed.
He reeled and swayed, holding onto the shovel with both hands. “God, help me.”
Only the drumming rain and the low whisper of the wind washing through the trees answered him.
Delroy felt more alone and cut off from the world than he ever had. It was even worse than when he had returned to his quarters after he’d received notification of Terrence’s death. He’d been at a new posting, with no one really close to him, bereft of family and friends until the helicopter had started him on his trip back home.
Lightning blazed against the sky. When the thunder came immediately afterward, the basso boom sounded right above him. The vibration reached through his whole body, jarring him solidly.
Looking into the dark sky above the small bubble of pale yellow illumination afforded by the flashlight lying on the other side of the grave, Delroy took a long, ragged breath. “You took him from me, Lord. I wasn’t ready to let him go, but You took him anyway. He was just a boy.” His words caught as fresh tears filled his eyes. “My boy. You had no cause to do that. I’d worked long and hard for You, and You took him from me anyway.”
Thunder rumbled in the distance, but there were no answers in the dark sky.
Delroy wiped the fresh tears from his face. “I want answers, God. I want to know what is going on. I want to know if the Rapture really did occur or if I’ve been fooling myself about everything my daddy taught me.”
That’s not true, Delroy told himself. You know that’s not true. Here you stand, lying to the Lord and you’re standing in your own son’s open grave to do it.
Realization of what he was doing filled Delroy with weakness. He tried to hang on to his resolve. “God, forgive me. I beg You. But I’m weak. I know that You’ve raptured Your church and that I’ve been found wanting, but I need to know—” His voice broke and he couldn’t go on. He felt the hard surface grate against the shovel’s blade as he shifted. “I just—I just need to know if my boy made it to You. That’s all, God. I just need to know that You’ve taken him into Your embrace and are watching over him because now I can’t.”
He turned his attention back to the ground. Placing his foot on the shovel, he thrust again, changing the angle. This time the shovel slid freely, rasping along an object hidden in the muddy earth. As he turned the shovel over, he saw that what he’d found was a rock.
The rock was flat and smooth, obviously one that had spent years at the bottom of a creek bed or a river. Now here it was, where no rocks were supposed to be, miles from any creek or river. The rock was large, as big as a hubcap, and at least thirty or forty pounds in weight.
Words from the past, from a talk Delroy had shared with his father, came back to him. At eight or nine years old, Delroy’s curious mind had constantly created questions for his father to answer.
“But how do
