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Dusty's List
by Jason Boyett
The stupid ink smeared again. This time, he was only three names into the list, and he had to start over. It was taking longer than he thought. He ought to be praying instead of making a list.
Dusty was never very good with pens. In Mrs. Caldwell's third-grade class, she made them use pencils, because seven-year-olds make mistakes, she said. That's why we use erasers. Sometimes she would be looking at Dusty when she said that, but she was nice. And pretty. He would add her name to the next list.
He crumpled up the ruined paper and got a new one from the shelf above his dad's computer, which he wasn't supposed to touch. The paper was clean and white. It was thicker than the paper they had to use at school, the kind that tore when you needed to erase. Sometimes it even tore when you pressed down too hard with your pencil. It was not very good paper. The paper in his dad's office, though, was perfect. It was white and empty. No lines, no grainy places.
Dusty picked up his dad's heavy ball-point pen and started a new list. He began with Mrs. Caldwell, very carefully adding the names from the earlier lists, in cursive. He wanted to go faster so he could finish, but he was left-handed, and it was hard not to rub his hand across the names he'd already written.
He hated being left-handed. You could never use a pen, because it smeared. A pencil smeared too, but not as bad. Still, he always had to lift his wrist off the paper to write, especially to write cursive. That's why he had bad grades in writing, the only B's he ever got on his report cards. His words always ended up too squiggly, like the way his great-grandmother wrote. She was almost ninety, and she wrote in cursive with a pen. She was right-handed and never smeared, but her hands shook all the time. So did her head and neck. Dusty didn't like to look at her because of that. It bothered him, especially when his mom made him kiss Grammy's cheek and hug her when they left the nursing home. It always smelled funny there.
He thought about Grammy for a second, and almost added her name to the list, but decided not to. She was pretty old and would die anyway in a few years. "Be nice to your Grammy," Dusty's mom always said. "She won't be around forever."
"Why?" Dusty used to always ask. That was before he knew so much about God, before he really knew about dying.
"Because God's almost ready to take her home."
Dusty was pretty confused about God's home. Sometimes it seemed like a nursing home, because it was usually old people who went there. When Mrs. Perry died--she was their next-door neighbor, and she was old--the minister said that God had taken her home. And when Auntie Irma died, Grammy told him she had "gone home to be with the Lord." Auntie Irma used to be Grammy's roommate at Cedar Plains. She wasn't really his aunt, but that's what she made Dusty and his brother call her when they visited. Auntie Irma always smelled like flowers, except for in the summer, when she smelled like weeds. He imagined that God's home had old furniture in it, and lots of photographs. It would probably have wood paneling and plates on the walls. It would have to be pretty big, too.
Mr. Stanley, his Sunday School teacher, said that their church was the house of God. Usually it was when Dusty and his friends were fooling around, and Mr. Stanley would say, "No running in the house of God." The house of God was for worship, not horseplay. Dusty thought that would make more sense if the house of God was like Jackson Avenue Baptist, because it was much bigger than anyone's house. But that was confusing, the size. He had always wondered about that. People died all the time, and a house would get filled up pretty fast. So would a church, even a big one. Mr. Stanley was probably wrong about the house of God.
So as far as he could tell, heaven was mostly like the pictures in Grammy's old Bible and in Mom's book about the angels. Lots of clouds, and everything was yellowish. It was a wide-open place, big enough to fit everybody that died. Nobody would feel any pain there, the minister had said at Mrs. Perry's funeral. No more crying. He had only seen Mrs. Perry cry once, and that was when her cat died. Dusty saw it first, on a Saturday. He was on the trampoline, and saw Scooter sleeping in the alley. Scooter was still there in the afternoon, so Dusty told his dad. They put the cat in a box and the two of them went to tell Mrs. Perry. That was almost a year ago, before Dusty knew that cats and other pets didn't go to heaven when they died. They didn't go anywhere.
Anyway, God's home was probably a good place, even if you might not be able to run in it. That's why Dusty was making the list of people he wanted to die, so they could go there. It was pretty hard to come up with the list, though. He had to be sure the people on it knew Jesus. Otherwise, when he prayed for them they'd die and go to hell. That would obviously be a sin, a bad one, probably worse than horseplay in church.
Dusty had five names down, including Mrs. Caldwell. He was pretty sure she knew Jesus. So did Jake, his brother. Jake went down the aisle during Vacation Bible School and accepted Christ, just last year. Mr. and Mrs. Stanley were on the list, too. He didn't know their first names, or Mrs. Caldwell's, but he figured that was enough for God. He thought about putting his parents' names on it, but Dusty didn't want them to die. Who would take care of him? He could pray for them later.
The only other name on it was Brother Steve, their preacher. Of course Brother Steve was a Christian. Dusty didn't worry about that. He did wonder who would preach on Sunday after Brother Steve died. That might be a problem unless they could get one of the deacons to do it.
He decided to stop at five names. That was good enough for now, and he didn't want to have to start over again. Every minute he wasted making a good list was time the people on it could be spending with God in heaven.
Your life is God's gift to you. What you do with your life is your gift to God.
That's what the picture on the microwave said. It was in a frame next to the telephone. The writing on it was in cursive, a fancy kind Dusty hadn't learned yet. There was a picture of clouds and a rainbow in the background. Dusty thought it might be a picture of heaven.
God gave him life; Dusty was thankful for that. God also gave him something else, and Dusty knew he had to use that gift for God. He just found out about it last week, but it wasn't too late. He was only eight years old. If he lived as long as Grammy had, he could send lots of people to heaven. All he had to do was pray for them.
Kyle died in a car wreck last Thursday. They found out when the phone rang during dinner. His dad had answered the phone. He turned his back to them while he talked, and Dusty could only hear him mumbling. Then his dad came back to the table.
"That was Uncle Mike," he said. At first Dad just stared at his mashed potatoes, until he looked up at Dusty and Jake. His voice was much softer than it usually was. "He's at the hospital. He said Kyle was just killed in a car wreck. A drunk driver ran a red light and hit the driver's side straight-on."
Dusty's mom started to cry, right there at the table. She said, "Dear God," but Dusty didn't think she was praying. He thought maybe it was the first time she'd ever taken the Lord's name in vain. His dad just kept staring at the potatoes. That was when Dusty knew about his gift. He had never heard of that kind of thing before, but if that picture on the microwave was right, he had better start using it. Kyle died, and he knew exactly why.
It was because Dusty had prayed for him that morning, right before breakfast.
Dusty didn't usually get to pray before meals. Dad usually did that, the same prayer every time: "Ourmostgraciousheavenlyfather, thank you for another day to serve you. Please forgive us our sins and help us love others as ourselves. Bless this food to the nourishment of our bodies. In Jesus' name, Amen."
On Thursday, though, he turned and said, "Dusty, why don't you pray this morning?" Mom had made scrambled eggs and toast, Dusty remembered. So Dusty prayed. He tried to pray the same way as his dad, but he had to stop after "help us love others as ourselves." He couldn't remember what came next, and knew that you should always keep talking once you start to pray. You can't stop until the amen. So while he was thinking, Kyle popped into his head. He didn't know why. So he added Kyle to the morning prayer: "Bless this food ... and take care of Kyle today. In Jesus' name, Amen."
"That was sweet, Dusty," his mom said when he finished. She smiled at his dad. "The faith of a little child."
Dusty didn't know what made him think of his cousin. Kyle was a teenager, and didn't talk to him much. He was big, and had just gotten his driver's license. Dusty knew about that because his mom and dad had talked about it at the dinner table a few times.
"Can you believe Kyle's already sixteen?" his dad would say.
"Can you believe they're letting him behind the wheel of a car?" his mom would say. They'd both laugh. Dusty would always laugh with them, even though he wasn't sure what was so funny. He liked it when his parents laughed.
At the funeral on Saturday, Kyle was in a shiny brown coffin. It wasn't opened up like Mrs. Perry's had been, which made Dusty glad. At her funeral, everyone had to walk to the front of the church and look at her. She looked plastic, like a doll. Dusty told his brother that and Jake told Mom, and Dusty got in trouble. He wondered if everyone looked like that when they died.
The preacher at Kyle's funeral talked for a long time. He wore a long black robe and a funny collar. Dusty asked his dad why he was dressed like that instead of wearing a suit and tie like Brother Steve, and his dad said to be quiet, I'll tell you later. Most of what the preacher said Dusty couldn't remember, except when he talked about heaven. That part was interesting.
"Kyle was a child of God," the man said. He lifted his arms up when he said it and the robe made him look like an angel, only it was black. "And for that, we are truly thankful. He's now with his heavenly father. He is in a better place. But we've been left behind, his family, his friends. In heaven, there's no more crying. But here on earth, we've shed many tears over Kyle, and we'll continue to shed tears as we deal with our grief."
Dusty looked at his mother. She was crying again. He wondered if he should be crying, too. "We keep questioning God," the preacher said. "Why? we ask. Why would he take this young man home? Why so soon? Perhaps we'll know the answer some day, and it will all make sense. Or maybe we'll never know. That's okay. All we can do now is trust. Trust God. Trust that he had a plan. Trust that, for some reason, God allowed that one poor individual to bring about Kyle's death, and that there was a reason for it."
The preacher kept talking after that, saying some things about the drunk driver and how the people of God should remember to pray for him. But Dusty didn't listen much. He kept hearing again and again in his mind what the preacher had said: "God allowed that one poor individual to bring about Kyle's death."
Dusty had wondered about it, but now he knew it was true. Somehow, the preacher knew about Dusty's prayer. Maybe God told him. But however the preacher knew, it didn't matter, because Dusty was certain of it: Kyle had died because Dusty asked God to take care of him. Of course. The best way to take care of someone is to put them in a better place. Dusty sent Kyle to heaven with his prayer. His mom and dad had prayed for people before, but those people never died. And Dusty hardly ever prayed, at least not out loud, but Kyle had died, that very same day he prayed for him. He was special. He had a special kind of prayer. His life was a gift from God.
The list was good enough, Dusty decided. He hadn't smeared, and the handwriting ended up pretty nice, without many squiggles. The only trouble he had was with the capital S's on Mr. and Mrs. Stanley's names. Those were hard to do, especially in cursive. He thought for a minute that he might save the list after he was finished, and turn it in to Mrs. Caldwell, because she would be proud of his handwriting. He even used a pen. But then he remembered--Mrs. Caldwell was on the list.
That made him sad. He liked Mrs. Caldwell. He liked Jake, too. They fought sometimes, but Jake made an okay brother, all in all. Dusty didn't want them to die, even though they knew Jesus and would probably like being in heaven. Even though it was a better place, with no crying. He wondered if he would cry when Jake died. He knew Mom would. Dad probably would, too. He wondered if his mom would use the Lord's name in vain again. That would be a sin; it was right there in the commandments on the wall in Sunday School. He didn't want his mom to sin because of his gift. Maybe he ought to crumple it up like he did the messed-up ones, and throw the list away.
No! Dusty told himself. That's the devil. He doesn't want him to pray, or make a list, or use his gift for God. Besides, God is in control of everything. The minister in the black robe said so at Kyle's funeral. Dusty knew that God had given him the names on his list. Those were the names of people God wanted to come home. It would be sad, but it was God's will, after all.
He would just have to do it. Trust God, like the preacher said.
Dusty put the pen away and went to his room. Jake was outside playing, which was good. Otherwise, Jake would probably make a lot of noise or jump on the bed and mess him up. And this was important. He decided to shut the door, just in case. It wouldn't take very long.
He got down on his knees beside his bed, like he saw pictures of kids doing in the Sunday School books. He folded his hands together and laid the list down in front of him, next to his pillow. He took a deep breath, and prayed.
Dusty prayed for every name on the list. He thanked God for his life, which was God's gift to him, according to the picture. He told God that he knew about the other gift, the one he had to give back. The one that made Kyle go to heaven. So he asked God to take care of Mrs. Caldwell, his third-grade teacher. He asked God to take care of Jake, his little brother. And Mr. and Mrs. Stanley. And Brother Steve, the preacher at Jackson Avenue.
After Dusty said "Amen," he folded the list in half, very neatly. He made sure the corners lined up perfectly. He placed the list in his Bible, on the dresser next to his bed. He looked in his desk for a pen to have ready, to check each name off after it happened, but there weren't any pens. Only pencils. He needed a pen. He would get one from his dad's desk.
Dusty heard Jake playing outside his window, and wondered when it would happen. He wondered what Mrs. Caldwell was doing. He wondered if it would hurt. No, don't think about that. Trust God, he told himself.
Just trust God.
Dusty left his room and went into the kitchen. He sat down at the table and waited for the phone to ring.
