Robert Duperre - The Gate 2 - 13 Tales of Isolation and Despair

“I need to go to church,” he decided.

Ever since his mother’s funeral he had not stepped inside a church. He felt like a burglar. His mind kept shrieking at him it’s Thursday! Still, Jake’s gut told him the small Baptist church would be packed, and he was right. He pushed through the crowd gathered at the doors, no easy task given his large girth. His slicked back hair and shaved face didn’t feel like his own. Jake was terrified someone would notice him, ask how he was doing and how long it’d been since he’d attended service. The sluggish crowd made their way through the corridor to the pews. No one noticed him, and for some reason Jake felt disappointed. A wayward son like he, weren’t there supposed to be trumpets, fanfare, and a father running down the road to greet his prodigal son?

Instead he found a giant room filled with people but no air. He struggled for every breath. A man in a black suit and white tie held a microphone to his lips and shouted hallelujah. Jake did not respond in kind, feeling embarrassed to reveal such emotion. There were no seats, so he stayed in the back, where the murmuring was strong. So many stories. Everyone had one. A disease cured. A pain removed. One single, prominent problem of their life…gone.

The church’s choir picked up their microphones. The pastor in the white tie smiled and let them take their turn. Everything about them was spontaneous and jubilant. Jake listened, the joyous lyrics washing over him. He mouthed along, still not having the courage to sing. The first song ended, and then they began Amazing Grace. Jake had heard it sung many times before, a slow, lumbering song weighted by the burden of forgiveness, always somber, always mourning. Not this time. The joy in it floored him. He rubbed his knee with one hand, and his other he raised to the sky. He didn’t care if anyone saw. There were a million hands raised high in that room, and he wanted to be one of them.

In that far back corner of that small Baptist church, Jake dared sing aloud.

The television was already on and waiting for Jake when he got back from service. Along the bottom ran updates about what had been dubbed The Worldwide Event .

“Even now we are receiving additional hard information,” a pretty blond said, her makeup barely covering the dark circles under her eyes. “Hospitals all across the U.S. are reporting spontaneously healed trauma cases, gunshot wounds, but the most prominent has to be the cancer patients. We go now to field correspondent Alan Green.”

“Thank you, Susan.” Alan was a white man with brown hair and an enormous nose. Briefly Jake wondered how he had ever been allowed on television.

“Standing with me are lines of men and women waiting to be screened here at Sacred Memorial Hospital. All had been diagnosed with cancer sometime before The Worldwide Event, with many having already undergone months of chemotherapy. Ma’am, please tell me, why are you here?”

He leaned the microphone toward a pretty woman with a very obvious wig.

“Well my father’s elbow has kept him from golfing for years, but now he’s out swinging, but I can’t go golfing to show my breast cancer’s gone. I want, and I think we all want this, to prove what we already know. Our cancer’s gone.”

At these words the rest in line, which had shushed to listen to the interview, let out a loud cheer.

“Nothing but optimism here,” Alan said, turning back to the camera. “And that optimism is well-founded. Every time someone leaves the hospital they’ve shouted their diagnosis to the crowd, and it’s always the same: no cancer. Susan.”

“Thank you, Alan,” Susan said, taking the top piece of paper before her and cycling it to the back, as if it were relevant to her ability to read from the teleprompter. “I don’t think this should surprise anyone, but church attendance in the nation has skyrocketed. Churches are reporting triple and quadruple attendance, with many holding additional days of service to accommodate the sudden…”

Jake turned off the television and sat down at his computer. He stared at it, unsure of what to do. For years he had hunched over his keyboard, doing his talking and socializing through games, forums, and voice-chat. Now he could walk. Now he could get out. But what was out there for him? He loaded up one of his favorite hangouts, clicked to start a new thread.

“I think I found God today,” he wrote. “Now what do I do with him?”

After a few minutes he closed the browser, having never posted his question.

For the next two days he took long walks, wishing he didn’t sweat so much and breathe so hard when he did. Sometimes he recognized a face, and he smiled at them when he did. Still no one talked to him, other than a courtesy hello or good morning. Sometimes he caught a few strange looks, and he had the feeling these people thought all the fat on his arms and legs should have been what was cured.

On Sunday he woke up, showered, and pondered over possibilities of work. He had been a lowly delivery driver when he’d blown out his knee. Hardly an exotic job, but what else did he know? As he slid the curtain away and stepped out, his heart halted. A twinge of pain tickled its way up his leg. He took his weight off it, clutching the towel rack hard enough to make it quiver. Slowly, gently, he put his leg back down. Again, a tiny tingle of pain. Jake let out a breath. He’d walked how many miles the past few days? Hell, his good leg hurt, too, now that he thought about it. Chuckling away his doubt, he grabbed a towel.

Jake decided to go to the park, hoping the trees and grass would help settle his unease. That feeling of aimlessness had grown stronger. There was something he should be doing, he knew, but he didn’t know what. So he walked. In the park he saw a trio of women talking at a bench. Longing to join in, he leaned against a nearby tree so he could listen.

“I think that just proves God’s grace,” the lady in the center said, her graying hair up in curls. “Even though we don’t deserve it, He has given everyone a taste of what heaven will be like.”

“I hardly needed the proof,” said a redhead on the left. “Not after Johnny’s car wreck. But it’s good. I haven’t felt like this in years. You really think the rapture is about to happen, like Pastor Rick said?”

“Sure hope it does,” the center lady said. “With half the nation stuffed into church this week, we might have a chance of filling heaven’s bleachers after all.”

“This grace, though,” said the lady on the right. “That’s what this is. God’s grace, even though we don’t deserve it. That’s what we offer the world, us Christians, God’s amazing grace.”

Jake wandered off. He didn’t have a chance in joining that conversation. He wasn’t sure what the rapture was supposed to be, and the only grace he knew was in the song, which still moved him to tears when he thought of it. As he walked a man called out to him, jostling him out of his trance.

“If you wouldn’t mind,” the man said, sitting cross-legged in the grass with a plastic bag open before him. A few dollars and some loose change held it down against the wind. The man’s clothes were dirty, his hair long, and his teeth yellow, but his smile was kind and inviting. In his lap he held a sign that read Hungry and Homeless. Desperate for conversation, Jake drifted over when his natural instincts told him to smile and continue on. Without a clue what to say, he stood in front of the man. Thankfully, he was spared from silence. The homeless man was an expert at guiding awkward conversations.

“Things just never went right for me, you know?” he said. He scratched at his face, which was covered with an uneven growth of stubble. “Tried traveling across the states, did that for awhile, but man, I haven’t had anything to eat in a day or two, and I’m really hungry.”