Beyond Heaven and Earth

by Steven H. Propp

  “Are you sure the power was turned off? Did they leave a notice on your door? I don’t think any utility company would turn off the power on Christmas Eve. You live in an apartment, right?” There was no response, so Jobran continued, “If there’s no notice on your door, it could just be that some kids turned off the master switch as a prank; that happened to me once, when I lived in an apartment.” There was still no response. “So you’re out of work now, and broke?” Jobran tried to summarize. “And bill collectors are bugging you?”

  “What the hell have I been telling you? Are you as stupid as they are?” the voice chided.

  Just keep talking, buddy, Jobran thought. Anything to keep you from throwing yourself down from there. “But isn’t there somewhere else you can go for a while? Family, or friends? If nothing else, the homeless shelters are open tonight. Why are you up there at night on Christmas Eve?” Jobran pleaded.

  The unseen voice laughed, and said, “I thought it would make a great headline on Christmas Day, for all the families sitting in their nice warm homes with lots of food. ‘Man kills self on Freeway on Christmas Eve.’ Then the TV reporters will find out that I’d gotten fired, and have all these goddam bill collectors at my throat, and my power has been turned off, and my landlord’s kicking me out. Then maybe everyone will see what heartless, bloodsucking leeches they all are— the TV people will show them as they really are.”

  “But what if your death doesn’t make TV, or the newspapers?” Jobran argued. “What if they just ignore it because they only like to print ‘positive’ news on Christmas?”

  The voice was silent. A car drove by quickly, briefly illuminating Jobran in its headlights. He thought about trying to signal the car for help, but was afraid this would cause the man to release his grip on the wire fence, so he didn’t. “Or what if they do run it, but they run the story tomorrow, not on Christmas Day, and they ‘bury’ it on page 58, so that no one even notices?”

  The voice remained silent. (Jobran didn’t know whether this was a good sign, or not.) He tried a different approach, and said, “If you throw yourself off from here, you might hit a car.”

  The voice replied, “I plan to; I’m going to time it so exactly so that I am hit by a car, and it splatters me all over the freeway—that’s why it will be front-page news!”

  Jobran kept trying to reason with the man behind the voice, saying, “But how can you time it that precisely? How can you know precisely what time to drop in order to hit a car speeding by at 70 miles per hour? It’s not like you’ve every practiced this, after all.”

  The voice was silent again.

  “Or even if you do hit the windshield of the car directly, then what? If you do that, you’ll probably kill the driver of that car, as well as anyone else in the vehicle. Think of that: there might be a mother in the car, with her children—sweet, innocent kids, with their whole lives ahead of them, trying to get to Grandma’s house for Christmas Eve dinner. If you smash into the windshield while they’re driving past at sixty-five miles an hour, they’ll probably all be killed.”

  There was a long silence, but suddenly the voice said, in a less frantic tone, “You’re right; I’ll do it when a truck is driving by, instead.”

  Jobran seized upon the bit of headway he was making, and said, “But that has all the same problems. Anyway, even if you managed to hit the truck, it might cause the truck to lose control, and overturn—maybe wiping out lots of other vehicles in the process.” Jobran listened for a moment, then continued, “And even if you succeeded, and didn’t wreck the truck, what about the driver? He might be emotionally traumatized, and feel guilty, as if he had caused your death. Can you do that to him?” He listened a moment, and when no reply came, he added, “And your body might still end up on the freeway; since it’s night, and oncoming cars won’t exactly be expecting to see a body lying on the freeway, they’ll hit it and veer out of control, and they more and more people will be killed.”

  The unseen voice now shouted angrily, “OK, then, I’ll throw myself off to the side of the road, head-first! Will that fucking satisfy you?”

  Jobran replied, “Look, it’s your decision, not mine, but I want you to think about something: Suppose that you aren’t killed by the fall? I mean, people have fallen from planes and lived, and you’re only jumping from a freeway overpass— you’re only…what, twenty-five, thirty feet or so in the air; it’s not like you’re jumping from the top of a skyscraper. If the fall doesn’t kill you, then what?”

  The voice had a note of doubt, and said, “But I said I’d land head-first; it would kill me if I landed head-first, wouldn’t it? I mean, it would break my spinal column, or something.”

  “Maybe,” Jobran said, “But breaking your spinal column wouldn’t kill you; it would be more likely to paralyze you—you know, so that you can’t even move any more?”

  There was silence from the voice (which Jobran hoped meant that he was thinking), so Jobran want on, “And what would your life be like? You’re already broke, so your situation wouldn’t be like the actor Christopher Reeve after he had his accident—you know, the one that paralyzed him? He was rich, and he can hire people to take care of him—whereas you would end up lying in some state or county institution somewhere, for the rest of your life. And as a ward of the state, they wouldn’t have any money to take care of you, so you wouldn’t even be able to be kept doped up all the time, so you’d probably be in constant pain, just lying there all day long.”

  The voice betrayed a note of uncertainty. “You…you think I’d really be in pain?” There was a sudden commotion, as he apparently lost his grip momentarily, and the wire fence rattled as he grabbed it again.

  Frantically, Jobran said, “Listen, I really want to talk to you more, but it’s hard top talk when you might lose your grip at any minute. Can you crawl up on top of the fence, so you can rest your arms a minute, until we’re done talking?”

  There is no reply from the voice, but Jobran could hear and see the man crawling up the fence slowly, until he was able to pull himself over the top of the protective fence. Now suspended over Jobran, he looked like a huge spider in its web, looking down at its prey. “OK, I made it,” the voice sounded, somewhat out of breath.

  “That’s better; it will be easier for us to talk, this way,” Jobran responded. In a more “conversational” tone, he said, “Look, no matter how bad things may seem, look and think about the advantages you still have: You sound like a young man, and you have to be in pretty good shape to be able to climb up this thing. You can see, you can hear, you can taste and smell; you can walk, you can talk. Think of all the people in the world that can’t do those things, and would give anything they had to be able to. You’re throwing away something that they would give anything for.”

  “They can take it, then,” the voice replied. “They can have anything in my body they want. Eyes, kidney, heart, anything.”

  Jobran kept arguing, “But have you done the paperwork to be able to be an organ donor? If you haven’t, then the doctors can’t do it, and it will all be wasted! Think of the people whose families desperately want donations of organs, but you’ll be depriving them of the chance, by going out this way?”

  There was a moment of silence, as another car drove by. Finally, the voice replied, “Why do you keep talking to me? Just shut up; shut up, will you? I don’t want to think about anything any more—I’m through with this, I’m through with everything!”

  “I understand how you feel,” Jobran said, pleading. “All you’re thinking about right now is that you want this pain to end, and you don’t care how.”

  “You don’t know how I feel!” the voice raged. “No one knows how I feel!”

  “Yes, I do!” shot back Jobran. Then, in a quieter voice, he said, “I had a very close friend…who recently took his own life. He did it in a way that we had no chance to try and talk him out of it. I�
��ve wished over and over again that he had given us the opportunity to tell him that that his life was incredibly valuable to us.”

  With a note of interest, the voice asked, “Why did he kill himself?”

  “He had AIDS.”

  “Oh…,” the voice responded. “Right.”

  Jobran spoke passionately, “And he thought that because of his illness, his life had no value—but it did: We would give anything to have him back here with us.”

  The voice remained silent.

  “What about you?” Jobran said. “What about the consequences of your action on other people? Have you thought about that? Don’t you have any family, or girlfriend, or other friends?”

  “I can’t talk to my Mom, or sister,” the voice said, trailing off. “They’re so disappointed in me already.”

  “Don’t you have anyone else?”

  After a moment of silence, the voice replied, “I have a girlfriend. That’s where I was at last night.”

  “How did you meet her? Have you known her long?”

  “I met her at work,” came the reply from above. “We’re both janitors.”

  “Did she lose her job, too?” Jobran asked.

  “No,” the voice answered. “She’s Mexican; she’s one of the new people they’ve been replacing the rest of us with.”

  “Couldn’t you move in with her for a while?” Jobran asked.

  “I can’t,” replied the anguished voice. “It would be too embarrassing to admit to them that I don’t even have a job, and I won’t have a place to live, soon.”

  “And you think that committing suicide will be less embarrassing?” Jobran said. There was no reply, so Jobran said, “You said, ‘them’; your girlfriend doesn’t live alone?”

  “No, she has a son named Pietro; he’s almost four,” the voice replied, some warmth coming into his voice for the first time. But then agitation returned to the unseen voice, as he said, “That’s why I have to kill myself—I can’t face them; I can’t let them know what a mess I’m in.”

  “But if you kill yourself, don’t you think they’ll find all about it anyway?” Jobran pleaded. “And besides, what effect do you think your committing suicide would have on them?” There was no reply, but Jobran let the silence linger for a moment, hoping the owner of the voice was thinking. He added, “What effect would it have on a 3-year old if his Mama’s boyfriend took his own life? And your girlfriend: what’s her name?”

  “Angelina,” the voice replied. “But I call her Angel.”

  “That’s a pretty name,” Jobran said. “My wife was Mexican, too. I’ll bet she’s pretty.”

  “Yes,” the voice replied, some warmth returning to it. “I mean, some people think that she’s kind of heavy-set, but I think she’s pretty just the way she is.” With genuine feeling, he added, “She’s the most beautiful woman in the world to me.”

  “Then think about her,” Jobran said, pointedly. “With anyone who knew about the two of you, don’t you think that she would be stigmatized by her friends and family? Wouldn’t they look at her as being partly responsible, if her boyfriend takes his own life? And wouldn’t she feel guilty about it, like she should have known, or done something about it?”

  The voice was silent.

  “You’ve never even talked about moving in together?” Jobran asked.

  “We’ve…we’ve talked about it before,” the voice admitted. “She thought we could both save money, that way.”

  “In a lot of ways, you moving in with her might be a very good thing for her. Even if you weren’t working right away, if she lives in a bad neighborhood, just having a man home during the day would probably reduce her fears of being robbed. But surely you could quickly get some kind of job—fast food, telemarketing, nighttime security work, anything—that would at least cover her additional cost for food. I mean, she’s already paying for rent and utilities, so you moving in wouldn’t change that.”

  “Well…yeah, I guess that’s true,” the voice admitted.

  “Angel’s son, Pietro; is his father around?” Jobran asked.

  Anger filled the unseen man’s voice, as he said, “No, he’s a worthless bastard that ran out when Angel got pregnant. He’s only seen poor Pietro a couple of times, that stupid piece of shit.”

  “Who watches Pietro while Angel is at work?”

  “He goes to preschool, then day care,” the voice replied.

  “So she might be able to cut down, or cut out her day care costs, if you moved in with her,” Jobran said, reasonably. “Plus, it might be a good influence on Pietro to have a man around the house, especially if he never sees his father. I think it’s hard on little boys these days, when so many of them grow up without any kind of adult male in the house at all. Just having someone to run with him, wrestle with him, and teach him how to play ball—that’s something that you can’t get at day care.” There was no reply, so Jobran asked, “Do you get along OK with Pietro?”

  “Heck, yes; he’s my little pal,” the voice above said. “He’s great; I wish that I could have had a sweet kid like him.”

  Sharply, Jobran suddenly asked, “How would he react to someone he loves committing suicide?” Jobran waited for a moment, then went on, “Don’t you think this might scar him emotionally, maybe for life?”

  There was another silence, then the voice sounded chastened. “You’re right; I wasn’t even thinking about him…it would probably…” and the voice trailed off.

  “You know, the main things in life that you can give to a kid aren’t biological—in the sense of being his physical father—or financial: it’s mostly just being there for him, talking to him, listening to him, taking the time to be his friend, his buddy that he can always count on; that doesn’t cost a penny. Wouldn’t all of us have wanted more time with an adult that cared—really cared—for us?”

  “Yeah, I guess so,” the voice replied. Bitterly, it added, “My old man never even gives me the time of day. That’s why we’re not close, even today.”

  “How about your mother, how would she react, if you took your own life?” Jobran asked.

  There was a moment’s hesitation, and the voice said slowly, “It would crush her—she would probably feel like it was her fault. My youngest sister…was killed in a car wreck when she was a teenager, and Mom’s never gotten over it.”

  “Losing two of your children while they were young would be a terrible thing for your Mom to have to face,” Jobran argued. “Most parents expect that they will outlive their children—so having to face a second child dying would be a terrible thing for her to have to deal with. And has she, or Angel, done anything to make you want to punish them? Are they part of why you’re so depressed?”

  “No!” the voice responded immediately. “They’re—Pietro, too—the only ‘positive’ things in my life right now.”

  “And especially the fact that you’re proposing to kill yourself on Christmas Eve, just because of some money matters? For the rest of their lives, whenever the holiday season rolls around, they’ll think of this as the time of year when you killed yourself. Other people will be singing songs and buying presents, but they’ll only have bad memories about it. Don’t you think that this would traumatize them forever? And think of the scandal it would create, with your death by suicide: people would stigmatize your Mom and girlfriend, as either the ones who drove you to suicide, or as the ones who didn’t talk you out of it. Can you do that to them?”

  There was a long pause, during which several cars drove by, until finally the voice replied, “No, I guess I can’t.”

  Jobran said, “Suppose that you were to go on and live, not for yourself, but for their sake?” Passionately pleading, he added, “Can’t you do that much?”

  “I know I should, but I just can’t face the idea of going on,” the voice replied, a tremor creeping
into it.

  “You can’t face it right at this point, but maybe you’re looking too far into the future. You said that your immediate concerns are financial, but moving in with your girlfriend would actually save her money. And surely you can get some kind of job, even at minimum-wage with no benefits. You sound like a pretty bright young guy; you could be a cashier at a store, or something; they always need people who will show up to work on time; how’s your attendance record at work?”

  “I never missed a day,” he replied, proudly. “And those bastards never appreciated it.”

  “Then maybe someone else will appreciate it,” Jobran countered. “And just think, then you’ll be able to flip your nose at your ex-boss who just fired you, a year from now. Wouldn’t you like to see him again once you’re back on top of things? And Angel still works there, right? Both of you could strut before him a year from now, when things are better.”

  The voice laughed, and said, “You know, you’re right; I’d love to be able to laugh in that bastard’s face next Christmas Eve.”

  “But if you kill yourself, you’ll just be confirming his opinion of you as being worthless,” Jobran chided. “And you don’t want to give him that kind of satisfaction, do you?”

  “Hell, no!” the voice replied quickly.

  Jobran spoke encouragingly, saying, “Look, if you come down from there, not only will you spare some people you love a lot of heartache, but you’ve got a lot to look forward to.” He paused, then added quietly, “But in order to achieve it, you’ll have to be alive.”

  There was a moment of silence, and then the voice said, “You make it sound so easy.”

  Jobran said, “It is easy. So what do you say? Come on, I’ll give you a hand getting back down.”

  The voice replied, hesitantly, “Will…will I have to go to jail, or anything? Are they going to lock me up?”

  Jobran made a show of looking in both directions, then said, “Do you see any cops around here? No, it’s just you and me, and I’m sure as heck not going to turn you in to anyone just because you’re going through some tough times. I just want to try and help you save what’s left of this Christmas.”