We made it all through school together as the best of friends. We went everywhere together, did everything together, but never really had a date. At thirteen, we both went forward to receive Christ during a revival. We took turns as president of our church youth group, knowing full well that most or all of the other kids slept around and used drugs. I accepted that through most of my high school years, but too much time spent around the wrong kind of guys slowly changed my mind.

Secretly, though I could hardly admit it even to myself, I hoped that Pam might become my lover,, not just my friend. Her response to my trial balloon shot down that idea. Immediately, my mind began exploring other possibilities.

No one would call Mavis Bowser a dog, not based on her looks, anyway. Depending on your point of view, she rated as either the friendliest or the most immoral girl at Pike North High. She made a well-publicized vow that she would have sex with every male at the school before she graduated, and she very nearly succeeded. She saw me as one of the main obstacles to meeting her goal, and she pursued me tirelessly through much of my senior year. Up to the point of my conversation with Pam, I ignored her.

Before the week ended, Mavis and I arranged a rendezvous behind the bleachers at the football field, on a warm spring night. After it ended, I felt nothing but shame and disgust. I felt so physically ill that I threw up on the way home. Mae Mae knew immediately something had happened when she saw my face.

“What happened, Angel? You look sick.”

“I just ate something that didn’t agree with me, I guess.” Lying to her hurt almost as much as the deed itself.

“Well, come in the kitchen and let me doctor you up.” She knew very well I didn't tell her everything, but, being Mae Mae, she didn’t press me right them.

By the next afternoon, everyone in school knew about “Bow wow’s” latest conquest. Some of the boys congratulated me; others, like Bennie, taunted me about being such a great Christian. All of that hurt badly enough, but the greatest wound of all came from someone who never said a word. Pam found out before lunch time; she just stared at me in hurt disbelief. I had lost my best friend. For the rest of our time in high school, she rebuffed my every attempt to apologize or renew our relationship. At first, I drowned in remorse and self pity, but eventually these feelings gave way to anger and resentment.

After all, Auntie Mae had forgiven me, when she found out. I had only to confess, and ask her to forgive me. I felt like God had forgiven me, too. If Pam wanted to be so stubborn and un-Christian, who needed her? Other girls out there appreciated me, whether she did or not.

I didn’t graduate at the top if my class, but I made good grades in high school. With a little push from Mae Mae, who told me to forget about the sacrifices I knew she must make, and with a big assist from the state of Kentucky, I enrolled at Morehead State University that fall. Not really knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I entered the teacher education program. Pam and Bennie both went to UK, so both the best and the worst parts of my life no longer played a role in my day-today existence. Others took their place, if not their roles. I soon forgot my earlier disgust at having sex on the fly, and I actively sought out girls I knew would willingly take a tumble with me.

I found other things I had neglected as well. Drugs made me feel in charge and in control, and the feeling of euphoria they brought me kept me coming back for more. Most of my meager stipend, and all of the money I could beg or borrow from Auntie Mae, went to support my habit. The Lord found no place in my new life style, and my old Bible gathered dust at the bottom of one of my drawers. I went home only infrequently, and when I did, I was invariably stoned. Auntie Mae knew, but she never stopped loving me. Ever so gently, she tried to show me what lay down the road I traveled, especially in rejecting God. I pretended to listen and understand, but all the time I had no intention of following her advice.

Somehow I made it through college. Very little of what happened in those four years remains in my mind. More than once I dodged death, either in senseless brawls or by reckless overdoses. Once I wound up in a hospital intensive care unit after driving my car headlong into a telephone pole; the girl with me didn't make it. For years afterward, in nightmares, her bloody face screamed at me to help her. She died on the way to the hospital, but I didn’t find out until later.

Auntie Mae made it to Lexington somehow. She stayed by my bed for days, refusing to leave until she knew I would survive. That experience should have changed my life; it did, but only for the worse. Anxious to forget what had happened, I redoubled my search for a good time. My classes remained an inconvenient sideline in my real life. With little effort, and with very little time in class, I did well enough to graduate with a degree in elementary education. On the day of the graduation ceremony, I slept through the afternoon in a pile of leaves on a hill above campus. Auntie Mae attended the festivities without me.

Besides celebrating the end of college life, I had another reason to rejoice. Auntie Mae brought to Morehead with her, the day before, the news that my childhood nemesis had taken in marriage the only girl I ever loved. In one of life’s most ridiculous ironies, Beauty had indeed married the Beast. Throughout all the years of college, I clung to a forlorn hope that Pan and I would some day be reunited. My last hope had fled screaming away in the dark drug haze of the midnight hour. After a particularly unsatisfying tryst with the campus whore, I wondered off into the woods. Some time in the dew-drenched hours of the morning I fell unknowing to the hard ground. No pretty words made their way into my besotted mind when I finally staggered to my feet; somewhere down below, I could hear the strains of the graduation processional. Vaguely the thought came to me that I should be there. I decided I didn’t really care.

When Auntie Mae came to pick me up later in my room, which I managed to find somehow, she bore little resemblance to the woman I knew and loved for so many years. She looked every bit of her soon-to-be 71 years, her face drawn and worn and her eyes unsmiling. Even in my stupor I knew she had been crying, and I knew also that I caused her tears. I felt a twinge of something akin to regret, a strange emotion to me. I smiled lamely at her, but her face froze into a mask of cold anger. I wondered for a moment if this was really the same Mae Mae who had cradled me so often in her arms.

“At least you could have shown up, Hank Raymond.” She had never used my middle name before. “For four years I’ve prayed for you every day. I did without everything except what I needed to stay alive, just to feed your habits. I took in laundry and did housekeeping to make ends meet, and at times, but for the Lord’s provision, I would have gone hungry. I kept telling myself that the Lord would pull you through, that He would draw you back to Himself. I’m not sure I believe that anymore.

:”Over and over I’ve asked myself what I could have done that I didn’t do. Maybe I indulged you too much, maybe I let you get away with too much. If I did, it was because I loved you too well. I just couldn’t stand to see you hurt or disappointed. At least, I thought, he’s finishing college. I felt proud of your for that. Maybe, I thought, he’ll straighten out when he gets away from all of his college buddies, away from all of the drugs and sex. Now you pull a stunt like this.

“Well, this is it. This is the last of the last straws. Come by the house and pick up your things. Until you make your peace with yourself and with God, I’ll not have you under my roof anymore. I’m sorry now I ever took you in.”

I staggered as if hit by one of Bennie’s fists. My mind cleared for the first time since my freshman year. :"You – you don’t really mean that, Mae Mae. You’re the only one that loves me. Please say you don’t mean that, please.” Real tears dimmed my eyes, and I could hardly see her face. Just for an instant, I thought I saw her face soften. But she quickly slipped her mask on again.

“Not this time, Hank. I’ve let you fool me with those crocodile tears before, but no more.”

With that, she turned on her heel and left the room. Later I found out she left quickly so I wouldn’t see her cry, but right then I felt totally alone and rejected. Auntie Mae cried most of the way back to Pike County, and I cried the rest of that evening and into the night. I all but forgot how to pray while I attended college, but that night I asked God to forgive every sin I could remember and all of those I couldn’t remember. Some time around midnight, I found a measure of peace. For once, the sleep that came wasn’t drug-induced.

The next morning I had to clear out of my room. I managed to find someone else going toward Pikeville. Once there, I waited for hours by the side of the road going north out of town before someone finally picked me up and carried me up 119 North. The last five miles home I walked. Stumbling along in the dark, I asked God to help me find the words to tell Mae Mae how very sorry I felt for hurting her so deeply. Like the prodigal son in the parable I returned home, but I doubted that the end of my story would be quite as happy.

I topped the rise above our little valley. Far in the distance, I could see a light burning brightly in a window, the living room light. The sight encouraged me a little, and I walked a little faster in spite of the lead weight of my luggage. An hour later I walked into the front yard and onto the front porch of the only place I ever called home.

My upraised fist never got a chance to knock on the door. It flew open, and two strong arms wrapped around me, fist and all. All of those pretty words I rehearsed flew away, unneeded and unwanted.

“Welcome home, Hankie!” she sobbed, over and over, her tears mingling with the kisses she showered on my eyes, mouth and cheeks. When she finally released me, she stepped away only far enough to grip me by both shoulders and look me straight in the eye, her face all aglow.

“The Lord woke me last night, about midnight, and told me you were okay, and that you would come home to me. Oh, Hanky, it’s so good to have you home again, really home. I kept your supper hot for you. Let me help you with those bags.”

That summer I rediscovered my relationship with the Lord. This time, though, I didn’t do it just for Auntie Mae’s sake, but because I wanted to know Him for myself. Fewer people attended our little church now, but that didn’t matter much to me anymore. I felt loved by the ones who still came, and they all crowded around the Sunday evening I rededicated my life to the Lord. Mae Mae cried again, but that’s what mothers do. For me, she’s the only real mother I ever had; for the first time, I got to know my Father, too.

Strange things happened in the world around us. We had problems with drugs and clandestine cults for years, but now people flaunted their addictions and their demonic rituals openly. Worse still, the police politely looked the other way; many of them even participated in Satanic rituals and drug festivals. School teachers, many of them, anyway, taught drug use along with homosexuality as an acceptable alternative life style. The worship if Satan and demons, they said, was an acceptable exercise of freedom of religion. Never mind that they denied that same right to Christians.

All of this convinced me that the schools desperately needed Christian teachers. I didn’t see much chance of getting accepted in the Pike County system, but I applied anyway, and went to an interview. Even if I didn’t see, though, the Lord did. Perhaps based on the reputation I had gained while I was at Morehead, the Board members decided I was their kind of folks, prepared to instill in young minds the kind of values they believed should be planted there. On August 1, just three weeks before school started, I got a letter confirming my appointment as a teacher at Shady Grove Elementary. I had already given up on the idea of teaching. I jumped up, grabbed Mae Mae, and danced a jig around the living room before I told her what had happened.

I reported to school the following Monday. I knew the principal, Lane Darker, as I did most of the teachers. They all acted friendly enough, though I heard a few of them snickering about “Hanky.” Darker assigned me to third grade; the school had only one classroom per grade. The Board would have closed it long ago, and consolidated it into a larger school, except for one very important detail: Superintendent Malden was an alumnus, and he had a strong sentimental attachment to Shady Grove. For fifteen years, he squelched every notion of closing the place.

The faculty lounge was hot and cramped; the air conditioning system had broken down again. Some of the teachers wiped their faces with handkerchiefs; other fanned themselves in a half-hearted attempt to move the stagnant air. I fought a fly that persisted in dive bombing my head one time too often.

Splat!

“Restrain yourself, Mr. Crandall. We’re not asleep, yet.” A few of the teachers laughed with little enthusiasm at Darker’s attempt at humor; the rest yawned or ignored the whole thing. “I called the meeting to let you meet the remaining member of our staff, our other new face for this fall.” He went to the door and called to someone waiting outside. “Mr. Bullitt, would you come in, please.”

OH, no! It couldn’t be! Not again!

Bennie just wouldn’t go away.

Chapter 3

JESUS IS the Bridge Ministries

CHAPTER TWO