Danny's Mind: A Tale of Teenage Mysticism and Heavenly Power
Page 16
Chapter 15
Here’s a snippet from another bleacher conversation with Michelle—this time without Joe underneath.
“Danny, where does awareness come from? Is it part of body or not?”
“Let’s test it. Can you sense a time when there was no body?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Can you sense a time when there was no awareness?”
“Well…no. I can’t.”
“Was it there three days ago?”
“Yes.”
“Has it changed since then?”
“No.”
“Was it there two years ago? Or ten? Has it ever changed? Can you sense a time when it has not been watching everything…through a being called Michelle?”
“It feels like it’s always been there. The same as it is now.”
“Go into the future a year or ten years—as your life goes through all kinds of changes.”
“It’s still the same. Danny, it doesn’t change! Is this a sense of my own soul?”
“I call it your Heavenly Mind. You can’t imagine that. You have to do it!”
- From His Recorded Words
After walking Danny all the way home that day—which was not our normal routine, but seemed necessary to me after the scare with Tim—I went the two extra blocks to Hambones to put in some hours at my cleaning job and earn a few extra bucks. Dad wasn’t there this time, which meant this was his day at the Cozy.
My current task was painting the basement ceiling. The way you’re supposed to do this is with a long handled roller, and you just dip it in the paint and walk from one end of the ceiling to the other. But ol’ Jerry didn’t have a roller and just told me to go ahead and use a brush and a ladder, even though it would take longer and cost him a little extra money. He seemed to be in somber mood anyway, and he said with a shrug, “No biggie, Joe. You do good work, and your dad is my best customer.”
So I worked patch by patch across the ceiling, moving the ladder every couple of feet, oblivious to the time as I pondered the situation with Tim Hanson.
After a couple hours, Jerry came down with a bowl of pickled eggs and coffee. I sat on the bottom of the ladder and had dinner. I normally knew better than to ask questions about Jerry’s infantry days in Vietnam; Dad had warned me that the stitches in his shirt weren’t just from wear and tear—he’d seen some real fighting and wasn’t keen on discussing it. He also had one of those shock-lined, weathered faces that hinted he’d seen some terrible things. But I’d always been curious and tonight, as he leaning against the wall sipping his coffee, I said, “You must really like that shirt.”
He looked at me a second. At first, I thought he wouldn’t answer. Then he sighed, and said, “You want to know why?”
“Yeah.”
“Well,” he said, “it belonged to someone I was close to once.” A pained flutter ran over his face. “A guy named Max…who sacrificed his life…to save mine.” He explained how his closest friend all the way back to their boot camp days, a big guy named Max, in the course of a engagement had sprinted across some open ground to warn Jerry and two other fox hole mates of enemy soldiers approaching behind them. Max took two shots to the torso (Jerry pointed to some of the rips in his shirt) and collapsed ten yards from the hole. But before he died, he got his warning out. It saved their lives. Jerry believed the attack that followed would have surprised them and they’d all have been slaughtered—if it hadn’t been for Max making that deadly sprint. “He didn’t mean to get shot, but that’s the way it worked out for him to do what he thought was right, and he was prepared. I’ve never forgotten him. That’s why I wear this.”
All I could say was, “He must have been a brave guy.” Jerry didn’t say anything, but gave me the cheers gesture with his coffee cup and went upstairs to the bar. I spent the next hour completing the ceiling and at about 8:30 put the paint and ladder away.
Tim had to go. I’d finished pondering. I decided to get in a first strike, and quickly. If it meant getting expelled, or worse, I was going to beat him within an inch of his life. At the bare minimum put him in the hospital, but—if I could get away with it—in the ground. I could do a few years for teenage manslaughter. I figured if people go to wars prepared to sacrifice everything…right? Well, this was my war. The thought settled inside me. I no longer resented all the changes that had happened with Danny—his rise to high school prophet, the whole mystique of his teachings. I may not have understood any of it, but at least I now had a clear view of my role in the story. As I walked out of Hambones into the night, I felt good and full of purpose again.
A block away from home, it turned out that someone else had found a sense of purpose. A parked truck and a big SUV at either end of the street turned their lights on and squealed up the sidewalk on either side of me. Completely cut off, I decided to throw myself as violently as I could at the half-dozen goons and Tim as they leapt from the vehicles. My knuckles found plenty of skin and bones to smash, but there were more of them and I ended up pinned on all fours. As fists and bats began hammering, I heard new voices yelling off in the distance, and then one clear vicious voice saying, “You and Perkins are history.”