It started out as a barely perceived apprehension on both of their parts.  Out of the corner of each one’s eye they would catch a vague impression of a person that seemed somehow interesting.  You know how sometimes you’re just drawn to someone, you don’t know why, and you’re drawn to them even though you don’t know anything about them, haven’t even really been introduced to them.  It was like that.  As they passed through the hallways of their high school, each with their own background, particular assortment of friends and acquaintances, and their own school schedules, occasionally they would spy each other and for a solitary moment be reminded of their desire to introduce themselves, but neither of them took the initiative.  It was one of those dilemmas in life that come up every now and then; vague, half-conscious, but nevertheless real, that most of the time never really get resolved.  But in their case it did. 

            One day Claire was running past the long row of lockers that lined each of the hallways at Watsonville High when one of her books slid off the top of the pile that she was carrying and sailed across the smooth concrete floor, its momentum transporting it quite a distance.  Late for her next class, she frantically tried to right the stack in her arms while attempting to track down the miscreant book hidden somewhere among the feet belonging to the passing throng of students.  When she finally tracked it down, Stanley was just about to pick it up.  He had seen her drop it and had maneuvered through the crowd, making his way to the fallen tome at the exact time that she arrived.  He stooped down, gathered it up and presented it to her with a big toothed smile. 

            “Here…..  I saw you drop it from over there,” Stanley said pointing, a little nervously. 

            “Thank you,” Claire said, flush with the recognition that this was the boy she had been aware of for so long but hadn’t met.  “You’re name is Stan, right?”  She had done a little research by this time and had at least discovered his name. 

            “Yeah, and you’re Claire Preston.  I’ve seen you around,” Stan offered in the awkward silence. 

            “Nice to meet you, Stan.  Hey, I’m late for my next class and you probably are, too.  We better go.  But thanks for finding my book.  I’ll talk to you later,” Claire said as she shook his hand. 

            “That’s okay, no problem, catch you later,” Stan said, feeling the soft warmth of her very feminine hand in his. 

            That was their first meeting.  It was their junior year.  Stan had just moved into the area and wasn’t very comfortable in his new school surroundings, feeling lost and vulnerable.  But Claire took him under her wing, calling him on the phone, spending time with him, and Stan gained comfort and reassurance from her company.  They even ended up walking to and from school together on some days.  Claire did most of the talking and Stan most of the listening.  Claire’s friends thought she was crazy. 

            Claire, strikingly attractive, slender yet curvaceous, with big green eyes and a radiant personality, impressed everyone she met.  She came from a large family.  All of her five older siblings had been popular at school, her family well known to most of the teachers and students.  Her father was an accountant who worked in his home.  Her mother had worked hard to get her degree, going back to college after her children started school, juggling being a wife, a mother and a college student.  Now she was teaching English and Literature at the State University.  It had taken a while, but she had seniority and was able to pick and choose the classes she taught so that she still could spend time at home. 

            Stan was about twelve inches taller than Claire, stocky and sort of plain looking.  They composed a slightly incongruous picture whenever they were together.  He: the tall chubby plain one, she: the eye-catching beauty.  Stan’s family consisted of him, his brother and his mother.  His mother and father had divorced when he was in junior high school.  His mother, Kay, had had to go to work after the divorce and she was an assistant manager at a large motel.  She worked hard, leaving the home early and coming home late.  The boys were more or less on their own.  Somehow the trauma of his parent’s divorce, the trials of puberty and his natural reticence combined to make him a loner through most of junior high and high school, shy to the point of being dumbstruck at times.  But Claire brought him out of himself. 

            “What are you going to do after you graduate?” Claire asked Stan one day in his kitchen, soon after they had started spending time together. 

            “I don’t know,” Stan said, looking suddenly confused.  Famous for his lack of conversational prowess, he would say “I don’t know” often, keeping his answers to a few words.  “What about you?” 

            “Well, my mom wants me to be a professor like her.” 

            “You’d be a great one, with all those books that you’ve read,” Stan said encouragingly.  Claire had read every classic children’s book by the time she was ten: Treasure Island, Alice In Wonderland, Little Women, The Lord Of The Rings; then she moved on to Joyce, Tolstoy, even D.H. Lawrence.  Her mother had instilled a love of literature in Claire and a passion for stories that had defined her life till now. 

            “But I like to sing,” Claire said, timidly.  She was taking guitar lessons, learning folk songs and had even written a few songs herself. 

            “Well, you’re good at that, too,” Stan offered.  He loved to listen to her high pure singing.  “Maybe you can do both?” 

            “My parents are pressuring me to go to Stanford.  I just don’t know if I want to go to college right away.  I want to travel.  There’s so much I want to do,” Claire said in frustration. 

            Stan held a five inch long, thin piece of unfinished mahogany steadily in his left hand as he applied glue deftly to the long, narrow protrusions at the base of it.  He then pressed it solidly into a larger piece, blew softly on it, and examined it intently, making sure the glue held. 

            “Are you listening?” Claire asked. 

            “I’m listening,” Stan answered.  “I am!” he added, noticing the look that she gave him. 

            Claire had this way of raising her eyebrows that seemed to say, “Oh, yeah, sure”!  But she had discovered that whenever Stan said he was listening, he really was.  He was always able to repeat what she had just said, even add something insightful to it.  He didn’t talk much but when he did, he showed remarkable understanding.  Claire had never known anyone who could listen as well as Stan before. 

            Stan leaned back to view the latest addition to the model that he had been working on while they were talking.  It was going to be a Greek Trireme, a “state of the art” fighting ship in the days of the Greek Empire.  The Trireme became famous in the Battle of Salamis in 480 BC, when the Greeks destroyed the Persian Fleet. 

            “Did I tell you I’m in a band?” Claire asked, coyly. 

            “What?” 

            “I’ve been singing back-up for a band that plays at the pizza parlor.  It’s really fun.” 

            “You have?  When did you start doing that?” 

            “I’ve done it for the last two weekends.  They pay me twenty-five dollars a night!” Claire said, obviously proud of her new found ability to make money from singing.           

            “That’s great,” Stan said, looking up from his work and returning Claire’s knowing smile.  They both laughed. 

            Such was the nature of the beginning of their relationship.  Claire, the youngest in her family, finally had someone who would listen to her; a sensitive, sympathetic male who cared, unlike her father and brothers.  And Stan was becoming more confident every day, blossoming in the glow of Claire’s encouragement and attention.  But the certainty of change was soon to affect even this seemingly perfect, mutually empowering association. 

            Claire had been successful, up until now, in ignoring the intentions of the considerable gaggle of suitors who strove for her attention.  She’d even stayed home from her Junior Prom, rejecting several invitations, because Stan was too shy to go.  But when, at an open mike night in which she was performing, a handsome musician sang a song that he had written, a song that stirred her with its beauty and truth, one thing soon led to another, and Claire suddenly became much more busy than she had been previously. 

            She answered her phone less often and the messages that Stan left weren’t returned.  But who could blame Claire?  She was being swept forward on a wave of emotion toward what seemed like an increasingly brightening future and Stan was left in the lurch.  Their senior year passed with only an occasional embarrassing moment when they would pass in the hallway or catch each other’s eye at a school function.  They were both able to move on with a semblance of equanimity and grace.  Still, Stan’s heart was broken.             

                                    *          *          *          *          *          *          *          * 

             A tall, handsome, muscular young man drove his car through the streets of Berkeley, California looking for an address on the computer printout in his hand, and, noticing the spot that he was looking for, he pulled into an open parking space in a lot next to the Freight And Salvage folk club.  He paused for a few minutes before turning off the ignition and setting the parking brake, listening to a CD that was playing on the player in his car.  The strong, sultry female voice awakened waves of emotion in him as he heard her sing:

           “I fell asleep down by a stream 

            And there I had the strangest dream 

            That down by Brennan’s Glenn there grows  

            A briar and a rose…..”           

            The song was Celtic-sounding, a cappella.  The woman’s voice followed the song’s simple melody effortlessly, adding trills and melodic lines here and there that made it sound hauntingly ancient.              

            “I picked the rose one early morn 

            I pricked my finger on a thorn 

            It had grown so tall its winding wove 

            The briar ‘round the rose” 

            The warm spring twilight faded from the young man’s consciousness leaving only an awareness of his thoughts and the voice, which captured him completely. 

            “I tried to tear them both apart 

            I felt a bullet through my heart 

            All dressed up in Spring’s new clothes 

            A briar and a rose” 

            It had been ten years since Stan had graduated high school.  He had gone to Junior College right away, taking the required courses and doing well enough to make the honor roll, when one semester he decided to take an art class as an elective.  It was a sculpture class, introducing the students to various types of media, allowing space for experimentation.  Stan’s love for constructing things, working with his hands, was reawakened by the teacher, who was an inspiration, being a working artist herself.  Creating sculpture became his one passionate means of expression.  Now he was a successful sculptor, living in New York.  He had come back out to the west coast to look into a commission that he’d been offered. 

            “And when I’m buried in my grave 

            Tell me so I may know 

            That tears may fall to make love grow 

            The briar and the rose” 

                                    *          *          *          *          *          *          *          * 

There was a knock at Claire’s dressing room door.  Road-weary, she stood up slowly, set down her guitar, walked absentmindedly to the door and opened it. 

            “Claire, uh, Hi.  Someone asked me to give this to you,” said the young man who was the stage manager and all around go-fer for The Freight.  Claire opened the door wider to let him in and, when she did, the young man walked over to the dressing table, set the object down and started to leave. 

            “Wait. Who was it?  Did they give their name?” Claire asked, incredulous. 

            “No.  I asked but they said that you would understand.  Tall guy, handsome…..” the young man’s voice trailed off as he made his way out the door and down the hallway. 

            Claire looked at the sculpture on the dressing room table.  It was of a single rose with a vine from a briar bush wrapped around it.  Finely represented in rich detail, in bronze, it was resting on a luminous marble base.  She immediately recognized the symbols as being those that she had sung about in one of the songs on her first album, many years ago. 

            “The Briar and the Rose,” she half thought, half whispered to herself. 

            She shut the door, walked up to the sculpture and slowly opened the card that was attached to it.

                 Whenever I look back at that day, I always picture the three police cars and canine unit winding their way up the shaded mountain road bumper to bumper, as if connected.  Making their way through the tall stands of redwoods, the creek gullies and shale hillsides of the Santa Cruz Mountains, I imagine them moving slowly, deliberately, gliding along the asphalt tributary like a menacing shiny black water snake.  I guess that’s because I had been taught to think of the police as co-villains in my particular situation, a tool being used to try and tear me away from my church.  Knowing what I know now, I’m not sure that was the case. 

                 My father, Sean Haverill, was in one of the squad cars, probably looking out the window and carrying on a one way conversation with the patrolmen; perhaps drumming his fingers against the cool, institutional grey simulated leather upholstery of the patrol car door.  My father was in his early forties back then; tall, clean shaven, with thinning black hair.  Definitely a type A personality, he was always fidgeting, anxiously working the angles in his head, a coiled up spring of a man.  Whenever anyone asked him what he did he’d say, “I sell nuts and bolts,” relishing the words.  He’d stare expressionlessly at whomever had asked, looking for their reaction.  Then he’d break into a semi-sincere salesman’s smile and pat them on the back or give them a wink.  He did, in fact, sell nuts and bolts and he was good at it, too!  

                Back then mom, dad, my brother and I lived in a pleasant area of San Jose in a two thousand square foot house with a two car garage, on a tree lined street.  My brother, Brian, was much older than I, the child of my dad’s first marriage, but we got along great.  Brian’s passion was playing all kinds of sports and I would always go to his games.  Dad coached Brian’s little league team, entertaining his players for hours with stories about the ballplayers he’d known growing up in East Oakland.  An expert embellisher of yarns, he’d spin tales of the players from the A’s and the Raiders he had hung out with in those days.  Back then the ballplayers were different; not so arrogant, more like regular people, not making the millions that they make nowadays and my dad had known a lot of them or at least he let on that he did. 

                My mom, Jenna, was in her late thirties, beginning to gain a little weight, but with a calmness and genuineness that tended to draw others to confide in her, to want to be her friend.  She was a good listener.  She had been in the military and was very practical, analytical in fact.  There was something of the drill sergeant in my mom.  My parents sometimes fought late at night, in their bedroom, when they thought my brother, Brian, and I were asleep; my mom’s voice piercing, accusative, my father trying to calm her down.  I was young, maybe four.  When things escalated to the point where they started fighting during the day Brian would take me outside and play catch with me.  That went on for quite a while. 

              Then, suddenly, they began arguing less and less.  Soon they hardly argued at all, and, finally, their rows almost stopped.  I never knew exactly what caused their truce but I was thankful for it even so.  I suppose, looking back on it, their sudden turn around had something to do with the church that we started going to.  Mom and Dad had never taken us to church before.  We’d gone a few times with our grandparents, on Christmas and Easter.   But now, every Sunday, the four of us would dress up, load into the car and make the trip up into the hills above Los Gatos to go to service.  Westside Christian Church sat on a large parcel of property that was leased from the Jesuits.  It had been a Jesuit Seminary, with gardens that had been beautiful but now were overgrown.  There was a small lake, classroom buildings, a chapel and long stretches of lawn that the church was trying to keep up. 

             When we arrived on the grounds we’d park our car and walk up one of the brick walkways that led to the quaint chapel in the rear of property.  The interior of the chapel was beautifully paneled in rich, dark hardwoods.  Everyone was so friendly, hugging each other, smiling and plying each other for the latest news.  There would be a hum of cordiality over the whole place that was warmhearted and alluring.  Then the music would start and everyone would sit down.  Mom, dad and Brian would stay in the service but, after the singing, I would be gathered up with all the other young kids to go to Sunday school.  It was fun!  They told us stories using big, oversized flash cards with bright colorful pictures on them, taught us songs and sometimes taught us movements that went along with them.  My teachers were kind and encouraging.  We’d always have snacks, vanilla wafers or graham crackers, with apple juice in Dixie cups.  I asked Jesus into my heart soon after I started going there. 

              When the police arrived Bonnie was the first to see them.  It was amazing that she happened to have been sitting on the recliner in the living room just then, looking absently out the window at the driveway and the Christmas Trees planted in a field beyond it.  Bonnie was twenty, an attractive brunette, her slender body like that of a dancer, with a brisk self confidence and a sweet smile.  When she saw the police her heart stopped.  She couldn’t believe it.  Then, gathering her wits, she went looking for Andrew, my mom and me.  

              Andrew and Bonnie had been married for a little over two years by then.  Bonnie had been a wild teenager, confounding her parents, even running away from home at one point, causing the elders of the church to do some detective work to find her.  After questioning some of her friends they finally tracked her down.  There was a big scene.  A deacon’s meeting was called and Bonnie was brought before the church.  Somehow during the meeting it was suggested that what she needed was a good spanking.  Even though she was seventeen at the time, she was paddled in front of the elders and, after a lot of anger and a lot of tears she finally repented and was restored to the church and her family.  Now she was a happily married woman.  No one guessed that later, the story of her paddling, when it came out in the papers, would cause the scandal that it did.   

              Andrew and I were in the family room playing one of the computer games he’d bought when the police cars drove up.  Also twenty, Andrew was tall, handsome, dark, and when he got the better of me in one of our games he’d break out into the silliest laugh you’d ever heard.  At first he had started buying computer games just to give me something to do during all the time I had to myself.  Spending so much time indoors, without much to occupy myself except to read or watch TV, I was going crazy.  But by now he was buying them for himself, breathlessly waiting for the next one to come out, the one with the latest graphics, the coolest look.  He was hooked.  We were both engrossed in our game, trying to kill as many of the enemy as we could, when Bonnie whisked into the family room and told us that the police were there. 

               We’d talked about it, we’d planned for it in great detail, but I guess we never thought that it would ever happen.  It took a while for it to sink in.  Together the three of us nervously marched to our bedroom, found mom and communicated to her what was happening in a bazaar mixture of adrenalin induced wild whispers and hand signals.  We had to move quickly.  We’d long ago decided to regularly hide any visible evidence of our existence from the house, storing things in their predetermined hiding places, so that the place gave the appearance that only two people, Bonnie and Andrew, lived there.  Gathering a small package of basic things we’d prepared ahead of time, we quietly rushed down the hall to the master bedroom, almost falling over each other, and opened the closet. Then mom and I slipped through the trap door that had been expertly built in the back wall of the closet and Bonnie deftly closed it behind us.  There was no evidence whatsoever that the rear paneling in the closet had been altered.  Inside the hiding place were supplies to last us a week.  

               Three of the officers quickly and quietly dispersed around the perimeter of the house while two others moved toward the front door.  Bonnie and Andrew, walking hurriedly to answer the doorbell, tried to compose themselves.  After Bonnie inquisitively looked through the peephole, both of them took deep breaths as if on cue, then Andrew opened the door.  The plan was to try and stall the officers as long as they could to make sure that we were safely settled into our perch.  

                 “Hello, can I help you?” Andrew said as calmly as he could to the officer who had rung the doorbell.  We could hear their conversation through the walls from where we were. 

                  “Excuse me, sir, but we’re looking for a child who has been abducted, James Haverill.  Do you know who James is?” 

                 “Yes, we know who he is but we haven’t seen him for over two years, ever since his mother disappeared.”  Andrew was trying, with difficulty, to be as nonchalant as he could. 

                 “Well, I’m sorry sir, but do you think you could let us look around.  We have a search warrant.  We’ve received reports that he might be living here,” the officer said, without emotion. 

                 “Okay, if you want to, but we haven’t seen him in a long time,” Andrew said, opening the front door to the officers. 

                 Safe in our hideout, still as statues, the only sound we made was the faint, restrained sound of our breathing.  Our hearts pounded wildly though, blood pulsating through our temples with each thump.  The officers in charge of the canine unit opened the entrance to the crawl space under the house and sent their dogs in.  We could hear them barking and sniffing, at one point gathered directly underneath us.  I don’t know why they didn’t start yelping that they’d found us.  Inexplicably the dogs just moved on to another area under the house.  

                 The two officers who had come in the front door searched methodically through each room, examining everything, opening drawers, looking behind curtains, under beds.  My father sat in the patrol car.  I’m sure they were afraid of what he might do if they let him out.  It was hours before the officers and the dogs had searched the house and the whole area, gathered a few pieces of evidence, and questioned Bonnie and Andrew to their satisfaction.  Just before they drove off I could hear my father loudly cursing Bonnie and Andrew. 

                  “What the hell have you done with him, you bastards!” 

                  Years earlier, after my fifth birthday, when the time finally came for me to start school, my mom and dad had decided to enroll me in the Christian school that the church was starting.  I would be one of the first students.  While my dad reluctantly supported us, my mom enthusiastically volunteered to take me in the mornings and pick me up in the afternoon.  It was a big commitment for her, having to deal with the bumper to bumper traffic and all that time spent on the road, but she believed in what the church was doing and wanted to support the new school. 

                  I started to see the world in a whole new way.  Everything I was taught was from a Christian perspective.  The Garden of Eden, the Flood, Noah’s Ark, the Twelve Disciples all became as real to me as everyday life.  The Bible became my main textbook.  I see now that, at my young age, my mind was subtly being molded to perceive everything in life through a buffed and polished evangelical lens.  And my mom started to change, too.  Her faith, as a new convert, was an intoxicating thing for her.  She started to show signs of a zeal that I’d never seen in her before.  But my dad still held back.  Maybe it was his streetwise upbringing or his basic skepticism, but, try as he might, he never really became a true believer, at least not like the other true believers at Westside Christian Church. 

            Mom and I had miraculously escaped the police a few times in the past, before finding a home at Bonnie and Andrew’s, but this last episode had been too close.  Pastor Gloria decided that she would wait for a week or two, till things got back to normal, then she would call a special deacon’s meeting at her home in order to pray about what we should do next.  It was obvious that we were no longer safe where we were.  

            Pastor Gloria was in her early fifties, tiny, a smart dresser, her long, completely grey hair worn either tucked up into a stylish hat, arranged to fall to her shoulders or put together in a sort of Princess Leia look.  She had been a talented painter and a New Age leader, a guru of sorts, until Jesus appeared to her one day and told her to read the Bible.  Now the small group of disciples who had started gathering in her home after her conversion had grown into a full-fledged church, with her as the pastor. 

            As the time for the meeting approached, cars could be seen climbing up the driveway and finding parking places.  Gloria and her husband, Gary, lived in house farther up into the Santa Cruz Mountains than the church.  They had remodeled an old barn into a rustic, but stunningly beautiful home.  Couples emerged from cars carrying Bibles, making their way to the house resting on an elevated part of the property, surrounded by redwoods.  No one said too much.  There was always a solemn tone to these special meetings.  Gloria and her husband had smuggled Jenna and I into their house earlier in the day so that when each couple arrived there was an exclamation of joy at the sight of us.  It wasn’t often that we were able to be a part of the deacons meetings. 

            When everyone had arrived, each couple either sitting on a couch, a chair or the floor, there would usually be a period of quiet as everyone waited for Gloria to speak.  She was the unquestioned leader of every meeting, the one everyone looked to.  

            “Well……….help Lord!” Gloria said finally.  It was a saying that she had adopted whenever she was at the end of her wits.  It was as if to say, “Oh, God!  What now?”   

            “Let’s pray,” she finally suggested. 

            There was a long silence while everyone collected their thoughts. Then voices slowly arose out from the circle of people, each person taking turns praying short but heartfelt prayers, prayers asking for our protection, for wisdom on what we should do next.  It went on that way for about ten minutes.   Then Gloria led everyone in the Lord’s Prayer.  

            All of us knew what we were there for.  We needed to hear from God.  So people started opening up their Bibles.  They did it slowly, reverently.  Some would open, read what was on the page, then open them up again, obviously not getting anything that they felt addressed the situation the first time.  Whenever the deacons gathered together at a meeting like this they used a form of what some people called “bible roulette” but, to us, it was an act of loving devotion to God.  We would all open our Bibles prayerfully asking for an answer to whatever question we were concerned with, looking for the solution on the page that we had chosen.  And if the page we had opened to didn’t seem to hold anything relevant to the question, we were free to open again.  When everyone had had a chance to open their Bibles and scan the pages we took turns sharing what we got. 

           “Who wants to go first?” Gloria asked the group. 

           “I will,” said Thomas, one of the more respected deacons. “I opened to Isaiah 30:19-21.”  Then he read the scripture out loud, in a respectful tone.  “O people of Zion, who live in Jerusalem, you will weep no more. How gracious he will be when you cry for help!  As soon as he hears, he will answer you.  Although the Lord gives you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, your teachers will be hidden no more; with your own eyes you will see them.  Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, "This is the way; walk in it." 

            Everyone in the group was grateful.  God was speaking to them.  They were sure He would have an answer for their situation. 

            “Who’s next?” said Gloria, motioning to the couple sitting beside Thomas. 

            “I don’t really have anything,” the man said. 

            Sometimes, when there wasn’t an obvious answer on the page we turned to, we’d pass, opting for someone else to read.  It was all very spiritual, mystical, untainted by the uncertainty and ambiguity of the human intellect.  At least that was how Pastor Gloria looked at it. 

            “I opened up to Luke 13:31,” the wife said.  

            “Go ahead.” Gloria nodded. 

            She lifted her Bible up closer to her so she could read it in the dim light.  "At that time some Pharisees came to Jesus and said to him, "Leave this place and go somewhere else. Herod wants to kill you," she read. 

            “That’s interesting,” Gloria said in a serious tone, “That’s exactly what I’ve been getting in my quiet time.  I’ve been thinking that they should leave.  Maybe Sean’s planning another attack.” 

            Someone raised their hand and excitedly said, “That speaks to what I got. I didn’t understand it at first.  It’s Genesis 13:1.”  She read unhurriedly, reverently: "Then Abram went up from Egypt, he and his wife and all that he had, and Lot with him, to the South." 

            “To the south……” Gloria mused, “To the south……….?”  

            There was a long silence as everyone thought and prayed. 

            Then Gloria remembered something, “Jenna, doesn’t your mother live in Texas?  Do you think that she might be willing to help you?” 

            “I’m sure she would.  But how would we get there?” my mom asked. 

            After another period of silence Gloria said boldly, looking around the room, “Who can take enough time off to drive them?”  She always acted quickly and decisively when she was sure God had spoken. 

            An older couple, Jacob and Martha, raised their hands, “I’ve got some vacation time I can take,” Jacob said.  “We were planning on going away for a week or so anyway.” 

            Then the practical details of our proposed journey were discussed.  When would we leave?  What would we tell my grandma when we got there?  More scripture was shared. 

            Finally Martha spoke up, “I want to share what I got,” she said, looking at my mom and I.  “I got John 14:18: “I will not leave you as orphans; I will come to you." 

            Everyone slowly gathered around mom and I; some of the women laying their hands on my mom, some of the men laying hands on me, and we all began to pray in tongues.  After a long time of prayers and tears, it was decided that we would leave early the next morning. 

            During the years before my mom and I disappeared, my father began to believe more and more strongly that his family was caught up in a cult and he secretly started to make plans to leave the church.  But whenever he tried to talk to my mom about it, still only vaguely suggesting we might go to church somewhere else, she would fiercely rebuke him.  Meanwhile, Gloria’s teachings became more legalistic, more bizarre all the time.  She began to assert more and more control over people’s lives.  There were more incidents of corporal punishment meted out by the deacons, but this time to adults, arranged marriages, occasions when, on Gloria’s advice, couples sold their property and moved to the church grounds.  Some families had been divided into bitterly conflicting camps, those who’d stayed with the church and those who’d left. 

            One Sunday, in the middle of a service, my father had excused himself to go to the bathroom and never came back.  He tried to reconcile with my mom but she wouldn’t leave Westside.  He finally divorced her.  The courts were about to award him custody of me, my brother, Brian, having long since gone off on his own, when my mom, on the advice of Gloria, fled.  We lived in an apartment with fake ID’s for a while but were almost caught when our landlady saw our pictures on a poster that had been circulated around the area.  Then Bonnie and Andrew took us in. 

            Jacob and Martha drove their older station wagon around to the back of the house early the next morning and loaded the few possessions that we would take with us.  All night we’d made preparations and hadn’t gotten very much sleep.  My mom and I slipped out the back door of Gloria and Gary’s house and into the back of Jacob and Martha’s automobile.  Wrapped up in blankets, uncomfortably propped behind the front seats and covered with suitcases, we hoped no one would discover us on our journey.  

            At first we stayed at my grandma’s.  She was overjoyed to see that we were alright but petrified with fear of the police.  Then, as some of our relatives got wind of what was up, they helped us out financially and we were able to rent our own apartment.  Using her maiden name to get a new ID, my mom was able to get a job and I started going to school again.  I was a sophomore in high school.  I’d been keeping up my schoolwork all these years with the books that Westside had given us and, having always been a good student, I discovered that I wasn’t very far behind at all.   Everything was working out. 

           The friends that I made in Texas began to open my eyes to how the world had changed during the five years that I had spent underground.  The music was different, the styles, technology, everything had been transformed.  I realized that being so insulated, so paranoid and protected for such a long time, I had missed out on what a normal kid my age would have experienced.  It took some getting used to but my mom and I started to settle in to a semi-normal routine of school, work and a new church.  The new church was different than Westside.  The pastor encouraged his people to study and think for themselves.  The congregation treated us with grace and love. 

            Then one day, when I was seventeen years old, instead of going my usual way home after school I decided to walk into town.  I found a phone booth and called my father collect.  

            “Will you accept a collect call from James Haverill?” the operator said mechanically. 

            “Yeah, sure, of course,” my father almost shouted into the phone. 

            “Hello.” 

            “James?  Is it really you?  James?” my dad said. 

            “Dad?” I said longingly.   “I want to come home.”