Paper Angels

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Paper Angels Page 16

by Billy Coffey


  “You two have a lot in common,” he said. “Not just the fact that you both lost parents at a young age, either.”

  “What else?” I asked him.

  The Old Man leaned in closer. “You’re both sitting in a big, dark room full of questions, Andy. Side by side. In front of you is a window, and streaming through that window is the light of truth, all the answers to all the questions either of you could ever ask. But over that window is a shade, and it’s drawn tight. Sometimes that shade draws up a bit and sheds some light on the things that hurt you so, but it’s just a bit. You and Jordan, you both want that shade out of the way. You want to see the whole view from that window, the whole truth. But you know what, Andy? If that shade were pulled up all at once and all the truth shone through in an instant, you would be blinded by the light.”

  I nodded. Not through acceptance, but—for the first time perhaps—a bit of understanding. My eyes fell to the spot where Jordan had sat just moments before. I could still feel the wetness of her tears on my shirt.

  I hoped to see Jordan again. Perhaps along some street paved in gold beside a crystal sea. She would introduce me to her mother, and I would thank her for bringing such a beautiful girl into the world. And then Jordan and I would sit on a bench and share all the answers we would then know.

  And we would laugh.

  23

  Hungry Dragons

  Elizabeth turned the piece of bubble gum over in her hands and said, “So I was right. What the Old Man does for you is tougher than it appears.”

  “Thought I really messed up with that little girl,” I said. “And who knows, maybe I did. I never saw Jordan again. I asked the Old Man about her, but he either didn’t know or wouldn’t say. I’m thinking he didn’t know. Thought angels knew everything.”

  “Maybe they just know what they need to get the job done,” Elizabeth offered.

  I would have raised an eyebrow at that if I’d had one. “Still seems strange that someone like you could be pegged as a believer.”

  She sat in her chair and regarded me, measuring her words before she dared to speak. I knew I’d asked Elizabeth before what she believed and what she didn’t as far as matters of the spirit, but she had deflected my question and I had allowed it. It was a curiosity then and nothing more, the equivalent of asking her where she grew up and where she had gone to school. But as our time together grew, I was beginning to understand that rather than simply wanting to know, I had to know.

  “I can’t imagine anyone being a counselor and not believing in God,” she said. “But faith’s a funny thing. I’ve talked with people who have come in here with all the belief in the world and lose it, and I’ve had people come in with no belief at all and find it. Hospitals are like that. They concentrate all of life’s big questions into one point and force you to confront them.”

  “Which is why you’re here,” I said.

  “Right here,” she answered.

  I looked into the box. The only two items remaining were a golf tee and the key chain Elizabeth had asked about earlier. Whether I admitted it or not—whether I hated it or not—an end was coming. I would have to tell Elizabeth everything, and then she would leave. A tiredness gripped me. I remembered a nature show the Old Man and I had watched once about a group of Komodo dragons hunting an ox. The ox had been bitten by one of them but managed to escape into the jungle. Its wound grew and festered as the dragons followed, waiting for its strength to finally give way. That finally happened three weeks later on the edge of a swamp. The ox sat motionless, watching as the dragons circled ever closer. In the end, it couldn’t even cry out in pain when the dragons began to feast. I felt like that. Tired and surrounded by hungry dragons I couldn’t hope to beat away.

  “So it’s your professional opinion that everything that’s happened to me, from then until right now, has all been done with a higher purpose in mind?”

  “Between us?” she asked. “Yes. That’s not exactly what proper counselors would say, I suppose. Maybe not what they should say. But yes, Andy. There is something greater here. I think life is drowning in purpose. I think everyone’s life is. You simply have had the blessing of a clearer vantage point.”

  “It doesn’t seem clearer,” I said.

  “It will. You just need the courage to find it. That means talking about what you’d rather not.”

  I looked into the box again, then to the pile of trinkets on my lap—my life vomited out in front of me, lessons I was supposed to learn but obviously hadn’t. All our lives we longed for a purpose, a reason for more than simple existence, but for our pains and sadness also. Worse than the death of the body was the death of hope and faith. We all wanted to matter, and the nagging feeling that our souls were mere accidents rather than part of something larger than ourselves was the root of all human despair. Yet just as frightening as the thought of not having a purpose was the thought of having a purpose you felt incapable of fulfilling.

  “I’m tired, Elizabeth. My heart is tired.”

  “Then let me carry you a while,” she said. “I know there are two things left in that box. Let’s do the easiest one.”

  I took Jordan’s piece of bubble gum from her hand and placed it on my lap, then reached into the box. I was careful not to touch Eric’s key chain, which wasn’t hard to do considering it was just that and the tee left.

  24

  The Golf Tee

  All I wanted to do was go fishing, because that’s what Sunday afternoons were for. The fact it was the first week of November didn’t matter. The weather was warm, nearly sixty, and David Walker had given me an open-ended invitation to visit the lake that backed up to Happy Hollow on the back part of his farm. No one wanted to fish there much; country folk are notoriously superstitious, and to them legend may as well be fact. I never minded, though. The Hollow was just dark woods full of darker stories. I had my pole by the door, my tackle box full, and my hat on. In other words, I was ready.

  The Old Man, however, was not.

  I checked the bait again and then the pole, and then jangled my keys at him like he was a pet rather than a higher being.

  He raised his hands from the couch and pushed them out and apart. “Just…wait,” he said.

  “Daylight’s burnin’, Old Man,” I said. “We gotta get.”

  “Cowboys are gonna score,” he said, pointing to the television. “Bet you twenty.”

  “You don’t have twenty,” I said. “I’m gonna leave you here if you don’t hurry up. I’m pretty sure you can catch up later.”

  “You can’t go yet,” he said.

  “Why?”

  “Because company’s coming.”

  “It’s Sunday afternoon,” I said. “You know folks don’t go visiting until Sunday evening, and you know nobody ever comes to see me.”

  “Company’s coming,” he repeated. “It’ll be interesting.”

  “And why’s that?”

  “ ’Cause it’s a dinosaur,” he said, then raised his eyebrows up and down and uttered a mock growl.

  I sighed. Not because he said a dinosaur was coming to see me, but because I really had to stay. Because a Lesson was about to be imparted. And even though I knew it would be a valuable lesson—if not at that moment, then surely at some point—I really just wanted to go fishing. But the Old Man had always been of the opinion that what all people had in common was their amount of little moments. Big moments varied from person to person, he said. Some had more, others less. But we all had the same amount of little ones, and the secret of life lay in them. Wise, yes. And profound, too. But as a result he never let me miss one of them, even when it meant I had to wait to catch dinner.

  I sat down beside him on the sofa and watched as Dallas fumbled on the ten.

  “You owe me twenty,” I said. “Guess you folks don’t know everything, huh?”

  His mouth said nothing, but the sudden and passing look of confusion on his face did. I’d never seen him surprised by anything.

  He recove
red enough to say “Put it on my tab,” then he interrupted me before I could ask another question—“Someone’s coming.”

  “Yeah, I know. The dinosaur. T-Rex or Stegosaurus?”

  “T-Rex.”

  I nodded. “Sounds about right.”

  I got up and walked into the kitchen for a bag of jerky. If I had to sit around the house all afternoon waiting on a dinosaur, I might as well grab a snack. I’d just taken a Coke out of the refrigerator when the doorbell rang.

  “Dinosaur’s here,” the Old Man called.

  “Didn’t know they rang doorbells,” I answered.

  I walked back into my small living room and looked through the glass on the upper part of the door. Nothing.

  “You messin’ with me?” I asked him. The doorbell rang a second time and answered for him. I grabbed the knob and said, “Sure are growin’ them things small nowadays.”

  I opened the door and looked down. The Old Man had been right. There was a dinosaur on my porch. A T-Rex, actually. Styrofoam teeth jutted out from his head and a piece of brown felt had been glued to his chest. His long tail stretched all the way to the steps. Impressive.

  “Trick or treat!” it said.

  I turned to look toward the sofa, which was now empty. The Old Man had fulfilled his mission of keeping me at the house. I guessed he didn’t think sticking around was necessary.

  “Trick or treat!” the boy said again. He held out an orange plastic bag and shook it for effect.

  “It’s not Halloween,” I told him.

  “I know.”

  “Halloween was last week.”

  “I know,” he said, shaking his bag again.

  This, I decided, was a new low. A blatant example of modern society’s pollution of young people with the poisons of greed and selfishness. Not only did I probably give this kid a handful of candy last week, now he was back for more.

  “Didn’t you get enough the first time around?” I asked.

  “Nuh-uh.” (Shake.)

  “Little greedy, ain’t ya?”

  He wrinkled his brow and tried to decide if I’d just complimented or insulted him. “…Yes?” he asked.

  “What’s your name?”

  “My name’s Logan the Dinosaur!” he yelled. “Now give me candy or I’ll eat you!” He added a “Grrr!” on the end that sounded like a frightened mouse.

  “Well, Logan the Dinosaur, I think you probably have enough candy at your house, don’t you?”

  “No. I don’t have any candy.” He said those words with an air of defensiveness that implied he’d had that asked of him quite a few times that day, thank you.

  “What’d you do,” I said, “eat it already?”

  “Nope. I didn’t get t’go.” He shook his bag again. “Please?”

  “You didn’t get to go trick-or-treating last week?” I asked.

  His shoulders slumped and his bag nearly dropped onto the porch. From what I saw, what would have spilled out wouldn’t amount to much. “I got dressed and went to Granny’s,” he said, “and then I got sick. I yarked in my bag.”

  “You did what?”

  “I yarked in my bag. You know…” He stuck a finger halfway into his mouth and made a heaving sound.

  “Gotcha,” I said.

  Then it was my turn to wrinkle a brow. Logan answered my question before it was asked—“No, not this bag.”

  “Oh. Good.”

  “Mommy says I can have a do-over,” he said, pointing a thumb over his shoulder. “She says we don’t get much do-overs and that’s why they’re special. I think do-overs are the best.”

  I followed Logan’s thumb toward the driveway. His mother stood at the end, resting an elbow on the mailbox. She offered a wave and a what-was-I-supposed-to-do? shrug. I waved back and smiled because I was beginning to understand.

  “Well, I’ve never been one to stand in the way of a good do-over. But I’m outta candy. Gave it all away last week.”

  “That’s okay,” Logan said. “Most everybody’s been out. They just gave me cooler stuff.”

  He opened his bag for proof—two baseball cards, a pencil, some glue, three golf tees, and a five-dollar bill were inside.

  “Not a bad haul,” I said. “Okay, little man, I tell you what. You hang here, and I’ll see what I can find.”

  I left Logan at the door and let him peek while I rummaged through the living room trying to decide if I had anything at all that would appeal to a boy his age. Unfortunately, the pickings seemed slim. In the end I settled on a small spiral notebook, two AA batteries, another baseball card, and an arrowhead I had found near the creek by my house.

  “There ya go,” I said, emptying it all into his bag.

  “Awesome,” he whispered. “Thanks.”

  “No problem. Happy Halloween.”

  “You the man who runs the gas station?” he asked.

  “That’s me.”

  “My mom and dad go to the Texaco, ’cause we live near there. They say you’re a nice guy, just kinda crazy.”

  “Well,” I said, “I reckon I appreciate that.”

  “Here,” he said, reaching into his bag. “You can have this one.”

  He pulled out one of the golf tees and held it up to me. “Happy Halloween, too,” he said.

  Logan the T-Rex bounded back down the driveway to his mother. We exchanged another wave and shrug, and I watched as he knocked on the door of the Thompsons’ house across the street. Stephen-with-a-P-H was the lucky one who answered.

  “My name’s Logan the Dinosaur!” I heard. “Now give me candy or I’ll eat you! Grrr!”

  I stood and watched Stephen-with-a-P-H scratch his head and try to figure out what in the world was going on. Then my eyes drifted. Not to Logan the Dinosaur, but to the person standing at the end of yet another driveway—his mother.

  Her son might have been the star of that show, but she was the wisdom behind it. What had happened to Logan the week before was beyond his control, a stroke of misfortune that culminated in a yark into his trick-or-treat bag. At some point she realized that might be a night he would always regret, and then at another point she realized it didn’t have to be that way. She could take that regret and turn it into a triumph.

  She could change the future.

  “Now they scored,” the Old Man said from the couch. I looked from him to the television. Sure enough, several football players dressed in white and silver were acting stupid in the end zone. “See? I just had my time line wrong.”

  “You still owe me twenty,” I said.

  “Nice little Halloween present you got there,” he said.

  “Nice kid,” I told him. “Guess I’m supposed to hang on to this.”

  “Like your life depended on it.” There was a seriousness in his words that bothered me. I felt as though he were speaking prophecy rather than some old adage.

  “Logan was right,” he said. “Do-overs really are the best. You’ve always believed them to be rare. Impossible, even. I get that. But see your eyes, Andy. I watched you as you stood there thinking maybe you had that all wrong. That maybe such a thing is possible.”

  “I don’t need a do-over.”

  He began to fade, but not before he offered one word.

  “Soon.”

  25

  Do-overs

  For a moment I thought Elizabeth expected there to be more to that story. Another ending, perhaps. A better one. Sometime during my retelling she had gone back to her scissors and paper. I watched as she snipped and brushed the droppings from her knee into a small trash bin that she retrieved from my bedside. The pile of discarded bits was an impressive one.

  “You know,” she said as she cut, “of all the stories you’ve told me tonight, I think that one counts the most.”

  “Really?” I asked. I had never considered there were some things in the box that meant more than others. Were there things that should be remembered and others that must?

  “Yes,” she said, “because it’s time for your do-ove
r, Andy.”

  Another sliver of paper fell into the trash.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked. “I don’t have anything to do over. I don’t need no second chance. I haven’t messed up the first one.”

  She kept cutting and said, “That’s not what I’m saying. I’m not talking about setting things right, I’m talking about doing what you were meant to do.”

  “What I’m meant to do?” I asked. “I’m doing what I’m meant to do the best way I know how to do it. I run a gas station. It’s not rocket science. And I didn’t have a choice. Grandpa died, and Grandma needed the money coming in.”

  “People are made for more than they usually become, Andy. Not to say that’s their fault. Life gets in the way sometimes, and it’s easy for people to lose their perspective. They forget about the things that matter because the things that don’t can seem so big and so necessary.” Elizabeth paused long enough to make the universal sign of crazy by moving the scissors in a looping motion around her ear. “Gets their thinking all screwed up. I’m not talking about a job, I’m talking about a purpose. That’s two different things. One gives you a living, and the other gives you a life.”

  “Then I don’t know what my purpose is,” I said.

  Elizabeth put the scissors down.

  “That’s because we’re not through yet,” she said. “There’s still one more thing in your box.”

  And there it was.

  Of all the futility of man, none was as pointless as the fight against the inevitable. I’d hoped to stretch out the contents of my box as long as I could, until either I gave out or Elizabeth did, and I was set aside in favor of other pained souls in other darkened rooms. But then came the inevitable, the rush of the expected, fueled by one man who wanted to set an order to his life and one woman determined to help him.

  I had run out of stories.

  Elizabeth had been right. She had always been right. There must be a valor to live this life, a courage born of grace and a knowing that things are more than they appear to be. For the first time I saw the world divided not according to race or nation or sex, but according to the ones who were conscious enough to know they were sleeping and determined to kick themselves awake, and the ones who chose just to roll over and slumber more.

 

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