Michael Lister - Power in the Blood

“When we saw that the trash had disappeared, he tried to look into the caustic closet, but it was locked. He said it was unlocked just an hour before, but I tried it, too, and it was locked.”

I went by the infirmary and prayed with the two inmates, who were really not inmates at all, but convicts, before I left medical. When I walked back out into the late afternoon sun, I saw spots. I considered going to confinement, but a voice inside my head said for me to go home instead. It was the voice of God.

Loneliness eats away at you from within and without simultaneously. Within, it’s the dull ache of emptiness and the sharp pains of hunger-hunger for another. Without, it’s the dull hum of silence when noise stops and the sharp pains of a body needing to hold and to be held. The only thing wrong with going home was that I would be alone. Actually, there were other things wrong with going to my current home: like the fact that it was not a home at all, but a trailer. And the fact that it was not just a trailer, but a butt-ugly trailer with several inches of crud on it, alone, like me, in the middle of a prairie of poverty around a lonely, dried-up palm tree. However, the worst thing about going home was being alone.

When I got home, there was a powder-blue ’66 Ford Mustang parked in my driveway. I was wrong; it was not parked. It was backing out. I pulled up behind and blocked it in. I wanted to know who was at my home when I wasn’t. I honked my horn to keep the car from hitting me. The driver slammed on the brakes, pulled back into the driveway, and got out of the car. It was Laura. I hadn’t recognized her outside of her one-ton FedEx truck.

I backed up and pulled in beside her. The gravel crunched under my tires.

“You scared I was going to leave without saying hello?” she asked when I opened the door of my truck. The sound of her voice was barely audible over the creak of my door.

“Something like that.”

“Where have you been? I called earlier, and since I was out driving anyway, I decided to stop by.”

“Unlike most people, my primary workday is Sunday.”

“Oh, that’s right. I forgot.”

“Can you stay for a while, or do I have to block you in again to prevent you from leaving?”

“I am leaving, and that’s why I stopped by, but I can stay for a little while.”

“You’re leaving. That’s sort of sudden. Usually women I’m seeing don’t leave me until at least the second or third date.”

“Relax, you’re not getting rid of me that easily. I’m just going home now.”

“Words cannot describe my embarrassment at having you see this place,” I said when we were seated in my living room, each of us with a tall glass of iced tea.

“Don’t be; it’s your place. It’s a part of who you are, or at least who you are becoming,” she said.

“That is truly a scary thought,” I said.

“Not at all. It says that you’re a survivor. You’ve gone through the most difficult thing that you are likely ever to go through, and you are surviving. Granted, it’s not in good shape, but it’s neat and as clean as you could make it and, in some unique way, homey. It says that you are independent, strong, and resourceful. You could live with other people in better homes, but you do not. You need space-autonomy.”

“This trailer says all that to you?”

“And more.”

“I agree. It is a part of who I am becoming or have become. I got into the ministry to serve God and to help people. I lost sight of that as my church in Atlanta got bigger and bigger. I had to have increasingly nicer clothes, cars, houses, and stuff to keep up with the Joneses-my congregation. I was never about that. And, now that my world has fallen apart, I am a prison chaplain, which, like you said, is for those who can’t make it on the outside. A tin man living in a tin box. But, I’m happier. And, I’m doing what God created me to do.”

“You are anything but a tin man.”

“I’m nobody. Who are you? Are you nobody, too?”

“As a matter of fact, I am. I’m a thirty-two-year-old virgin who drives a FedEx truck for a living and who has only recently decided what she wants to do when she grows up.”

“You’re a virgin ?” I asked, shocked beyond description.

“I have intimacy problems, in case you haven’t noticed.”

“No, I hadn’t noticed,” I said, and we both laughed, which is what we needed to do at the moment. “I would like to know more,” I said.

“Yes, I know you would, and that scares the hell out of me. But I want to tell you more. I want to move forward, but there couldn’t be a more unnatural thing for me to do.”

“I understand,” I said.

“I think you really do. I think I can trust you, but I want to know.”

“You want to know you can trust me?”

“Yes.”

“You realize that you can’t.”

She stood. “I can’t trust you?” she asked, her voice quivering.

“No. Sit down. That’s not what I meant. What I meant was that you can’t know that you can trust me. You can never know that you can trust someone until they have repeatedly kept your trust, which they cannot do until you first give them your trust.”

“So I’m damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”

“You’re damned if you don’t trust somebody, not necessarily me, but someone.”

“I usually trust the wrong people,” she said with an ironic laugh.

“Maybe, but I figure you’ve never completely given your trust to anyone, so in that respect, you’ve never truly trusted the right or the wrong people. But to live is to learn to trust-God, others, yourself.”

“You trust yourself?” she asked with the awe of a child. Gone was her adversarial demeanor and quick-witted verbal cuts.

“I trust me with everything but liquor, but I trust myself not to trust myself where liquor is concerned.”

“I am getting to the place where I can truly trust me, but it will be a while for God and people, men especially. With the possible exception of you.”

“It makes sense to make exceptions for exceptional people,” I said and laughed.

She smiled, but not much. It was not the time for jokes.

“I’m sorry. You’re trying to be intimate, and I’m trying to make it easier for you, and that can’t be done,” I said.

“I appreciate it, but you’re right. It’s hard, and it has to be. It’s no small thing that I’m contemplating. I’ve known you such a short time, but I really do feel like I can trust you. It’s just that my judgment has been so bad before.”

“I know.”

“I want to share who I am with you, and I think I can, but . . .”

“But, what?” I asked.

“I need to know if you feel like we might have something here. I think I can trust you, but if this isn’t going anywhere, then I don’t want to do it.”

We were silent. I tried to take in everything, to be fully present in the moment.

Finally, she said, “Well, what do you think?”

“I think,” I began very slowly-I was walking on eggshells with land mines beneath them, “that you would be a lot of work. You are, to use the words of Jesus, ‘a treasure hidden in a field.’ You are going to . . . We are going to take a lot of work.”

She looked down. I placed my hand under her chin and lifted her head up. I gazed into her eyes and caught a glimpse of her soul.

“You would be a lot of work, but in my estimation, very worth it. You should be encouraged that I don’t have unrealistic expectations going in. It means I will be less likely to become disillusioned later.”

She smiled a wide, full smile. The skin under her chin tightened. I wanted to kiss her, but it was not the time. She had much more that she needed to say. Kissing, while very nice, would hinder true intimacy. I knew that. I had used it for just such a thing many times before.