Outlaw. Part 1

Outlaw.

Ted Dekker.

My dearest son, whom I was allowed to birth for reasons far beyond my own understanding:.

You must know the full truth of who you are and from where you came. I have carefully written down our story through many nights alone, lost to the world, to be read only by those who would seek the truth as I myself do.

I pray that in reading our account, you will finally understand. Listen with your heart and surely you will be among the rarest who live, as will be those who one day awaken from their stupor and follow in your footsteps.

I wait for you, my son. Find me, the one whose womb gave you breath and blood. Search me out so that we might summon all those who would hear the distant beat of our drum and see, with new eyes, the world as it really is beyond the law of flesh and bone.

Hear my voice calling to you through these pages now. Come to your mother. Let my words guide you home. Awaken, my son. Come out from among those bound by the law of this world and find new life.

I wait....

Chapter One.

THE STORY of how I, Julian Carter, and my precious two-year-old son, Stephen, came to be on that white sailboat, tossed about like a cork on a raging dark sea off the northern tip of Queensland in 1963, is harrowing, but it pales in comparison to being abandoned in that tempest.

One moment we were in the hands of a capable captain; the next he was gone, swallowed by the storm, leaving us utterly alone and at the whim of nature's crus.h.i.+ng fury.

Before leaving Thursday Island, I'd been a.s.sured that the captain-a congenial and talkative man named Moses who'd agreed to take us out for a leisurely afternoon sail-was the best. I suppose he might have been, but not even the most experienced pilot can control the hand of fate. In this case that hand was nothing less than a fist, perhaps a large log or a whale, and it slammed into the hull, jerking me from my dead sleep below deck where I'd dozed off in gently rising and falling seas.

The boat lolled dangerously to my right, then pitched in the opposite direction. I cried out and clambered to the adjacent bench seat, thinking little Stephen had surely been thrown across the galley. To my relief I saw that he hadn't been bothered at all. He slept peacefully, unaware of the waves cras.h.i.+ng against the craft.

How long had we been sleeping? In my panic I left Stephen and scrambled up the narrow ladder to the main deck.

The sight that greeted me stopped me cold. Dark, ominous clouds pressed low like a cave of black boulders. We were in the maw of two towering waves with jagged, wind-whipped crests that looked like bared teeth. The serene seas that had beckoned us out for leisure had become a monster and we were in its jaws.

The captain twisted from the wheel, sun-leathered face now ashen and drawn. I saw the fear in his eyes, two open wells that sank into the abyss of uncertainty. I felt myself being swallowed by the darkness in his eyes, sucked deep into a place that could not be rightly navigated.

For the s.p.a.ce of no more than a heartbeat, we shared a common, terrible knowing: we were in dreadful trouble.

Whether distracted by my sudden appearance or lost in his own fear, I don't know, but he was oblivious to the sudden swing of the mainsail sweeping toward him. I thought to cry out, but before the words could form in my mouth, fate dealt its blow. I watched, speechless, as the boom struck the side of his head with bone-crus.h.i.+ng force. He lurched to his left. A sudden wave heaved the boat, and he toppled over the side and into the boiling sea.

I stood frozen at the hatch, clinging to the ladder, unwilling to believe what my eyes had just shown me.

Thinking to rush to the rail and save the man, I released my grip, but my legs were not accustomed to walking a bucking deck and I grabbed the ladder again, sure that I would only be thrown over as well, leaving my helpless son alone.

I cried out and frantically searched the foaming water but there was no sign of the captain. The ocean had swallowed him whole and shoved the boat far from where he'd gone overboard.

I felt a moment of dread for the man and whatever family he'd left behind, but the thoughts were quickly crushed by the singular terror of my own abandonment.

The empty deck before me looked like a scene from a nightmare, disconnected from reality, a single cruel image meant only to horrify. I saw the full scope of our danger as the boat rose to the top of a colossal wave. We were alone in the throat of a yawning ocean, a mere speck in that towering sea so far from the distant American sh.o.r.es I'd left to answer G.o.d's call in the wake of a sunken marriage.

Even during my tumultuous relations.h.i.+p with Neil, my family had always been a strong fortress of refuge. My whole life, mother and father and sisters and servants had always been at my beck and call. Even during the darkest nights, the land had always been solidly under my feet.

But in that sea north of Queensland I was free-falling into bottomless chaos and death. The G.o.d I had come to serve was nowhere to be seen.

The boat tipped dangerously onto its side and my mind snapped to the crash I'd heard. Something had broken.

The rudder? The keel. Or worse, the hull.

Salt water crashed over the railings as I spun toward the open hatch behind me, grabbing for purchase, sopping wet. The water spilled through the doorway.

I threw myself down the ladder, reached up and slammed the door shut, then jerked the lever down to lock the door tight, muting the sound of pounding waves.

Stephen slept in peace.

I began to shake.

For a long moment I allowed myself to imagine that it was all a mistake. I was still asleep beside my son aboard the Pan American flight high in the sky, angling toward Australia, enduring a nightmare from which I would soon awake. Safe.

But then the boat lurched wildly, hurling an empty stainless coffeepot from the shelf to the floor, and I knew it was no dream. Large raindrops began to pelt the windows.

Amazingly, Stephen breathed evenly in a peaceful sleep. It was the only blessing of that moment. My maternal instincts demanded that I protect my son at all costs. He would continue to sleep without a hint of discomfort or fear-this became my sole purpose in the galley of that boat.

Pus.h.i.+ng away all thoughts of the pounding storm, I dropped to my knees and scrambled under the table. A single latch locked the tabletop to the stand. I clawed at the lever, popped it open, then jerked the top off the stand and stood it on end, bracing it against the cus.h.i.+ons where Stephen slept so he couldn't roll off. I'd seen a box of canned goods along the wall behind me, and I fought for balance as I hauled it into place to secure the tabletop.

In truth, nothing could possibly be secure in that storm.

I knew nothing about making a sailboat go or turn or stop, even in a gla.s.s sea. The boat's mainsail was straining in the wind. Looking out the round porthole window, I could see that we were being flung over the waves, tipping first one way and then the other in a dramatic fas.h.i.+on. The power of the storm would surely capsize us unless I could find a way to lower the sail. From what I could see, there was no way to accomplish that task from inside the hull.

I had to go back up and face the storm.

My mother and father were eccentric but made of iron. Some of that mettle had found its way into my bones. Faced with what seemed like certain death, I was finally able to set my panic aside.

I can't tell you that I had any idea what I was doing or that I had any real hope for accomplis.h.i.+ng it, but I knew I had to do something.

I staggered back onto the main deck, the memory of Moses being hurled overboard large in my mind. Why he hadn't lowered the sail was beyond me. Perhaps he had been desperate to get out of the storm using as much wind power as possible.

Seawater soaked my blouse and capris to the skin, but the rubber soles of my canvas shoes didn't slip. I grabbed one of the ropes to steady myself and pulled myself to where the sail was tied into the mast. There was a metal crank there and I tugged at it, but the lever refused to budge. Spray slapped my face. I could hardly see, and if not for my firm grasp on the rope, the bucking deck might have thrown me from my feet.

I searched in vain for a locking mechanism. I couldn't figure out how to release the crank. It came to me that I had to cut the rope.

Lightning ripped jagged lines in the sky. Thunder crashed over my head. Angry clouds unleashed torrents of stinging rain, forcing me to squint to protect my eyes. The sail was dragging us over the crests, threatening to capsize us at any moment. Maybe I could release the sail by cutting the line. There had been a red bucket and a filleting knife on deck earlier, but no more. Both were long lost to the sea.

I clawed my way back to the hatch, descended the ladder without falling, retrieved a knife from the galley, and returned to the deck. With each step I took, the waves seemed to rise higher, like rolling mountains on either side. I had to get the sail down!

But the moment I tried to saw into the rope, I realized that it wasn't rope at all. It was a cable. Thick strands of steel wire.

I stood there, frozen by indecision. I didn't know how far out to sea we were. I didn't know the direction in which we were headed. I didn't know where the sea ended and land began.

We were in the Coral Sea, I knew that much. The boat might have been blowing west into the Pacific, north toward New Guinea, south toward Australia, or east, back toward Thursday Island. I could only hope that it was the last. Thoughts of the open Pacific filled me with the certainty of death.

Screaming at the wind, I lunged for the sail and thrust the blade at the stretched canvas. Repeated jabs rewarded me with a small tear in the material before a large wall of water threw me to my knees. The knife flew free.

Grasping at any surface that gave me a hold, I managed to crawl back into the galley and close the hatch. Stephen still slept-how, I'll never know.

Only then did I think to secure him to the cus.h.i.+on using the strap from a life jacket so that he wouldn't be thrown off the seat if the ride grew worse.

After I did so, there was nothing else I could do but crouch over my boy and beg G.o.d to save us. We were ants on a piece of driftwood being pummeled by cras.h.i.+ng waves. Each clap of thunder rattled the metal stove.

The wind ripped into us with a savagery that left the boat groaning and screeching. My only hope lay in the fact that we hadn't already been torn apart or flipped under the waves. The crash that had first awakened me must have been the rudder rather than the keel.

The beating seemed endless. Minutes dragged into what must have been an hour and then what might have been several hours.

I can't fully understand how the boat held together under those pounding walls of water. I only know that somehow we made it through the storm's worst. The wind finally began to ease. The waves weren't as high and the rain lightened.

After hours of terror, a calm began to settle over me. Real hope for our survival slowly edged back into my mind.

The moment the storm finally destroyed us came suddenly, with a deafening crack below us, much louder and more jarring than the one that had broken the rudder. At first I thought the hull itself had split in two.

But as soon as the boat began to tip, I knew that the keel had somehow snapped. The long underwater wedges that keep the wind from pus.h.i.+ng a sailboat over are normally the st.u.r.diest part of a boat, so I don't know why the keel broke before the hull.

What I do know is that one moment the boat was upright, and the next it had been pushed all the way over on its side. The impact forced part of the mast through the window.

I find it nearly impossible to relate the full horror of our capsizing at sea. The floor jerking up to my left. That coffeepot smas.h.i.+ng into the ceiling. The tabletop flipping away. Water gus.h.i.+ng into the cabin.

I could see the cabin collapsing around me, but my mind was swallowed by what was about to happen to Stephen. I instinctively grabbed for him, releasing my hold on the table post. The instant my hand came free, I was thrown across the cabin.

I remember screaming, a pitiful cry as my body flew through the air. I remember thinking that all of this had happened because of a recurring dream that had drawn me halfway across the world. Then my head slammed into one of the low-hanging cabinets and the world vanished.

Chapter Two.

EACH OF our stories begins long before any event that suddenly and often irrevocably catapults us onto a new path.

My story began with a dream.

But really it began with my father, who guided my understanding of the world, and with my mother, who influenced my every waking moment. I will write here only what will give you a general context for my life before I was ripped from the bosom of one world and thrust into another, all because of that simple, recurring dream.

My mother, Ellen Carter, was a proper British woman from London who met my father in New York, married him a year later, then moved to Atlanta in 1933. She soon gave birth to my older sister, Patrice, then to me, Julian, and finally to Martha. We lived in Georgia with all the Southern belles, but Mother brought us up as proper English. We were referred to as "the Brits" by many in our social circle. My accent was far more British than Southern drawl, and I preferred hot tea to mint juleps on summer afternoons.

Our estate consisted of a mansion and four smaller homes, and to hear Mother talk, you would think she was the queen, our estate her country, and we her subjects. Anyone not part of our family was a foreigner who did not belong on her soil for more time than it took to have tea or play a game of croquet, and she saw no harm in making her opinion known.

Her eccentricity grew as she aged and eventually gave way to a disposition that might be considered senile. Her choice of words made foreigners cringe, but we knew her heart was golden.

She got it in her mind that the servants, all of whom were colored, were slaves, and she had no problem saying so to their faces. "Slave Regina, what have you done with my slippers?" Or, "Where are the rest of the slaves, Jacob?"

Our servants were with us for many years, and Mother was thoughtful of them on all occasions, particularly at Christmas. She was the first to bandage up their scratches and send anyone with the smallest cough to the doctor.

And yet my mother was distant. Her own mother and father had s.h.i.+pped her off to boarding school for a proper education and were barely present in her life. I suppose she was only doing what she knew. I often thought she was more present for the servants than for me.

If my mother was distant, my father, Richard, was almost entirely absent. And when he drank, he was downright obstinate-which was most of the time he was home. We learned early to stay clear of him to avoid a smack or a verbal las.h.i.+ng.

Furthermore, he was a racist. His great-great-grandfather had been one of the wealthiest plantation owners in Georgia. The family no longer farmed cotton, having traded cotton farms in the South for oil fields in Texas, but Father still hadn't shed the bigotry that ran thick in his blood. He could talk the proper line and work up some kind words for Martin Luther King if required, but his veneer vanished after a couple of drinks.

Nevertheless, as is the case with many children, I grew up under his spell-a daughter desperate to be accepted and loved without achieving either. As I grew older, I swore that my own children would receive my full love and attention. Like many young girls, I dreamed of an idyllic marriage to a loving man who would shelter me in a beautiful mansion surrounded by lush green lawns and a white picket fence. There, in bliss, we would sing around the fireplace with our children, because singing had always been my most treasured escape when things became difficult.

We would have picnics with our children, tell them delightful stories, and tuck them into bed to dream beautiful dreams. How I looked forward to finding this man with whom I would birth wonder and love.

Despite my father's apparent self-confidence, he secretly depended on my mother for his security. When she became sick with pneumonia and died, part of my father died with her. We all mourned her loss, but Father came unglued. He barricaded himself in his room for nearly a week. When he finally came out, he emerged with a new vision for his life.

During that week of solitude, weeping for his loss, Father fell under the deepest conviction that he had to have a grandson. He called together his three daughters-Patrice, Martha, and me-and begged us to consider him in his last days. He would soon follow our mother to the grave, he said, he could feel it in his bones.

He instructed each of us to marry swiftly, keep our maiden name, and produce a son to whom all the wealth and prestige of the family could pa.s.s. After all, Father had no brothers.

Perhaps it was his way of making good. Having been dealt such a blow, he wanted a second chance at love, and for him that meant having a son, which he could only have through one of his daughters now. My only true value to him seemed to be my potential to give him a son.

"Keep our maiden name?" Patrice objected. She was already married and had moved to Houston, where her husband, Henry Cartwright, managed Father's oil wells. "I'm already married. Besides, I was under the distinct impression that you wanted me to keep an eye on Henry, not raise a family."

"And you should keep an eye on that parasite, before he sucks me dry!" Father rasped, pointing a crooked finger at her. "But you have to change your name back to Carter. Give me a son. A good-looking boy who has the Carter blood in him. It's the least you can do after all I've sacrificed for you."

Having made his plea with Patrice, Father turned his desperate eyes on me. I was twenty-four at the time and had no lasting love interest.

"Please, Julian, have mercy on your father and give me a grandson. I'm dying, for heaven's sake."

"I'm not even married," I protested.

"But you could be! Like that." He snapped his fingers. "We have to find you a man. Someone with looks and brains, not like the dolt Patrice got."

We all knew there was at least some truth in his words.

"And you, dear," Father said, turning to Martha, who was only nineteen. "You're the spitting image of your mother. You have to bear me a grandson. Soon. Before I die. Promise me." His eyes begged us all. "Promise me this one dying request."

"I don't think you'll die anytime soon," I said.

"I'm half-dead already! Promise me this one thing. It's all I will ask."

For a moment no one spoke; he had us all under his spell. I had been very particular about whom I would eventually marry, looking as I was for the perfect man, you see? But it struck me then that my expectations had failed to bring me any satisfaction.

And I had always dreamed of having a son or a daughter who might finally correct what was wrong with my life. Perhaps I should honor my father. Really, any fine man could make a good husband or give me a beautiful child.