by Kit Duncan
I leaned back in the wicker chair and looked out over the bluebonnets. Silas' rocking slowed down, and after a short time I heard him snoring. His nap was short lived, though.
"Dinner's ready!" Sallie was standing at the doorway. "Ol' man's asleep again, huh?" She looked down at Silas and opened the screen carefully. It creaked as she stepped onto the porch. She bent over and kissed him on his forehead, and whispered. "Time to eat, Baby."
Silas gurgled a little, opened his eyes, and smiled up at Sallie.
We sat down at the table.
"This is all we're having?" Silas pointed at the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. He was more curious than demanding.
Sallie sat down in the chair next to him and sighed lightly. "We were going to have pork chops," she said. "With corn and okra."
"So how'd chops and vegetables turn into sandwiches?" Silas asked.
"Well, it's not that complicated," Sallie said nonchalantly as she picked up her sandwich. "All you do is add a little grease fire to the mix, next thing you know, well, there you have it."
We ate the sandwiches, and Silas and Sallie washed them down with iced tea. Sallie had made me a glass of lemonade, said she knew it was my favorite, and she was right.
We walked to town that evening to see South Pacific. A troupe from out of town was performing, and I thought they did a pretty good job. Silas complained on the way home that the lady playing the part of Nellie was a little off-key, but Sallie said she thought the lady sang just fine and that Silas was being picky and overly sensitive. I don't have that good an ear for music, and I couldn't tell for sure if the actress sang in tune or not. But the musical, I told them, seemed to be very well done overall, and they both nodded.
I woke up the next morning fairly early. The house was still. I stretched and yawned, and rolled over on my side, and let the day catch up with me slowly.
"Now, that's peculiar," I thought all of a sudden. Most of my life, whenever I thought of dying, I always imagined that one of the first things I'd want to do was see people I loved who had gone on ahead of me.
And yet I realized I had not asked about my family. I sat up, felt a little guilty, but more confused. I loved my family. I adored them. Why had they not been in the forefront of my mind for two days?
I walked outside. Silas was nowhere to be found, but across the bluebonnet field I saw Sallie walking toward me, a small batch of envelopes and slick, bright colored papers in her hand. She saw me from a distance, waved excitedly, and her step quickened.
"Silas and me had some cereal this morning," she said as she stepped up onto the porch. "You hungry?" I walked with her into the house.
"Not really," I said.
She flipped through the mail, threw a couple pieces into the garbage, and tossed the rest of it on the desk. She sat down, and picked up the teal yarn and crochet needle. I sat down on the chair beside her.
"Well," Sallie said after a little time. "I expect you're wondering of your family about now, huh?"
"How'd you know that?" I asked.
"Oh, happens all the time long about now. Eternity's a big place, so much to take in all at once. No matter how much you care for folks who've already died, usually takes a few days to get around to asking about them. Just natural, I suppose. Don't know why, just seems to happen that way generally." She shot me a quick gleam from the corner of her eye and kept crocheting.
"Well," I said. "Yes. Yes, I was hoping to see them. I mean, if I can."
Sallie set the yarn aside and stood up. She rummaged among some papers on the desk, found my information packet, and sat on the couch. Patting the seat next to her, she said, "Come here, Sweetie. Let's see what we can see."
Obediently, I moved to the couch.
"Now," she said. "Who's first on our list?"
"Mom," I said.
"Yes, yes," she was scanning the pages, flipping over, scanning some more. "Oh, yes. Here she is." She read silently a few seconds, then said, "Sorry." She looked at me.
"Sorry?" I asked, and I felt my voice rise. "You mean I can't see Mom?"
"She's not here," Sallie said. She read from the packet, then looked back at me. "Says here she reincarnated about a month after she got here. Early 2002. Sorry. You'll have to wait until she dies again. Must have been an awfully happy lady, going back that quickly."
I nodded sadly, then realized how ironic my sorrow was. Mom had been happy all her life, and she went back to life quickly. This was not something to be sad about, I realized. Still, I was disappointed.
"Who's next"
"Pop."
Sallie looked down her list. She shook her head slowly. "No. No, Honey. Sorry. He stayed around about a year after he got here." She read the packet and smiled sweetly. "Says he had something very important to do before he left again. But anyway, he's gone now. Anyone else?"
"Michael." I said. "Did he hang around?"
Michael and I had dated all through high school, broken up in college, and had remained close friends. In 1976, just after his twenty-second birthday, he had been killed on his motorcycle by a drunk driver.
"Let's see," Sallie read, flipped, read some more. She looked up at me. "Computers, huh?"
"Yes," I answered. "He was an electronic wizard, years before the advent of PC's. He could program in Fortran and Cobol with his eyes closed. An absolute prodigy. Everyone said so. I always thought it a great tragedy that he died just before computers became so common. He would have had a blast with them."
"Well, Honey," Sallie said, looking gently into my face. "Seems like he didn't miss much. He reincarnated almost immediately."
I smiled and imagined. In my fantasy, Michael helped design the Internet, wrote the code for five of the most popular video games in history, and was now working on a top secret holographic imagining project.
Or maybe he became a bush pilot, went on photo safaris, climbed Mt Everest, became an opera star.
"I never knew anyone who had so many interests, who knew so much about so many things. He was the most talented and the most brilliant man I ever knew."
"But you broke up with him?"
"Bad case of college," I said.
"College?"
"I was blinded by new people, new places. Didn't appreciate what I had."
"Oh, Honey," Sallie patted my hand. "Happens to folks all the time. Now, anyone else you're wanting to meet?"
My grandparents, who had died in the eighties, had lived a short time in Heaven after their last lives but had also reincarnated earlier than most people.
"My, goodness!" Sallie said, setting the packet aside. "You've sure loved a mess of happy people!"
"That's true," I said with a long sigh. "I figured that part out early, I guess. "Mopey folks, they just don't have much appeal for me. I get tired of their whininess, complaining all the time, never able to enjoy anything. So I wound up not really being that close to too many people. But the ones I love do tend to be pretty happy. Not always cheerful, but real joyful, you know what I mean?"
Sallie nodded and smiled.
"They have happy, contented hearts," I continued. "You are what you eat. If I hung around too much with people waddling around all droopey drawered most the time, why, I was likely to get sucked into their chronic despair. I didn't want that, decided I'd rather be happy and alone, if that's what it took, than to be surrounded by all that dead weight."
She giggled. "Yes, dead weight indeed. Folks like that don't know much about being alive in the first place. But, lands, being around that kind of sulleness, why, that would bore me. Bore me to death!"
We both laughed.
"Not that I dislike sad people!" I sad suddenly.
"No, I didn't think that," Sallie answered.
"Just don't care to be around people who make a habit of it, that's all."
Sallie was shaking her head yes, and looking back at my packet. "Oh, here's one. She's actually in Paradise right now." She looked up and smiled brightly. "Your Aunt Helena!"
"But I didn't like her
when I was alive," I said. "Never had much in common with her. Can't imagine what we'd talk about now."
Sallie didn't quit smiling, but looked back down at the packet again. She looked up, raised her eye brows, and said, "Uncle Joe?"
"Oh, yes!" I exclaimed. "Absolutely! When can I see him?"
Sallie studied the paper again, and the smile faded. "Well, not right away. He and his cousin Ethel both live outside New Falls, and that's, let's see, oh, at least a four or five week walk from here."
"Couldn't I drive, or get a bus? Maybe a plane?"
Sallie chuckled a little and said, "No, Honey Child, I'm afraid not. Around here, unless you can hitch a ride with a stork, which ain't too likely, you have to walk to get where you're going."
I frowned, but the frown was short-lived. "Hey!" I said excitedly. "What about Mark and Amy?"
"Let's see," she looked down, then back up. "Polack?"
I nodded.
"Well," she said, "Yes, you can see them. Probably. Maybe. Most likely."
"They haven't reincarnated again yet, have they?"
"No, Sallie said. "It's just that they're both in Heaven, and it'll take at least a month, maybe longer for the paperwork to get processed."
"What paperwork?"
"Well," Sallie explained. "Folks in Heaven, they can visit here or the Basement anytime they want, but folks in Paradise can only visit the Basement. We can't go to Heaven as long as we're living in Paradise, except for the Open Houses. So if we want to visit someone in Heaven we have to submit a request, and if the person we want to see wants to see us, they'll come here."
"Red tape in eternity," I sighed heavily. Sallie patted my hand cheerfully, and put the packet back on the desk. "It's okay, Honey," she said as she picked her yarn up. "We've got all the time in the world! Just like I tell Sy, things happen when they're ready to happen, no need to push 'em along."
CHAPTER THIRTEEN