John Dallen
by Georgia Elliott, age 13
It was July 1st. School had just ended a few weeks ago and the kids in the town were still getting used to it. Summer was a breeze for me. The prison doors had been opened; the inmates had flooded out. Oh, was I ready.
My friend Nate and I had been planning this for a long time, had been working on what we would draw for months, planning and replanning and replanning again. Finally, school was over, the supplies were bought, the sun dawned bright and happy, and the alarm buzzed.
Morning had come.
Quickly I pulled on my jeans and T-shirt. The weather was warming, and my sweatshirt was no longer needed. My parents had not risen, so I was able to sneak downstairs and out the door with relative quietness. There was one trip down the stairs, but it was quite a minor thing, and I didn’t believe anyone had been roused.
Nate and I stepped out of our houses at the exact same time, just as we had planned. We lived right next door, you see. Nate caught up to me, backpack full of metal clinking noises, and wrapped an arm around my shoulder saying, “Ah! My partner in crime!” I laughed, but there was some feeling in my gut that didn’t want me to. The whole morning had seemed off. I just couldn’t tell why.
The shining sun had just crested the mountains, turning them red, as if they were wearing the light. We made our way down the sidewalk, watching it brighten up as the sun pushed himself higher. Neither of us said much. Even though I had been waiting for this day for so long, it suddenly seemed like such a stupid idea, and I wanted to turn back.
No, some part of my brain whispered to me. Plenty of people have done this before. It’ll earn you status. And just think of what Nate would think if you backed out!
“Come on, Dan!”
I was slacking, lost in my own thoughts, and Nate was far ahead of me. I jogged to catch up. We were passing through one of the rough parts of town, by the homeless shelter. I could see the silhouette of a man by a house. I didn’t want him to know I’d seen him, so I looked straight ahead. There was another guy, with a blanket on his back and wheeling an old rusty bike by his side. I never liked walking down this street. It only intensified the odd feeling, which still grew with every step I took.
Eventually we reached the tracks. I jumped with the cars that passed.
There was the whistle of a train in the distance.
Nate let his heavy backpack fall from his shoulders and unzipped it. I watched as the insides spilt onto the gravel.
The world was quieter on the tracks. The river, only yards away, gave it a nice, serene feel, and from back behind the trains the sound of the highway was muted. There was the whistle of a train in the distance. Still the sun had not fully risen.
“Grab a bottle. Let’s get to work.”
I chose the dark blue and tentatively sprayed my name in the corner. Not my real name, of course, but an almost unreadable bubblified version of my nickname. After that, I grew more confident, getting bigger. Nate had jumped straight into the big stuff. “Don’t leave any inch clean!” He told me.
See? This isn’t that bad.
Well, it doesn’t feel good.
But I did it anyway.
Eventually, it was finished, the culmination of our efforts finally displayed on the car of a train. Nate’s demand had been fulfilled. Not an inch was left. On our one side, that was. The side facing the road was untouched, besides a few remnants of someone else’s crime.
The train whooted again, calling me back.
“We should get going.”
“Now?”
“I mean, yeah, we’re done.”
“Hey, you!”
Both our heads jerked up simultaneously. A cop! Of course there was a cop, why not?! And there was a man, hidden by a train car so we couldn’t see him, just now coming towards us. I had a good hunch he was the one who had called the police. “Run, Dan,” Nate told me, but neither of us moved. Nate’s bonds broke first, and he bolted for the trees, his will to escape overpowering his shock. I was stuck there, my feet unwilling to unscrew themselves from the gravel, my eyes wide.
What would my parents say? What would my mom think?
You could still get away now, you know, and if you make good time nobody has to know.
That’s true. They hadn’t seen our faces close enough to be able to identify us. I could catch up with Nate. We could go home and pretend we’d been at Mela getting something to eat.
Nobody has to know.
That’s when my feet were released. I turned and I ran, blind to my surroundings, wishing only to catch up with Nate and get home. I wanted to be in my room, I wanted to be safe, and I did not want to go to Juvie. The world rang as I ran.
Everything slowed and grew quiet for a moment, telling me something was wrong, as I took my last step before everything blurred. My ears rang and my head exploded, some ear-splitting noise breaking things apart, and all I could see was the sun shining down on me, gazing at me, gloating of his success, ‘I made it up here!’ he told me. ‘And you thought I never would!’
The last thing that seemed odd was that my head was very warm, and I could not feel my body. It was the last thing because at that moment, the world went dark, and the sun said goodbye.
…..beep…..beep…..beep…..beep…..
Ow.
That hurts.
What’s that sound? It’s giving me a headache.
Where am I again?
I opened my eyes and at once shut them again. One thing was for certain, I was not at home in my room.
“Daniel?” The voice was fuzzy and distant, but it was a grip and a calling to reality that I held on to until I could blink in the light and eventually see, though it took a minute. I found my mom next to me, Holding my hand. My head felt stiff.
I was tired, and knowing my mom was there was enough, and I let myself fall back into the previous darkness that had so blissfully shielded me.
It was all revealed to me, over time.
The stranger, John Dallen, who had called the cops on us, had seen the train coming before I did. He had seen me running for the tracks, about to cross them, oblivious to all.
He had caught up, pushed me forward, and let the train hit himself.
John Dallen’s funeral was on Saturday.
I was going to go.
I had a minor head injury. “The bark is worse than the bite,” the Doctor had said. “Head wounds always bleed a lot.”
But what left me sitting in the hospital bed, staring at the ceiling with some sort of chasm in my heart, was why.
Sure, he had saved me, but why? He had just called the cops on me and Nate. And now he was gone to who knows where and I was left alive. The thought of utter darkness made me shudder. Was that what John Dallen was in now? Was that where I would have been?
There was a cop, waiting for me to be admitted out of the Hospital so I could be escorted to Detention. Yup. A month of it. Nate was already there.
The funeral came soon. All of a sudden, I was sitting in a pew in a small little church full of crying people, staring at a man talking about things like ‘Job’ and ‘Psalms’, each having little meaning to me, but for some reason they seemed to pile up, and a hollow space was being filled. There was that feeling, that pit in me I had had ever since that morning I had woken up and decided to ignore myself.
Man, was I stupid.
Then I was being hugged by women in black dresses and men in black coats, and I was meeting Dallen’s family, and I was invited over for dinner.
The days moved quick and slow at the same time. A month and a half had come and gone. I faced myself in a mirror -sweatshirt, baggy jeans- and set off for the Dallens’s house, a mere five blocks from our home.
It was unlike anything I had ever experienced. The family all sat at one table. There was Mrs. Dallen and her children, and John Dallen’s brother’s wife and kids. There was laughter and talk and throwing of food resulting in stern words from Mr. Dallen, as he had introduced himself. Finally, when the kids were settled watching a movie, and a lull had fallen over our talk, I asked a tentative question, not sure if I was making a fool of myself or not.
“At the funeral … what were the Psalms and like … that stuff they were talking about?”
For just a second, there was a silence. But it was a thoughtful silence, broken by Mr. Dallen’s slow, sad smile and his answer.
“Have you ever heard of the Bible?”
Yes, I had. But I didn’t really know what it was. I explained that, and Mr. Dallen explained this to me.
“The Bible is a Holy scripture. It is the words of God, written by his people filled by his Holy Spirit. Psalms is a book in it, it is beautiful poetry.”
I was still a bit confused.
“Daniel, why don’t you come to Church with us tomorrow? We can pick you up, it’s hardly out of the way.”
I agreed, not quite sure what I was agreeing to, and we talked more about this. Eventually, it was time for me to head home, and Mr. Dallen, not wanting me to walk alone in the dark, walked with me the five blocks.
I asked him this as our feet hit the pavement in a homeward motion.
“Why … why did your brother … do what he did for me? I mean, I didn’t know him, and, well … I wasn’t exactly being a saint …”
He stopped me right there, the same sad smile he had worn before returning. “It is what the Bible calls us to do, Daniel. To lay oneself down for his neighbor.”
“But, we’re not neighbors.”
“No, your neighbor is everyone around you.” Mr. Dallen told him. They stopped before my house. “I look forward to talking with you further.”
The details were worked out for the next morning, and he watched as I climbed my steps and disappeared into my house.
That had been an interesting experience.
Church the next day was even more interesting. I think I was starting to understand it, the whole Bible thing. But God? My mind couldn’t wrap around that. Mr. Dallen just smiled and said, “I can’t either. Next Sunday, then?”
I agreed. Something about it seemed necessary. Something inside me longed for the funny colored benches, the words. The singing …
I think I finally understand why John Dallen laid himself down for me. He valued my life more than he valued his own. He saw me as a sinner in need of a savior. And he knew I needed to be saved. He saw me as a neighbor in distress, unable to help myself. He saw me as a young soul with many more years ahead of me.
And he was willing to give himself up so I could live them.
As for me, right now I’m continuing with a “next Sunday, then?”
About the Writer
Georgia Elliott has a knack for weird ideas, as some say, and her stories, books (currently in development), and poetry can attest to it. She spends her days writing and singing songs, reading, drawing, listening to a lot of music, and loving the world the Lord made. She lives in Malaga, WA with her family on their two-acre farm.
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