Under-Heaven

by Tim Greaton

  “Well, you don’t.” Vicky turned and left the room.

  “Vicky, come back. Vicky!”

  But my sister kept walking and slammed the door to her room. She was still crying when I backed out and returned to my Under-Heaven. It pained me to know that there was nothing I could do.

  It had been almost two weeks since Jesse had last seen his father. Every day, he had watched snow and ice build up outside the ledge of his third-story bedroom window until he had to stand on his tippy toes to see over the snow that had built up outside his window sill like a mountain landscape. He watched people come and go along the slush-filled streets below and imagined his father was shivering somewhere nearby, even as his son enjoyed the heat inside his bedroom. Jesse had pleaded several times with his mother, but she insisted that it was too dangerous for his father to live with them. Jesse knew it had more to do with the burned truck than the nose-candy, but both seemed to be part of the issue. He also felt more and more certain it was a problem that could never be fixed.

  It was almost his bedtime when Jesse heard the security buzzer. Moving close to his door, he held his breath and listened. He couldn’t make a voice out of the intercom static but did hear his mother’s response.

  “I told you, Wagner, you can’t stay here. Call the police. I’m sure they’ll give you a place to sleep.”

  Jesse was crestfallen. Would it have been so hard for her to say yes? What harm would it do to have his father here in the apartment, at least until it grew warm enough to be outside again? How could his mother be so cruel to let his father freeze to death just because of nose-candy? Suddenly, Jesse had an idea. In his five-year-old mind, a plan had formed. It wasn’t perfect or fully thought out, but Jesse didn’t want to think of his dad sleeping in the snow anymore.

  “Mom!” he said, racing out into the kitchen. “Mom, I want to say hi to Dad!”

  He was thankful she was in jeans and a tee shirt. She would never have said “yes” if she had not been dressed. Her finger was near but not on the intercom button. Jesse could hear his father trying to say something, but the speaker crackled too much for him to make it out.

  “Hold on a second, Wagner,” his mother said. “Jesse wants to say hello, but then you need to get off my front stairs. Okay?”

  “Hi, hero,” his father’s voice crackled. “Are you being good?” Jesse thought he heard tremors in his father’s voice.

  “Dad, can you come up and tuck me in?” He knew he was putting his mother on the spot.

  “I’m not sure your mom wants me to, Jess.” Either his father’s voice was growing clearer or Jesse was getting better at understanding the static. He turned his best sad eyes up toward his mother. He blinked twice but couldn’t quite make tears come. It was working though. He could see her struggling with the decision.

  “It’s late, Jesse.”

  “He’s my dad….” Jesse let his voice drift off but never took his eyes from hers.

  “Jesse, we shouldn’t.”

  Jesse knew he almost had her. He didn’t dare to say anything more for fear he might break the spell.

  “You promise to go right to sleep after?”

  Jesse nodded solemnly, but inside he was cheering wildly. The first part of his plan was working. His mother pressed the intercom button.

  “You can come up, Wagner, but only for a minute. You have to leave again right after that, okay? No hassles?”

  “Okay.”

  “You’re a stinker,” she said reaching down and stroking Jesse’s hair.

  Jesse willed his lips to stay closed and his face to remain neutral. He was afraid that any wrong expression might ruin everything. He knew if they could just talk, his father would know what to do next.

  “Why don’t you get into your jammies,” she said to him.

  “Can I wait for Dad first?” he pleaded. He didn’t want to take a chance that unsupervised they would get into a fight with each other.

  His mother tousled his hair again. “Okay, but Dad’s only staying for a minute, you understand. No video games, no snacks. He’s just tucking you in and leaving.”

  “I know,” Jesse said in his most innocent voice. This was one night he intended to follow his mother’s instructions perfectly.

  His father knocked, and Jesse intentionally put himself between his mother and the door. He figured he had to block her view of his father’s dirty hands. His mother pulled the chain lock, and Jesse turned the bar in the center of the knob from sideways to straight up and down. His father had taught him to pretend the bar in the lock was like a big stick. Sideways, you could not get through, but up and down you could walk right in. It was one of the best things his father had ever taught him.

  Jesse opened the door. His father’s hair was snarled and his face was red from the cold wind outside. Jesse guessed he didn’t even have a hat anymore. Now that he knew where to look, Jesse could see a faint smudge of red below his father’s nose. Hopefully his mother wouldn’t notice.

  His father’s eyes didn’t drop to Jesse’s level. Instead, they stared straight into his mother’s.

  “Hi, Babe.”

  “I’m not your babe anymore,” she snapped as she backed away from the door. “You look like hell.”

  Before his father had time to say anything further, Jesse grabbed both his hands and tugged him into the apartment. His fingers were cold and felt scaly, and if anything they were dirtier than before.

  “Dad’s going to help me brush my teeth,” Jesse said. He kept hold of his father and pulled the man through the kitchen and down the hall, never giving his mother a single chance to see the filth.

  “Right to bed after that,” she called after them.

  His father’s hands were so cold they were almost painful to touch. It was like dragging a big ice cube around, Jesse thought, as he led his dad into the bathroom. Gently, he closed the door.

  “Dad,” he whispered, “I want us to make a plan so you can sleep here with me every night.”

  “Jess,” his father said. “Your mother said ‘No.’ I tried.”

  Jesse turned on the sink water and made it lukewarm. Whenever his hands got cold at the playground, hot water made them hurt, and he figured the same would be true for his father.

  “You have to wash up good,” Jesse said. He pointed to his father’s grimy hands. “If Mom sees them like that she’ll make you leave.”

  His father smiled weakly. Jesse suspected he hadn’t slept much lately. Maybe he didn’t dare to fall asleep when it was so cold. He also noticed that his father was still wearing the same clothes he’d seen him in for the last few weeks. It looked as though things weren’t going well for him at all, which made Jesse even more committed to helping. As his dad cleaned his hands, a chore that required a scrub brush from under the sink, Jesse retrieved the comb and brush from the windowsill and a washcloth from the closet.

  “Face and everything,” he insisted. Oddly, his father did as he was told. Somewhere along the way the child had become the parent. Jesse had a mouth-full of toothpaste when his mother called out to them.

  “Everything okay in there? It’s been a while.”

  Jesse spit into the sink in preparation to answer, but his father got to it first.

  “No problem, Babe,” he said. “I was just cleaning up a little, while Jess did his teeth.”

  “Good thing,” Jesse heard his mother mutter through the door.

  His father looked up so Jesse was able to get a good view of him in the mirror. He looked much better now, but the skin on his face was red and peeling in places. Jesse hoped it wasn’t a frost bite. He didn’t really know what frosts looked like, but he knew they lived out in the cold. Storm, one of his friends at school, said a frost bit his brother the previous winter, and the doctor had to cut off the rest of his toe because it had turned black.

  Jesse tried not to think of his father’s peeling skin as he whispered, “I know how you can sneak back in, Dad….”

  Most nights, I found myself d
reaming about my life back on Earth. One night, the dream was a familiar one: Whiskey and I were hiking along the hills that sloped down into the old mica mines behind Staber’s Golf Course. The hillside was steep and treeless. I grasped small bushes and shrubs to balance myself as we made our way down the gravel slope. Whiskey, sure-footed as ever, pranced happily along below me. Though I feared I might slide and roll at any moment, he seemed to have no concerns at all.

  By the time we reached the quartz and granite plateau that most of the kids in Coldwell would jump from in the summer, I was ready for a rest. Though the August air was surprisingly cool, even for Maine, I was hot from our hike. Together, Whiskey and I stared down at a perfectly round pool below. I had heard the shaft that formed the small pond was over a hundred feet deep and that at the bottom was an excavating machine that had been caught in a sudden flood. Some of the kids at school also said there were at least two stolen cars down there. I didn’t know if either story was true, but I’d once seen several Coldwell teenagers leaping from my dangerously high perch into the water. Diving as deep as their breath would allow, each one had been hoping to at least see the tip of the excavating machine. From what I heard none had succeeded. To my knowledge no one ever had.

  Whiskey laid his head on my lap, and we enjoyed one of our final days before I had to go back to school, and I was trying to get in as much time with my dog as possible. That’s probably why, when the sun began to set, I chose to remain a little later.

  I should have known better.

  When we began the return climb, the temperature had dropped from cool to nearly cold, and the shadows had grown long and dark, making it difficult to see proper handholds and footholds. My poor decision to stay late had turned a challenging but relatively safe climb into a perilous chore. We had ascended about three quarters of the way when I slipped on a granite shelf and started to slide backwards. I grabbed for the nearest shrub.

  It came out, roots and all.

  I scrabbled at the mostly bare slope but there was nothing to hold onto.

  “Whiskey!” I screamed. I rolled onto my butt and tried to dig my heels into the crumbling slope. It was like scrabbling in breakfast cereal. The edge of the narrow plateau rushed up at me. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t stop myself!

  At any second I knew I would hit the narrow ledge and pitch head first over the cliff and into the cold water. I’d once heard that falling from a second-floor window into water would hurt almost as much as landing on concrete. The mica mine cliff was higher than a second floor window!

  It’s true I had seen those teenagers leap from the same cliff and live, but they had been older and had jumped feet-first. Who knew how I would land? It would be a spectacular belly flop for all I knew. I grasped for another bush but the leaves ripped off in my fingers.

  “Whiskey!”

  Terrified I might be the first person to see the bottom of the flooded mine shaft, I kicked and scrabbled wildly. It was no use. Soon, a dead boy would sink past the excavator and any other underwater vehicles.

  Suddenly, a blur rushed down my left side and plunged beneath my feet. My sneakers struck soft, furry flesh—flesh that miraculously had come to a stop!

  Whiskey had done it. He had saved me…

  When I woke for the umpteenth time since my death, I remembered every detail of that harrowing day, in­­­­­clud­­ing how my dog had come only inches from the edge of the cliff side when he brought us both safely to a stop. Whis­­­key hadn’t given a single thought to his own safety that day, or any day. When it came to protecting me and my family, he never hesitated. Not even at the very end.

  I desperately missed my dog, my best friend. I missed my parents, too, but at least they still existed. Though they were still working through their purgatories, someday I knew we would be reunited. But when Whiskey gave his life to defend my family, he had given up everything.

  My Whiskey was gone forever.

  20

  Dominoes begin to fall

  For the third night in a row, Jesse woke to the muted sound of his Aladdin alarm clock. He gave his stuffed, blue dog a hug, then rolled out of bed and crept over to the closet door he had left open earlier. He reached down under the mass of clothes, some clean, some dirty, and groped until he could feel the blue Genie’s arm. He pushed it down. The buzzer stopped. Jesse held his breath and listened for any sound that might indicate his mother had woken.

  Nothing.

  Good. He was safe. He grabbed his Star Wars sword, which he knew was really just a flashlight, and crept out into the living room. They had only a single window in that room, and it was crowded by an end table on one side and the arm of the couch on the other. Jesse climbed up onto couch and pushed the curtain back so that he could look down at the dimly lit street below. A light snow was falling. The plan, which had been mostly his, was that at midnight his dad would wait across the street until Jesse blinked his flashlight twice. Then Jesse would push the button to unlock the security door. Jesse would have preferred they sleep together in his room, but his dad had suggested he sneak into the basement where he could stay out of the cold and weather at night.

  For the third night in a row, however, Jesse saw no one on the sidewalk. His dad never showed any of the nights. Jesse felt as though he had somehow failed. Maybe he had misunderstood the time, or maybe he’d missed something his father had said. Whatever the reason, their plan wasn’t working.

  Had his father found a different place to sleep? Jesse doubted it. As he stared at the snow and ice piles that lined the sidewalks, in his gut he knew his father was in trouble.

  Just as he’d done the last two nights, Jesse committed himself to staying awake as long as possible. After all, sleep didn’t seem that important when your dad was freezing outside. Jesse sat on the back of the couch with his feet on the arm and waited. If he fell asleep on the couch and got caught there, his chances to ever let his father in would be ruined. A long time later, when he finally did stagger back to his bed, it was only because of exhaustion. Dejected, he crawled under his covers.

  He’ll be here tomorrow, Jesse thought.

  He hugged his stuffed dog and, after a while, fell into a troubled sleep.

  It’s surprising how fast the years can go by, and if it weren’t for my nightly visits with Vicky, I might not have even been aware of the time that passed. It seemed as though she jumped suddenly from a pretty, elementary school girl to a full-fledged, beautiful woman. It was apparent that the boys around her thought so, too, because I could scarcely view her during waking hours when there wasn’t one guy or another fawning over her.

  One night, I zoomed in to find her heatedly kissing a boy that seemed to be older than she was. They were sitting in the front seat of a small, sleek car that I learned was a Ford Fairlane. The boy, probably nineteen or twenty years old, was wearing a faded, blue jean jacket. Not wanting to snoop, I backed away from the scene and caught sight of something shiny in his back pocket. I spun my view and my breath caught. It was a gun. What would he need with a gun?

  As I withdrew and returned my attention to Under-Heaven, my head was filled with concern.

  If I had been surprised by the appearance of the young man with two red stains on his shirt, imagine how I felt when an elderly man appeared in my Under-Heaven with seven individual, red stains on his white suit jacket. He was the epitome of all my fears and proof they were well founded. If I went back to Earth, I might be murdered again. Of course, moving on to Heaven was always an option but as Uncle Finneus often said: I still had too much dirt under my fingernails to give up on Earth just yet.

  As I stared at the man and his stains, I was in a quandary. If I didn’t want to spend eternity in Under-Heaven, I would someday need to make a decision, but how could I risk everything by going back down there again? Maybe a talk with this man would help. Having grown out of my childhood shyness, I approached the elderly, multi-murder victim where he sat on the stairs of his house. His shoes and clothing were snow wh
ite, his only color being the red stains that covered his jacket like spaghetti sauce from a food fight.

  He nodded at the stain on my right shoulder.

  “Guess I got you beat, huh?” he said.

  I smiled weakly and swallowed. His red stains swam like danger signs before my eyes. Visions of the violent lobstermen who had killed my family threatened to overtake my courage. I steeled myself because I knew I had to find out as much as I could before this man moved on to Heaven. He was thin, almost gaunt. I suspected he had been sickly at the time he had been murdered.

  “Scary stuff, huh?” he said, pointing a thumb at his jacket. He had a nonchalant smile as though the stains on his coat were of no more interest to him than what he might have eaten for breakfast that morning.

  “How’d it happen?” I asked, feeling shyer than I had in years.

  “Which one?” he said casually.

  I found his tranquil manner baffling. How could some­one have been murdered seven times and not think it was a big deal? I’d only been through it once, and the experience had left me in such turmoil that I had become a legend of indecision in Under-Heaven.

  After a long delay, I said, “What about the last time?”

  He shrugged and shook his head. “I not sure yet.”

  I wasn’t surprised by his lack of memory. The boy with the two stains said the last life took a while to recall. What I couldn’t fathom was this man’s calm demeanor.

  “You don’t seem upset? After seven times, I would’ve thought…” My voice trailed off.

  He shifted his position and gave a quiet laugh.

  “Not as much flesh on these old bones as there used to be,” he said. “I think I’ll bring a cushion from the couch out here next time.”