by Amanda Leduc
“What happened?” asked Sam.
Timothy shrugged. “I woke up and they were there.” He picked at his bun. “What happened to you?”
“The same.” Now that they were here and speaking he found thinking difficult. The air of the coffee shop felt oppressively warm. The boy was so thin Sam could see the veins beneath his skin. His dark blue, holy veins. “Can anyone else see them? Your wings?”
Timothy shook his head. “I don’t think so. You’re the first.”
“The first.”
“Yes. My mother, my sister — they don’t see anything.” He slurped the coffee and did not seem to notice when it dribbled down his chin. “You?”
“Three others,” he said. “Three others can see.”
“Oh.” Timothy nodded. “What do you do?”
“About the wings?” he asked.
“No. What do you do. In your life.”
“I used to be a teacher,” he said.
“What do you do now?”
Sam shrugged. “I walk, mostly. I don’t know what else to do.”
“What does your family think?” said the boy.
“There is no family,” Sam said, as though saying the words for the first time. “They’re all dead.”
“Your friends?”
“They worry,” he said. “But I’m not sure that there’s anything they can do.” He leaned closer and noticed as he did so that the boy moved his head away, down, made it look natural. “What is this?”
“I’m damned if I know,” Timothy said. “Damned.” He finished his coffee and put the cup down with a loud clang. No one looked over. “O foolish anxiety of wretched man,” he whispered.
“What?”
The boy looked at him. His mouth moved and sound came out slowly, like mist through the air. “O foolish anxiety of wretched man, how inconclusive are the arguments which make thee beat thy wings below!”
“Dante.”
“Yes.” Timothy nodded. “We are beating our wings together now, you and I.”
—
“You could come home with me,” Sam said. They had finished their coffees some time ago. “There’s room.” A priest, a cat, two men with wings.
“I shouldn’t,” said the boy. “There’s too much to do.”
“Too much to do?” Sam asked. “What do you do, then, on the street?”
“I sit,” Timothy said. “I walk.”
“Yes,” said Sam. “I know that too. But,” and here, unbelievably, was an echo of Father Jim, “you need to be around people, Timothy.”
“My sister finds me,” he said, the smallest note of pride in his voice. “Almost every day.”
“Then why aren’t you with her?”
“She doesn’t understand,” he whispered. “She doesn’t see me anymore.”
Yes, he knew that too.
“What’s going to happen?” said the boy. That’s all he was, a boy. A boy with a hooked nose and ratty hat and hair that was falling out, even as they sat hunched at the table. “Sam. What’s going to happen to us?”
“I don’t know.” He stood and picked up both mugs, carried them to the counter. “But tonight you’re coming home with me.” Timothy looked about to protest, and then nodded. “All right.”
They walked home to Kitsilano in the dark, single file along the sidewalks. It was now almost six o’ clock in the morning. The flowerbeds that dotted the path to his house were spiky with frost-frozen leaves, stark black shapes in the darkness. Sam led the way up the path, stepped up the stairs, and unlocked the front door. He turned the knob and opened the door into the house. All was dark and silent, save for the faint glow of a light at the end of the hall.
“You live with people,” said the boy. “I thought you said you lived alone.”
“I do.” Sam closed the door behind them. “I have guests.”
Chickenhead appeared at the end of the hall, and then ran down to them, a soft blurry shape. She went straight to Timothy and butted her head against his feet, purring.
“This is the cat,” Timothy said. He watched Chickenhead, wary, and did not move to pick her up.
“Yes.” Sam moved to take Timothy’s coat but the boy shied away, wound his hands around his elbows. “Come to the kitchen. Father Jim is up.”
“Father Jim?” said the boy, but he followed Sam down the hall. “You live with a priest?”
“Guest. I said I had guests.” He pushed open the kitchen door and Father Jim looked up, saw them both.
“Hello,” said the priest.
“This is Timothy,” Sam said. “I met him earlier this morning.”
“Yes.” The priest watched Timothy for one long moment. Then he stood up from the table and moved to the cupboard. “Can I get either of you anything to drink? You look cold, both of you.”
They said it, both of them, at exactly the same time. “I’m never cold.” Sam looked at Timothy and then away. His hands shook.
“Can I have some water?” Timothy asked.
“You certainly may.” Father Jim cracked three ice cubes into a glass, poured water from the tap. The other men, silent, took seats. Sam let his head fall forward and rest against his hands.
“So,” said the priest, placing Timothy’s water on the counter, “Timothy. How did Sam find you?”
“I sleep on the streets now,” said the boy. “I was trying to sleep, and Sam . . . saw me.”
“We went to a coffee shop,” Sam said. “We sat and talked. He had nowhere to stay, so I brought him home.”
“Of course.” Father Jim nodded. And then, as though it was the most logical question in the world, “Timothy. Do you believe in God?”
Sam laughed out loud. “That hardly matters.”
“I have to, don’t I?” Timothy said. He flexed his hands around the glass. “But this is no God I’ve ever known.”
Father Jim nodded again. He poured tea for himself. The steam ran up his neck, got lost in the thick of his beard. “Do you have family, Timothy? What do they think, about you being on the street?”
“I am trying to protect my family,” Timothy said, still in that low voice. “They won’t understand.”
Sam thought of Julie standing in front of him. I don’t know where you’ve gone.
“Your parents?” pressed the priest. “Surely they have something to say?”
Timothy shook his head, looked at the ground. “My mother is dying,” he said. He glanced at Sam. “They’ll all be dead, soon enough. That’s what has to happen.”
For a moment silence overwhelmed the house. Chickenhead crept back over to Timothy and poked at his wing — a feather broke free, fell into the ground. As they sat, watching, the feather crumpled and turned into black dust.
“What’s that?” Sam asked. He leaned forward and touched a finger to the dust.
“It looks like ash,” said the priest.
“I leave a trail wherever I go,” said the boy. “I couldn’t hide now, even if I wanted to.”
Sam thought back to the day when his own feathers had fallen on the floor of the x-ray room. They’d gone in his pocket, the feathers. He stood and reached for the jacket, crumpled in the closet by the kitchen door. When he opened the pocket, he saw nothing but fine black dust at the bottom, as though it had been there all his life.
“I’m tired,” the boy said suddenly. “I’d like to go to bed.”
“Of course.” Sam stood. He waited until Timothy got off the chair, and then took him into the hall. “The one on the right-hand side — that’s the one you can use. I’m at the end, and Father Jim sleeps,” arm out, “in the room across from you. Sorry about the mess — I’ve been meaning to clean.”
“Mess.” Timothy laughed. He looked surprised, as though amazed he could still find small things funny. “You should see my mother’s house.” He w
alked into the room and shut the door.
Sam stood in the hall for a moment, thinking of the fear on Timothy’s face. That sudden panic in his eyes, underneath the laughter, and the way his hands gripped everything — the table, the railing, the doorknob — as though to anchor, hold him to the ground. That flash of something other in the boy’s face just before the door shut. And the sound that came from the other side of the door? The hard thump against the ground, the little moan, the whoosh of expelled breath — someone else might have thought the boy was crying. Or having a seizure, perhaps.
He knew, though. He felt the rivers of God carolling through his own veins, hard and unrepentant. He knew. He understood.
—
He walked back into the kitchen. The cat made a running leap as soon as he appeared in the doorway — Sam caught and held her, firm against his chest. “Timothy,” he said. “You can see him too.”
“Yes.” In the lamplight the priest looked exhausted. How many people weren’t sleeping now, in this house?
“He’s . . . further along than I am. With this thing.”
“Yes.”
“He doesn’t know who he is half the time.”
“I noticed that too.” There was something odd in the priest’s face. Recognition?
“Have I done this to you?” Is that what he was doing, during those long stretches of hours that he couldn’t recall? Sleepwalking during the day now — wandering the streets of Vancouver and mumbling nonsense, mumbling prophecy?
“Yes.”
The sudden drop in his heart, the sudden rush of fear. “So this is going to happen to me. This is already happening to me.”
“Maybe.” What he meant — what they both knew — was that the answer was yes.
—
Later in the morning, after a few stolen hours of sleep, Sam shuffled into the kitchen to find the boy already awake, staring out the patio doors. Timothy had showered; his hair was slicked close to his scalp, white patches evident. Like Sam, he wore no shirt, and his feet were bare on the kitchen tile. His jeans were filthy, full of holes.
“Good morning,” Sam said.
“Hello,” said the boy, without turning. “Hell-o.”
He felt it, that pull of the Infinite. The push of something other in the air. It whispered to him, called his name. He had to force words out of his mouth. “Do you want something. To drink. To eat.”
Timothy turned to him slowly. “No.” He was so thin.
Father Jim came into the kitchen then, and nodded to them both. “Breakfast?” he said, and he went for the cupboard.
“No.” Both of them, again, at the same time.
“I want to go back outside,” said Timothy. “I have to wait. For my sister.”
Sam glanced at the priest, and then looked back at Timothy. “Sure.”
“Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?” Father Jim said, sliding into his own coat. “Just something for the road?”
“I don’t want you to come.” Timothy flushed. He looked restless now, antsy. Even more a bird, ready to jump into the sky. “I’m sorry. I just want — I just want Sam.” He clutched at Sam’s arm, panic sudden in his eyes. “But you can’t stay with me when my sister comes. You have to leave.”
Sam exchanged another look with the priest, and then nodded. “Okay. Just let me get my shoes.”
They walked out the door single file, Timothy in front. “Where to?” Sam asked.
Timothy raised his arm and pointed in the direction of downtown. “That way.” He set off. His feet made no sound as they moved onto the street.
“Does God speak to you?” he asked, after they’d been walking a few minutes. His voice, his stature — everything about him seemed to be shrinking, or fading away into the air. “Does God tell you anything?”
“No.” Sam kept going. “And even if He did, Timothy — I don’t know what He’d say.”
“God is not talking to me,” said the boy. “At the beginning, when it happened, I thought I heard it. I thought God said, Give away everything you own, and come and follow me. So I did. I came here, to be close to my sister. But now I don’t hear anything, except for the noise.”
“The noise?” Sam asked. It was another beautiful day. The air was still and calm.
“You’ll know,” Timothy said. “Soon enough. You won’t be able to think in all of the noise. Everything will be — trying. To get inside your head.”
You’ll know. The priest had said that as well. Did they truly expect fireworks, or a voice that split clouds in the sky?
“I’ve been having dreams,” the boy said suddenly. “I wake up and I don’t know where I am.”
“Yes,” said Sam. “I know. I do it too.”
“I walk — I walk because there’s nothing else to do.”
“Yes.”
Timothy moved like a man asleep, oblivious to the cars that drove by, the horns that blared. As he continued in step behind him, Sam felt everything mesh together in light and fuzz and colour.
“I’m disappearing,” the boy continued. “I look at my own hand and I don’t know what it is.” He stopped, shot a glance back at Sam. “Sometimes, when I wake up — I don’t know what this is. Anything. The ground under my feet, the trees. I don’t know what any of it means.”
“I know,” Sam said softly. “I don’t think I would have understood you before,” he said. Julie. Bryan. Emma. “But now — I do.” His pilgrimage. Joni Mitchell singing to him on the open road. Camping trips with Julie and the one lost life that had broken them, had turned him away. His mother, whose face was fading. All of these memories and people who were gone, or in the act of disappearing. Is this what it meant, serving something larger, something different? That eventually all of the small things would fade completely?
“I’m glad you found me,” Timothy said. He did not look back, and the words disappeared so quickly into the howl of the wind that for a moment Sam wasn’t sure he’d spoken at all. Then, “It makes me feel better.”
“I’m glad too,” Sam said.
“What happens now?” the boy asked. “What do we do?”
“I think we just watch,” he said. He remembered Father Jim. “We watch, and we wait.”
“For what?”
“For God,” he said. Finally. “I think that’s what we’re waiting for.”
IV
More research will tell her that pain causes changes to the brain, to one’s physical chemistry. That the dopamine receptors in the brain are equally responsible for the increase in and relief of pain, that prolonged exposure to hurt will, literally, make someone into a different person. People who are in pain think differently, act differently. They build a world that operates around hurt and solace; they create nightmares, and lift themselves above in any way they can because when you hurt, freedom from it brings a release better than that of any drug. The highs of lacerated skin, the throb of a bruised and bloody mouth. The dark moments of stillness in between. Teresa of Avila beat herself and saw God; so too might Lilah’s own penance bring with it visions of something else. A better world? A life where she is stronger, more than equal to her sins?
Or perhaps Israel is making her into a different person altogether now, with every slap of his hand. Remoulding her flesh. Rewiring her brain. Perhaps she will emerge from his hands like a newborn, her guilt burned away, ready to conquer that space between her brother and her story and that name across the stars. She doesn’t have to travel far to cross it — all she has to do is lie still, and let him bring it to her.
—
“Do you ever have the same dream more than once?” This to Debbie, over pasta and baguettes. Lilah moves noodles around on her plate and watches Debbie eat — linguine, more lesbian tea.
“Like, nightmares?”
She shrugs. “Sure. Or just dreams, whatever.”
“Sometimes. I dream about high school. But everyone has those. Why?”
Lilah pokes at her food. On the way to dinner, she kept her head down and ducked into the alley every time a black car passed down the street. And now she can’t eat. Every time a plate’s put in front of her she thinks of Roberta, chained to an IV in her starchy hospital bed. Every time someone passes by the window she expects to see her brother, cowering and helpless under Israel’s hand. “I’ve been having some strange dreams lately.”
“What are they about?”
“My brother.” Debbie doesn’t look satisfied with this, so Lilah continues. “Sometimes it’s my brother, and sometimes it’s another man. I think. He’s thin. And we’re in a stone hallway.” A spear. “Or sometimes on a cliff, looking out over the sea.” Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea. “And I think — I’m not sure, but sometimes he has wings.”
“Wings? You mean, like, an angel?”
“Um . . . yes.” Is it, though? This man that shines, that makes entire oceans rise and fall under his hand — is this an angel? Are those really wings that flicker behind him, or just more tricks of the light?
Debbie dips a finger into her tea and then sucks it. This would drive Roberta wild. “You know you can get dream books from the library, right?”
“I know what the dreams mean,” Lilah says. Her brother is lost, and she is looking for anything to save him, even God. Even a terrible, unfathomable God with a spear. It’s not rocket science. “I just want to know why I’m having them all the time.”
Debbie shakes her head. “I don’t know. I can ask Jo, if you want.” Jo, Debbie’s partner, is a psychologist-in-training. Apparently she is all about dreams. No doubt she would shit her pants if she sat down with Lilah for an hour.