Second Chances, Richard French [good books for 8th graders .TXT] 📗

All my bones are out of joint.

“I can see you have a problem,” I said gin
gerly, inching toward a suggestion. “Please be patient while I work out a new theme. “I’m not the first to say so, but I see two ways of thinking about life, two paths, two conflicting strands that weave through history. The 4000 year old war in Mesopotamia that takes up half your film stands for the world that Sarah and Abraham left to lead lives of faith. Isin has had more successors than anyone can count, including the tyrant and his minions whom Roland and hundreds of others died fighting. The other path reaches us from Abraham and the promises God made to him that he would start a great nation of faithful people that would last forever, mostly invisible to history, and that abides by mercy, pardon, love, and faith. We don’t see this nation, but we feel its presence. Both paths will continue to the end of time. Then there will be only one.

The situation turned against Isin before long.
An enemy leader, as gifted as he,
Brought the Amorite tribes together.
Gungunum and his men pushed Isin back.
He lost the territory he’d gained.
The Amorites moved into Ur.
Crunch of armor,
Clink and clash of swords,
Shouts, dust, blood,
Clumps of bodies
On roads and in pastures.
Gungunum took prisoners,
Sacked neighborhoods, set fire to marketplaces.
Ur was in worse shape after several years of fighting
Than before Isin began his crusade.
An Amorite killed his oldest son
Ten leagues from the palace.


Neither Jocelyn nor Howard said anything for half a minute or so – a long silence when you’re on the phone. I thought they might be taking in what I said, but it didn’t sound like it. Civilized folks can be the most wounding, because we suppress our firepower and speak in driblets, leaving our victims to guess what’s on our minds. Once in a while, we unleash a verbal thunderbolt that rattles someone’s nervous system.
“I can’t count on Jocelyn to do one thing she promises.” Howard’s voice was rough and weary.
“No one could ever be reliable,” Jocelyn said, “who has to live near your superior attitude.”
An acid flow of recrimination swept down the phone line.
“I wonder about your judgment,” Jocelyn snapped, creating an effect you rarely see in her work, but when the situation calls for it, the chill she creates can stun an audience. “You’re the one who said Roland should go into the service. I wonder if you’re trying to get rid of me, too.”
“I resent that,” Howard said. “She’s always making comments like that.”
“Not always,” Jocelyn said. “I didn’t mean what I said just then. I’m sorry.”


They found a hill on the third day. Abraham bade
His servant wait till they’d said their prayers.
“We have the fire and the wood,” the boy observed
When they were halfway up, “but I still don’t see
A goat to sacrifice.”
“The Lord will find the goat he wants,” said Abraham.

My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth

“At least you’re talking to each other,” I said, guarded, not sure if their piercing style would lead to plus or minus. I asked them to meander with me again. “Suppose we’re not happy that daily living roughs us up and we want some rest for mind and nerves. Can we find a crossroads where earth and spirit intersect? A link that joins them?”
“What on earth are you babbling about?” Howard growled.
“I imagine Sarah and Abraham had days like this,” Jocelyn mused in a tone of lamentation, though I doubted she was as resigned to fate as she pretended.
“Not just days with us.” I pictured an angry look flicker across Howard’s face. “A whole marriage.”
“You know that isn’t so, Howard, dear. We’ve had good years.”

Many of his own people said that
Isin was cruel and vindictive.
A few in his entourage plotted against him.
What inner error led him to war?
Why did he lose?
He grieved for the suffering of his people.
The deaths of children touched him.


Howard and Jocelyn seemed to have released all their bile. “What do you mean by a link?” Sarah asked.
I’ve always been shy at speaking about my faith. I shrink back – ashamed? – because plenty of folks think poorly of you if you mention the Cross. I know their arguments – a crutch, you can never prove it, primitive blood theology, a fading way of life. Why do I bother with what heaven’s critics say? It’s because I live in the world. I want friends, not people pushing me away. Then, too, I’m partly of the same mind as they. I found the courage of the faithful at least for a few minutes, though, and said Heaven can take away what we love the most and also heal us.
“That has nothing to do with our problem,” Howard said, perturbed again. “I think I’ll call a taxi.”
“You don’t understand how desperate your situation is,” I pushed him. “You’ll dry up if you don’t learn to forgive.” (That goes for you and me, too, Mary Beth.)

They made a wooden altar when they reached the top.
“The Lord gave promises concerning you,”
Abraham said, “That he intends to keep.
If I take your life, he’s testing me and
Will raise you from the dead.” But then:
“Oh, Abraham,” he heard a whisper in his ear.
“Yes, here I am,” he said. “Don’t lift your hand
Against the boy.” He felt his heart swell.

They have pierced my hands and my feet.

Howard settled down. “Aside from work, Jocelyn and I are helpless at managing basics – when it comes to ordinary life, we’re members of the audience.” This remark surprised me, since I’d never known Howard to criticize himself.
“You’ll never find anything better,” Jocelyn said, “than a steady, warm, loving friendship between a man and a woman.”
“I thought we were getting used to separate roads,” Howard countered and then said to me. “You should come to see us. Talk to our director and help Jocelyn and me hash things out.”
Their stupid problem was starting to irritate me.


“I had a good beginning,” Isin said.
“Education, training, ideals.
I looked for projects the people would like.
I wanted Ur’s greatness to shine.
I’d discovered that life is flawed: famine,
Drought, children dying in misery.
War seemed the only way out.”
Isin shifted from anger to despondency.
Amorite soldiers took Ur street by street.
Isin and his people were trapped.
He never imagined life in the presence of God,
Who would have shown him a better destiny
Than the one he thought up on his own.

I raised my voice, a show of indignation Howard didn’t expect. Neither did I. “If you’re so hard-headed that you can’t see that Jocelyn wants to start over with you, maybe you really should break up.” I slipped, too, from the standard of compassion I’d set for myself.
“I like what Howard suggested,” Jocelyn said in a quiet voice, “that you fly out to see us.”
“We should get some sleep,” Howard said. “We need to report to the set early tomorrow.”
“If nothing else,” Jocelyn added, “our arguments will help us bring life to Sarah and Abraham, who must have had their ups and downs.”
“They had faith, too,” I reminded them.
“They never actually lost their son,” Jocelyn pointed out with a sharp tang of bitterness. “Our problem is much harder. Grief empties us. And constant reminders of Roland in this film.”
“The sort of calamity it’s hard to get over,” I agree. “I like to remember that God lost a Son in a war, too, then brought him back to life. He promises he won’t forsake anyone who trusts his power to restore, that he will create another, better world that he wants to fill with people eager to follow him.”
“Come to see us,” Howard growled. I heard a click.


Still lashed upon the wooden altar,
Isaac told his father to look behind him.
A ram caught by its horns was hidden in a thicket.
The angel spoke again – about blessings,
Descendants, heritage, and faith.
A sigh escaped the old man’s soul
He freed his son, who trembled from their brush
With God, and killed the ram instead.
While homeward bound, he spoke about
The work that Isaac soon would do,
And seeing Sarah on the road, he waved;
She ran to greet her family home.
“He kept his promise after all,
As I prayed he would.”

I can count all my bones.

I booked a flight and phoned the film’s director. I got to Beirut the next Monday and was on the set hours later. I watched a scene that featured a mass of dying soldiers in which Jocelyn and Howard didn’t have much to say.
I saw more aimless running around than I liked, irreverent and frantic because none of the company believed that what they were doing was vital – just work to finish quickly that had no profundity or significance.
The director called for multiple retakes, adjusting different details each time so that the scene would gleam when the film was done. Crew and cast were exhausted and tempers short until the director said he was satisfied, at which point actor-corpses got up from the ground. Someone made a crack about a resurrection.
I helped the director with the next-to-last scenes in Ur, which go something like this:

Gungunum and his troops occupy the city.
The cameras show stone buildings
With ornate carvings,
People strutting or dragging their feet,
No blood on the streets
Or gold and silver either.
Gungunum speaks to the people
From a balcony. He looks
Strong, proud, but not invincible.
It’s beyond the film, but his successors
Failed to hold his conquests.
Hammurabi came in later.
The whole world knows about him.

When the film comes out, the last sequence will show Sarah, Abraham, and Isaac making good lives in Canaan, still pretty much on their own under the guidance of the God they never saw but who spoke to them with comfort and strength.
Turning, I saw Jocelyn and Harold beside me. “No wonder they left Ur,” Jocelyn said. “To find a better way than politics and war. Not that they escaped for long...”
She fumbled for words – rare for her. Howard helped her. “They were promised abundance. They’d start a great nation. A blessing to others.”
I wanted to bring up my metaphor again before we parted –