“Home. Just a few miles from here.”
“Well, then, let’s go. I’m off, Irma …”
The clerk waved and went back to her stocking. Calliel hopped in the back of the cab. The air was warm and smelled of stale cigarettes. He gave the address and the cabbie pulled out of the parking lot.
I considered the violence I’d witnessed this night. Somewhere more of it was taking place (or had already happened) as a jealous bartender took bloody revenge upon his cheating girlfriend and his boss, who would no longer get to smirk at cameras as more notoriety came his way. At the fulcrum of the carnage was the angel below me, who sighed and settled into his seat.
He wanted me to be an angel like him. That sounded absurd on its face. I didn’t have his strength, for one. I had no idea how to handle myself in a fight, for another. I remembered the last fistfight I got in; I was in sixth grade. The bully beating me didn’t have much of a challenge. He made quick work of me, then kicked dirt in my face and spat on me before the teachers got there. He promised a regular beating each and every week after that, but never got the chance to make good. On a family outing just a few days later, as I recall, the stationwagon he was in was sideswiped by a semi, killing him and his family instantly.
The entire school came to a halt to deal with the tragedy. Everyone was in tears. Everyone except me. I remember feeling nothing but relief and, to be completely honest, a sense of justice. I remember hiding that deep inside myself, and feeling horribly guilty for feeling it. The bully was a very popular boy, well liked by everyone. His mother and father were respected community members, and his younger brother was an athletic prodigy of some sort. They were this wonderful All-American family, and I didn’t feel anything but relief that I wouldn’t have to deal with their sparkling, can-do-no-wrong kid ever again.
That didn’t sound angelic. It sounded spiteful and petty and small.
The cab pulled to the end of the asphalt near Calliel’s home and swung around. Calliel paid the driver and got out. He seemed exhausted. He closed the door to his home and plopped down on the sofa in the dark and let his head flop back.
“Too much to drink,” he mumbled (to me?). “Too much to drink.”
I chuckled. “I don’t suppose there’s booze in Heaven?”
“Dr. Wilms … of course there is. I almost forgot you were tagging along. Watch yourself, boy, or you’re gonna dissolve, assuming that’s not gonna happen anyway. And don’t tell me, because if you do, it’ll happen no matter what. So shut it!”
“I’ve got one question for you, and then I’ll ‘shut it.’ Deal?”
“Deal. Fire away.”
But I didn’t have one question. I had one million. Questions like: Why couldn’t he have been there for Nora in her last moments? Better yet, why couldn’t he have fought that gang off before they even got to her? Why couldn’t he be there for Apple, pulling her away from temptation? Why didn’t he minister or preach to the apathetic sacks in the bar? Instead of inciting the bartender into a jealous rage, why not reason with him, give him hope along another path? Why not talk Floyd back from the edge, have him turn himself in? Why not tell the cop to duck before the bullet blew half his head off? Instead of chucking me off the pier, why not simply give me a good cussing out and be done with it?
Would it have made a difference?
I couldn’t accept that he was a robot, preprogrammed to roam the streets of San Diego, exacting God’s will when and where he was directed. The very thought made me angry in the same way that a logic gap in a math proof did. The answers to my questions were bigger than my perspective, they had to be. So instead of asking the deep, probing question (and remaining cognizant of the danger I was putting myself in just by talking to him), I simply asked:
“Is Nora an angel now?”
He laughed. “Nora? Nora Williamson? Are you kidding?”
I couldn’t help myself. “Why not?”
“She lived a life of purity, of decency, of faith, that’s why not. She followed her heart and did what she was put on Earth to do. She didn’t lose her way. Not like you did. Not like I did. Those of us chosen to be angels are chosen because we lost our way during life, but not to the point that our souls were completely compromised. We are chosen by God because we went through that hell but didn’t become it, which is what most people end up choosing for themselves, whether or not they have the integrity to recognize it as such. Our true selves were still alive, were still trying to guide us in the proper direction. The pain of that struggle makes us very effective teachers.”
Before I could ask another question, he barked, “Now shut it! If I saved your sorry ass, I don’t want to ruin it by talking to you!” He struggled to get to his feet. “I’m going to bed. I’m glad you’re here. Watch and learn, Professor. Whether I succeeded or failed—and yes, I’m fully aware I’m using the past tense for events that haven’t happened yet, at least for me—you can either take that learning with you to Heaven, or give its positive force to the universe when you dissolve.”
He stumbled to his bedroom and fell face first on the bed fully clothed, his boots still on.
~~*~~
I fully expected to be engulfed by another vision of his past, and so wasn’t surprised when it happened. It didn’t take long at all, maybe a couple of minutes after he passed out. I suddenly found myself dismounting a horse and tying it to a rail, then walking up the rutted dirt street of some Old West town.
It was hot. The back of my—Calliel’s—neck felt gritty with dust and sweat. He adjusted his hat back and then reached for his pistol, which was secured in its holster on his right hip.
Anger and fear made him breathless. Adrenaline burned through his gut.
He held up a moment, then made his way across the street to a saloon (the street was lined with them; it looked like an Old West version of Chula Vista), where he walked inside and up to the bar.
The pub was busy. There were probably a hundred or more patrons seated at tables. A man sat at a piano, pounding out the exact type of music you’d expect at a Western saloon. A woman leaned against him and sang, but it sounded as though she was too drunk to follow along.
Calliel waited a good while before the bartender got to him and asked, “What’ll ya have?”
He was a heavy-set, heavily bearded man with eyebrows so bushy they partially hid his eyes.
“Whiskey,” grunted Calliel. “Where’s your shitter?”
The bartender pointed to his left. He returned with a shot glass full of clear reddish-brown liquid and set it down. Calliel took a sip and then made his way toward the bathroom, which turned out to be little more than an outhouse brought indoors. He pulled his pants down and sat for a long time. The adrenaline burning through him made him nauseous; it also gave him diarrhea. After a time he wiped and pulled his pants up, then went back to the bar, where he knocked back the rest of the shot in one go. When the barkeep returned to top him up, he slapped down a large coin and left.
I’d listened to snippets of conversation during all of this, and knew that he was in Bodie, California.
Modern-day Bodie doesn’t exist. It’s a ghost town. It died in the first decade of the twentieth century. It seemed incredible that it could have, given the enormous number of people milling along its streets, the carriages and horses, the busy dust of commerce and activity filling the air. It appeared to be thriving, a municipality destined to expand and set down deep roots. That belief was palpable in the citizenry, who ranged from very grizzled and dirty miners to ladies shopping along the main street, many of whom were dressed in what were probably the latest fashions.
But Bodie is long gone. The gold ran out, and within just a matter of a few decades this town, which I believe once had a population close to ten thousand, was abandoned utterly. From the looks of it, Calliel was in the middle of its boom which, if memory served, was in the late 1870s.
I watched the bustle, feeling a strange sadness settle in me. Nothing lasts. Everything dies.
/> What does man gain by all the toil
at which he toils under the sun?
The sun rises, and the sun goes down,
and hastens to the place it rises….
All things are full of weariness;
a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing,
nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun.
Had my life been nothing more than what had already been seen by the everlasting sun a million million times before? What made life worth living? Was it true that there was nothing new under the sun, or did ol’ Solomon just have a bad case of gas the day he made that infinitely depressing declaration?
In my most cynical days, which were very many, I would have fully agreed with it. But no longer. Uniqueness is a birthright to everything in existence, including days, including every single hour, minute, second, and millisecond.
I caught myself, and exhaled with surprise. For it was then, right then, that I saw the path to Heaven, to life everlasting.
Solomon had had his head up his ass. Despite the fear and anxiousness I felt in Calliel, who was on the other side of the street now, walking steadily towards a destination unknown, I laughed with great relief and joy.
Across another street was a fairly fancy-looking three-storey hotel: the Blue Lead Inn according to the large signage on its roof, which Calliel stared up at it before crossing a side street. A doorman opened the ornate stained-glass door for him with a short bow and “Good day, sir …”
Calliel didn’t respond, but pushed the brim of his hat down and hurried inside. It was obvious he didn’t want the doorman to get a good look at his face. The adrenaline surging through him got stronger, so did the nausea. He was clearly very scared about something. He crossed the lobby to the stairs and took them two at a time.
The lobby was quite a sight to see. This inn was plainly for the wealthy and no one else. A large chandelier hung overhead, and the air smelled of expensive leather with the slight hint of a fine feminine powder and the occasional waft of expensive steak or some other food being cooked nearby. Someone played a piano somewhere, but unlike the saloon, it wasn’t popular music, but classical: Mozart, from the sound of it. The few men and women sitting here and there in high-backed chairs were in the finery of the age. Calliel, in his boots and hat and grit and sweat, clearly did not belong. Several looked up to watch him pass, curious disdain coloring their frowns.
Calliel didn’t slow his climb. At the top floor he glanced left and right to get his bearings, his heart pounding like a drum. He advanced left, stopping at the head of a hallway for a moment before marching into it. Halfway down he drew his pistol and flicked the safety off.
He stopped at room 343, which was almost at the end. He reached for the knob, twisted it. Locked. Fear made the tips of his fingers numb and gave him tunnel vision. Whatever was going to happen, whatever he was going to do, it was going to happen in the next few seconds.
He cursed and stepped back and with several vicious kicks busted the knob. One more kick and the door slammed inward. Gun raised, he marched inside.
It was dark. He yelled, “Calabis, get your chickenshit ass out here right now!”
The hammers of at least half a dozen unseen pistols clicked all at once like the snapping teeth of a voracious wolf.
“Drop the pistol! Drop it! On your knees! On your knees NOW!”
Lawnmen materialized out of the dark, weapons drawn. He was surrounded.
I could feel it in him: frustration so intense that for a moment he considered fighting. Instead, his jaw clenched, he growled and dropped his six-shooter and fell to his knees. A deputy kicked his weapon out of the way as another kicked him in the face. The pain exploded brilliantly against his forehead and nose, and he collapsed on his back. The others joined in, kicking and pistol-whipping him before turning him over and hog-tying him and carrying him bodily out of the room. By that point he was only half-conscious. Blood ran in streams out of his nose and mouth.
They hauled him outside and threw him into a paddywagon. His head slammed obliquely against the side and he lost consciousness completely. I had felt all of this—the beating and the hog-tying and the rough treatment down the stairs and the tossing into the wagon and the jolt of agony along my ear and neck as I hit its side—and had screamed to be released from the vision, for Calliel to wake up so I could be free of it. When he went unconscious I felt myself rise up and away from him, and that brought its own terror. Was I about to dissolve?
Instead I floated up into what was sunrise or sunset over a green valley so beautiful it brought tears to my eyes. Below me wasn’t Bodie, but a small ranch house surrounded by well-tended fields and milling cattle. A red barn was off a bit, behind the house. The sunlight caught it just so and something from very early in my life called out: a poem or a song or a prayer. I could not recall the words to it, but it had never left me. I had pushed it away, but not far enough for it to be lost.
I cried at the sight. It held me like a mother does her infant. I descended towards the house, and then, as if by magic, I passed through its roof and settled on a comfortable seat in a small living room illuminated by a fireplace.
A living room I’d seen before.
Calliel was eating with the old man who had come knocking in the first vision. They were laughing about something. As far as I could tell, it had something to do with a woman Calliel had known. They finished up, and the old man helped him clear the table. With topped-up glasses of beer they made their way into the small living room, where they sat across from each other. I was just to the left of Calliel, who took a big gulp and settled back in his seat.
“Let’s talk about your next assignment,” said the old man, who took a drink and put his glass on the coffee table between them. “As always,” he added, “it’s entirely up to you if you want it.”
“Hit me,” said Calliel with a ready grin.
“It’s always your choice to take an assignment or not,” said the old man. “I feel compelled to tell you that, especially with this one, because this guy …” The old man shook his head and chuckled mirthlessly. “You’re going to have your hands full.”
He reached for his glass of beer and took a couple long gulps. “His name is Ray,” he said, setting his glass down, “and he’s as lost as they get. In fact, it’s entirely possible he’s beyond reach. He’s well out of your normal comfort zone. But you’re my ace. Don’t get me wrong: the others are good—damn good. But you … if anyone can get to this guy, it’s you. Just be yourself and go after him like you do the rest. Still interested?”
“Ray, you say?” said Calliel. His jovial mood was gone, replaced by stony determination. “What’s he do?”
“He’s a mathematics professor in San Diego, California. Very intelligent. Which is why he’s going to be such a pain in the ass.”
Calliel nodded while I gaped. Was the old man sitting across from me … was he God? He was talking about me!
Calliel took another drink as the old man (God?) continued, “He uses his intelligence like a weapon, and believe me, that weapon is sharp. He’s an expert at cutting people to pieces with it. But if you can get past it, you’ll see that he’s got … well, he’s got a tremendous, tremendous heart. Sadly, it’s one that has turned almost completely to stone. Almost. He’s become a cynical, angry, bitter skeptic, and what’s worst of all is he’s somehow convinced himself that he’s found happiness by being so. You’re going to have to show him what he’s become. It won’t be easy.”
“I take it he’d make a hell of an angel if I can get through to him?”
The old man (could he be the leader of the angels? What were they called—“archangels”?) nodded emphatically. “He has the potential to become like you—one of the very best. Elite. His intelligence, and that heart of his—! Oh Calliel, if you can
somehow melt that stone around it, you’ll be astonished. Ray has tried for many years to kill it—his spirit. He thinks it’s dead, that he succeeded. He doesn’t believe in it. That’s where the real challenge will lie. You’re going to have to show him he has one, that he hasn’t destroyed it. It may be on its last legs, but it isn’t dead yet.”
“When do you want me to leave?”
“I don’t want to push you,” said the old man gently, “but could you be ready the day after tomorrow?”
“Absolutely,” said Calliel with a sure nod.
The old man finished his beer and sighed. “I don’t expect you to succeed. This is a pie-in-the-sky assignment. It wouldn’t be wise if you went back to Earth believing you have anything more than a snowball’s chance in hell. You’ve got nothing to lose, so swing for the fences. Ray Wilms is a shining jewel that I think got away. If so, it’s a tragedy, but we’ll do as we always do, and carry on.”
The men stood and embraced. At the door the old man said, “I thought you were lost too. Just as lost as Ray.”
“Jegudiel,” said Calliel. “You sent me Jegudiel.”
“He sends his love,” said the old man. “He told me to tell you to expect a visit after you get back.”
Calliel grinned. “You knew I wouldn’t turn you down.”
The old man shook his head. “Not true! You’ve turned down assignments before.”
“Why me then?”
The old man smiled. “It was on Jegudiel’s recommendation. I went to him first. I thought his skillset was better suited to Ray’s quirks. He told me to come to you. He thinks what you went through at the end of your life and what Ray is going through are more similar than appearances would suggest.”
The men came together again. The old man released him and walked away with a wave. “The day after tomorrow, my ace. The day after tomorrow.”
Calliel watched him walk away. The sun had set and a very pleasant, cool breeze puffed about. I hadn’t noticed earlier that there were people working in the fields; he waved at them and went inside and closed the door.
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