- Twenty-Four -

Gideon

     Gideon walked over to the window in his office that looked out toward the docks. He was lost in thought. All this had developed so fast from the moment of his realization. He thought of his first meeting with Aaron and the week of trouble with Britta and Monir. The week of the funeral for Jasmine, and helping Mr. Ahmo transport his son’s body home. He thought of the busy week during all that.    

     The sudden awareness of the constant presence of God and the battle, all made sense. The idea that we are safe here in the US is ridiculous. It is a dangerous world filled with natural threats and evil people. In reality the only thing that lasts on Earth is love and our only safety is the Love of God.

     Gideon thought about his decades of feeling alone and how he now realized that there was someone or something right beside him that whole time who loved and cared for him. It would have changed so much of how he had behaved and the decisions he made. This revelation had made sense of so much troubling news he encountered every day. It gave him energy and courage. It made him realize that he was built to be a deadly force and he needed to be able to use that.

     He remembered back three plus decades ago to his time in Viet Nam. Gideon was back in the rain forest under the 300-foot high canopy of trees. He felt the heat even at night and the humidity and was uncomfortably settled in among the large leafed plants waiting for the passing of an American led unit of ARVN (Army of the Republic of South Vietnam) that was on the way to a tunnel system entrance that they would watch and destroy. Gideon was their advisor.

     Gideon had been there for a long day to make sure all the animals in the area were used to him before any one came along. It got really dark in the rain forest at night and as he sat there, alert but motionless he sensed, more than heard a movement. When he looked up he was presented with an embodied something. It was not human but looked like a human. It moved slowly and was clearly scanning the area. It had a dark energy pulsing and seemed to just consume the air around it. It stopped and Gideon sat absolutely still. He was in good enough shape that his heart rate was in the low 40’s when he just sat and his breathing was slow and shallow to feed his lungs. He could remain motionless for a long time. The presence made him feel nauseous and tight and he felt evil coming from it. What is evil? He couldn’t define it but this was it. It stood still for 10 minutes and surveyed the area before it began to move on. He was reminded now of the verse in the Bible that described the devil as roaming back and forth on the Earth like a hungry lion looking for some one to devour. This was satan, it was real and it could not be anything else, satan was feasting in Viet Nam. There was so much hatred and fear and sadness. So many people had given in to the father of lies.

     During his service there in the U. S. Military Gideon had realized that he was a loner and worked well independently. He was good at details and had a good memory. He was resourceful and could accomplish a task without having to have every step spelled out. He almost always came back with the desired result, and when he didn’t succeed he survived. He smiled as he remembered the call sign he had been given “Hard Ball.”    

     He had been involved in a couple of long term projects while he was there and ended up serving for a full five years. He had come home as a 24 year old, battle hardened, veteran who was already divorced once. He had developed so many skills in Southeast Asia that had absolutely no value in normal society and had forgotten any social skills he had before the “police action.”

     The horrible experience of the war had changed him. It was unsettling to look back at his life and see the troubles he had encountered and how he had always just attributed them to his deficiencies. He did not ever think that the forces of darkness were actively working to derail his happiness. He was still a ways off from even meeting God. He realized now that there are spiritual forces working in life that are bigger than we are and that we all need to turn to the God that made us to be able to survive. 

     While he was standing there Gideon remembered the process he had gone through in Vietnam with a shudder. He came into the service as a fairly decent young man. He did not look for trouble or hurt people. He went through boot camp and training and learned about danger and how to be violent and deadly. Then he went to the theater of war and was surrounded by a frontless danger zone. He went out on his daily duty and encountered the enemy. They engaged in battle and he survived. He was relieved and came back feeling lucky. Then more engagements and he began to get comfortable with the violence. Then he started to look for the enemy and the violence. The first time he killed someone he was sorry but felt lucky to be alive. Then he was more efficient and direct in trying to kill someone. Then he got to the point where he was out looking for someone to kill. 

     The surreal experiences he encountered got to the point where he was in the field fighting when a napalm bomb exploded nearby. Napalm was originally designed to level buildings, then was used to clear the dense forest and jungle plants. Then it became an anti-personnel weapon and Gideon was often where the enemy was. He was in the field and the explosions rained down. The napalm bomb showered its thick petroleum gel out over a large area and some of it slammed onto a man in his unit as they were beginning a pursuit of the enemy. It covered half of his chest and one arm. Napalm is a sticky gelatin and burns at a high temperature. He teammate was on fire and suffering greatly, screaming, Gideon stopped and looked at him and made eye contact and saw the terror. Gideon pulled his weapon up and ended the suffering for his fellow soldier even though the fire continued.

     How can you have this experience and ever come back home and behave like a “normal” person? How can you value life? How can you control yourself in conflicts? How can you expect someone to fall in love with a killer or to want to have a long-term relationship? He ended up killing those relationships just as efficiently as he had dispatched the enemy. He was cheered for what he had done overseas but then reviled for how he behaved at home. It sucked. 

     Gideon thought of the poet Richard Shelton and his book “You Can’t Have Everything.” Shelton talks about Exiles a lot and Gideon felt like an exile even while living in the U.S. Gideon remembered the lines from “I have no wings”

      a tired man carries only himself

      a frightened man carries himself and his shadow

      a vicious man carries the weight

      of all he would harm…

and he also remembered the lines from “Local Knowledge”

      if you should see one of us

      in the distance as your caravan passes

      and, if he is ragged and gesturing,

      do not be mistaken

      he is not gesturing for rescue

      he is shouting, go away

     One day he released the power of hate and fear and he felt like he could rejoin society and he left for his first stop back since his return from Viet Nam three years earlier, New Mexico

     So much had happened since then as he became the Champion of Failed Relationships and worked at a couple of careers until he had finally found himself in this coastal town living in a cottage and working in construction. 

     He had tried relationships but continued his difficulty in bonding with another human being. His last marriage had been very difficult. They had somehow produced a beautiful boy who grew in wisdom and strength through the years. While Gideon and his wife never really became intimate partners in life they had done a really wonderful job of raising this young man.

     Gideon had turned into a battle hardened combat soldier. His training was so intense and its application so strong that he could not stop thinking as a soldier and feeling like a soldier. He was happy to have a wonderful son in college to care for. He had Mo and his family and he did have a couple of friends he could talk to.

     Now he had the friendship of Aaron and Curtis. He needed to make sure that Aaron came home safely. God likes to work through people and so apparently does satan. It became clear at that moment to Gideon that someone had a bad experience with Aaron directly or indirectly and that negative feeling was being fed by the darkness to seem like a good reason to act. He felt a pat on the back of his head.