The Braxtons of Miracle Springs (24 page)

It was early that same afternoon when Mr. Harris sent word through Almeda that he wanted to see Pa.

Pa asked Christopher and Zack to go with him. The three of them went into the sickroom and closed the door. The rest of us waited in the sitting room, wondering what was going on, talking softly amongst ourselves, and praying. Aunt Katie and Uncle Nick had come down and were with us with their three rowdy young'uns. Ruth and the cousins had been sent outside.

Christopher told me afterward what happened.

“Hollister,” Mr. Harris said in a tone that didn't have the anger in it from before. “I can see you are tryin' to help keep me alive, and I'll try to watch my tongue.”

“Don't mention it, Jesse.”

Pa introduced Christopher to Mr. Harris as the two younger men took chairs on the other side of the bed from Pa.

Mr. Harris and Zack nodded to one another.

“Been a while, young Hollister.”

Zack nodded.

“Never expected to see you again like this. That's the second time you outsmarted me.”

“I'm sorry I had to shoot you, Mr. Harris—that's what Pa says your name is.”

“Well, I reckon a feller's gotta stick up fer his own. I don't reckon I can fault you fer sticking up fer yer own pa. I reckon I oughta thank you fer not killing me. But layin' here like this, I think I'd have been better off if you'd done it.”

“I was aiming for your arm, just so you'd drop the gun,” said Zack. “I didn't mean to lay you up so bad as this.”

Mr. Harris stared down into the bed in front of him for a minute.

“I gotta tell you, Hollister,” he said at length, “I ain't feeling none too good. All the while I been laying here—asleep, I reckon, though I ain't sure if it was altogether like normal kind of sleeping—as I laid here I was having dreams that weren't like anything I ever had afore. I saw the faces of men I killed and other things I don't even know what they was.”

His voice was agitated and fearful.

“I tried to holler out,” he said, “tried to make myself wake up, but I couldn't do it. I saw things that'd make any man tremble, things that would—”

He stopped, then glanced up first at Pa, then over to Zack and Christopher, his eyes wide.

“You gotta tell me straight, Hollister,” he said, turning back toward Pa with a wild fear in his eyes. “Am I dyin'? Is that why my brain's goin' loco?”

“I don't know, Jesse,” answered Pa calmly. “I hope not, 'cause we've all been praying mighty hard for you. But if it's your time, then none of us can stop the Lord from doing what he has to do.”

Again it was silent.

“You believe in heaven and hell, Hollister, now you got religion?” Mr. Harris asked.

“Yep, I do, Jesse.”

“I reckon we all know where a no-good varmint like me is headed, eh?”

“It don't have to be that way, Jesse.”

“I done some pretty bad things, Hollister. Durned if I ain't just exactly what the preachers call a sinner waiting fer the flames of hell. I heard them fellers plenty of times when they'd come into some saloon, trying to scare us out—bunch of women, I always thought. Leastwise, I don't reckon there's time left fer me to do much about it.”

Pa glanced over at Christopher with a look of question. He didn't know what to say in reply and silently beckoned Christopher to jump into the conversation.

“There is always time, Mr. Harris,” said Christopher.

“Time fer what? What kin I do?”

“The single most important thing in life.”

“Don't talk in riddles, young feller! What in tarnation do you mean by the most important thing?” he asked, coughing again.

Pa handed him a towel. He coughed into it again a time or two.

“Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.”

“Ain't no time for that” he returned spitefully. “My life's near over. For all I know, it
is
over.”

“It takes no time to
believe
, Mr. Harris.”

A long silence followed, during which Mr. Harris calmed.

“What'm I supposed to believe about him, then?” asked Mr. Harris at length.

“We must believe
in
him, not
about
him,” said Christopher. “We must take what he has done and bring it into our hearts—each of us for ourselves. He is mankind's Savior and Lord, but we have to make him our
own
Savior and our
own
Lord.”

Both men fell silent. Mr. Harris seemed to be thinking. How much of what Christopher had said he could grasp, Christopher couldn't tell.

“It all sounds like nonsense to me—I can hardly make out what'n the heck yer talking about.”

“It's never too late to tell God you're sorry for what you've done, that you're finally ready to do things his way,” said Pa, now resuming the conversation with Harris.

“Being sorry don't much make up fer the wrong a body's done.”

“I reckon you're right, Jesse,” said Pa, “leastways the way we look at it. But God's got a different way of figuring things. And when a man's sorry enough for what he's been to repent of it, then God has a way of setting it all right no matter when that time is.”

“Even if a man's dying?”

“If dyin's what it takes to wake a man up, then sometimes that's what God's gotta do—though he'd rather people woke up before then, so he could show his love to them while they're still here. That's why we're here in the first place, you know, Jesse.”

“Why?”

“So God can show us how much he loves us.”

“There you go again, talking about love. Whoever loved a mean, no-good killer like me? Ain't nobody ever loved
me
. Not even my own daddy loved me.”

“The God who made you loves you. You're his child—how could he do anything but love you? And because
he
loves you, so do we.”

This time the silence that followed was lengthy.

“I gotta tell you, Hollister,” said Mr. Harris after a while, “what you did out there—whenever it was—it ain't somethin' I kin git outta my mind. It weren't natural, Hollister. Why . . . blamed if you wasn't gonna let me kill you! Dad-burned, Hollister—how could you do that? You wasn't gonna lift a finger against me! Why . . . it was almost—but whoever heard of such a thing? It was almost like you. . . .”

He stopped and glanced down, his voice choking. Christopher told me later that Mr. Harris was starting to cry. He and Zack looked down at the floor, not wanting to embarrass the poor man.

Only Pa kept looking straight into his face.

“Like what, Jesse?” Pa said.

“Like . . . like you were putting me ahead of yerself . . . like you were willing to die
yerself
rather than hurtin' a hair of
my
head.”

“I ain't saying I wasn't scared, Jesse,” said Pa. “I was. I didn't know what you'd do. But you're right—I was willing for you to put a slug in me if it came to that, 'cause I
wasn't
going to hurt you.”

“But . . . but
why
, Hollister?” stammered Mr. Harris.

“I told you before, Jesse—because I been
praying
for you ever since we heard that you were coming here, looking for us. Zack and I and Christopher here, we've been praying for you, praying for your
good
. As we prayed, we couldn't help growing by and by to
love
you just a little, Jesse. That's why.”

In the silence that followed, Mr. Harris's tired, worn, pale cheeks began to glisten from the tears trickling down them, right down into the big scar above his neck.

That fearsome outlaw lay listening like a little child to words too incredible to believe. Yet because of what he had witnessed, he
did
believe them. What he would have scoffed at in a sermon, he could not help believing—because he had seen it lived out in a man's life before his very eyes.

“But that's not the best of it, Jesse,” Pa began again with a childlike enthusiasm. “
Our
love isn't anything compared to the love
God
has for you. In fact—do you want to know something that'll really surprise you, Jesse? There is somebody that wasn't just
willing
to die, but who
did
die just for you.”

Mr. Harris glanced up, puzzled. He obviously had no idea who Pa meant.

“Why don't you tell him about it, Christopher,” said Pa, glancing across the bed.

“You're doing great, Drum,” replied Christopher. “I don't know when I've ever heard the gospel make so much sense. I want to hear what
you
have to say.”

Pa took a breath, then continued.

“You know who I mean, don't you, Jesse?” he asked.

Mr. Harris shook his head.

“Don't reckon I do, Hollister.”

“It was Jesus, the Son of God. He died for you Jesse—just for you.”

“Well, I heard about that, of course—but how do you mean, just for me?”

“He died for me, too, and for all of us. But that don't take nothing away from his dying for every one of us like we were the only ones. When
he
died, it was different than if I'd died.”

“How you figure that?”

“'Cause you see, Jesse, he was the Son of God. He didn't have to die.”

“Why did he, then?”

“'Cause he loved us. When he died, his dying took care of all the sin of the world—and that means yours and mine, Christopher's here, Zack's . . . everybody's. Took care of it all ahead of time. That's what I was talking about before, about how God's got a way to make things right when a man makes up his mind to repent. That's how he does it—Jesus' blood washes all that sin away.”

“I heard those words before—never thought much about 'em.”

“That's why you can tell God you're sorry, and repent of the man you've been, and tell him you want to be his son. Tell him you're ready to do things his way. Don't matter if you're gonna die tomorrow or if you got fifty years left—the blood washes away the sin all just the same. That's what Jesus died for, so that we could become God's children.”

A long silence.

Mr. Harris glanced over toward Zack.

“You believe all this stuff, young Hollister?”

“Yep, I do, Mr. Harris,” said Zack. “Everything my pa's telling you's true—every word.”

“What about ol' Nick?” asked Mr. Harris, looking at Pa again. “He was always a pretty tough feller—he go in for all this religious way of looking at things?”

Christopher was already on his way to the door. He opened it a crack and motioned for Uncle Nick to join them.

Uncle Nick approached the bed, then gave Mr. Harris his hand. The sick man shook it feebly.

“How's it going, Belle? Been a long time.”

“Jesse,” said Uncle Nick.

“Drum's been telling me some of the durndest things I ever heard, and I asked him if you go along with it all.”

Pa briefly recounted the conversation.

“I reckon I'd say I do,” said Uncle Nick when he was done. “I was a little slower than Drum to see some of it. Reckon my pride got a mite more in the way than his did. But yeah, Jesse—what he's telling you's the truth. If you wanna make things right and you wanna get rid of the wrong you done, then you gotta let God do it. Ain't no other way. You can't get rid of the sin yourself. Nobody can. That's why we gotta give it to God. Every one of the four of us here's done it—and we're all here to tell you that God keeps his word. And we're all better men for it.”

Pa and Zack and Christopher all nodded as Nick spoke.

Another long silence.

“Blamed if it don't sound too good to be true,” said Mr. Harris, shaking his head slowly. “But I reckon there ain't nothing else left but for me to try it, seeing as how I've made a worse mess of my life than most folks. I gotta tell you, it ain't been no way to live.”

No one said anything. Jesse Harris lay in the bed with his thoughts. The four men around the bed waited for the Spirit of God to carry out the final persuasion and take conviction to the needful corners of his being. They wouldn't say or do anything to force the heart's door open ahead of its time.

“So tell me,” said Mr. Harris after five or ten minutes, “what do I gotta do fer God to make what I done all right, like you say he can?”

Both Pa and Uncle Nick glanced over at Christopher. Pa gave a little nod.

“All you have to do, Mr. Harris,” Christopher said, “is tell God that you're sorry for what you have done and the kind of man you were. Tell him that you repent of it, and ask him to forgive you. It's as simple as that. Ask him to take away your sin. The Bible calls it being born again. It's not something you can do for yourself. But he can do it for you, and all you have to do is ask him to.”

“Well, I reckon I ain't got nothing to lose but my pride—what do I say?”

“Would you like me to help you tell him?”

“I reckon I would.”

“All right. Then, I'll say some words, and you repeat them—but say them to God, do you understand?”

“Don't sound too hard.”

“Dear God,” began Christopher, “I want to tell you that I'm sorry for the life I've lived. . . .”

Mr. Harris closed his eyes where he lay in the bed.

“Dear God,”
he repeated,
“I reckon I'm sorry—”
his voice broke momentarily,
“fer the kind of life I lived.”

“I repent of it, and I ask you to forgive me.”

“
I repent, God, and I ask you to forgive me.”

“Forgive me both for the things I have done and for the sin itself which lies in my heart.”

“
Forgive me fer the things I done and fer the sin in my heart.”

“I ask you to wash me clean by Jesus' blood. . . .”

“I ask you to wash
me clean by Jesus' blood.”

“ . . . and to make me be born again.”

“ . . . and to make me be born again.”

“Most of all, God, I thank you that you love me.”

“I thank you that you love me, God,
though I got a hard time believin' ye do, but I will 'cause these four men here say it's
so.”

“Help me to live from now on like you want me to.”

“Help me to live like you
want me to.”

“I am ready to make Jesus
my
Savior.”

“I am ready to make Jesus my Savior.”

“I am ready to make Jesus
my
Lord.”

“I
am ready to make Jesus my Lord.”

“Help me to learn to think of myself as your son, God. . . .”

“
Help me to learn to think of myself as yer son—”

Here his voice choked.

“ . . . and to think of you as my Father and Jesus as my elder brother,” said Christopher.

“And to think of you as my Father
and Jesus as my elder brother.”

“Help me to do what you want me to do.”

“Help me to
do what you want me to do.”

“Amen.”

“Amen.”

The four men around the bed were all smiling. In the midst of them, still weak but looking noticeably less pale, a thin sheepish, childlike smile now breaking upon his lips, lay Jesse Harris.

It was the first full smile his face had felt in years.