"Hi. I'm here to visit Will Sandstone."
"Alright. Can I see some I.D. please?"
"Sure."
A small drawer slid out to Tom's left. He fumbled for his license as he made small talk.
"I didn't see that drawer there, kinda blends in, that's pretty cool."
The woman made no reply. He thought this was due to the energy she was using to make such an uninterested face. She pulled it in, examined it, stroked some keys on the computer, and then slid it back out to him.
"Are you carrying any weapons?" she asked.
"No," Tom said, although he wondered if he'd want one once inside.
"Okay. Normally we only let immediate family in, but I remember that detective called in, so you're clear to go. This is a special circumstance to be sure, I'm sorry for your loss. If you go through this door," she pointed to the door on his right, "I'll have Jo pat you down and take you to the visiting booths. You'll be able to talk to Mr. Sandstone through some glass on a phone for one hour."
"Thank you," Tom said.
She nodded and pressed a button. A short buzz sounded, followed by the click of the door's lock. Tom opened it and walked inside.
Chapter 6
The telephone was cold against Tom's ear. The kid sat across from him, clothed in an orange jumpsuit. The face on the other side of the glass was not one of a murderer. He looked like a normal boy which, in a way, made it harder for Tom. In his mind, only a monster could have done this.
The kid's reaction was different than Tom had expected too; he wouldn't look at Tom. Was it out of shame? He'd expected a cocky young man, who would explain to Tom that his family was just in his way—a confession without remorse. Something entirely different happened on the other side of the glass. Before Tom even had a chance to ask him why he'd done it, the kid had begun to cry.
He dropped the phone and placed his face in his hands. Tom didn't know what to do, so he just waited with the phone held up to his ear. Then Will looked up. His blotchy face held a shuddering mouth and wet eyes. His left hand gripped a chunk of his thick black hair.
"I'm so sorry," he said into the phone. "What I did, they didn't deserve it."
Tom was surprised by his tears and heartfelt confession, but it didn’t change Tom’s feelings about the kid.
"Then why did you do it?"
"I don't know. I was just so angry."
"But why shoot my wife? You must of had some reason!"
Will sighed, and Tom could see the guilt in his eyes.
"Why did you do it?" Tom asked again.
The kid wasn't looking at him anymore, but he started to respond.
"I was running away from home. I wanted to finish high school, but my dad was, well, I just couldn't handle living with him anymore."
Tom's expression back told Will he didn't catch the meaning, so Will pulled up his shirt sleeves.
"I tried blocking his punches with my arms. Sometimes, like last time, it's enough to get away before he lands one on my face. Look, I'm not trying to make excuses: I'm just trying to explain why I did what I did."
"Ok, go on," Tom said.
Will told him how he was already really upset when his wife cut him off and then gave him the bird.
“I lost it.”
His head sank and he pressed the phone into his forehead, then brought it back and looked up with red stained eyes.
“I’m so sorry.”
Tom was fighting back tears as he said, "She wasn't the best at paying attention while driving, but she never would have flipped you off. She was probably doing the motions to a kid’s song with our son."
At hearing this, Will's eyes filled with tears once again and his gaze dropped back down to the floor.
"I'm so sorry," he said.
Tom just held the phone up to his ear, staring blankly into the glass. His emotions were so conflicted, because even through his rage he had started to hear from God. God wanted him to tell Will that he could be forgiven. Not just by Tom, but by God as well. God wanted Tom to tell Will how he could be forgiven of everything if he accepted Jesus into his heart; but Tom couldn't take it. He hated this and could never tell the kid these things. Without another word Tom got up and left; leaving Will on the other side of the phone with his pitiful tears. He went straight to his car and drove home in silence.
Tom had been prepared for something else. He wasn't ready to feel sorry for the person who murdered his wife and child, and at the same time hate him. He was not expecting to find out that she had been the victim of another victim, and that her killer had been set off by something as innocent as hand motions to a kid song. She had been in the wrong place, at the wrong time. He needed it to be more than that. It was all too much for him so he went back to his parent's and stayed in his room until the next morning.
After breakfast Tom went into the rarely used living room. It was on the opposite side of the house from where his parents sat watching TV in the family room. He had not eaten much for breakfast, which was his favorite meal. He had every intention to go back to sleep on the couch. He chose the living room because the bedroom would have reminded him of his sleepless night. All he could see when he closed his eyes was that kid on the other side of the glass.
He was just a kid with a sad story—not some monster like Tom had imagined. He had pictured a six foot plus brute, covered in all sorts of obscene tattoos patterned around his rippling muscles and shaved head. Nope. His monster, the one who had ruined his life and taken everything away from him, was just some dumb kid. His wife had just been at the wrong place at the wrong time. He needed to stop saying that to himself.
She should have been paying more attention to the road. Haven't I told her that a thousand times? He had always said that she was going to get into an accident someday. He wished he had never uttered the words. If she just hadn't cut the kid off, he never would have unloaded that gun on her. Now there was nothing he could do to get them back.
He stretched out on the couch trying not to think about it. He had no success. He looked around and noticed his phone was still in the guest room. That was fine; he didn't want to talk to anyone. Yet as he looked, nothing around him would help him take his mind off of what had happened. He just needed to get some sleep. He couldn't deal with this day after a restless night.
The only thing in the room was a large book sitting in the center of the oak coffee table next to him. He thought he remembered some verses in the huge tome that he wanted to find. He remembered that they were in the Old Testament. If a man kills then by man shall his blood be shed, or something like that. It was a large King James version hardback copy of the Bible; one that no one read. It was more for decoration than anything in a room rarely used. He didn't have the energy to get up and go anywhere else, so he reached over and hefted the large tome into his lap.
As he opened the book, its pages came apart with dull cracking sounds. He remembered back from when he used to read a lot in college, that there was something about capital punishment. He wanted to find the verses to justify his feelings about his family's killer. He began flipping through the massive book, its thin pages turning easily in his hands. They felt silky under his fingertips as he flipped through them. He started to get near the front when he stumbled upon the book of Jonah. His fingers had stopped just at the spot where the first chapter began, so he figured he would just start reading. Immersing himself in these old stories might get his mind off of all that had happened.
He read how Jonah was a great prophet—someone who God used to speak to people. God had told Jonah to go to a great city called Nineveh. He had to tell them that their wickedness had come up before God. Jonah, however, did not want to go to Nineveh, so he sailed the other way toward a place called Tarshish.
It had been such a long time since Tom had read his Bible that he had forgotten how compelling some of the stories inside of it could be. He found himself lost in the story, reading on. Somehow this massive King James Version of his parent's Bible
had become like a paperback page-turner for him. In the story Jonah's act of running away from what God was telling him to do was affecting the weather around him. While he was fast asleep in the belly of the boat, the men of the ship above were facing a fierce storm. They were afraid and cried out to their own gods. They threw cargo into the sea to lighten the ship. The captain came down and woke Jonah, saying to him,
"How can you sleep? Get up and call on your God! Maybe he will take notice of us so that we will not perish."
Tom wished he could sleep through chaos like Jonah. The sailors cast lots to find out who was responsible for the great storm, and the lot fell on Jonah. They asked him who was making all this trouble for them, what work did he do, and where had he come from. Jonah told them that he was a Hebrew who worshiped the God of heaven, who made the sea and dry land, and that he was running from his God. This freaked the sailors out and they asked Jonah what they could do to make the sea calm down.
Tom was surprised to read that Jonah told them to throw him overboard and it would calm down. Jonah must have been pretty depressed to want to be thrown into a raging ocean. Tom could relate. Getting tossed in the sea wouldn't be so bad. Then he could drown and wouldn't have to go through the rest of this life without his wife and kids. To his greater surprise, the men instead did their best to row back to land.
They failed, however, because the sea grew even wilder. So they ended up throwing him overboard, and the raging sea grew calm; but the story didn't end there. This was the one part that Tom remembered. So Jonah did not drown, but was swallowed up by a great fish. There he stayed for three days until it spat him up onto the land. God spoke to Jonah a second time, telling him to go to Nineveh and proclaim the message God would give him. This time Jonah obeyed.
He told the people that they should give up their evil ways and violence. The people decided to change and so God did not bring to them the destruction he had threatened through Jonah's message. This ticked Jonah off. God's compassion on the people of Nineveh was something Jonah felt was wrong. Tom knew how Jonah felt; he wasn't about to tell that murderer that he could be saved from hell. The kid deserves hell. Tom read on.
Jonah told God that he knew this would happen because he knew God is forgiving, and that's why Jonah fled from Nineveh. Then he told God to take away his life, because it would be better for him to die than to live. That about sums it up. He closed the book and threw it across the room onto the loveseat. Tom knew God had wanted him to read this story. He felt God tugging on his heart, telling him that he needed to forgive the kid. It made him furious. He stuffed the small voice inside of him deep down, ignoring it as best he could, and laid down on the couch. Eventually his sleepless night caught up with him and he took a long nap.
Chapter 7
Tom found himself walking through a strange town. His long sleeve dress shirt and khaki pants were overkill for this place. He began to sweat immediately. Everyone around him was dressed in strange clothing. Some were just wrapped in cloth. Suddenly he knew that he had to give a message to the people in this town. Then he saw it, the face of his family's murderer. He too was dressed in modern clothing and stood out among the rest of the people. When he saw Tom, recognition flashed across his face and he looked down in shame.
Tom awoke suddenly, knowing that he had to tell the boy that God would forgive him. Tom couldn't do it though, at least not in person. He knew that if he went back to that jail he would get in trouble with the law himself for trying to throttle the boy and acting crazy.
Why does God have to use me to give that murderer this message? Isn't there a Chaplain in the jail or something?
But Tom knew somehow that this kid wouldn't hear it from anyone else. Only he held a place in the kid's life that would shake him up enough to listen. If Tom wrote him a letter, the kid would read it. Tom got up and went to the other side of the house where his parents were watching TV.
"Hey Mom, where would I find a piece of paper?"
“Second drawer under the phone hon, and there's pens near the phone too."
"Okay, thanks mom," Tom said, and he started to go.
"What do you need it for?"
"I'm writing someone a letter," he said, walking back to the kitchen. Tools in hand he strode to the living room and landed on the couch. He stared at the blank page. It stared back at him. He uncapped the pen, and started to write.
I don't really know how you're going to respond to this. I don't know how to respond to you. To be honest, if it were up to me, you would die by my hands. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to forgive you. That said, I serve a God greater than me. I do know that he will forgive you if you ask him to. As much as it pains me to write this to you, God is telling me to. No matter how I feel about this, I will obey my God, and he has told me to tell you that he will forgive you. I'm sending you a Bible. Read the book of Jonah. I'm Jonah, you're a Ninevite.
That was it. Tom signed his name and stuffed it in the envelope. He sealed and stamped it; done. As far as he was concerned, once he put it in the mail he had sent his message, obeying God.
Will read the letter. He almost crumpled it up after reading the first part, but he was too curious and remorseful not to finish it. He didn't really think much about what it said, until he had read it again, and again, and again. He thought it was stupid, that garbage about God and the Bible. He did think it was weird that the guy had written him to tell him that God would forgive him, even if he couldn't. That was pretty weird. Will didn't blame Tom for hating him, or even wanting to kill him. He got that. What he didn't get was the stuff about forgiveness.
Will wasn't even sure if there was a God, but he knew if there was one that there would be no way he would forgive Will for what he'd done. After a few days he was just too bored to not crack open the Bible Tom had sent him and read the book of Jonah. He looked at the long columned table of contents and found Jonah. The story was quite surprising to Will. He never would have guessed that the hero of a Bible story could be such a loser. He had to admit, the story had some pretty strong resemblance to he and Tom. Tom wanted Will dead. Tom didn't want to tell Will that if he turned away from his sin and repented that God would forgive him.
After that Will read many more stories out of that Bible. He was surprised again and again that the Bible was full of stories about people who were messed up like him, and did some horrible things, but God still loved and forgave them.
One of Adam and Eve's kids murdered the other one out of jealousy. Noah got drunk after the whole ark thing. Moses murdered a man. King David had a woman's husband murdered so he could steal her after happening to see her bathing nude. He supposed Tom was right. If God forgave all these people, why not him? So for the first time he prayed.
It was a simple prayer, asking God to forgive him. It wasn't the last time he prayed either. He started to read his Bible daily, hungry for a knowledge of this supposed God. Eventually he came to a place where he could forgive his Dad. He tried calling him, but he couldn't do it; so he wrote him a letter. He wasn't expecting to hear back, but his old man had taken the time to write him back. It was scrawled out, written in a rushed hand permanently damaged from too much lifting of the bottle. It read:
Hey son,
Thanks for writing me. You don't know what it meant to me to read the words you wrote to me. The fact that you forgive me makes me relieved and guilty all at the same time. Didn't think you ever would, but I'm so glad you did. I'm ashamed of what I'd become. What I've done to you, my only boy. I want you to know that once you were put in jail I stopped drinking. I figured it was kinda my fault you were in there once all my anger wore off. Guess that was what it took to sober me up. I'm sorry. I hope you're doing okay in there. I've tried to call and write, but I just couldn't do it. Hung up or couldn't dial. Wrote some letters but couldn't send them. I guess I was just too afraid you'd never write or talk back, and I just couldn't handle that. It would mean that I was dead to you. I know I've been a terrible Father, but I love you son.
I'd like to come see you if that's ok. Maybe we can start over, make things right again between us like it was before Mom died. I love you, and I'm sorry.
Dad
Before long the old man started paying visits to his son. It became a weekly ritual, and it was the best part of Will's week. He never heard from Tom again, but still kept sending him letters, from time to time, letting him know how things had improved in his life thanks to the letter Tom sent him. Life went on like that for the three men. God’s love met them in their loneliness and gave them a life worth living. Not the life they would have chosen, but a life they chose to be thankful for every day.
THE END
About the Author
Dan first started writing stories in elementary school, where he and a friend would skip lunch and recess once a month to eat in the library while hearing all about the new books on the shelves. His love for reading, as with visual art and music, has now extended into creating his own fiction. He is also a huge fan of podcasting, and all of his stories are available for free in audio. He works as a digital artist and lives in Washington State with his beautiful family of five.
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