The Sinners' Garden

  “God can do whatever He wants,” Welsh said. “And all of those things you did and felt were real, from repeating what you heard out of that iPod to having a dream that told you I would be the one to tell your Uncle Rip when he would be ready to go in the garden.”

  “But he never went!”

  “He’s there now!” Welsh yelled back, pointing at the garden. “What do you think that is over there?”

  “Nothing,” Andy said. “At least, not what it was supposed to be.”

  Welsh came up the bank and stood right in front of Andy.

  “Look at me,” Welsh said sternly, and Andy did. “Hearing things through an iPod, a prophetic dream, and a patch of flowers that come and go in the twinkle of an eye?” Welsh let out a sarcastic little laugh. “What else in the world do you need to see, man? What will it take to make you realize this is all exactly how it’s supposed to be? Stuff like this doesn’t happen by accident.”

  Andy shrugged.

  Welsh reached up and grabbed the top of the ramp. “Your uncle told me that when he bought you a Bible, you laughed off a lot of the things you read in the Old Testament.”

  Andy shrugged, a little irritated, a little embarrassed. “Sure. The crazy stuff.”

  “Crazy stuff?” Welsh repeated. “Why is it that people think God could only perform miracles two thousand years ago? Where is it written that He was going to stop?”

  “They could write whatever they want in that Bible,” Andy said.

  Welsh laughed and this time Judi could tell it was because he thought what Andy said was funny. “Whether you like it or not, Andy, just like Noah, Moses, and Abraham, God used you to make a big difference in people’s lives.”

  “Says who?” Andy asked, looking back over his shoulder at Heather and Chelsea, who were leaning against the hood of the car. “Tell me.”

  “He had you help me get over my father’s death,” Heather said.

  “And look what you did . . . what He did for us,” Judi said.

  Andy pulled his hair back and exposed his scar. “I have this scar, my dog is dead, my uncle is dead . . . What did God do for me?”

  Welsh looked at Judi in a way that seemed to suggest they should take a break. “Andy, I think you need a little time to take all this in.”

  “C’mon, Pastor Welsh,” Andy said. “Uncle Rip says—said—you were a straight shooter and weren’t afraid to pull punches. Tell me . . . how did God help me? I don’t have real faith. I was given an advantage. Uncle Rip always told me that faith is something that needs to be developed. Mine wasn’t. It was given to me. I had the ability to hear and feel God, and I’m pretty sure I even saw Him in my dreams and in the garden. But now I don’t.”

  “Well, poor you,” Welsh said. “And you asked what God has ever done for you. Did you, even for a second, ever think about thanking Him for that advantage?”

  Andy turned around again and gave Chelsea a funny look. “No, I didn’t. But it doesn’t matter now because the iPod is busted, I don’t get the dreams anymore, and I don’t feel anything when I look at the garden now.”

  Welsh tapped Andy on the leg. “Looks like you are out of luck then, pal. Because God didn’t have anything to do with those things.”

  “Yes, He did.”

  “Sorry,” Welsh said. “But I don’t think so.”

  “What are you talking about?” Andy said. “I know it was Him.”

  “Hold out your hands,” Welsh said. Andy did and Welsh took off his glasses like he was studying them. “I don’t see your iPod, you aren’t dreaming, and you aren’t looking at the garden, yet you just told me you know it was God behind those things. So are you saying that you do believe in God?”

  Andy glanced back at Heather and Chelsea and then at Judi. His blue eyes seemed to light up when he looked back at Welsh.

  “Yes, Pastor Welsh,” Andy said. “I guess I do believe in Him. The way you put it, I guess I really don’t need those things to believe.”

  “Why don’t you tell God that?” Welsh asked.

  Andy looked at the sky and said robotically, “I believe.”

  “You don’t sound too convincing for the only guy I ever knew who heard God through an electronic device. I still haven’t heard you thank Him either. Watch how you feel when you do that.”

  Andy glanced back at the sky and then over at the garden for a long moment. “Thank You, God,” he said quietly, without sarcasm.

  “Who you talking to over there?” Welsh asked, studying him. “You feel Him again, don’t you? But that was still a pretty feeble show of gratitude for the only guy I know who God talks to in his dreams. Let me hear you say you believe and thank God like your Uncle Rip would have.”

  Andy glanced quickly at Welsh and then stood up like a man on a mission. He threw his arms up in the air, looked at the sky, and then at the garden, almost as if something had called him from over there. Then he shouted at the top of his lungs, “I believe! I believe! Thank You!” He stared at the flowers and Judi could hear him trying to catch his breath. He looked back at Welsh. “What else do you want from me?”

  “Nothing,” Welsh said with a fatherly smile. “God loves you, Andrew . . . and He loves your Uncle Rip even more than you do.”

  Andy’s lip quivered and he dropped to his knees on top of the ramp. He covered his face in his hands and then began to sob. Chelsea ran up the ramp and kneeled at his side. Judi walked around and went up the ramp as well while Pastor Welsh joined Heather at the car.

  “It’s okay, Andrew,” Judi said. “It’s okay, baby.”

  Judi could hear the heavy footsteps behind her on the front of the ramp. It was Pastor Welsh.

  “Oh my heavens,” he said.

  Heather ran up the ramp as well and stopped at the very end.

  “What’s wrong?” Judi asked.

  Heather just pointed across the canal and Judi stood.

  The last section of the flowers was gone and all that stood in its place was a bald patch of cracked mud with a few shoots of grass coming out of it.

  “How did that just happen?” Chelsea asked, blinking slowly as if she couldn’t believe her eyes.

  Judi squinted at the mud and noticed a deep divot in the front portion of the patch, followed by a straight line that ran all the way to the back.

  “What is that line?” she asked.

  “It’s one of those,” Heather answered, pointing behind them at the dried dirt and mud that surrounded the car. There were hundreds of tracks that had been made by Rip’s and Andy’s motorcycles. And then she pointed back across the canal. “It’s a tire track. A motorcycle drove through the flowers.”

  Andy stood and craned his neck toward the garden. And then he jumped off the side of the ramp and ran down to the edge of the canal. He dived into the water and swam across with his good shirt, pants, and shoes on. But even Judi didn’t say a word.

  The only one to speak was Chelsea. “What’s he doing? What’s going on here?”

  Andy dragged himself up the other bank, stood, and then ran to where the last section of the garden had been. Slowly he followed the straight line that ran through the center of the dried mud. Then he turned toward them, and even from across the canal, they could see his joy.

  “He made it! Uncle Rip made it!” He kneeled down and studied the divot where the motorcycle must have landed, and then stood and walked the length of the straight line. “This track is from his bike!”

  “What’s he talking about?” Chelsea asked.

  Andy walked around in the bald patch for close to five minutes, and they all watched as he dropped to his knees and touched the motorcycle track. And then his hand pointed around the rest of the dried mud and they heard him laugh before he stood and held his hands in the air. “There’s paw prints too!”

  “I still don’t know what he’s talking about,” Chelsea said.

  Welsh put his hand on Chelsea’s shoulder. “He’s just trying to figure things out, sweetie.”

  “That section
was for Andy,” Judi whispered, wiping tears from her cheeks with her palms. “The third one was Rip’s, not Kevin’s.”

  She looked at Heather, who had her hand over her mouth and a pair of tears weaving down her left cheek.

  “But I thought . . . Why wasn’t he healed?” Heather asked.

  Judi didn’t answer and waited for Pastor Welsh to say something. He didn’t. Welsh was watching Andy, who had just walked out of the bald patch and into the high grass back toward the canal. He jumped back in The Frank and Poet to swim toward them.

  He came up the bank, and right when he reached the ramp, Judi saw it happen. She looked quickly at the others. They had seen it too. The bald patch was gone. What was just there a few seconds earlier, the only remnants of the garden, was now the same wavy knee-high grass that ran the length of the canal and back to the gates of McLouth Steel. She’d seen it sprout and grow, right before her very eyes.

  Andy turned around and when he saw the far bank of the canal, he smiled.

  Judi stepped up next to him and put her arm around him. “I love you, Andy.”

  “I love you too, Mom,” he said, pulling her close. “I want to celebrate. But there is something from my dream I forgot about that I have to do.”

  “Now you’re talking,” Welsh said, placing his hand on Andy’s shoulder.

  Andy nodded and then went back to the ramp. He walked up to the very top and stopped, his left foot hanging over the edge. He held his right fist up and smiled. Not at where the garden once was, but at the sky.

  “Pound it, bro!” he yelled, fist bumping the air.

  Gooseflesh covered Judi’s back and arms as her eyes welled again with tears. Heather took her by the arm and they held each other as Andy opened his hand.

  In it was the iPod.

  “This is for you, Uncle Rip!” he yelled, wrapping his fingers around the iPod and cocking his hand behind his head. He thrust his arm forward, sending the iPod and earbuds straight over their heads. Judi turned around just in time to see it splash, disappearing right into the center of The Frank and Poet.

  Andy came down the ramp and they all huddled, hugging and holding each other before piling into Judi’s Tempo.

  “Why wasn’t he healed?” Heather asked again. “I heard it said twenty times. If Rip could make it into the garden, he would be healed.”

  “You want to answer that?” Welsh said to Andy.

  “He was,” Andy said simply, reaching in the backseat and dabbing at Heather’s tears with the pad of his thumb. “Don’t you see?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “He was healed,” Andy said with a smile. “In heaven.”

  EPILOGUE

  SEVENTEEN MONTHS LATER

  And I’m thankful that my daddy came home safe,” Sarah Chapman said from the center of Heather’s fourth-grade class at Parson’s Elementary School. “I don’t like when he goes over the seas for a long time.”

  “Very good, Sarah,” Heather said. “That’s a good thing to be thankful for and thanks for sharing.”

  Sarah gave Heather a beautiful smile, and when she hunched her little shoulders together, the way her ponytail hugged against her neck made Heather smile too. “You’re welcome, Ms. Gerisch.”

  “Who wants to go next?” Heather asked.

  Billy Allen raised his hand. He was a cute little redhead and was as thankful as they come, but he was notorious in class for taking his allotted two minutes of thankfulness sharing time and turning it into ten. She called on him, and when he started, she couldn’t count the number of eyes that rolled on the other little faces around the room, including Marjo Cochran’s, Heather’s best student.

  While Billy began to talk about how thankful he was for his big brother and sisters, Heather looked over in the last row, two seats from the back, at Jason Coleman.

  Heather had noticed a suspicious string of bruises earlier in the school year on Jason’s left arm, and when she asked him about it, he said he hurt it getting tackled during Little League football practice for the Huron River Yellow Jackets.

  Jason was relatively new to the area and was a big kid for his age, easily five inches taller and thirty pounds heavier than anyone in class, and Heather figured he had to be an amazing football player. So in a show of support for one of her students, she swung by the football field the Saturday after seeing the bruises to watch Jason play.

  Jason didn’t play football for the Huron River Yellow Jackets.

  She didn’t say anything to anyone for a couple more weeks, until Jason missed a couple days of school and then showed up with a bruise on his neck and another on his left arm.

  Heather had called two different protection agencies and even asked Duke Ruthenberg with the Benning Police to snoop around and see what he could find out.

  Both of Jason’s bruises disappeared after about ten days, as did any serious inquiry as to what had caused them.

  Two weeks later Jason came to school with a black eye and a splint over the pinky and ring fingers on his left hand. Heather pressed for an investigation and, at the risk of losing her job as a teacher, went to Jason’s home. Nobody answered the door.

  And then a week went by, and then another, without bruises. Jason started talking more in class, his grades improved, and he made friends.

  Heather asked the department if any arrests had been made and none had. She left messages with both protective agencies, and neither of them returned the calls.

  It was impossible for Heather to look at him and not wonder what had happened to make the abuse stop. But she was thankful anyhow, because it had.

  “And that’s what I’m thankful for,” Billy Allen said, concluding his thankfulness dissertation.

  “Thank you for sharing, Billy,” Heather said. “Those are good things to be thankful for.”

  A little sliver of guilt tapped at Heather’s side. She hadn’t listened to a word of what Billy had said.

  “Anyone else?” she asked.

  Jason Coleman’s hand went up and Heather smiled.

  “What are you thankful for, Jason?”

  The entire class turned around and Jason smiled bashfully.

  “I’m glad my mom’s boyfriend moved away.”

  An awkward silence hung in the room and Marjo was on the spot to break it.

  “Why did he move away?” Marjo asked.

  “Because I told him to,” Jason said confidently.

  “You told a grown-up to leave?” Billy Allen asked. “What did you say to him?”

  Jason shrugged, then reached in his pocket and pulled something out. “I really don’t remember. This told me what to tell him.”

  He opened his hand.

  In it was an iPod.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  God must be in prison, because that’s where so many people seem to meet Him . . .

  I heard that line well over ten years ago, and as funny as it seemed at the time, it’s interesting how its meaning has changed for me since then. With that said, I wouldn’t have forgiven myself had Gerald Ripley not encountered that phrase—or some variation of it—in the story. I owed it to him, because truth be told, he reminds me quite a bit of someone I know very well.

  I love being an author, and writing The Sinners’ Garden was a lot of fun. It also presented quite a few challenges for me from the first couple of drafts to what ultimately became the book you are holding now. Andy’s character has undergone significant changes, including going from a twenty-four-year-old who rode a moped to a fourteen-year-old who rode a motorcycle. Kevin Hart’s fate changed dramatically, not by the stroke of a pen, but by my accidental deletion of the original ending along with around nineteen thousand other words, which was roughly the last twenty percent of the book. As miffed as I was when it happened, I’m now looking back and am kind of glad it happened, because everything really does happen for a reason and rewriting it gave me an opportunity to take the story in a much different direction, including having Kevin Hart in the Cochran house at the end.
Sorry about that, Kev-O.

  I think most authors want to entertain readers, but as a Christian author with a checkered past, I thought it was extremely important to try to share some of the lessons I’ve learned, and I hope that readers walk away from The Sinners’ Garden feeling closer to God from the experience.

  Lots of people helped me hone and craft my story, so please bear with me . . .

  First of all, I would like to thank the readers. I hope you enjoyed the story as much as I did writing it and that it somehow makes a difference in your life.

  Thanks to my good friend with the English accent, Alan Bower from Author Solutions. Alan has been a proverbial godsend to my writing career. He has an amazing passion for publishing, and the interest he takes in the authors he works with is second to none. Thanks also to his better half, Erica Dooley-Dorocke. Together, you have gone out of your way to help me and I recognize the difference you made.

  Chris Cancilliari is the first one to see anything I write and has been the recipient of countless last-second phone calls and e-mails, where I’m usually asking her to proofread something I’m about to send off to the wonderful editors I work with. Thanks, Chris. I usually ended our calls by calling you my hero or the greatest of all time. I meant it.

  Natalie Hanemann and Lisa Bergren are my wonderful editors. Both of these ladies epitomize what many refer to as “the patience of Job.” I am truly blessed to be able to work with them, and I know I’ve said it before, but there is no one in the world I’d rather have help me tell my stories. Thanks for putting up with me and for guiding me through the rough spots in the book. You have taught me so much, and I’m truly appreciative. Thank you.

  I’d like to thank everyone who either offered advice or read an earlier version of the book, particularly: Brett Kays, Hyacinth Palmer, Cousin Sharon Coventry, Bob Deragisch, Angel Mason, Kim Falkowski-Lewis, Cherilyn Barber, Melissa West Morris, Donna O’Brien, Susan Tant, JoEllen Hurst, Belinda Cornett, Rhonda Raft, Elizabeth Sloan, Duke Malnyok, Tommy Arsenault, Fred Bisaro, Lynn “LJ” Bisaro, Carol Bodenhorn, Jil Burks Cooper, Cindy Benedict Barclay, Pat Pittsnogle, Joe Milosic, Kay Campbell, Gail Welborn, Karla Dorman, Liz Zeller, Judi McNair, Tom Ayers, Aunt Paulette Pedigo, Cousin Susan Shelton, and my sister, Karen. Sometimes an author can get so close to a story that he can’t see it and all of your input and suggestions made my life a lot easier. Thank you so much.