On the Edge

by Parker Hudson

  “Awesome,” said Brent, holding open for Tommy the Petgirl magazine he had smuggled on the bus in his team bag.

  “Look at that,” he whispered to Tommy. The boy's reaction was immediate and predictable; the pictures depicted beautiful women in poses hecould not have imagined with a fourteen-year-old mind unless they were captured for him. He wanted to see more, but the bus was nearing the ballpark, and Brent buried the magazine in his bag. Tommy was left with an empty feeling, as if some of the wind had been knocked out of him. A voice seemed to tell him that he needed to see more, but for now he had to think about baseball.

  Maybe tonight something good would happen. His ninth-grade team had their first spring game. His dad had said he would be there. Mom and Susan too. His coach had hinted that maybe he would play in the infield It had happened almost by chance. Everybody knew that only the best players played in the infield, and Tommy had been tagged as an outfielder since Little League. For years he had tried not to let it bother him. He never had the confidence to upset a practice by pushing a coach to give him a chance in the infield.

  But deep inside he wanted to play shortstop or second base. To be noticed. Perhaps by Becky Thornton, his pretty classmate whose twin brother, Patrick, was on his team. To make a great play. To make his mom and dad proud. To see them smile together again, like they used to, because of him.

  And then yesterday, after he had charged and fielded a grounder cleanly in center field, coach told him he was playing well and that perhaps he would get a chance in the infield! Maybe tonight would be a good time for the whole family. If Tommy had known how to pray, that would certainly have been his prayer.

  The ever-growing darkness was gratifying to Balzor, but he knew its cause was the even more wonderful noise. If a human could have perched above the city at his height, taking in everything from the river on the west to the university on the east, he would have heard nothing. But to the black, horrendous Balzor there was the cacophonous din of thousands and thousands of voices—some whispering, some shouting—all lying! The combined noise was a terrible, frightening mixture of roars and screams, slowly rising to new peaks as yet more voices were added. To Balzor it was eternal music, and he planned that it would grow even louder, day by day. And as the noise grew louder, his sector of the city would grow darker still.

  Down below, just above the trees, the well manicured lawns, and the expensive houses along Devon Drive, the voices did not combine to a single roar for Streetleader Nepravel. At his level, he could make out distinct sentences now and then, as he went about his appointed tasks, his dark shape moving from house to house. From centuries of habit, his blood-red eyes darted constantly for the occasional angel who might still be around, despite the lack of prayer, as he sowed lies and discord with impunity. The spiritual lights were now almost out on his street, and as a part of the darkness, he could move almost anywhere, unchecked.

  Tonight he was bringing the demon Envy into the McKinneys’ house at the north end of Devon Drive, to recharge the voice of Bruce McKinney's envy for his neighbor's new second home. As Bruce sat down in his armchair before dinner with a new European car catalog, Nepravel nudged Envy right up behind him; and Envy began speaking words into Bruce's ear, which Bruce heard in his own voice.

  “That Tom Bryant is one lucky guy. Where does he get the money to buy a new mountain house in this economy? Isn't he in real estate development? And last weekend when we were up there together with them, Diane commented that the furnishings alone must have cost a fortune. She's already implied we're some sort of failures because we drive a perfectly good four-year-old domestic car. And the kids always want something new. Tom and Nancy only have Amy; we've got four little ones to raise. Is it my fault our new business has taken all of my money, and everything else costs so much?”

  Once Envy had started it, Nepravel knew that Bruce McKinney's own internal voice of envy, without anything to stop it, would take over, repeat it, build on it, improve it, and continue the cycle until Bruce had to act. Humans were so predictable. A single session with lies from a demon could start a voice replaying which could last for months, even years!

  So long as nothing interfered.

  Nepravel pulled Envy back and smiled grotesquely at him, smoke and sulfur escaping from his hideously smoldering mouth. He wished for a moment that Bruce could see them and smell the putrid stench that flowed from them like sewage. But Nepravel knew that there would be plenty of time for that; it didn't look like anything was going to sidetrack Bruce McKinney's rendezvous with him and the other demons when he passed. Oh, how he looked forward to the look in these stupid humans’ eyes when they finally came face to face with him, with Balzor, and with the others! Hopefully some would pass tonight in their sector. He never tired of watching that first realization of where they were going and how they had been deceived. That was what he had lived all these millennia for!

  As Nepravel and Envy floated up through the rafters and out of the McKinneys’ house, they shared together a final hideous laugh of hatred for Bruce, and for the whole human race, as they heard him say to himself, with his own internal voice: “Tom Bryant has been looking for a way to one up me ever since Diane and I bought that boat which Nancy likes so much. He may be our friend and neighbor, but he can't stand having to go out on our boat all the time. Now I'll bet he'll want to go to their mountain house instead. Well, we can't quite afford a second home right now, but when this capital infusion comes through for the company, we'll at least buy—or maybe lease—a new car to make Diane feel better. And then maybe next year a new home even nicer than Tom's—maybe at the beach.” Bruce heard just one of the tens of thousands of deceiving voices working in the northwest section of the city that night, virtually drowning out the few isolated voices that were speaking and praying the Truth.

  Nepravel nodded to Envy in mutual satisfaction as Envv headed off for another appointment to the south. Sometimes Nepravel lapsed and felt that creating envy over something like a new home was not really very important. But then he remembered that it was a higher power than he who made these assignments. And he had to admit that his meeting with Guilt, which he was now hurrying to make, was to solidify the uncrossable gulf between a mother and her daughter, which started after an explosive argument over just the same sort of small thing. Others like Sectorchief Balzor obviously had the assignments worked out, and Nepravel could certainly see with his own beady eyes that the process was working well.

  Still later that evening he had to rendezvous with a demon so powerful and so vile that he almost single-handedly sucked light into himself: Pride. On one of his regular rounds of the street, Nepravel had overheard Mark Davidson, who lived in the middle of the block, near the city park, listening to a tape which a Christian friend had given him on salvation, and Nepravel was petrified to hear almost nothing coming from Mark's internal voice of pride. Someone must have been praying for Mark or talking to him about that accursed Jesus, and Nepravel had missed it! He would have to watch Mark closely for a while, but for tonight he would personally insure that pride was turned up again within Mark. With pride playing loudly again in his head, Mark would never admit that he needed help or imagine to get down on his knees and submit to the Lord.

  Nepravel knew he had dodged a close one there. Balzor's wrath flared mercilessly on those rare occasions when someone in their sector was saved from hell by that unmentionable blood of the Lamb. Thankfully, as the voices grew louder year after year, and the city grew darker, fewer and fewer were saved. And he was particularly proud that Devon Drive was almost completely dark now. That one old couple, the Halls, across the street from the Sullivans, had the accursed Light burning in them, and they prayed together every day. But they were almost finished—good riddance—and no one listened to them anyway.

  And there was that teenager out in the suburbs, Bobbie Meredith. Every night Nepravel had to watch the answers to her prayers, incoming from heaven, for the Sullivan and Bryant families, like clockwork. Streaks o
f bright light in an otherwise gloriously dark sky. But by themselves these few answered prayers had little effect on the voices. It wasn't like the old days, when people really prayed, lighting up the whole city, causing Balzor's horde real problems. What could these few prayers do to silence so many wonderful, harmonious, lying voices on his street?

  Susan Sullivan lay back on the only part of her bed not covered with the books and papers from her homework, talking on the phone to Amy Bryant, who lived next door to her. “Did you see that ridiculous sweater Mr. Demetry was wearing today? Didn't he look dorky? Do you think he's trying to win the Worst Dressed Faculty Award in the yearbook?”

  Amy laughed. “Maybe he's trying to impress Mr. Peters. Petey wears stuff like that, and maybe Mr. Demetry wants to be a principal too, someday. Wouldn't he be just perfect!”

  The thought of young Mr. Demetry as a principal made Susan laugh along with Amy—it seemed so absurd. The girls had finished their homework and were comparing notes on the day, before supper.

  “Was that Drew walking with Sally after gym class?” Amy asked.

  “Yes, but she said they were just talking about the school newspaper; he didn't ask her out or anything.”

  “Susan, dinner's ready,” her mother called upstairs. “We've got to hurry to make it over to Tommy's game.”

  “Hey, I gotta go. No, not tennis. I told Tommy I'd go to his first game, and now it's turned into a family thing. You know.”

  “OK, Mom!” she yelled towards the hall.

  She told Amy goodbye, slid off the bed, and carefully arranged all of her books for school in the morning. Susan looked around her room: from the top of her desk to the row of stuffed animals collected since she was a little girl, everything was in order. She stopped in front of the mirror over her bureau to check her hair and makeup, and then she bounced down the stairs to the kitchen with a spring in her step.

  The world was reasonably OK to Susan Sullivan. Except for her parents’ relationship, which seemed to worsen every month, everything else was, like her room, in the neat order that most firstborns seem to appreciate. She was a consistent B+ to A-student, a member of student council, one of the junior members of the varsity cheerleading team, and a strong tennis and basketball player in her own right. As importantly, Susan just seemed to exude confidence and quiet strength. She was popular, but she was good-natured and genuinely concerned about others, particularly her friends, of whom there were many. But Amy and Bobbie were her best friends.

  Occasionally Susan was struck by how different they all were, yet she truly loved them both. The three of them had been together since sixth grade. Amy Bryant was good looking and very popular with the senior boys; she had even dated one or two college freshmen when her parents were out of town. Amy hinted once or twice to Susan that she was quite knowledgeable about boys and had even come close to “doing it” with a college date. That was all so incredible to Susan that she simply dismissed it as Amy's occasional bragging.

  An average student, Amy tended to view her world through how others viewed her. Sometimes the resulting anxiety would make Susan laugh, and she would tease Amy for being so uptight about her appearance. But acceptance and approval meant a lot to Amy, and she sought it through friends, boys, and athletics.

  Amy laughed a lot and kidded almost everyone, but she used Susan as her rudder to push her back on course when she became too distracted by contradictory opinions about anything—from the color of her skirt to where they should think about going to college. She even once told Susan that it was as if there were a lot of different voices in her head, and she could only really trust Susan's.

  Bobbie Meredith was just the opposite in many ways. Not nearly as striking as Amy, Bobbie was nevertheless quite popular with most of the girls and with many of the boys. While Amy bounced from boyfriend to boyfriend, Bobbie quietly dated two of the brighter boys in their class and one senior. Like Susan, she tended to stay in one “serious” relationship for quite a while. Unlike Susan or Amy, she was not at all athletic, but she made the best grades of the three. She did not live on Devon Drive with Susan and Amy; her family had a slightly smaller home on the northern edge of their school district.

  The main thing about Bobbie was her faith. One day, when she was fourteen, she told Susan and Amy that with her father the previous evening she had prayed to have Jesus come into her life. Although she did not parade her faith, she did tell her friends on a couple of occasions in the intervening two years that events or testimonies at her Spirit-filled church had really moved her and that she felt like a different person because she knew that Jesus lived inside her. It had once struck Amy that Susan was quietly strong and confident because she was born that way. Bobbie, on the other hand, was just as strong and just as confident, but it was as if those qualities had been added later to Bobbie. And Bobbie herself occasionally almost marveled that these qualities had been given to her as gifts.

  Susan—and Amy and the other kids in their class—knew of Bobbie's faith, and most respected her for it. Only a few kidded her now and then; one or two actively ridiculed her. She was pretty good-natured about it, never seeming to get angry. But Susan, like the others, did not really understand it. On the few occasions when Susan had spent the night at Bobbie's home and gone to church with her parents and two brothers, she had definitely felt something different, particularly from the youth minister, Glenn Jamison. He just seemed to understand teenagers. But Susan's own family didn't go to church, and Richard Sullivan thought that organized religion was unnecessary to a caring, moral person. His voice Susan heard every day, not just on an occasional Sunday. So whatever it was that Bobbie had was definitely noticed by her friends; but it went no further.

  Susan, Amy, and Bobbie were best friends, unconsciously respecting their differences and enjoying each other's company. They shared everything with each other. They kidded each other. They supported each other. They imagined that they would always be together. And as their junior year was drawing to a close and they were preparing to look at colleges in earnest, they sensed that a special year was beginning for them, culminating in graduation in just over twelve months. They were looking forward to being seniors.

  That thought put the bounce in Susan's step as she walked into their kitchen early that spring evening to find her mother finishing a large salad for their supper. “Where are Dad and Tommy?” she asked.

  “Your father is working late,” Janet said, a little too icily, concentrating on the salad bowl, “and Tommy took the team bus over to Riverside. The game starts at 7:30, so we've got to eat and get going to be there on time.”

  “Isn't Dad going to make it? I heard him tell Tommy at breakfast that he'd be there.”

  “I know, dear. He called and said he has to work late, but he'll try to come directly to the game.” Janet said it as positively as she could, but it was part of an earlier battle for her—a battle she had lost. And she didn't have the energy to recall it again with Susan. She hoped Susan would not press her with it, as she herself had pressed earlier with Richard.

  Susan sensed the weariness under her mother's voice, despite the otherwise normal tone, and decided not to push further into the uncharted water of her parents’ relationship right then. So she played the game with her mom, gave a reassuring smile, and said, “I hope so too.”

  While Bruce McKinney was listening to the voice of Envy, Richard Sullivan, his neighbor and attorney for almost ten years, sat behind his desk downtown and reviewed the contract for the capital investment which Bruce's company needed to survive.

  If the other attorney did a good job, maybe this will be simple and I really can make Tommy's game. God knows I'd rather be there than here, he thought, as he glanced out the window at the long shadows being cast by the tall buildings in the sunset. It was quiet in their space—only one other attorney was working late. For a moment he allowed himself to picture Tommy, Susan, and Janet. How did life get so complicated? Were other families on the same treadmills? When did
it start? How would it stop? When could he spend more time with his children?

  But then, before those thoughts could build, another voice came up, blocking them out. What else can I possibly do?The mortgage on the house and the overhead at the firm have to be paid every month. Janet stopped trying to understand me years ago; she's so caught up in that idiot TV station that she's forgotten how to be a wife. Susan and Tommy do need me, and I'll try to spend more time with them; but even more they need a roof over their heads. And besides, Bruce is counting on me to represent him in this deal. I've just got to review this contract now.

  He turned off that one sided debate and waded back into the contract, still hoping to finish in time for the game. Forty-five minutes later, he knew it would be impossible. He exhaled a long sigh and cursed the other attorney. He's got these conditions for closing all wrong, at least as Bruce explained them to me. I'll have to redraft this whole section. Reaching for his dictating machine, he blotted out a momentary thought of Tommy. I'll make it up to you, son. Then he began dictating.

  As so often happens, the baseball game itself was an anticlimax. The important events were those that did not happen, because they had the most lasting effects.

  In the bottom of the first inning, standing in center field, Tommy could pick out his mother and sister in the visitors’ stands; but he could not see his father. He imagined that his dad would arrive late, directly from work.

  Tommy spent the first four innings in his usual places, center field and on the bench, alternating with Brent. He realized in the top of the fifth inning that he might have made a mistake by mentioning the infield to his mother. While his team batted with a two-run lead and he and Brent sat together, watching, their coach walked in front of them, studying his lineup card. Tommy summoned the courage which had built during the whole day and asked, a note of hope in his voice, “Hey, coach, you remember about me maybe playing in the infield?”