When Crickets Cry

by Charles Martin

Emma once told me that some people spend their whole lives trying to outrun God, maybe get someplace He’s never been. She shook her head and smiled, wondering why. Trouble is, she said, they spend a lifetime searching and running, and when they arrive, they find He’s already been there.

Emma’s all leaned toward matters of the heart. While I could understand and explain the physics behind a rainbow, Emma saw the colors. When it came to life, I saw each piece and how they all fit together, and Emma saw the image on the face of the puzzle.

but Emma knew it first, and Saint Augustine said it best: You stir man to take pleasure in praising You, because You have made us for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You.

People marvel at the genius of Mozart because he supposedly wrote “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star” at the age of three and composed his first symphony at the age of twelve. And yes, of course he was a genius, but another way to look at it is that he just discovered early what it was God made him to do. That’s all. For some reason, God gave him a little extra, or a little something different, and Mozart found out what that was and then got a head start on using it.

“Reese, your books might not tell you this, so I will. Every heart has two parts, the part that pumps and the part that loves. If you’re going to spend your life fixing broken hearts, then learn about both. You can’t just fix the one with no concern for the other.” She smiled and placed my hand across her heart. “I should know.”

“You can buy that lie if you want, but if you’re working for a bank, you don’t study the counterfeit to know the real thing. You study the real thing to know the counterfeit.”

“You put that crap in your heart, and you can’t help but find it coming out your mouth. It’ll color and flavor your whole person. Pretty soon, it’ll eat you up.”

and it struck me that doctors can help people get well, even prolong their lives, but they cannot heal them or make them whole. That’s something else.

God gives most of us mortals normal hearts and lungs. To others, He gives a little more. A slightly larger heart and lungs. Studies of long-distance athletes confirm this. And yet to other people, like Emma, He gives a little less. One thing my education never taught me was the reason for this.

“Lord, You’re the only one here who knows what You’re doing, so we ask that You come hang out with us a bit. Be the guest of honor at this table. Fill our conversations, our time, and our hearts. For”—Charlie pointed his voice in my direction—“they are the wellspring of life.”

beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched; they must be felt with the heart.”

Then I thought of Emma and how much of her I saw in Annie. “Son of David,” I whispered, “I want to see.”

‘Sometimes trees forget they were meant to blossom and just need to be reminded.’ I looked at the three spikes and asked, ‘Why not ten spikes?’ He shook his head and eyed the tree. ‘Nope, three is a good enough dose. Don’t want to kill it, just remind it.’”

I thought for a minute and realized that maybe, somewhere in the residue of what was once me, I wasn’t all that different from Annie. Maybe my inner emotions still had expression, still made it to the surface and bubbled out. Maybe I wasn’t dead after all.

Hope is not the result of medicine or anything that science has to offer. It is a flower that sprouts and grows when others pour water upon it. I think sometimes that I spent so much time worrying about how to protect and strengthen the flower—even going so far as to graft in a new stem and root system—that I forgot to simply water it.

“We are all shipwrecked. All castaways.” I took a few steps forward, toward the boat launch and the edge of the dock. I dug my hands in my pockets and then turned, my eyes meeting hers. “One day, we all wake on the beach, our heads caked with sand, sea foam stinging our eyes, fiddler crabs picking at our noses, and the taste of salt caked on our lips.” I turned slightly, glancing up at the shadow of Annie’s frail frame swinging gently in the hammock, rocked by the wind. “And, like it or not, it is there that we realize we are all in need of Friday to come rescue us off this island, because we don’t speak the language and we can’t read the messages in the bottle.”

on my unbuttoned flannel shirt, pulled my hat down,

“I’d like my eyes back, Reese, but I’m not waiting around. I’m living. And that’s the thing. You’re not.

The point is that hell is separate from love. If Lucifer knows anything, he knows that. And ever since Emma left, I’d known the same thing. It’s a lonely, desolate place.

He said, “It’s time you get back on the horse that threw you.”