“It's only six-thirty! I wonder who that is?” Rachel said, puzzled.
As the local pastor, calls at odd hours weren't unusual–but the odd hours tended to be from midnight to three am. People were usually too tired at six-thirty in the morning to get in trouble or bother their pastor.
Fern jumped up and grabbed the receiver and chirped a cheerful hello, her curiosity getting the best of her.
An official-sounding voice asked for Pastor Taylor and Fern handed her father the phone with a shrug. “They want Pastor Taylor,” she said.
“This is Joshua Taylor. How can I help you?” Fern's father said briskly, standing up and moving to the side so that he didn't have to stretch the curly cord across the table. The Taylor's hadn't invested in anything as sophisticated as a cordless phone.
He listened for all of ten seconds before he sat down again.
“Oh. Oh, dear God.” He groaned and closed his eyes like a child trying to hide.
Rachel and Fern looked at each other in alarm, breakfast forgotten.
“All of them? How?”
Another silence.
“I see. Yes. Yes. I'll be ready.”
Joshua Taylor stood once more and walked to the wall unit, hanging up the ancient phone with a finality that made Fern's heart quake in her chest. When he turned toward the table, Joshua Taylor's face was sickly grey and his eyes bleak.
“That was a man named Peter Gary. He's an army chaplain assigned to casualty assistance. Connor O'Toole, Paul Kimball, Grant Nielson and Jesse Jordan were killed by a roadside bomb in Iraq yesterday.”
“Oh, no! Oh Joshua,” Rachel's voice was shrill and she covered her mouth, as if to push the words back in, but they reverberated throughout the kitchen.
“They're dead?” Fern cried in disbelief.
“Yes, Fern. They are.” Joshua looked at his only daughter and his hand shook as he reached for her, wanting to touch her, wanting to console her, wanting to fall to his knees and pray for the parents who had lost their sons. Parents he was going to have to notify in less than an hour’s time.
“They contacted me because I am the local clergy. They want me to go with the officers assigned to the team to tell the families. They will have a vehicle here in half an hour to pick me up. I have to change,” he said helplessly, looking down at his jeans and favorite T-shirt that asked “What Would Jesus Do?”
“But they were scheduled to come home next month! I just saw Jamie Kimball in the store yesterday. She's been counting down the days!” Fern said, as if the news couldn't possibly be true for that reason. “And Marley! Marley's been planning her wedding. She and Jesse are getting married!”
“They're gone, Fernie.”
The tears had started to fall, the initial shock turning into teary devastation. Pastor Taylor's eyes swam with grief, Rachel was weeping quietly, but Fern sat in stunned silence, unable to feel anything but sheer disbelief. She looked up suddenly, horrified as a new question exploded into her mind.
“Dad? What about Ambrose Young?”
“I didn't ask, Fern. I didn't think. They didn't mention Ambrose. He must be okay.”
Fern shuddered with relief and immediately felt remorse that his life was more important to her than the others. But at least Ambrose was alive. At least Ambrose was okay.
Half an hour later, a black Ford Taurus pulled up to the Taylor residence. Three officers in full uniform stepped from the inauspicious vehicle and walked up the walk. Joshua Taylor was in a suit and tie, freshly showered and pressed into his most respectful attire, and he opened the door to the three men. Rachel and Fern hovered in the kitchen, listening to the surreal conversation in the next room.
One man, whom Fern assumed was the chaplain who had called her father, briefed the pastor on the procedure, giving him the information that he knew, asking advice on whom to inform first, on who might have family that they would need to gather from distances, who would need the most support. Fifteen minutes later the four men, including Pastor Taylor, drove off.
Jamie Kimball was the first to receive the news that her son Paul was dead. Then Grant Nielson's family was delivered the news that their twenty-year-old son, their big brother, the kid with good grades and perfect attendance would be coming home in a casket. Jesse Jordan's estranged parents were notified and then had the unenviable task of escorting the officers to the home of their little grandson and telling Marley Davis there would be no wedding in the fall. Luisa O'Toole ran from her house shrieking when the non-commissioned officer who spoke fluent Spanish extended his heartfelt condolences. Seamus O'Toole wept and clung to Pastor Taylor.
The news spread through the town like wildfire–early morning joggers and dog walkers saw the black car with the uniformed men inside and gossip and speculation tumbled out of mouths and into ears before the truth made its way on slower legs through the devastated town. Elliott Young was at the bakery when early word reached him that Paul Kimball and Grant Nielson were dead and that the black car was still parked outside the O'Toole's home. He hid in the bakery's freezer for half an hour, praying for his son's life, praying the uniformed men wouldn't find him . . . surely if they couldn't find him then they couldn't tell him his son was dead too.
But they did find him. Mr. Morgan, the grocery store owner, opened the freezer to tell him the officers were there. Elliott Young shook from cold and terror as he received the news. And he collapsed into the arms of Joshua Taylor when he heard his son was alive. Alive, but gravely injured. He had been flown to Ramstein Airbase in Germany where he would stay until he was stable enough to bring back to the US. If he lived that long.