Ignorance has wronged some races

And vengeance is the Lord's

If we aspire to share this space

Repentance is the cure

DC Talk

Prologue

I grew up in a very small farming town in California. My family, the Holts, owned a tiny farming business that they liked to call 'Holt Harvesters'. I thought it was the neatest thing, growing up on a big huge farm, with hills and so much land to run and play on. That was, however, until I grew old enough to work.

By the time I was five I was riding in the tractors with my father. I thought this was wonderful, too, sitting up high with my tiny car seat strapped to the huge armrests (which really aren't as big as I thought they were, but compared to the five-year-old me, those things were giants). Dad would sit there all day with me beside him in the tractor, telling me about everything around the farm and how this, that, and the other thing works. By the time I was eight, I knew just about how everything around the farm worked.

When I was eight I spent most of my time during the summers tagging along with Dad and Haley, my older sister, as they did things around the farm. That meant irrigating, hauling the irrigation pipes and hooking them together, and much, much more. One thing I loved was when gophers dug holes around the ditches and it would be like a big puzzle for the three of us, trying to figure out which hole went to which and trying to cave them in so water wouldn't leak out anymore. Little did I know that this was Dad's least favorite of all tasks. I had thought the entire thing was a game, when in fact we paid for all the water we got for the crops, and gophers meant losing at least a fourth of that water.

I was driving by my tenth birthday. No, not real driving, but going three miles per hour and pulling the irrigation pipe trailer behind me in the old beat up red truck. This was all on our property, with Haley and Dad throwing pipe off the trailer, one by one, and coming back to hook it all up later. I thought I was pretty important; sitting behind that great big wheel with the seat all scooted up so my feet could reach the petals.

Not until I was twelve did I learn how to shift geers, and by then I was a crazy driver, seeing how fast I could go and yet make a nice, complete, and gentle stop without knocking Haley or any pipes off the back of the trailer.

And throughout all those years, no matter how much work needed to be done or how badly I wanted to drive the red Ford truck, we got dressed in our neatest, nicest outfits to go to church. Mama would always click her tongue when we'd come home at eight, an hour before church started, all muddy and wet from irrigating with Dad.

Then there was that summer when I was thirteen, we'd all come in late at eight-thirty, barely in time for Mama to make us all proper. I already understood that moms and dads fought and that it was just a part of marriage. Mama was mad at Dad for some reason, and they fought about it on the way to church. I was too nervous to think about what they were arguing about.

That was the day I was supposed to play the piano for church, while offering was going on. As the Deer was both mine and Mama's favorite song, and I'd picked a beautiful, low version of it in B flat. I was excited and anxious, but my nerves were going crazy, and I almost felt sick to my stomach. Mama had taught me how to play and told me to be confident and that I'd do a good job, but nothing could calm my frazzled nerves.

And that was when it happened. Dad and Mama's raised voices brought my mind back to present. Dad wasn't paying attention to the road, and his eyes were on Mama. He was angry, and she was glaring right back at him. I didn't know what they were so worked up about.

A car horn blared. Dad swore and Mama gasped. Haley screamed. A flash of metal to my right. And then there was only black.

That was all I remembered, even though I strained to remember more. I replayed those moments over and over in my head. When I closed my eyes, it was like a movie, never stopping. When it came to the end, it would start all over again. When I drifted off to sleep, it would appear in my dreams. When I was trying to concentrate, it would fill my thoughts.

That and the image of Mama in the hospital bed. They'd tried to keep her alive, all of the doctors. We'd sat in the waiting room with pillows, books, things to do while waiting, staying the night sometimes. She was in the ER for a week with a head injury, several broken ribs, a shattered right arm, and worst of all, a fractured back.

I don't remember all of it. It was clear a few years ago, but the details have gotten fuzzy. But the very images of the accident and later the ones of Mama surrounded in the white hospital walls, those images stayed in my head, as clear as water and never leaving me. Like a mental picture book, I could flip through them any time with only a moment's notice. I still can, even though I choose not to.

I never played the piano again.