The Mustard Seed

By M. Willow

The world was golden as Hutch drove down the rain slicked streets--golden from the reflecting glow of the amber streetlights.  It had been raining ever since he left the hospital.  Ever since he watched his partner lying near death and he had cried out to God to save him.  Only God hadn’t answered.  Starsky was still in a coma.  Still fighting for life.  He was dying.  And Hutch was a man on a mission—a mission to find out who destroyed his world, but first he needed to get home, change his clothes, and maybe take a shower. 

His world was a golden one before the shooting, only Hutch hadn’t known it.  He’d spent the year depressed, his life spinning out of control.  In the end it had been Starsky who brought him back.  Now he was about to lose that stalwart figure—his best friend, his brother.  The tears fell hard and fast and he called out to God again.  Dead silence followed.  He felt so alone, abandoned, and angry.  No matter what he did, it would mean nothing in the end.  He couldn’t change the doctor’s words.  “Massive Damage.”  Nothing could change that. 

Hutch steered his car into the right lane and made a sharp turn.  At that precise moment a figure emerged in the street and Hutch slammed on his brakes, moving the car swiftly into the next lane.  Stopping the car in the middle of the street, Hutch jumped out and headed toward the figure who now stood by the curb.  It was a woman and she stood hunched against the mailbox.  He hadn’t hurt her, his swift actions saving her life, but she was obviously shaken by her close brush with death.  As he neared, he saw that she was an old woman—well past seventy he figured, but in one so old it was difficult to tell.

“Ma’am, are you alright?” Hutch asked, coming to stand in front of her.  She said nothing at first, just looked at him with clear blue eyes, a smile coming to her well-lined face. 

“I’m fine young man, but you look completely done in.” 

“I’m going to go back to the car, and call an ambulance,” he said quickly, putting a gentle hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I’m so sorry, ma’am.  I just didn’t see you.”

“You saw what was needed, young man.  Now take me to your car and we’ll be on our way.  We have much to discuss.” Then she was off, walking purposely towards his car.  He followed closely, his hands outstretched as if to catch her should she fall, but she was steady on her feet, and easily slipped into the car without problem.

Hutch came around and shoved himself into the seat.  His hands were shaking from his near miss.   It had been close.  Too close.  If he hadn’t seen her at the last minute more than Starsky’s life would have been in danger.

He regarded the woman.  She was small, a little over five feet, but she held the plump figure of one used to eating well.  She wore her hair pulled back into a bun, but left a few tendrils to spring around her face.  Her hair was completely grey, but for some reason he pictured her with blonde hair.  Shrugging, he turned his attention to the street.  It was then that he saw the strangeness of it.

It had rained for nearly two hours, a torrential downpour that should have warranted more than a few puddles, yet the streets were completely dry.  Then there was the unearthly silence.  But what drew Hutch’s attention most of all was the fog.  It was just up ahead—thick, with flecks of silver and gold that seemed to swirl.  He’d never seen anything like it, not in all his travels, not in all his years in California.

“I just live three blocks up,” she said, her cheerful voice cutting through the silence.  “Straight ahead in that old red Victorian.” 

Three blocks up, which meant he’d have to drive through the fog.  Hutch searched his memory for another route, but there was only one way to her dead-end street and it was straight ahead.

Taking a deep breath, Hutch scanned the streets.  It was a neighborhood that was home to nearly every crime known to man.  Many called it the Devil’s Playground, but the criminals who plied their trade never played.  Crimes ended in death, lives destroyed or altered forever.  Now said neighborhood was completely deserted.  Not one restaurant open.  Not one store had its lights on.  He’d been in this part of town many times.  Had to go through it to get to his apartment.  At this hour it was usually peppered with people—hookers, pimps, and drug dealers, all avoiding the arm of the law, all hoping to survive for just one more night, desperate souls in the night.  But now there was only him, the old lady, and the fog that awaited him in the distance.

He wanted to turn the car around—go past the stores, the hotels, the taverns, back to the safety of home.  Back to Starsky.  Instead he slowly inched the car forward, his heart racing, the silence a sort of hush in the night. 

Hutch spoke as he drove, mostly to calm his nerves, but also to hear another human voice.   “You often come to this part of town Mrs…Mrs….”

“Just call me Verte,” she said, spelling the name.  She had a cheerful sound to her voice, a way of speaking that was comforting.  She went on,  “Everybody thinks I’m called Birdy, but it’s Verte, spelled the way the French spells it, only with an ‘e’ at the end. It’s a nickname my husband gave me.  He was a nice fellow, but he couldn’t spell if it killed him.  When he came back from France, he started calling me that.  One year later we were married.”

Hutch introduced himself then brought his attention back to the fog.  It was like driving into a wall and he had to resist the urge to slam on his breaks to avoid a collision.  It’s just fog, he kept telling himself, but a part of him didn’t believe that.  He broke out in a cold sweat, his heart beating frantically.  All the while, Verte spoke, “Everything is going to be alright.  You’ll see.”  She said it as if she knew what was going on in his life, yet he’d only given his name and told her he was a cop.  And the shooting hadn’t appeared in the newspapers yet.   Normally, his cop instincts would have gone on alert.  He would have demanded answers.  Maybe even considered that she had somehow been involved in the attempted assassination of his partner.  Normally, but then this night was hardly that, so he drove, questioning nothing.  If this was an attempt to assassinate him, so be it.  They’d already tried in the police garage.  They would fail again.  He wouldn’t die until he found the men responsible for his partner being in the hospital.

They said nothing once the car entered the fog.  Again Hutch noticed the strange silence—a sort of hush as if the world had been told to remain silent.  He drove in quiet contemplation as the fog surrounded the car. He saw a light up ahead, nearly blinding in its intensity.  It was stark white, devoid of all color.  If Hutch could have described it, he would say that he was driving through a tunnel, and the white light was the opening into another world.

Reluctantly Hutch brought his mind back to the old woman.  He was pretty sure that she was mistaken about the address.  He’d been in this area many times and most of the homes had long been abandoned, leaving the area in disarray, another place to house drug dealers and their victims. He would have noticed a red Victorian, but as Hutch exited the thick fog, a new world opened.  This world was straight out of a Norman Rockwell painting, with curving roads, and homes that reminded him of his childhood in Duluth. This was a world of Bungalows, Victorians, and Early Americans—homes that epitomized the American dream.  All were well maintained, beautiful even in the dark.  And the light—it was late, but nearly every porch had its lights on.  Hutch could see families sitting there, the children with smiling faces as they sat around the adults or played in the front yard.  And the couples who held hands as they strolled down the street. None seemed worried about the possibility of crime, but then this hardly seemed a neighborhood where one worried at all.  Here was a place that crime did not touch. And it was utterly foreign to him after so many years as a cop.

 “That’s my house over there,” Verte said, pointing to a red Victorian up ahead.

The house was smaller than the rest of the homes on the block, but it was well lit with a street lamp straight out of the 1920s.  A large porch surrounded the house which contained a swing and two chairs.  Hutch imagined the old woman sitting on the porch drinking cold lemonade in summer.

He pulled the car over and took a closer look.  It was home—the house that he lived in as a child.  Identical in every way.  He’d been loved then.  Loved by his parents.  Loved for who he was—their son.  That had been before the money, before the teas, coming out parties, lunch at Tiffany’s.  Before his father had expected him to live up to the standards of a Hutchinson.  He longed for those days until he met Starsky.  Now the memories came back and with it a flood of emotions.  He would lose everything now.  Life wouldn’t matter once he was alone. 

Hutch felt the warmth of Verte’s hand touch his face.  He turned to face her, surprise to see the sadness reflected in her sky-blue eyes.

“It’s going to be alright.  You’ll see.  Everything will be fine.”

*******+*********+   *****+**********+**********+******

It was the sort of room Hutch had expected—plenty of lace and flowers, and comfortable furniture on a hardwood floor.  Some would call it cozy, the blazing fire in the fireplace       warming him, chasing away the cold that he felt since his partner had been gunned down.  It wasn’t his old home, the resemblance having ceased the moment he came inside, but it was a home filled with love.  He could feel it as he sat in front of the fireplace. 

He was flipping through an old photograph album.  Verte had given it to him and left the room to prepare tea.  The photographs spanned the decades, cataloging the people who graced the worn pages.  He found himself wanting to know more about them, and wondering if any of them still lived.  Finally his eyes came to rest on a picture of five women.

“That’s me and my sisters,” Verte said, startling Hutch.  He hadn’t heard her enter the room, but now she was standing there holding a tray, the scent of fresh baked cookies and apple-cinnamon filling the air.  She sat the tray on the cocktail table and joined him on the sofa.

“It was many years ago.  More than you could imagine.” 

Hutch stared at the picture of the five women.  He heard Verte pour the tea and offer him sugar which he declined, then she was putting the cup in his hand and Hutch took a sip of heaven.  Heaven—that was the only way to describe the delicious apple-cinnamon flavor of the tea.  Verte explained that she made her own blend using delicate spices and fruit. 

“A tea should be made with love, “she went on to explain.  “It is not enough simply to boil water.”

Hutch let the tea warm him as Verte told her tale.  She spoke of her life—her parents who came from the old country, the husband with whom she loved, the sisters who were her best friends. She’d never had children, but she was the mother of many in her career as a school teacher.   Hutch turned the page of the old photograph album as she spoke, and her words brought the people to life.  In the end he felt as if he knew them and he turned the page to the five sisters again.

“Can you guess which one I am?” Verte said, a smile in her voice.

The five sisters wore long flowing dresses, their hair pulled into a loose ponytail, bibles clutched in hand.  From the style of dress he estimated the year at about 1915, maybe even earlier.  The women appeared to be in their late teens or early twenties and they were standing in front of a church.  None smiled, but Hutch fastened in on the one with a smile in her eyes. 

“There,” he said, pointing to the pretty girl with the blonde curls.  “That’s you.”

She nodded her head. “That’s me in 1910.”

Verte had been beautiful once, the eloquent sweep of her brow, the soft eyes, the swan-like neck—beauty laid bare.  But the woman she had become was far more beautiful.  It was hidden, covered by time, but there none the less.

 “All gone on to the Father, Kenneth,” she said softly.  “Every one of them.  Parents of course.  Then sisters, then the love of my life.” Verte spoke without sadness.  It was simply a fact, something to be mentioned because it had happened.  Hutch couldn’t imagine feeling that way.  So how did she find the strength to go on?  The answer was forthcoming, almost as if she were reading his mind.

“Life can be hard, but you can survive if you have God.”  Hutch took a sip of tea, watching her face light up as she spoke.

 “At first it seemed unbearable, loosing everyone, alone in the world.  I remember the loneliness used to swallow me up, but I came to realize my family was in a better place.  That the Lord had them in his arms now and they were free.”

But Hutch saw no freedom in death.  He’d seen true pain when a child died, leaving the parents to grieve at the loss of life, the dreams of the future suddenly gone.  He’d seen the senseless killing.  He’d seen young men maimed for life because of a stray bullet.  If there were a God, he would have intervened.  He would have made sure his children were safe.  People wouldn’t die in fires.  They wouldn’t die from cancer.  People wouldn’t be kidnapped.  They wouldn’t be raped.  And Starsky wouldn’t be dying.  Still, he wasn’t an atheist, just an angry man who questioned God.  A man who’d given up on prayer when none were answered. 

“You have to understand,” Verte went on.  “We will suffer many tragedies in life.  It is our curse.  I’ve seen wars and the people who came back from them, their lives in shambles with injuries that seemed impossible, but they went on.  They survived.”

The words seemed perfect, as if Verte knew what troubled him.  Knew that his partner was lying in intensive care with massive injuries.

Massive damage.  The doctor had said those words, giving Starsky little chance of survival.  Hutch had some medical training.  He knew that no one could live with the type of injuries his partner had.  He’d listened to Dobey and Huggy’s words of hope. 

“There’s always a chance,” Huggy had said, but for Hutch luck had run out, along with the hopes and dreams of Starsky’s recovery.  They’d cheated death on more than one occasion, but not this time. Not this time.

“People have to go home to be with the Lord,” Verte continued.  “It is what most of us hope for, but we don’t like the transportation.  Dying is hard, but death brings us home to the Lord.  I lived ninety-five years and I saw a lot of it.  I watched my entire family die until I was all that was left.  In all that time, God carried me through.  He was always there for me.  I was never alone.”

“And you never once cursed God?” Hutch said quickly.  “You never got angry because he took everything away from you?”

“Never once, because I knew He loved me.  I hadn’t lost anything; they were merely parted from me for a short time. And one day we would be reunited.”

Hutch let the words sink in as he pondered what he felt.  And then he spoke, his words tinged with anger, but also a need to understand, to seek the answer to a question that had troubled him since he’d become a cop.

“Explain to me why God allows this suffering to continue.  Explain to me how He can watch children die, people injured?  How can He just sit there and watch it all when He can stop it?”

Verte took a sip of tea and the smile came to her eyes as if she had been waiting for his question. “And how many have been saved?  How many went to sleep last night and awoke to find their world perfect?  How many escaped death and did not know it?”

Hutch settled back against the cushion, his eyes gazing at the woman, remembering the battles he and his partner had won.  He recalled the time Starsky was poisoned.  The time he nearly died of the plague, the time he’d nearly been killed save for the timely appearance of a dog.  In all those times he’d never stopped to thank God.  Instead he’d attributed their success to skill.  To luck.  Even to a dog, but never God.

“Did you ever stop to thank Him, Kenneth?”

Hutch shook his head sadly.  Suddenly, he was incapable of speaking, the lump forming in his throat.  He’d never thanked Him, plowing on with life after every near miss.  And what about the times he wasn’t even aware of the danger, when he and Starsky had lived just because they happened to be somewhere else.

 And other people, people who decided against going to the store that was being robbed. Or the person who made the last minute decision to take a different road home, one that kept them from being in a fatal car accident.  Did they even know? Did they ever stop to thank God?

“People tend to ignore God when things are going right.  You will never see a newspaper headline proclaiming how many people went to sleep last night and awakened to find their world unchanged.  You will see only tragedies in the headlines.  Crime after crime screaming at us to abandon God, to trust only our wits, our luck.  But it is the devil’s lie.  And death is of the devil, but God gives us everlasting life.”

Everlasting life—a concept he believed in.  He’d grown up in the church, read the bible until he became an adult.  He believed in a heaven and a hell.  He believed that he and Starsky would one day spend eternity together, but he hadn’t considered what that meant.  It was just a concept, something to expect at the end of life, yet somehow he had separated that concept from God.  . 

“Your friend will survive,” Verte said, simply.  She said it with conviction, like she had a pipeline to God and she was his messenger delivering the good news. 

“How do you know about Starsky?” Hutch said, not really expecting an answer.

“He will be okay, you’ll see.  But his recovery will be a difficult one for both of you.  That’s where your faith has to come in.  You must believe God will heal your friend and that he will recover fully.  And then you must relax in that knowledge.  Do not fret or worry yourself.  It is not in God’s plan.”

Hutch let out a stifled cry, overwhelmed by emotions. Hot tears ran down his face and his body shook.  Then he looked at her.

“How do I believe?  How do I have that much faith?”

“You need only the faith of a mustard seed,” she said.  And then his world faded.

*******+*********+   *****+**********+**********+******

Hutch felt a warm hand touched his forehead and he opened his eyes and stared into the deep brown eyes of his captain.  Dobey was standing in front of him, his eyes full of concern for the man who had become like a son to him.  Hutch’s heart raced.  There was only one reason his captain would seek him out in the chapel.  Coming to his feet quickly, Hutch grasped Dobey’s arm. 

“Starsky.  Is he…is he?”

“No change, son.  I just came looking for you and found you asleep in the chapel.  You were talking in your sleep, so…”

Hutch looked around, memories of Verte and her words of wisdom coming back. 

“How did I get here?” he asked slowly, watching Dobey’s eyes narrow in concern. 

“Son, I told you to go get some fresh air, maybe something to eat.  Guess you came here instead.  I went looking for you when you didn’t come back.”

Hutch couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He clearly remembered the old lady, the house, the stories of her family.  And he remembered her words about God and faith.  All so real, but he realized with sadness that it had all been a dream. 

Hutch sat down, running a hand through his blond hair.  He closed his eyes as the tears fell.  He felt no shame in crying in front of his captain as he told the story of Verte. Afterwards Dobey said nothing, but Hutch could tell that the story had touched him. 

Dobey spoke, “Son, I been a God fearing man all my life.  And I’m telling you that wasn’t no dream.  God sent you a messenger—a messenger from heaven.  And what Verte said you must take to heart.  We all must.”

Dobey sat down next to him in the pew, putting a hand on his shoulder.  Was Verte an angel?  He’d cried out to God for help and then she had appeared in the street. 

“I met an old lady, tonight,” Hutch said.  “And she changed my life.”

The men sat quietly, each lost in their own thoughts.  After a time Huggy joined them and they all prayed for the man who meant so much to them.  Finally Hutch looked at the solemn bible that sat on the alter.  It was opened to a page and Hutch moved quietly from the pew. Once he reached the alter, his hands moved gently over the page and came to rest on the words written in red.  His voice was chocked with emotions as he spoke the words out loud,

I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, 'Move from here to there' and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you."

Matthew 17:20

Fin

Author’s note:  My great-aunt was diagnosed with cancer in her late thirties.  She was given less than a year to live and told to get her affairs in order.  She went to a preacher who laid hands on her and told her that she was healed.  She had faith that the Lord had healed her.  She died fifty years later.