HE RESPECTS HIS DAUGHTER’S NEED for distance, he really does—just one quick call after breakfast to make sure she’s safely settled with Olive. Turns out she’s not there and Olive hasn’t heard from her. David tries her cell and she doesn’t pick up. He’s scrolling through his contacts, trying to decide which of her friends to call first, his hands starting to tremble, when the land line rings. Sean Youderian. “Pastor Dave! Sorry about the telephone tag. It was just—all hell broke loose here yesterday.”
“Before you launch in,” David says, “you don’t happen to know where Abby is, do you?”
A silence. “I might. She didn’t tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“She’s headed to LA. She’s got an audition later this week.”
“What?”
“Yeah.”
“You set this up?”
“Well, sort of. I passed her photo and contact info on to Walter Varga. He’s the director. I thought we might have a better chance if somebody else approached her.”
“This is for one of your films?”
“I’m a producer.”
“I just saw your parents at Wheaton. They didn’t say a word.”
“Yeah, well, I asked them to keep it on the down-low. We were in some really heavy negotiations with funders. But it’s full steam ahead now.”
“So Abby—you said LA?”
“Yuh.”
“She was driving down on her own?”
“I guess.”
“Where’s she going to stay?”
A little silence. “You know, Dave, if I could give you a word of advice. Maybe just lighten up on Abby. She’s not a kid. She knows what she’s doing.”
David almost hangs up. I’ll track her down, he thinks. There was a world of hurt between the two of us after that talk. She’s getting her revenge.
But here’s why Sean called—to brief David, which he does, at length. After years of beating the bushes, they’ve put solid funding in place for a feature film on Operation Auca. They? Sean rhymes off a string of names and titles. There’s always been money out there for this story, but his team has a particular vision. First, the story’s not going to be watered down. The Lord’s hand is going to be visible in everything. Second, the film is going to be pitched to a secular audience, to non-Christians, to the world at large. No more preaching to the choir. A lot of people think those two mandates are incompatible, but picture a Venn diagram. Where the circles overlap, you’ve got a viewership that’s spiritually hungry and a message that’ll rock their world. And now they’ve found a super-wealthy businessman who is grateful to God for his prosperity and wants to give back. He’s not a young man, he’s dealing with heart disease, and he’d like to live to see the film. The shoot is scheduled for September, and in fact Sean is flying to Ecuador on Thursday with a few other guys. “So here’s the thing. You up for joining us in a day or two?”
“What?”
“We could use you to consult on locations.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“’Course I’m serious.”
“You realize it’s years since I was in Ecuador.”
“I do realize. That’s why you’re perfect. You’re going to walk into a scene and say, That was not here, that was not here, nix the cell tower in this shot, whatever. Find a few donkeys.”
“I was just away, for Betty’s funeral. I can’t take off again.”
“Don’t you have a youth pastor? That Ryan guy? He’s dying to step up.”
He’d be able to abandon his sermon on the Islamic caliphate, he thinks, and then, to counter the unworthiness of that thought, he suggests September. “Wouldn’t it make more sense if I went when you were shooting? Like, in terms of consulting on details?”
But Sean gets an idea in his mind and reason only irritates him.
David finally says he’ll think about it.
“What’s to think about? Dave. Dave. You get an all-expense-paid trip to Ecuador. You get a consultancy fee—we should be able to stretch to a couple K. You get a screen credit—wouldn’t that be cool? You’re helping us take our story to a new generation. What’s the downside?”
“Well, Sean, I’ll tell you what it is. I’m not sure I’m keen on working with you. I’m pretty disappointed in something Abby told me—”
“She got things wrong,” Sean interrupts.
“So there was nothing to it?”
“Let me just say—it was not what she thought. And I’ve got to believe our Lord forgives.”
On this mixed note, the call ends.
David sits stunned in front of his cereal bowl. Oh, God, you have surely broken this day wide open. He goes out the back door into a fine June morning, his cellphone in hand. He sits at the picnic table and texts Karen at the church. Working at home for a bit.
The timing is astonishing. Betty dies, Abby is in crisis, and then this. How amazing it would be for Abby. Potentially life-changing. She’s made the mistake of trusting in her emotions. A little dryness of the spirit and she thinks God has abandoned her. But then He reaches down and He says, This.
Ecuador—David’s green world. It gleams in his mind, the leafy longhouses guarded by a harpy eagle, the courage and sacrifice. It’s a beauty of a proposition. He’s never been back. At first because of Sharon, who was so sick for so long, and then, well, it’s hard to say. It was a relief to have a bit of distance from some of the problems there. Things in Tiwaeno were bad enough when he and Sharon were in Ecuador, but worse in the last years of Rachel’s life. All sorts of rumours about dementia, heavy metal poisoning, something to do with the diet.
Everybody else went, all his Operation Auca cousins and their kids. It seemed they needed to take a pilgrimage to see where the men had lived and died, and of course he didn’t need that. One of the McCully granddaughters, Cheryl, went maybe a year ago and e-mailed to tell David about a tour she took in Cuyabeno. She called it the Toxic Tour and went on at length about the pits of abandoned crude, how fouled the rivers were, and the health problems the local people faced. A lot of people have this romance with the rainforest, and they want Indigenous lands to be left untouched. It’s a form of nostalgia. They don’t expect us to ride around in horse-drawn buggies in America, but they get all worked up when native people move into the modern era. Anyway, los afectados she talked about—they were Secoya and Cofán, not Waorani.
Of course Ecuador will have changed, but he could play a role in taking people powerfully back to the story. And they’ll shoot at the guesthouse in Shell Mera, he thinks with a spurt of excitement. Frame houses don’t last long in the tropics, and it was abandoned and boarded up in the 1960s. No one had the heart to tear it down, and now it’s been rebuilt. Churches in the US raised the money, and crews of volunteers flew down to do the work. David wasn’t involved in that project, but if he says yes to Sean, he’ll see the house. He pictures Abby in a cotton housedress, standing in front of his mother’s blue kitchen cupboards, buttering bread for sandwiches—but then he thinks, Betty. Betty’s part is sure to be bigger and more dramatic.
He picks up his phone and crafts a text:
Just had a call from Sean and it looks as though I’m going to be a consultant on his movie. Feeling pretty hurt that you didn’t tell me what was up—but holding you in my prayers. Abby, sweetheart, I need to know where you are and how you’re doing. Love Dad.
He sets the phone down and almost right away it pings.
Not Abby. It’s an e-mail from Sean.
just in case you’re having doubts about God’s leading it thrills me to forward you a song we hope to use on the soundtrack. it’s by singersongwriter leo duric a brilliant artist and a real man of God and if you google him youll see hes on the cusp of a massive breakout. ran into him and told him about the project and a week later he sent me this song. says he’s never had music given to him like this before.
David touches the link. Digital instrumentation and a voice that’s pure California schmaltz, all vibrato and emotion. He can’t make out the lyrics. They’re not in English or Spanish, nor do they sound like any Indigenous language he’s ever heard. It must be like a Cirque du Soleil song, written in a made-up language so nobody in the world is privileged above anybody else.
He sits in the spring morning with his head bowed, listening. To a yearning song intended to baffle everybody on earth equally.