Almost Heaven by Chris Fabry Page B

has been that innocence does not fare well when pitted against evil.
    Not long after high school, the girl from the bus came back into his life. I assume humans considered her beautiful based on the way they deferred to her and doted, from teachers and administrators to members of the community. This beautiful one returned to that small community about the time Billy was studying at a nearby technical school. It was much less expensive than college and more practical. The truth was, Billy knew more than most teachers at the school, but he dutifully attended classes.
    The girl was enrolled in a beauty school (which seemed entirely appropriate to me), and since she had no automobile, Billy offered her a ride. Upon a cursory investigation of her home situation, I learned that her family was punishing her for some unseen infraction. She had studied at a prestigious university in the east and squandered her opportunity or money (or both) and was now paying the consequences. She was learning a trade, hairdressing, and worked odd jobs in the evening. Billy never learned how “odd” these jobs were.
    Every month or two, Billy would go to her home for a haircut. The first few were ghastly, but he always acted pleased. He would put on his baseball cap and then tip her more money than he would have paid in a salon.
    There were days when Billy did not have classes, but he would drive her anyway and wait at the nearby library until she was finished. Other times he would work overnight at the radio station where he was newly employed and make it back to her home just in time to pick her up, drive her all the way back to the school, and then drive to his own home for sleep, setting his alarm to pick her up again.
    On more than one occasion, the girl would come from the building laughing and joking with new friends, telling Billy that she wouldn’t be needing a ride that day. She was headed to a movie or dinner or a bar. Billy was always gracious.
    I had heard from others of my kind about this type of relationship. In the lull of battle they would regale us with stories of strong Christians who were enticed and drawn away by the love of a beautiful woman or, more often, the strength and danger of a handsome, rugged man. Foolishly, they believed they could reform this person and somehow cause them to believe. Sometimes, in a few isolated instances, that occurred. But more often, the enemy uses this passion and desire for the forbidden to draw the Christian from the deep water of faith into the shallow end of the pool.
    I feared for Billy because it was clear the girl had no inclination toward the spiritual. I thought of ways I could thwart him in his pursuit of her, believing that since I was sent to protect, this would be approved. A flat tire here, an injured dog there, a stranger broken down on the side of the road—all of these things would have diverted him, but only temporarily. I did not come in contact with the enemy in relation to the girl. She was already being pulled away by her own passions—I assume that is why the enemy left her alone. When an auto is in neutral and rolling down a hill, one does not need to shift into gear and push the accelerator.
    But Billy did not see. His heart was romantically intertwined. He had never so much as held her hand, other than to help her up when she was in a drunken stupor. His lips had never touched hers. She had shown him no encouragement, which is commendable, I suppose, though she did rely on him for encouragement in her dark times. He even loaned her money, if you can fathom that. Billy, without so much as a dime to his family name, loaned her the money to continue schooling. He was, in my estimation, the only person on the horizon of her life that she could truly count on for stability. The phone would ring early in the morning and Billy would rouse from his slumber and retrieve her from whatever party she had attended the night before. More than once he was summoned to