Eventually, the time came to hang up.
“I love you, Pookie-Pie,” Annie said.
“I love you, too,” I said. But as I told Annie I loved her, I directed the words at Hank. It shocked me how honestly those words came when I thought of him instead of her. I had never said “I love you” to my wife so passionately.
I admitted to myself then that I didn’t love Annie. I liked her a great deal. More than that, I needed her. I relied on her judgment for everything. I depended on her to find my house keys, move my underwear off the kitchen table, and talk me through my worries. Her opinion meant more to me than Mama’s. I enjoyed all the amusement parks and lovey stuff we did together. She had a terrific sense of humor and had given me a wonderful child. I loved the meaningful things that kept our marriage standing. But I loved stupid things about Hank. Like the shape of his eyebrows, his blocky handwriting, the roll of dough above his hips. I even caught myself loving the way he stirred coffee: three stirs in one direction and then one in reverse. “That’s scientific,” he explained when he saw me staring. “It gets the molecules moving.” my love for him had passion in it. Compared to this crazy love, my marriage felt like a workplace.
A few delicious minutes later, I slid under the covers with him. There wasn’t enough room to keep my fatness from touching his broad back, smooth except for a few moles. The heat of it felt like somebody dumping butterscotch sauce all over my body. The burning, sweet truth could have drowned me: I loved Hank—a man I didn’t even know so well—more than my wife. I thought about lifting my arm and wrapping it around him, and freely breathing in the smell of his shampoo. But I might as well have started building a nuclear bomb—I would’ve gotten it done faster. I spent the night in a cold sweat.
In the morning, I couldn’t breathe. I struggled awake and found that the comforter and sheets had wrapped themselves around my head. I clawed my way free and saw Hank watching me from a chair by the bed, his fists propping up his chin. Dark circles puffed under his eyes. “Did you have, like, a really terrible nightmare?” he asked.
“No,” I said, puzzled. “I don’t dream. Why?”
“Damn, Gar, they said you only snored. You kept me up half the night, crying in your sleep. It sounded like somebody torturing a house cat, man! How does your wife stand it?”
“Gee,” I mused. “I had no idea. She’s never mentioned it. I’m sorry, Hank.”
“No, I’m sorry. I could’ve suffocated you when I put those bedcovers over your head.”
Hank drank an extra cup of coffee and went to the day’s first seminar, “Point of Purchase in the Age of Cable Television,” but I stayed. I thought for a long time as I watched Philadelphia’s streets, bustling with so much more purpose than my life. How thoughtless. Hank had almost suffocated me and didn’t care. He had as much love for me as a street dog. He might as well have stabbed me.
Finally I came up with a solution. The hope I saw in the end of my troubles filled me with happiness. I whistled to myself as I prepared for the day. I sailed through all the presentations on new varieties and flavors of cracklings and pork rinds. Lime and chili, cheddar cheese, low fat—how’d they do that?
When I got back to my hotel room, I flipped through the Philadelphia yellow pages. I took the EL to kensington and bought a .38 from a rude Polish guy in a dusty shop. He tried to persuade me to buy a set of cleaning patches and rods to go with it, but I told him “no, thanks. I don’t need any of that.” I was so excited I forgot to get scared. When I returned to the hotel, I still had time before supper, so I prayed.
“Lord,” I said, “either change me in forty-eight hours, or give me a sign that you have plans for my life. If you don’t, I’m going to shoot myself in the head at twelve noon on June 13 at the Radisson Hotel in Atlanta.”
Having done that, I showered and changed into my nice clothes. I sprayed cologne behind my ears, slapped my cheeks, and smiled at myself in the mirror. Hank had already gone to supper. He’d left me a note, which I read and then kissed. I folded the paper and slipped it into my breast pocket, right over my heart. About to leave the room, I turned back and fished the .38 out of my bag. It was dark and rough; its heaviness made my palm sag. Unlike all the threatening questions circling above my life, the pistol had the weight of an answer. “Salvation,” I whispered, tracing the barrel with my finger. I slipped it back into its case and hid it under all my dirty clothes.
Galloping down the stairs to the ballroom, I thought about the long train ride I would take the next day. Philadelphia Pork Rinds and Cracklings wouldn’t even be over before snaxpo started. I’d asked Rhonda to give me a night on my own in Atlanta. So I could do some man activities if I wanted.
Even in the dim light of the ballroom, I found Hank immediately. I was a compass and he was due south. He greeted me with quiet enthusiasm, and I dreamed he was a lover welcoming me back to bed. Now that I knew what to do, this new twist—love, I guess—didn’t even matter. I was almost amused that it came when it did—too late.
I didn’t move my knee when it touched Hank’s lightly. A VP of sales at nabisco with the weird name of Delico Organ had already started the after-supper coffee chat. But Hank—perfect, considerate Hank, trying to make up for the suffocation and failing—had saved my meal under a plate next to his. Knowing it might be my last supper, I ate slowly, concentrating on every flavor as it took a long trip over my tongue. Stuffed filet of sole. Garlic mashed potatoes. Julienned green beans almondine. And for dessert, strawberry shortcake topped with a sweet cloud of whipped cream.
II.
TRANSFORMATION OF CHARACTER
A method of playing more than one person,
or morphing from a tree to a person, a bird to a tree, etc.
SEVEN
On Amtrak’s Crescent service to Atlanta late the next afternoon, a woman from Decatur told me how pretty she thought Orlando was. The woman and her daughter were on their way home. She had never visited Kissimmee, but she thought she would like it, too, from what I told her about the golf courses and theme parks there. She had been to Disney World, so we talked about that some. They had also gone to Sea World several years back and the daughter had petted an Orca whale.
Still thinking about my plan, I only half-listened to the woman. The woman’s daughter sat with her cheek smushed against the window, humming a sad melody as industrial lots and suburban condos blurred past. The mom said the daughter would graduate from the theater program at Temple University next year. A paperback copy of a book called Plays and Masques, by somebody called Ben Jonson, lay split open on her thigh. That caught my eye because I’d known a kid named Ben Johnston in school. In the girl’s face, I saw the kind of sadness that would end for me the next day. I smiled. When depressed people commit suicide, everybody says that they rally right beforehand. I was rallying.
The girl’s mother said, “For my husband, I bought a sweatshirt with a picture of a flamingo—” Then came a loud noise like a thunderclap, the sound of hard steel scraping, and an explosion. We were thrown to the front of the car, and a pole slammed into the woman’s chin. I tried to stabilize my fall with my hand and slammed against the automatic door. The mechanism jerked, unable to open. The train car pitched backward and rolled over. Snack packets, cardboard trays, and plastic cups rained on us. For a moment or two I lost consciousness. The next thing I knew, I was lying on the grass, my fingers scratching Georgia clay. It all happened in about ten seconds.
Flexing my joints, I checked for broken bones and picked safety glass from my hair. My skull throbbed. I didn’t know how I’d made it out. I figured the doors had sprung open. Nobody big as me could have fit through the exit windows in the bar car. Later, I’d find that I had multiple cuts and a sprained wrist. But praise the Lord, I was still alive.
Prickly darts of fire shot out from the windows of at least seven cars up the way. They lay burning on top of each other like logs in a fireplace. A tornado of toxic smoke climbed up out of the wreckage. Our train had smashed
head-on into another one—loaded with acrylic acid and ethylene oxide, the news would say. It could have been worse. Kids were playing in a schoolyard up the tracks. Bitter chemical fumes burned in my nose and throat. Covering my mouth with the sleeve of my sweatshirt, I searched for other survivors.
Aside from from the accident, it was a beautiful day. Clear, sunny, and cool, with still air and infinite visibility. Birds sang and cabbage moths darted through the bushes, like a picture from a children’s book.
As I stood and came to my wits, a powerful presence made itself known to me. Jesus appeared. I couldn’t tell from where. He had on the robes that you always see Him in, a close-cropped beard, and an otherworldly glow surrounding Him. But His hair was pretty dark—black even. In the flesh, He looked more Arab than in the picture books, plus He was a lot shorter than you’d expect. So I didn’t recognize Him at first; I thought He might be an angel, maybe a disciple. When He lifted up His hand in the classic Jesus gesture, I thought, Darned if this fellow doesn’t have the best posture of anybody I’ve ever met. Then I noticed his crucifixion scars—they were on His wrists, not His palms. That’s how I knew it was Him, and I freaked out. I hollered so loud that I scratched my throat. I fell to my knees and wept, at first because I thought I had died.
“Hush, my child,” He said. “Never would I desert thee.”
When I heard that, I cried tears of joy, because I understood that my prayers had come true. Again and again I shouted “Jesus! Jesus!” until I lost my breath. Finally I recouped enough to ask, “Jesus?” but I couldn’t form a whole question after that, because, well, where would I start? The lord nodded slowly—of course He knew what I needed, and He’d already said His piece. Gradually, the halo around Christ’s body vanished and He faded away, becoming part of the smoke that still drifted around the wreckage. Now I knew how and why I had survived. The Lord had plans for me. I took to sobbing again.
But when my tears stopped, I didn’t understand what the Lord meant to communicate. I’d come over so starstruck that I’d missed His message. What did He want me to do? I searched myself for a minute or so. Then it came to me, like the lightning bolt that knocked Saint paul off his horse.
I checked the underbrush for a trail. Down a nearby hill, two clumps of kudzu had been pushed apart to make a passageway. The vegetation rose high enough so that nobody would see me. Somebody had dug a hole underneath a nearby fence to bypass the razor wire. It even looked large enough for me to squeeze under. I jangled in my pockets for my wallet, removed the cash for safekeeping, and edged closer to the burning part of the train. I tossed my wallet into the wreckage. They would find it, burned just enough to prove my death. I thought about the picture on my driver’s license catching fire. I pictured Gary Gray’s face buckling and melting into hot blobs, the way a movie burns when the sprockets jam.
I thanked Jesus. Oh, how I thanked Jesus! I started to move away from the disaster, toward a fenced-in parking lot full of cement mixers. Then I heard a cry. When I looked down, I saw a woman’s hand in the dirt a few yards back. Without thinking, I stepped over and grabbed hold of her wrist. It was the Decatur lady’s daughter. It felt like her arm had popped out of the socket, so I scooped her up and dragged her out from under a piece of the wreckage. A bright red stream flowed from a wound on her other arm. I yanked off her sock and bandaged the cut. Moments later, it was sopping wet.
“Don’t worry,” I said to the girl. “Help is on the way.” People from the shopping district on the nearby road had rushed over, but farther down, on the other side of the train, where the worst damage had occurred. I could hear the commotion. This side had only a small group of trees and a series of factories, and nobody had arrived to help yet. The girl and I waited in the long shadow of a toppled car.
Since I was such a heavy person, I couldn’t imagine climbing to the top of the train car and waving my arms. “That’s a very pretty blouse you have on,” I said, trying to keep the girl calm. She reminded me a little of my college friend Joy.
Once I helped her, I would make a break for it. But then Cheryl’s face appeared in my mind, giggling at an affectionate purple dinosaur we had seen on TV. Immediately the gentle laughter I imagined sharing with her got to me, and she became the gatekeeper of my soul. Was her spirit inside this injured girl, begging her daddy to reconsider the plan? Or was the Devil putting her image in my mind to distract me?
Thinking I heard somebody coming on our side, I took a few backward paces to look. I stepped on something brick-shaped and lost my balance. It was the girl’s paperback. At the same time, I saw a group of samaritans marching down the little hill, probably toward the area of thicker smoke. Dressed in plaid shirts and baseball caps and carrying axes, their hasty but careful movements let me know they were part of a rescue operation. I reached down for the book and it sprang open. Balancing it in one hand, I put it in front of my face to keep my identity secret and dashed toward the group as quickly as I could. Peeking around the pages, I steadied my direction. As I ran, I hollered at the samaritans to follow me—a girl needed help.
The group leaped into action at the sight of the girl. Her eyes had rolled back into her head. Fortunately, everybody was too busy to ask me any questions. I held the book in place. After a few quick glances under it, I felt sure the girl would survive. A kind, red-faced woman from the group spoke to her loudly and sincerely. Two of the good old boys spread a sheet out at the girl’s side and lifted her onto it. They didn’t seem to know where to take her at first. The remaining pair steadied the operation and searched the area for more wounded. They shared a comment comparing the scene to Vietnam.
I took small steps toward a parking lot beyond the fence, thinking the rescuers might notice me before I could excuse myself. Even though Jesus had shown me the way, I felt ashamed and scared to do His will. I considered throwing the book down and forgetting about the whole thing. But I had lived for a very long time as I appeared that evening, hiding my true face under a pile of false actions. I couldn’t bear it any longer. Leaving behind my dishonest life was the only option. And Jesus had given me my only chance.
Much later, some pessimistic type said that I must’ve seen the Lord because of head trauma from the train wreck. But to me that proves it more. Because maybe belief does come out of your own mind, but how does that make God not real? Folks see evidence of God’s work everywhere they look—they live on the evidence. Heck, they are the evidence. Disbelief’s like saying that the phonograph isn’t real because it came out of Edison’s mind. Could be that vision of Christ was like a safety valve God put into the head when He invented the head.
Sirens howled, coming closer. The girl woke up and moaned loudly. My heart warmed to see her conscious again, but I pretended not to hear. I set off on a course away from the railroad tracks, away from the sirens. As I scuffled down the dirt path toward the parking lot, I thought I heard one of the men ask the other who I might have been.
My sweatshirt got stuck on the fence as I went under it. I tugged at the cloth with everything I had. Then, after a yank that practically tore my soul in two, I pulled it free and scrambled across the lot, out of breath. I’d ripped a big hole in the sleeve and scraped my forearm, but I made it.
I jogged across that parking lot, past rows of cement mixers covered in white dust. When I passed each one, I felt like something just as heavy was leaving my distressed mind and floating away. I exhausted myself running. The front exit of the lot was open to the main road, so I sped through it, following a grassy path. Hustling along next to the road, I got nervous that somebody had followed me.
Though my heart throbbed in my chest, and enough sweat ran down my forehead to sting my eyes, I picked up the pace. Trucks and delivery vans zipped past me in both directions. A shudder of relief made my head tingle. Not only had I made a clean break with my painful past, I had saved my wife and daughter from me. I really did think that my secrets were poisonous to my family, like a bum appendix about to burst. At first that kept me
from feeling a lot of doubt about doing as the Lord had ordained. I reminded myself of how Jonah sacrificed himself to the sea to save his companions on the ship. But where was my whale?
Soon I had to slow down on account of feeling lightheaded. I walked for about forty minutes until I came to a strip mall.
The accident had happened in a town called Duluth, about twenty miles northeast of Atlanta. By the time my walk ended, I had reached the next town, Norcross, a mexican part of Georgia, believe it or not. Many of the signs on stores were in Mexican. I got the sense that I hadn’t just escaped my life, I had left the country, too.
A mile or so down the road, I spotted a restaurant called La Valentina. For a few minutes I stood outside the restaurant in the parking lot and caught my breath, nervously turning to make sure that nobody had seen me. Gradually, I stopped panting and stood up straight. I brushed the dirt off my clothes.
The restaurant had a festive atmosphere, even without many customers. I smelled garlic in there, and tortillas warming up. Despite my hunger, I made a beeline for the restroom. I plucked the mess out of my hair, rolled up my torn sleeve, washed out the cuts on my arm and face with soap, and dabbed them with a paper towel to stop the bleeding. I walked out looking more or less presentable. It didn’t seem like a restaurant that cared much about your presentation anyhow.
In the dining area they’d draped striped poncho-type blankets over the chairs. Tissue papers with complicated designs cut out of them hung in a string across the back wall. The top half of the wall was made of mirrors, and they’d taped up a bunch of heart-shaped decorations around the counter. Only one customer sat at a small table, a man the color of a peeled potato wearing a grease-stained jacket, smoking and guzzling a beer. Mexican trumpets played softly on the radio.
Jesus had created this situation so that I could start my life over without hurting my wife and daughter. Annie and Cheryl would never know that as a husband and father, I was a complete fraud. They would grieve at first, I knew, but now they could carry on with dignity. Our neighbors would think of them with sympathy and caring, not rumors and scorn. They’d never have to lay my pictures facedown on the home entertainment center.
God Says No Page 11