“I’m trying to understand something,” Benton said back to him.
“What is it?”
“It’s in Hebrews. It says, ‘Are they not all ministering spirits sent out to serve for the sake of those who are to inherit salvation?’”
“And?” Rameel sat up farther in his bed.
“I always thought that this was God telling us to go out and save people.”
“And you doubt that now?” Rameel asked.
“No. I doubt that I am helping God in any way other than providing food and water. I feel as if we are doing nothing more than reading a few scriptures and then moving on.”
“We are, Been-tone. We are giving these people food. And we are giving them water. And, yes, we are trying to sell God to them. But, you see, it is not so much in the things we say to them about Christ, but more in the things we do for them that mirror the ways of Christ.”
“But how will they know to worship him? How will they know where to look for salvation?” Benton’s tone was frustrated.
“They will know that someone is looking after them. And the rest is up to God.”
The next day Benton Sage thought constantly about what Rameel had said to him. He watched a small child drink from a jug of water and wet his sun-crusted lips. He heard a mother begin to hum and sing a song and watched as her entire family joined in. He saw children playing with a soccer ball near a field of grain, a field that Rameel had helped to get planted for them. He heard Rameel laughing with a small family inside their hut as he showed them pictures of his church and of his family, telling them stories and singing them songs. Benton Sage sat alone outside a family’s hut and wrote a letter home. It read:
Dear Reverend Hughes,
I am not quite sure that this is the place for me. I feel
as if my talents could be of better use somewhere else,
somewhere I can speak the language and preach, instead
of just stand around and run errands. I understand
that God has called me to this place for some reason
or another, but either I am not ready to receive that
message yet or we have made a mistake. You say, always,
to trust in the Lord and he will provide an answer, so I
will wait on your response and I will continue to do what
is asked of me here, for the Lord, and surely he will
hear my cries.
Sincerely,
Benton Ezekiel Sage
Benton was able to mail his letter in Addis Ababa, the capital, and listed Rameel’s church as the return address. He was told that a letter to the United States would take somewhere between three and five weeks to reach its destination. He waited patiently and continued his work with Rameel, with whom he became closer as the weeks moved on. He learned that Rameel was married to a British woman named Isadora, and that they had two children together, Ezra, a daughter, and Micah, a son. He learned that Rameel had studied in London, where he learned English, and had met Isadora in a literature class during his last semester.
“It was like looking at the sun and not going blind,” Rameel said of his first sight of Isadora.
“That beautiful, huh?” Benton asked.
“Been-tone, my family’s faces shine like the light of God.”
One morning nearly two months later Rameel walked into the small room where Benton stayed while they were in between travels across the country. The room overlooked a prayer garden that Rameel had designed and built for the church. Benton looked up at Rameel, who seemed worried and was holding an envelope addressed to him. Benton grabbed it from his friend, who slowly walked out of the room, and ripped it open with little hesitation. Inside there was no letter from home. No late card for his birthday the week before. No response from Reverend Hughes. The envelope contained only a single plane ticket.
That night, after Benton had explained that he would be leaving in one week, Rameel looked down at his hands and back up at Benton. He shook his head and began to whisper, though they were the only ones in the dining room.
“Been-tone Sog. You will be missed. I thank the Lord for your time here with me. May he shine his light upon you for all of your days.”
It was decided the next day that before Benton left, he would be introduced to Rameel’s family, who had been staying in London but would be returning to Addis Ababa for the summer months. Rameel beamed with excitement as they drove up to a white, two-story home with a well-manicured lawn so green that the sun reflecting off it made Benton squint his eyes.
“Isadora’s family is very wealthy,” Rameel said with humility.
“This is not your home?” Benton asked.
“This home belongs to my wife. I stay here from time to time.” Rameel laughed loudly as he parked the car and got out.
Inside, the two children ran and jumped into their father’s arms. He picked them both up, held them up over his head, and swooped them back down. They laughed and giggled and their faces lit up. Isadora, a tall, slim, and tan Caucasian woman, approached Benton with one hand extended.
“You must be Benton Sage,” she said gracefully.
“Yes. And you must be Isadora?” Benton asked.
“Nice to meet you, Benton. Have you enjoyed your time here?”
“Very much so,” Benton said, telling his second real lie.
After Isadora showed Benton the house and introduced him to the children, who thought it funny to keep repeating “BEEN-TONE SOG!” at the top of their lungs, they all sat down for dinner in the formal dining room. Benton tried his best to stomach the food, which had been prepared by a chef, but was put off by the rareness of his steak and the cold soup that was served as an appetizer. During dessert, a chocolate mousse that Benton did enjoy, Isadora began asking him questions about himself, his family, and his life as a missionary.
“Well, this has been my first mission, really. I did do some teaching of the scriptures in New Orleans one summer. Do you know New Orleans?” Benton asked.
“Yes,” Isadora replied. “My father calls it the Big Easy. Is this unusual?”
“No. That’s what most people call it. I have no idea what it means, though,” Benton said, thinking about the nickname.
“And do you have any other hobbies besides helping people, Benton?” Isadora asked.
“You mean like sports, or what?” Benton laughed.
“Like singing or writing. Do you paint or anything like that? My Micah is a beautiful painter and Ezra is learning piano.”
“Oh. Well, I’ve always sort of thought that if the Lord didn’t make it, then it doesn’t need to be made. So I kind of just stick to the scriptures. Never really considered being an artist or anything. I think it would just distract me,” Benton said.
“Well, then, perhaps we should call you Gabriel. Huh, Rameel?” Isadora laughed.
“Yes. Gabriel, the Left Hand of God himself,” Rameel joined in, raising his glass of water toward Benton and then taking a sip.
“I don’t get it,” Benton said, feeling confused and out of place.
“Gabriel, the angel. You know him?” Rameel asked.
“Of course,” Benton answered.
“He sent the Grigori to hell,” Isadora said.
“The Grigori … the fallen angels?” Benton asked, sitting up in his seat.
“Right. But it is said, if you read the Book of Enoch, that he did this because the Grigori were teaching the humans too many things like astrology and the arts,” Isadora explained.
“The Book of Enoch?” Benton asked.
“Yes. It is not in your Bible. Only in that one.” Rameel pointed to the bookshelf behind him and to a thick, leather-bound edition of the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible.
“They were banished to hell for all eternity because they kept messing with the humans here on Earth. They were nosy and so God, through Gabriel, killed their children and sent them to hell,” Isadora explained casually.
“They had children?” Benton asked.
&nbs
p; “The Nephilim,” Rameel said quietly.
“They were giants. Gabriel killed them all and made their parents watch,” Isadora said, and took a sip of water.
CHAPTER FIVE
Love the Bird
Two weeks into summer break was how long it took for everyone in town to start talking about that damn woodpecker. This guy named John Barling started popping up on the front page of the Lily Press, and people in restaurants and stores began to hassle him for details and even ask for his autograph. Three weeks into summer break and he was on Little Rock Live, a morning show with two corny hosts whose hairdos couldn’t have been shaken with a sledge hammer. He talked mostly about himself and how he had decided a year before that he would come down to Arkansas to find the “elusive Lazarus woodpecker.” When asked why he would do such a thing as to travel from Oregon to Arkansas to find a bird that hadn’t been seen in sixty years, he said something along the lines of “I knew it wasn’t dead all along.” Wasn’t that convenient? That was like saying, “I knew my keys were here all along” or “I knew you’d win.” I knew from the first time I saw John Barling’s face that he didn’t give a damn about birds, and he sure didn’t give a damn about Lily, which he tried his best to compliment in every interview that summer. The other thing I knew about John Barling was that he had been shacked up since February with Shirley Dumas, who lived next door to us with her son, Fulton.
Fulton Dumas, a tall, lanky, and disheveled sixteen-year-old, described John Barling as the most egotistical, maniacal, and power-hungry man he’d ever met. I didn’t put too much stock in what Fulton said, given that the only man he had to compare anyone to was his slightly effeminate father. But when I saw John Barling and heard him talking about finding the Lazarus, I knew Fulton had been spot-on. This guy was the ass-hat to end all ass-hats. The last of the great ass-hats. The only man to dethrone the Quit Man to reign as King of the Ass-Hats.
When one is driving his mother’s car through town and sees signs taped up in the windows of stores and restaurants that read things like love the bird and lily: home of the lazarus and second chances happen in lily, he immediately starts to think about what heaven must look and feel like to distract himself from the hellish thoughts that invade his mind. He imagines heaven to be not some huge city with streets of gold and tall, white buildings, but a simple room filled with just enough of the good people to make him smile and feel like the center of attention as he tells a funny joke or talks about a new idea for a book. He sees his brother standing in the corner wearing green flannel pajamas like he did at Christmas five years before, and he sees his mother and father holding hands at the kitchen sink as he caught them doing one time when he was eleven. He sees Lucas Cader tossing a football across the room to his older brother, Alex, who looked just like him, and he hears his aunt Julia singing a hymn that he heard in church when he was eight or so. He sings the chorus out loud, the only part he can remember, as he drives past Burke’s Burger Box to see advertised a new product called the Lazarus Burger.
Here I am, Lord. Is it I, Lord?
I have heard you calling in the night.
I will go, Lord, if you lead me.
I will hold your people in my heart.
It’s hard to say exactly what bothered me so much about John Barling and the whole bird thing without painting myself as an angry-for-no-real-reason teenager dressed in black and moping around like Charlie Brown all the time. But it was the same for Gabriel, and Lucas, too. It was as if we got the joke that everyone in town had been told. We knew the punch line. And it would’ve been much easier to sit back while all of Lily fell under the awe-inspiring spell of the possibility of second chances, or rebirth, but we just couldn’t do it. I may not have liked the people in Lily that much, but I felt sorry for anyone being massively scammed.
My cynicism had been known, from time to time, to get me into accidental trouble. I was especially cynical in groups, perhaps feeling that a witty cut-down about a stranger would earn me the respect and admiration of friends. This rarely worked. You can only act like a jerk so many times before people stop listening to you. Gabriel broke me of this habit one night after I made fun of a couple leaving a movie theater. “You act like you hate everyone. It must be exhausting.” And, having no response, I decided that he was right. My brother, ever innocent, had a way of giving everyone in the world a chance to prove him wrong. First impressions meant nothing to Gabriel. In fact, his dislike for John Barling and his mission stemmed not from cynicism, but from the perspective of an animal rights activist. “If I saw the bird, I wouldn’t tell anyone,” he said to me one afternoon at home. “People can sort of mess everything up even when they’re trying to help.”
I had gotten to work at noon, and four hours into my shift I had read an entire book and shown off my expert whistling skills to three junior high school girls who liked to flirt with me while one of their mothers pumped gas outside.
Five hours into my shift brought me to the realization that if I saw the bird, I wouldn’t tell anyone either. Not a soul. Like Gabriel said, people only got in the way of things. This is why the bird went away in the first place. How could bringing all those people into its home help it to survive any better? No, the Lazarus would be much better off without John Barling and his little mission of rediscovery.
Just as I was about to resign myself to the fact that I should probably mop the store’s dull-brown floor, Lucas Cader came striding through the door (ding-ding) with his head bopping from side to side.
“Guess what, my kind clerk of a friend?”
“What?” I asked.
“I have big news.”
“Well?” I hated when someone would tell me they had something to tell me instead of just telling me.
“I got you a date!”
“A date?”
“Yes, and I don’t mean the fruit.” Lucas chuckled.
“Funny. With who?”
“Are you ready for this?” he asked, both his hands pointing at me.
“Yes! Tell me!”
“You may want to sit for this one, Cullen.”
“I’m going to kill you and go on a murderous rampage if you don’t—”
“Alma Ember,” he interrupted with confidence, leaning against the counter and close to my face.
“Alma Ember?”
“That’s right. The one, the only. Oh yes, my friend. She’s all yours.”
“Lucas,” I said, “Alma Ember is twenty years old.”
“Wrong. She won’t be twenty for another month, I’d say.”
“Still. I can’t date Alma Ember!”
“Why? Is it her name? I know, it’s kind of—”
“It’s not her name, jackass. I can’t date a twenty—”
“Nineteen.”
“Sorry, a nineteen-year-old girl who wouldn’t even talk to me when we sat right beside each other in civics class!”
“Cullen. Cullen, Cullen, Cullen. You were a freshman back then. You were short, awkward, I’m pretty sure you had acne. It’s all changed now. She’s gone out there into the world. She’s seen what places outside Lily have to offer and now she’s back, and back for good. That means that she’s ready to see what’s left in Lily that she hasn’t already—”
“Screwed?” I interrupted.
“Experienced,” he said, crossing his arms.
“The last thing I heard was she was getting married to some guy in Georgia,” I said, confused.
“Yeah, and the divorce is nearly finalized. I made sure of it.”
“Lord have mercy. What’s wrong with you, Lucas?”
“What’s wrong with you, Cullen? That is the question that needs to be answered here. I have arranged a date for you with a beautiful, kind, funny young woman who told me that she couldn’t believe you didn’t have a girlfriend.…”
“She said that?”
“Absolutely did. She even mentioned the last time she saw you, how you were so nice and handsome. I swear it.”
“You’r
e full of shit.”
“No. Just you wait. Tonight.”
“Tonight?”
“Yes, tonight at seven o’clock I’ll be pulling into your driveway with my woman at my side and yours in the back. Hopefully you’ll be waiting there with flowers in hand. What do you say?”
“You’ve already made the plans?”
“Mena and I are picking her up at six fifty on the dot.”
“Fine.”
I couldn’t help imagining, as I bit into my Lazarus Burger on the way home from work, what it might be like if the bird actually did exist and happened upon one of these sandwiches. The burger itself wasn’t made from woodpeckers, of course, but instead was a quarter pound of beef with ketchup, mayonnaise, and barbecue sauce. The red, the white, and the dark brown were supposed to remind one of the bird but only reminded me of ordering the same burger when it was called the Number Three.
“Gabriel,” I began as I walked into my brother’s room when I got home, “what do you think about the Lazarus Burger?”
“It’s just a Number Three without cheese.”
“Right. But what about the fact that they are selling a burger that has nothing to do with a bird that probably has nothing to do with this town and isn’t even alive anymore?”
“I think you’re thinking about a burger too much instead of just eating it.” Gabriel turned a page of the book he was reading.
“Think about this.” I sat on the edge of his bed. “What if I threw a burger into the woods and the Lazarus, if it existed, flew down and took a bite out of it?”
“Ha! Cannibalism!” Gabriel shouted.
“Ornithological cannibalism! That’s even worse!” I shouted back, before jumping into the air and running down the hallway to my room in a childish manner that only brothers exhibit around each other.
At five past seven there was still no one in my driveway except for me, and I didn’t have flowers in my hand because Handy Stop didn’t sell flowers and neither did Burke’s Burger Box. At eleven past seven, Lucas’s car could be heard making its way to the end of my gravelly road. Mena had her hand hanging out of her window, letting it fly through the wind, as they pulled up and right beside where I stood. Mena opened the door, hopped out, kissed my cheek, and folded her seat forward to let me in. Once in the backseat, I became quiet and awkward as Lucas looked back and said, “Cullen, you know Alma.”
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