The church was closed that day. So I stood in the arched shelter of its entryway, beside its graveyard. I had meant to pray inside the church, but where I now found myself seemed no less fine a place for prayer. So I thanked God for my family and friends and for my calling as a storyteller. And I thanked God for William Wallace.
I wondered if William Wallace was just as grateful that I had come upon his story.
And then something strange happened. I can’t say that I saw him; it may be an overstatement even to say that I felt his presence. But I felt… that I could talk to him there. And so I thanked him personally. I told him I had no idea if we were related by blood, but I had come to feel a kinship with him and felt that somehow I was meant to be there, seven hundred years after he was, to tell his story. I told him there were few promises that I could make him as to what would become of this telling of his tale, but I could make him the same one I had made to God and to myself: I would do my best to convey the truth as I saw it to those around me.
Maybe all that happened that day was that I talked to myself. Maybe the gift of any great person is the power to make us converse with our own hearts. And maybe as I stood there, I stood there all alone.
But when I walked away, I glanced one last time at the plaque. Someone had left flowers at its base. They were buttercups, and they were beautiful.
Copyright
© 2011 Randall Wallace
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