“Yeah, I got to stay with him in heaven. You were really close to him, huh,
Dad?”
“Yes, I was,” was all I could manage. My head spun. Colton had just
introduced a whole new topic: people you’ve lost, and meeting them in
heaven. Crazily enough, with all the talk of Jesus and angels and horses, I
had never even thought to ask him if he’d met anyone I might know. But
then, why would I? We hadn’t lost any family or friends since Colton was
born, so who would there have been for him to meet?
Now this. I probably drove another ten miles toward Benkelman,
thoughts charging through my mind. Soon, the cornfields were broken by
neat squares of bronzed stubble, wheat fields past the harvest.
I didn’t want to make the same mistake I’d made when I’d put ideas in
his head—that people had to die, for example, before being admitted to
heaven. I didn’t want him just feeding me back stuff to please me. I wanted
to know the truth.
On the left, a quarter mile off the road, a white church steeple seemed to
rise from the corn. St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, built in 1918. I wondered
what the people of this longstanding local fixture would think of the things
our little boy had been telling us.
Finally, as we crossed into Dundy County, I was ready to start asking
some open-ended questions. “Hey, Colton,” I said.
He turned from the window where he’d been watching a pheasant
pacing us amid the corn rows. “What?”
“Colton, what did Pop look like?”
He broke into a big grin. “Oh, Dad, Pop has really big wings!”
Again with the present tense. It was weird.
Colton went on. “My wings were really little, but Pop’s were big!”
“What did his clothes look like?”
“He had white on, but blue here,” he said, making the sash motion again.
I edged the truck over to avoid a ladder someone had dropped in the
road then steered back to the center of the lane. “And you got to stay with
Pop?”
Colton nodded, and his eyes seemed to light up.