How Like A God

by Brenda W Clough

  The drowned man sat back on his ragged haunches, a sardonic glint in his eye. “Thought I was old Gil.”

  At least the logical corollary to that came easily. “No, no,” Rob said. “He was lying about that. I see it now, the old lunatic. You are the worst of me, and still you’re miles better than him. Gil is the sort of real bad-ass we save the rough stuff for. You did a fine job on him in Kazakhstan, by the way.”

  The drowned man grinned wolfishly. “That was fun, wasn’t it? When do we get to do that again?”

  Edwin hoisted himself up onto the ledge again on Rob’s other side. “How about right now,” he wheezed. Rob glanced back in surprise at him. He had never known Edwin to be so aggressively hot-headed.

  Suddenly, without the slightest warning, the button light died in his hand.

  In the illimitable darkness Rob could only see blurry afterimages of Edwin sprawled on his left and the drowned man squatting on his right. Quickly, before he lost track of positions, Rob put both hands out to touch his companions. Edwin’s furry arm was humidly warm, trembling with some strong emotion, but the drowned man’s hand was boneless and cold, slick with wet.

  “Oh Jesus,” Edwin gasped, coughing. “Oh Jesus, where’s the light?”

  “You shouldn’t’ve brought him,” the drowned man grumbled. “This place is bad for his like. How come you take him around to all these dangerous places, anyway? He’s a drag.”

  “No, he isn’t,” Rob said. “In fact, he mostly drags me!”

  “Well, take him away, or he’ll go buggy. I’ll be in touch.”

  The drowned man pulled his icy hand away, and was gone. Rob could neither feel nor hear any trace of him. On his other side Edwin was panting unevenly, obviously in distress. Rob tugged gently on his hand and Edwin tackled him, a clumsy fumbling hug in the dark. Here no foolish shyness impeded Rob’s tenderness. He held Edwin the way he would Davey or Angela, feeling the strong heart thudding desperately with fright under the deep ribs. The drowned man was right. Down here was no place for a child of the

  light. “Hang on, pal,” Rob said. “We’re out of here.”

  And they were rolling over and over together in the shallow warm water of the duck pond. The sun blazed down so high and bright in the sky that it must still be early afernoon. With an irritated quack, a mallard duck fluttered away from their flailing limbs. Rob stood up shakily in the knee-deep water. “Ed, are you okay?”

  “Better now.” Edwin wallowed over and clung gasping to the flagstone verge.

  To his horror Rob saw ferocious crimson finger-marks sunk deep in Edwin’s throat. “My god, Ed! Let me see—we’ve got to get you to a doctor. You’re bleeding!”

  “Rob, this is me, remember? Give me ten minutes in the sun here, and I’ll be fine.” He rolled over onto his back in the water and leaned his head on the verge. Rob climbed out and lay prone on the sun-warmed stone. For a long time they rested, panting. Then in a stronger voice Edwin said,

  “Besides—if we went to the emergency room—I bet these marks would match your fingers, bud. I wonder what a passerby would have seen.”

  The thought made Rob gulp in dismay. “Oh yeah. I’m glad this is a quiet park.” A brief silent struggle, and then Rob went on, “It was me, Ed. I can’t shove the responsibility off onto anybody but myself. I just tried to rip your head off. I’m really sorry.”

  “Nonsense, Rob. Perfectly okay. I can take it, thanks to you. Maybe I shouldn’t have pushed you so hard to let me in. I didn’t realize how—how deep we were going to go. I was intruding, so I deserved some hassle.”

  “No—it was okay. You did good.” Rob had to smile at the shy, inadequate words. Out here he could say little more, entrenched once again behind his reserve. It was just the way he was—he could never change.

  After some consideration Edwin added, “I will say though, that I never want to do that again. The next time you need help with your psyche, I’ll give you advice from the outside.”

  Rob sighed. “I don’t know quite what I’ve achieved just now, Ed. Except that—I know I’ll always have to stay in control. Keep a tight hold on my temper, my impulses. With great power comes great responsibility, you know.”

  Edwin raised his head. “I’ve heard that someplace before. Who said it, Virgil?”

  “Believe it or not, the Amazing Spider-Man.”

  Edwin snorted with laughter. After another long reflective pause he said,

  “I don’t know why I began to lose it in there. That’s unusual for me. And here’s a good question: what happened to my stuff? The notebook, the light,

  the Swiss Army knife—they’re not in my pocket now. I dropped them in your head. So where are—yeowtch!”

  Rob started, bumping his chin on the flags. “Ed, what is it?”

  Edwin rolled over and heaved himself splashing out onto the flagstones. “A duck bit my toe, right through the sneaker!”

  Rob laughed. Suddenly his heart was absurdly light. Somehow, from the dark below the bridge, he had brought back some smatch of that inner joy and serenity. “Let’s take the hint, and get moving.”

  The canvas grocery sack was still on the bench. “I wonder if we just sat there on the bench awhile,” Edwin mused, “and then fell forward into the water?”

  Rob noticed that the savage red marks on Edwin’s neck were nearly gone. Amazing! He said, “Maybe you should tell Carina we were just horsing around, and fell in.”

  “What, lie to her?”

  “It’s the truth—you’d just be leaving out some details. On second thought, let me do the talking. When you lie you always look like a guilty baby. You can take our clothes downstairs to the laundry room instead.” Whether from the duck pond or the Tidal Basin, their clothes exuded a growing swampy

  reek in the hot sun.

  With relish Edwin declared, “If you’re going to walk from the laundry room up to my apartment, and pitch a story to Carina, all without a stitch on, I want to see it.”

  Rob laughed at the picture. “No, I guess that wouldn’t work!”

  In the end they both went upstairs, sneaking into the apartment like naughty schoolboys. A heavenly smell of chicken mole made Rob’s mouth water. Carina was sitting out on the balcony, chattering rapid-fire Spanish into a cordless phone.

  “Suppose you take first whack at the shower,” Edwin said. “Towels are under the sink, the shaving stuff in the cabinet.” He snatched a blue terrycloth bathrobe off the hook behind the bathroom door.

  Rob dove into the bathroom and stripped off his wet casino clothes for Edwin to wash. After a thorough shower he spent a long time painfully and clumsily shaving. Rob had last handled a razor a year ago almost to the day. The face that emerged from the final toweling was not the same as the one in the bathroom mirror in Fairfax. He looked older and thinner. Pain and madness had etched their lines around his eyes and mouth. Threads of gray contributed to the new butterscotch brightness of his hair. The icicle-blue glint in his eyes was new too, and his chin was pasty pink

  against the rest of his weathered face. But overall he thought the family would recognize him, and that was all he cared about.

  He put on a fresh set of clothes, the heavy jeans and a plain white Salvation Army T-shirt, and snatched up his bags. He ran downstairs, intercepting Edwin near the mailboxes.

  Edwin stared at him. “Holy Mike, is that you, Rob? I’ve never seen you without the beard. You look so, so ordinary!”

  With a selfconscious grin Rob said, “I shouldn’t have let it slide for so long. I better leave you to it, Ed. It’ll take me a couple hours to get home by Metro and bus.”

  “That’s right, leave me holding the bag. Could it be that my bride makes you nervous?” Edwin set the box of laundry detergent down on the stair and rubbed the back of his neck thoughtfully. “I suppose you can pick up your clean clothes any time. Rob, will it be all right? You think you should maybe phone ahead?”

  “Of course not,” Rob said confidently. “Everything’ll be great.”
He held out his hand, and Edwin took it in a firm grip. “Look, Ed … I was thinking. You’re right—what you said by the cherry trees. It is a miracle.

  I’ve been really lucky. So lucky it’s crazy. There were hundreds of times I could’ve gone under this past year, but I didn’t. I’m—thankful, I guess.”

  “Now I warned you, Rob, not to make a habit of thanking me. It’ll get on my nerves, and then I won’t invite you to the wedding.”

  “I wasn’t thanking you,” Rob said indignantly.

  “You’re not, huh?” Edwin looked at him, his gaze very sharp. “Then who? We’ll talk later about it. Right now you have a long-awaited date. God bless you, bud.”

  Rob turned away, and then remembered. “Ed, I forgot! I’m flat broke. I lost every cent I had at the casino. Could you lend me ten bucks for the bus and subway?”

  Edwin began to laugh. Reaching into the pocket of his terrycloth bathrobe, he drew out his sodden wallet.

  CHAPTER 3

  Rob rode the Metro Red Line downtown in such a turmoil of happiness he could hardly think straight. He almost missed the transfer entirely at Metro Center to the Virginia train. He tried to get a grip on himself. He had worked for this day, dreamed about it for so long, it would be a pity to be incoherent about it.

  The twins wouldn’t be the same, of course. At that age children grow and

  change daily, almost hourly. They’d be taller, smarter, maybe even approaching the potty stage. Angela would sing new songs for him, and Davey had probably mastered the playground monkey bars long ago. Perhaps they’d learned to use forks—that would be a major improvement in the household ambiance.

  And Julianne. Rob was overwhelmed with yearning: the memory of her kiss, her touch, the smell of her skin. She would have new clothes, of course, and probably a new haircut, but she herself would be exactly the same … wouldn’t she?

  The train stopped at the end of the line. Rob rode the escalator up to the bus stops. Suddenly he was uneasy. It was illegal, he was sure of it, to just up and abandon your wife and children. He had vanished from his Fairfax life like smoke. He hadn’t called, or sent word, or written.

  Suppose Julianne had given up on him? Didn’t love him any more? Divorce would be an entirely reasonable reaction, given her situation. Desertion was sufficient grounds, wasn’t it?

  And if she’d gone through with a divorce, she might even have remarried by now, a full year later. People did that every day. In her style, Julianne was as lovely as Carina. There’d be hundreds of guys waiting in line for her. Rob realized that, as always, Edwin had been right. He ought to phone ahead. But just at that moment the commuter bus pulled up at the stop in a cloud of blue diesel exhaust. If he didn’t take it, he’d have to wait forty minutes for the next one. The doors sighed open, and he got on. He’d have

  to go through with it.

  The bus wasn’t full. He set the ancient brown duffel bag on the seat beside him and searched inside. Down at the bottom corner he felt a clump of metal bits: his keys. He drew them out and held them. If I were marrying a young divorcee with kids, he thought—or, my god! if I bought the house from her when she moved away! If I did that, I would rekey all the locks and bolts.

  It would be the sensible, Harry Homeowner thing to do. Even if Julianne has just axed me, the first thing she’d do would be to change the locks. So I don’t have to phone. I don’t even have to ring the bell and see her new man open the door. Or the new owner of the house. All I have to do is try my key in the lock.

  Rob sat and stared tensely out the window as the subdivisions rolled by. He was afraid now, afraid as he hadn’t been at Aqebin. Power sang through his bloodstream and bent to his will, power enough to totally dominate the entire earth and everyone on it. And he couldn’t use it, not now, not for this. If Julianne had moved on, emotionally or physically, he couldn’t muscle her into coming back. She was free to make her own choice, and he would have to accept her decision. He could do absolutely nothing about it. For all his strength, he was helpless as a child when it came down to what really mattered.

  The thought should have been fearful, but was in fact gloriously freeing.

  Here, arguably at the pinnacle of human power, Rob was only a small step

  above everyone else after all. He wasn’t a god, had never even been close.

  In the family of humanity he wasn’t the dad, but only a younger son. The realization was a tremendous relief, like a titanic rock rolling off his back. Somebody else had the job of being God. He had never for one second wanted that burden, and now he knew he would never have to shoulder it. Dimly he saw, not the details, but the broad contours of belief, a wide new country to explore some day.

  When the bus halted at his stop Rob felt dizzy. It roared away into the sweet spring evening, vanishing around the corner before Rob mustered the nerve to cross. I am not going to chicken out, he insisted to himself. I have to know. I’ve faced so much, I can face this.

  His own street now. The house at the corner had a new roof, and someone was barbecuing—Rob could smell the burning charcoal. The azaleas were just coming into flower in masses of clashing reds and pinks. He marched slow but steady down the sidewalk, putting one foot ahead and then the other, watching for the first glimpse of the house.

  And there it was. The maroon Plymouth van was parked in the driveway—they hadn’t moved away. The lights were on in every room, so that the Cape Cod house glowed a welcome in the twilight. The yard looked in reasonable shape too. Jul had probably hired a lawn service after all.

  Rob went slowly up the front walk and set the duffel and the laptop on the stoop. The keys jangled in his shaking hand, and in the shadows he had problems sorting out the right one. She never remembered to put the porch light on.

  He pulled open the storm door, the familiar door he had bought and hung himself, and it was too much. He leaned his forehead on the door jamb, silently pleading for mercy, from whom he didn’t quite yet know. Then he straightened and pushed the key into the lock.

  It fitted. It turned. The deadbolt snicked back, and the door opened. From inside came the aroma of microwave pizza, and the thunder of galloping small feet. Davey’s ululating Tarzan cry echoed down the hall. Rob took one more deep breath, right down to the bottom of his stomach. “Thank you,” he said aloud. Then he stepped in and shut the door behind him.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  The central alteration I have made in the ancient story of Gilgamesh—that the king actually retained the gift of eternal life instead of mislaying it—is my own. Everything else about the hero I have borrowed from many sources. Of the epic, translator Maureen Gallery Kovacs says, “As was traditional in Mesopotamian literature, ‘authorship’ consists largely in the creative adaptation of existing themes and plots from other literature to new purposes.” I have happily aligned myself with this tradition.

  In the New York Public Library, Rob reads David Ferry’s Gilgamesh (1992),

  the most vivid verse rendering available today. The paperback epic he buys on Christmas Eve is the Penguin Classics edition, translated into prose by N.K. Sandars. Randall Garrett coined the term “tarnhelm effect” for his Lord Darcy stories. The Individuated Hobbit, by Timothy R. O’Neill (1979), explicated for me the use of Jungian archetype in fiction. And the marvelous and obvious truth about immortality—that it is a pearl, not an undersea plant—is pointed out by Geoffrey Bibby in Looking for Dilmun (1969).

  Many on-line geniuses supplied answers to my inordinate array of questions, ranging from trucks to casino blackjack to EEG machines to the adventures of Mandy Patinkin. David Singer told me about travel in the former USSR and the inmate population of Lorton Reformatory. Dr. Louise Abbott sneaked me into the bowels of buildings at NIH for a private tour. Greg Feeley wrestled mightily with title problems, and Carol Kuniholm and Larry read the manuscript. To all these generous people, my thanks.