Angel of Death

EIGHT

Donna rose in the preconscious moment before the crash. Through her bedroom window, she saw the crazy sweep of headlights in driving snow, heard the violent whisper of tires sliding on ice. The pickup was only a spreading stain of blackness on the gray night. It rushed down the hill, vaulted from the street, and soared into her yard. It filled the whole window.

Whispers went to metallic shouts. The bumper wrapped itself around a tree. Headlights crossed inward. The hood arched up in an angry grin. A white oval winked on the windshield and then exploded as the driver, macerated, launched outward. He seemed the spectral figurehead of a ghost ship heaving up out of the snow. His leg snagged on something. Half-emerged, he slumped across the hood.

Sudden fire turned the blue landscape red. That was the first moment, as Donna came fully awake. In the second moment, she realized she was naked. In the third, she saw that Azra was gone.

And then the tree was falling. Sparks plumed as power lines snapped. The ancient elm crackled and pivoted once, magnificently, and then surged down toward her, naked in the window.

She could not move. It was as though this was her preordained moment to die. It was as though she were merely acting now, the scene staged by someone else. Breath and voice and all failed her. Not even the sign of the cross came to her clutched fist. He was there. Azra. He stood between the window and the falling tree. And the tree was not falling. He held it up. In the flare of fire and spark on snow, he was there, for one undeniable moment, naked and holding back the descending fist of death. Or was he? Transfigured in pasting flakes and jags of flame he seemed both Christ crucified and Adam wincing back from the fiery blade of banishment. Then the moment was gone. The tree crashed to one side of the house. Nearby, power lines danced in Medusa snakes upon the torn blanket of snow.

Azra stood there, small and naked, framed in the surreal snow, in electricity and fire. Now she could move. Grabbing up a pair of robes, Donna ran for the front door. “I’m coming!” she heard herself shout stupidly. “I’m coming!”

The deadbolt stuck, frozen because of the blizzard. How did Azra get out? She kicked the door with her bare foot, receiving only a throbbing bruise for her efforts. Growling in frustration, Donna turned to the bay window where the love seat was. She clambered over the stack of books by the love seat and flung up the sash. The storm window grated upward, and cold and wind and snow sluiced into her living room. She scrambled out that streaming space. With the robes still clutched in her hand, she rolled over paving stones and two inches of new snow.

Beyond, sparking wires danced, fitful and violent. The truck had turned into a flaming geyser. Its burst radiator spewed steam into the night. A regular apocalypse – Ragnarok, night of fire and ice. Azra was there. His young face flashed and disappeared in the orange glare of the engine fire. He stood just beside the place where the dead man burned. Fitful flames now and again belched out over him. He was insensible to them. He was a small boy before an open furnace.

“Mother of God, get back!” Donna shouted, catching his arm and pulling him away from the wreck. “He’s dead. There’s nothing you can do.”

Azra’s voice was husky. “I know.”

She drew a white robe around his shoulders, cinching it at his waist, before she took the time to put her own on. “Come inside. It’s a blizzard-”

“I’m not cold.”

She glanced at the blazing truck. “Doesn’t matter. Come inside. There’s a thousand ways to die out here.”

“I know,” Azra said, relenting to the tug of her hands. He trembled.

“You’re going to be okay.” Clinging to each other, they walked back toward the dark house. Its open window spilled heat into the night. “I’ll call the station house, the fire department – there’ll be twenty volunteers here soon. We’d better get dressed.”

“I’m hungry,” Azra blurted.

“I’ll heat water for cocoa-”

“I’m hungry.”

“We’ll have cinnamon bagels, too.”

“He wasn’t supposed to die.”

“I know-”

“No, I mean he really wasn’t supposed to die. I should have been there sooner. I should have been able to stop it.” Fat flakes of snow shambled down all around him. In the white robe, he seemed a paladin of old, or a priest of some ancient and very good god.

“You’re only human. You did everything you could.”

“But not everything I should-”

“You saved my life. Whatever you did with that tree, you saved my life.”

“You weren’t supposed to die tonight, either.” His hands and arms were strong, framed in the flashes of fire and spark.

“Thanks to you, I didn’t-”

“That tree shouldn’t have fallen. That truck shouldn’t have struck it. That man shouldn’t have died.” A hurt light shone in his eyes.

“Let’s get inside. I’m cold.” They stood before the window. Radiator air, as warm and as wet as blood, gushed out over them. Donna leaned toward Azra and gave him a quick kiss on one cheek. “I’ll go first, clear away the books so you can crawl through.” She stopped, assessing him. His eyes were far away. “No, you go first. Push the books out of the way. You go first.”

He bent obediently into the dark window and climbed through. Crime books cascaded before him. They slapped the floor. He left piles of snow on the arm of the love seat as he crawled across it. Wet feet crushed the books. He stepped from them and stood, waiting for Donna to come after him.

She followed, fitting more easily through the space, and turned to close the storm window. Her fingers were frigid in the aluminum slots. The glass grated downward. She closed the sash, too, panting in the darkness. Azra stood beside her, stony.

“How about some light – if the accident hasn’t taken out our power?” Donna said. She switched on the floor lamp that curved over the love seat. Comforting gold illumination spilled across the pillows. “We can hope the phone lines are good, too.”

Azra looked diminished, now, standing in a woman’s robe, puddles forming around his feet. The snow that haloed his hair was quickly melting into it.

“Sit down, Azra.” She kicked the crime books aside. Her feet trailed water on the floor. “I have to call the station. Sit here.” She guided him to sit. He did. A resigned whuff of breath escaped him. She blinked into his staring face. “You’re going to be okay.”

“Everything’s coming apart.”

“You’re going to be okay.”

“Yes.”

She turned on the TV. It crackled and set up a highpitched keen. The screen glowed to life. WGN was showing a movie version of Tennessee Williams’s Period of Adjustment. Two men stood on a porch, snow spitting fiercely down outside their cave of light. Donna had retreated to the kitchen. She stood at the phone, speaking quietly and urgently into it. “Yes. Just five minutes ago. The driver’s dead. Nobody else in the truck. It’s on fire. We’ve got a downed tree, too. Yeah. There’ll be power outages. On Fish Hatchery Road. Yes, just across from the conservancy. Yeah, they get going pretty fast down the hill. I’ll stay on the line. Yes.”

She drew the mouthpiece away from her lips, snatched a white-enameled kettle from the stove, flipped the faucet on, and began filling it. In moments, blue flames licked the drops of water inching down the outside of the kettle. “Something to eat,” she murmured, wanting comfort. Cradling the phone between shoulder and jaw, she pulled out a pair of plates, a bag of raisin bagels, a tub of spread, and her jar of cinnamon and sugar. She waited for the water to boil, waited for the operator to respond.

Steam coiled above the chipped ceramic mugs. Floating mounds of cocoa powder sank and dissolved in the dark water. Donna glanced at the man sitting, small and crouched and silent, in the spot where Kerry used to sit.

“Hello? Operator? Yes. I’m still here. I won’t hang up, but I’ve got kind of a crisis I need to take care of. Yes, shout if you need me.”

Donna slipped the phone into her bathrobe pocket, unfolded a TV tray, and arrayed the food and drinks before Azra. She sat down beside him.

“Here. You’ll feel better. Have some cocoa.”

“I’m hungry.”

“Have a cinnamon bagel.”

“Thanks.”

They both drew halves of a warm, buttered bagel from the tray and watched the TV flickering in front of them. The men in the show were inside now, in a living room decked for Christmas but devoid of any cheer except the drinks they held in their hands.

“You’re going to be okay,” Donna said to Azra.

“You’re just shaken up. Me, too. The volunteers will be here soon.”

“Everything is falling apart,” Azra said. His hand trembled as he held the half-eaten bagel. Donna leaned in toward him and took his hand. “No. Everything is coming together.”

He turned to her. At last, the distant focus had gone from his eyes. “Did you ever have one of those times when you feel like you’ve suddenly changed, and you don’t know when or why, but you know that what you were isn’t what you are anymore, like you’ve been given somebody else’s memories and somebody else has taken yours?”

“Sweetheart, it’s just this one crazy night. Just this one night-”

“It’s enough to make you crazy. You can’t rub two thoughts together. All the words you know don’t apply any longer and you have to learn a whole new language before you can even think.”

She sipped her cocoa. It was still too hot, and the liquid drew a scalding line along the curve of her tongue.

“No, I’ve never felt like that.” She blinked sadly. “I knew someone who felt like that, though.” Someone with the same mother, the same birthday. “You’re going to be okay, Azra.” She patted his knee. “I’ll make sure you’re okay.”

A deep breath filled his lungs, and he returned the last hunk of his bagel to the plate. “What are we doing?

There’s a body burning outside. The fire department will be here any moment. What are we doing?” He struggled to stand, but Donna pulled him back down beside her.

“Sit down. We’re doing what we need to do. Sit down.”

He relented, allowing her to pull him to the love seat.

The TV showed a bedroom, where a woman sat, weeping, at a vanity, and her husband hovered above her, trying to comfort her. In the other room, another couple reflected on how awful and frightening it was when two people, two worlds, tried to live together. Donna kissed Azra. His lips tasted like cinnamon. On the television, the man said, “The human heart would never pass the drunk test. If you took the human heart out of the human body and put a pair of legs on it and told it to walk a straight line, it couldn’t do it. It could never pass the drunk test.”

She kissed him again. Donna kissed him. His face was streaming with tears. She kissed him. “You’re going to be okay. You’re going to be okay.”

Union between angels and humans always brings abomination. I had known that. I had known my work was slipping. But the truck accident outside Donna’s window – that was a true abomination.

Kevin Brown, a devoted father and honest worker, was returning home from the night shift at Nestle. He had driven cautiously all the way, had used his low beams in the blinding blizzard, had even shut off the radio so he could focus completely on the road. He had worn his seat belt. Just by the conservancy, Fish Hatchery Road turns a sharp corner and plunges down a steep hill. As Kevin rounded the bend and began his descent, a family of deer ventured across the road. His brakes locked. He fishtailed. He missed the doe by inches. The truck gained speed. He pumped the brakes. Tobogganing across unseen ice, the truck smashed into an elm. Sheet metal severed his seat belt. There was no airbag. He was stopped only when his left ankle caught and broke in the steering wheel. It didn’t matter. Kevin Brown was dead the moment his head burst through the windshield. He was not supposed to die. I would have been able to save him had I not been so locked in humanity. I could have run time backward. I could have dulled the edge of the sheet metal. I could have shattered the windshield before his head struck it. But not that night. Drowsy, naked, human, I could barely save Donna.

Even now, I struggle to keep this accidental abomination from claiming more lives. I sit beside you, Jacob. This is a nice room. Bright. The winter sunlight off white snow is hot in here. Moist peat and potted plants make a smell like summer. Your mother calls it her greenhouse. Your father used to call it Jamaica – his tropical paradise.

He lies in a cold place, now, in God’s Acres. They had to use a coffin-shaped metal dome burning gasoline for two days to thaw the ground where they dug. The dirt is freezing again above him. You stood through two different wakes and a long funeral. You shook lots of hands and hugged lots of backs, but didn’t even get to see him, what was left of him. It was a closed casket. He was there, but all you could see was the shiny box of puce-colored steel. Now, you can’t even see the box. It lies in a cold place. You’ve been to the brown rectangle of ground every day after school. Earlier today, you had lain down on it. Even now, black particles of earth cling to your jacket hanging by the back door. Mother will be home soon. You’ll be able to see her pull up the long drive just beyond the bank of windows. If you’re still here. It would be a real shame for her to see the red all over the glass. It would be a shame to ruin her greenhouse, your father’s Jamaica. In your right hand, you hold your father’s deer rifle, barrel pointed up toward your shoulder. In your left, you hold a religious tract you found in the Take-One bins at Sentry Foods. The rifle is loaded. So is the tract. Its lower edge is rumpled in your hands, sweaty with the January sun. You read:

Why do bad things happen to good people?

There is a one-word answer to that question: Sin. When the first humans sinned, they brought evil and death into the world. Since that time, sin is part of us. The Bible tells us, “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). Why do bad things happen to good people? Bad things do not happen to good people. No one is good. Sin is part of us. Evil is part of us. When bad things happen to us, we merely reap the harvest of our evil.

Don’t believe it, Jacob. You father didn’t die because he was evil. He didn’t die because of something he had done or something you had done. He died because I failed. He died because God blinked. Don’t believe this tract. Small minds and smaller traditions. Don’t believe it.

Can I keep bad things from happening to me?

There is a one-word answer to that question, as well: No. God’s laws are immutable. Water does not flow uphill. The sun does not shine at night. Time does not run backward. Nor does sin lead to happiness. The Bible tells us, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). And because all of us are sinful, we cannot prevent bad things from happening. Our works cannot save us, for they are sinful and lead only to more evil.

Your eyes are streaming tears now. You’ve positioned the gun barrel in your mouth. Don’t do it, Jacob. No. Keep reading. It gets better. Even in its perverse way, this tract holds forth something that might pass for hope. Keep reading, or better yet, throw the tract away. Your father’s death wasn’t about sin and evil. It wasn’t about deserving to die and being under God’s sentence of doom. And, no matter what happened to your father, your job, Jacob, is to live.

I never knew that before. I, myself, never knew that fact until the night your father died, the night I ceased to be what I was and became something new. I had always thought that mortals were those creatures defined by their dying. But being human isn’t about dying. It is about living.

Your finger tightens on the trigger.

Don’t do it, Jacob. Don’t think of him burning on the hood of his truck. Think of him laughing in this room, his tropical paradise. Think of your mother, driving home even now. Think of your little sister, and your girlfriend, and your best friend. Think of all the living. You can’t do this. This breath can’t be your last. This bright space cannot be turned dark.

Or, perhaps, it can.

“Mother of God,” Donna said.

She stood beside the microwave, watching a bag of popcorn rotate on the turntable. Small pops shook the bag as, kernel by kernel, the corn burst. Their little heads blew apart, and they became white snacks. Donna’s eyes shifted from the popcorn bag to the Burlington Gazette. Her thumb pinned down a Blake Gaines byline – CORONER RULES SUICIDE FOR TEEN.

“Did you see this?”

“See what?” asked Azra from the love seat.

“The guy who hit my tree? His son – Jacob, sixteen years old – killed himself yesterday afternoon.”

“Yes, I saw.”

“Says he turned down counseling at the high school. Says his friends had seen him going to the cemetery every day after school. Says his mother came home from working at Sentry and found him. Can you imagine how horrible? A husband and a son, in two weeks?”

“Horrible.” February was black and cold in the windows behind him. The popping corn had reached a frenzy, steam venting out the end of the bag. Donna pulled it gingerly from the microwave. “Why couldn’t he have said yes to counseling? Why couldn’t his friends have stayed with him? Why couldn’t his mom have taken time off work?” The steam scalded her wrist. “He shouldn’t have been alone.”

Azra stared at the TV. It showed a black screen with small lines sparking atop it, the DVD paused just before the opening credits of a Great Performances production of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending.

“He wasn’t alone.”

“What?” Donna called from the kitchen.

“You can’t stop a suicide.”

She emerged from the kitchen and tore open the popped bag of corn. “What do you mean?”

“Even if you could roll back time, could reassemble the kid’s head and plead with him not to do it, he would do it anyway. Even if you appeared before him, an angel of God, and ordered him to live, he would die anyway. A suicide wants death more than anything else in the world. You can’t dissuade that kind of desire.”

“They have no idea,” Donna said, her voice growing bitter, “no idea what they’re doing to the people they love.”

“Who?”

“Suicides.” She paused. Her eyes grew gray with memory. “God, I would have done anything to save him.”

“You didn’t even know him.”

“I’m not talking about him,” Donna snapped. Then her tone softened. “I’m sorry. Just remembering my brother.”

“Oh, yeah,” Azra said quietly. “Right. Kerry.”

“Yeah. His name was Kerry.”

“I’m sorry.” He drew a deep breath. “We don’t have to watch. If you need to talk-”

“No.” She sniffed. “I just need some napkins. You can start the disc.”

Azra pressed the Play button. The title appeared, glowing in the midst of the stark darkness. Orpheus De- scending. In parentheses beneath these words appeared Williams’s original title, (Battle of Angels). Donna returned from the kitchen, settled into the love seat next to Azra, and set the warm bag between them. She looked up in time to see the fading title sequence.

“Do you believe in angels, Donna?” Azra asked.

“Me?”

“Do you believe in angels?”

“Yes.” She considered between bites of popcorn. “Yes. I suppose I always have.”

“Do you believe they can appear to humans – to us?”

“Yes.”

“And intervene on our behalf?”

“Yes.”

“Then why don’t they? Why don’t they intervene more often? Why don’t they save us? Why don’t they?”

Munching on popcorn, she stared at Azra’s intensely angry eyes and said, “We have to live. They can’t step in whenever someone’s tire goes flat. We have to live.”

“Yes. We have to live.”

Light came up in a country mercantile store. Opening lines gave way to a surreal monologue. The speaker was a middle-aged gossip named Beulah, who told about a

“poor old Wop” named Papa Romano who “sold liquor to the niggers.” A group of vigilantes paid him back by pouring coal oil over his vineyard and orchard, burning everything. Not a fire truck came that night, and old Papa Romano tried to put out the fire himself but burned alive doing it.

Donna shook her head. “People can be so cruel.”

“God can be so cruel.”

“Why do you say that?”

“I just say it.”

She leaned against him, her arm touching his from shoulder to wrist. “Let’s forget about that horrible night. Let’s just try to enjoy the movie. I wasn’t a Tennessee Williams fan before that night.”

“Me neither.”

“My brother liked the Road pictures and the Fred and Ginger movies. Light stuff. I don’t think he’d’ve much liked these plays.”

A new figure had entered the mercantile, a lean drifter with a guitar. He was speaking to the owner of the place, the woman whose father had been burned up in the orchard years before. He spoke about a tiny bird with no legs that spent its whole life in the sky. He claimed to have seen one that had died and fallen to the ground, with a sky-colored body that was feather light and the size of a pinky. It even slept on the wind, simply spreading its wings and sleeping. It never touched ground until it died. “So’d I like to be one of those birds,” he said, “they’s lots of people would like to be one of those birds and never be… corrupted!”

Donna turned to Azra. “I’d like to be one of those birds.”

He seemed to deflate. “I used to be one of those birds.”

“What do you mean?”

“Nothing. It’ll all be put right in a few weeks. It’ll all be right then.”

She watched him, his small movements, and said, “Let’s just try to get back to the way things were, before the truck accident and all this. Let’s just try to get back to being happy.”

He smiled sadly. “Yes. Let’s just try.”