“I
don’t know, Braylon,” his older brother said, a little impatiently. “But I
think you should ask yourself if the job’s worth the…” The voice in his Bluetooth
fuzzed out at the end of the sentence.
Braylon
glanced at his daughter playing with the sawdust under a park swing. She
was twenty-three months old, and interested in everything, even sawdust. There was
a little red and yellow object sitting on the swing over her head. A fallen leaf?
It was a moist autumn day in Oregon and
leaves fell with every gust of wind. “It’s the only job I’ve found that pays
well enough for us to live on, with Aurelia’s spending habits,” said Braylon. His
brother Mel said something that fuzzed out completely. Braylon pushed the Bluetooth
a little deeper into his ear. “What’d you say?”
“I
said talk to Aurelia about it. Talk to her about economizing. Or decide you
shouldn’t have to work at Vape-a-tude if you don’t want to.”
Easy
for you to say, Braylon thought. Marrying a guy who owns a profitable app
start-up, you can afford to decide to be an artist, Mel. Shivering in a gust of
wind and wishing he’d brought his coat, Braylon said, “You know Aurelia. She
has a rationale for every last thing she buys. It’s all vital to her
self-image, or something. If I object to a purchase she’ll say it’s because I’m
against her finding herself, she says.”
“She
says that? Weird. I’m lucky with Robert. He actually listens to me.”
“Well
yeah—” He broke off, staring at his daughter. She had pulled the little round
red thing off the swing and was gawking at it. “Hold on, Mel. Gabby, what’s
that you’ve got, girl?”
Braylon
strode over and took it from her hand, at which she immediately burst into
tears. “Hold on, hold on…” It was a small sort of homemade bracelet made of
cheap beads and imitation-gold foil. It was roughly shaped like an angel, with the
red beads being its body and legs and arms, and its head being a circle of
white beads, gold beads for a halo, gold foil for wings. It was in a small
plastic bag with a note in blue ink that said, Please accept this angel made
to share smiles. Keep or share.
“What’d you do to your kid to make her wail like that?” Mel asked—just kidding, but annoying.
Braylon
opened the plastic sac and took out the little angel bracelet and handed it the
baby. “Here, Gabriella, you’re as spoiled as your mama. Don’t tell her I said
that. Do you want me to put the bracelet on your arm?” He reached for it but
Gabby snatched it away, pouting. “No!”
She turned away, and toddled a few steps,
staring at the angel of beads and wire and foil.
“Fine,
be that way.”
She
gnawed on the beads. New tooth coming in.
“Anyway, Mel—dude, we got the results of that test in. Vape-a-tude’s most popular vape turns out to be toxic. It’s some humectant they’re using—”
“I thought all that stuff was
just water vapor?”
“No,
there’s flavorings and perfumes and the humectants to give it a feeling like
cigarette smoke in your mouth. And nicotine of course. And they found some
Chinese company that was making a new humectant supercheap but it’s not what
they said it was and it’s giving people lung disease or something—”
“So
that means they’ll discontinue it?”
“No
it means they should discontinue it. But they said that the FDA will
force them to discontinue it soon enough so Carl says until then why not sell
as much as they can, it’s our most popular flavor and they don’t want to get
stuck with all the recalls and—”
“That
is so unethical! I can see why you don’t want to work there.”
“I’m
VP of marketing and it’s the best paycheck I ever had but how can I stay? And
there’s a toxic work environment to go with the toxic—” He broke off, staring. Gabby
was bent over double, coughing, flapping her arm at her mouth. “Uh—gotta call
you back, Mel.”
Braylon
rushed to Gabby, didn’t see the bead angel anywhere. He knelt by the wheezing
toddler, raised up her head a little, saw her cheeks were deep red, her lips turning
blue. Looking in her open mouth he could see the angel’s white-bead halo poking
up at the back of her throat. There was a little blood brimming around it. She’d
swallowed the thing somehow, perhaps thinking it candy—he sometimes gave her
red gummy bears. Heart thudding, he pushed his index finger in her open mouth, trying
to snag the top of the bead angel. She squealed, not understanding, attempting
to wriggle away from him—
“What
are you doing to that baby girl!” a woman hissed at him.
He
reflexively turned to see a chunky blond woman in a spangled America First
t-shirt and a spangled blue and red dress, standing by a big tattooed man with
a vaper in one hand—
“She’s
my daughter!” Braylon shouted. His finger was still working to snag the
circle of beads. “She’s got—”
“Get
him off her, Dutch!”
the woman shrieked, her eyes wild, her mouth quivering, hands fisted. “Get
him off that baby!”
“Karen
sweetie, I got this,” the man said. He stepped in and grabbed Braylon by the
collar just as he almost had a latch on the beads—and Braylon was jerked
backwards, his neck whiplashing painfully, Gabby falling back, flapping her
arms…
The
burly stranger dragged Braylon to his feet, turned him around—and slammed his
chin with an uppercut.
#
Waking
was like laboriously swimming up through gelatin. That’s what Braylon thought,
in a hazy way. Everything was blurred by a translucent thickness. “Hold still!”
said gruff voice. A pain forked through his neck. He groaned. The pain woke him
up some more and the blur swept away. He was looking up into the frowning face
of a young Black man. He was wearing a blue shirt that had a uniform look to it.
An RN, probably. The ceiling was white, with a diffuse light set into it.
Hospital
room, he thought.
“Lay
still now,” the nurse said more gently, managing a smile. “You’ve got a bad
neck injury. There’s a brace around your neck, best not to disturb it.”
“My
daughter…Gabby…”
The
nurse’s smile vanished.
#
“I
don’t understand why her gravestone is crooked,” Braylon said. It came out
sounding like ‘graveshtone ish cruck-ed,” because of the medication. He was on Oxycodone
for the chronic pain radiating from his misaligned upper vertebrae, and the heavy
dose made him mush-mouthed.
Gabriella’s
headstone—shaped like a somber teddy bear, at Aurelia’s insistence—was surrounded
by ivy and thistles and a few March wildflowers, though they paid a fee to keep
it clear of weeds. And now it was tilted to one side.
“They settle sometimes,” Aurelia said, through the Bluetooth. “Gravestones. The ground gets wet or something. Can you straighten it?”
Braylon tried.
He gasped as the pain of the effort pierced right through the Oxycodone. “Tried.
Can’t.”
“Oh yes. Your
chronic pain.”
She said it
as if he was malingering, or milking it. “The doctor diagnosed damage from the
guy’s whiplashing my neck—” He said it like ‘whish-lashing’.
“Nobody
said anything different. You going to be okay to testify this week against
those two? You’re slurring.”
He licked
his lips and made an effort to speak slowly and clearly. “I wish it could be a
criminal case instead of just civil.”
“The DA
said no to a criminal charge. But we’ll win the suit if you can show up and
tell the jury what happened—and say it clearly. He’s got money, he owns a
Harley dealership.”
She’d already
talked to another lawyer about divorcing him. But she wanted the settlement
first.
“I have to
go. We’ll get them to fix the headstone.”
She hung up
on him. He looked at the crooked teddy bear. Aurelia had given Gabby a teddy
bear, which she’d ignored, mostly, in favor of a giraffe. But now the teddy
bear’s stone likeness sat on Gabby’s head.
Braylon
walked away, trying to remember if he’d taken his antidepressants. He weaved between
headstones. It seemed to take forever to get to the street. Starting across the
street, he called his brother on the Bluetooth. A ringing, and then Mel’s voice
appeared in his ear. “Yes Braylon? I can’t stay on the line, I’m at a company
picnic and Robert is about to speak—”
“Her grave-shtone
is bent over, all crookedsy.”
“Her what?
Speak clearly, dude.”
Braylon
stepped out into the street, heard the roar of an engine, looked up to see Danny
“Dutch” Griffin driving his enormous giant-wheeled black Dodge Ram pickup truck
straight for him, and the look in Griffin’s eyes said that he had every intention
of running Braylon down. The lawsuit…
Braylon
stepped back, turning, but the truck caught his hip as he leaned forward to run—and
now he was spinning through the air.
A thump. He
found himself on his back. He was staring up at a post, next to the cemetery,
that had moss atop like hair on a head. Someone had scratched the semblance of
a face on the old wood.
“Are
you the Green Man?” Braylon asked it.
The
scratched-in mouth twitched. Braylon thought it said yes, but he wasn’t
sure because it was being blotted over by the encroaching darkness.
#
Braylon
found himself floating over the sidewalk. And over a body on the sidewalk: a man
lying on his back, with his head cracked open on large rock at the base of the
Green Man post. The body seemed as empty as an old suit someone had tossed
away.
The
man lying on the concrete looked familiar.
The sidewalk under the dead man was flowing like a creek of dirty, mossy wet cement. Then it was drying out; then it was cracking up, breaking down, covered over with water and drying up again. And then it was reconstructed into the sidewalk with the dead man lying across it—all within a few seconds. He dimly realized his relationship to time was askew. Dim realization was all he had about anything. He tried to remember how he came to be there, and couldn’t. He stared at the body, the man’s gawking, unblinking face, and then made up his mind: That is me.
But
who am I? Or—who
was I?
He
couldn’t remember his name.
He
turned to look at the post with the crude face of the Green Man on it. “Can you
help me?” he asked, wondering why he bothered to ask it anything.
Then
he seemed to see himself in a park, with a little girl. He was talking on his Bluetooth
to someone. His daughter was putting something into her mouth, and he wasn’t
watching her and she was…
“Greetings,
Braylon,” said a creaking, ageless voice. It said something else in a language
Braylon had never heard before. He thought it had a vague Celtic ring to it.
The
park was gone, and Braylon was aware of the Green Man standing beside him: a
man with bark and lichen for skin, and leaves and moss for hair and a wide
mouth and eyes that might be black or just very dark green. He was shrouded in greenery
but there was a murky sense of a human body too. Braylon could smell him: a rainforest
after a monsoon.
“Your
reproductive body is dead,” said the Green Man, in the unknown language, but the
words became English in Braylon’s mind. “Your subtle body is what you have now,
Braylon. Yours is almost so subtle it’s not there, but you will have a chance
to make it more there.”
Braylon
looked down at himself—and saw almost nothing. Only a sort of wavering of the
air. There and gone, there and gone. There again. He tried to look at his hands—he
could feel them, in a nearly-numb way. But he couldn’t see them.
“Your
selfhood will grow, stem and blossom, if you work for it,” The Green Man said. “I
can help you a little, by introducing you to someone.”
“Why
help me?” Braylon said, feeling a sudden fear; a throbbing suspicion.
“You
asked me to help you, a few moments ago, and I was moved by your sincerity,”
said the Green Man. “Also, you cracked your head on my support rock.”
“I
want to see my daughter,” said Braylon. Blurting it, really.
“That
is not impossible,” said the Green Man. “But come with me, and speak to Rusty.
See what he says.”
The
Green Man became a sentient greenness flowing over the wall of the cemetery.
Braylon wanted to follow—and wanting made it so. He was suddenly flowing over
the wall too.
A
timeless moment, and they were in the cemetery beside an old, mossy stone tomb.
A rusted metal fence around the tomb had fallen or been pulled down; the
wrought iron was figured with Catholic imagery, and gazing up at them from the
ground was the face Jesus in wrought iron.
It
stared at nothing—then it looked through nothing, right at Braylon. Then it
quivered—and a man arose from the fence; a man of rusted iron. The iron face of
Jesus regarded him Braylon thoughtfully. The iron was blackened with age;
flecked with rust.
Braylon
felt like backing away; afraid of a divine judgment. Remembering that he’d
failed to help take care of his mother as she lay dying. He had left it to his
sister, and the memory was eating slowly at him—like rust.
The
Green Man spoke to Rusty Jesus in yet another language, one seeming a mingling
of Hebrew and Greek.
Rusty
Jesus responded in a deep, gentle voice; speaking the same language, lips
unmoving, but the words emanating from the rusted iron face.
“Is
he…Jesus?” Braylon asked.
“He
is a Christus,” said the Green Man.
“Christ?
Made of rusty iron?”
“Rusty
iron was used to transfix Christus onto the wooden cross,” said the Green Man. “Between
this world and The Cosmos In Its Entirety there is an intermediate
spirit, which some call Christ and some call Krishna and some call by other
names—even names spoken on other worlds. He is the Intermediate. The Intermediate
emanates into many forms. Some are female; some are male. Some are stone, some
are iron; some are of wood, some of flesh. He sometimes formulates in lonely
places, for lonely persons. Thus he came here, to the image in the iron.”
Then
Rusty Jesus spoke directly to Braylon. “I am told you wish to see your
daughter.” The words were not spoken in English but they became English in
Braylon’s mind.
“I…yes.
Can it be done?”
“If
you will put yourself into my hands.” Hands of rusted iron stretched out, creaking
as they came, and cupped open for him.
“I’ll
do anything,” said Braylon. He felt no deception in this being; he felt no
antipathy. He knew nowhere else to go.
He
urged himself into the cupped hands of rusty iron…
Braylon
was in a plastic bag. Giant hands placed him, within the bag, a giant swing
seat, and then came a giggle that seemed to weep, and fingers that plucked him
out –and he was being thrust toward a large blurry face, a child’s face, the
open mouth.
“Rusty!”
he cried out. “Rusty Christ!”
The
mouth was gone. A void opened up before him.
“You
fell into your mind,” said the deep, gentle voice. “Come.”
Then
Braylon was falling, through a vast emptiness, but he was not alone; someone
was here, though he couldn’t see anything. There was nothing to be seen.
Then
came a glimmer of blue; a flicker of scarlet; a fillip of green; a twist of
sunlight…It spun about a central point. Braylon was drawn toward it, and heard the
voice say, “Go in peace. Go in trust.”
Then
he was in a whirling whirlpool of glass; a crystal that was liquid and solid at
once. Colors changed places and danced; blue asserted itself; red protested. Braylon
remembered a song his father had liked, “Crystal Blue Persuasion”. Maybe that’s
what this was.
He fell…and was swallowed.
A
period of anguish…He bore the anguish. Bearing it seemed to make him stronger...
Then
he was walking under a blue sky, on a path through a forest of growths that looked
like coral, except for the eyes, numerous eyes on each one, turning to watch
him…
He
glanced down at himself and saw he had something of a body. It was translucent
but it was almost human. It had fog for clothing.
Under the biggest coral tree was a little girl, his own little girl, in the same yellow jumper she’d been wearing. She seemed more solid than he. She was smiling at a small sprout of a coral tree; it was gazing back at her.
“Gabriella!”
Braylon called.
Gabriella
looked up, and beamed, and ran toward him—they embraced.
She
took his hand, and then she led him along the path, saying, “This way, Daddy. They
told me which way we should go.”
“You
speak like an older child,” he said. “You walk like one too.”
“I’m
not any age now, Daddy. Come on!”
They
emerged from the forest of seeing coral, out into an open plain green with gently
waving grasses. Ahead was a low, rocky ridge. The path led between two great
standing stones. Beyond there was a pillar of mist, which emanated a rushing
sound that seemed to resonate with all things everywhere.
“There,
let’s see what’s over there!” she said.
Braylon
let her tug him along, though he worried about what might be over that ridge.
They
crossed between the stones, the rushing sound becoming a strangely reassuring
roar. They stepped into the caressing mist and onto the ridge. With dread, Braylon
looked down and saw what was there…
An
ineffably tall and powerful waterfall was falling through the pillar of mist.
It seemed to be falling out of the cobalt sky. It fell into an enormous pool;
from the pool issued nine streams, symmetrically raying outward in five
directions. Some went into caverns in the escarpment under the ridge; others stretched
off into the infinite distance through a field of rippling green and yellow.
“Where
does it fall from?” he asked.
“From
everywhere,” she said. “Let’s look at it up close!”
“Wait—!”
Braylon cried.
But she stepped out into the air, beyond the ridge, and—still gripping his hand—she floated there.
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