Mutant of Mainstream

Yes, thank God! I'm finally finished with the whatever-draft-this-is of the story. I would love for you to read it and please post comments and suggestions.



Chapter 1: The Workmanship

I was searching, as a vagabond in the wilderness, but unsure exactly what I was searching for. Everyday, I was back and forth between trust and doubt, not knowing that God was working through all the pain to bring me to the place where I had no option but to rest in Him completely and where I would want nothing but His good and perfect purpose for my life. I had no idea what I was in for the spring of my senior year in high school, the trail that God had predestined for me to follow in order to bring me slowly, ever into his likeness.
Near the beginning of the semester, a meeting with the principal of the school loomed over my head. With everything in my being, I dreaded it, praying the meeting would be canceled or that I would get sick, but as the time neared and neither of my prayers were answered, I just asked God for wisdom that I might know how to respond to the principal, Mr. Rummers. His office was dark with a single dim lamp casting shadows across his face. In fact, the shadow of his glasses left his eyes hard to see and his lips hard to read. He complained about my recent decline in grades. Having known this was coming, I was prepared with my defense. I wrote down on a piece of paper that I was only doing so poorly because I had stopped speaking. Since then, I had begun flunking oral exams and presentations, although I should have been flunking them all along because no one could understand me when I spoke. Mr. Rummers then tormented me with his dim lips and concealed eyes, urging me to keep trying to speak, and reminding me how far I had come with lip-reading (so that I didn’t even need an interpreter for my classes), and assuring me that just such a thing could happen with my speech. However, Mr. Rummers, sitting back in his desk chair, with an immovable expression plastered across his face like a fortress which separated his world from mine, had no way of imagining what a monster speech could be. He had never known the feeling of doing away with it to be like chaining a vicious monster to a stake and setting it on fire. It was wonderful. But Mr. Rummers let me know that if I did not learn to speak, my life would be basically useless. Against these harsh ideas, I tried to copy his expression, to set my face like flint with no emotion, but the pain boiling inside of me was torture to mask. I feared the principal could see right through me.
When I was dismissed, the January wind of the outside world greeted my face, cooling all that had boiled inside of me. My father had been waiting for me in the lone car in the parking lot. I used my natural means of communication—American Sign Language—to convey to him what Mr. Rummers had told me. But my father seemed to think little of Mr. Rummers’s concerns, signing to me that, as the Bible says, I was God’s workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God had before ordained that I should walk in them. In comparison with God’s viewpoint, the speculations of my school principal were unimportant.
So, with my hope battling on against despair and my faith against doubt, I rested my head against the vibrating car window as my father drove us home. The feeling of uselessness was always chasing and taunting me and it was only further fueled by Mr. Rummers remarks. I cried out to God in the constant silence of my mind, pleading that He might take me and what little I had to offer and use me for His glory in order to accomplish His purpose.
Home was a small, ordinary-looking place, crammed into a neighborhood with miniscule yards. No flowers adorned the bushy garden outside—no flowers dancing like little, bright fairies in the wind to signify individuality or profess to passers-by of a feminine heart within the home’s brick walls. Yet this place welcomed us through the garage and into the kitchen. Once inside, the aroma of wood greeted me warmly; it was the scent of peace, work, and stability. Though the house held little furniture and few luxuries, there was no place I would have preferred to return to after that painstaking meeting with Mr. Rummers than this simple place.
Walking through the sawdust which covered the floor, I got a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table, while my father turned on some music, sat down on the couch in the living room, and fashioned guitar parts. In my own silent world, I endeavored to focus my freshly wounded mind on American History, forcing myself to think in terms of questions, blanks, and complete sentence answers.
In the course of an hour, however, I had moved from a world of words to a world of wood, sitting on the opposite side of the couch from my father, gluing guitar parts together. My father and I worked intently without much signing—for our hands and eyes were preoccupied with the wood. This was the tranquil community we shared, sanctified from the clamor of the world outside. Though the world cut at us and abandoned us, this was our haven of healing.
At six o’clock, we washed the sawdust and wood glue from our hands and began making a dinner characteristic of us—one which combined rice, chili, and which ever spices appeared most tasteful to us at the time. Above the steaming pans on the oven, we signed leisurely about making guitar deliveries, things going on at our church, and interesting facts I had learned at school that day.
I told my father that I was invited to James’s house the following night along with Elizabeth. The three of us—James, Elizabeth, and I—were the only deaf students at our school, and we had been close friends since the deaf school we had begun in, with the focus and the end thereof being public, mainstream education. Still, as we were high school seniors, we stuck together through the currents, all of us inefficient communicators. James, who had lost his hearing at the age of five, could talk decently, but was not a lip-reader; I, having lost my hearing at three, could read lips, but had given up on speech; and Elizabeth, who was born deaf, could neither speak nor read lips. These “flaws” were evident to everyone, leading to our general ostracism by the hearing students. To befriend one of us was to deface oneself, and it had been this way since grade school. We, the few, the deaf, though tragically unconformable, were still lost in the mad rush of the mainstream. Only, we all knew we could not end where everyone else was ending. We were different.
After dinner, my father and I pulled out two of our handcrafted guitars. My father began strumming some chords in the key of F. Noting this, my fingers drifted into picking solo notes up and down the frets and strings. The feeling of the wood, smooth beneath my finger, and the steel strings, pliable to my touch, indulged me. I lost myself in the vibrations. After a while, with my fingers still moving, I looked up into my father’s deep, brown eyes. Perhaps the darkness of his eyes drove many people away from him, but it welcomed me in. His hair was dark brown also and curly. A short, unkempt beard surrounded his face providing him with a rustic appearance. My eyes dropped down to his moving fingers, which were also rustic with work and practice so that looking at them caused respect and pride to grow in my heart. Certainly, we were not a typical family, but we loved what we had—what we had been given of God.


As one fighting the ocean current, I struggled through the crowded hall at school the next morning, toward my locker. It was 6:55. If I did not get to homeroom by 7:00, I knew the teacher would take pleasure in mocking me before the entire class. She did it to everyone who was late, but she always found more to ridicule me about.
When I was near my locker, I saw Elizabeth surrounded by a group of students. The students’ mouths were moving rapidly and Elizabeth, unable to read lips, was simply trying to find a way past them. Because I knew exactly what the students were saying, my urgency to get to class instantly evaporated as my emotions suddenly boiled in anger. I pushed through the group of students which enclosed Elizabeth, conscious that this action had thrown at least one person to the ground. Putting my arm around Elizabeth, I broke through the other side of the group. Without looking back to see the damage I had caused, I walked with Elizabeth to her homeroom, my arm around her securely, until she sat down at her desk.
When she thanked me, respect revealed itself through her eyes. And as I turned to find myself lost again in the ocean of the hallway, working my way back to my locker, I could still see Elizabeth’s relieved face in my mind, her weak smile, her sparkling eyes, her blonde, wavy hair. She was a sort of angelic princess, always there in the corner of my mind, and it was my duty and privilege to protect her. The look she had given me which said that she needed and trusted me was well-worth what I knew was coming when I entered homeroom at 7:05.
As I took my seat at the front of the class, the teacher put on a sarcastic smile and, through it, asked me what had happened. She started with questioning about the little things, remarking that perhaps I had forgotten to set my alarm, or enjoyed my shower to much. But eventually she came to sharper ideas, saying perhaps my girlfriend had broken up with me, and that was what made me late, as pleasure in her own wittiness lit her face. Even when I started to write something down, she stopped me, telling me this was not writing class and that she wanted an answer. With a smile still plastered across her face, she said she sensed a lack of respect at my not answering her. It was utterly mortifying. Though I could not hear the laughter, I could sense it, which was probably worse. I forced myself to faze out completely and asked God to give me patience and a sound mind, to be “slow to anger and abounding in love,” as Paul puts it, as anything else would end me in detention.

When I arrived at the Kirkpatricks’ house that night, James greeted me with his three-year-old sister, Jessica, held against his chest. We signed in the living for a while with the strong smell of dinner calling out from the kitchen. His siblings were running around the house playing hide-and-seek or some such game, knocking into him occasionally. We discussed the school setting as usual and he expressed anger toward the principal, as he had recently had a meeting with him also. James signed that Mr. Rummers was a communist and that is why he wanted us to conform. But I reasoned that if Mr. Rummers was a communist he would want us to die. Despite my own inward struggles with bitterness toward the principal, I told James that Mr. Rummers truly wanted the best for us, but that he was simply mistaken about what was best for us. James could not agree. He just held out his hand to stop his six-year-old sister, Jenna, and signed to her with his other hand to slow down so she would not hurt herself.
Then Elizabeth arrived. I watched James kiss her on the cheek at the door as he instantly took her hand and drew her into the house where Jenna and Jessica crowded around her. I licked my lips against the intensity of their relationship, which had recently felt to be the conclusion of so many years of our mutual companionship. But I never discussed it with them.
The aroma of lasagna is the aroma of big family. When I arrived at James’s house that night, everything was warm and perfect. In the Kirkpatrick house, the sense of unity was so prevalent and so intrinsic that the members seemed woven together and Elizabeth with them. I was beckoned into this tapestry, but I could not really enter because it was already perfect and beautiful. I could only be an admirer. The Kirkpatricks spoke and signed simultaneously, although James was the only deaf member of the family. Tonight, the mood around the table was light and refreshing after the tedious week of school, with the bright prospects of the weekend before them. I was intrigued by Jessica’s determined efforts to cut her own lasagna despite the offers of everyone at the table, not knowing she had already received offers, volunteering to cut it for her. James, who worked for his father’s company, was discussing a work situation with his father, as Elizabeth watched with interest. Julie, James’s fourteen-year-old sister, was telling her mom about being offered drugs at school that day. The four youngest children were too caught up in eating for making much conversation, although at intervals they would burst out with some nugget of information. I sat slowly taking in the food, looking from person to person in the warmth of the atmosphere, as if I was but gazing in at them through a window.
After dinner, we played an aggressive game of “Spoons.” The game is not solely about skill; it has much to do with one’s degree of viciousness as well. So, it was not surprising that James and Joseph were the ones to make it to the last round. At that point, the game is only luck. Joseph won, by chance.
When James, Elizabeth and I were in James’s room later that evening, James made a point to ridicule my poor skills at the game of “Spoons.” But Elizabeth stood up for me, reminding James that I was probably a wonderful guitar player, though the two of them couldn’t know, and that I at least looked cool when I played. Elizabeth and I looked at each other, smiling like two siblings might when they find themselves on the same side of a conflict. James reminded me of how Elizabeth’s grandmother thought I was weird when we were little kids I was always playing guitar, despite my being deaf. I did not remember that. When I thought of Elizabeth’s grandmother, Mrs. Anderson, I could think of nothing but raking her yard for her in the fall and her repaying us with chocolate chip cookies and telling us stories about child-eating monsters. We asked Elizabeth how her grandmother was doing and she told us her grandmother was doing very poorly, almost to the point of having to go into a nursing home. I, who had had no idea that things were so bad, looked away, ashamed I had not asked about Mrs. Anderson more recently.
If Mrs. Anderson went into a nursing home before graduation, James told me that Elizabeth would move in with his family for the remainder of the school year. After that, we all knew what was going to happen—James and Elizabeth were going to get married, get their own house, and start their own family. Though their anticipation seemed to grow as the time drew closer, that night the idea remained like the moon seen through the window, neither spoken of nor reached for, but present, still, in its resplendence.
I, on the other hand, faced the future without direction. Perhaps, after I graduated, I would go to college or perhaps I would simply become a luthier like my father and put in more hours in the workshop at home. Honestly, I would be content with anything, as long as God would place me in His will.

Chapter 2: A World of Weapons

I lay in bed, staring at the tiny, white protrusions which covered the ceiling, and praying, until I drifted off again into a light sleep. I asked God why I should get up. Hardly anyone at school would care whether I was there or not. Memphis would only try to tear me in pieces today, even as I went about not knowing what I was made for, not getting into anything. The world did not want me. I could just stay in bed. But as I kept praying, I remembered that it was not about what the world wanted or needed. It was about the plans that God had for me. And, though I did not know what I should do in a year, I could be sure that at that moment God wanted me to get out of bed and be His witness at my school. At last I forced myself out of the bed, and, walking over to the window, lifted one blind slightly in order to peek out into the new day.
At 6:30 on that weekday morning, I left the enclosure of my own small room and made my way into the kitchen where my father sat with a glass of water and his Bible. He looked up from the book as I entered and signed to me, telling me that I could take the car to school that day, as long as I made a guitar delivery to the Johnsons. This was the third delivery for them. Although it was odd that anyone would want so many expensive guitars of the same brand, we did not complain; we would make them as many guitars as they would buy. When I got home, we would balance our budget. I had been included in this practice for as long as I could remember. Instead of my father paying me for the work that I did, everything was ours. Together we saved and gave and strove to keep our spending as little as possible.
That morning, I poured myself a glass of orange juice. When I drank it, it seemed as if I was drinking of the morning sun in all its richness. Over such a beverage, I sat down with my father at the table to see what he was reading. It was Deuteronomy still. He had been reading in that book of the Bible for a long time, and seemed peculiarly passionate about the monotonous, law-filled book. But he pointed out the verse in the first chapter that read, “And in the wilderness, where thou hast seen how the LORD thy God doth bare thee, as a man doth bare his son, in all the way that ye went, until ye came unto this place.” My father explained that, in the midst of the Israelite’s weakness and rebellion, God still showed Himself faithful and gave them more than they deserved. He brought them through hardships with the purpose of causing them to love Him and seek Him more so that He might accomplish His ultimate purpose with them—to be close to them and reveal Himself among them.
My father never used my sign name—a couple taps of the L-shaped hand against the chest—like other people did when they signed to me. Instead he signed the word “Song,” which was my middle name. This gave me a sense of identity, a sense of what my father must have seen in me.

Later, as I sat in Algebra and waited for the teacher to arrive, I got bored with doodling odd designs across the top of my notebook paper and looked up at the new girl seated across the classroom. She was glancing around anxiously. I watched as she leaned over to the girl beside her and I read her lips as she questioned her as to the “hot guy over there.” The girl questioned responded that she must mean Lancen. As the second girl’s red lips articulated my name, I suddenly felt a tinge of interest somewhere so deep in me that I could not seem to draw my eyes away from their conversation. The red lips then went on to say that I was deaf and I never talked and they summed me up as “creepy.” Though the description almost caused me to turn away, I had to see what the new girl would think about this. But all that came from her lips was a question as to why I was starring at them. The other girl told her I was probably reading their lips. How creepy was that? Then I did turn away.
It was then that the fullness of their words settled on me. But I had learned long ago not to keep this kind of thing trapped inside me. I could go insane. Instead, I prayed, begging God to help me forgive those cruel red lips, and that He would forgive them. After all, when the Israelites had sinned against God again and again, He had forgiven them. And when I had still been in my sins, He had died to forgive me. He still was forgiving me everyday for the ways that I hurt Him. I wanted to be like Christ and share His love with others at my school, but at the same time, it was difficult when they treated me like I wasn’t quite human, like the fact that I couldn’t talk meant that I could not feel. So, I prayed in the harsh atmosphere of the classroom, with an urging still to meditate the outpouring of the girls’ lips, that God would be my strength and that He would give me an opportunity that day to show His kindness.

At lunch, I sat across from James and watched Elizabeth from afar as she went through the cafeteria line. A dismal aura seemed to surround her as she barely noticed what went on about her. James signed to me that her father had stopped by her grandmother’s house the night before, asking for money from his mother, but had barely even noticed Elizabeth. As James signed, a hardness seemed to go over his visage, almost like a knight’s helmet against the battle. His eyes conveyed the agony he felt due to seeing her this way, met with his inability to immediately make everything right for her—to make her completely his, to show her the love that she desperately needed.
As Elizabeth sat down beside James, her presence was that of one not truly in our presence. It was as if she was locked in a dark dungeon somewhere too far away for us to reach to her. Though we would both boast of our strength, it was beyond our power to save her. Even when James’s hand slipped beneath the table (to find hers, I assumed), Elizabeth’s expression remained unchanged.
At length, a little way down the long table, Eric Skelton, shoved his cup toward me and his lips mumbled my name along with a command to get him some more Dr. Pepper. Though his words brought instant agitation to my ego, I did not dismiss his request. Instead, I signed to James that I would be right back after I got Eric some Dr. Pepper. James told me not to do, that that was selling out. Then I looked over at Elizabeth. She gave me no advice.
So, I took Eric’s cup and went to the drinking fountain, with my feet uncertain beneath me. I felt as if everyone in the cafeteria was thinking that I, Lancen Hamilton, had become Eric Skelton’s slave. But I forced my mind to scroll over the Bible’s words: “If your enemy is thirsty, feed him. If he is hungry, give him something to drink. In doing so you will heap burning coals on his head.”
When I set the refilled cup in front of Eric, he looked at me skeptically and asked if it was poisoned. Someone sitting near said that he wouldn’t drink it and someone else said he would give Eric a dollar to drink it. Without watching further, I sat back down in my own little group. James called me a suck up, but I just laughed to myself at this, knowing that my mute and “creepy” self could never make it into the popular crowd.

When I got in the car after school, I jotted down a note with usual civilities on it to hand to the Johnsons. I did this because people generally did not feel comfortable or appreciated when I made no communication and I did not want the Johnsons to have to wait on me to etch out a note after I arrived. When I thought I had written something suitable, I scanned over the note, set it in the passenger’s seat, and started the car’s ignition. I thanked God that I had made it through another day at school, that I had been able to show God’s kindness that day, even if it was not understood or appreciated.
I followed a windy road which led me up and down small hills until I found myself in a part of town that felt like the country, especially since I had the windows rolled down and I could breathe in the air of a singularly warm January day and hear the tree branches rustling all around in their excitement, as their old leaves had long been severed and new leaves now contemplated taking their places. I felt free that day with the wind surging through my hair. But freedom is not all that the human heart longs for. More than to be free, it desires to be needed and to be purposeful and those things seemed distant that day. There were houses hidden behind the trees in this country-like place—large, uniquely beautiful houses. I began trying to remember which belonged to the Johnsons. Only when I saw it, did the familiarity strike me and I pulled into the driveway, which was practically a road of its own. By following this, I finally reached their enormous house.
I got the guitar out of the trunk and climbed the numerous steps to the front porch and passed tall pillars. “Welcome,” the doormat read in large, bold letters. I conclude the message on the mat was meant to give the visitors, previously overwhelmed by looking at the house, just enough courage to ring the doorbell. So, I rang it.
The door was opened by Mrs. Johnson, a bubbly lady with bouncy, short, blonde hair. My eyes had difficulty keeping up with her mouth. Taking the guitar, she told me that they would want another soon guitar soon, but that would be a miniature and she would talk to my father about that later. Without giving me time to produce the note from my pocket, she, smiling unnaturally, bid me good-bye and shut the door in my face. So, with a sigh, I went back toward my car, toward the long, windy road, toward my own practical, compact neighborhood.

Music—not the sound, but rather the intensity—was flowing through my fingers, into the strings and wood, and then back again. Music was the feeling that I was doing what my father did. It felt right. It was an experience of vibrations mixed with the idea that other people could hear something wonderful.
After my father and I had been playing guitar for an hour and we found ourselves at the kitchen table drinking milk, my father signed to me that I had a great sense of rhythm. He assured me that I was a wonderful guitar player, not just for a deaf player, but for anyone. He told me I could be famous. I licked my lips of the white liquid lingering there as he told me not to let him talk me into anything. He encouraged me to seek only God’s will for my life. When I had consumed the last bit of milk from the cup, I asked my father, somewhat anxiously, whether he was going to bed. When he responded in the negative, I knew it meant. He often sat there near the door at nights “waiting” for my mother to come home. She had been gone now for fourteen years and yet, somehow, my father’s desire for her continued, unfaltering.
Lingering in the kitchen after I had rinsed out my cup, I signed to my father that James and Elizabeth had told me that if they had the option of hearing, they would still want to be deaf. But if I had the option, I would want to hear, if that meant that Mom would come back and my father and she could be together again.
My father starred at me a moment, and then responded slowly that it was not my fault she had left. She had had problems of her own and that had been the reason for her leaving. He signed this like he was weary of signing it. It was a sensitive subject for both of us, and though we did not discuss it very often, the discussions we did have were so memorable that we practically bore the marks of them.
Again, I told my father that if it had not been for that sickness which had left me deaf, my mother would not have gone away. I had been too much to handle. Maybe she had had problems, but if it had not been for my deafness, she would have stayed and gotten through them. Because my father made no response, I continued to tell him that it would have been better if I had not been born. At least she would have stayed.
But then a harsh expression covered my father’s face as he signed to me never to say what I had just told him again and that I should not even think it again. He told me God hade made me because God found pleasure in me. He had let me go deaf for a reason and He had a purpose for my life. I should never let anyone tell me that that was not true.
To this I gave no response. I only grabbed the back of the chair I had been sitting in and starred into the granules of wood in the kitchen table. Then my father signed very gravely that he would not trade me for anything. My gaze shifted to his deep, dark eyes as I searched for relief in their sincerity. When at last I felt I had attained all the relief he offered, I told him goodnight.

James told me he was sick of this. He was ready to get through this year of school and on to the rest of life. We were sitting in his room against his bed and he was glancing at the football game on his television from time to time. Really, James had no hopes for the present. His life was centered on graduation, getting a full time position at his father’s job, and getting out from under the misunderstanding eyes of his peers. I told him that this was life though. We would always be the rejects, the mutants. But that’s what he thought was so wonderful about the deaf community. We could fit in there. I told him that I feared to live out my life impacting only a few people who were like in my tiny comfort zone. To him, such an impact would be sufficient. He would mind spending his whole life with people who were like him. At least, he reasoned, there was understanding and acceptance there, as the world neither wanted nor needed us. But I was not so sure that it didn’t need us. James and I both might have gone to some private deaf school a few hours from home if it was not for that issue of family. James may have regretted going to a mainstream school, but only because (at least it seemed to me) he took his family for granted. He was so used to belonging. Through out my life and increasingly each day, the only person I felt like I belonged with was my father. I could not imagine leaving the one secure relationship I have for the sake of education and acceptance among peers. And in the end, I felt that my public education had in some ways done me good. It had showed me what the world really was and what I was up against. Somehow, after being exposed to the same things, when James and I looked at the world, we saw two different things. The world before his eyes was dark and cruel; the world before mine was dark and needy.
After our argument about life, the hearing world and the deaf community, we started wrestling as if we were striving against our own frustrations, stress, and pain. I was also trying to wrestle away the guilt which marred me deep inside due to my mother’s leaving. Tragically, I knew I could never wrestle this away.

Chapter 3: Anything to Feel

On a dark Thursday night, I sat at the kitchen table, starring into the last bit of milk in the cup and swishing it from side to side. I had been taking a great deal of time to consume this milk with the hope that my father would be home by the time I finished. He had gone to deliver the miniature guitar to the Johnsons. They had been adamant about getting it that night because the next day was their youngest child’s birthday. Judging by the way Mrs. Johnson had shut the door in my face when I had made a delivery, it was hard to imagine that the Johnsons had invited my father in and indulged him in a lengthy conversation, particularly because my father—thought neither deaf nor mute—was not a conversationalist. The Johnsons lived about fifteen minutes away from us, yet my father had been gone for almost two hours.
As I starred toward the front door, I got the sudden and horrible sensation that I was doing the exact same thing my father had been doing for the fourteen years my mother had been away—waiting, as if at any moment the door handle would being turning and that much desired companion would return. I felt lost without him. Finally though, I drank the last bit of milk, which by now was room temperature, and washed the cup out slowly in the sink.
Then suddenly, lights flashed—my signal that someone was ringing the doorbell. I knew it was not my father because he had a key. Curiously, I walked toward the door and looked through the peephole. Two police officers stood outside. In a muddle of terror and confusion, I opened the door to the officers. They starred at my awkwardly, which seemed odd for police officers. The white officer introduced both of them and asked if I was the son of Ronald Hamilton. I nodded. At this he seemed troubled and he told me that they needed to talk to me. I let them come in and they did so hesitantly and sullenly, which lead me to fear the worst.
When we had sat down in the living room, the officer who had spoken before did so again, his lips dragging each word out of his mind. He told me that my father had been in a car accident about ten minutes away. He had died. I looked into the speaker’s green, almost transparent eyes for an affirmation of his words. Had he really said the words I had gathered from his lips? I looked over at the other officer who seemed as mute as myself and nodded his assertion. The first officer told me he was hit by a car and that the other driver had also died.
I buried my head in my hands and my mind went completely blank, but for this new, bizarre information which suddenly overwhelmed it. He could not be dead. It wasn’t right; it didn’t feel right. He would come as he always had. It wasn’t possible for him to be gone so suddenly. I prayed that it might all be a misunderstanding. After a length of time inexpressible, I felt a hand on my shoulder. It was the white officer standing before me. He asked if there was someone he could call, maybe an adult I trusted, who could be with me. Surely he did not understand, surely no one could really understand, that my father was all that I had. I nodded to the officer but did nothing more until he asked for the person’s number. I looked around a little and then down toward the floor effortlessly. The black officer, who was still sitting on the coach, asked for my name. I starred into his eyes for a moment and then down at the floor as before. Once again, my head slipped down into my arms and my mind into its muddled thoughts. But at length, I felt that hand on my shoulder again. This time it held a notepad and a pen. The officer told me to write down my friend’s number.
Taking the writing implements, I jotted down the Kirkpatrick’s last name and phone number with a shaky hand. The officer took out a cell phone and dialed. I closed myself off again, not caring enough to read his lips anymore.
When the James and his parents arrived, James looked at me with uncertainty for a moment. Then he walked slowly toward me and hugged me for a long time. We had never done that before, but neither had we ever needed to. His arms seemed to hold me tighter and tighter until he pulled back and looked at me with the same awkwardness he had originally. Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick also hugged me and Mrs. Kirkpatrick wiped tears from my cheeks were her soft motherly hands, but this did not good since the tears were constantly being replaced. The police officers spoke with Mr. and Mrs. Kirkpatrick for a long time. It was not long before I lost the ability to focus on their lips and sat down on the floor against the wall, picking up a handful of sawdust which lay there and staring into it.
James sat down beside me and signed to me that he wished he knew what to tell me and what do, but he had no idea. Opening my fingers, I allowed the sawdust to drop softly to the ground until my hand was empty for signing. I told him all that I wanted was for him not to leave me. He signed that that would not happen and that I was going home with them that night.
There in the sawdust, I felt like such a child. It would seem that a seventeen-year-old could understand the concept of death, but though I told myself over and over that he was gone and nothing was ever going to be the same, I could not grasp the fact.
At least I knew he was heaven… That’s what Mr. Kirkpatrick told me in the kitchen of their home. He told me that my father was so full of God that it seemed everything he said or signed revolved around his God. I starred into Mr. Kirkpatrick’s eyes, remembering how often my dad had been on the subject of heaven. He had told me that was the reason we lived in a small house with only our basic needs covered—because earthly comforts would not matter in eternity. He had thought that the present was a pitiful thing to live for. After a while, Mr. Kirkpatrick turned away, perhaps feeling uncomfortable with being starred at for so long without any explanation.

After a dark and sleepless night, I got out of James’s bed into a rainy morning. James was still asleep on the floor in his room. I opened his door and went into the living room. After opening the window blinds, I sat down on the coach to watch the rain. It was only five o’clock and the house was still and dark. When I remembered that I had gone to bed at two, the long, painstaking night turned short with reality. I had known about my father’s death for seven hours. How was I going to live the rest of my life in this reality?
I told God that I needed my father, and I asked God why He had done this. How was I supposed to keep living without him? The raindrops drizzled gently down the window pane and I was left without answers in this eternal silence. Would I now have an eternal numbness as well? There, in that full house, I felt more alone than ever before.
Wanting to feel something, anything, any kind of touch or communication, I took my shirt off and went through the Kirkpatricks’ back door and out into their yard. The rain fell down on my face, arms, chest, and jeans. My feet sank down into the mud. My tears blended with the rain so that I did not have to be conscious of them. I told God that I needed Him. I didn’t even know what was going on. I just knew that He was all that I had. It seemed that the rain beating against me was God’s way of telling me that He with me. It was His response to my desperate pleas. I was like Mary, Lazarus’s sister, and God was crying over my pain. He was comforting me and assuring me that He had a plan even while I felt utterly numb. Raising my hands and closing my eyes, I surrendered myself to Him.
At length, I felt a hand on my shoulder. When I opened my eyes, I saw that James stood before me in pajama pants and a T-shirt, hold an umbrella. He asked me with hurried exaggerated signs what I was doing and if I wanted to get sick. I told him I didn’t care. But I followed him inside and stood on the rug by the backdoor with water dripping from me. He threw me a towel. He signed to me that he had looked all over the house for me until he thought I had gone gotten run over by a car. I told him I was seventeen years old and not about to go jump in front of a car. His response was that I was not mentally stable; it was six o’clock in the morning and I had just been standing out in the pouring rain. I looked down at my bare chest and Julie, James’s fifteen-year-old sister who was fixing cereal in the kitchen. I dried off and put my shirt back on. James asked me if I had brought another pair of pants. Of course I had. Why would I have gone out into the middle of a rainstorm if I had not brought another pair of pants? I wasn’t mentally unstable, I told him.
Mechanically, I went and changed into my other pair of jeans. When I went back into the kitchen where the entire Kirkpatrick family was scrambling through the refrigerator and cabinets for breakfast, I leaned against the wall and became like a statue. Mrs. Kirkpatrick asked me if I wanted something to eat or drink. I didn’t. Mr. Kirkpatrick asked me what they could do for me. Without hesitation, I told him I wanted to see the scene of the accident.

It was a horrifyingly ordinary place—a sharp bend in the road at the top of a hill. I had driven past it several times before. We pulled over at the place and Mr. Kirkpatrick explained to me what the police officers had told him. My father had been going one way while the other driver, who was probably drunk, had been going in the opposite direction. It seemed the other driver had been going much too fast and made no attempt to turn at the bend. My father had come around at the wrong moment.
I walked down the hill as my wound seemed fresh like the moment I had first heard the news of his death. As I came to the place where my father’s car was on its side against a tree, I peered over into the driver’s seat as in a hope to find my father there, though I knew his body had been removed long ago. I touched the steering wheel where he had touched it and took off the paper with the Bible verse he had most recently stuck to it. “Blessed are the pure in heart,” it read, “for they shall see God.” Then I touched some of the blood which was splattered on the driver’s seat. With the eerie feeling that he was truly gone slowly pouring into me, I stood there for a long moment. When at last everything had settled, I collapsed on my knees and sobbed.
On the drive back to the Kirkpatricks’ house, I leaned my face against the cool window pain and starred down at the road so that the rest of the world was a complete blur around me.
When the car stopped and I looked up, I saw Elizabeth’s car parked in front of the Kirkpatrick’s house. I glanced over at James who sat beside me in the backseat. He signed that he had told her. On entering the house I was greeted by a soft, soothing hug from Elizabeth. It felt so good that I did not let go for a while. But when I remembered James, I forced my arms to return to me and my eyes captured in Elizabeth’s eyes of sympathy. They were almost of empathy. Against the hideousness of the moment, Elizabeth looked more beautiful than ever. I told her I needed to talk to her and when I looked at James he left the room. I slid down onto the coach and, with a reluctance which conveyed no hurry to pull to pull reflections out of me, she sat down also.
I told Elizabeth that the night before I had felt a compulsion to deliver the guitar for my dad or at least to offer, but, for some reason, I hadn’t. And now it made all the difference. I wished that I had gone instead of him, that I had been thrust down that hill at eighty miles an hour and hurled into a tree to die on impact. It should have been me. It must have been the Holy Spirit prompting me to go. Surely I was the one who had been intended to die.
Elizabeth told me that what I was saying didn’t make any sense; that God wanted me to live; that God was incredibly power and that I was not capable of messing up His predetermined will; that He had a purpose for me.
When at last I responded I told Elizabeth that if I had been the one to die, my mom would have come back and my father could have been happy.
But Elizabeth signed that my father had loved me, and that now that he was in heaven he could not be doing any better. I was the one who felt the sting of this; he was in peace.
I though that what Elizabeth had told me was something close to what my father would have said, and when I thanked her, it seemed that my thanks could never make up for the things she had just told me. She could never know how much she meant to me.

The funeral came and went. In some ways, I was absent from it because I was surrounded by a strange numbness. I kept thinking that my mother would show up, that she would at least return after his death to the man who had earnestly desired her all his days. But if she had come, I would not have known what to do. In the end, there was no point in wondering. She probably did not even know that he was dead and that she missed forever the chance of earthly reconciliation.

Chapter 4: And Now to Live

In his will, my father had given everything over to me, which was plenty as we had been diligent savers and investors. In his will he had encouraged me to sell the house. I struggled over this request. Even though I did not want to live in the house by myself, to part with the house I had always lived in—the house that bore the aroma of everything that had been dear to me and that had been consistent for so long—seemed too much for me to handle. But at the same time, when I entered it, the memories were also too much for me and it made me crave even more strongly the things that I could never have again.
At school, nothing much changed. I was certain that some people knew what had happened as the rumor ran from certain lips to other lips about the “creepy,” silent guy whose father had died as if my story was part of a gothic work that no one could enter. However, the new girl in my Algebra class did tell me that she was sorry about my father. I responded with a smile and a nod before being separated from her by a mass of bodies sweeping us away in their currents in opposite directions.
I knew James and Elizabeth were not trying to push me out. It was just the natural flow of events as they inevitably blended more and more and I became more and more unlike them. After all these years of the three of us, now when we tried to do things together it became awkward. I suppose I finally came to admit to that deep part of me which had long been screaming out into the silence that Elizabeth was, after all, James’s girl. For a while that had been okay. She had been James and my girl, but when life and reality and growing up sets in, everything changes. When she was around James, she was radiant. She simply didn’t need me anymore.
While the Kirkpatrick family was kind and welcoming, there was something essential missing in my relationship with the family. In any healthy relationship, each party must have a need for the other and I had always sensed that, while I could be squeezed in to their family, it was only to the discomfort of all the other members. I could not be a beneficial part of their house for the Kirkpatricks, like all families I suppose, were bound together tightly like a living, breathing organism to which a member of a foreign unit could not graft itself into allowing the health of the organism as a whole to persist.
People looking on from the outside (for example, people from my church) may have thought I was getting along fine though because I was still in school, I still had the same friends, and I had found myself in a new family. I guess that is why no one else did anything about me. And there was nothing that they really could have done. But still, I felt that I was, whether intentionally or unintentionally, breaking away as a leaf does from a branch in season. The place to which I had become attached was not a place in which I fit. Here, nothing had need of me.
But, in all of this desperation, I began a determined search. All of my life I had been so accustomed to seeing my father feasting over his Bible. He hadn’t just read it; he had lived it and breathed it. The back porch at the Kirkpatricks’ house had become “my room” more than the room that I stayed in with James. There were so many things I needed to figure out and I could not do it alone, for when I tried, I felt all together directionless. So, I would often be out there on the porch playing guitar or staring into nowhere, seeking God, for it seemed He alone would always be there for me and He alone could make my life purposeful. For the first time in my life, I began reading my Bible like a starving man eats food, but it seemed the more I read, the more I had to keep reading. Also, for the first time, I began to truly love to spend time alone with God. My life before had been dull in comparison, marked by a few short-lived spiritual highs. Now, I finally understood the way my father had always felt toward God. Only with God did I fit and find meaning and purpose, and He was not connected to a particular person or family or school or city. With Him, I was free to do the things that He had lovingly purposed for my life.
The last time I walked into the house before it was no longer mine, the sawdust no longer covered the floor. There were new carpets and the walls were freshly painted. The table where I had often sat with my father was no longer there. The coach where we had played guitar had been given away. But still, I could smell the aroma of wood which had so long hung through out the place. I kept asking God where to go from here. I felt a peace, but no clear answer. This peace, this promise that He would direct me in His time, was enough for now.
Graduation came and our hats flew up in the air like our old lives. We were different now, all of us; we could not go on in the way which we always had. Three weeks later, James and Elizabeth were joined in a sacred, overwhelming matrimony. Mr. Kirkpatrick walked Elizabeth up the aisle to give her away to his own son. I was the best man. As I watched that beautiful girl be united to James, and as I watched their faces ignite with new hopes and adventures, I was torn inside. I licked my lips until they were horribly chapped. I knew God was telling me I had to leave this place soon; it was the only way that, through His help, I could hope to cease loving my best friend’s wife. I hated myself for my own jealousy on the happiest day of their lives.
As I continued to pray and seek God out, He began revealing Himself and His will. As this happened, I felt near to God in a way I had never known was possible before. Indeed, I felt I could go anywhere or do anything and His presence would be more than enough to get me through. I often rested in the silence of His presence for the sheer pleasure of it. And, sensing the direction of God, I purchased a bus ticket.
One day, though James had moved out, I thanked the rest of the Kirkpatricks for their kindness, for their compassion, for going out of their way to welcome me in. I went to James and Elizabeth’s apartment to look at them, laugh with them, and be with them. I went to the bank to draw out twenty dollars from my account and to the grocery store to buy a loaf of bread. That night, I played my guitar in James’s old room, staring out the window into the dark, unknown world. Then I laid the guitar down in its case with my Bible, the cash, and the loaf of bread. When I woke up the next morning, it was still like night. I left a note in the room which read: “Dear Kirkpatricks, I’ve gone to New York City to follow God’s lead. Love and best wishes to you all. Song Hamilton.”
It was a long walk to the bus station. With my guitar on my back, I felt lost and yet found, enslaved to Christ and, in this way, free. There was no way to imagine what lay ahead—the struggles, the heartache, the simple pleasures, the victories. But I knew this would be adventure on adventure and with God I knew I could do it. The night was still and expectant all about me. As I handed in my one-way-ticket and boarded the bus, I just begged that God might use me as He had promised. I put my guitar in the overhead compartment and sat down. I glanced at the characters around me—they looked like they were hurting beyond the hope of hope, like I had been, like I knew I would have been even now without the presence of God in my life. I asked that God might reveal His mercy to them, even through a mute man on a long bus ride. I looked out the window into the beautiful, mysterious darkness as the bus started off in to the unmistakable power and unknown mercies of the will of God.