The First Phone Call From Heaven: A Novel

by Mitch Albom

  The story prompted a furious reaction, six hundred letters to the editor, and multiple requests for the device. While Edison would later suggest he’d been less than serious, there are those to this day who search for clues to his mysterious invention.

  Word that a live broadcast from Coldwater, Michigan, would feature, for the first time, a voice from heaven, set off a reaction that would have avalanched Edison. Roads to Coldwater were backed up for hours. The governor assigned dozens of state troopers, who positioned themselves every mile along Route 8 and every hundred yards on Lake Street. Caravans arrived. Station wagons and RVs and yellow school buses. Like a meteor shower, a solar eclipse, or a turn-of-the-millennium celebration, the event drew the curious, the devout, and those who simply wanted to be a part of something historic. It attracted religious zealots and nonbelievers alike, who felt it lunacy or sacrilege to treat heaven in such a fashion.

  The event was set for Friday, three days before Christmas, at 1:00 p.m. The location was the high school football field, outdoors, with a stage and loudspeakers, because no building in town could hold the anticipated crowds. Police chief Jack Sellers, who went on record as “totally against this whole idea,” would not ensure the safety of an indoor filming. He envisioned a trampling of people trying to get inside and a fire hazard beyond description.

  Amy Penn would not be covering the event. She had been sent home. Phil Boyd apologized for her lack of professionalism. No one knew what got into her, screaming “STOP!” and suddenly refusing to talk about a story she had cultivated for months. “Probably exhaustion,” Phil had said. “People do stupid things when they’re tired.” He assigned his top news anchor to take her place.

  The green light for the entire plan had hinged, of course, on Katherine Yellin, who’d asked for a day to consider it. Friday morning, after praying for several hours at the foot of her bed, the phone rang. She knew it would be Diane. And it was.

  “Are you happy today, sister?”

  Katherine poured it all out. She expressed her frustration, the protesters, the doubters, the nonbelievers.

  “Diane, will you speak with me in front of everyone? Let them know this is real? That we were the first?”

  Static.

  “When?”

  “They want to do it next Friday. I don’t know. These men. Is this good or bad, Diane? I feel so lost.”

  “What do you truly want, Kath?”

  Katherine smiled through her tears. Diane, even in heaven, was concerned with her sister’s needs.

  “I just want people to believe me.”

  The static grew louder.

  “Diane? . . . Are you still there, Diane?”

  Finally, her sister answered her.

  “I am always here for you, Kath.”

  “You always were.”

  “Friday.”

  Then silence.

  The offices of the Northern Michigan Gazette were busier than ever. Recent weeks had seen the paper double in size, largely from ads aimed at out-of-town visitors. Ron Jennings had brought in freelance writers to help produce copy, and the two permanent reporters, sixty-six-year-old Elwood Jupes (who had been there for decades) and twenty-four-year-old Rebecca Chu (tabbed to replace him when he retired), each had at least five stories per edition.

  In the two months he’d been working for the Gazette, Sully had never met anyone on the editorial side. He didn’t want to. Given his past, and the nature of the news business, he only figured to encounter a bunch of questions he didn’t care to answer.

  But now he had reason to be here: Liz’s sensible suggestion that someone at the newspaper might be privy to Maria’s obituary interviews. With that much information about the deceased, and the access that reporters have to phone numbers, data, history, and backgrounds—what better perch from which to perpetrate a hoax?

  “So, lets get started, folks,” Ron Jennings said. He’d gathered the entire staff around a conference table—editorial and business. His enthusiasm could barely be contained. He stood by a white markerboard and tapped a blue Sharpie against it.

  “This is going to be the biggest week we’ve ever had. . . .”

  When the meeting ended, Sully eased his way toward Elwood Jupes, the white-haired reporter with a boxer’s nose and a rolling double chin that spilled over his buttoned collar and tight-knotted tie. Jupes glanced at Sully through horn-rimmed glasses, then held out his hand and introduced himself.

  “You’re in sales, eh? I’m Elwood.”

  “Sullivan Harding.”

  “Mmm.”

  Sully paused. What was that about?

  “How long have you been with us?” Elwood asked.

  “Just a couple of months. And you?”

  He chuckled. “Since before you were born, eh?”

  “What do you make of all this? The phone calls, I mean.”

  “Damnedest thing I’ve ever covered.”

  “Do you think it’s good?”

  “Good?” Elwood narrowed his eyes. “Well. Let’s see. People are behaving better, eh? We haven’t even had a shoplifting incident since all this started. You talk to the ministers, every seat in church is full. People praying like never before. So what do you think, Mr. Harding? Is it good? Eh?”

  Sully thought that if Jupes said “Eh?” one more time, he was going to slap him.

  “I guess you’ve had to write about this an awful lot,” Sully said.

  “Nonstop since it happened.” He sighed. “I barely get to cover anything else—except the Hawks games on Friday nights. I’m still a football nut, eh? We weren’t too good this year. Only won three.”

  Sully changed the subject. “Hey. Did anyone ever find that Elias Rowe guy? Wasn’t he one of the early ones?”

  Elwood looked left and right, then leaned in.

  “He’s been in town this week. A few people spotted him.”

  “Why wouldn’t he come forward?”

  “Why? Maybe the person calling him isn’t somebody he wants to call him, eh? Nobody ever thinks of that. But I do.”

  Sully felt his fists clench.

  “So who’s calling him?”

  “Can’t tell you. Have to protect my sources.”

  Sully forced a smile. “Come on. We work for the same side, right?”

  “Oh, no,” Elwood said. “The money and the news are never on the same side.”

  Elwood tapped him jokingly on his arm. Sully’s mind was hurrying. He sensed the conversation was about to end; there was still so much he needed to know.

  “Hey, speaking of business, I have to go to a client today. Davidson and Sons. You know them?”

  “Know them? I’m sixty-six. Can you imagine how many funerals I’ve gone to? Anyhow, the owner is an old friend of mine.”

  Great, Sully thought. This guy and Horace. What a combination.

  “I was speaking to a woman there. Maria. She told me she wrote our—”

  “Obituaries. Yeah.” Elwood made a face. “I never approved of that. You’re taking money from an advertiser, and they’re supplying you copy?”

  “I know, right?” Sully said, thinking about Maria’s files. “It seemed strange to me, too. How do we know what we’re printing is accurate? Does someone check the details?”

  Elwood cleared his throat. He studied Sully carefully, like a camera panning a horizon.

  “You’re pretty curious about this, eh?”

  Sully shrugged.

  “What makes you curious?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  Elwood rubbed his chin.

  “Do you believe in heaven, Mr. Harding?”

  Sully looked at the floor. The answer was no. He blinked and looked back at Elwood.

  “Why?”

  “No reason. But people have been wondering if heaven exists since man was created. Later on this week, we might get some proof of it. That would be the biggest story of all time, wouldn’t it?”

  Sully held still.

  “As long as it was true.”

/>   “Mmm,” Elwood said again. His lips tightened, fighting a grin. Sully decided to take a chance.

  “Who’s Nick Jos—”

  He felt a whack on his shoulder.

  “Are you boys getting to know each other?” Ron Jennings bellowed. “Maybe some other week, OK? We’ve got a load to do. Here’s your call sheet, Sully. Let’s go.”

  As Ron steered him away, Sully glanced over his shoulder and saw Elwood Jupes headed back to his desk. Ron walked Sully to the door, talking nonstop, reminding him that ad rates had been doubled this week in anticipation of the largest circulation ever for the Gazette.

  “Tell everyone it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity,” Ron said, opening the door. “They’ll pay it.”

  And just like that, Sully was standing in the snow. He breathed out cold smoke and tried to process what had just transpired. Was he onto something, or further away? Up the street, he could see a bus unloading. More out-of-towners. He heard church bells chiming.

  “Harding!”

  He spun. Elwood Jupes was leaning out the door, grinning, saying nothing.

  “What?” Sully said.

  “You didn’t turn that way when I yelled your name at the football game last month. How come?”

  Sully swallowed.

  “That was you?”

  Elwood smacked his tongue on his teeth.

  “You got a raw deal, kid. A lot of us know it. And never mind the idiot who yelled ‘Geronimo.’ He was drunk off his feet, eh?”

  He shut the door.

  The Gazette had indeed run a story about Sully’s crash when it happened. It ran under the headline FORMER COLDWATER MAN IN MIDAIR COLLISION. Written by Elwood Jupes, it basically repeated most of the information in the Associated Press story, but added a quote from Sully’s father, whom Elwood had phoned after the news.

  “I know my son,” Fred Harding had said. “He’s a damn good flier. Somebody in that tower messed up, and I hope they get to the bottom of it.”

  No one ever did. Elliot Gray was dead, and all that was known about him was that he’d taken the job less than a year earlier, after similar work in three other states. The tapes of the tower transmissions were blank or distorted beyond comprehension. The suspicion at first was that Elliot Gray had somehow destroyed them, but such efforts would have taken time and expertise, and given how soon he crashed his Toyota into Giselle Harding’s Chevy, it was quickly ruled impossible. The recording equipment had simply malfunctioned. No one else was in the tower, with all available personnel running outside to deal with the incoming Cessna, which made a belly-flop landing on the grass beside the runways after striking a telephone pole on its descent.

  That plane suffered a dented fuselage and a split rudder—part of which likely had been sucked into Sully’s engine, causing his crash. The Cessna pilot said he never saw the F/A-18, and that the tower had told him he was “cleared for final on twenty-seven right”—just as Sully had said he was told. There’d been considerable focus on this, until Sully’s blood report became public.

  The Gazette had written about that, too.

  Sully never read those stories. But every night he sat in prison, he thought about that transmission, the words twenty-seven right, and how a human voice, speaking through wires—a technology unimaginable if not for the telephone—had changed his life forever.

  Jack hadn’t made pancakes in years, but it came back to him quickly enough, especially after the ninth batch. He was working two pans and a griddle. When the pancakes were ready, Tess took them on large trays and served them to the people in her living room.

  Since Thanksgiving, her mother’s old house had become a way station, filled with visitors (Tess forbade the word worshippers) who sat on the floor and questioned Tess about her conversations with heaven, what Ruth told her, what advice she gave. Tess did not allow anyone in the kitchen where the phone hung on the wall (except Samantha or Lulu and, now, Jack Sellers), and if it rang, she stretched the long cord into the pantry for privacy.

  Jack had been coming every morning before work since last week. With all the insanity of the protests and the media, he liked being here for an hour or so, in an old-fashioned kitchen with plates clanking and silverware jangling. He liked how Tess didn’t keep a television on. He liked how the place always smelled of cooking and how there were often children running back and forth.

  Mostly, Jack liked being around Tess. He had to constantly push his eyes off her for fear he would betray his feelings. What most captivated him was how genuinely humbled she was by hearing her mother again. She struggled with it, as Jack did with hearing Robbie. She didn’t want it to draw attention.

  Which was why he tried to talk her out of the Friday event.

  “Why be part of that fiasco?” he asked her in the kitchen.

  She thought for a moment, then motioned for him to join her in the pantry.

  “I know,” she whispered, stepping inside. “But when I asked my mother, she said, ‘Tell everybody.’ I think I’m supposed to spread the word about this.”

  “You mean if you don’t—”

  “I’ll be doing something wrong.”

  “A sin?”

  “Kind of.”

  “Is that what Father Carroll said?”

  She nodded. “How did you know?”

  “Look, I go to church, too, but—”

  “I wouldn’t do what Katherine is doing—”

  “No, that’s crazy—”

  “But if they want to ask me what I’ve learned, is it right to keep that to myself?”

  Jack didn’t answer.

  “All the other people will be there, too.”

  She flashed her eyes. “Except you.”

  Jack looked away. “My ex stopped talking to Robbie. She said it makes her too sad.”

  “And you?”

  “It doesn’t make me sad. I love hearing his voice. But I have . . .”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Doubt?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Doubt is how you find God.”

  He stared at her. Hadn’t Robbie said the same thing?

  “Does this hurt?” she asked softly. She reached to touch his wound. Her fingers seemed to melt through his skin.

  “Nah,” he said, swallowing hard.

  “It seems to be healing.”

  “Yeah.”

  They were inches apart.

  “Why are you so worried about this show?”

  “Because . . . I can’t protect you.”

  It came out before he realized he was saying it. Tess smiled. She seemed to watch the words evaporate in front of her.

  “That’s sweet.”

  Then she kissed him. Once. Softly. They both pulled back awkwardly and said “Sorry” at the same time. Tess looked down and stepped outside the pantry and immediately heard her name called by the visitors.

  Jack stayed where he was. But he was no longer where he was.

  It was the last place in town to draw a crowd, but now even the Coldwater library was bustling. During the day, outsiders rifled through books and documents about the town’s history. Magazine writers did research for major pieces. Others asked for maps. As the only librarian, Liz found herself in constant demand.

  But after six in the evening, she would kill the outside lights and allow Sully to do his work in private. On Tuesday night, three days before the scheduled broadcast, he came through the back door with another man, a beefy guy in a canvas coat and a wool cap.

  “Hi,” Sully said, not introducing him.

  “Hey,” she said.

  “We’re gonna talk over here.”

  They huddled in the corner by the computer. Sully took out his yellow pad. Slowly, methodically, Elias Rowe reviewed the conversation he’d had with Nick Joseph.

  “Where did you go, Elias?” Nick’s voice had begun.

  “Leave me alone,” Elias had said.

  “You need to do something for me.”

&nbs
p; “I don’t need to do anything. Why are you calling me?”

  “You need to take care of something.”

  “What?”

  “You need to take care of Nick.”

  “I tried taking care of you. I gave you every chance!”

  Sully stopped his note taking. “Then what did he say?”

  “Nothing,” Elias said.

  “Did you ask him the questions we talked about?”

  “I tried.” Elias and Sully had worked out a list of inquiries they hoped might offer a clue about how this was happening. One was, “Where are you calling from?”

  “You know where,” Nick had said.

  “So he never said ‘heaven’?” Sully asked.

  “No,” Elias answered. “I asked twice.”

  “And did you ask about the coworkers?”

  “Yeah. I said, ‘Tell me the guys from the old crew. What were their names?’ And he didn’t say anything. Just a lot of static and noise.”

  Why wouldn’t he answer that? Sully wondered. It was a simple question for the real Nick Joseph. And how had he been able to call on a completely new number—on a phone that Elias had just gotten from Jason a few days earlier?

  Sully put his chin in his hands. “What else?”

  “I asked him, ‘What does God look like?’ Like we agreed. At first there was nothing. Just more noise. Then he said his name again. ‘Nick.’ And then . . .”

  He paused.

  “What?”

  “And then, before I could say anything else, he said, ‘Do what’s right, Elias.’”

  Elias began to tear up. “It really affected me. The guy was an ass, a total liability, you know? He took advantage left and right. But once I found out he was dead, there was always . . .”

  “Always what?”

  “A bad feeling. Like I’d done something wrong.”

  “But you c—”

  “OH MY GOD!” Liz screamed.

  “What?” Sully spun.

  “There’s somebody there!”

  “Where?”

  “At the window!”

  Sully jumped, but whoever it had been was already gone.

  Liz caught her breath. “Oh, man, sorry. It just startled me. There were two hands on the glass—”

  But Sully was already out the door. He saw a blue car pulling away. He scrambled back inside.