“Did you give me a name, Father?”
“I call you Uriel. But you have other names… Abaddon, Apollyon, Ragnarok, Armageddon, Apocalypse, Revelation. It is all the same.”
“I prefer Uriel.”
He smiles ruefully. “So do I, dear, so do I.”
I sit for a moment, trying to decide what to say, what question to ask.
Finally: “Did I make this happen? Or did I let it happen?”
He leans in close to me. “What a question… what a discerning question, Uriel. It never fails to amaze me how my Words take on lives of their own, endowing what I have uttered with a richness, a deepness I never anticipated. You transcend my intent.”
“You didn’t answer my question,” I reply, after a long moment.
“No,” he agrees, reaching to pat my cheek with his hand. “There is no answer to your question. You are my Word, you see, the articulation of my need, my creation. You were uttered for a single purpose, and you fulfill that purpose as intended.”
“That is still no answer, Father.”
He nods, takes another sip of his coffee. “The question implies a starkness that cannot be answered directly. You are a paradox, in your design, in your intent, in your purpose. You both make and let, if you will.”
“I made this happen… this?” I ask, throwing my arms wide to indicate all that was around us.
“Yes, you are the Word of the End, and you made this. Unmade this, at it were. As you have done before… as you will do again.”
“But I also let this happen?” I say, tears coming to my eyes unbidden, unwanted.
“Yes,” he answers, softly. “Yes, you let it happen, too.”
“How?” I wept now, tears streaming down my face, dropping onto my half-eaten food.
“Into each of my Words, I must allow for free will,” he said. “Every Word I utter has within it the ability to decide for itself what to do, how to enact my will. It is the only way that I can achieve what I desire for my creations.”
“And I… I was water once, I was fire?”
“Yes. Water, fire, ice. You have been these things for me and more. You have allowed me to begin again, to hone my creation, to breathe new life into it. Yours is a purpose greatly to be desired… greatly to be mourned.”
I scrub my tears away, suddenly ashamed.
“And this time?”
“This time a small thing: a virus. You traveled the world, infecting all whom you met, touched, passed. They took that part of you and passed it on, a torch lighting other torches.”
“Until all the world was aflame.”
“Yes.”
I hang my head, try to clear my thoughts, organize them.
“And now?”
“Now, I wait. I bide. Time will pass, the earth will forget, and I will start anew. See what I can achieve this time,” he answers, drinking the last of his coffee.
“And me?”
“You carry my secret, the secret of the Word of the End. You carry it, and it is you.”
“I am a tool?” ”You are my Word… one of an infinite number.”
“And you will… utter me again?”
He nods.
“But you say I can choose… choose… to not let it happen again… to not make it happen?”
Again, he nods.
“And if I do?”
“All things serve my purpose in the end. It is the nature of the Word, and the great paradox of free will.”
“I had a choice this time?”
“Yes.”
I shake my head, and the tears fall again.
“This is why the Word is secret to you. Its burden comes at a price too dear. Oh, Uriel, if I could, I would lift this from you, take it upon myself.”
“Why don’t you then? Why curse me with this terrible purpose?”
“I cannot un-utter what I have uttered. And I cannot take your purpose upon myself. If I reached in to perform your purpose, I would destroy everything… not just this, but the All. That I cannot do.”
I lower my head to the table and weep.
I feel his hand upon my head, stroking my hair gently.
“But I can keep the secret, Uriel. I can take away its knowledge from you, remove it. And you can return or stay here, unhindered by the truth of the Word. I can do this for you.”
I lift my head, look at him through blurry eyes.
“And you have done this for me before… after each time?”
“Yes.”
I thought a moment. “No. I wish to keep the secret of the Word. I wish to know its purpose and decide for myself the next time.”
He smiles at me, knowingly, and wipes my tears away.
“Dear Uriel,” he says. “What will you do now?”
I consider that, having not considered it before.
“I will stay,” I answer, not terribly sure of my answer, whether he will allow this.
“You will be lonely,” he says. “Until I speak the new Word… the Word of Making. Again.”
He stands, takes my hand, lifts me to my feet. Then he draws me into an embrace, and I feel his breath against my neck. It is the breath of the Word, the breath of creation.
Releasing me, he steps back, looks once, wistfully I think, at the coffee cup, then leaves, walks out the door, down the street.
I go to the front window and watch him walk two blocks, then turn a corner.
I step outside, and it is warm, sunny. No longer January, no longer winter, but spring. I hear birds sing, feel a cool breeze tousle my hair.
And all the bodies are gone, vanished, removed.
Cleaned away…
Their stuff remains… the cars, the roads, the buildings… but I know that these, too, will disappear over time. He’s merely tidied up the place a bit.
For me.
I step onto the sidewalk, breathe in, feel refreshed, renewed somehow.
The knowledge of the secret energizes me, while it also causes me guilt, pain.
I am his Word… yet I also have free will to do what I choose.
In a way, I am my own Word, too.
I decide, on a whim, not to head back to the penthouse apartment I’d been staying in.
I will leave this city, seek another… see the world once more as it was.
A flash catches my eye, a movement to my right.
My reflection in the café’s plate glass window.
My aspect has come upon me with the knowledge he’s bestowed.
I unfurl them to their entire span, and they burn white in the sunshine, each feather iridescent, pearly white. The whoosh of the air as they move, the jump of my muscles is intensely familiar to me.
Lifting slowly from my feet, I soar into the air, climb above the great, dead city, see its immaculate design, its layout, its straight-edged form, its organic sprawl. I see the way the sun plays on the buildings, how shadows fall in the canyons between.
I made this.
I let this be.
I go higher, arc my body toward the west, toward newer cities, distant cities.
And promise myself that next time, it will be different.
Next time I will choose.
I give my word on it…
THE WATER BEARER
Jim was the kind of neighbor who never said too much; a wave when he saw you outside, maybe a few polite, friendly words at the mailbox, or when you caught him outdoors as he puttered in his well-kept yard, but little more.
The year is 1947, and Jim, oh, he must have been at least 80 years old. Never married but in good health, his back slightly stooped, his legs bowed.
My wife and I live in newly built suburban home, bought with money from a GI loan. That was supposed to pay me back for the year I’d spent tramping through the muddy fields of France and Germany, living with an ever-dwindling group of men, sleeping wherever I fell, and shooting at—and being shot at by—people I couldn’t even understand.
Now here I was with three suits in my closet, a new Chevrolet in the garage, a
kid who had been born while I moved through the dark trees of the Ardennes, and a young wife I barely knew. It was an adjustment for all concerned.
This spring, though, we had begun to settle in, to make our peace with our long separation. We had begun to find a rhythm.
The young, tender grass was taking root, the few trees just sending out their first, tentative leaves. Yet, for the most part, the defining color was still brown.
The only green at all was a small pond that lay in a natural depression in the middle of the common ground, which our house—and Jim’s—backed up to. A ring of trees surrounded it, and its banks wore a mane of cattails and waterweeds that rustled in the wind.
I said the neighborhood was mostly brown, but that wasn’t all true. Jim’s yard was the exception. It was a dazzling green jewel amidst the rough. The grass was lush and thick in his yard, flowerbeds burst with unexpected color, and he had planted trees--real trees, taller than a man, as a tree should be—and they provided the only pools of shade on the entire street.
Jim spent about an hour every morning when the sun was cool watering his plants, pruning, mowing with an ancient push mower, clipping this and clearing that. Then, he’d disappear into his house.
It was on a Friday, as I recall. I had just closed a pretty good sale and phoned Sarah to tell her to start the grill. I picked up a couple of expensive steaks and a good bottle of wine, and we were going to celebrate.
I swept into the house, kissed Sarah and little Billie, then took my station out in the backyard to grill dinner. A few beers before, some wine with dinner, and we were pretty loose.
Sarah and I were still making up for lost time, and we didn’t even try to make it back to our bed. We turned off the lights, fumbled with buttons and hooks and belts, and I pulled her to me there on the living room couch.
When I awoke, I was confused for a moment, uncertain of where I was. I didn’t move for fear of a bullet. After a minute, I decided I was home.
I pulled myself from Sarah without waking her, dressed, found my pack of cigarettes and a book of matches. I crept outside in bare feet to smoke.
The night was brilliantly lit by a three-quarter moon low on the horizon. Its muscular light swept away the stars.
Cupping my hands against the evening breeze, I struck a match, lit my cigarette, took a few deep puffs. Exhaling, I saw another star, this one close to the ground and glowing red-orange.
A lean shadow sat on the steps of Jim’s back door, rolled the star between its fingers.
“Evening,” he said in his gravelly, amiable voice as he saw me. “Fine night for a smoke.”
“Sure is.”
“Just thought I’d come out here and stare at that old pond. It’s been preying on my mind, you know.”
What he said was so unexpected, so enigmatic, that I found myself walking the short distance between our yards to stand near him.
He looked at me with rheumy eyes, and I smelled tobacco, beer, but mostly musty age.
“That old puddle bothering you, Jim?”
Pulling on his cigarette, he looked away. “Yes, sir. Why tear out everything that took so long to grow, and leave something like that; something that just… filled up?”
He took three long drags from his cigarette and let the smoke gather around his head, blue and diaphanous.
“It’s just a pond, Jim. It’s not even that deep.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he growled. “Water is water, and that’s all there is to it.”
I began to feel that maybe it was best that Jim never spoke much. He was getting on in years, and maybe he was a bit senile or becoming peculiar in his ways. I began to regret my decision to walk over and talk with him that night.
“Mosquitoes in spring. Bad smells in summer. Ugly in fall, frozen over in winter. You got kids, don’t you?” he asked, fixing me with a hard stare.
“A little boy.”
“That’s the worst. Little boys are into everything. He’ll be over there like a shot. Should have it drained.”
I shrugged noncommittally. I mean, the pond was no more than three maybe four feet deep, and that’s after a heavy rain.
Jamming his cigarette back into his mouth, he inhaled. The ember flared, lit his craggy face. “You’re too smart to believe that’s the real reason, though. Well, you’re right. I have another reason, a real reason, but that’s another story.”
He stubbed the fading butt onto his steps, dropped it into an old coffee can at his feet. I could hear his joints creak as he rose, held out his hand.
“Good night,” he said, and I shook his hand. He gave the pond one last, disgusted glance, turned to go inside.
Sarah still slept on the couch, the moon shimmering on her naked skin. I closed the door quietly.
As I did, I saw the moonlight sparkling on the water of the pond.
And for a moment, brief and shivery, it was bone-white beautiful.
* * *
“Do you believe a place, a spot of earth can be bad? Like a person, I mean.”
This was two nights later, when I had awakened and felt the urgent need to pee and smoke, in that order. Pulling on a pair of pants and a t-shirt, I tiptoed outside and lit up.
Jim had been out there a while, and, again, he waited until I noticed him to call me over.
“Sure, I believe that,” I answered in surprise, as he popped open a beer and handed it to me. It was this simple, neighborly act that surprised me, not the question.
I had been in such places--felt them--several times during my war years; in a back alley of a Paris slum, in a little clearing near the edge of the Ardennes, and again as I filed past the ruins of the Reichstag in Berlin, even after the Russians had systematically destroyed it.
There are places that, like canker sores or abscesses on the face of the earth, both breed and attract evil.
Jim nodded his head gently. “Then, you also believe there are places that are good, for balance. Everything in life is a balance. And that’s the old part of me talking.”
“I suppose that’s true, as well.”
“Now what if I were to tell you that it’s possible to hurt a good place, just like you can hurt a good person?”
“How could you hurt a place?”
“Same way you’d hurt a person… spurn it. You can’t hurt a bad place or a bad person. They’re as hurt as they’ll ever be. Oh, you can piss ‘em off.”
“Okay,” I answered.
He gave my dubious response a dubious look, as if he might suddenly clam up; as if getting me to see this connection were vital. But he obviously wanted to tell his story.
“When you hurt a person deeply enough, even a very good person, sometimes that person will want to hurt you back,” he proceeded after a minute. “It’s just so with a place, even a very good place.
“I knew such a place once. It was a pool of water very much like that one over there,” he said, swiping his hand toward the dark little smudge that was the pond.
Then he opened up like some terrifying night-blooming flower.
And he told his story, scattering it like dark pollen, just as I have set it down here.
* * *
It was 1923, the height of Prohibition and bathtub gin, Irving Berlin and jazz.
Already Hollywood was flickering across America, and radio was beaming to homes everywhere. The last great agricultural century, the momentous 19th, had finally given way to the gleaming, ferocious 20th.
For men like Jim, men who’d been boys during the country’s reconstruction, who had participated in the great mythic West, it was a sad time, a lost time.
Old even then, Jim had been moving from flophouse to flophouse for several years, taking temporary jobs, all the while unconsciously moving east.
He stopped moving for a day or two when he reached Bonne Terre, a mining town south of St. Louis. He’d been born in St. Louis, and, like a salmon, I suppose, he had made it his goal to return there before he died.
While in Bonne Terre, thoug
h, he heard of a wealthy gentleman seeking to hire a man to maintain his house and grounds. Outdoor work had always appealed to Jim, and he went out to the man’s property, a few miles from town, and applied for the job with a Mr. Krieger, the lawyer who was managing the man’s affairs.
He was hired on the spot, paid a week in advance. That afternoon, he moved his meager possessions to the groundskeeper’s cabin, set off from the main house behind a copse of dense evergreens.
The owner of the property, he was told by Mr. Krieger, was a young doctor, recently widowed. Wealthy by the measure of the day, the doctor had simply quit his practice, bought this land, and come out here to rebuild his shattered life.
Krieger gave Jim a tour of the house, not overly large or opulent, but seemingly a palace to Jim, introduced him to Grace, the housekeeper and cook.
“What about the owner?” Jim asked. “Will I meet him?”
Krieger gave Jim a sympathetic look. “Dr. Wilson is… a very private man. I’m sure you’ll see him sometime, but as to when, I wouldn’t guess.”
* * *
It was an entire month before Jim saw Dr. Evander Wilson. Jim had made friends with Grace and had settled into a routine of having his meals with her, working alone, retiring early to his separate living space.
Jim didn’t take long to get the lawn and garden in order, either. He spent a day or two organizing everything in the work shed, then another few days planning what plants he’d need and where he’d put them.
Two weeks later, everything was planted, the lawn was freshly clipped, and Jim was pruning hedges and bushes near the house.
He stopped to drink from a glass of lemonade Grace had brought him earlier.
A shadow fell over him, though, startling him enough to slosh cold liquid down the front of his shirt.
“Sorry,” came a quiet voice, and Jim turned to see Dr. Wilson.
The doctor was young, not much older than 30, with pale skin, brown hair, and large, brilliant eyes behind wire spectacles. He was dressed simply in a pair of khaki trousers and a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up.
Little Deaths Page 5