“Few would consider Socrates and Judas to have been easy cases,” Luas replied. “I’m just a clerk.”
Haissem winked at me. “Don’t let him fool you,” he said. “Without Luas, there would be no Shemaya.”
“Wait a minute,” I said, bewildered. “Cain and Abel? Socrates and Judas? What are you talking about? What’s the joke?”
Luas turned to me impatiently. “Do you believe theirs were clear cases about which there could be no doubt?” he said.
“I, I guess not . . .” I said. “I really have no idea, but my point is that you couldn’t possibly have— Well, what happened to them, then? What was the verdict?”
Haissem patted Luas on the back. “I must enter my appearance and prepare myself,” he said. “I trust you’ll explain everything.” Haissem reached again for my left hand, and for an instant his eyes seemed to focus on something inside me that was much larger than me. “We will meet again, Brek,” he said. “You’ll do well here, I’m certain of it.” He walked toward the chair at the center of the Courtroom, and Luas motioned for us to take our seats.
“We present only the facts,” he whispered as we sat down. “Our concern here is not with verdicts.”
“But if they were really put on trial, then surely you must know—”
“Nothing,” Luas interrupted. “We know nothing about the outcomes. The Judge never speaks. One might speculate, of course. There are instances when a presenter feels the result should go one way more than another, but it is strictly forbidden. The consequences for a presenter who attempts to alter eternity last all of eternity. We must not seek to influence the result.”
I watched him, trying to see through him, behind him, still unwilling to believe, still clinging to life as it used to be, searching for explanations for what was happening. Nothing made sense. “The surgery isn’t going well, is it doctor?” I said. “You’re making me worse. I’m becoming even more delusional.”
“Nonsense,” Luas replied. “Look, Haissem has taken his seat. You’ll see things more clearly after he presents his case.”
Haissem sat on the chair at the center of the Courtroom, adopting the same position as Luas, hands on knees, eyes closed, waiting. I kept my eyes open, watching. Suddenly, a powerful tremor rocked the triangular monolith, rippling its smooth surface. From the center of the monolith, from its solid core, emerged a being like the one on the animated sculpture in the hallway, human in shape and size but without hair, face, or features, dressed in a charcoal gray cassock. Haissem maintained his position and the being stood before him for a moment, then returned to its dark home without a sound. When the tremor subsided, Haissem rose from the chair and, standing at the exact center of the Courtroom, raised his arms up from his sides in a broad arc. The energy of the walls and floor pulsed violently and surged toward him from all directions, seemingly compressing the space around him like an imploding star. The shock wave struck Haissem’s body, instantly vaporizing him, leaving behind in the vacuum only his voice, detonating like a great cosmic explosion: “I PRESENT TOBIAS WILLIAM BOWLES . . . HE HAS CHOSEN!”
The Courtroom went dark. No light. No sound. No motion. Then the Courtroom vanished altogether.
What came next left me shaken to my core. I did not merely witness the trial of Toby Bowles’s soul. Instead, by merging with his memories, I became Toby Bowles. I relived his life exactly as he had lived it. As had happened when I walked among the souls in the train shed, Brek Cuttler ceased to exist.
—
I FIND MYSELF crossing a dirt road in a World War II military encampment. My body feels heavy, tired, anxious. My face feels thick and rough, covered with whiskers and grime. My mouth tastes unfamiliar, like a first kiss. My arms, two of them now, feel powerful but detached, as though I am operating a machine. There is an aggressiveness I have never felt before, a heightened wariness of my surroundings and other people. My thoughts and reactions are accelerated, more analytical; my emotions and ability to comprehend subtleties are dull and unused. I reek with body odors that seem both comfortable and unpleasant. My head aches from a hangover.
I am wearing a filthy green Army uniform and new black boots. This is my second pair of boots this month—a fact that I know implicitly but don’t know how I know. I know too that I can have as many boots as I want, that there are enough boots at my disposal to outfit two armies. They’re nice boots, shiny, black, and warm, but they can’t be kept clean here in Saverne—another fact I know: the location of the encampment. The dust takes the shine off the boots as soon as you put them on, and there is nothing here but dust, darkening the sun and fading the colors. Everything is dust brown: the clothes, the tents, the once white requisition forms. In Saverne, the food tastes brown, the water washes brown, the stars sparkle brown, the air smells brown, and, when the dead arrive at the morgue here, they bleed brown onto the brown ground, ashes to ashes, brown to brown. I even dream in brown. The only thing not brown in Saverne is greed, which tints the eyes and fingertips a vibrant glossy hue of green.
Crossing the dirt road, I’m debating in my own mind whether to lowball the medical supply chief or give him a fair offer and make him think I’m doing him a favor by selling his extra supplies on the black market. But when I reach the middle of the dirt road, somebody yells, “Toby, look out!”
From the corner of my eye, I see an olive green Army truck racing toward me at breakneck speed, plowing a tantrum of brown dust into the air. The dust looks startled for a moment, as if it has just been awakened from a nap. I leap out of the way, spinning a pirouette in my new black boots and giving Davidson a thank-you slug in the shoulder for the warning.
“You gotta be more careful, Toby,” he says. “You’re gonna get yourself killed.”
“Me, killed? No way,” I tell him. “Not by no goddamned truck anyway. It’ll take a French maid to do me in.”
Davidson guards the entrance to a brown tent that was once olive green. Dirt blown from the road piles into drifts against the canvas, re-creating in miniature the blowing and drifting snow in the mountain passes to the south that make the Alps impenetrable at this time of year. Early winter cuts crisp and cold over the peaks and down into the French valleys, pruning the wounded and diseased from the battlefield and encampments, villages and cities. A mountaineer lucky enough to reach the summit of the Alps would see war on the horizon in all directions.
The tent is warmed by a well-stocked wood stove and insulated with boxes of medical supplies stacked from floor to ceiling with dusty red crosses painted on their sides. Each box is worth $200 on the French black market, making the tent into a bank vault. They form an aisle through to a desk at the center. A kerosene lantern hung on a tent pole produces a thin drizzle of light. Behind the desk sits a lean, powerful-looking black man. His left chest bears the name Collins and his shoulder the stripes of a corporal. We are of equal rank. He crushes the cigarette he’s been smoking and lights another without offering me one.
“Scuttlebutt says Patton’s crossing the Rhine near Ludwigshafen,” I say. “Two Divisions are moving up from southern Italy to join the party. Price of boots and gloves just tripled.”
Collins’s mouth curls. “Where are they?” he asks.
“Keeping warm in a chateau.”
“Don’t be playin’ no games wit’ me, Bowles,” he says. “I ain’t got no time for it now.”
My stomach churns a sour broth of hash and coffee up into the back of my throat. I’m finally gonna get a piece of the action, I keep telling myself. Just a piece of what everyone else has. I didn’t want to come here. I wanted to stay home and work on cars. That’s all I ever wanted. I got a right to a little comfort, and I’ll be damned if any black guy from Kentucky is gonna get more than me. They assigned me to the quartermaster after I played up an asthma attack during basic. It beat carrying a rifle.
“Somebody’s got to keep guys like you happy, and it might as well be me, right Collins?” I tell him. “What do you want, I got it all: uniforms, tents
, food, booze, utensils, tools, radios, movies, office supplies, sundries.” It’s all true. As a corporal in the quartermaster, I’m a walking department store and everybody’s my best friend. As soon as the bees figure out where the clover is, they swarm to get it. Officers, GIs, locals—they’re nicer to me than to the docs who cure their syphilis. They shake my hand and talk to me about me: Where’d I come from? Got a girl? Sure, good-lookin’ guy like you’s got a girl. Ten of ’em, and pretty too, I bet. They show me pictures of their girls, mothers, fathers, and kid brothers and sisters. I’m just a regular guy like you, they’re all sayin’, and us regular guys gotta stick together if we’re gonna make it. Got any extra whiskey stashed back there? Helps me sleep better at night.
“You ain’t got nothin’ I want, Bowles,” Collins says. “I’m the one who’s got what you want. You’re standing in my personal piggy bank, and my man Davidson out there, he’s the guard. Now do you wanna sign for a loan, or do I tell Davidson to throw your ass out of here?”
I stand there for a minute, deciding whether to lowball him. I know Collins just came in with the Surgeon General’s command. He’s got no connections in the area, but he knows he’s sitting on a fortune because medical supplies for the French population have become scarce and they’ll pay almost anything to get them. I came in behind the invasion force and worked up some relationships with a few French doctors who have backers all the way south to Marseille. I decide to lowball him to see how he’ll react.
“Twenty-five a box, unopened, and I’ll throw in a crate of boots and gloves for every two medical.”
“Davidson!” he hollers. “Get this lump of dog shit out of my office!”
“Look, Collins,” I counter, backtracking a little. “You couldn’t move this stuff if you set up a booth under the Eiffel Tower. I’ll give you three boots and gloves for every two medical. I can’t go any higher.”
“One-fifty a box, Bowles, and you can keep your damn boots.”
“Fifty.”
“One-twenty-five.”
“Seventy-five.”
“Hundred.”
“I got costs, Collins,” I tell him. “No way you’re comin’ out ahead of me. Seventy-five, take it or leave it.”
“I’ll need a deposit.”
“How much?”
“Thousand.”
“What?”
“You ain’t the only one interested, Bowles. You the third white guy been sniffin’ round here today. One thousand in cash, final.”
“I got five hundred on me,” I say, reaching into my pocket. “I’ll give you the rest tonight.”
Collins thinks it over. “You know,” he says, his thick lips parting into a toothy greed-green smile, “I like you, Bowles. Get the rest here by eighteen hundred.”
I give Collins the money and walk out of the tent doing the math in my head. I can move at least a hundred boxes a month. At two hundred bucks a box, that’s twenty thousand gross, twelve-five net, minus grease money for the motor pool and perimeter patrol, maybe a thousand max. I just made eleven grand!
I nearly skip over to the enlisted club to grab a beer and celebrate. But on my way I see two men opening the rear panel of the truck that almost hit me, parked now about fifty yards away. They crawl up inside and begin unloading empty black body bags onto a folding litter, stacked twenty at a time. I stop to watch them. The guys in the morgue detail pretty much keep to themselves, and everyone else stays away from them. A guy will deny any belief in superstitions and yet walk out of his way to avoid getting anywhere near the morgue. I wonder whether the bags are new or whether they just reuse the old ones over and over again. It doesn’t seem right reusing them, violates the privacy of the first guy and insults the second. They gave their lives, for chrissake. The least the Army can do is spring for new bags.
Eleven grand . . . eleven . . . freakin’ . . . grand!
The body bags slap onto the litter like stacks of crisp, new script hitting a counter.
Surplus, Toby. Just surplus, I tell myself. The stuff’s just sitting there while some French kid dies because his doctor can’t get enough sulfa and penicillin. A fellow ought to get paid when he puts himself on the line.
Turning into the enlisted club I hear boots racing toward me from behind, pounding like hooves. Before I can turn to see what’s going on I’m knocked to the ground. There’s a sharp pain in my back. I try lifting my head, but it won’t move. Oh my God, they’re shelling us and I’ve been hit!
“Help!” I yell. “Help! Medic! I’ve been hit! I’ve been hit!”
The pain in my back increases, like a great weight is bearing down on me.
“Stop your damn yelling, Bowles,” a voice says, close behind, just above me. “You’re under arrest for theft.”
Two MPs pull me off the ground and cuff my wrists behind my back. Over their shoulders, I see Collins in the door of the tent, shaking hands with another MP and handing him my money.
—
HAISSEM WAS SITTING again on the chair at the center of the Courtroom. I felt the same sense of confusion and exhaustion that overwhelmed me after passing among the souls in the train station.
“Can you hear me now, Brek?” Luas said.
“Yes,” I said, barely hearing him, as though he was far away. “What do you mean, ‘now’?”
“I was talking to you during the presentation,” he said. “When you didn’t respond, I asked Haissem to stop.”
“Oh . . .” I replied, lost, trying to separate my identity from Toby Bowles. “I’m sorry. It just seems so . . . real, like I’m remembering my own life.”
“Yes, it is that way, isn’t it?” Luas said. “When Haissem begins again, listen for my voice. At first you’ll hear me speaking through the characters in the presentation, but what I say will seem out of context. If you fail to respond, I’ll bring up the circumstances of your disfigurement again to bring you back. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to instruct you on how to separate yourself from the soul being presented. You must learn this by doing, which is one of the reasons for having you watch.”
“What other reason is there?” I asked.
“To prepare you to present souls yourself,” Luas said.
10
Luas nodded and Haissem continued the trial of Toby Bowles’s soul. Again the Courtroom vanished and with it my identity as Brek Cuttler. I became Toby Bowles.
—
THE WAR IS over and I’m back at home now in New Jersey. I’m in the parish hall of my church during coffee hour after the service and seething with rage because my wife, Claire, has just told people that I don’t make enough money to support her or my kids.
“How dare you tell them that!” I whisper to her through clenched teeth so no one else will hear.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Toby,” she replies.
I glare at her before stomping out through the parish-hall doors, humiliated.
In the parking lot, Alan Bickel, one of the parishioners, smiles at me and sticks out his hand.
“Mornin’,” I grunt, brushing past him without shaking his hand or making eye contact.
I climb into our rusting 1949 Chevy Deluxe, slam the door behind me, start the engine, and light a cigarette, drawing the smoke deep into my lungs and holding it there with my rage until they both can be contained no longer. I still can’t believe she said it. I exhale loudly, talking to myself, repeating what Claire said to Marion Hudson: “I’m sorry, Marion, but money’s tight right now. We just haven’t any extra for the building fund.”
How could she? To Paul and Marion Hudson? And there they go now, driving off in their new Cadillac. Every year a new car. From a dry-cleaning store? The guy must be running something on the side or cooking the books. I bend down and pretend not to see them.
The rear door opens and my kids climb in, Tad and Todd, then Susan and Katie.
“Dibs on the window,” Tad calls.
There’s a big commotion and Tad starts crying.
“
Dad, Todd hit me and Susan won’t move. I called dibs first.”
“Knock it off back there or I’ll take off my belt!” I yell. “For chrissake, Tad, you’re the oldest. What are you, eleven now? And still cryin’ all the time like you was a baby. If you don’t like what Todd and Susan are doin’, then give ’em one across the mouth. That’s what I used to do to your uncle Mike when he crossed me. It’s time you started actin’ like a man, son, and I’m tellin’ you right now you’re playin’ football come August. Period. I don’t want to hear another word about it.” I take another drag on my cigarette. “You’re playin’, right, Todd, old boy?”
“You bet, Dad,” Todd says. “Mr. Dawson says he’s startin’ me at linebacker and quarterback.”
Even though he’s a full year younger, Todd stands two inches taller than his brother and weighs at least fifteen pounds more.
“Atta boy,” I tell him.
Claire slides into the passenger seat beside me. “I really don’t understand why you got so upset,” she says.
I’m furious. I throw the cigarette out the window, slam the gear selector into first, and mash the accelerator before she can close the door. We roar out of the parking lot.
“Toby, for heaven’s sake!” Claire screeches. “I haven’t got the door closed and there’s kids in the car!”
“No!” I holler over the engine. “There’s a bunch of cryin’ ingrates in this car and a woman who embarrasses her family in public and don’t even have the sense to know it.” My chest tightens and I feel the veins in my neck swelling. As usual, when I catch Claire doing something wrong, she refuses to respond. “You got nothin’ to say?” I yell. “You ain’t got no idea what I’m talkin’ about?”
“The souls come into Shemaya Station just like you did,” she says. “A presenter is assigned to meet with each postulant before the trial, then they wait in the train station until their case is called and a decision is made. Since they’re not permitted to attend the trial, the presenter must acquire a complete understanding of the choices they’ve made during—”
The Trial of Fallen Angels Page 8