by Weston Ochse
Instead of answering, Rev Boscoe steepled his hands beneath his chin and closed his eyes. He shook his head twice. "No," he mumbled. "We shouldn't—" he began but was cut-off by some internal dialogue. "Yes. Okay," he finally whispered. Without opening his eyes he said, "She will honor your request."
"My request?" Gibb sputtered.
"You were going to petition the Long Cool Woman, yes?" Rev Boscoe asked, his tone that of a patient professor.
"Well, yes. I mean, I was going to, but how did she know? How did you know?"
Rev Boscoe smiled, the sight utterly lacking in humor. "You're willing to accept that the dead can speak through a comatose woman but have a problem with the fact that I can communicate with her?"
Gibb processed the question and saw the reason within the unreasonable. "So she'll do it?"
"Yes," Rev Boscoe said. "She'll do it."
"Then it's back the way we came. You'll follow me, right?"
"Right." Rev Boscoe toggled closed the window signaling the end to the conversation.
Gibb rushed back to his police cruiser. He hadn't missed the tired resolve on Rev Boscoe's face. He'd just decided to ignore it. After all, his most private wish was about to be fulfilled. What was he to do? Trade his dream for the nightmare of a burned preacher?
A break in traffic found them accelerating until the next exit, where they were able to regroup before heading West towards mile marker 43. And with each mile they drew closer, the more excited Gibb became.
Excitement not like when he chased down a perp or during a high-speed chase. Gibb had never intended on being a policeman. No, not the adrenaline surges of the physical, more like the endorphin highs of higher learning.
Like when he'd received his scholarship to Princeton. No one in his family had even gone to college, much less received a scholarship. But after four years of perfect grades and an inspired letter from his guidance counselor, Princeton had tendered him the Soren Kierkegaard Scholarship in Philosophy.
Or when he'd graduated Phi Beta Kappa and slid into graduate school.
Or when he'd been offered a teaching position at Arizona State University, charged with shaping the thoughts, ethics and futures of a hopeful generation.
After passing mile marker 44, Gibb did something he'd never done before. He didn't call in. He didn't text a message. Instead, he turned everything off. The computer, the portable radio, the console radio— all turned off. He didn't need their interruption. He didn't need for something to spoil the moment.
Usually, the interior of the cruiser was alight with police technology. But as he pulled to a stop beside mile marker 43, the interior was as black as the universe Gibb saw from behind his closed eyes. He waited several moments, remembering the words he'd said on that night his life had changed, words he'd borrowed from Kierkegaard himself. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wishes me to do; the thing is to find a truth which is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die. An imperative of understanding must be taken up into my life, and that is what I now recognize as the most important thing. That is what my soul longs after, as the African desert thirsts for water. What is truth but to live for an idea?
And that idea had been responsibility.
Gibb's eyes shot open as knuckles wrapped at his window. More time had passed than he'd realized. The interior windows had begun to fog. He turned and toggled his window down. He watched as a gloved hand gripped his door and a face hove into view.
"You gonna do this?" the biker with the Fu Manchu mustache asked. "The reverend's waiting and wants to know if you’re ready."
Gibb rubbed his face. His hand came away wet with sweat. Where had he gone? Where had the time gone? He stepped from the cruiser, leaving his hat on the seat. He glanced once at the baton resting in its door sleeve, but decided to leave that alone as well. Where he was going, he didn't expect to need either.
The other two bikers were lowering the Long Cool Woman to the ground as he approached the shrine. The Burned Man stood nearby, hands clasped in front of him, head down as if in prayer. Gibb glanced towards the bus where the mourners sat facing forward in their seats, ignoring his episode. Clearly they were not his mourners.
Gibb grinned nervously. To be able to finally speak to the man he'd killed was something very significant to him—something he'd never thought he'd be able to do from this side of the shroud. He understood that his need was selfish. Redemption was a private thing.
What had changed his mind and made him seek out the Long Cool Woman was the constant wondering about Stephen Jones and whether or not the man's soul had passed to the other side. The accident had been horrifically violent. Superimposed upon the desert, Gibb watched as a phantom car careened out of control. The car twisting through the air. A head slammed against the driver-side window as geometry and torque merged. Blood plumed. Then an explosion of earth, plastic, glass and metal as what was left of the car hit, tumbled and split asunder.
They say that the soul remains at the scene of violent deaths. Gibb remembered the crash as if it were yesterday and there was no death as violent as the one that had taken the life from Stephen Jones. If the soul remained, the Long Cool Woman would help it across. If the soul remained, perhaps Gibb would be able to tell it all the things he'd done to make up for the untimely death.
The bikers finished arranging the Long Cool Woman, then backed away. As they passed Gibb on the way back to their bikes, he noticed that they seemed afraid to make eye contact.
Rev Boscoe walked to the body and gently grasped the Long Cool Woman's left hand and placed it against the shrine. He knelt beside the body and held the right hand in an embrace. Slowly, he petted it.
"Come, Mr. Gibb," Rev Boscoe said.
Gibb gulped and stepped forward.
"Allow me to tell you a few things, before we begin," Rev Boscoe said.
Gibb nodded, suddenly very nervous as the moment of his confrontation neared. He didn't mind postponing it a moment or two longer.
"You never asked me how I became this way?"
Gibb had thought about asking, but knew it would have been presumptuous and rude. What must have happened must have been truly horrible.
Rev Boscoe smiled and, without moving his head, glanced up at Gibb. "It was truly horrible; more so because of the betrayal. It was my mother who did this, you see."
Gibb felt his breath hitch.
"You don't have children, but let me promise you, there is nothing more terrible than a mother who hurts her own child. The shattering of the trust alone..." Rev Boscoe's voice trailed off.
Gibb didn't have children. He'd wanted to, but since he'd taken away Stephen Jones' chance to be a father, it hadn't seemed fair.
"We were always poor. She was always high. When she couldn't get hold of morphine or heroin, she'd have to settle. My father painted houses, you see, so there were always a lot of paint cans lying around. He'd collect them until he'd have enough for a full can, then charge the client as if he'd purchased the paint special for them. Not really cheating, just frugal."
Gibb watched Rev Boscoe petting the hand of the comatose medium and tried to imagine the Burned Man as a child. Try as he might, he couldn't.
"Yes. Would you believe I don't even know what I looked like back then either? I was so young, I just don't remember." The Reverend shrugged. "No matter. Like all of us, I am what I've become." He glanced up suddenly, confusion in his eyes. "Where was I?"
"Your father was frugal," Gibb murmured.
"That's right, ever the frugal man. What he didn't know, is how my mother would go into the paint shed when he was gone during the day. She'd take a plastic drop cloth and drape it over her head. That day she hurt me, I watched her through the window as she opened up cans of blue and red and white. I remembered thinking of the flag and wondering if she was going to paint something patriotic." He glanced up and smiled weakly. "Of course, I didn't know the word patriotic until much later."
Gibb matched the
smile and nodded.
"Then she began to sing and sway like we were back in church."
"What'd she sing?" Gibb surprised himself by asking.
"Showtunes. She sang showtunes. We had these old records that she'd play. She had all the words memorized. I broke one of the records once and was soundly trounced. I deserved that one." Rev Boscoe stopped petting the hand, and placed the Long Cool Woman's hand over his eyes as he continued.
"Then later after the red, white and blue paint, when I was playing with my trucks in the kitchen, she came inside with a hammer and two ten penny nails. She called me over, and like a good boy, I came. I was so surprised when she nailed my left foot to the floor, I didn't even cry out until she started pounding the other nail home in my right foot."
Gibb brought his hand to his mouth. Although he'd seen horrific things in his fifteen years as a policeman, the matter of fact way the story was being told was almost as shocking as they events they retold.
"Then she began to boil water. She told me I was dirty. She told me I had bugs. She said that she knew how to get them out. She said that she knew how to make me clean. So there I stood, crying and begging my mother to let me go, trying to move my feet, when the first pot came to a boil. Do you know that she smiled when she poured it over my head?"
Gibb shook his head, but it went unnoticed.
"My brain shut down at that point. It took three years before I could think straight again."
Gibb stood, hand to his mouth, eyes wide, staring at the Burned Man. The words ‘when the first pot came to a boil’ reverberated through his mind. Part of him wondered how many pots she'd boiled.
"You were right about something," Rev Boscoe said, abruptly changing the subject. "The soul of the man you killed is still here."
"What?" Gibb was taken off guard by the pronouncement.
"Do you know why the Long Cool Woman never came to you?" Rev Boscoe asked, removing her hand from his eyes and staring at Gibb. "You do know that the normal way this happens is that she comes to you, right?"
"I didn't know."
"Clearly. There's a reason why she didn't come to you."
"What's the reason?"
"Better let her explain." Rev Boscoe stood.
Gibb suddenly noticed that the Long Cool Woman's eyes were open. Her attention was fixed on him. Her face was unreadable, yet her eyes were alive.
"Take her hand," Rev Boscoe said.
Gibb stepped forward, took the hand into his own, and felt the grave. If possible, her skin was even colder than the Burned Man's. But he didn't have time to contemplate this. Her gaze held him as firm as the gripping hand and he was unable to look away.
"What do we do now?" he asked.
Then he watched the lips writhe upon the Long Cool Woman's face like two red worms. A hiss escaped as the eyes narrowed. Gibb felt the grip on his hand tighten. Her nails dug into the inside of his wrist.
"You are the one," the Long Cool Woman said, her voice low and mean.
Gibb tried to pull his hand free.
"You did this. You killed me."
Blood began to seep from where her nails had pierced his wrist. With his other hand, he tried to pry her fingers away. Then a hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed it.
"You wanted this, so stop fighting it," Rev Boscoe whispered.
Gibb shook his head, but knew the truth of the words. He could take a little pain. He should take a little pain; after all, he was the one still alive.
"Yes. I killed you," he said slowly, gritting his teeth so as not to cry out from the pain and the guilt.
The soul that had once been Stephen Jones hissed in reply. "Why?" asked the Long Cool Woman.
"I wanted to make sure that you made it to Heaven. After all that I did, I wanted to make sure you were—"
"No. Why did you kill me?" asked the voice. "Why did you run?"
"Because I was afraid."
"You were driving drunk," the Long Cool Woman stated matter-of-factly, the voice authoritarian and with a sudden mannish quality.
"Yes. I'd been at a party at the Dean's house and had a few too many martinis," Gibb said, remembering the event. He'd just been promoted to full professor and the Dean of the Humanities Department had thrown a party for Gibb at his resort home west of Phoenix. "I didn't know I was drunk until I hit the interstate and by then it was too late."
"Too late," mimicked the voice.
Gibb continued, but he was flustered by the sarcasm. "I should have stopped. I should have let you give me a ticket or take me in, or anything other than what happened," he said, stumbling over the words in his rush to get them out.
"Why were you afraid?"
"Because I would have been fired." Gibb looked into the Long Cool Woman's face. "I know. It's stupid. Incredibly stupid. I want you to know that I would have done anything, would do anything to erase that day."
"Why are you here?" the voice asked.
"To make sure you were released to Heaven," Gibb said, his eyes hopeful.
"Bullshit," spat the Long Cool Woman. "Who the hell are you trying to kid?"
Gibb jerked back as if he'd been slapped. He opened his mouth to say something, but he didn't have the chance.
"You came here to make yourself feel better," the Long Cool Woman said, drawing the words out into one long snarl.
"I did not," Gibb said. "I've been—"
"—keeping me here for seventeen years while you made yourself feel better. Don't think I didn't know what's going on. I felt you thinking about me every day. Each thought, each wish was a tug on my soul. Your pathetic conscience needed to be soothed because killing me made you feel bad."
"But that's not true."
"Boo fucking hoo! You felt bad and did all this to make yourself feel better."
After the accident, Gibb had high-tailed it home. It wasn't until the next day that he'd discovered that the police officer had died. He'd attended the funeral, but kept to the back. Seeing Stephen Jones' young wife weep as she was handed the flag had broken him inside. He'd felt responsible and knew that the responsible man would do something to make things right.
"That isn't fair," Gibb said. "I did this for you. I changed my life for you."
"Not fair? Not fair?" sputtered the Long Cool Woman. "You kill me and tell me I'm not being fair?"
After the funeral, Gibb had quit his job, the same job he'd been worried about losing that night of the accident. Keeping it would have been a laugh in the face of responsibility. Kierkegaard would have rolled over in his grave. So Gibb had taken a sabbatical at St. David's Monastery down by Tombstone as he contemplated his future. Three months later, his conclusion was that the ethical thing, the existential thing, the responsible thing, would be to live the life of the man he'd killed. His goal was to fulfill the dreams of the dead man, so at the age of 29 he'd become a highway patrol officer.
"I was trying to be responsible. I was trying to—"
"Shut up. Just shut the hell up. It's because of your irresponsibility that I died. It's because of your misplaced responsibility that I have not passed through the shroud."
"No. The violence of the accident is what kept you here." He glanced up at Rev Boscoe. "Tell him, Rev. Tell him it was the violence that kept him from passing on." Gibb trailed off as he noticed the sad look in Rev Boscoe's eyes. "What? Tell me."
Rev Boscoe cleared his throat before he spoke. "Memory and heartache. Sure, the violence of the death carries a certain resonance. But unremembered, the soul will pass on just as quickly as if he'd died in his sleep."
"I don't understand," Gibb said, looking at the shrine he'd erected. "Do you mean that these," he said pointing to the cross atop the concrete based, "are responsible for keeping the souls in place."
Rev Boscoe nodded.
"But they're no different than tombstones in a cemetery," Gibb argued.
"They are very different," Rev Boscoe said. "These things along the road commemorate the event, rather than the person. In a graveyard, only
the person is remembered. Graves are where people are buried. Shrines are where memories are buried."
Gibb stared at the shrine in shock. What had he done? He hadn't meant to make matters worse. He'd only thought to pay respect and be responsible. "But these are everywhere," he said.
"Yes," Rev Boscoe sighed. "They are."
"And now you're a policeman," came the edgy voice of the Long Cool Woman.
"Yes. I thought it was the proper thing to do."
"To replace me?"
"No," said Gibb. "To show respect for you."
"By becoming me?"
"Yes. No." Gibb suddenly found the need to defend himself. "By doing the things you had done so that the world wasn't at a loss."
"What the hell kind of logic is that?"
"It's good logic. It's the way a great many people believe. It's about responsibility and existentialism."
"It's about you wanting to make yourself feel better," said the Long Cool Woman. "That's it. Nothing more."
Then the Long Cool Woman released his hand. Her eyes narrowed, then closed, her face returning to the soft features of a woman asleep.
"Wait," said Gibb, picking up the limp hand. "Come back. Please," he sobbed.
Rev Boscoe knelt beside him and gently, yet forcefully, removed the hand of the Long Cool Woman from his grasp. He placed the hand back on the woman's chest, then placed the other on top of this one.
"You wanted forgiveness, didn't you?" Rev Boscoe asked.
"I—" Gibb's chest felt incredibly tight. Tears burned his eyes.
"I never forgave my mother, either. Not only didn't she deserve it, but I can hold a grudge if I want to. I can be pissed off. If she'd killed me, I'd have haunted her," Rev Boscoe said as he finished smoothing out the Long Cool Woman's dress.
Finally the fist around Gibb's heart relented allowing him to release a long sob-filled sigh.
"Kind of selfish to take things into your own hands, don't you think?"
Gibb stared miserably at Rev Boscoe as he stood, then extended a hand to help Gibb to his feet. When they were both standing, Rev Boscoe continued. "Did you think he'd be eager to accept your apology? Life and death is not some Rodgers and Hammerstein Broadway show. My mother found that out when my Dad shot her with the pistol we kept up on the refrigerator. According to the police report I read when I'd reached adulthood, she was singing a song from Oklahoma." His voice switched to a cappella sing-song as he sung, "O what a beautiful morning, O what a beautiful day. I've got a beautiful feeling, everything's going my way." Rev Boscoe shook his head, as he gestured for the bikers to come over. "Pretty fucking audacious that you'd think so highly of yourself to take on his life."