The Lord's Acre by David Armand

Author:David Armand
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Texas Review Press
Published: 2020-08-01T00:00:00+00:00

19

As we walked back to our truck in the woods, the road steaming beneath our shoes from the rain, I stayed a few steps behind my dad so that I could see what Darryl had handed to me in the recycling shed. I couldn’t wait. I just had to know. So I reached into my back pocket and pulled out the wad of damp paper.

Folded up in my hand was a twenty-dollar bill. There was also a tract that had the same picture and writing as the one that the lady at the fair had handed to me. I had thrown that one away in the ditch as my dad and I left the fair that night, but here I was looking at it again: the same colorful wording, the same slightly unfocused picture of the man with the thick brown beard and long hair. His arms open, his face looking peacefully skyward. His eyes seemed to follow you as you moved the tract around in your hands.

Beneath his photograph, though, was slightly different wording from the other tract I had been given. The words were still italicized or bolded in what seemed strange places for emphasis. It said, “Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you REST.—Matthew 11:28.” Then in a smaller font below that, but in red this time instead of yellow: “Sundays @ 10am.”

I didn’t remember if the tract I had gotten last time had this information on it, but here it was, below the day and time of service: the name of the church, its address, and phone number. I’m sure it had been there on the other tract, but I just hadn’t noticed it then. I hadn’t needed to. Back then—just a couple of weeks ago—we had a place to live, had food to eat. And I had thrown that tract away in the ditch. Now we were homeless and near starving. And the words on the paper seemed more significant somehow.

The church, it said, was here in Angie, not far from where we were living in the woods in my dad’s truck. It was called Light of His Way.

“Dad?” I said, stopping on the gravel shoulder of the road and putting the tract back into my jeans pocket. He stopped walking, turned around.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” I said. “I have some money.” I didn’t know how else to say it other than to just be direct and see how he reacted.

He looked at me. “What?”

“That man at the junkyard—Darryl—he gave me twenty bucks.”

“He did?” My dad’s face seemed to change, as though I had flicked on a switch, bathing the room it was in with warm soft light.

“Yeah,” I said. “Maybe we can use it to buy some food.”

“He gave you twenty dollars?”

“Yes, sir.”

He stared at me for a while longer. I couldn’t tell if he was going to make me walk all the way back to the junkyard and return the money, if he’d just snatch it from

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.