There were trees in the foreground, and grass beneath them, and a wooden fence just beyond. Past that was a large open field with cattle. Beyond them were what looked like twenty or so elk. Past those, a good half mile, maybe, was a big red barn and fields of crops, and another fence widely surrounding a small house—Calliel’s house.
I padded out of my new bedroom over cold wood floors into the living room, where a small fire crackled contentedly in a large hearth. I went to the front door and opened it and listened to the rain, then stepped out to the porch. I walked down the stairs, then out along a winding stone path that ended at a hip-high gate, which I opened and strode through. A few steps on I turned around to look at my heavenly house—the empyrean Chateau Chaos.
It was small and beautiful, a homey, perfect part of my spirit made real and solid here. Heaven.
As the rain poured down, I raised my arms again, but not to stretch. I raised my arms and lifted my chin and cried and gave thanks.
~~*~~
My heavenly home had a study. In it were cherished books from my past, including my little red book on Analytic Geometry. On a roll-top desk that looked just like the one Mom used to have were my reading glasses, papers, pens and pencils in a cherished coffee cup I broke in a temper tantrum years ago, a laptop computer (which would have surprised me had I not witnessed what had happened on the computer Calliel used back on Earth), a stapler, a box of assorted paper clips, a few manila file folders, a small bottle of Elmer’s glue, and … my compass.
I picked it up like it was made of the most fragile porcelain. It was next to its opened case; I picked that up, too. I sat and closed my eyes and clutched them to my chest like long-lost children.
~~*~~
“Well, I’ll be! I think I got it!”
I looked up from Carrie, whom I’d been helping with a sticky geometry proof. It was Calliel who’d yelled.
“Excuse me,” I told her, and stood and went to him.
“Tell me I’m wrong, Professor,” he challenged, handing his papers up so I could look at his work. “Tell me! Go on! I dare ya!”
My dear friend Calliel, the angel who had come and saved me, beamed like a young schoolboy. I peered down my nose at him and took the papers. He’d been working on a differential equation that had pestered him for days. It took me a minute to cull through it to verify his answer, which indeed was correct. I handed the papers back with a smile. “I wonder what people on Earth would say if they knew people in Heaven did math problems—and liked them.”
He laughed, as did Jegudiel, who glanced up from his beginning Algebra. “Tell me about it! Ain’t math somethin’ that belongs in hell? You wanna come over here, Perfesser, and help me? This word problem is makin’ less sense than my last wife.”
“Absolutely,” I said with a chuckle.
It was a little schoolhouse I met students in, one run by none other than Al Snow. He came down a few minutes later when several more students walked in. It wasn’t school as students on Earth shudder to think about; it was school in Heaven. I’ll let you imagine the glorious details.
~~*~~
I had come home after a long day teaching and was making myself dinner when the feeling came over me. You know the feeling you get sometimes that tells you you’re doing exactly the right thing at exactly the right moment in time? That’s what I was feeling. I put down the pot I was washing and stared blankly up and around, then walked into my study and sat. The feeling got stronger. I gazed at the case my compass was in, then opened it and pulled the compass out. The feeling got stronger still, and then a very gentle, very familiar voice spoke to me.
It is time, Ray, my raven.
“What would you like me to do, O Lord?” I asked.
The God I refused to believe in most of my earthly life spoke. I listened—I felt, more like—and asked questions, and He responded. He sounded just like my grandfather.
We talked for a long time.
~~*~~
Calliel helped get me ready. He had already given plenty of instruction over the many timeless months (no, I won’t explain that) that I’d been in Heaven. Now it was here, it was starkly real. God wanted me to return to San Diego to save a sixteen-year-old girl who had been repeatedly beaten and incested by her father and was thinking of killing herself. She was a lesbian as well, and for that suffered no small amount of rejection, humiliation, and abuse from him and the rest of her family, as well as classmates and church community. What made matters even worse, sadly and outrageously, as if they could get any sadder or more outrageous, was this: she was a mathematics prodigy.
It wasn’t my job to save her soul just before she died, but to save it and then to teach her to have the courage to live on, fight on, until ripe old age claimed her. Calliel had had such assignments before, he informed me. One of them was Nora Williamson.
It would be a very difficult first assignment. The girl’s prospects were dismal.
But I had the Lord on my side, and the mighty cowboy angel named Calliel. Most of all, though, I had myself: Ray Wilms, brilliant and uncompromising pain in the ass.
I would not fail.
Epilogue
~~*~~
THE CROWD walking along Fifth Avenue in San Diego did not notice the man appear among them as though from nowhere. He stopped for a few moments and watched them, then rejoined the stream. At the intersection he stopped, waited for the WALK sign. It flashed, and he crossed.
He carried himself like a hero. Halfway down the block he stopped, glanced right at a shop.
He went in.
Thirty minutes later he emerged.
He stopped to admire the new, black cowboy boots he wore, smiling down on them for a moment. He straightened and adjusted his tie and buttoned the bottom button of his blazer, and continued walking.
The sun had set behind a heavy dome of gray, making the orange street lamps at the Fifth Avenue trolley stop flicker on early. The southbound Blue Line was just on its way from America Plaza. Its bright yellow headlamps grew slowly, haltingly.
There were few people here. He gazed up when a light drizzle began to fall. The cold light of the city streaked down on him, descending droplets of radiant apathy.
Five minutes later the trolley pulled up and stopped. He boarded it. The doors closed, and the trolley lumbered on into the massing dark.
THE END
Thank you for reading!
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