Devine Intervention

by Martha Brockenbrough

  X. THOU SHALT NOT INTERFERE WITH THE NATURAL ORDER OF THINGS.

  Six hours left.

  I WANTED OUT of her room before she came back, but I couldn’t find my body’s gas pedal or whatever it is inside of you that lets you get up and do something when your motivation’s left the building. I stayed there long enough that the house got totally quiet, even the part of me that might have been moaning. People stopped bringing casseroles. Cars stopped cruising by, and it had started snowing again, little flakes at first, then a whole lot of them. Through the window, it looked like the sky had worse dandruff than my uncle Mort.

  But it was soothing to watch. The snow, not Mort’s dandruff. That was sick and you know some of it got on his food when he was eating, which is why I wasn’t sorry when he went to jail for the Florida swampland deals.

  It was like I’d been born into a family with a curse. We had these trouble magnets inside of us, pulling us toward the wrong things all the time. Mort and his scams. My other uncle and his thing with those corpses. Then there was me and Mike and anything that could get blown up, or shot at with arrows, or run over by his car, or covered with glue and most of the feathers in his pillows. And of course, that poor, stupid cat that trusted us and shouldn’t have.

  Cursed. Every last one of us.

  My dad always said I had a choice in the matter, but that wasn’t something I ever felt. When you wanna do something so bad and all you hear is that devil on your shoulder, and your body is an engine going as fast as it can to get you to that spot where your idea is waiting, where does the choice come in? Even knowing what happened and how I felt when the cat’s eyes lost their shine and its body stopped twitching, could I say for a hundred percent certain that I wouldn’t do the same thing again today if Mike was egging me on? Was my soul any better now than it was then?

  By the time I made it outside, it was the middle of the night and there was no sign of Heidi or Jiminy. Not even Jiminy’s footprints. The snow had filled in everything and it would’ve looked all perfect, like one of those paintings at the mall, except for the part about a missing soul and a missing dog and me having no clue where to look for either.

  I tried to shoop to wherever she was at, but it didn’t work. I couldn’t figure out why. She might have broken my shoop when she was using me as her own personal punching bag. Or maybe she got pulled into Heaven. I hoped that was the case, but good stuff like that is not the Jerome Way of Things Happening. More likely, she’d already fallen apart. She didn’t even get the full twenty-four hours, and as hard as it was to imagine her gone — just gone, like that — I had to face the fact. I owed it to her to be that much of a man.

  And I hoped that the end for me was worse than it was for her. I was so out of last chances that it was just a matter of figuring out which level of Hell to send me to. I’d broken so many commandments, they might have to split me up and send hunks of me to every level.

  I had to lie down again and I moved my arms and legs through the cool white fluff the way kids do when they’re making a snow angel. I didn’t even leave a wing pattern. Whoever thought I had the makings of a guardian angel was a world-class dumbflask. There was no way to make me an angel. I couldn’t even make the kind kindergartners make in snow. Of course I never stood a chance in rehab. I couldn’t help myself. Why would I be able to help anyone else? I had to laugh and cry at the same time, all sloppy and wet and shaky.

  Jiminy ran up and licked my face. He smelled like kibble, and you know what? That stuff tastes better than anyone gives it credit for. It took me a few minutes to figure out what the problem was in this scenario, besides his dog breath. If Jiminy could lick me, it meant only one thing.

  He was dead.

  Chevy.

  The thought of it wrecked me because I knew how much Heidi loved that dog, and I also knew how everything that had happened since the day at the pond — since before, really — was at least partly my fault. It wasn’t as bad as what happened with the cat, but it seemed like death went where I did and maybe it would be better for everyone concerned if I was locked up someplace I’d never leave.

  I lay there for as long as it took the lopsided moon to slide a couple hand widths across the sky, and by then, I wasn’t laughing anymore. My body shivered, but not from the cold. Jiminy lay next to me, and I got why Heidi liked him so much. He was all right for someone who spent a lot of time licking his balls. I was sorry he’d gotten killed, even if it wasn’t totally my fault. Gabe and Xavier could just add this to the list. It’s not like I could be any more damned than I already was.

  Then I caught a sniff of something in the air: pizza rolls.

  Howard.

  Heidi and Howard. Together. If she hadn’t fallen to pieces yet, he’d probably taken her. Either that, or she’d gone with him all on her own, just to get back at me. Maybe she wasn’t worse off, though. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt her. Maybe he knew how to keep her soul from disappearing. Maybe he knew something more than I did about getting her into Heaven. Maybe it was time for me to give up on Heidi, to give up on myself, time to let someone else take over.

  Something skittered in the bushes, and Jiminy ran after it, leaving me completely alone. He’d find his own way to the creature gate of Heaven. I couldn’t show him anyway. Only Howard and his crew knew where it was. They once went cow tipping there and the authorities had to put extra security in place because cows enjoying their eternal reward do not deserve to be tipped, apparently.

  For about the millionth time since my death, I wished I could ask my dad for advice. Xavier and Gabe try, but it’s not the same. Nothing’s the same as your dad, and even if he thinks you’re worth less than the sack the groceries come in, you never stop wanting to have the kind of relationship where he smacks you manly-like on the back and tells you what he’d do if he was in your shoes.

  The smart part of my head knew this was never going to happen, and I didn’t have time to waste on wishes or watching my old man sleep. Heidi’s and my clocks were ticking down together. But even knowing that wasn’t enough to keep me away from stopping by, just to spend a little time near him. I tried to get up the guts to talk with him, to say sorry, but I couldn’t make a single sound come out.

  Pop’s place smelled like bacon. It was the only thing he knew how to cook besides something from a box or a can. A pan of grease on the stove had hardened and turned tan and there were little flecks of burnt meat in it. It was pretty satisfying huffing the fat for a while. I don’t know why people sniff glue or gas when there’s bacon. Erase your brain or have an orgasm of your entire face? Come on!

  He was asleep in his La-Z-Boy with the blanket my grandma crocheted for him pulled up under his chin. He’d started sleeping there after my mom left. When I was little, I thought it was because he was guarding the place in case she decided to come back and he wanted to give her the what-for. But then I read the note he always put on the kitchen table, alongside a can of Schlitz. WELCOME HOME. I was probably like six or eight at the time and I’d come to the kitchen for a drink of water because my throat used to turn into sandpaper at night.

  This was before me and Pop had stopped talking to each other. And even though stopping talking had felt like a good way to stop fighting, it turned out to be a bad thing, because each word we didn’t say was like a brick we stacked into a wall, and pretty soon that wall felt so big, we had no way of getting over it.

  Anyway, however old I was, I was still little enough that I couldn’t read without sounding stuff out. Pop heard me and busted out of his chair like a bear that had sat on a beehive. He yelled a bunch of stuff and he came at me all fast with his arms spinning at the air like sideways propellers, and he kicked at me, but I was more awake than he was, and definitely less drunk, and so his foot went into the kitchen table and there was this crack and the power of his kicking had busted one of the legs right off.

  Only it wasn’t a clean break. There were a lot of splinters and he said some bad words and I stood there and watched him tr
y to get the table propped up again. He had one hand holding the Schlitz and one hand holding the table, and he was trying to get the leg in there using his knees, which wasn’t working too good. I wasn’t sure if I should offer to help or if that would make him worse, so I stood there in my underwear and T-shirt, feeling the cold air on my legs and noticing the patterns the streetlights made on the floor when they slid through the blinds.

  “I want a drink of water,” I said. Pop didn’t answer me for a while. Alls I could hear was the kitchen clock ticking and the occasional car zooming by. Their headlights had a way of making shadows from the blinds slide all the way across the room like claws. I wondered if he’d fallen asleep there holding up the table and the Schlitz. Nope. He was awake, but his eyes were puffy and his chin was wobbling, like maybe the table was heavy.

  So I was all, “Here,” and I scooted in there and got the table leg out from between his knees and I worked it as best as I could so the splinters lined up.

  Pop took his hands off the table and the beer all slow, like he was a magician doing something complicated with a rabbit and a hat.

  “As long as we don’t put any food on it, it should work good as ever,” he said.

  He rubbed his palm over his face and then over the skin on the back of his neck, which was always one of the most interesting things on him because it was red and crinkled and full of dents like the ones on those red rubber balls at school. I reached out my hand and put it on it real soft. It felt warm. My hand might have tickled because he started laughing, the quiet kind, where no sound comes out but your whole body shakes. I didn’t want to look at him in case he was laughing at me standing there in my underwear, but me and Mike had used my pajamas to make a scarecrow and I only had the one pair. My legs were goose bumpy and I was real glad when Pop stopped laughing. I took my hand off his neck and he said with a kind of rough-edged voice, “What say we get you that drink of water and you go back to bed?”

  He was still squatting and his eyes were lower than mine, which made me feel pretty grown up.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “We’ll fix that table leg tomorrow,” he said. “I got all the tools for the job.”

  I drank every drop of the water in one gulp the way I’d seen Pop do it, but I don’t think he noticed, because he didn’t say, “That’s the stuff,” the way he did when he finished his drink. He was probably still thinking about the table.

  We did try to fix it the next day, but Pop maybe didn’t have all the tools that he thought. We had to sand the leg down where there were splinters, and even though we got it reattached all right, the table was wobbly. I had the idea of sanding down the other legs to match, but Pop said no because it would make the table too short and he wasn’t going to sit at a midget table for the rest of his life. I decided not to say anything else after that, because he used to sometimes get really mad when things didn’t go right, and part of me wondered if he was going to get it in his head to kick one of the other legs off. If there was one thing worse than one busted table leg, it was two.

  Afterward, the table always had a lean to it. We tried sticking a bunch of stuff under it, but someone was always accidentally kicking it out and the table would — woop! — go slantwise, which is no way to eat, especially when you’re working on something slippery, like a bowl of SpaghettiOs.

  The dictionary did the trick, once we figured that out. Other than that, we were used to it. You can get used to a lot of stuff by living with it.

  I could never quite figure out why Pop kept sleeping in the La-Z-Boy, though. After he stopped putting out the can of Schlitz and the note, he still parked himself there every night. Habit, probably. Or maybe it made it easier for him to get up in the morning, seeing as how he was already at something of an angle.

  Now I stood over Pop again and watched him sleep. I was close enough that I could smell his aftershave, which always reminded me of limes. The light from the street bled through his whiskers, turning them from reddish to gold, and he snored a little bit, making a quiet noise that sounded like he was gently sanding wood.

  “What you dreaming about, old man?” I said, not expecting my voice to work.

  But it did and he woke up and grabbed on to the arm-rests of the chair. His face had a scared look, like my words went straight into his dreams.

  “Jerome?” he said.

  He looked from side to side quick-like. And then I could see the memory sink into his face. It was probably the light, but for a minute it looked like remembering took the color out of things, because his face turned from a sort of pork-chop pink to gray. He knew it couldn’t be me, but that’s only because he doesn’t know what happens after you’re dead. He blinked his eyes a couple of times real slow, closed his eyes, and fell asleep again, and his blanket slipped down to his stomach.

  I looked at the clock. At most, Heidi had three hours left. Three hours is a lot of time if you want to kill it, and it is not enough time if it’s all you have. I didn’t want to kill time anymore. I didn’t want to kill anything. I’d had enough of that for one lifetime.

  It made sense to me now why Heidi wanted to say good-bye to her people. I wanted to do the same, for Pop, and for Mike. That seemed like as good a way as any of filling my last hours before going to Hell.

  It was against the rules, but I focused all my emotion on getting Pop’s blanket up under his chin. The guy might not have been the dad I wanted, but he didn’t deserve to freeze in his sleep. Nobody does. I figured that was as good as I could do by way of good-bye. I took one last look at him and memorized him in his favorite chair. Then I shooped to Mike’s.

  Three hours left.

  HEIDI’S EYES OPENED and the room spun into slow focus. At first, she wasn’t entirely sure where she was, or even who she was. There was the voice again. The voice, and a blinding light.

  Come to me, it said. Don’t make me come and get you.

  She fought the urge to obey and float out of Jiminy’s body. That had always been her default setting: listen to the other voice in her head, forgetting what her own was telling her. But an image of her family formed solidly in her mind. If there was any way she could get back to them and restore Jiminy’s soul, she would do it. That it was a violation of one of the commandments in Jerome’s handbook didn’t matter. She was already outside the system, a lost soul. It wasn’t as if things could get any worse.

  The anesthesia cloud began to dissipate and she realized the white light that surrounded her came from the overhead fixture in the operating room. Squinting blocked the worst of it, and she could still make out the blurry shapes of the vet and his assistant as they tidied up the room, pushing sweet antiseptic wind over her face every time they passed.

  The vet spoke: “You know, I’m sort of surprised we were able to get this little guy stitched up on the inside.”

  “So it wasn’t just me?” the assistant said. “I thought he was a goner, for sure. Someone up there must want him to live.”

  “That’s one way of looking at it,” the vet said. “Okay, so we’re going to have to shave that down before we do the plaster.”

  They were talking about Heidi’s leg, or Jiminy’s leg — whoever it belonged to was no longer clear. The limb was numb from anesthesia, but she could still feel the buzz of the clippers and the pressure of the cast as they wrapped the wet plaster. It ached like a bad tooth. Worse, though, was the plastic cone the assistant strapped around Heidi’s neck. It blocked everything but the circle of room in front of her face, and it amplified the smell of dog breath. Within a few minutes, she’d coated the inside of the cone with a depressing, damp film of stink. A whine escaped her mouth and she sank lower on the metal table. Then a hand grabbed the fur between her shoulder blades.

  “No collar or microchip,” the assistant said. “Shame.”

  “I hate that,” the vet said. “There’s gonna be a hell of a bill for this. The Good Samaritan lady only left twenty dollars. Here’s hoping we can find this guy’s owners before we have t
o put him down.”

  “That’s more than most leave. Dog’s lucky he got found. If we don’t find the owners, someone’ll want to adopt him. He’s adorable.”

  The vet grunted. “Can you believe it’s only six A.M.?”

  Six. Heidi had three hours before she disappeared for good. Three hours to get Jiminy’s body back to her house, find his soul, and make the swap. The knowledge should’ve filled her with a sense of urgency, but the lingering anesthesia was so strong. She wanted to rouse herself, but it felt hopeless. How would she find Jiminy’s soul if she couldn’t even stand? Even her eyelids were more than she could keep open. She wished Jerome were nearby. He’d keep her awake.

  Find me, Jerome. Find me and save me. She whispered it in her head like a prayer.

  The assistant moved Heidi into one of the many small cages stacked against the wall. Most of them held animals: rabbits, cats, snoring dogs. Inside it reeked of 409. Heidi couldn’t believe she was feeling nostalgic for her mother’s organic cleaning products. The assistant stroked her on the nose, closed the door, and fastened the catch with a metallic snap.

  “All set,” she said. Heidi read the woman’s plastic name tag. CORINNE.

  She sniffed and noted that Corinne had eaten a hot dog with mustard and relish for dinner, along with a side of Cool Ranch Doritos; her breath also seemed to carry on it a whiff of Diet Coke. She inhaled again. Was that Head & Shoulders shampoo? Her dad used that. And had Corinne been crying? She smelled the tiniest bit sad. Heidi suppressed a sympathetic whimper.

  “Oh, little guy, did you sneeze?” Corinne said. “I hope you’re not allergic to cats or it’s going to be a long day.”

  Corinne flicked off the light, and the room became a dark box. Her shoes squeaked as she departed. Heidi fought the anesthesia for a few more seconds, but it was like wrestling a cloud. She knew there was a chance she’d never wake up if she fell asleep. And that was her last thought before her eyelids drifted shut.