Always a Brother Read online

  Always a Brother

  Always a Brother

  Michael Shenk

  © 2020 Michael Shenk

  Always a Brother

  All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, scanning, or other—except for brief quotations in critical reviews or articles, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  Published in Nashville, Tennessee, by Elm Hill, an imprint of Thomas Nelson. Elm Hill and Thomas Nelson are registered trademarks of HarperCollins Christian Publishing, Inc.

  Elm Hill titles may be purchased in bulk for educational, business, fund-raising, or sales promotional use. For information, please e-mail [email protected].

  Publisher’s Note: This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. All characters are fictional, and any similarity to people living or dead is purely coincidental.

  Scripture quotation is taken from the King James Version. Public domain.

  Cover photography: Caroline Shenk

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019918917

  ISBN 978-1-400327225 (Paperback)

  ISBN 978-1-400327232 (Hardbound)

  ISBN 978-1-400327249 (eBook)

  Information about External Hyperlinks in this ebook

  Please note that footnotes in this ebook may contain hyperlinks to external websites as part of bibliographic citations. These hyperlinks have not been activated by the publisher, who cannot verify the accuracy of these links beyond the date of publication.

  DEDICATION

  I dedicate this story to my wife, Jean Devoted, talented, lovely, and gracious, words that only begin to describe what I feel when I see you. You’ve prayed Psalm 90:17 for years – thank you for being the best partner ever.

  Contents

  Acknowledgement and Thanks

  Introduction

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Acknowledgement

  and Thanks

  Many thanks to Bill, Xandra, and Donavan for your guidance and advice. Thank you, Sharalyn, for the hours of editing and encouragement. Caroline, thank you for the cover photography and design ideas.

  Thank you, Mom, for your shining example of how a person should live, and for reading me stories over and over and over. Dad, thanks for teaching me to read and for being a friend and brother as well as a father. Thanks to the best Mother-in-law ever, who has never stopped asking, “so when is that book coming out?” and to my late Father-in-law for inspiring me to try new things.

  Thank you, Jean, Vincent, Stephen, Micaela and Caroline, for being the best family I could ever hope for and for the wonderful years we have already enjoyed together (road trip!), and welcome Ashley, Jeff, Erika, and Davis – lucky us, lucky you – the best is yet to come! Uno mas?

  Thank you to my grandparents; Grandpa Ron who expected the cutting edges of both men and steel to be sharp, and Grandpa Royden who lived his life like he plowed his fields – straight and true. Grandma Schweitzer made and served the finest popsicles in Idaho, I wish I could have another. Grandma Shenk, thanks for being an example of courage and for loving life, may your 96th year be the best one ever!

  Finally, thank you to Mr. Lewis, Mr. Michener, Mr. Ludlum, Mr. Grisham, Mr. Smith, Mr. Burke, Mr. Peretti, Mr. Berton, and all the others who have enriched so many lives, including mine, something a good brother would do.

  Introduction

  Early Winter 1986 – Vanderhoof, British Columbia

  The girl shivered. She slid her chair closer to the open oven. The electricity was on again, the hot stench of the dirty element pushed into the cold apartment. She wanted to go to the other room where the heater was running, but the crying made her sad, the noise was too much. A pink notebook was open, held to her leg by her elbow. It was snowing, and she wrote about it. She wrote about winter, and the apartment, and the fear. Her nose was running, and she wiped it on her sleeve. She wrote about being forced from her home. She wrote about the people who helped her. She wrote about being left by her family. She wrote about her boyfriend and being away from her unhappy home and how he made her feel.

  She wrote more about him, and who she had thought he would be to her. She wrote about how happy she was until he left. She wrote how she was safe. Until he left. She wrote lines about being lonely.

  She scooted her chair to the other side of the oven door and wondered who had turned on the electricity. She wrote about what it was like to not be noticed, or have nice clothes, or be pretty. She wrote about the old lady who brought her a box of food the day before Christmas. She wrote about the nurses at the hospital. She wrote about her baby. She wrote that her father and stepmother were angry with her and how she let them down. She wrote about rules. She wrote about what her stepbrothers did to her, and how it made her feel and how she had no friends to talk to and how her mom called her a whore and her dad swore and told her it was her fault anyway and God hated her.

  She cried.

  She wrote about the chickadee that landed on her windowsill. She wondered if it was hungry. She wrote about being hungry. She wrote about two cans of tomato soup left on the shelf. She wrote about the nurse who visited her, and then came back with a pan of lasagna and baby clothes.

  She wrote how she didn’t know how to name her baby. Or how to feed him. Or what to do. She wrote that her sixteenth birthday was soon, and she had never had a birthday in town and had never had a birthday present. She wrote that her family had moved away. She wrote that she had nothing. She wrote about the man across the hall who had food. She wrote what she had to trade for food.

  She went and looked at her baby. He was quiet now. The room was warmer.

  She left the apartment and went across the hall and knocked on the door.

  Early Summer, 1987 – Burnaby, British Columbia

  He sighed and crossed his legs. According to his appointment book, the next client was a crier. He scanned his notes, deciding where to start. The door opened and she came in.

  “Hello, Jan. I’m glad you came today.” He rose from his desk, extending a welcome.

  She sat, quiet, hands in her lap, waiting. She held tissues.

  La
ter, he asked, “So, Jan, what are you thinking about work? Your time away is nearly complete, almost done.”

  She was still crying.

  “I just don’t know if I can go back!”

  She fought to maintain composure, and mentally he shook his head, reviewing her background. She was an athlete, or had been, a track and soccer star in high school, had excelled in her studies of criminology, graduated high in her class, hailed from a prominent family in a major city. A real winner. But within her first three months as an RCMP officer, she had encountered a sorrow and pain so deep that he doubted she would recover. He waited, expression calm, deeply wishing for a cigarette; her time was almost up.

  “It’s just, I just feel … I feel so helpless!” She cried more.

  “Jan, what are the segments, the pieces, that make you feel this way?” He spoke calmly, serene. Dying for a cigarette.

  A flicker of anger, she tensed, shoulders hunching slightly. This was good.

  “It’s just not fair, and no one did anything about it!”

  “Mmm-hmm.” He nodded encouragingly, glasses hanging from his left hand.

  “First, this girl was obviously struggling. A neighbour had reported that she thought maybe the girl was sleeping with men for food. We, I, didn’t do anything!” She cried some more before speaking again.

  “Then she disappeared, and I checked her apartment, and I didn’t know she had a baby!” She was visibly angry, cheeks flushed now. “How was I supposed to know there was a baby in the box? There were no baby things, no crib, bottles.”

  She took a breath. “I know, I know, we’ve been over this before. It’s not like it was my fault—but it was!”

  He blew out his breath, a little too loudly, then coughed to cover his show of feelings. He lit a cigarette. Much better.

  She ignored him and his flexing jaw, somehow deflating, the anger replaced by depression. “How can I be a police officer, supposedly helping people. I lived across the street from this girl. Right across the street! From a teenage girl who had a baby, no family, no food, no support, no one who even knew she needed help!”

  “Do you want to talk about the diary, the one you found?” It irritated him that he continued to clarify his questions. He exhaled and pressed on.

  He felt it might be painful but worth the risk if he could help her find a way to realize she was not to blame, not responsible for the horrendous neglect of a young girl. She was a victim herself, like two guys from his crew in Vietnam, still struggling today.

  The rain traced lines on the filmed windows. Her crying steadied as he led her once again through the details she had found in the diary, and he took redundant notes.

  Yes, she felt like the diary had been written for her. Yes, she knew the Jan written at the top of each page almost certainly stood for January. No, she was not the only person responsible for this girl.

  He started a new paragraph, forcing his grip on the pen to relax.

  Yes, when the girl had approached her shyly on the sidewalk, asking what to do when the heater and lights didn’t work, and she told her to call her landlord, yes, that day she had told the girl her name.

  He wrote on, smoke drifting from his second cigarette, wanting a drink.

  No, she didn’t think the girl even knew what a landlord was, and most likely moved in with a guy who had then moved away.

  Yes, the girl had mentioned a boyfriend who had broken up with her, but probably had never had a boyfriend previously, and most likely didn’t really understand what had happened. She hadn’t appeared to be drinking or doing drugs, but seemed detached, distant, a ghost.

  He was following the thought pattern but drifting somewhat. He nodded thoughtfully and absently, as she continued.

  The diary had seemed to indicate that the girl’s parents had withdrawn her from school when she was fourteen or fifteen because “she was stupid and didn’t need school anyway,” as she had written in one entry.

  During a lull, he broke in quietly, “Jan, what do your senses tell us about the situation?”

  “Well, I saw there was a problem …”

  “And?”

  “I should have done more about what I saw.”

  “Now Jan, let’s not be negative here. Let’s simply explore what your senses have to say.”

  “Well, yes, I saw there was a problem, and I did report it.”

  She tensed, ready to add the negative, which he forestalled smoothly “And then the next?”

  This was familiar ground. “I felt something was wrong, and I did something about it.”

  “Mmm-hmm?” His mouth was dry, and he noticed he was flexing his jaw. He wanted a drink.

  “I heard there was a problem and followed up on it.” She stopped, blocking the negative comment that was to follow.

  He was surprised when she looked up quietly, eyes hollow, locking on his. Her voice rose, and his neck tensed painfully with a sudden chill. He realized they were losing ground, and he may have been very, very unprepared for this session. He flinched when she shifted toward him in her chair. He looked up at her and stopped taking notes.

  “The smell!” she stared at him, as if he should know. “It was terrible! All these empty soup cans, crammed in the cupboard under the sink, not rinsed. Lots of them, they smelled so bad! And the oven door was open. I thought something was burning, but it was only the oven, turned on ‘high’. And then I went in the bathroom.”

  She stood abruptly, formidable, shifting from foot to foot. “In the bathroom, well, the smell. There were diapers on the floor behind the toilet, lots of diapers. But I still didn’t know she had a baby!”

  She was shrieking now. His receptionist would hear; she would know what to do.

  “I still didn’t know she had a baby! I ran down to the dumpster where I had carried the box of old, dirty clothes. I heard crying!”

  She slammed her hands flat on his desk, leaning toward him. “I heard the baby crying in the box of clothes. The baby I dropped in the trash.”

  She collapsed to her knees, forehead on her forearms which were now flat on his desk, strident voice turning to a hollow whisper.

  Between sobbing breaths, she forced out sentences. “I put a baby in the garbage. I only took him out just before the truck took it away, the garbage. I almost killed the baby.”

  This was a breakthrough. It hadn’t been in the file or come up in earlier appointments. He was shocked, and then distracted further when the door burst open. The receptionist walked two steps into the office and stopped.

  Rattled, he asked, “And how did this make you feel?”

  The air seemed to leave the room. The words came from some deep and stupid place, a place to which he had never previously stooped.

  The receptionist, large and grandmotherly, bustled forward and knelt beside the crying woman, hugging her to herself, turning the woman away from her therapist.

  “There, there, my dear. Don’t worry about how it made you feel. Let’s just cry for a while.” She turned slightly, glaring at her boss.

  The woman cried, and then opened up, phrase after phrase.

  “I feel so helpless to fix what I did. I wish I could go back and do everything over,” she sobbed into a safe place. “We got the baby up to the hospital, and he was okay, later. He was so small and cold and sad.”

  She cried some more, and the receptionist moved her to the velour couch. She sat in the corner, pulling the young woman to lean against her, rocking her gently.

  “The girl had been gone for two days, the people downstairs had heard the baby crying, but thought the girl was home. How could a baby cry for two days, alone, hungry and cold, and no one check? Why didn’t they tell me there was a baby? How could I come and carry him down to the garbage with the other trash? I thought the box was full of dirty clothes and diapers! Who puts a baby in a cardboard box! Oh, God, how could this even happen?

  The receptionist rocked and hugged and sent her boss to get hot chocolate.

  “Sweetie, was the
baby okay?”

  “Yes, he was okay. I stayed at the hospital until he pulled through. Two big men, I think they were his uncles, maybe? Well, they came up to the hospital, and I told them what I knew.”

  She looked at the receptionist for the first time. “I was so scared of them; they were big and stern and so concerned. It was like they hadn’t seen the baby before. Later I thought maybe they didn’t know about him. I thought they would yell at me, but they just looked at me when I told them what happened. They only said a couple things. They asked about ‘the mother’. We didn’t even know at that point she had disappeared, like, for good.”

  She accepted a cup of hot chocolate from the counsellor and turned back to the receptionist.

  “Then they asked what his name was. They didn’t know the baby’s name, and I didn’t either. The nurse checked, and the mother hadn’t named him yet.”

  She began to cry again, deep, wrenching sobs.

  “The baby could have died without a name, no one would have known he was missing. He would have,” she paused to breathe, words coming one at a time, “he would have just been gone.”

  The receptionist set the hot chocolate on the floor and rocked and hugged. The broken young woman cried.

  “Do you think the baby would be safe with the big men?” the receptionist asked quietly.

  The young woman got her breath, and straightened, the question penetrating her sorrow and sense of failure and certainty that life could never be the same.

  “Yes.” She opened her eyes, wiping tears, nodding, “Yes, he would be safe with them.”

  She sat very still then, leaning back on the grandmotherly shoulder, breathing steadily.

  “Yes,” she whispered, “he will be safe with them.”

  Chapter 1

  May 2017 - Vanderhoof, British Columbia

  Johnny Amund sat in his truck and realized Frank had scared him. He swore, reversing his empty logging truck into the narrow turnaround, dust lifting like heavy smoke from the powder blanketing the road. Yes, he had been scared, the feeling quickly turning to an anger which hung in the cab like the dust he could see in the rear-view mirror.