Paper Angels
Page 24
Two small tabs had been cut into the front and back of the page. I grasped the ends and carefully pulled the paper apart, overwhelmed at both the design and the skill required to craft it. Stretched out in my hands were twelve paper angels joined wing to wing, each one as perfect and exact as the next. Twelve angels, one for each story I’d shared with her. One for each moment the Old Man had asked me to keep in my box.
I understood then. Perhaps not everything, but everything that mattered. My life had not been a collection of ordinary occurrences, but holy ones. I had lived not mere moments; I had lived defining ones.
And I knew this—our pasts, no matter how mangled, could be forged anew upon the anvil.
My eyes settled on the box, the book that held not all the chapters of my life, but the ones that meant the most. I took the box in my hands and walked toward the window, where I set it on the ledge. Cars moved east and west on the highway beyond. House lights and storefronts pierced the darkness around them. In the distance were the faint outlines of the mountains and the soft glow of Mattingly.
All those people, both drifting and adrift in this world, searching for their way. How many knew the truth of their lives? How many knew of the world beyond their own, a world that was hidden from them but one in which they were cast naked before it?
I looked down. A lone figure walked out of the main entrance toward the parking lot beyond. His steps were slow and staggered. A rock lying in his path was kicked to the side, then he sat on a bench to think and mourn.
Jabber.
Who better to send to a frightened young boy than someone who will understand?
At the time I thought she was speaking of the Old Man and me, but now I knew better. She was speaking of Jabber and me. And she was right. Jabber needed an angel, a special sort of angel. An angel who would understand.
I looked away from him and into the night sky. The lights from the hallway behind me shimmered then parted, only to gather themselves again into a carbon copy of my own reflection.
“That’s a good boy down there,” the Old Man said.
I smiled to the window and said, “Thought I was done with you.”
“You are,” he said. “Just came to say good-bye.”
I turned to face him—or me, or at least the me that would be. The questions, the impossibility, the sheer irrationality of it all, washed over me in a wave that crashed in a sigh.
“I know,” he said.
“How? How did you—did I…”
The Old Man shrugged. Said, “God can do whatever He wants. Whatever is good. The world isn’t solid, Andy, least not all the way through. There are hollow places where the impossible shines through. Places where heaven mingles with earth and wonders abound. You know the why now. Or most of it. The how, though? I’m afraid that’s not for me to say. Not because I don’t know. I do. But explaining everything would be more than you could handle right now.” He paused to smile at himself and added, “Besides, it would ruin all the surprise in the end. Trust what you cannot understand, Andy. Find your faith in the unanswerable.”
“Elizabeth,” I said. “At least tell me she was real. I have these,” I said, holding the paper angels up to him, “but I need to know.”
“You need to believe,” he said.
“Help me believe,” I answered.
He considered me and smiled. I wondered then if he had asked the same once and if someone would one day ask me. He put a hand on my box. “Open it,” he said.
I lifted the latch and opened the top. All twelve pieces were there, arranged just as they’d always been. But there was one addition.
Elizabeth’s hair tie.
I picked it up. Felt its smoothness in my hand, a smoothness that reminded me of her. Even the color seemed perfect—black, like the black she found me in and rescued me from. I felt it and felt her. Felt it to make sure it was
“Real,” he finished for me. “See?”
The Old Man held up his wrist, and I saw for the first time the bracelet that he’d always worn, that I constantly watched him handle and caress, had not been a bracelet at all. It had been Elizabeth’s hair tie.
“Good-bye, Andy,” he said. “You have all you need, and you need all you have. You pray now. Pray you’ll do right by that boy.”
He faded away before I could answer that I would. I supposed he knew that already.
I slipped Elizabeth’s hair tie onto my wrist—touched it with a finger, just as he had—and looked out the window to Jabber. He still sat on the bench, alone and lost, aching for someone who would piece him back together. In that way we were all each other’s angels, I thought. Here upon this earth to help and to heal. We were all engulfed in a collective sigh, put side by side in a world that we were not made for. This, I decided, this life and this world, was merely a stop on a sojourn to lands distant and welcoming, where our doubts would be shed like an old coat that no longer fit and where there was goodness and light and peace.
I vowed then not to find my old life but a new one instead, to live each day not as if it were my first but as if it were my last. I would hang on. I would shine my light. And when I would be called home I would go willingly, for I had someone there waiting who had promised to see me again.
My Elizabeth. My angel.
Jabber rose from his bench and made his way into the parking lot. Halfway there, he paused to look up into the night sky. I followed his gaze. There above us shone the light of a million stars. My eyes settled on one group in particular, hanging in the air and ready to pour out its contents onto all of God’s creation. I followed the pattern to the second dot from the handle and offered one last prayer.
The star winked.
Also by Billy Coffey
Snow Day
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Contents
Title Page
Epigraph
1: In the Black
2: Elizabeth
3: The Box
4: The Slingshot
5: We’ll Always Be Who We Are
6: The Paintbrush
7: The World’s a Hard Place, Andy
8: The Happy-Face Card
9: No One’s Here for Rest
10: The Envelope
11: The Letter
12: The Pocket Cross
13: The Difference between Singing and SINGING
14: The Pine Needles
15: The Muck and the Mire
16: Paper Napkins
17: Needed by God and Man
18: The Cap
19: My Brother’s Keeper
20: The Fingernail
21: Black and White
22: Bubble Gum
23: Hungry Dragons
24: The Golf Tee
25: Do-overs
26: The Key Chain
27: Eric
28: The Weight of the World
29: Settling Up
30: The Plan
31: Ordinary Things
32: Heisme
33: The Anvil
34: Jake
35: Paper Angels
36: The Beginning
Also by Billy Coffey
Copyright
Copyright © 2011 by Billy Coffey
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
Unless otherwise indicated, Scripture quotations are from the Holy Bible, New International Version®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved.
The “NIV” and “New International Version” trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.
Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STA
NDARD BIBLE ®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.
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First e-book edition: November 2011
ISBN: 978-1-455-50533-3