At First Sight

PROLOGUE

Life and the night were equally dark. The overpowering light display down the hill from Harry Wright was an incredible denial of the former.

Looking down on the football field as two teams postured for the opening kickoff, Harry quickly reaffirmed the next step his life must take.

All his dreams for rising above the commonplace life to which he had been born resided somewhere down there, two hundred yards away, where a school band and throngs of fans praised the heroic, man-like strides of a few dozen boys, and where a couple of men, sent and empowered by unidentified colleges, waited to see the confirming signs of those on whom they might bestow rewards.

Harry would not be one of them.

Why? Because of a silly decision: to wait for love at first sight.

Harry shook his head at his naiveté. He had been a sitting duck, the happily unsuspecting victim of a culture’s cruelest tormentors: young peers. He might as well have pinned a target on his back. Kick me. Make fun of me. Ruin my life.

And now that, too – the dream of love at first sight – had scattered like the fuzzy seeds of a dandelion blown away with a little boys’ wishes.

Two dreams destroyed for the price of one.

Was this God’s way of saying, No, you don’t have the right to demand love at first sight?

To destroy all hopes and shut down all options?

How could he live with the devastation of his hope and dreams, the reversal of his desired path, as he stood at life’s virtual threshold? That was the great unspoken question Harry had for God.

How, Lord? How can I proceed without hope?

That unverbalized cry stood like a monument on the desolate, storm-driven ground where his dreams had so recently dwelled. All the while, opposing forces fought for control of the monument.

On the one side, a power that seemed to call weakly and from a distance in the voices of his father and Mahlon Harmon: Don’t worry; just trust God!

On the other, the laughing voices of a multitude – the loudest of which belonged to the trio of Bobby Garrett, Dolores Bowles and Calla Culpepper – crying, Nothing will ever be good and right again; all is lost; cast away your foolish restraints and do to others what we have done to you!

But these thoughts and aches Harry could not articulate at the moment. He only knew he was caught in circumstances that dictated a single next step, only one act that he could see before him to perform.

A whistle pierced the air two hundred yards away and caught Harry away from his thoughts. He heard the drums roll and watched the kicker approach the ball. The whomp of the mighty kick resounded in his gut, as adrenaline attempted to rise into his blood, for the ball should have been sailing toward him.

He turned the ignition key. The pain of being where he was had reached its peak and now he could not watch.

Only one path lay before him, and Harry knew it was time to go. He backed away from the spot and drove into the darkness.

Chapter One

Harry, Harry, Harry, his mother would have cautioned, shaking her head. Just trust God, Sweetheart.

But then if she had been there, maybe Harry would not have been in the frame of heart to make the decision he did. After all, it was the memory of his mother that made Harry Wright dare to dream he would fall in love at first sight.

If someone he trusted had possessed the foresight and wisdom to reveal the path that lay ahead, doing so might have spared Harry much anguish. But then, who could know his decision would bring him to the point of death, especially after denying himself so much, losing so very much, in order to persist in such a quixotic and antediluvian dream?

Of course, Harry – being, an anachronism of sorts in the modern thinking of 1960s America, a pure heart without the pretensions and affectations of his peers, and being free from the polluted idea that only certain things in narrow troughs of thought are possible – might have paid no more attention to cautions than he did to the ridicule of his supposed friends.

If it is possible to find a reason for the direction of his path, you could say it began the night in April, 1963, when Harry’s mother, Janie Wright, lay in a hospital bed, covers pulled neatly to her shoulders, dying. She might have been asleep, except that her skin was pallid and her breathing barely perceptible in the faint rising of her chest. Her right arm lay outside the blanket to accommodate intravenous attachments at her wrist and forearm. The ceiling lamp was off and the blinds closed, leaving her room dark except for the dim light of a lamp fixed over her bed that cast a golden pool upon her upper torso.

At the edge of the light pool, Harry’s father, Jim Wright, lifted his head from his hands and rubbed his eyes. In his lap lay a thin, brightly wrapped package bound with shiny purple ribbon.

He moved the gift aside and reached cautiously toward his wife. The backs of his fingers touched her cheek ever so gently, lovingly, and glided slowly along the graceful curve to her chin. He leaned close and placed a kiss on her lips, then drew back far enough to see if her eyes moved, if her lips responded, if – anything.

From an uncomfortable chair against the opposite wall where Harry’s long frame stretched, he opened his eyes at the sound of the movement and watched the kiss, viewing the scene as if it were a movie. It appeared very much like a sad movie he had seen at ten years old from the back seat of their Buick at a drive-in theater. He remembered being covered with a blanket against the night’s chill, and forcing his heavy eyes to watch to the end.

Maybe, his weary heart hoped, this was that movie. And maybe it would have a happy ending this time.

The two people before him could be images on a screen, couldn’t they? The starlet and her leading man, possessed of a love so intense and pure that it would – must – prevail. She could open her eyes at his kiss, then stretch and yawn. The man would tousle her hair and laugh at her sleepiness. She would sit up and announce it was her birthday – which it was, her forty-second – and that she could lie abed if she wanted on her birthday. And he, Harry, would say, Yeah, Dad, let her sleep!

And there would be more birthdays – uncountable times left to take her hand and hug it to his cheek and look into her eyes in a way that always made her smile and kiss him and call him My sweet boy!

Tears burned Harry’s eyes. Maybe he would awaken to find he had been at the drive-in theater and it had been that movie.

Except.

Except that the scene before him had been static for hours now, broken film waiting for someone to make repairs, to rethread it so the players could regain vitality.

And his stomach told him this was no movie. His stomach could not deny the distressing knowledge that had risen in his belly when he came into the hospital room two days earlier and saw her unconscious, yet restless in her sleep, a soft moan emanating from deep inside her. His was an ache of dread in the belly, of unfillable emptiness, of world-ending change. The look in his father’s eyes, when he turned and saw Harry, told him everything that his hope might have rejected.

The ache persisted, through the bits of sleep and surrealistic wakefulness that followed, hour on hour, until now.

He had cried his eyes dry and his mind numb. The silent good-bye kiss from his father could be celluloid and light. Harry wanted desperately to make it so, to hear the music rise and see the camera’s view tilt higher until the hospital room faded to darkness and the credits rolled downward over blackened screen.

Jim Wright pulled a wrinkled handkerchief from his shirt pocket and mopped his eyes. He lay his forehead in his hands again, his mouth opening and closing in mute wails for ears other than those immediately by.

For how long, Harry would not know. It was morning when he woke to a hand placed wearily on his head, and saw his father’s stooped figure backlit against a white gauzy curtain that prevented Harry from seeing his mother. He lurched forward to stand, only to be pulled into a hug that told him all. And Harry saw the unopened, purple-ribboned birthday gift in his father’s other hand. Somehow, his eyes had focused on the card tied to the ribbon, and the scripture verse written on it: "And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose."

That was the way it had ended for Janie Proden Wright, in April, 1963.

And that was where life for Harry Wright began to change direction.

Chapter Two

August, 1963

Maybe dog days were ending.

The Georgia heat had built to crescendo over August, and was just losing its oppressive weight, lifting slowly toward the sigh of September, when Harry began to see his Dad return to normalcy.

A breeze teased the tall loblolly pines momentarily and fled upward on flows of hot air wiggling off the newly paved parking lot of Mount Zion Baptist Church. A deep blue cloudless sky made the brilliant white of the freshly painted church practically blinding.

The building’s doors opened and piano music tumbled down the stairs and onto the asphalt lot. The young minister and his wife stood with their sides to the open doorway and smiled as a wave of families moved toward them from the interior. The minister took the hands of the members and guests, held them, and urged those leaving to come again. The flow of people continued in multiple hues down the broad concrete steps, across the black asphalt to station wagons and pickup trucks and the occasional sedan. A butterfly floated indecisively over the ripples of rising heat, and honeybees played in dulling gardenia bushes that ushered at the sides of the steps.

At seventeen, Harry was the same height as his Dad – about six feet – but at 225 pounds, his athletic build made him seem massive next to his father’s slim and sinewy construction. He wore tan slacks and a tie-less white dress shirt with the long sleeves rolled to the elbows, which he believed gave emphasis to his tanned and muscular forearms. He had been lifting weights since spring training in the hope of increasing his speed and strength; this last year of football would be his big opportunity to catch the eye of scouts for the best colleges. He had made All-Region tailback his first varsity year. Then when Coach Moon moved him to fullback after a growth spurt, he made All-State at that position in his junior year. Training for the fall season was to begin next day. It was the closest to hell he ever wanted to come. But he was ready. He would never have another senior year in high school.

Harry’s medium brown hair was trimmed short after the style of his favorite singing group, the Kingston Trio. Guys at school had at times snickered when he talked about that group instead of the Beatles. But for the last year, since his growth spurt, that talk was mostly behind his back. Still he didn’t bother saying he and his Dad also enjoyed going to the downtown theater to see old Bowery Boys movies on Saturdays, laughing at the comedy of Horace Debussy Jones, his favorite. Harry cared little what his peers thought. His Dad liked the Kingston Trio and the Bowery Boys. If Harry had to stand away from the crowd to maintain a link with his father, the crowd could go wherever they were headed without him.

He had made that decision shortly after his mother’s death, as his junior year ended. Life had changed a lot since then.

Harry’s grief for his mother grew to mature size over a dozen weeks and stopped, completing its growing season. Like a shrub in the corner of the yard, it became virtually unnoticed, though an undeviating part of his living landscape. His father needed him now.

Jim Wright’s grief showed signs of waning near summer’s end. Harry had made it his unspoken goal to be there for his father as much as possible, and he believed that made his father’s first summer as a widower much easier for him than it might otherwise have been.

Often this summer, Harry and Jim would put an album on the record player and sit on the porch to listen to the Trio, and even sing along when they could manage the cheer. Summer nights in rural Georgia were made for that kind of peace, where the lights of town were far enough away to encourage the stars, and the occasional passing car was not noise enough to silence the tree frogs, crickets and katydids. Since his mother’s death, Harry had come to place great value on the simpler, less frantic treasures about him. Consequently, he was an anomaly among his friends, who were unhappy unless they were swaddled by the beat and fervor of a culture breaking free from anything scented by tradition.

Today he smiled shyly at the pastor and shook his hand firmly, nodding as the minister remarked about his size.

Despite the pride in his son, Jim Wright could not hide his sad, moist eyes from the pastor. Shuffling behind his son, he took the pastor’s hand and attempted a smile.

Jim, said the young pastor, squinting in the brightness of noon. He allowed his own eyes to moisten in compassion. It was a one-word greeting and acknowledgement of the older man’s persistent pain. There were times that the Spirit brought to surface the things men dreaded to touch. Better the Spirit should do so.

The pastor reached an arm to Jim’s shoulder and pulled him close enough to hug the man stiffly.

Pastor, answered Jim, taking the offered hand. He returned the hug with his left arm and accepted the sympathetic smile of the pastor’s wife, then moved down the steps, removing his handkerchief from his hip pocket as he went. He dabbed at his eyes as he crossed the lot to the five-year-old Chevy pickup and slid onto the bench seat behind the wheel while Harry slid in the passenger side. It was their only vehicle now. Jim had held onto the Buick as long as he could before giving in to the commonsense need to sell it. Janie’s Buick.

Harry did not speak. He had tried to comfort his Dad many times, but he had come to know that though grief may arrive quickly, it does not necessarily depart that way. As for himself, he was too near tears over his father’s grief to speak. He would do well to wait until he got to his room to try to express to God what was in his heart. Why burden Dad with it, especially when his burden appeared to be gradually lifting?

I’ll stop by the grocery store, Son. Okay? Jim’s voice was steady and gentle.

Harry was relieved to see he was apparently over the worst of it today. Stopping by the grocery store on Sunday usually meant a break from the routine of leftovers or a TV dinner after church. There had been the mundane adjustments, after all. Once, Sunday dinners had been special. Mom had loved cooking big meals. Neighbors came over. Grandparents dropped by. But the two had not complained about the disappearance of Sunday meals. Sunday dinner was the least of their loss.

Yes, sir.

Maybe the butcher will make us a couple of Dagwoods. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?

Harry smiled at his father. He felt near equality with him when he could contribute to his happiness with mere understanding. Just a couple?

Oh, yeah, you need to keep up your strength, Jim winked. Okay, how about two?

Sounds good, Dad.

One of the family’s special treats had been to stop by the meat department of the grocery store and have the butcher make them sandwiches stacked high with roast beef, pickles, tomatoes, lettuce and mustard, stacked between at least three slices of rye bread for each sandwich.

The truck eased into the parking lot of the store, which had only in recent months begun to open on Sundays, and parked near the advertisement-stickered door.

I’ll be right back, said his father as he got out and closed the door. His voice seemed almost carefree now. The weight was definitely lifting.

At home, they ate their sandwiches in the living room and watched the news on the monochrome television set atop the coffee table. That was a concession toward moving on – Janie would not have allowed the TV on the coffee table – but Jim had acknowledged the indiscretion and said that if the men had to work things out their own way, it’s something Janie would have understood.

As they watched, the news anchor began talking about the escalation of fighting in Vietnam. During the previous year, American soldiers had edged away from merely an advisory role in South Vietnam and engaged in direct combat. The number of American servicemen in the country had grown to over 15,000 in recent months. And now, the president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem, had expelled a number of key Buddhists from government positions. When a news clip showed a Buddhist monk who had set himself on fire in protest, Jim Wright changed the channel.

We don’t need to see this kind of thing, especially while we’re eating, he said, holding up his half-eaten sandwich. Hey, isn’t there a football game on?

The first quarter of a Green Bay at Dallas game had just begun. The players appeared to be moving in slow motion in the pre-season Texas heat, but Green Bay was clearly the stronger team. The game did a good job of occupying Harry’s mind, but before the end of the quarter his Dad meandered to the kitchen to dispose of his plate and glass, and then quietly slipped into his bedroom.

It was halftime when Harry decided to check on him.

Through the narrow opening at the bedroom door he saw his father seated on the edge of the double bed staring at a page in a photo album. Tears streamed down his face and his lower lip quivered. Harry wiped at his own quick tears then, and went quietly inside. On the bed lay scattered photos of his father in uniform, in combat gear during the war years in Germany, and a post-war version of him in civilian clothes standing proudly beside his wife as they held their bundled baby boy. His Dad looked up from the album, smiled and placed an arm around Harry. He gestured to a photo showing himself and his wife.

She was beautiful, Harry. He sniffed. His was a natural, manly weeping, to Harry’s mind. Not a maudlin, pitiful act of self-indulgence.

Harry nodded, a tear of his own dropping onto his father’s shoulder.

A handwritten note underneath another photo read, Jim and I at Niagara Falls, Jan. 1942. What were we thinking to honeymoon there in the dead of winter???

The ink had fuzzy edges where it had bled into the porous paper from the graceful hand of his mother. The black and white photo was of two young lovers heavily bundled against the backdrop of icy floes in a slow, pushing river. A tangible mist covered so much of the vast river that the opposite bank was not visible.

She sure was, Dad.

Physical beauty said so little, Harry realized, looking at her twinkling eyes in their fierce fragile strength and the way her head lay trustingly against her young husband. Harry ran his finger over another photo of the pair in embrace; a suitcase sat on the ground beside Jim Wright’s feet. The handwritten caption noted, The saddest day of my life – when Jim left to go into the Army. April 1943.

I loved her the moment I saw her, said Jim.

Janie Proden Wright had been a beauty. Anyone could see that, even with a scarf tied around her head and a bulky wool coat hiding her frame, even in the relatively miniscule rectangle of the photo. Harry stared at his mother’s picture. She was nineteen, going on twenty, then. His Dad – a wide-eyed, head-over-heels-in-love young man of twenty-one – behind her, rested his chin on the top of her head, his broad shoulders making her seem small, and his arms wrapped affectionately about her.

How did you know?

That I loved her? He looked at his son.

So quickly.

Well, I knew I’d do anything for her, the way my Dad would do anything for my Mother. If it meant laying down my life for her, I’d have done it. My folks treated one another better than even they seemed to expect. And I just always wanted it to be for me the way it was for them. Wouldn’t have wanted it to be different. Jim Wright seemed to drift into the photo for a moment, a smile visiting and leaving his features the way a hummingbird tastes a flower. He nodded. I just knew Janie was the one for me.

Harry glanced at the girl in the photo, studied her face and eyes. He remembered those eyes. They were often exactly the way they had been on that Niagara Falls day, flashing and mischievous. She had loved so well and so thoroughly. What a Mom she had been! What a wife she must have been!

Was it the same for her?

She said it was. Jim glanced at the small brass trophy on the dresser across the room. Atop its base were two oversized rings, gold-plated, and interlinked as though the links of a chain. World Champion Marriage was engraved on the plaque attached to its base. Jim had had it made for their tenth anniversary. They had laughed over it that day. It had been merely a cute little brass trophy then. It was a treasure now.

She said she knew within five minutes I was the one for her.

Tell me again about how you met her, Daddy. Harry had not called his father Daddy in several years. He realized it the moment he said it, but forgave himself as quickly. This was a special time.

She visited the old Mount Zion church on Youth Sunday. The young people were doing all the grown-up jobs that day. A few made up the choir. One boy read the announcements. Another preached. I was ushering when she walked up the front steps with her parents.

Jim shut the album and held it in his lap as he leaned against the headboard of the bed and closed his eyes.

"I don’t think I saw anything else clearly after I saw her. My eardrums bubbled with a sound like fast-boiling water – which never happened before nor since, except the day I saw her walking down the aisle to meet me – and my heart began to double-beat. When she smiled at me that first day, I almost fell out the door. Monroe Fuller was my best friend, ushering next to the first pew. He said he tried to get my attention half a dozen times because I was so goofy-lookin’, but he said I paid him no more mind than if he’d been a doorpost. He said my eyes looked pasted on.

It just clicked. I knew she was the one. He chuckled and looked at Harry. Her Dad told me later I looked like their dog when they brought groceries home. If I’d had a tail I’d have beat the church door down.

They laughed together, the elder continuing into a relaxed chuckle that told Harry the melancholia was gone.

I would have asked her to marry me that day if I’d had more sense. But I was eighteen and had six more months before graduation, and she had two years left. Her Dad wouldn’t let her go out with me until just before she graduated. For two years, I would go to her house and we’d all sit – the whole family – in the kitchen or in the living room. Mister Proden would sometimes read the Bible aloud – I think he did it to make sure my intentions toward Janie stayed on the right track – or sometimes we might listen to a preacher on the radio. And finally, when I could hardly stand not having a moment alone with her, he allowed us to go to town together in my car – just she and I; I had a job by that time – and we went to the drug store and bought ice cream. I was her first date and she was mine.

Harry’s father sat up and placed the photo album on the bed, leaning it carefully against a pillow.

Harry, I sure hope you find love like that someday. Your mother and I had twenty years together, and they were all happy ones. Very happy. I’d give a million dollars for just one more. He sighed and looked at Harry. And if I couldn’t raise a million dollars, I’d work hard labor for as long as Jacob did for Rachel, just to have her at my side for a few hours. Tears rolled over his stubborn smile. I credit God for sending her to me. Want to know the best advice I could give you?

Harry waited.

Make sure the girl you pick loves God more than she loves you.

More than me? he asked incredulously.

His father nodded. Yep, and you’ve got to love Him more than you do her. That’s the only way you’ll want it, believe me.

But how about the other part?

What other part?

The love-at-first-sight part.

"Oh, I don’t know how often that kind of thing happens, Harry. But looking back, I don’t know how it could have been any other way for me. Your Mom was so beautiful and wonderful, why, anyone would have fallen for her. I’m just so glad to be the one she fell for.

You know, he went on, I never was overly anxious to chase girls; do you understand what I mean? Some guys my age were. If I had been raised in a less happy home, maybe I would have been in a hurry to grow up, too. But I was pretty content. I guess I’m just one of the most blessed men in the world to have met your mother, and to have had it happen that way.

That’s the way I want it to happen, Dad, Harry suddenly said. For my wife and me. Just like it happened to you and Mom. His ears warmed with the confession, and his face reddened. An image flashed before his eyes. It was the one he had awakened to see in the hospital room, when his father kissed his mother’s lips and waited to see if she would awaken. To Harry, somehow that moment had encapsulated their love, more than all other kisses and all other words.

I hope it does, Harry. I hope it does happen just the same way. Jim patted his son’s big hand and stroked the book. Harry heard the doubt in his father’s voice, an elevated wonder holding little hope for such a miraculous reoccurrence. Harry reacted immediately.

No, Dad. I mean it. God did it for you. Won’t He do it for me?

Jim straightened. Maybe He will, Harry. I didn’t ask for it to be that way, but then I never thought of it before. If I had thought it was possible, I would have asked.

Well, I know it is, so I’m going to.

Jim stared into his son’s eyes for a moment. I’ll pray for you, then. But you’ve got to be serious about it, Son. Don’t be like a lot of these boys today, and go throwing yourself at first one girl and then another. If you don’t take it seriously, you can’t expect God to, can you?

I guess not.

He laid his hand on his son’s shoulder and stood, squeezing it affectionately.

I’ve seen God work miracles for people who refuse to give up on Him. When neither time nor distance matters, when circumstances don’t hold sway, and when you can say no to everything that falls short of what you believe God will do, you’re in line to see the impossible done.

He paused as if to let it sink in, all the while holding Harry with his eyes. When he seemed to sense Harry got the message, he added, I’ll ask God to keep you strong, so you can wait.

And her, too?

His father smiled.

Yep, and her, too.

Chapter Three

September, 1963

Harry Wright was the last player to trot into the rumbling locker room after the game, dripping, shuddering with power and almost whinnying like the stallion he felt he had become. He had made the first and second touchdowns of his senior year, and the Blue Streak had won by twelve points. Cheers rose above the triumphant din, and padded hands and fists rocked his shoulder pads with manly violence as he strode past.

Great game, Harry! Way to go, man!

Bobby Garrett, Harry’s best friend and fellow senior rose in front of him to pound his helmet with the heel of his fist.

The thrills of previous years never felt anything like the charge that ran through him now. The potential for a scholarship at Georgia or at Alabama appeared more possible than ever. Power barely contained. Invincibility. These were the first of many touchdowns this year, he knew. He had increased his