'Why? You still a man.'
'And I don't want to put you in the middle.'
'What middle? They did wrong. I'm pissed at both of them. Love them, but I'm pissed at them.'
'They were laughing at me.'
'Who?'
'Both of them. I did this for them as much as anyone else. To be a hero to Lady G. To be worthy of Lott's friendship.'
'To prove yourself to them. I'm sorry if I don't seem real sympathetic. I'm not going to pretend to know what draws a silly country girl's heart. I'm not trying to minimize the dull shock of sorrow you want to wallow in. I'm really not. My heart hurts for you. I wish you could just remember the good times you had with them and hold on to the love you have for them. But I also know you can't just yet. Right now all you can do is think of the pain. All you can do is re-visit each memory through the lens of that pain and question everything.'
'I just want to make all the hurting stop.'
'I know you do. I know how hard it is to open up and reveal yourself, only to be rejected. That's the big fear of relationships.' Pastor Winburn drew up his sleeves and revealed a scar line of old track marks. 'The world is a painful place, full of things and people that will hurt you. And I know the temptation to numb yourself from it and do whatever it takes to keep us from dealing with life and what's going on. That's an easy path to walk down. You're no different than any other addict out here, you just used a relationship to numb yourself. Living life on your own strength, within your own fears.'
'That's easy to say.'
'What you've been doing hasn't been working.' Pastor Winburn rolled his sleeves back down. 'How about you listen to someone else other than yourself? You want to run away from folks and be all alone, that's on you. But you'll have no one speaking into your life except you. You don't want to be alone with your demons unattended. They are so many and it gets awfully noisy with all of those competing voices in your head.'
'Everything just seems so… It's too much. Too loud. It's confusing.'
'I wish I were one of those quick-to-forgive people. How when I feel dishonored, disrespected, or disavowed, or otherwise holding on to memories of someone's mistreatment of me, I can just go 'I forgive you' and all of the hurt and ill will just vanishes. It's like we feel this tacit pressure from other Christians. They hear our struggles with the pain of our situations — the anger, the hurt, the sheer pain of it — and confuse that with not being able to forgive. Almost as if we aren't forgiving on their time table or that a good Christian would have forgiven by now. Or faster. Or better. On-the-spot forgiveness works with smaller slights, but deeper wounds require more, especially if they tap into a familiar one. Sometimes we have to ask if part of what has wounded us is us carrying something else with us from the past that we are connecting to this present person or circumstance. That's part of what forgiveness is about, freedom from the things which hold on to us. A hardened heart can't feel the love nor the forgiveness a faithful and just God has to offer, it has walled itself off. Pursuing forgiveness is agreeing with God that there needs to be healing and trusting Him to heal us through the process. And sometimes it's a hard, long, messy process. But what's broken can be redeemed. And there's a real you that you have yet to find.'
King leaned against his kitchen counter. 'Help me understand how to do that. How to get to the real me.'
'You're always asking 'what do I need to do to make this work?' because you operate out of a need to control. Faith and control don't exist well together. When you are moving from a place of faith, you're asking 'God, what are You going to do to make this work and how do I get involved with that?''
'I want to be that man.'
'Look, King… I've seen how you've carried yourself. How you've fought. There's always going to be someone stronger. Everyone loses some time. It's what you do. In defeat, that defines you. You can become broken and bitter, just like in victory, you could become petty and small. Victory is a matter of spirit, not might. You have a mighty sword by your side, but you do not have to draw it. To wield it is to draw blood. Real love risks and offers redemption.'
'Where do I start?'
'Go back and clean up what you messed up.' Pastor Winburn put a tentative hand on King's shoulder, not wanting to crowd him if he wasn't ready. But King neither flinched nor pulled away.
'You always have a lesson for me. Just like a father.'
'King, I… I was never your father. Though I'd have been proud to call you my son.'
'There's more to being a father than blood. How about you listen to someone else other than yourself.'
Lott dribbled the basketball three times, took aim, bounced it three more times, held his pose for a moment, then released his shot. The ball arced through the net-less rim without sound. Putting on a limp pimp roll strut to chase down his own rebound, he pretended to evade a couple of defenders before laying back with a fade-away jumper. The game was easier this way.
The other day he was in a pickup game with folks he knew from around the way. And he was every bit as alone. No one on the court chatted with him. No girls flirted with him from the sidelines. No one met his eyes. No one passed him the ball. Getting a rebound resulted in elbows to his gut or face. Too aware of their scrutiny, their wariness, he retreated. He knew what to expect, but the pain of the reality was nearly too much. Maybe underneath it all he wasn't this awful person — the villain in everyone's story — maybe he was still the caring, loving little boy his grandmother tried to raise. But it seemed, he could sense it in his heart like stomachs turned in his presence. He just wanted to get away. To retreat.
Lott's disheveled hair needed tightening up, a week overdue. His large brown eyes checked for anyone who neared him. His tongue traced where his row of faux gold caps once grilled his teeth. A scraggly beard scrawled along his face in tufts like a child's cotton ball art project. Lott had lost his job at FedEx. It was the job Wayne had helped him get through Outreach Inc which took him out of the streets, and he'd been there for a couple years. He'd been doing well. They were even talking about promoting him again. Then the stuff with King and Lady G went down. He loved them both. He'd hurt them both. It was selfish of him to get with Lady G no matter the love he believed he had for her. She was King's girl. He was King's ace. And he betrayed them and it grieved him. He carried the weight of the pain he caused to work with him. The shame ground him down, affected his performance. His supervisor said he'd become bored and spiteful at work, not all the young man he thought he was giving a second chance to. And definitely not living up to the potential he thought he saw. Then that was that. Lott didn't disagree with his boss's assessment and would've fired him his own self. But the part that hurt was the fact that even during the firing, his boss had a sting of pain in his eyes, as if begging Lott to find the words to keep him from doing what he had to do. As if it hurt him to be adding to Lott's pain. Lott welcomed the firing. He welcomed the punishment. He knew he had to suffer for what he'd done and just wished everyone would stop giving a damn about him so he could throw his life away in peace.
'Why'd they have to do him like that? He was a good kid.'
'He was into some dirt.'
'No more than anyone else. And he was trying to put it behind him. Folks wouldn't let him.'
So the whispers about him went. But he knew how they saw him. This unfeeling monster. Beyond tears. Beyond redemption. Sometimes a body had to move on, get away from a place. Run from the memories, history of hurts and betrayals, otherwise they became trapped by a story. A tale told by others and believed by more. Such was his story. A story that would define him in such a way that he began to believe it himself. One that wouldn't allow him to grow out of it. He had to break his routine, his habits, shake up his world and paradigm.
The ball swished through the net. But there was no roar of a crowd. Nor any elation in his heart. Only the dull ache of moving when he didn't want to. He ran down his own shot then dribbled out for another.
Lott could never figure out why he wanted, needed, to block it out, to kill off the person he was. Because he hurt. The pain bobbed and ebbed, varying in intensity, but always there, and he simply never wanted to hurt again. Pain drove people mad and the self-loathing he felt was a raging fire fed by bits of his soul. One he'd do anything to quench. His life in drugs was no different than how he treated women, they were both attempts for his selfish need to come first and allow him brief moments of escape. What he hated was how he was powerless to make any of the changes he knew he had to make. His life was a runaway train, one he tried his best to ride out because to change, to stop, meant he'd risk losing Lady G or his friends and that he couldn't bear.
Instead, he lost everything.
The scorched earth of his life left him with a profound regret at having taken himself away from the people
