Under-Heaven

by Tim Greaton

  “That’s sad.”

  “Yeah, but everyone dies, I suppose.” Ricky’s eyes had a far off look.

  “Should we talk about…you know?” I asked. I didn’t want to say I was anxious to learn his secret, but it had been burning like a firebrand in my mind ever since he mentioned it.

  “I really want to tell you,” Ricky said focusing on me again. “But it’s bad.”

  I glanced at his clothes. His tee shirt was completely white, and his pants were tan only up to his shins, pretty good for him.

  “’Want me to ask Grandma Clara if it’s safe?”

  “Sure,” Ricky said.

  Thinking we might play for a while longer, I got to my feet but found he had already started back toward his house.

  “’You heading home?” I asked.

  He stopped and glanced back but seemed to be looking right through me. It was almost as though I had disappeared again. I patted my arms and cheeks. I seemed real to me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked

  He blinked and seemed to realize I was there again. “I think so. Let me know what your grandmother thinks, okay.”

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Sure, I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  The next morning, I waited anxiously for Grandma Clara to arrive. She had barely walked through my back door when I blurted out the question. Her answer was pleasant but predictably cryptic.

  “So Ricky has a terrible secret,” she said, repeating my question as she often did, “and you’d like to know if it would be safe for him to share his secret with you. Is that about the gist of it?’”

  “Yeah, that’s what I want to know.”

  “I’d say it was very smart of him to worry before telling you.”

  “And?”

  “And it was also proper of you to ask me first.”

  “But is it safe for him to tell me?”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “Grandma, for once can’t you just say what you mean?”

  “Of course.” She smiled sweetly but said nothing more. I wasn’t sure, but it seemed she had just brought the craft of evasion to a whole new level.

  “Please,” I told her. “I need to know if it’s okay for him to tell me.”

  Her brow furrowed and her smile faded. She nodded. “Yes, it should be safe. But you’ll need to hurry.”

  “Hurry?”

  “Ricky is leaving, Nate.”

  “Leaving! You mean the demon is back!”

  I raced out the door so quickly that I’m not even sure my feet touched down on the porch, which in Under-Heaven was a real possibility.

  “Nathaniel!” I screamed. “Nathaniel! The demon is coming! The demon is coming!”

  By the time I rounded the cherub fountain, nearly every soul in Under-Heaven was staring at me. I later wondered if most knew the archangel’s name or if they thought I had gone crazy and was calling out to myself. I was still screaming about demons when Ricky hurried out his door.

  “Demons!” he exclaimed. His eyes darted all across the sky.

  “Don’t come off the porch! Not until Nathaniel arrives! Your pants are mostly white, Ricky. He’ll protect you, I know he will! Somehow Grandma Clara knows you’re leaving—”

  “It’s okay.” His panicked look evaporated to be replaced with a smile. “Don’t worry, Nate. The demon isn’t coming for me. At least, I don’t think so.”

  “But Grandma Clara—”

  “Must have heard my uncle say that I’m leaving.”

  “But how could he know?”

  “Because I told him.” Ricky paused, then said, “Nate, I’ve decided to go back.”

  “Back?”

  “After spending this past week with Grandmother Amber, I’ve decided.”

  I stood on the bottom step and stared quizzically up at him.

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I never had much of a life the first time around,” Ricky said, “I missed so many things. Maybe that’s why it’s harder for me to have fun. When my grandmother told me her saber tooth story, I realized I had never even seen a lion or a tiger. I want to.”

  “Ricky, I don’t think there are lions or tigers in Heaven.”

  “I know, Nate. That’s why I’m going back to Earth. I’m going back down there…to live again.”

  Apparently, Ricky had gone bonkers. The demon scare had been too much for him. I struggled to find words to console and reason with him. He must have read my expression, because he gave me a sympathetic smile.

  “So no one’s told you about that yet? Maybe I shouldn’t either, but I’m not leaving with you thinking I got dragged off to Hell.”

  My head swam. Suddenly my friend sounded as cryptic as Grandma Clara, and that took some doing.

  “Ricky, I don’t under—”

  “I’m being reincarnated, Nate. I’m going back to Earth to have a new body and a new life.”

  “How—I mean…is that—can you really?”

  He motioned for me to join him on his swing.

  “They don’t tell us at first,” he said. “Probably because they’re afraid we’ll choose to go back in hopes of seeing people or places from our old lives. But that’s not how it works. The chances of getting reincarnated into the same country, forget the same family, are pretty slim, though one of my uncles said it happened to him. But even if it did happen, it wouldn’t do any good because we wouldn’t remember anything from our previous life. So, even if we got to see our relatives from before, we wouldn’t recognize them.”

  “I didn’t know anyone could go back.”

  “Neither did I until a few weeks ago.”

  “You think I could?”

  Ricky shrugged.

  “If they haven’t mentioned it to you, they probably don’t think you’re ready to decide. But I’m pretty sure that’s what you’re here for—besides saving me, that is.”

  “I didn’t save you. Nathaniel did.”

  Ricky chuckled. “Who would have guessed I’d have two saviors, both named Nate?”

  “I’m not sure you can call an archangel by a nickname,” I joked. “He might feed you to the demons.”

  “Seriously, Nate, I think God knew what he was doing when he put us together. I needed a friend. You’re the one who knocked me out of the way when the demon attacked, and you’re the one who has helped me stay safe since then. I think if I’d been sent to another Under-Heaven, I’d probably be shoveling ashes and dodging pitchforks right now.”

  I grinned. Neither of us thought Hell was really like that, but my grin faded as I remembered the demon. Any world with them had to be bad.

  “I think at some point, Nate, you’re also going to have to decide if you want to go back to Earth.”

  My mind spun with the enormity of the concept, one that I would wrestle with for many years to come.

  “Why not go to Heaven?” I asked. “You could, couldn’t you?” I pulled at my own white tee shirt, a reminder that his had been white for a long time.

  “I don’t know, Nate. I’m not even sure God would let me in Heaven. After all the mistakes I’ve made, it’s hard to say.” He shrugged. “’Guess I’ll never know.”

  “Mistakes?”

  What was he talking about? How could an eight-year-old have made that many mistakes?

  Ricky glanced to either side of his porch. There was no one nearby. I felt giddy with excitement. It looked as though he would soon share his mysterious secret.

  “What did your grandmother say?” he whispered.

  I got up and leaned against the rail.

  “Danged if I know.”

  “What do you think she said?”

  “I think she said that if I got here before you left, and if you wanted to tell me, and if I wanted to hear, then it would be okay. But I’m not sure.” I sat back down in exasperation.

  “I don’t think she knows the answer,” Ricky said.

  “She’s an angel. Of course she knows.”

  Ricky shook his
head.

  “I don’t think they know as much as we think they do. Sure, they’ve been around for a long time, but it seems that even God doesn’t have all the answers. He lets us decide most everything for ourselves, and if you ask me, I think it’s because he doesn’t want to ruin anything for us.”

  “Ruin anything?”

  “Imagine a zoo on one side of town and a carnival on the other. If both were only going to be in town for one day, how could anyone decide which one you should go to?”

  I thought I understood, but his example sounded incomplete.

  “Choosing between Heaven and Hell isn’t the same as choosing between a carnival and the zoo.”

  “What if the choice is between returning to Earth or moving on to Heaven?” Ricky asked.

  “Okay,” I admitted. That argument was a little easier to make. “But we’re talking about whether or not I should hear your story.”

  “Yeah, I think you need to decide whether you want to hear about the awful thing I did. Then I need to decide if I dare to tell you.”

  Maybe I was dense, but up until then it hadn’t occurred to me that Ricky’s secret was about something terrible he had done. I had more imagined it to be something terrible he knew about. Now, the entire subject took on a sinister tone. What horrible crime had my friend committed? I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

  “What do you think?” Ricky asked me.

  “I think I’m scared.”

  “That’s it then,” he told me. “I’ll keep it to myself. It’s not that important.” But his shoulders sagged and he stared out at our Under-Heaven. Obviously it was a big deal to him. For a moment I thought he was upset with me, but then I realized that he was upset with himself. He must have been deeply ashamed for what he had done, and he thought I wanted no part of his shame.

  “Did you tell your family?” I asked.

  He shook his head and gave an insincere smile.

  “You know angels,” he said. “If you talk about the past, you’re really just reminding them.”

  “So, did you remind any of them?”

  He brushed a tear away and gritted his teeth. I knew we were touching on the very heart of Ricky’s color problem. I waited several long seconds, and when he didn’t answer I wondered if maybe this was a wound that could only be healed by friendship. When I thought about it in those terms, there was no question what needed to be done.

  “I want to know,” I told him.

  His cheeks relaxed, and he nodded. Ricky began at the beginning...

  Ricky spun his Buck Rogers atom gun around on one finger as he stared at an older boy sleeping in the hospital bed across from him. There were four children’s wards in the Chicago Hospital, ten beds per ward, but Ricky and the other boy were alone in their room. Eight other empty beds lined the walls around them. The older boy’s head and both arms were wrapped in stark, white bandages. He had been sleeping soundly ever since Ricky had arrived an hour or so earlier. The bandages on Ricky’s nose forced him to breathe through his mouth but he’d endured worse. At least whole face didn’t hurt anymore. Ricky aimed his gun at the older boy but didn’t actually pull the trigger. He had almost lost his ray gun in the hallway. The Ward Matron warned him she’d take it away if she heard the loud whirring sound even one more time.

  “Whoosh, whoosh,” Ricky whispered, mimicking the sound. He knew he should have been resting, but he’d been too worried to sleep. He would have felt a lot better if his father had stayed with him at the hospital. At least then he wouldn’t have had to worry what he could be doing to his mother.

  Though never exactly nice, his father was not violent most of the time, but at night—after the drinking started—he was a person to be feared and avoided at all costs. Most of the time, Ricky knew enough to stay clear. Once his father got ranting, Ricky often hid in his bedroom closet or under the bed; or, when his father seemed particularly loud, Ricky would climb the shelves of the bathroom closet, and crawl up though the scuttle hole into the attic. Fortunately for both Ricky and his mother, his father did most of his drinking at local bars and at friends’ houses, which only left them to worry about the time between when he got home and when he passed out. Most nights that was only a few minutes, but on a bad night it could stretch into an hour or more. A lot could happen in an hour.

  Ricky touched his nose and winced.

  As time went on, Ricky’s father fought more and more with his mother, and the fights began to happen even when his father was sober. About the time Ricky turned six, his mother began to develop bruises that she tried to hide—turtle neck collars, long sleeved shirts, and dark glasses. Ricky knew what was happening, though. He often stood by the bathroom door and listened to her soft but audible whimpering. After particularly bad beatings, she would remain cloistered in there for large parts of the day. By the time Ricky was six and a half years old, he had committed to growing up quickly so he could protect his mother. He planned to grow muscles on top of muscles and to take boxing lessons so he could stand up to his father and keep his mother safe. It never occurred to him, no more than it did to her, that his mother should have left his father.

  “Through thick and thin,” Ricky had heard her once say to a friend, “marriage is sacred, and Tom and I just happen to be in one of the thicker stages right now.” Apparently, that’s what you called three to four beatings a week: thick.

  Though Ricky was terrified of his father, he also knew that as long as he kept out of his sight for those few minutes each night, he would be safe. Ricky chose to think that by not coming to look for him during his drunken rampages, his father was demonstrating how he actually did love him. On the few occasions he did storm into his son’s room to find the bed empty, Ricky would often hear him chuckle to himself and mutter things like, “Smart boy,” or “It’s a good thing,” before he would stomp off to find his marital punching bag.

  Ricky rolled onto his back and stared at the bright white tiles on the hospital ceiling. He tried to understand what he might have done differently. Earlier that night, two days after his eighth birthday, Ricky had overheard a particularly nasty fight. His mother’s screams were like sirens between loud slaps and punches. Terrified that his father might actually be killing her, Ricky slid down off the shelf in his closet and crept out into the living room. There he saw his father standing over his mother holding a pair of scissors like he was about to stab her.

  “No!” Ricky screamed without thinking. He raced across the room and tackled his father in the leg.

  Ineffective would have been a gross understatement. He felt as though he’d just slammed himself into a tree trunk. It might have been his father’s kneecap that stuck his nose, or possibly something hit him after he had knocked himself out, but either way Ricky woke in the Emergency Room. To make matters worse, telling the nurses he had to find a bathroom, his father had simply left him, an eight-year-old boy, there to fend for himself.

  The doctors and nurses had been pleasant, but Ricky was worried and really wanted to see his mother. He needed to know that she was all right. Could his father have done something truly horrible? Is that why he had been in such a hurry to leave?

  Ricky didn’t sleep much that night.

  Relief flooded his system when his mother arrived the next morning and settled into the seat beside his hospital bed. Her face was coated with thick makeup and she wore a long sleeved sweater. Ricky also noticed her left ear had a spot of blood and that she winced every time she moved her left arm.

  Anger sent blood rushing to his head. He felt his cheeks grow hot.

  His mother reached out to touch his forehead.

  “I should get the nurse,” she said. “I think you have a fever.”

  It’s not a fever, he thought. I just hate him!

  “It’s okay, mom. I feel alright.”

  “You can’t tell anyone what happened,” she whispered. “We need to protect our family.”

  Though he didn’t agree with her use of the word “protect,” Ricky
nodded. He wouldn’t say anything even though he’d heard rumors that some Chicago policemen liked to give wife beaters a taste of their own medicine. One boy in third grade actually started smiling every time they heard a police siren pass the school. Coincidentally, he also no longer came to school with bruises or casts on his limbs.

  The night he arrived at the hospital, a nurse had said to him, “Your father says you fell down the basement stairs. Is that true?”

  Ricky, of course, readily agreed. The fact that their little house at the edge of the projects didn’t have a basement made his father’s lie seem ludicrous, but apparently no one at the hospital knew that.

  Ricky spent four days in the children’s ward; a longer period than he suspected was normal for a broken nose. It turned out that his young male doctor insisted on having the local police inspect Ricky’s home for safety issues before he would release him. Ricky saw the doctor talking with a tall policeman that Ricky assumed would be in charge of the home inspection. The policeman left the hospital for a few hours and then returned to pick Ricky up personally.

  The policeman was huge. His head almost touched the ceiling of the police car, and his arms were as big around as Ricky’s head. Though it seemed odd not to ride home with his own father, it was exciting to see all the buttons and levers inside the police car. The friendly officer let him turn on the flashing lights as they pulled onto the double concrete strips of his parents’ driveway. His father was waiting at the door, a phony smile on his face.

  “Thank goodness you’re back,” he said. He glanced at the policeman then down at Ricky. “You’ll have to be much more careful in the future, son, won’t you?”

  “Why don’t you go on inside, Ricky,” the policeman said in a more serious voice than he had used in the car. “I’d like a few minutes alone with your father.”

  A thick gauze pad still on his nose, Ricky made his way quickly through the living room, past the fireplace, down the hall, and into his own room. As soon as he got his door closed, he went to the window and opened it a crack. Though he couldn’t see the front entrance because of a thick lilac bush his mother had planted several years ago, he hoped to hear what was going on.