The Light

by Francis CoCo

  That morning I had been reading my Bible as I drank my coffee, something I hadn’t done in a very long time, and as I read, I found the verse in Timothy 6:16 about God, that read: He alone can never die, and he lives in light so brilliant that no human can approach him. No human eye has ever seen him, nor ever will. That was the verse Max had talked about, a few days before. I knew I’d read it and was glad to find it again.

  So, if that were true, did it mean that even though God lives in light- a brilliant light- that it couldn’t be God that we saw, because of this verse? But, Saul had seen him and he was human.

  But, if the verse were true- if, God forbid, it had been the Devil, then, the only thing I could wonder would be, why?

  Why would we the Devil come to us? What had we done, so terrible, to illicit an encounter with Lucifer? And most importantly, if it were the Devil, what could he possibly want with us?

  That night, when I got home, I poured myself a Kahlua and Creme and sat down in front of the television. I was feeling pretty good. I’d enjoyed the movie and I was going to drink my Kahlua and watch some silly sitcom, an old Cosby or Newhart re-run- one of those old 80’s shows they were always showing on TVLand. But just as I’d sat down, there was a knock at my door. I got up and went to open it. It was Angela. She pushed her way in and before she said anything, I said, “Oh hey! What are you doing coming by so late?”

  She asked me where I’d been and I began to tell her about going into Irondale, the Cineplex and about the movie. I was saying, “Marilyn Monroe was really good in this movie, you should have come along-” but I realized suddenly, in the middle of telling her about it, that something wasn’t right about her. Her head sort of hung down and she walked heavily towards the couch and plopped down in an odd fashion. I turned and took a few steps towards her and then I knew what was different- there was a strong stench of alcohol coming from her.

  “Are you drunk?” I said.

  Angela looked up, shook her head and said, “No, no I’m not...”

  “Did you drive?”

  She didn’t answer and I went to the window and looked out. Her car sat in my driveway. She had driven drunk. I couldn’t believe it. I turned around, angry and said, “Goddammit, Angela, you could have killed someone!”

  “Hold the lecture,” she said thickly, holding up her hand, in an attempt to stop me from going on.

  “No, I will not! How dare you do that? You could have killed yourself! You could have killed someone else...”

  I had no tolerance for drunk driving. There was absolutely no excuse. We were adults. I couldn’t believe that Angela would do such a thing. She mumbled something and I snapped at her and told her to shut up. She looked shocked. I didn’t care. I was so pissed.

  “Fine, fine, I’ll go home...I’m okay, I’m okay...” she said drunkenly, getting up, unsteady on her feet. She held her keys in her hand and I snatched them from her.

  “No,” I said, “you’re going to stay here, sleep it off.”

  “God, Paige, why are you being so mean?” she slurred. She looked a mess. I asked her where she’d come from. Surely not Stitches? Max wouldn’t let her leave like this, would he?

  “I was at the Brass Register,” she said.

  “In Deerhedge? You drove from Deerhedge like this?”

  She didn’t answer. It was a wonder she’d made it to my house without killing someone, without killing herself. I was truly disgusted with her. I stood looking at her. She was dressed in tight black pants, black boots and a leather jacket. Had she borrowed someone’s clothes? I was positive whatever she was wearing didn’t come from her closet.

  “Are those your clothes?” I said.

  Angela stumbled back a step, looked down at herself. She pulled at the bottom of her shirt and said, “Yes. Mine.”

  “Come on,” I said, grabbing her and leading her towards the stairs, “you can sleep here.”

  I led her up the stairs and into my bedroom. She fell back onto the bed, fully clothed and almost instantly fell asleep. I pulled off her boots, laid them in the corner, flipped off the light and left her there. I went downstairs and called Max.

  “Drunk? She drove drunk?” Max said when I told him.

  “Can you believe that? What is happening with her? Have you seen the way she’s been dressing lately?”

  “I saw her in a biker jacket or something the other day...”

  “She used to wear embroidered cardigans and penny loafers, now she shows up in a leather jacket and high heeled boots...”

  “I don’t know, everyone is noticing it...”

  “Well, obviously, how could they not? The tattoos, the drinking and smoking, truthfully, if she keeps going this route, things are going to get really bad. She could have killed someone or herself tonight. She drove drunk- all the way from Deerhedge.”

  “What can we do?” Max said, “how can we stop her from unraveling altogether? She’s on some kind of downward spiral...”

  “Besides her appearance, it isn’t safe- to be out by herself, dressed like a -”

  “Dressed like a what?” said Max. He knew what I was going to say but Angela was my friend so I didn’t say it. I said, “Look, she’s in a bad state, and there are people who will take advantage of a girl in a bad state.”

  “I know,” said, Max, “we’re going to have to talk with her.”

  I stood at my living room window. The curtains were open and I stared at the birch tree in the front yard. In the dark it almost seemed to glow white.

  “If she wants to get stupid tattoos and smoke and whatever else, that’s fine,” I said, “but to drive drunk and to take other people’s lives in her hands… there’s no excuse for that.”

  “I agree.”

  “We have to talk to her.”

  “Do you want me to come over?”

  “No,” I said, “I’m tired, I’m going to sleep on the couch. In the morning, maybe, we can all have breakfast or brunch- talk about it then.”

  “Okay, I’ve got to close up now anyway, but tomorrow...”

  “Yeah, I’ll talk to you tomorrow,” I said. We said our goodbyes and I hung up the phone. For a minute I stood and stared out into the night. A bird was looping around, in front of the window and I watched him for a minute before I realized that it wasn’t a bird, it was a bat. And then there were two bats flying around outside my window.

  Fitting, I thought, and shut the curtains.

  Chapter 8

  “Hurry, hurry, and come inside,” Max said. He was standing behind the screen door. Angela and I were getting out of the car, going around the back to get the groceries but Max, standing behind the screen door, ushered us in with his hand and said, “No, forget them, hurry – come inside.”

  “We have to get the groceries,” Angela said, standing in the driveway, beside the car, one hand on her hip and one hand on the hatch.

  “Please, come inside, you can get them later.”

  Angela didn’t move. Neither did I. Why couldn’t we get the groceries from the back? Again, Max insisted that we leave them and hurry inside.

  Angela looked at me. I shrugged. We walked up onto the porch and Max quickly opened the screen door and pulled us both inside. He shut the door and snatched the lock.

  “What, in the fuck, is going on?” said Angela. Her cursing was still new to me. It was hard to accept this new Angela who cursed and smoked and had casual sex and had a tattoo of a rose with blue tears that I still could not for the life of me, figure out what it meant.

  Once we were inside the house, Max hurried to the large living room window and peeked through the dark navy blue curtains, which were closed.

  “What are you looking for?” said Angela.

  “Did you see him?”

  “See who?”

  Max dropped the curtains and they fell back to a close.

  “The dog. You didn’t see a big black dog?”

  “No. Why? What dog?”

  Max began to pace, “There was a...dog… a blac
k shaggy dog, the biggest dog I have ever seen in my life- neither of you saw him?” he looked to Angela and then to me.

  We both told him we hadn’t seen a dog.

  Max went back to the window, peeped through the curtain, “He was just here...”

  “So?” said Angela.

  “He tore up the flower beds,” said Max, “he wanted inside.”

  Angela and I looked at one another. We weren’t exactly following.

  “The dog is why we can’t get the groceries?” said Angela.

  “No. You don’t understand, something was wrong with this dog- he wasn’t a normal dog… he came to the front door and -”

  Just then the phone rang. Max walked over and picked it up and said to whoever was on the other end, “No, he isn’t here anymore… I don’t suppose you need to come… I’ll call back if he returns… okay, what is that number?” he grabbed a pen and a scrap piece of paper and jotted down a number and hung up the phone.

  “Who was that?” I said.

  “911 calling me back.”

  “You called 911 because of a dog?”

  “You don’t understand. He was not a dog- I mean, he was but, he was something else. He came to the front door and scratched it up and he had this awful bark, a deep, deep bark, and the cat- his ears went back and he got low to the ground and began to howl and hiss… I’ve never seen Hef do that-and then, and then, he came to the window- and stood up and tried to get in through the window- he was scratching at the window, he had his big mangy paws on the glass, look! Do you see them, here? You see this? These mud stains are from him, his feet- he was hitting the window with the pads of his feet, it wasn’t normal-- he went all around the house- to every window- to -to the back door - and he had this bark- this deep, deep bark.”

  “He’s out there now?” Angela said, walking over to the front door and looking through the peephole.

  Max sat down on the couch. He put his head in his hands. “He was. Right before you pulled up. Right before you pulled up.”

  “What do we do about our groceries? I have ice cream...”

  “I’ll run and get them- but you girls watch me, okay?”

  “Okay,” we both said. We looked at one another. A look that said, What the fuck? I mean, I could see being scared of a dog- if it were vicious, foaming at the mouth or trying to bite or even if it were growling- but, I didn’t see why Max was so upset over a dog coming to the door or the window, or tearing up a flower bed. Isn’t that what dogs did? Get into stuff?

  Max got up and opened the front door. Cautiously, he looked out – scanning the yard- the driveway. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. The sun was shining. It was a completely normal day. And there wasn’t a dog anywhere in sight.

  He looked back at us, who stood right behind him at the door.

  “Watch me, okay?” he said.

  “Okay,” we said cautiously. It made no sense. Big, burly Max, afraid of a mangy mutt?

  But we stood at the screen and watched as he nervously went outside and quickly grabbed the bags from the back of the car and slammed the door.

  Once he was back inside, he bolted the door and said, “You girls don’t understand. I don’t understand either, but, that was no ordinary dog. That was something else entirely.”

  His hands were shaking. I took the grocery bags from him and walked into the kitchen. Angela and Max followed me and Angela and I began to put the groceries up while Max sat down at the kitchen table and told us about this strange encounter.

  “I can’t- I mean, I know what you’re thinking,” he said, “You’re thinking it doesn’t sound like anything but, he wanted in- he went around the entire house- to every window- every window and tried to get inside. He was terrorizing me, he was relentless.”

  Angela sat down beside him. She had a box of cherry thumbprint cookies that we’d picked up at the bakery on the way home. She leaned over and put her head on his shoulder, “I think it sounds scary,” she said, “I’ve always been scared of big dogs.”

  “He wasn’t just big.”

  “I know,” Angela said, biting into one of the little cookies and looking at him with her eyes wide, “I don’t mean just because he was big- but the trying to get in… that’s weird, right Paige?”

  “Yes. It is. It’s odd.”

  Max looked at me. I could tell that he knew I didn’t see what the big deal was.

  I folded the paper grocery bag and placed it in the cabinet and then went over to the table and sat down across from them.

  I didn’t know what to say. I asked Max if he were okay.

  He sat there for the longest time. I was beginning to think he hadn’t heard me, or at least, that he was going to ignore the question, when, after a few awkward minutes, he looked up and said, “The biggest dog I have ever seen in my entire life has just come to my home- to my front door, walked around my whole house – circled it, scratching and pawing and climbing up every single window in my home. He had the nastiest bark- the deepest bark I’ve ever heard in my life from any dog- No, I don’t think any of us are okay. Do you?”

  _____

  “What is going on with Angela?” Barbara said, reaching for a paper towel and drying her hands. We were in the bathroom at work. She stared at me in the mirror.

  “I guess you mean the haircut,” I said cautiously. Angela had cut off all her hair over the weekend. Cut it all off might have been the understatement of the year- she’d sheared herself like a sheep. She was practically bald. Well, that wasn’t quite right. She called it a pixie cut but it was so short you could see her scalp. Max and I had talked to her- had an intervention of sorts after the drunk driving incident and she’d promised to never drink and drive again. She’d cried and swore she was sorry and would never- and we’d also talked to her about dressing the way she had been dressing and she promised to tone that down as well. But her hair, well, what harm is there in a haircut?

  Barbara swung around to face me, “Her hair was beautiful why in the world would she do that?”

  She looked at me like Angela had killed someone. Her eyes were wide- she looked truly concerned. Beyond concerned, she looked positively frightened.

  Everyone came to me to ask me about Angela and why she’d begun to do the things she’d begun to do- like smoke and drink and curse and scalp herself.

  “I don’t know, I guess she got tired of fucking with her hair,” I said defensively.

  “Has something happened to her? Is there something we should know about?”

  “Huh? What do you mean?” I said, playing dumb. Fuck yes something had happened to her! Something had happened to all of us – Angela going off the rails a little made absolute sense to me. I didn’t know how it was that Max and I were presenting such a normal front to everyone. But I had learned the best thing to do, when people asked me about Angela was to just act stupid. It was a tactic I’d used my whole life when I didn’t want to go into a certain subject or deal with some type of confrontation- I played dumb, like I had no idea what the person confronting me was even talking about - like I didn’t even understand why they were asking. It helped a lot that I was blonde.

  “You guys are close, right?” said Barbara, lowering her voice and putting her hands behind her to grip the counter. She stared me in the eye. “Has something traumatic happened? Has she told you anything?”

  “No,” I said, stepping back. Her intense gaze was freaking me out. I didn’t like being put on the spot like that- plus, I couldn’t swear that I wouldn’t just blurt out the story about the Light. It was always on the tip of my tongue.

  “Well, I’ve known her since kindergarten,” Barbara said, suddenly adopting a bitchy tone, “and you’ve only known her a couple of years… but, it seems you two spend quite a bit of time together.”

  Her eyes narrowed. Suddenly, I realized what she was getting at. For some reason, it seemed that she thought I was the reason for Angela’s sudden change. I almost laughed. I hardly even drank alcohol- the very worst thing I did
was to curse, which, I did a lot, but beyond that, I certainly was no bad influence. I guess she thought that though, because I was still fairly new to town. I’d been in Fallcrest for two years but, if you aren’t born in a small town, you’re always an outsider.

  She stared at me and said nothing. I walked over to my purse, which sat beside her, grabbed it and tucked it beneath my arm and headed for the bathroom door.

  “Calm down Barbara,” I said without looking back, “sometimes a haircut is just a haircut.”

  _____

  “I keep thinking about my father,” Angela said, crossing the room to pick up the ashtray that sat on the bookshelf. Neither she or Max bothered to go out and smoke anymore if they didn’t feel like it. Now, they smoked inside if they wanted. It seemed that lately, everyone just did whatever they felt like doing; Angela shaving her head, the bad tattoos, the two of them sleeping together -All rules had gone out the window.

  She lit a cigarette and sat down on the couch beside me, placing the ashtray down on the coffee table in front of her. Angela had never spoken of her father. I didn’t know the first thing about him. Was he dead? Alive? Were they close?

  “Where is he?” I said.

  She tossed the box of Diamond matches onto the table and pulled her robe around her tighter. She didn’t look at me. After a minute she said, “I have no idea.”

  An ambulance roared through town. We sat and listened as it screamed through the center of town and then trailed off.

  “He left when I was nine. It was one of those going for a pack of cigarettes and never coming back situations.”

  “You haven’t seen him since?”

  Angela shook her head but said nothing.

  “Have you looked for him?”

  “He hasn’t looked for me.”

  “He might be dead.”

  She turned and gave me a hard stare. I hadn’t meant to be so blunt. I told her I was sorry, I wasn’t trying to be insensitive. I told her maybe she should check, make sure he was okay.