Promises

Never mind any of that, Carla. You must go back inside and trust God Without trust, your faith is a charade.

But still she resisted though less certainly, taking one step, then another away from the stage door and down the alley toward the street beyond it.

Suddenly she saw movement.

A middle-aged derelict had pushed aside a pile of cardboard boxes under which he had been sleeping. In his hand was an old rusty trumpet.

Carla walked faster, a bit afraid because she was well dressed, obviously “from money” and he was a typical panhandler. Normally these people, she had heard, were not violent but then desperation was a wild card in anybody’s life.

She was almost at the end of the alley, just a few feet from the street outside.

“You can just walk ‘way and leave everythin’ and everyone behind you,” the derelict spoke. “I can’t. I’s stuck where I am, can’t do nothing about it.”

…you can just walk ‘way and leave everythin’ and everyone behind you.

Carla stood still. Suddenly she could not move.

Her band.

She was leaving every member of it behind her, betraying them along with fifty thousand customers, part of that great mass of people who had made her the success she was.

How can I do this, Lord? she prayed. How can I stab them in the back like that?

She took one more step toward the street.

The derelict let out a cry of despair that hit her like a very large block of ice, chilling, it seemed, every nerve in her body.

Slowly Carla turned, and saw him standing in the middle of that alley, and seeming very much a part of it, as dirty, as smelly, as filled with debris but his trash was different, for apart from his wretched clothes, it was inside him, the refuse of a life that apparently had been inexorable in driving him to that alley that night. She walked back into the alley, and approached him, standing there, wanting to say something but not yet quite sure what the words should be.

“Hey, lady, what are you starin’ at?” he snarled defiantly, having learned the bad habit of being offensive to everyone.

“You,” she told him honestly.

“What about me? You ain’t seen no bums before?”

“None with a trumpet in one hand.”

He looked at it, and chuckled as he said, “You got that right, lady. I’m one of a kind I am.”

“Why are you carrying it like that?” she asked.

“Only thing I got left from the old days. I never let go of it. I’ll be buried with it, yes, ma’am, I surely will.”

“You have played the trumpet professionally?”

“Shoot, lady! I was tops years ago. Lookin’ at me now, you’s probably thinkin’ I’m dreamin’ or somethin’. But I ain’t. Gene Krupa, those other guys, they were no better than me, no, ma’am, they sure enough weren’t.”

“Do you have any family left?” Carla asked, aware that scaring him by talking about his eternal destiny would only have made him shut her out.

“Not any more. All dead, or so disgusted with me that they might as well be. My parents were the last to go. I’ve been all alone since then. Nobody wants me, you see. Nobody cares no more.”

She glanced more closely at the trumpet, saw that there was a possibility it could be repaired.

“You could play that instrument,” she offered. “If you were as good as you say, you’d get gigs even now.”

He scratched his dirt-streaked hair.

“Who would sit still and listen to a has-been or maybe some guy who never was?” he spoke, sighing forlornly. “Maybe all I ever did have was my stupidity in thinkin’ that I was any good, you get what I’m sayin’, lady?”

“I can help you,” she insisted.

He coughed convulsively and Carla’s heart went out to him.

“Sorry…” he told her as he caught his breath again and seemed to mean it. “What’s some slick broad like you able to do for a godforsaken guy like me?”

“You think God has turned His back on you?”

“You blind or somethin’? I ain’t seen nothing and no one showing me God’s love lately.”

“I am an entertainer myself. There are fifty thousand people inside this building who have paid to watch me.”

“Oh…” he said, impressed but growing more uneasy. “Well, I’ll be goin’ now. You can’t be late. Audiences hate that.”

“I am very late already, mister,” Carla remarked ruefully “A few more minutes could never matter.”

She reached out for his arm.

“Let me take you inside,” she said, understanding why he would hesitate, given his appearance and the body odors coming from him.

“I stink.”

Carla had no need of being convinced of that.

“Yes, you do, mister, very badly,” she agreed. “But a good shower can take care of that. And there are some stage clothes you can slip into. Would you tell me your name?”

“Thomas…” he blurted out, narrowed his eyes, the cynicism that was part of the outlook of most homeless people, especially the ones as bad off as he was, an instinctive fact of life that most of them never shed. “Thomas Gilboyne.”

“God doesn’t want you to end up like this, Thomas,” she told him.

“And you speak for God, lady?” he asked. “Then ask Him to snuff me out like He does everybody else sooner or later.”

Thomas coughed again, nearly collapsing to the ground and Carla thought for an instant that he was indeed dying, right before her eyes. She gripped his arm and held him upright, fighting her revulsion as she inhaled the rank odor of his body and filthy clothes.

As Carla glanced around desperately for help her silent prayer was answered when two stagehands appeared at the exit door. They stepped into the alley, both apparently about to light up cigarettes, since smoking was not permitted in most of the backstage area.

“Randy! Jeff!” Carla called out to them.

The young men ran over to her and she read the confusion on both faces as they took in the sight of Carla supporting the derelict musician. “Help me get him into the theater, please,” she instructed. “He’s sick. He needs a doctor.”

“But Carla…” Randy began. He glanced nervously at the other stagehand.

“If you won’t help, I’ll do it myself,” she insisted. She took a stumbling step forward doing her best to support the sick man and suddenly, Randy and Jeff moved to help her.

The company always traveled with a doctor and Carla knew her specific request to have Thomas examined and given the best possible medical care would not be ignored. He would in fact most likely get better medical attention here, she reflected, than in any of the city hospitals that would accept him as a patient.

The two stagehands gently carried Thomas Gilboyne between them, and as Carla opened the stage door, they took him inside.

He was beginning to regain consciousness, his bloodshot eyes widening.

“Am I where I think I am?” Thomas asked, casting a longing glance in the direction of the stage. “What did I do to deserve this?”

“You were God’s instrument,” she said, “and that makes you special.”

“God used me?”

“He did, my new friend, he did use you in a wonderful way,” Carla assured him as she smiled broadly.

Carla pointed out where the doctor’s little office was.

“When you’re finished,” she said, “you can stay for my second performance.”

“Second?” Tom repeated. “You must be bone tired after the first one.”

“I do not allow myself that luxury!”

After they were done, Carla bowed her head for a moment.

“Lord, Lord; that could have been me a year ago or maybe a year from now,” she prayed, “if You hadn’t given my beloved Kyle to me. If only I could have done for him what he did for me.”

She half expected the once persistent voice to say something but it did not, and she sensed that whoever it needed to help, it had been accomplished and now she was expected to take care of her part.

Carla cautiously stepped into the wings as she had done a thousand times over the years in hundreds of arenas but none as big as that one.

“Albert…” she whispered.

Perspiring heavily due to the strain of keeping the audience from bolting, Albert caught a glimpse of her.

Carla smiled, holding up one finger to show him that she needed just a minute, and he nodded in acknowledgment. then she hurried back to her dressing room, and prayed for a moment while holding her Bible tightly with both hands.

Then she headed back toward the wings. Albert saw that she was ready.

“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, obviously relieved, his voice choking as tears mixed with sweat, “I am happy finally to present to you, tonight, the one and only Carla Gearhart.”

The band immediately struck up its regular introductory music as the audience became absolutely quiet.

With some awkwardness in view of what had happened, Carla stepped out into the glare of spotlights.

“It’s real amazing to me that you haven’t left here by now,” she confessed. “I would have, if I were sitting where you are.”

A curly-haired young woman, dressed like a cowgirl in the front row, stood and smiled pleasantly as she said, “Carla, your friend told all of us what is going on in your life. We’re waiting…because we love you. And our prayers go with you.”

One by one, people were standing until nobody remained in their seat. In an instant, some fifty thousand pairs of hands started clapping, with a chorus of voices shouting, “Carla, Carla, Carla!”

Finally she signaled that she was ready to begin.

Visibly relieved, Albert handed her a cordless microphone and then left the stage but stayed in the wings, bowing his head as he prayed briefly.

“I remember a time when I would look out over an audience like this,” Carla said, “and know that my beloved Kyle was sitting there among you, and I could sing my heart out to him. That made a big difference to me.”

She paused, fighting back some fresh tears.

“But tonight I have only your love to reach out to,” she added, “to sustain me, and that is all I need.”

So it began that evening in Nashville, in an arena that had been completed only six months earlier, but no one would ever break her attendance over the ensuing years because no one had lived the drama that was hers and the man’s to whom she would remain devoted through time and eternity.

“I believe in a God of miracles,” she said, “and tonight is proof that He exists, that He cares, that He will be with us every step of the way, no matter how rebellious we are, no matter how many times we try His patience.”

As Carla started to sing, memories came back in a flood that threatened to sweep her off the stage but she held on, as though that microphone were her life raft. She refused to do anything but sing from the center of her soul, sing of the love that had transformed her, love from Almighty God and, as well, from the wonderful man whom He had been gracious enough to send into her life.

“This first number is dedicated to Kyle Rivers,” she said. “I guess my friend Albert told you a little of what’s been going on. If only Kyle could feel tonight what you and I are experiencing.”

…if only.

She had let “if onlys” rule her for far too long. It was time to declare her independence of them.

Carla started with her favorite gospel number, “He Lives.” “‘I serve a risen Saviour, He’s in the world today. I know that He is living, whatever men may say.’“

Then she did something that not even her loyal band could have predicted.

“Lord…” she nearly whispered as she clipped the microphone to the front of her sequined dress.

The band members hesitated, trying to anticipate when Carla wanted them to join in again.

Her eyes sparkling, that resplendent hair like a crown of scarlet as it reflected the spotlights overhead, she thrust out her hands in front of her, palms upward, and spoke, “Dear Lord Jesus, take care of my beloved, for now, for eternity…”

And then the band, at a nod from her, started its accompaniment again.

“‘I see His hand of mercy, I hear His voice of cheer,’“ Carla Gearhart, eyes closed, continued singing words that had been written by someone else but were coming straight from her own heart and soul that night of nights in Nashville. “‘And just the time I need Him he’s always near. He lives, He lives…’“

No other song could have said it better.

Part One

Life has taught us that love does not consist in gazing at each other but in looking outward together in the same direction.

Saint-Exurpéry

Chapter One

Three months ago…

Carla had returned to Nashville from Hollywood after losing out on a movie role that she coveted, despite her Oscar win the year before. She was depressed, tempted to drown her sorrows in a bottle but with enough inner strength left to hold off just a bit longer.

Wandering the streets of Nashville, she recalled, like some pitiable waif, depending upon the kindness of strangers.

She had driven into town on her own, dismissing her driver, Rocco Gilardi, for the evening. The car she chose out of the half dozen she owned was her Jaguar convertible, driving it at top speed, the top down, the wind blowing her red hair in a dozen or more directions.

No state police stopped her, though she was hoping that someone would. She felt suicidal, wrenched as she was from the high of the Academy Awards triumph to being rejected in favor of a younger actress. Irving Chicolte had tried to argue that she was “big box office” now, her first picture after the Oscar earning $100 million plus in the United States alone where it played at a bit over two thousand theaters. Counting the foreign take, Chasing Dreams would eventually bring in nearly $200 million altogether, and that did not factor in the substantial video, cable and network broadcast revenue.

Yet she lost to someone ten years younger.

The news devastated her. Every time she passed by her Oscar statuette, it seemed to be mocking her, having promised a whole new world of career opportunities, and yet delivering little except invitations to entertainment industry functions which she had been attending anyway. Only now she was getting the better seats, either a table of her own or one that she would share on a given evening with the power elite.

From that glamorous company to the streets of Nashville, alone, walking aimlessly, not a soul in the world knowing or caring where I am tonight.

That was when she heard Kyle’s voice.

She stopped short, listening.

He left the splendor of heaven, knowing His destiny was the lonely hill of Golgotha, there to lay down His life for me…

She could not move, could not open her mouth or shut her eyes or turn her head.

If that isn’t love, the ocean is dry, there’s no star in the sky, and the sparrow can’t fly!

Suddenly she seemed to be gasping, as though someone had placed a pillow over her face and was suffocating her.

If that isn’t love, then heaven’s a myth, there’s no feeling like this, if that isn’t love.

A brief pause.

Then the second stanza was being sung.

Two voices.

She realized that there were two voices, one of which was strangely familiar, the other not recognizable at all. But it was the second that had hooked her, that had grabbed hold of her body and was now tugging at it.

Finally she could move.

She walked slowly, still unaware of her surroundings, her senses locked in on that voice as though it were a radar signal, drawing her toward it.

Lights ahead. Flashing lights.

Above the entrance to one of the myriad little clubs that was part of the Nashville music scene, clubs where fledgling country music stars often got their first taste of performing in public.

She walked up to the front door, which was open, and went inside.

In an instant she recognized one of the two performers on stage.

Darcy Reuther.

Carla had known the woman for many years.

What are you doing in a club like this? she thought. You’re a star. You should never descend back to this level. Are you crazy?

But then her attention drifted to the man standing next to Darcy. He was about a foot taller than she, dressed in jeans and a white T-shirt and black vest.

As they finished the song, the audience of a few dozen people burst into applause that was loud and sustained. But nothing took Carla’s attention away from Darcy Reuther’s singing partner.

“I wrote that before Kyle Rivers was born,” Darcy said after the room was quieter, “so I guess I’m old enough tobe his grandmother!”

Laughter.

“But I’m not that fortunate,” she continued. “Nothing would have made me happier than to say Kyle is my grandspn son. I would have been very proud of him, as a young man, as a young singer.”

She turned to him.

“Kyle, would you do that number we discussed?” she asked.

He smiled, and nodded, then turned to the band leader and asked him to cease any accompaniment.

That departure from the norm for such clubs had not been scripted, so the members of the band seemed confused.

“I feel a special leading tonight,” he said. “All I need is my guitar.”

The band leader nodded understandingly, and gave him the sign of the cross.

“Praise God, brother, and thank you,” Kyle said.

And he began to sing “Amazing Grace” as Carla had never heard it sung before. Carla found herself staring at him, hardly blinking.

On the final stanza, Darcy Reuther joined in with Kyle.

“‘When we’ve been there ten thousand years, bright shining as the sun,’“ they sang as though they had been doing duets together for a very long time, “‘we’ve no less days to sing God’s praise than when we’d first begun.’“

Carla could not move, not even to join in with the applause.

And then Darcy Reuther noticed that she was in the audience.

“We have a special patron tonight,” she said, “someone who is a country music legend and, now, an Oscar-winning actress.”

She pointed in Carla’s direction.

“Carla Gearhart is here tonight. Won’t you come up onstage, my dear friend?”

She did not want to do anything but leave, but she was caught literally in the spotlight and, in order to be gracious, she had to accept Darcy’s invitation.

After having met many male performers during ten years as a singer, while she was making hundreds of appearances in the main metropolitan areas of the United States as well as small country locations, Carla should not have been nervous to stand next to Kyle, to have him whisper into her ear that he had been a fan for a long time, to look briefly into his eyes.

“Carla, you didn’t really plan on this,” Darcy Reuther observed, “so I can’t ask you to sing anything tonight.”

As she said that, everyone in the small audience seemed to start shouting, “Sing, Carla, sing!”

She was at her best when she had had plenty of time to rehearse and so the idea of singing with no preparation played havoc with her normal confidence on stage.

“I have no idea what I could do tonight,” she muttered, partly to the audience, partly to Darcy.

Kyle whispered, “What about ‘Were You There?’ You sing the first stanza. I’ll do the second. Darcy can take the third. And the three of us can sing the fourth together.”

As an afterthought, he asked, “Do you know it?”

“Yes…I do,” she told him nervously.

“Let’s go ahead then, okay?”

“Sure.”

He kissed her on the cheek.

Carla had not sung that hymn in years but, somehow, she had never forgotten the words, the tempo, anything about it.

“‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord?’“ she began. “‘Were you there when they crucified my Lord? Sometimes it causes me to tremble, tremble, tremble.’“

And she felt better about her unexpected performance in that little club than others that she had spent long hours rehearsing in order to face tens of thousands of people in a single stadium or arena.

Kyle and Darcy could do nothing but stand amazed, Carla seemingly at the top of her form during those few minutes.

Now it was Kyle’s turn.

“‘When through the woods and forest glades I wander,

and hear the birds sing sweetly in the trees…’“ he sang with great skill, imbuing that less familiar stanza with a power that seemed to shake the ceiling and the walls of the club.

Next, Darcy stepped into the spotlight.

“Something special is happening tonight,” she said. “I have heard the greatest female voice in the history of country-and-western, and I have heard the greatest young man’s voice in ages, and I must step aside. The spotlight is theirs tonight.”

More applause, louder, sustained.

“I have to ask Carla Gearhart and Kyle Rivers to sing the remaining stanzas while I sit down and enjoy them as you all are doing,” Darcy continued. “This is not a church, this club, but that’s okay, for I feel the Holy Spirit here just the same, and I think He is saying, ‘Let Carla and Kyle be a blessing to everyone!’“

The next day, Carla and Kyle went on their first date, beginning a relationship that they would come to pray would last a lifetime, and beyond.

Chapter Two

Carla had never met anyone like Kyle before.

The men she had known were veterans of show business and life itself. She could never think of them in the same way as she was beginning to think of Kyle.

Strong…

He was strong physically, but there was a strength of the spirit that she found appealing as well, which did not translate into arrogance.

She talked with him about this during their fourth date, a simple one that involved dinner, a movie and a walk through one of Nashville’s parks.

“You are just so solid,” she told him.

“I work out a lot,” he replied.

Chuckling, Carla said, “That much is obvious.”

They were holding hands as they walked, enjoying the cool evening after an especially humid day.

“It’s something else,” she explained.

“Tell me…” he encouraged her, pointing to a bench where they could sit down.

“I have known men who never seemed to look me straight in the eye. You could tell that their minds were someplace else or that they felt insecure.”

“Or, maybe, it seemed that they were always planning something, always thinking of an angle.”

“That’s about it, Kyle. How did you know?”

This was one aspect of his personality that Carla had not decided whether she liked or hated. He seemed prone to honest answers at any given moment. She could not help wondering how much of what he told her along such lines was not wisdom but simple judgments that were inherently superficial.

But this time he had a good reason to say what he did.

“I’ve dated some women who were the same type,” he told her. “Pretty infuriating at times.”

“Is calculating a better word?” Carla ventured.

“Well, yes. There was no way I could trust them.”

“How about me?” she asked.

He sucked in his breath as he exclaimed, “Oh, brother!” then looked rather sheepish seconds later.

“Is it that bad?” Carla asked.

“It isn’t. But you aren’t perfect.”

She had never had any illusions. If anything, she tended to dwell too much on her imperfections.

“That’s funny,” Carla remarked.

“What’s funny?” Kyle asked defensively, unsure of whether she was making fun of him or not.

“You…”

Jumping to conclusions, he was beginning to feel rather awkward and uncomfortable just then. “What’s funny about me?” he asked.