The Gate (3 page)

I wanted to ask where “here” was, but he never gave me a chance.

“Your room is ready,” Ahbee continued. “Michael will show you where it is in a few minutes, but let's eat first. Sit down, sit down, you must be starving.”

They each pulled out a chair while motioning for me to do the same, and for a moment we sat and smiled at each other in an awkward silence. Then Michael folded his hands, bowed his head, and said a word of grace. He thanked God for the day, for the food, and for my safe arrival, and when he said “Amen,” the old man said, “You're welcome.”

How odd
, I thought to myself. I was beginning to feel a little uncomfortable. Something about all this was one bubble off plumb. But then it dawned on me: this was Carol's doing! She must have gone online and booked a room for me without telling me. That's so Carol. She loves to surprise me, and she knew more than anyone that what I needed was to get away for a few days. Sure, that must be it. That's why these two were expecting me. Little by little, the pieces were falling into place.

As I looked up, my eyes caught the old man's gaze, and for a moment it was as though he had peeked into my very soul. Clearly he knew much more than he was letting on. There was wisdom in his years, but I sensed that it was something that would have to be pried out of him a little bit at a time.

Without saying a word, Ahbee flipped the cinnamon rolls out of the pan, turned them nut-side down, and began frosting them with a cream cheese icing and serving them.

“I've heard of open houses where they baked a loaf of bread so the house would smell like home, but I've never heard of one where they served breakfast. It's a nice touch,” I said, taking a bite of my cinnamon roll. “Homey—and it kind of makes me feel like I belong here.”

“You do belong here,” said Ahbee. “We have everything ready for your stay.”

“Do I know you?” I asked again. “You look so familiar to me. Have we met before?”

“I imagine I do,” Ahbee replied with a wry smile. “We've met many times.” As he poured me a glass of milk, he said, “I knew your parents quite well. In fact, your father and I had quite a talk on the day you were born.”

“You look to be about his age,” I responded. “Were you and Dad friends when he was young? Have you known him a long time?”

“We're very close. Your grandmother introduced us when he was only a young boy.”

“It's funny that he never mentioned you. Were you from the old neighborhood on College Avenue?” I asked.

“Oh, I know the old neighborhood very well,” he replied. “And I'm sure you've heard your dad speak of me.”

I began to get a little annoyed with what seemed to be an obvious evasion of my questions.

“Listen,” I said. “I appreciate the hospitality, and the sticky bun was great. Actually, I've never had better. You were right, it tasted like a little bit of heaven. But this is the strangest open house I've ever been to. It's like I woke up in Neverland! Just where in the world am I, anyway?”

“Well, that's the point, isn't it?” the old man answered. “You've gotten away from it all here. Like the sign says, ‘You're in God's country now.' ”

“God's country?”

“You know, heaven,” he said with a sincerity that was hard to deny. “And I'm opening my house to you. At least a part of it.”

“And that makes you—”

“I Am,” he interrupted.

When God told Moses that he was the great I A
M
, in some ways, it was both an answer and a refusal to answer.

I couldn't help but hear an echo of Exodus where Moses asks God his name and the Lord replies, “I
AM
WHO
I
AM
.” My preacher likes to throw a little Hebrew into his sermons, and I remember him saying that God's answer was the Hebrew verb “to be” twice repeated. According to him it can be translated “I am,” or “I was,” or “I will be,” or any combination of the three. In some ways, it was both an answer and a refusal to answer. It's both open-ended and open to interpretation. It was like God was messing with Moses by speaking in riddles, and I was beginning to feel the way Moses must have felt.

“Look,” I said, “I don't know if this is some kind of game, or who you people are, but maybe I should go check on my car.”

With that, I got up and walked out the door.

Your life is the sum result of all the choices you make, both consciously and unconsciously. If you can control the process of choosing, you can take control of all aspects of your life.

Robert F. Bennett

I
t was a beautiful day. The sun was shining, the birds were singing, and a gentle breeze blew the screen door shut as I walked down the brick path and out the gate. The two-track followed the line of the lakeshore for about a quarter of a mile and then merged into Old Mill Road. On the left side of the road there was a public swimming beach with a sign that said S
WIM
AT
Y
OUR
O
WN
R
ISK
, and to the right was the beach parking lot. I didn't know where I was, but it all felt strangely familiar, like I'd been there before.

As I got closer, I could see my car sitting in the far corner of the lot with the door open. Someone had pulled it out of the mud, washed it off, and parked it next to the row of rusted rural route mailboxes. The top was down, the keys were in the ignition, and there was a piece of paper under the windshield wiper that I assumed was the tow bill. Instead, it was a note that said, “Look inside the mailbox.”

When I glanced back at the row of old mailboxes, one of them had my name on it. Hand-painted in weathered black block letters it said D
R
. S
CHUYLER
H
UNT
. Tentatively, I looked inside. There I found a brown manila envelope with Ed McMahon's picture
on it. It too had my name on it, and stamped in red it said, “You may already be a winner!”

There's something reassuring about getting mail, even if it's only the electric bill. It says someone's thinking about you, someone cares about you, you matter, and we all hunger for that. Insecurity is the common thread that links humanity. I had left the cottage because I'd felt uncomfortable, but getting the letter had the opposite effect.

Insecurity is the common thread that links humanity.

Carol had sent me on a few wild goose chases in my life, but this was a little out there even for her. Still, somehow she must have known that I'd be a little uncomfortable with Michael and the old man, so she sent the letter to soothe my worries. I held it for a moment and then broke open the seal. Inside was a picture of the cottage that I'd just left, and below it was written, “The path goes in two directions. One is safe and well-traveled; the other holds the answers that you seek most. Either way, the choice is yours.”

For what seemed like an eternity, I stood by the mailbox. Looking down, I realized that there were indeed many footprints heading off in front of me. As I turned around, only my footprints were left in the sand behind me. A voice in my head said,
Don't be a fool—take the safe path. Those others couldn't all have been wrong
. It didn't make sense. Why should I be the one to break from the pack?

But then again, I've never been one to play it safe. I've spent my life ignoring the warnings, speeding up on yellow, and rushing headlong into a challenge. In fact, that's always been a problem for me. I have a hard time letting things go. When I was a kid, my dad always told me to go for it, to throw caution to the wind, to run at a problem instead of running away from it, and it's become second nature to me. I guess I could say that it's probably my father's fault.

———

On my first day of school in seventh grade, I left the house with fifty cents in my pocket, hoping to buy the school lunch. Why I wanted to do that is a wonderment to me now, but at the time, not carrying a brown bag lunch seemed like a big deal.

Some people play it safe, and some people speed up on yellow.

When the lunch bell rang at eleven fifty, Rodney Williams asked me if I had lunch money. When I told him I did, he demanded that I give it to him.

Did I mention that this was Rodney's second trip to seventh grade and that he'd spent two years in third grade as well? That meant the two of us were on the opposite ends of puberty. He was big, strong, and hairy, and I—well, let's just say that I wasn't.

Not being all that streetwise, I tried to explain to Rodney that if I gave him my lunch money I wouldn't get a sandwich. “If you don't give it to me, I'll give you a
knuckle
sandwich,” he replied, holding up a fist the size of a softball.

Needless to say, I didn't eat lunch that day.

That night I told my dad what had happened and explained to him that I needed a dollar for lunch—fifty cents for my new best friend, Rodney, and fifty cents for me. Although he sympathized with my dilemma, Dad said that I would only be getting fifty cents for lunch and that I had two choices: I could hit Rodney as hard as I could in the nose, or I could go hungry.

“If I hit him,” I said, “he'll kill me.”

“If you don't, he'll eat your lunch every day,” Dad replied.

I lay awake that night worrying and wondering what to do. I even prayed that Rodney would be sick or not very hungry. Evidently God wasn't listening, because when the lunch bell rang at eleven fifty, Rodney made a beeline for my desk.

He said what I knew he'd say. “Have you got your—”

Bang!
I hit ol' Rodney as hard as I could, and he went down like an elevator. He banged his head on the radiator, and when
his head hit the tile floor, it sounded like someone dropped a bowling ball.

What did I do? What could I do? I jumped on top of him and pummeled him in the face until the science teacher, Mr. Pulte, pulled me off and dragged me down to the principal's office.

The principal's name was Elmo Wiersma, and he looked like an Elmo. He had receding black curly hair, high cheekbones, and a long, pointy nose with bifocals balanced on the end. I soon learned that Elmo had zero tolerance for fighting.

“What possessed you to hit poor Rodney?” he asked.

“My dad told me to,” I explained.

“Listen, young man, I'm in no mood for games! If I don't start getting a straight answer, I'm going to suspend you for three days and call your dad.”

“Go ahead and call him,” I replied.

And he did.

The conversation started off pleasant enough. “I'm sorry to bother you, Mr. Hunt, but your boy is in my office for fighting, and he says you told him to.”

For a moment there was an awkward silence, followed by a “Hmm” and an “I see,” after which Mr. Wiersma got a pained look on his face. “But that's no reason to return violence for violence,” he said. “I'm afraid I'll have to suspend him for three days. I have no other choice.”

I don't know what my dad said next, but ol' Elmo's face got as red as a tomato, and I heard him say, “Well, Mr. Hunt, if that's the way you feel, then he's suspended for the whole week.” And he hung up.

When my dad picked me up from school, we went out for ice cream, and he said, “We don't need to share this with your mother, right, Scout?”

“Right!” I answered.

When I went back to school the next week, Rodney confronted me just like my dad said he would.

“You better watch your back!”

Inside I was terrified, but I said what Dad told me to say: “You want a little more of what you got before?”

Rodney looked at me for a minute, turned, and walked away saying again that I'd better watch my back, but I could tell that he was more afraid of me now than I was of him. It seemed I'd developed a reputation. From then on, everyone said I was either crazy or tough. No one was quite sure which, but either way, they didn't want to mess with me anymore, and I ate hot lunch all year.

After that, I didn't have much use for playing it safe, and whenever there was a problem, I ran at it, not away from it. So like I said, it's probably Dad's fault.

———

The Bible says that before they were kicked out of paradise, Adam and Eve talked with God in the Garden. There within the gates of Eden, each afternoon, in the cool of the day, they asked their questions, and God answered. We don't know what their questions were, but we know what ours are, and my guess is that many of them would be the same.
Why
questions, and
when
questions, and even
how
questions.

We all have questions we'd like God to answer, and maybe that's what eternity is all about.

I've always had lots of questions, and I don't think I'm alone. I think there's a part of each of us that was born homesick for Eden. Like Adam and Eve, we want to walk peacefully among the lilies, the leopard, the lion, and the lamb and get our questions answered. I can't imagine how long it would take to answer all our questions, but maybe that's what eternity is all about.

Back at the mailbox, curiosity won out over fear, and I found myself slowly retracing my footsteps back toward the cottage.

As I got closer, I noticed what I'd missed before. The sign above the entrance said A
NGEL
'
S
G
ATE
.

Yes
, I thought to myself.
That confirms it. This is the place I read about on the internet.

I wished that Carol could see it. The house itself was old but well-maintained. From the outside, it looked more like a home than an inn. It was a large saltbox with a carriage house attached to the back. The grounds were well-kept, surrounded by flowers and fruit trees and a large, towering pine.

The building sat atop a slight knoll, with stone steps cut in the hill on the front side. A brick walkway went out through the gate and led down to the lake. I was admiring its beauty and haunted by a lost memory that perhaps I'd been there before, when suddenly I realized that Michael was standing beside me.

“You have a way of sneaking up on people,” I said. “Where'd you come from, anyway?”

He ignored my question and opened the gate, and together we walked up the path. As we went through the kitchen door, he said, “Like Ahbee, I'm always around, even if you're not looking for me.”

Ahbee interrupted just as I was going to ask Michael what he meant by that.

“I'm so glad you decided to come back.”

“Did I have a choice?” I asked.

“Of course. You always have a choice. I simply tried to help you make the right choice,” Ahbee answered.

“I'll bet you're the one who put my name on that mailbox, aren't you?” I questioned.

“Yes,” he answered. “I knew your name before you did, and I also knew you couldn't resist looking inside. You've always been more curious than cautious.”

“And the letter?” I asked. “Did you and Carol come up with that?”

“No, she had nothing to do with it. This is strictly between you and me.”

“Look,” I said, frustrated. “I don't know what's going on here, but it seems to me that you both know a lot more about me than
I do about you. So why don't you guys quit fooling around and fill in some of the blanks for me?”

“Oh, you know us much better than you think!” Ahbee said. “That's part of your problem. You're overthinking this. It is what it is. Nothing more, nothing less.”

“If that's true,” I replied, “then either you've gone to a lot of trouble to get me here, or this is all some kind of a weird dream.”

“Would you be more comfortable if it was a dream?” the old one asked.

“No. I just want to know if this is real or not.”

“Oh, it's real all right,” he replied. “As real as a root canal, probably the most real thing you've ever done. And parts of it will be painful, but in the end you'll be better for it.”

“That's right,” Michael chimed in. “No harm will come to you here, I can promise you that, and you're free to leave anytime you want.”

“Well, if this is so real and so wonderful, then where in the world am I?”

“Like I tried to tell you before,” Ahbee continued, “think of this as a little taste of heaven on earth. Time has no meaning here. This will be like a seamless gap in your story.”

“My story?”

“Every life is a story,” Ahbee explained. “Some people think their story is predetermined. They imagine that every line of the script of their lives was written by someone else. They have no choice, no responsibility. They're simply actors in the play, part of a predestined plot. Others see themselves as the author. They imagine that they are in charge of their own life, the master of their fate and the captain of their soul.”

“So which is it?” I asked. “You seem to have this figured out, so tell me—is life a matter of choice, or is it predestined?”

“It's a mixture of both. The problem is in knowing where the one drops off and the other begins. Each life is a story in time, but not all stories are the same. For example, some people, older
people, often want to stop time. They live in the past, and their story always begins with the words, ‘Once upon a time, a long, long time ago.'