The Chosen

by John G. Hartness

  I took her hand and pulled her to a stop outside the bar. “Why don’t you go for a ride with me? I’ve got my motorcycle. You can leave Bubba or whatever his name is to cover, and you can take a night off. We’ll just go for a ride.”

  “His name’s Jeff, and I can’t do that to him. Tell you what, you come on in here and have a few beers, and if you’re still straight enough to drive after I get done, then maybe, just maybe, I’ll take that ride with you. If you’re lucky.”

  The bar was everything you’d expect from a bar in a little town in Texas. There was plenty of Lone Star Beer, a Texas flag, a couple of pool tables, a tired old guy propping up the end of the bar, and a slightly greasy bartender with a gut that had its own zip code. I perched on a stool at the end of the bar to watch Myra work and to drink my body weight in beer for the night. I was impressed at the change in her in just the short walk across the parking lot.

  In the diner, she had been the sweet waitress, all “how you doin’, honey” and “can I get you somethin’ else?” But in the bar, she was just as quick with a dirty joke as any of the guys, and she moved across the sawdust-covered floor with a nimble grace, balancing trays full of drinks and dodging wandering hands with ease. I sat there for a few hours, sipping beer and watching her ass as she served drinks all night. When the last drunk had been poured out into the night, she tossed her apron on the bar and sat down next to me.

  “Nice place,” I said.

  “It’ll do.” She reached over the bar into the cooler and grabbed a couple of Lone Star longnecks. She passed me one and popped hers open on the edge of the bar. She drained about half of it in one long pull, looked me straight in the eye, and said, “Come on, cowboy. Let’s go out back and look at the stars.”

  I might have weaved a little on the way out, but we eventually found ourselves sitting in a couple of lawn chairs in the bed of a ’65 Ford pickup truck that had the hood off and weeds growing up through where the engine block used to sit. Myra had picked up another six-pack on the way out of the bar, and we just sat there for a few minutes looking at the stars before she broke the silence.

  “So what do you want, mister?”

  “Adam.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “My name. It’s Adam. I figured it’s only fair. And I don’t really know what I want. I was just passing through, saw a pretty girl, and thought I might like to get to know her a little better.”

  “Really?”

  “Scout’s honor.” I even held up the appropriate finger sign.

  “Something tells me you were no boy scout.”

  “Now, that might be true, but my intentions are nothing but honorable.”

  “Right.”

  “Well, I might have a loose definition of honorable. But I don’t mean you any harm, at any rate.”

  “I can take that, I guess. And if nothing else, you’re cute—”

  I interrupted her by leaning in for a kiss, and the rest of the night became a lot more interesting. I was there for several months, until I started to recognize the look in her eyes and decided to move on. I never thought I’d see her again, much less be kissing her in the middle of the same diner, with that same old truck peeking out from behind the bar twenty-five years later.

  Chapter 6

  In retrospect, kissing Myra right then only had about a one-in-three shot of defusing the situation, but it was a better shot than anything else I could think of, and I really didn’t want to get physical with her. Well, not in a confrontational way, anyhow. Not just because I don’t like hitting women, but also because the cook had come out of the kitchen to watch the floorshow, and he looked like he could cause some serious damage if so inclined. Plus, it had worked once before, so I had history on my side. At least, that was what I thought when I went for it. I poured everything I had into the kiss.

  It’s not that I have any supernatural abilities, other than immortality and a little bit of extrasensory perception where Eve and Lucky are concerned, but after a couple of eons you pick up a few things. I spent most of the fifteenth century in France, so I learned from some of the best.

  When I felt the iron melt out of her spine, I stopped kissing her, looked into her eyes, and said, “We should talk. Outside. All three of us.”

  I led her to the door, Emily in tow. We walked out of the diner, around the side of the building to a couple of concrete picnic tables where the crew took their smoke breaks, and I sat Myra down. Emily sat next to her, and I sat on the table cross-legged, facing them.

  “So, I guess I have a little explaining to do.” I was trying to figure out how I was going to get part of the story out without telling them the whole thing when something new happened.

  Let me interject something here. This was something new. That’s a big deal. I haven’t really been surprised by anything that happened in the world since Alexander made his great sweeps across the world, and that was just more me being impressed by his audacity and drive than actual surprise. But what happened next has never happened to me before, at least not since we left the Garden.

  “You do indeed, Adam. You do indeed. And I think both of these young ladies deserve to know the truth. The whole truth, as they say.” The voice came from behind me, and I knew it instantly.

  Michael, the first unfallen angel I’d seen in the flesh since we left the Garden, did not look happy to see me. The Sword of Heaven wore a French blue dress shirt with white cuffs, and the little priss actually had cufflinks in. There was no hint of wings anywhere, but his blond hair did float a little in the afternoon sunlight. I always thought it a bit unfair how disgustingly pretty angels were when they manifested, but Michael was really taking things to the extreme. Even his slacks were perfect, and no one had perfectly creased slacks in that part of Texas.

  So let’s take a good look at my afternoon so far. I drove cross-country on a motorcycle I borrowed from Lucypher Morningstar to look for Eve, my long-lost-and-content-to-stay-that-way immortal first love. I encountered a woman who I had relations with a couple decades before, along with the offspring of said relations. Then, the friggin’ Archangel Michael showed up, demanding that I tell the women the truth, of all ridiculous things.

  I did the only thing I could think of; I walked briskly across the dusty parking lot from the diner to the run-down bar that shared the interstate exit and ordered myself a shot and a beer. Some things just cannot be addressed properly without a certain level of mental lubrication, and the situation was shaping up to be Cuervo-sized.

  Once I felt I had properly fortified myself for the coming confrontation, I made my way back across the parking lot to the picnic table where the Archangel sat chatting idly with my daughter while her mother smoked a cigarette.

  These are not situations that occur every day, not even if you’re immortal.

  “Myra, I think I owe you an explanation,” I started.

  “Explanation? Explanation?” Usually, when a word of four syllables involved more than two octaves, whatever followed was not going to be good, so I decided to cut her off before she could get a head of steam going.

  “Yes. Explanation.” I used The Voice.

  It’s nothing supernatural. I really don’t have any abilities other than the touch of ESP everyone has and a ridiculous lifespan, but with age does come a certain level of authoritative voice, and I had elevated mine to capitalization status through a long period of study with the Greek orators. Those boys could talk; let me tell you.

  “I know that I left without any warning, and I know that I showed up here again the same way. But I did warn you when we first became involved that I wouldn’t be staying very long, and that one day, you’d likely wake up to find me gone. We agreed that we’d enjoy the time we had, and that we wouldn’t put any strings on each other.”

  “Yes, but that was before…” she trailed off and looked down, suddenly very interested in her scuffed sneakers.

  “Before what, Myra?”

  “Before I fell in love with you,” she said
in a very small voice, the confident woman near fifty turned teenager-shy again. She looked as though she wanted to be doing anything else in the world other than having that conversation. I knew the feeling, and I’d been there before. I could only imagine what it must have felt like going through it for the first time, and from the other perspective.

  “Myra, I loved you, too. I still love you, after a fashion, but there are some things about me that you didn’t know then, things that make it hard for me to fall in love.”

  “Hard, Adam?” Michael chimed in. Uninvited, as usual.

  “Michael, when I need your input on human relationships, I’ll look it up in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Until then, butt out. Myra, I’m not really sure how to put this, but it’s probably pretty obvious that I’m not exactly normal. I look about the same as I did when I left, and that’s been—”

  “Twenty-four years and three months, give or take a week.”

  “How do you keep track of it that closely…?” I trailed off as I looked over at Emily, who appeared about twenty-three-and-a-half. I decided that finishing the question would make me look infinitely stupid and lead to more unnecessary input from my good buddy Michael.

  “Yeah, a little over twenty-four years. So, the thing is, this is not easy to explain—”

  “Adam, you’ve had work done. It’s okay. We’re not Los Angeles, but we’re not complete bumpkins, you know. There’s even anesthesia for facelifts in Texas nowadays, and folks don’t even assume guys are gay if they get a little scalpel action. Well, most folks don’t, anyway.”

  I laughed. I’d had this conversation on more than one uncomfortable occasion in the past few millennia, but I’d never been accused of cosmetic surgery. It was certainly a day of firsts. I was so taken aback by the idea that I just blurted out the truth without thinking a second about it.

  “I didn’t have work done, honey. I’m immortal. I don’t age. Remember Adam from Genesis? Yeah, that would be me. And Moses got most of that stuff right because I told it to him while we hung out in Israel.”

  “Yeah, whatever. You’re immortal, and I’m Marilyn Monroe.”

  “No, really. I look the same because I always look the same, at least since we left the Garden. And I left without saying anything because I’m not strong enough to stick around and watch the people that I care about grow old while I stay forever young.”

  “What?”

  “He’s telling the truth, love. If you just take it at face value for now, we can get on to the grand reconciliation, and we can all leave this dump of a town. Honestly, Adam, why you insist upon finding trysts in such Father-forsaken holes in the cosmos, I will never understand.”

  “Michael, for the last time. Shut. Your. Mouth. And when did you decide to be British?”

  “Just now. It’s a pretentious decade, and I can’t possibly fit in without an appropriately posh accent.”

  “I think you’ll manage just fine. Anyway, Myra, like I was saying. I’m immortal, and the reason I left was because I really did, I mean do, care for you, and it’s just too hard staying in one place for very long because of the inevitable questions about not aging. That, coupled with the whole ‘watching the people you love grow old and die’ thing, well, it’s just gotten to be too much for me over the centuries, so now I relocate every couple of years at the most, and I stay less time in places where I’m afraid that a real connection might be starting because I figure it’s easier on everyone involved if I leave sooner rather than later, you know, giving them a chance to move on with their lives and that sort of thing, and… I should probably stop talking now.”

  “Yes. Stopping talking now would probably be a safe move.” Her voice was icy, and the look on her face made me inch out of arm’s reach, fearing another slap might be forthcoming.

  She stared down at the ground, took a deep, shuddering breath, and then lifted her head to face me. “You son of a bitch. You selfish, uncaring, thoughtless, chickenshit son of a bitch. You ran out on me after I laid in your arms every night for six months. I told you things I’ve never told anyone before or since. I told you my hopes, my dreams, my fears, the embarrassing things that I’ve never once dreamed of having the courage to tell another living soul. Then one morning, I come in after my shower, and you’re gone!

  “Gone, without a note, without even a slap on the ass and a thank you. You worthless motherfucker, you leave me without any reason, without any hope of ever seeing you again, and then you have the unmitigated gall to come back in here twenty-four years later, riding on your big motorcycle, spouting some bullshit about being immortal and scared to love, and expect me to fall for it just like I fell for your line of shit the first time you were here?

  “Well fuuuuuuck you, buddy. That train left the station a long time ago, and the only thing I got out of the deal was a beautiful, smart, darling daughter, and you don’t ever, ever deserve to be part of her life. So get back on your motorcycle and ride off into the sunset you came out of, and don’t you dream of coming back into my life or my baby’s life!”

  By the time she finished, she was full-on sobbing, screaming, and looking for things to throw at me. Before the cook decided it might be worth it to come through the screen door where he stood watching the show, I reached for Myra, put my arms around her, and held her.

  When I pulled her to my chest, memories came flooding back— waking up with her naked and lying across my chest in the middle of the night, the ceiling fan doing nothing to cut through the heat of the day that still lay across us like a blanket; sitting on a hillside by a pond, watching the sun set and pretending to give a damn about the corks we had floating on the ends of our fishing lines; watching her sling coffee and hash browns along the length of the breakfast counter to long-haul truckers and locals alike, each served with a smile and a saucy shake of the hips. I held her as she cried like a baby who had just lost her favorite toy, and more than one tear of my own slipped down my face to dampen the curtain of hair hiding her face.

  Finally, she cried herself out, got tired of hitting my back with her fists, and pulled away.

  “Better?”

  “Yeah, I just needed to get that off my chest.”

  “Good. It’s good to see you again. I’m glad you’re well.”

  “That might be stretching it most days, but I’m still here. And I think I’m glad to see you, too. But why did you really leave? And really, where is your fountain of youth? Because most days, especially the way my feet feel when I pull a double, I’d like a swig.”

  “Well, you see, here’s the problem.”

  “What?”

  “I was telling the truth.”

  “About what?”

  “About the hard to believe bits. You know, immortal, Garden of Eden, Adam. That stuff? That was real. I’m that Adam, and I left because I didn’t want to fall in love with you and watch you die, and because I thought if I left soon enough, I could be gone and you could move on, leaving me as just a faded, but pleasant memory from your youth.”

  Emily, who had been content to sit and watch things unfold to this point, asked, “Let me get this straight. You’re the Adam, of Adam and Eve, fig leaves, snakes, apples, and Cain and Abel?”

  “Yes to all of the above, except Lucky, I mean, Lucypher, wasn’t really a serpent, just kind of a metaphorical snake in the grass, and the fig leaves were just inserted by uptight artists. We went straight from naked to woven grass skirts, actually.”

  “So if you’re Adam with a capital A, and I’m your daughter, which you seem oddly willing to accept at face value without any mention of DNA testing or other proof—”

  “It’s the eyes. I recognize them. My eyes always breed true in the first generation, so I learned to recognize them after a while.”

  “Okay, so you’re Adam of the original humans, Adam and Eve, and I’m your daughter, and you’re immortal. What does that make me?”

  “From what I can tell, lifespan tends to follow the norms for the period when you’re born, so you won’
t end up immortal. At least, none of my children have been since Cain.”

  “And exactly how many of them have there been?”

  “Four hundred thirty-seven.”

  I remembered how much I disliked certain aspects of hanging around with angels. They kept a lot of trivia floating around in their heads. Michael, being ridiculously honest and forthcoming even at the most inopportune times, felt that he had to share my exact offspring census with the gathered family at a time when some obfuscation may have been the more tactful approach.

  “Four hundred thirty-seven? That’s not a family, that’s a regiment! Jesus, what do you do, just leave a couple of bastards in every town where you stop for lunch?” Emily seemed a little outraged at finding out that she was part of such a large family.