Pieces of You

by J F Elferdink

  Well, yeah, but I’ve tried it several times in the past, and it didn’t work.”

  “Your girlfriend asked, believing she would be heard.”

  “If Janie trusts in you, I guess I shouldn’t be quite so skeptical. And it seems like I don’t have much more to lose. Okay, free my body from this comatose state and let’s get going.”

  “No, Mark, I did not suggest that. The journey I’ve offered takes place only in the spirit. Your body will remain where it is as you travel back in time to your turning points.”

  “That’s preposterous!”

  “Why is traveling back in the spirit less possible than having this conversation? No part of your physical body is engaged as you speak.”

  Zachri went on.

  “These episodes from your past may seem like a theatrical performance, but you will be playing yourself. Some of the characters in your life’s play are the original actors; others will be ‘stand-ins’ but you won’t be able to tell the difference.”

  “You see,” Zachri continued: “once humans have crossed over, their past, present and future are fused, creating one identity.

  They also become one with the whole heavenly community, taking their place in the completed puzzle. This ability is inexplicable to humans who see themselves as wholly separate individuals, never fully making contact with others; even those whom they love most dearly.”

  “What you’re saying is utterly confusing. How can individuals merge and still retain their individuality? I understand that each puzzle piece must be in its designated place to complete the image. But relating puzzles to what happens after we die is incongruous!”

  “The only way I can answer some of your questions is to use simple human objects to reveal what you cannot comprehend.”

  “Okay, Zachri, that was the easier question, and I’ll just accept your explanation. The more disturbing question is my second one. Why must we revisit events in my life?

  “By the way, I don’t agree with you about never fully making contact with another person. Even though Janie and I haven’t been face-to-face all that often, we have become exceptionally close—‘soul mates’: a term I never appreciated until I met her.”

  “I told you some things cannot be fully understood by the earthbound. Answering your second question is simpler, although not easier. Mark, do you remember the biblical story of Job?”

  “That’s funny, I just thought of it and I haven’t read that chapter in many years. I used to attend an Episcopalian church, although I only did it to fulfill one of the obligations of my job. All senior bank officers were expected to do whatever it took to be perceived as upstanding members of the community.”

  With a sudden look of apprehension, Mark said:

  “What does this have to do with the question I just asked?

  Is that why you’re here? Tell me you’re not here to test my religious knowledge!”

  “No, that’s not it!” Zachri replied, smiling.

  “It’s just that many people have read the story and it’s as good a way as any of describing what is going on right now. Remember the part where the Lord says to Job: ‘brace yourself like a man: I will question you, and you shall answer me.’?”

  Mark nodded, a look of comprehension dawning on his face.

  “As you’ve admitted, Mark, you have been ignoring what you might call your ‘gut feelings’ these last few years. The time of reckoning has come. Your physical condition is much more serious than you have acknowledged to your son, to Janie or even to yourself.”

  9

  A BARGAIN, A MEMORY AND A PROMISE

  Janine received an update from Martin on Mark’s status. It was, however, much less optimistic than the first:

  ‘There has not been any change in Dad's condition, he remains non-responsive to any kind of stimulus, and all that can be done is to wait and pray that he awakens. The doctors and hospital here are as good as any in the world, and we know Dad is getting the best of care. All the tests confirm that he is experiencing a myxedemic coma resulting from his long-term thyroid gland problems and now magnified by the blood infection. Your prayers are appreciated, but I’m afraid we can only wait.’

  Janine tried very hard to believe that Mark would wake up at any moment and she would hear his voice on the other end of the line saying: “Hello Lover, I just took a little nap but now I’m wide awake, with you on my mind.”

  Though part of her mind was in torment, envisioning him lying mummy-like in a Swiss clinic, she still believed this crisis would soon be over. Since her family had taken her relationship with Mark lightly, believing that a long-distance romance would lead nowhere, she didn’t share the burden of her aching heart. She laughed. She ate. She tried to listen to the conversations swirling around her and the screaming in her head went unheard.

  ***

  Mark lay motionless, but his mind was feverish.

  “Zachri, please don’t tell me you’re the angel of death!”

  “No, Mark; that is never my role.”

  “Do you want my confession? In the last few weeks, I’ve thought a lot about the people I mistreated. I wish I could relive those times and make different choices.”

  “Admitting your mistakes is healthy but I’m not here to be your priest.”

  “So what do you want from me?”

  “I want you to accept this gift; the gift of your recovery.”

  “That is precisely what I’ve been asking for. When I wake up, will I remember you as a figment in a dream? Will I remember this at all?”

  “That is not what I said; restoration will not come instantaneously. Remember, I told you that you would be reliving some of the crucial events in your life.

  “This time you are traveling as a spirit, becoming both a participant and an observer. That gives you the advantage of recognizing the effects of your choices, even on people you didn’t personally meet.”

  This couldn’t be real. Even in his most bizarre imaginings, he had never conjured up a ghost or any other kind of spirit and here was one implying that he, Mark, would have a spirit’s trait: the ability to read the minds of complete strangers.

  What he had just heard made him want desperately to stop listening, but the consequences of shutting Zachri out of his life were too unpleasant to contemplate.

  Zachri continued.

  “Nothing you ever faced has such power to alter not only your own life but also the lives of your descendants.

  “Will you trust me? Shall we begin the journey?”

  Mark reeled at Zachri’s next words:

  “By the way, if you choose not to go, my work with you is finished.”

  As this statement sank in, Mark felt his hope fading.

  “Could I make a deal with you, Zachri?”

  Without waiting for a response, Mark continued.

  “What type of restitution could I promise in return for being released immediately from this coma?

  “I would give all I have - and you know that is a good deal - to the poor; just to hug my son and daughter-in-law, get on the next plane and fall into my lover’s arms as quickly as possible.

  “I need nothing you have, Mark. I am not here to take what is yours. You know why I’ve come.”

  As Zachri said that, Mark became aware that his mom and dad were showing up in his mind’s eye. ‘What if I could see them again when I return to my past? Would I be overjoyed or would it just reawaken my grief?’

  The mental images became more like a motion picture, featuring himself as a teenager.

  This scene was eerily familiar: His parents’ home, just before his eighth-grade graduation ceremony. He could almost hear his mom reprimanding him…

  “Mark, your sister says you’ve been reading a book instead of getting dressed. Are your shoes polished? Your hair combed? Your father will be embarrassed if any of his colleagues see you looking rumpled at the podium. Have you practiced enough?”

  “Come on, Mom, I’m nervous enough! Lay off, will ya?”
<
br />   “I’m sorry, honey. I am very proud of you. It’s just that some of the other parents know your father is on the school board. We don’t want them to think you didn’t earn this honor.”

  “I’m really tired of all the hassle just because people know Dad. I’d prefer to have a family like Wayne’s. His folks don’t make a big deal out of everything. Or, better yet, I’d like to live in India or Africa. African students don’t wear shoes to school. Maybe that’s where I’ll go when I graduate—either that or I’ll join the Navy.”

  “Honey, your father and I have plans for your future that don’t include a third-world country or military duty. We’ll discuss those plans later.

  “Now it’s time for us to go.”

  As the scene with his mother faded from his mind, Mark realized that, right up until the year both his parents died, he had accused them of trying to arrange his future.

  This notion must have been sowed that day, at the end of eighth grade when his mother’s impulsive remark—probably made to stop him from whining—had irritated him enough to make the Navy his goal.

  ‘Would I want to see them again? With all my heart! I want to make up for the shameful way I’ve treated them, and for using them as my scapegoat.

  ‘Those dear people meant the world to me and I rarely let them know.’

  “They know.” Zachri assured him.

  “What did you just say?”Mark asked.

  “They know. I know your parents. We are members of the same community. I assure you, they know how much you love them. I am their messenger, too, relaying what they want you to know: that their love for you never waned, even through the years you hardly spoke to them.”

  Mark’s expression was beseeching, saying without words that he wanted to believe but that it was a monumental struggle. In the heat of his struggle, it came to him that to believe this he would have to admit that everything Zachri said was true.

  “If I follow you, can I count on being restored to my family and to Janie?”

  “I can only promise that you will be allowed to choose the next phase of your existence.”

  “I’m not sure what that means, but I won’t argue. I’m beginning to believe in you. Let’s get going.

  10

  THE FIRST JOURNEY BACK

  The few ‘hootches’ set into the hillside were all empty on this gloriously sunny day.

  Every single resident of those thatched peasant dwellings who was not away serving in the North Vietnamese Army was standing within the circle; a ring of broken hearts.

  The villagers, from newborn to weather-worn, stood facing the casket of one of its own; a young father of two, a man revered by the whole community.

  Their faces were in stark contrast to the day’s radiance. The anguish on each face; the despair in the eyes of the young widow; the piteous cries of the young children and old grandmother all signaled their unwillingness to let go of this precious youth whose only, fatal, mistake was in having been a dutiful soldier.

  If the mourners could see into the casket, their eyes and hearts would have been forever mutilated by the image: the ravages of a death by black powder and explosive materials. What they would have seen were the torn pieces of a body which, until three days ago, had kissed and caressed; had handled tools more adeptly than weapons, sung songs and breathed prayers.

  Mark, invisible to everyone but his traveling companion, Zachri, watched over the shoulders of two of the diminutive Vietnamese adults. As it dawned on him who was in that box in the ground, a terrible pain gripped his heart and raced upward; every heartbeat seeming to strike in his head with the force of a sledgehammer. He looked over at Zachri.

  “It feels like shards of glass in my skull and my heart but why? Wasn’t this was one of the dinks stationed in the war zone where I almost died? What are you doing to me?”

  “You were taught to believe the enemy is less than human.

  “Now, for the first time, you are identifying with the very human pain of the relatives of a dead enemy.”

  “You said you’d help me. Do you really think striking my heart is helping me; or them? I think it’s cruel.”

  “This is real, Mark. I am just showing you what happened beyond your field of vision.”

  “I wasn’t responsible for this! If that squad of dinks had not been killed, many more American military would have met his fate; so how do you expect me to respond? Fall on my knees and beg forgiveness for doing my job?”

  “In your military training, you exchanged your civilian role for that of a killing machine. You were programmed to attack and destroy whoever and whatever was branded as the enemy of the American people. Am I right, Mark?”

  “You bet you’re right! All our training exercises started and ended with the refrain: ‘Kill or be killed, kill or be killed’.”

  “Please do not think you’re being vilified. This could be your liberation. Guilt has been wreaking havoc within your body ever since you killed your first Vietnamese.

  “After all, you were taught the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill.’ when your parents took you to Sunday school.”

  “That’s not fair! That commandment is about murder, not self-defense or defending a legitimate cause. Don’t you know I was shot, too?”

  “God heard you when you pleaded for relief from the horror of what you had been through, but you have not let it go. Corpses still roam freely through your nightmares most nights.”

  “Stop it! How can you possibly know what’s in my dreams?”

  “Mark, shall I disclose what you’ve been repeating to yourself for years? It goes something like this:

  ‘I didn’t enjoy serving in Vietnam, crawling through the jungle, parched; having dysentery, being lonely, getting shot up and nearly dying.

  ‘I was only defending my country and my men. I tried to protect even civilian Vietnamese although it was always a challenge to separate the innocent from the Vietcong’.

  “It seems you can read minds as easily as I read books, Zachri. Yes, that’s what I told myself, almost daily, during the first few years after I came home.”

  With Mark’s admission, an image of a family gathering came back to him in vivid detail. His family had thrown a party to welcome him home. His mom and dad had even talked him into wearing his uniform and the Silver Star he had been awarded for his part in rescuing captured soldiers. When he arrived at the hall, his cousins, who had already been drinking, had started in on him immediately:

  “Thank you for keeping America safe but did it require killing babies?”

  The shock of discovering that his own flesh and blood could show such disrespect for his sacrifice had enraged him. He frantically wanted to shut them up, but without a weapon his only option had been retreat.

  Running the three miles home, almost out of his mind with the horror of his own reaction, Mark had made two decisions.

  He would lock his Silver Star away and give the key to his mother, and during the rest of his life he would never discuss his navy experiences.

  When Mark came out of his reverie, the look on Zachri’s face told him that he’d been followed and his expression made Mark want to disclose other memories too; the stuff of his recurring nightmares.

  “What would the world have become if Communist rule had swept through all of Southeast Asia and then on into North America? What else could we have done?”

  “I am not your defense attorney, and I won’t answer that. Instead, I am here to listen to whatever you’re ready to share. But first, let me take you to an old friend.”

  Mark and Zachri moved from the site of the burial ceremony to a little hill near where Mark had sustained serious injuries.

  There, they were joined by someone who had often walked or crawled with him during his tour of duty and had been a regular nocturnal presence. Bob hadn’t made it out of Vietnam breathing. Yet here he stood, looking just as Mark remembered him the day they had landed in Vietnam.

  Astonishment and fear left Mark speechless.
When Bob spoke, Mark recognized his distinctive baritone voice.

  “Mark, it’s me.” He flashed a shy grin and added:

  “I’m delighted to see you.”

  “It can’t be! You’re dead, Bob. I saw you die.”

  “I knew this would be hard for you to believe so I asked C.S. Lewis for help—he was good at expressing things in human terms. We agreed that his poem, ‘Death in Battle’, was a pretty fair explanation of the gateway to my current address.

  By the way, he sends his greetings and gratitude for being a loyal fan.”

  Mark knew that Lewis had died forty-five years before, on the same day that John F. Kennedy was assassinated.

  “How, how could….”

  “Just listen, Mark:

  ‘Open the gates for me!

  Sorely pressed have I been

  And driven and hurt beyond bearing this summer day,

  But the heat and the pain together suddenly fall away,

  All’s cool and green.

  But a moment agone,

  Among men cursing in fight and toiling, blinded I fought,

  But the labour passed on a sudden, even as a passing thought,

  And now—alone!

  Ah, to be ever alone,

  In flowery valleys among the mountains and silent wastes untrod,

  In the dewy upland places, in the garden of God,

  This would atone!’

  “This is what happened to me, Mark. Lewis had it right, except for being alone in the ‘garden of God.’ Zachri and Lewis are among my innumerable friends.”

  “Bob, I don’t understand this at all but it really seems to be you, although I never heard you quote C.S. Lewis before.

  “Am I supposed to believe you conversed in heaven before you dropped in on me? Just when I was beginning to believe in Zachri! My imagination is much more powerful than I ever received credit for.”