CHAPTER ELEVEN
Arthur froze. He wasn’t sure he heard his mother correctly. Quietly he set his spaghetti fork down. He thought, ‘Wow. I spent the whole afternoon talking to this guy. He’s the nicest adult…….I mean, like I could actually talk to him and he talked to me like we had been friends for ages. It was like we were just having fun together and stuff. And……I think Mom just called him Grandpa. Holey-moley, I can’t believe we might be related.’ He didn’t want to create any disturbance right now. All of his attention was focused on her and his………great-grandfather? No. He must have misunderstood. But, what if he didn’t?
Tom slowly put his right hand over hers and rubbed it gently. Olivia felt his tears as they fell on her arm. Just above a whisper, the old man spoke, “How long have you known?”
Ryan got up and brought the box of Kleenex over to her and commented, “I’ll go get some more from the bedroom.”
Fred made himself scarce, also. He gently slipped Tom’s plate and coffee cup from in front of him and said, “I’m going to make a pot of coffee.”
Arthur glanced at his sister out of the corner of his eye. Wendy saw the activity and couldn’t understand it. The only thing she could grasp at the moment was that her mommy was crying. He slowly held up his hands and asked with a whisper, “Bath?” Her smile meant yes, and he quickly slipped her out of her chair and whisked her down to the bathroom. He needed some place away from the scene of action anyway.
Olivia couldn’t help but notice her son taking that kind of initiative. She was so proud of him. God had blessed her with wonderful husband and two wonderful children.
Now they were alone although she knew some could hear. She fought to maintain some semblance of calm as she first kissed him on the cheek and then answered, “Fred told us it might be you.” She chuckled nervously and then continued, “Then I got this notion about pinning my hair up on the sides like Grandma always did. When I saw the surprised look on your face I was seventy-five percent sure. Then, when I baited you into telling that story about proposing to Grandma, I was one hundred percent sure.”
Tom wanted to chuckle but it wouldn’t come out. Fifty years of grief over one decision kept any sound from coming out but a low moan. He stood up and she loosed her grip. He stepped back from her a little and said, “Honey, I’m sorry. All those years…..”
Olivia stopped him by putting her hand over his mouth and told him, “All those years are over with now. This is now and you are home,“ she said just above a whisper. Her voice broke again as she re-iterated her last statement, “Grandpa…., you.. are……..home!” She slipped her arms around his waist and laid her head on his shoulder. Through her tears she continued, “God has brought the man I have only dreamed about into my very home. Grandpa, nothing else matters to me.”
He sobbed as he threw his arms around her. All he could manage to say over and over was, “My baby, my baby. After all these years….my prayers have been answered.”
There they stood in the dining room. Two people who had been held captive by deep, aching voids were finally tasting the sweetness of God‘s answers. For Tom, the walls of his fifty year prison and torture chamber were falling down chunk by chunk. For Olivia, the fantasy of the great man she had only heard about was becoming a reality in her arms. Healing had begun and would never stop. Tom was going to leave a legacy that could not be erased.
Ryan and Fred had been standing in the kitchen waiting for an appropriate time, and now seemed as good as any. Fred took a tray of coffee cups and some cream and sugar into the living room. Ryan interrupted the two by suggesting that they could best continue their conversation while sitting together comfortably on a couch.
However, neither one showed any interest of doing anything else but holding on to each other and crying the past away. Their sobs subsided for a moment and they parted long enough to look at each other and smile. Then they started back up again. One would only surmise from their smiles that this time they were crying for joy about spending their future together.
The coffee pot started making that gurgling sound that indicated it was almost ready. Ryan whispered to Fred, “I’m going to go ahead and fix the cups. You go ahead and bring the pot in here. You take one cream and two sugars, right?”
“Yep, and Tom does the same. I watched him at the bakery,” Fred added with a wink. As he went by the kitchen table, he grabbed a couple of Kleenexes to wipe his tears and blow his nose. He and Ryan both weren’t too far away from coming completely unglued either. They were close enough friends that neither was ashamed to be seen crying.
Olivia and Tom finally pulled themselves together enough to make the journey into the living room. Ryan had pulled the coffee table out far enough to serve as a table for all of them. He and Fred had moved the easy chairs a little closer so that no one would have to do much more than lean forward a little to get to their coffee. As Olivia and Tom were getting themselves settled on the couch, Fred came right behind them and poured four cups of coffee.
Tom just could not let all of their actions pass without a comment, “Fred, which one is the commanding general and how long did y’all have to practice to get this drill down pat?”
Everyone laughed. The uneasy tension was beginning to melt.
Fred answered, “Actually it just came together, Tom. I mean Sgt. Dandridge.” Fred was more than ready to have his former friend back, name and all. As he and Tom held each other’s gaze, once more Fred found himself reaching for his handkerchief. As he blotted his eyes, he asked, “Are you OK with that? Should we call you……Baxter?”
Tom picked up the cup of coffee that Ryan had put in front of him and took a gulp or two. He looked at his feet, smiled and then looked at Olivia who hadn’t stopped smiling. “I don’t rightly know, Fred. They legally changed my name when I turned up in that mountain village……”
All eyes looked up as Arthur entered the living room with his precious, red-haired sister in his arms. He not only had cleaned her up, but he had dressed her in one of her Sunday dresses (no shoes, though) and had put her hair up in a bow. He shrugged his shoulder to kind of bring himself together a little bit and said, “It……uh just didn’t seem right to…….uh introduce……,” a smile and a tear made their appearance simultaneously as he finished, “our……. Grandpa to his great-granddaughter when she was covered head to toe in spaghetti sauce.”
He put her down and she ran and stood a couple of feet in front of her mommy. Then, with a smile on her face she turned around a couple of times as she modeled her Sunday dress for them. When she stopped she placed her hand on top of her head and said, “Bow?”
Of course, everyone clapped and made over her as if she was a movie star at her premier. She loved it and danced around a couple of times while clapping her hands. Then she ran to Olivia and climbed up into her lap. However, she made sure she was on the opposite side of her mother from Tom.
She knew Tom must have been OK because Mommy was sitting beside him. She just wasn’t convinced as to how much Ok he was. Tom held out his hands to see if she would come to him but the only thing he got was a stare.
“That’s OK, little girl,” Tom said after she refused to come to him. “Your brother wants to be my friend.” He looked at Arthur and patted the seat next to him.
Arthur didn’t have to be invited twice. With a big smile, he came over and sat down as close to the old gentleman as he could. The bond between these two was evident even before they knew they were related. Tom patted Arthur’s knee and Arthur slipped his arm inside of his grandfather’s arm. And what did he do next? That‘s right. He giggled.
Of course, every grandpa had to play the “knee grabbing” game and Tom was no exception. After Arthur giggled, Tom began squeezing his knee. The giggle turned into a full-blown laugh and Arthur wriggled with delight in his mock attempt to get away from Tom’s grasp.
When Tom stopped, that meant that it was Arthur’s turn to grab Tom’s knee. No laugh, no giggle. Tom’s smile was all that Arthur go
t at his futile efforts. Vainly, he leaned over and with both hands, gave his grandfather’s knee a solid grab. Nothing. He tried a different location on his knee. His hand touched something firmer than somebody’s knee. That caused him to remember his grandfather’s mention of an operation. He quickly let go and gushed, “Oh, my gosh. I’m sorry, Mr. Tom……uh Grandpa,” he said with a smile before he continued. “Did I hurt you? I didn’t mean to if I did.”
“No,” Tom laughed. “Between the explosion and the operations I’ve had, I have lost some feeling in a couple of places on my knees.”
“E-w-w-w-w. That’s right,” Olivia said as reality began to dawn on her. “You were in an explosion. That’s what the Army said had killed you. They said there were no live witnesses and other bombs landed in the area. It was only supposed that your body had been torn apart by the carnage. But, it obviously didn’t.” She realized that it might not be something that Tom would want to remember so she ended by saying, “Oh,………..oh well, that’s OK. You’re alive and here and that’s all that matters.” She tried to chuckle the subject away.
“I NEED to tell you probably more than you need to hear it,” Tom started out very seriously. “Fred will agree that the way into complete healing for any traumatic experience is to be able to relate it to his loved ones without getting extremely or violently emotional about it.”
Fred affirmed what Tom had just said, “In all of the cases that I have seen and helped, when a man can do that, his healing is basically complete. I agree that it would be good of you to do that but, Tom, know your limits my friend. Know your limits.”
“Good advice,” Tom answered. “I don’t want a repeat performance of what happened this afternoon.”
“Me neither,” Arthur added as he snuggle his grandfather’s arm while looking up at him. “They said I came in on the tail end of it. I sure am glad I didn’t see more of it than that. Boy, you sure had a crazy look on your face. Oh…….I didn’t mean…that..”
Tom assured him, “I know what you mean. I’ve helped pray several guys through things like what happened this afternoon. But, before I get started, there’s something else I need to say.”
Almost sensing his need, Fred filled up Tom’s cup with a fresh shot of coffee. Like an obedient servant, he got up and announced, “It’s time to refill the pot.”
Tom chuckled, “Yep, I can tell that you’ve been through several of these sessions before.”
“Too many, pardner, too, too many,” he called back on his way to the kitchen.
Tom started adding the cream and sugar as he explained, “Like Fred, I have been through a lot of living room meetings myself. Most of them with young children involved. There have been some with both parents in attendance and some in single parent homes. Some have been easy and some have been very difficult.”
He took a good sip of his coffee before he continued. He looked steadfastly at Ryan for a moment. A smile formed as he spoke, “Ryan………I want to thank you for marrying my granddaughter.”
This caught everyone by surprise. It was Olivia’s turn to blush and giggle. Arthur’s eyes widened as he smiled and proudly looked at his dad.
Tom continued as he leaned forward and put one hand back on Arthur’s knee. “As I have said, I have been in a lot of homes where children were involved. Most of the settings were almost akin to a war zone. Parents were against the children. Children spoke against the parents. Parents argued with each other. Then there was always the single parents torn apart by situations and didn’t know what to do. And, no one had a clue as to how to stop the ‘war’ that they were in.”
He leaned back and looked into the smiling face of his granddaughter. Like a teenage girl sitting beside her first true love, she squeezed his arm and rubbed her cheek on his shoulder. Wendy watched her momma’s action in fascination and then looked up at her great-grandfather. When he smiled at her, she snuggled under her mother’s chin and covered her face with her hand.
Ryan teased her, “You faker.”
Now it was Wendy’s turn to giggle.
A wrinkled hand reached over and pulled her hand away from her face long enough to say, “I love you” and he put it back.
Shyly she looked at him through spread fingers and repeated back to him, “Love you.”
He pulled his eyes away from the cherubim in Olivia’s lap and continued telling Ryan, “In all of those situations, I have learned how to tell a Godly man from the fakes. It wasn’t just by what you said or did, it was how Olivia and Arthur showed their love and respect to you. Men have to earn that. It can never be demanded. I’ve seen enough broken homes to know that a Godly home begins with a Godly man. And you, my son, are a Godly man. Thank you, once again for marrying my granddaughter and for showing my great-grandson what he’s supposed to grow up to be like,” he finished as he patted Arthur’s knee and gave it one more squeeze for good measure.
Well, it’s hanky time at the Hollis household. Ryan and Fred both reached for theirs. After Ryan finished blowing his nose, he answered, “Tom, the pleasure is all mine. I was desperately in love with your granddaughter even though she had eyes on Jim Gillis. I saw how Olivia absolutely adored her father. I knew if I wanted to win her love, I would have to be as good a Godly man as her father. He was, also, one of the men that I admired most at church.”
He looked at Olivia and put on this lonely-hearts-club look. Then, he sighed real deeply before he continued, “But……like I said, she had her eyes set on……Jim Gillis.”
Olivia was grinning from ear to ear. Seeing that her husband had playfully stopped the story at the crucial part, she prompted with a shake of her head, “Until………”
He faked a memory relapse, “Oh, yes….now I seem to remember. It was a Sunday night and church had been dismissed. I had always made it a point to shake hands with her father before I left for home. That night, however, when we hugged, he held me long enough to whisper in my ear, ‘Go ask Olivia to the Junior-Senior Banquet next week before Jim does.’ Then, he winked at me and pushed me in her direction. I looked and saw her and a couple of other girls just kind of ambling toward……..guess who?”
In mock consternation Olivia prompted, “Get on with the story, Dear. Uh,….the important parts, that is.”
“Oh, yes. How could I ever forget?”
“Well, there are some parts you should,” Olivia giggled and hid her face in Tom’s arm as if she was embarrassed.
Ryan chuckled and continued, “Tom, I can say without a doubt that I am glad that I had not drunk four glasses of tea before church. Her father’s comment had put me on the spot. I was embarrassed NOT to go ask her and I was embarrassed TO go ask her. So, I took a deep breath, summoned every bit of courage I could get and made a bee line to them. My voice went from almost baritone to a soprano with a great vibrato as I asked her if I could speak to her for a moment. She had no idea what I was going to ask her.”
Olivia broke in again, “Grandpa, you should have heard his voice. He must have been nervous. Vibrato, yeah. He quivered like I was the meanest old witch that God ever let live.”
“No-o-o-o-o, now I wasn’t THAT bad,” protested Ryan.
“So, and…” Olivia repeated.
Ryan continued, “When I asked her, she looked at me like she hadn’t heard a word I said. So, I asked her again. She told me that I had to ask her father. I turned around to go back to ask him. When I did, he was almost standing directly behind me. I did not know that he followed me over there. He said, ‘Sure you can take her to the banquet. And, why don’t you take her to get an ice cream. Just be home by eleven, Sweetie.’ He walked over to kiss her and then just kept on walking out of the church. Olivia and I looked at each other with the blankest expressions until she said, ‘Well, let’s go then.’ And that started a relationship that is sweeter than I ever imagined.”
“Same here, Sugar,” Olivia added. “When I got home, I walked up to Daddy and asked him what the little scene at church was all about. He just kissed
me on the forehead and told me that Ryan had been his choice for me for quite some time and for me just to be friends until I knew whether or not he was the one God had designed for me. I wish more daddies were as concerned about their children‘s mate like mine was.”
As she talked about her father, it was impossible to keep a tear from falling. “Even though he and Momma are gone, there are times, like tonight, that I can still feel the effects of my daddy’s prayers.”
Tom looked at Arthur and said, "My boy here mentioned something about a car accident. I suppose that was him and his wife?"
Olivia laid her head on his shoulder again unable to speak through her tears. Ryan answered for her, "Yes, Tom. They were on their way to a vacation in Florida when they were hit head-on. From the way it was described by witnesses, it all happened in a moment of time. No one had time to react and they were killed instantly. Their bodies were pretty much mangled. It was our decision to have them cremated. We have their ashes stored if you would ever like to see them."
Olivia added, "They had actually asked to be cremated when they died. They never wanted anyone to come to a cemetery to mourn over them like they had seen so many people do."
Everything was quiet for a few moments. Finally, Tom broke the silence by saying, “It looks like Brian did a great job of teaching him the important things of life.”
Olivia caught what he said and asked, “Nobody mentioned his name. How did you know his step-father’s name?”
Tom sighed, “That is the only paper that I asked the Army to get for me. The one with Ellen’s wedding announcement.” As he looked deep into her eyes he added, “I wanted a name to pray for. Raising my son and being a godly husband to the love of my life was very, very important to me.”
Fred suggested, “Don’t you think that this would be a good time to tell us what happened? It could be the release that you need.”
Ryan added, “I think the time is right, too. We’re ready and I just believe it would relieve some of the heavy load you’ve been carrying.”
Tom smiled and looked him in the eye as he said, “Ryan Hollis, you ARE a Godly man.”