by Jeffrey Ford
“Is this part of the training?”
“I’m just curious about these dead souls you’re unpacking in your dreams.”
“Stevie? He was a trip. Big thick glasses. A face like Alfred E. Neuman. I’d try to teach him basic sentence structure. I’d say, “Come on, you can get this.” In his shrill voice, he’d say something like, “Of course I can. But if you were gonna die in five years would you give a shit about any of this stuff?” Sometimes he’d pitch a fit, but he was confined to a wheelchair and very frail. Occasionally, he’d knock somebody else’s books on the floor. I’d tell him, “If you keep that up, I’m gonna have to get rid of you.” He’d stop. Later, while the other students worked on their essays, I’d go sit with him ten or fifteen minutes before the class ended, and we’d talk about anything except writing or dying.”
“In the long run, though,” said Drogo, “you really didn’t help him?”
I shook my head. “He’s long gone. But I think about him all the time, and when I do, I picture his heart exploding like a bright red Christmas ornament, shattering to glittery bits.”
“That was pretty much his fate,” said the angel. “He never learned to write.”
“I suppose I failed miserably then.”
“Neither here nor there,” said Drogo.
“What’s my wrestling an angel have to do with my teaching? I don’t get it.”
“That’s why you wrestle. To find out,” he said and disappeared.
The rooftop bar dissolved beneath me. I fell twenty stories and woke, suddenly, in my bed. After that night, I dreamt of covered bridges, the lost and forgotten books of my favorite writers, that weird other house with the green shutters, and food gone bad. St. Drogo was bilocating in two other places than my dreams.
It was Wednesday night, so Lynn and I sat out on the porch and got hammered. There was a light drizzle and a strong breeze. We’d had music on but the speaker had run out of juice. Instead the symphony of wind chimes filled in. Two of the dogs slept, but Nellie, the psycho collie/shepherd mix, was standing at the edge of the top step of the porch, peering out into the dark, quietly growling. We’d recently seen a fox, and there was the raccoon family in the white oak across the field, the possum behind the shed, deer heading for the pear trees in the way back.
“Coyotes?” said Lynn.
“Or angels,” I said.
“Yeah, I forgot about that. When is it?”
“This week some time. I have to go check the letter.”
“Are you nervous?”
“I don’t know what to expect, so it’s hard to get nervous about it. I know I’m wrestling Metatron.”
“Sounds like a machine,” she said.
“His skin is fire and his breath is as corrosive as Time.”
She rocked back in her chair and laughed.
“Think about wrestling something like that. Supposedly his eyelashes are lightning.”
“Just quit,” she said.
“I want to see what the deal is. If that angel of fire shows up, I’ll quit on the spot. Obviously, I’m not wrestling that fuckin’ thing. But I have a theory. Maybe the whole affair is just some ritualistic event, like a symbolic recognition of a milestone in your career. And the threat of the coming match makes you reconsider your life in teaching. When it’s over, you either stay on and teach longer, or you throw in the towel. There’s only one thing I don’t get.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m not even religious. I don’t go to church. I don’t give two about the angels. And I was never aware, after having taught at the university for nearly ten years, that the place was in any way overtly religious.”
“Wasn’t the guy it’s named after some famous Protestant?”
“If I lose the job, will you think less of me?”
“I’m the one who’s telling you to forget about it. Just retire.”
“We’ll see,” I said. That night I fell asleep in my chair on the porch and only woke at dawn to birdsong. I looked over and, in the dim light, I could see Lynn had gone in to bed. Then I heard footsteps and felt the planks beneath my feet tremble. A black bag went over my head, and I felt a needle in the neck. As I passed out, my body was being lifted by many hands amid the beating of wings.
I felt something hit against my back. Each jab was accompanied by a mechanical sound. For a moment I thought they were attaching wings, but then I came fully around and could ascertain that I was on the floor in the darkened hallway in the basement of the university library.
“Mr. Ford? Are you OK?” came a voice from behind me.
I turned to see it was Kay Cass. She’d been nudging me with her wheelchair. I stood up and staggered to catch my balance. Whatever had been in the hypo left a sweet taste like rose-petal candy. “I’m fine. I’ve just been burning the candle at both ends lately trying to get my pedagogy put together for the fall.” She gave me a look like she knew I had no idea what pedagogy meant. I flashed her a smile and said, “You know why I’m down here, right?”
“What are you talking about?” she asked.
“I think my match is this morning.”
“What match?”
I leaned over and whispered, “Wrestling the angel.”
“Don’t get so close,” she said, putting her hands up to block my hot wine breath. “What are you talking about?”
“You never wrestled the angel?”
“What angel?” The wheelchair whirred and she backed out of the hallway, wearing an expression that led me to believe I’d freaked her out. Quiet filled the darkness. I could hear my blood pumping. I turned and saw, at the opposite end of the hall, a small flame spark to life in the pitch black. The red orange tongue sang in a chorus as it grew into the form of a man with wings. I was numb at the sight of it. The only thing going through my mind were the words “I quit.” My voice wouldn’t work to say them, though. The music swelled and Metatron spoke a rasher of incomprehensible/Ancient of Days bullshit, working himself into a lather that would peak with, I supposed, him lunging at me.
His face was a face of faces amid the fire. The flames shifted from one personality and visage to another. I watched the anger grow in him. I looked him over. He wasn’t any taller than me. He was in better shape, though, and seemed eager to tussle. I thought if I could just get a grip on his throat, I could push him back and take the advantage. I’d follow that with some uppercuts to the ribs. Maybe a karate chop to the side of the head. I was high on my prospective agility and defensive strategies until he stamped his foot and the building shook. I’m not sure I didn’t crap my pants. Metatron’s breathing reverberated and then, in my voice, he said, “If I lose, will you think less of me?” His words were followed by cackling laughter.
It was then that I thought “Fuck Metatron” and bum-rushed him. Before I got halfway down the hall, I was gasping for breath. Still, I managed to reach him and grab him by the throat before he could react. Yes, the fire burned, and it hurt bad, but its drawbacks could never exceed the joy of throttling Metatron against the file cabinets at the end of a dark hall. One, two, I slammed him with body shots to the ribs, twenty years’ worth of teaching behind each one. His breath was electric with the stink of paradise. It was in administering the karate chop to the side of his head that I remembered that I didn’t know karate and all along had been envisioning a scene from the opening credits of Mannix, a ’70s detective TV show. He moved like a flash, kicked me in the nuts, punched me in the jaw, clonked me on the head with a rock-like fist.
I staggered in the dark, dizzy and short of breath. In that brief period, I realized that although my hands were burned by the fire of his form, once I let go of him they were instantly healed, no scars. My inclination was for the floor, but the revelation about the fire rallied me and I turned it around. As he came in for the kill, I jabbed him twice in that shifting angel face, then brought the left
around and clocked his fiery jaw. He staggered backward and when he began to fall his left leg was at an angle to the floor; I stomped on the shin, and whatever angels are made of, I heard it snap in two. He hit the deck, his fire went out, and he started moaning to beat the band. His skin was the consistency of burnt grocery-store pizza. Wafts and curls of smoke rose from him.
After a joyous moment, I felt bad for old Metatron, but figured I’d at least established the fact that I could literally beat him. The situation also offered me a chance to display my easier-going side. Who wouldn’t dig a teacher with a heart of gold? I helped the big wreck onto his good leg. The other leg, from mid-shin down, hung like a dead fish in a sock, swinging here and there, every time he hopped alongside of me. His arm was draped across my shoulders. “You didn’t have to break my leg,” he said. He was crying from the pain.
“OK, whatever.”
I found my way through the dark to my classroom door. Moving slowly and carefully I managed to set Metatron down in one of the student’s seats. Then I made my way back to my desk. When I sat in my chair, I finally was able to catch my breath. Seeing was out of the question, though.
“Is there an angel ambulance I can call?” I asked him.
He said nothing. In fact, it had gotten so silent, I could no longer hear him panting from the pain. It suddenly dawned upon me that I could turn the lights on. I got out of my chair and crossed the room to the entrance. The switch was right there, inside the door. I found it and flipped it. The light was momentarily blinding, like the supposed beacon in Metatron’s head. I cleared my eyes because sitting in the student seat, at the first table in front of my desk, wasn’t the crisped form of the angel. It was, instead, a young woman. She appeared to either be sleeping or unconscious. For as little as I could see of her face, there was something familiar about her. I kept my eyes on her as I went to my desk and sat again.
I moved back through my mind, swiping the cobwebs aside, descending into the past. Somewhere in my search, I realized she had been a student at one time, back in my old community college teaching days. The department head put her in my class halfway through the semester. I’d long forgotten her name. She was maybe nineteen, dark bangs, always dressed in overalls and a sweater, always sporting a necklace of candy, like a choker, to cover the scars on her throat. She stared at the wall a lot, and wrote maybe a handful of sentences the couple of months she came to class. She was definitely out of it. Next time I saw my department chair, I asked him if he was going to start wheeling the students in on gurneys. He told me, “It’s open enrollment. As long as they have high school diplomas, they’re in.”
I ignored her limitations and made a good effort to reach her and get her to do a little writing. It was a slow, sad business, with tiny victories of a line or two, followed by disheartening retreats into silent staring. Sometimes the tears would roll fat and glistening down her face as she no doubt struggled to find herself within. I’d try to talk to her, and during one of those sessions, she managed to get out that she had a dog. It was a subject she seemed to respond to, and although those sessions weren’t much more animated than the usual, they usually resulted in a few broken and twisted lines of writing.
One day her brother dropped her off for class. I introduced myself to him and asked if he could hang out for just a few minutes. He agreed. I got the students started on a project and then I spoke to him out in the hallway. He told me that she’d been in a car accident and the oxygen to her brain was cut off for a while. After telling me that, he said, “A long while.” I caught his drift. I asked why she came to school, since it sounded like her condition was pretty bad. He told me, “My parents had her in their old age. They don’t want to deal with her being around all day, so they enrolled her here. Plus, sometimes when she doesn’t get out for a while, she gets violent.” By the time he left, I wished I hadn’t asked. Also, it came out that she didn’t have a dog.
In the weeks before she phantomed, she was never any trouble. In fact, a slow as molasses, meandering conversation with her about her dog that didn’t exist could really keep me centered and her smiling that vacant smile. We had quite a few. She never returned from winter break. On the last class before the holiday, after the room had emptied and I was gathering together my books and chalk, I discovered something when I lifted the paperback dictionary I always put out on my desk at the start of every class. Beneath it was a tiny yellow disk with a hole in the center. I picked the thing up and turned it in my hand. It took a minute, but finally I realized it was one of the candies from her candy choker. I would normally just have assumed that the necklace had broken, but the fact that the disk was under the dictionary was a giveaway. She’d been the last one to use it that day, and I’d been surprised, as it was her first time borrowing the book.
I wished I might have remembered her name, and in trying to bring it back I was overwhelmed by the thought of thousands of students I’d taught through the years; how many were completely lost to me. Instead of waking her, I quietly turned off the lights and left the room. Groping my way down the hall, I made it to the main floor of the library. The place was shadowy and silent. Only the morning light streaming in the windows lit the place. It didn’t seem to be open yet. Kay Cass was nowhere in sight, nor was anyone else. Don’t ask me how, but my keys were in my pants pocket and my car was in the empty parking lot. I got in and drove home.
That evening, over wine, I told Lynn about the battle with Metatron, and about the girl who took his place.
“Did you hear from the school? Are you in or out?”
“They said I can keep teaching.”
“Do you even want to?”
“Just a semester or two more,” I said and rocked.
Lynn shrugged at my reply and we went back to our drinks, dozing into the night, while Crazy Nellie, the dog, stood watch against coyotes, possums, and angels.
From the Balcony of the Idawolf Arms
Willa hated Saturday nights. She had to leave the kids home alone with no babysitter. She knew they weren’t old enough to be on their own, but there was no one nearby to help her. Their father was three states away and she wasn’t unhappy about that. Every cent she made waitressing was apportioned before she even served the drinks and meals at Walsh’s Diner. Only when the tips were great did she have enough to stow a few dollars away for an emergency. She’d never been a churchgoer growing up but now she prayed every night, primarily for the kids to stay healthy and to get to a better place and time. It had nothing to do with religion. Leaving them on their own was taking a big chance, but there wasn’t any aspect of their life now that wasn’t.
Landing the unexpected diner job was a godsend and with it she just managed, before the start of winter, to get out of the mothers and children shelter they’d landed in and into a crazy old apartment. It was at least warm and had a door that locked. The electricity and the water were erratic, the TV was dead, there was no shower in the bathroom, just an old tub with lion-claw feet, and the furniture smelled like a dog on a rainy day. Still, in its way, the old place was magnificent. The ceilings were ten feet or more, affording plenty of room to dream of a better future. And it was cheap—a red-brick leviathan from the early 1900s. Four stories with a tile roof. Some of the brick was chipping, a few of the windows on the bottom floor were cracked, the bannisters were splintery, but otherwise the place looked pretty good for an old wreck. There were three-story wooden buildings on either side, both ramshackle and abandoned.
A copper plaque above the tall front door, its letters gone green, announced The Idawolf Arms. The real-estate person told her that the owner, who lived on the top floor, a Mr. Susi, had just opened the place up for rentals and was only renting the middle two floors. The first floor was a dingy lobby from way back when the place had been a small upscale hotel—dim lighting and sheets thrown over the furniture and front desk. It was spooky to walk through at night on the way up to the third floor. As of y
et, there were no other boarders, but the owner had hopes to rent the remaining available rooms. Willa never met Mr. Susi, and the real-estate woman told her he was “somewhat reclusive.”
Whereas Willa hated Saturday night, the kids, Olen and Dottie, looked forward to it. With Willa not there to scold or hug, there were any number of opportunities to be bad. They weren’t, though. Even Dottie, the younger at eight, knew what was at stake. They perfectly grasped the dilemma their mother was in with work and not always being able to be there; how everything in their lives balanced on a knife blade. Willa cared so much and they could feel it. They wanted for it to be always like that. So, instead of running roughshod, breaking things and eating badly, they behaved and channeled their energy into a ritual built around a miracle of chance.
At the door, before leaving, Willa knelt down in front of the kids and once again went through the list of things they were absolutely not allowed to do—leave the apartment, open the door to strangers, cook anything on the stove. They could use the microwave to heat up their dinner, spaghetti in the refrigerator from two nights earlier.
“What if it’s the cops at the door?” asked Dottie.
Willa remained patient and said, “Get a chair, stand on it, and look through the peep hole. If it’s someone saying they are the cops and they’re not dressed like cops, go and get in the bathroom and lock the door behind you.”
“We’ll be OK,” said Dottie, sensing that even the thought of someone breaking in made her mother a nervous wreck.
Willa reached into the pocket of her blue-striped uniform and brought out a small bag of M&M’s in each hand. “You can only eat these after dinner and if you’re good,” she said, and they all laughed at the absurdity of it. Then she slipped her coat on, kissed and hugged them, and went out the door. She waited to hear it lock behind her and then the kids listened to her footsteps on the creaky stairway heading down to the dark lobby. They bolted into the living room at the front of the apartment to look out the tall window. In the twilight they saw her heading up Rose Street, away from the dilapidated end of the city.