On the Edge

by Parker Hudson

  “What?…Oh…Oh yeah. Sure. I meant in practice, to see how you do. Someday. This is a close game, Tommy. We couldn't put you in now.” And he said it just loud enough for four or five of the starters sitting nearby to hear, besides Brent. The other boys turned for a minute to look at him, or rather to look through him, as if he were not there. Several smiled. In an instant he knew the coach was right, that he had been stupid, and that he should never have brought it up. How many more kids in his class would hear this story by lunch tomorrow? What a fool. Now he just turned red in the dark of the dugout and wished he could hide, but there was no place to run.

  “No sweat,” Brent whispered to him under his breath, as if to say he understood Tommy's agony. At least Tommy had one good friend.

  In the sixth inning Tommy made a spectacular catch over his shoulder; the runner on first was as surprised as Tommy was to see the ball caught cleanly in his glove. The runner had to turn around and race back toward first. Tommy saw a chance for a double play—something he had never done before—and heaved the ball toward his teammate on first, who was waiting with outstretched glove.

  Unfortunately, Tommy was off with his throw; the ball sailed up and to the right of the first baseman. By the time the catcher ran after the ball, the base runner had tagged and was standing on second. Tommy cursed. A voice told him it was always like this. Even when he lucked out and did something right, he messed up the next thing. Infielders don't make bad throws like that, he reminded himself.

  After the game, which Northpark won by a run, the players, families, and friends all milled around together between the dugout and the concession stand. Janet found Tommy and said, “Good game; you made a great catch. Your father had to work late, Tommy. He called this afternoon and said he'd try to make it, but he was working on a contract for Mr. McKinney, and I guess it just took too long.”

  Tommy had a long face. Inside he was stumbling through the complex emotions of what to tell his mom and sister about not playing in the infield, and of whether to be upset or glad that his father had not been there to see it. Before he could say anything, Brent, who had been standing next to him, said, “Mrs. Sullivan, can Tommy come with me and my parents to get some ice cream?”

  Janet sensed the general disappointment in her son. She wanted to reach out and hug him to her. Just a few years ago she would have done exactly that; but now he was fourteen, and she felt she couldn't. “I guess so. Sure, Brent, if your parents say it's okay.” The boys turned together and ran off, leaving Janet with a smile, intended for Tommy, frozen on her face and unseen by him.

  Just then Susan walked up with one of the boys from her class. “Mom, this is Drew Davidson. He was here watching his brother in Tommy's class. We want to go get a Coke, and then I'll be home in a little while.”

  The daughter and mother exchanged looks, unseen by Drew, which communicated: “I really want to go with him—he's neat—pleeease.”.. “Can he be trusted? I don't know him. Is he a good driver? Will you be home on time?”…“Yes, yes, yes, yes.”

  Then Janet spoke, “Well…all right. Sure. Hi, Drew. I'm Janet Sullivan Have a nice time, but please have Susan home by 10:30. OK?”

  “Yes, ma'am. We won't be late. Thank you. Nice to meet you.”

  And as quickly as that, Janet Sullivan was all alone.

  As Janet drove home by herself, her mind bounced back and forth between her marriage, her children, and her job. Only her daughter Susan provided a bright spot; her strength and normally positive outlook sustained Janet in what was otherwise a troubling night.

  Raised as a Catholic in a parochial school, Janet's primary association with religion was overreaching guilt. As a girl she had been made to feel guilty about almost every indiscretion, no matter how slight. Consumed by guilt, she had finally rebelled completely in college and never looked back. She had decided in those heady days that people—either individually or as the government—could solve their own problems, without any help from God, were He even really around.

  As an adult, she knew she could not sit through a Catholic mass, yet she felt out of place in the few Protestant services she had attended over the years. Richard had been raised as a Presbyterian; and after their marriage, the easiest way to solve their religious difference—it was really religious indifference—was simply not to attend church at all.

  When the children came along, they had half-heartedly tried some different churches in their neighborhood. Usually one of them dropped the kids off at a Sunday school, then came back an hour later. When they did attend, it seemed that half of the sermons were about raising more money. Finally, when the children were older and complained about having to go to Sunday school, they gave up entirely.

  They even had a discussion about it a few years ago, convincing themselves that if they taught their kids the right, moral ways to behave and set good examples themselves, then that was what really mattered. What more could God actually want in these complicated days, anyway, if there really was a God? And that conclusion had the happy result of freeing up their Sundays for other things.

  But when Janet reflected on the past several years as she drove home alone on that dark spring evening, genuine guilt started to speak to her. For an instant it occurred to her that even if their theory was right, were they now very good parental examples? And when was the last time they had done something together that was fun on a Sunday—or on any other day? And what about Richard, and their marriage?

  As her mind wandered to her husband, the potentially positive voice of convicting guilt, which could have led to real change, was overtaken by the louder voice, planted in her long ago, of personal, unworthy guilt.

  “What have I done to our marriage? Is it my job at the station? Should I have stayed home these last five years, like Richard wanted? Was I too selfish in wanting to continue my career after the children were older? Have I valued myself over them? What have I done to drive Richard away? When was the last time we were intimate—not sex—just lying quietly together on the big sofa, or holding hands? Is it all my fault? What can I do? Is he going to leave us?” That thought hit her like a shot, and she almost steered off the road.

  A jerk of the wheel snapped her attention back to driving. Her mind rested for a minute, without resolution. Almost in defense, she started thinking about her work, where she generally found satisfaction as the director of programming, responsible, as many told her, for the real operation of the station. She knew that such accolades were flagrant exaggerations, but she didn't mind the compliments, which otherwise were few and far between in her life.

  She had taken the job at TV5 four and a half years ago, hoping to put her college training to work. She started as the promotion assistant, under Tom Spence. But she was a quick study, and soon her talents for organization and communication had been noticed by management. Two years later, when the position unexpectedly opened, she was asked to be the programming director, a fantastic opportunity for her. Now she balanced, like so many other women, the dual responsibilities of home and office, some days wishing she could stay at home again, other days filled with exuberance by what her team at work was accomplishing.

  But even at work there seemed to be a problem brewing. The network was promoting a new show for the fall lineup to be called “911 Live.” For years several syndicated shows which reenacted ambulance, police, and fire department emergencies had won very high ratings. True to life, these shows were immensely popular. Because they were reenactments, they were edited and generally wound up with happy endings.

  But “911 Live” planned to take this concept one step further. The producers intended to put tiny cameras and dish transmitters on two hundred ambulances, police cars, and fire trucks in ten of the nation's largest cities. Then when the show came on the air every week, the directors would monitor the activities at these two hundred potentially live sites from a central control room and cut to the city where the “action” at that moment was the “best.” Anything could be happening. Anyone cou
ld be involved. Fires, accidents, murders, rapes, drug busts—anything that the cameras could catch. Real. Live. No script. Anything could happen. A helicopter would be on standby in each city in case something really big started, so that a live reporter could cover it.

  The problem was that a couple of the old timers at the station had already told her boss, Bill Shaw, that they thought the show was unsuitable, particularly for the early evening time slot for which it was planned. The scuttlebutt from network was that the producers hoped to capture the first live killing on TV since Lee Harvey Oswald. Or at least a burn victim jumping from a tall building.

  These employees, whom Janet labeled as “Christian fundamentalists,” asked Bill in a meeting she had attended not to air the program in their city. They said it just went too far in its potential for death and violence. Real death and real violence. And during the family hour. They even suggested that the wrong people in those ten cities, of which theirs was one, might start planning their violence for the specific day and hour of “911 Live,” hoping to achieve some perverted recognition on national television.

  Bill Shaw had listened quietly and promised to take their views under consideration before making a final decision. But after they had left, he confided to Janet that he thought they were squeamish God-squaders, trying to censor America's right to see and to experience whatever technology made possible. The problem for Janet was that she found herself agreeing with these Christians; she simply thought about her own children and what they might see and hear on this show. But the experience of agreeing with them was so unusual, and the issue was so difficult, that at this point she didn't know what, if anything, she should do.

  With all that on her mind as she neared their home, hoping to find Richard's car already in the garage, she hardly had time to reflect on Tommy. She felt his confusion and his sadness. It pierced her. But she had been unable to talk to him tonight, not even one word. She had a sickening feeling that they were losing him. She did not know to where. She did not know exactly when it had started or when it would finally happen. But he was withdrawing, from them and from others, slipping through their fingers as they watched. Richard was too busy, and she didn't know how to begin. She wanted to stop and run the tape back, like at the station—about five years—and then start it again. But she couldn't. She had no one to turn to. She would have to force Richard to listen. He had to do something. Tommy was their precious son, and they were losing him.

  Even before she clicked up the garage door from the driveway, she knew that Richard was still not home. The lights in the house were on exactly as she had left them.

  Thirty minutes later Tommy came through the front door. She called from the kitchen, where she was cleaning up the few dishes from supper. Tommy moved quickly through the breakfast room, opened the refrigerator for an apple, and headed upstairs, mumbling as he went that he had to take a shower and finish his homework.

  Susan came home right on time. Thank God for Susan, Janet thought. Susan said she and Drew had shared Cokes and frozen yogurt at the shopping center near the mall. Drew was new for Susan; he had transferred to their school last year, and he was only now being “noticed” by the girls in the tenth and eleventh grades. Susan offered few details and Janet didn't mind—it was just nice that someone in their family was happy.

  After Susan went upstairs, Janet's sadness and distress settled in again, like a dull weight on her chest. She didn't know what to do or where to turn. She could have gone to see her sister, but Caroline lived hours away and had much younger children. Janet doubted that she would understand. And Janet suspected that Caroline was still tied to religion—she would probably tell her to pray! A lot of good that would do.

  Following a bath and a glance at the news, hoping that Richard would come home so that she could at least tell him about Tommy, about the game, and about the TV station, she finally went to bed, alone. As she lay her head on the pillow, a small voice said “There has to be a better way’…but a louder voice despaired, “How will any of this ever change?” Despair coursed through her that night; dull, aching despair. What scared her most was the realization that she was used to it, that it was almost “normal.” A tear wetted her pillow as she finally drifted off to a fitful sleep, alone, in the darkness of her bedroom.

  As midnight drew near, Streetleader Nepravel broke off from Devon Drive and headed up for the nightly rendezvous with Sectorchief Balzor and the other fallen angels who now virtually controlled this part of the city. They gathered above the city in an invisible demonic swarm, like black vipers writhing in a nest, bent on human destruction by any means possible.

  Although they did not “talk” in a human sense, they communicated well enough with one another. Balzor was very much in charge, meting out praise when it was due; and disciplining with demonic brutality whenever one of his soldiers fell prey to a plot by members of God's diminishing army on earth.

  All of the streetleaders reported the important events in their areas, emphasizing their successes, because they knew that Balzor then had to report to the lord of the city, Alhandra, and he had been known to blast even a sectorchief back to hell for too many failures. Each demon in the city lived in fear of Alhandra, whose bitter hatred for God, angels, and humans was well known and well documented. It was rumored that Alhandra had once been a member of Satan's own ruling council and that he wanted to be there again, no matter what it took to make this city a showplace for demonic power over human lives.

  So Nepravel reported his close brush with Mark Davidson and the Christian tape in a way which emphasized his own alertness and his own brilliance, particularly the way he brought Pride in quickly to counter the tape with a strong, clear voice. Balzor congratulated him but also warned him to watch Davidson and his friends closely for the next several months.

  As their cabal broke up and Balzor headed off for Alhandra's palace, Nepravel flew back to his neighborhood next to Zloy, a streetleader with a station just to the north of his own.

  “Can't you do anything about that Meredith girl?” whined Nepravel. ’Every night her prayers for the Bryants and Sullivans spoil our otherwise quiet street. Each answered prayer hits and diminishes one of our voices just enough to make a lot of extra work for me. Can't you quiet her down?”

  “That little twit,” Zloy snarled, “and her whole family. They all pray! Constantly. It's terrible. You're not the only one I hear from. I get complaints and groans from as far away as England, where they have friends. They pray for lost souls everywhere, by name, so they make the prayers stick. I hate them. Ever since the Light came into that family, I haven't had a moment's rest. Can you believe that they have a neighborhood Bible study going on our street? So I not only have to fight them with the voices, to try to throw them off track personally, I also have to run around the whole neighborhood, countering the Word wherever I can, turning up the volumes, hoping that no one else will learn the truth. It's awful! If they don't stop, someone else will repent soon and surrender his life, and I'll get blamed, and I'll have two families at it. Have you got any ideas?”

  Nepravel started to boast about how he had dimmed the Light in an entire village, back when the Word was really spoken and most families actually tried to follow God, and about how this particular village had stopped praying altogether, rendering them no threat to anyone else. But just as he was warming to his own key role in this success, he whirled, sensing a passing on his street. “Oh—got to go—a death on my street to handle!” he blurted behind himself to Zloy, as he darted for the fruit of his long labors, leaving a trail of dark smoke in the night.

  “Who could it be? One of the Halls, finally?” he hoped. As he neared Devon Drive he saw the soul rising from a house near the Davidsons. It was Hugh McEver! Only thirty-eight years old—Nepravel knew instantly that he was dead in the shower from a massive stroke while he was talking through the door to his wife, Betty. Left three children, all under twelve. Fantastic!

  Hovering near to McEver's spirit, which
had virtually the same appearance as his earthly body, only translucent, Nepravel waited for the only moment he hated during this otherwise enjoyable task: dealing with one of God's holy angels. The light was already coming; soon he knew it would almost blind him. Fearsome creatures—he was glad that his master, Satan, had dominion over the earth and that prayer was now rare, so demons like him only had to deal with angels on special occasions like this one.

  On the angel came, flying down from heaven. The light became brighter still. Six massive wings! Two heads like eagles! Eyes covering his body! Two legs ending in sharp, taloned feet! Nepravel knew firsthand that many real angels were nothing like the wispy characters in human books and films. This creature was simply awesome in his power and his might. On several occasions in years past he had seen lesser demons such as himself crushed and exploded back to hell in those powerful talons. But tonight there would be the usual truce. There was no need in fighting now for McEver; the battle for his soul was obviously over. Nevertheless, Nepravel could hardly imagine that he and some of his fellow God-haters had long ago looked like this, before their rebellion against God, which Satan had led, and their expulsion from heaven.

  The light temporarily blinded McEver's soul as well. Although by ancient tradition an angel and a demon accompanied each soul to the judgment seat, the angel often arrived at the scene of the death first. Balzor had laughed at a recent midnight rendezvous and told them that it was because angels didn't have too much else to do on Earth these days! At any rate, the light was very bright; on those few occasions when a soul had left someone's body prematurely and then returned, the subsequent report almost always emphasized the light.