by John Raymond
He opened his eyes, and he was whole again, relatively speaking. He could see the stars and the planets above, and he could also tell that a presence had joined him. Did he believe in angels? Well, he did now, in this moment, anyway. He turned to the angel and discovered she was a young woman with a pleasant face, high cheekbones, and pale-blue eyes. She had golden-brown tresses, and her eyes were familiar and full of a welcoming joy.
I know you, the angel’s eyes said. And Ben smiled into her eyes, knowing her as well.
They both laughed—an angel!—and again he shook to tiny pieces. When he opened his eyes again, the angel was still there with him, and he was incredibly glad. They were beaming at each other, so pleased they had finally found each other. Had she been with him all this time, he wondered? Had she been watching over him in Kuwait and Afghanistan? Had she watched him in youth karate class in Sun Valley? If so, she’d never allowed the slightest clue to drop. But it didn’t matter now, because she was fully with him, and he assumed they would be together on some level for eternity. He would most definitely never forget her, even if this ended. This moment would never leave his mind.
He realized he and the angel were on the move. Together, they were bobbing through the celestial wind, surrounded by many flashes of bright, vivid color. Tangerine, cadmium, canary, and iridium, all vibrated in his vision, and he realized, much to his amazement, that they were riding on the majestic wing of a butterfly. Absolutely insane! There were millions of butterflies streaming all around them, an ocean of butterflies! Carried along by butterflies, Ben and his angel, his being-partner, glided over a landscape of verdant earth, wild meadows, dappled woods, laughing and disintegrating into each other as they flew. To ride a butterfly seemed to be thrilling even for an angel.
He’d never felt a feeling with someone that was so perfectly clear, so perfectly open. Without words, they understood each other. We will show you things, she told him. You will know everything very soon. I trust you, he said. I’m ready. And all around them the butterflies shivered and shimmered in the light, flashing powder blue, indigo, pastel orange, and peach. All the while, the wind on their faces remained steady, fragrant, and warm.
They exited the forest, and the butterflies spun upward into the sky. They became like a cyclone of color, rising higher, and Ben and his angel rode along in their funneling motion. It was a wild ride, better than any roller coaster, and as they reached the upper levels of the atmosphere, he could see the black pane of outer space approaching ahead. The blackness was not exactly space, though, he could see. There were no stars or planets in the blackness. It was more like a pool of oil, perfectly black, and before he could ask the angel what they were zooming toward, they passed through into the blackness, and the butterflies began bursting out of existence all around them. Pop, pop, they sizzled into smoke. Ben found himself suddenly floating in absolute blackness, not sure whether the angel was at his side or not. There was no light to see her by, no light by which to see his own limbs. The clouds and trees and sky were all gone from view, and only blackness existed. It engulfed him like a substance, soft, granular, warm, and absolute.
That level of darkness didn’t last long, though, because almost immediately a spot of light appeared, flickering and growing into a compact, silver orb. It was an interpreter orb. Ben knew this somehow without being told.
The blackness—illuminated softly by the orb—took on shape and texture. Ben found himself in a cavernous stone hallway lit with flaming candelabras and heavy, candle-studded fixtures on the ceiling. The shining orb was floating up ahead, beckoning him onward, and he walked deeper into the hallway, over massive paving stones. He heard the sounds of laughter and talking somewhere, many voices echoing on stone walls. He followed the sound, hoping his being-partner was somewhere nearby.
The interpreter orb led him under a Moorish archway into a large banquet room where two long, oaken tables were set. At the tables sat all the men and women he had ever killed.
Ben stood in the doorway, feeling great dread run through him. Fearful, awful intuitions spilled through his chest and into his arms and legs, numbing him. He recognized many of the dead. He knew them by sight, from the glass of his scope or the images of his dossiers. He’d killed these people in every corner of the world, and now, for some reason, they’d been assembled in this dank Valhalla of his mind. This was still his mind, wasn’t it? He had to think he was getting to the limits of his imagination here. But he felt resigned to whatever his mind was giving him. This was how it should be. The truth of his life was on the verge of being disclosed, the final, ultimate shape was taking form, and he had no choice but to submit to its totality. It was only right that the answer to the question of his life would go through these men and women. They were his riddle. It was his duty to receive the answer humbly.
The dead didn’t seem to notice him at first. They were all too involved in their own boisterous talk and what seemed to be an endless series of toasts, accompanied by the clanking of huge bottles and steins. Many of them were still mangled, still bleeding, even. A man with half a head, a boy holding his dismembered arm. From Kabul? That kid? There was Jorge Martinez, the Hyena. And Milan Maric. And there was Larson. So the shot was good after all. This suggested something, but he didn’t know what.
Where am I? he asked, for his angel had appeared at his shoulder again.
Where do you think? she said, without any judgment or even any real inflection.
Am I in hell? he said. If this was his judgment, he wanted to rise to the occasion.
She shook her head. No, this place doesn’t have a name.
He had other questions for her, but he didn’t have time to ask because his dead had spotted him at last. They’d begun rising from their seats and stumbling closer, almost like shambling zombies. They didn’t seem vengeful or violent, exactly. They just had their own questions, their own truths to understand. As they drew closer many of them began talking at once. The book of dead faces opened, page after page. Ben looked deeply into each victim’s face and understood each of their lives in full. He saw all the dead’s experiences as husbands, mothers, brothers, fathers, sons. He saw their families, he understood their ideologies. Holmes appeared, expressing discontent that he’d missed the chance to tell his son an important fact. There were certain things I wanted him to read, he expressed. There were things he needed to read. I could have saved him so much useless pain and suffering. All of it is right there, and he doesn’t know.
Ben knew everything his dead had ever known, which meant, he realized, he was knowing things he couldn’t possibly truly know, which meant he was moving beyond the limits of his own finite mind. Was this still his mind’s activity? Or was he in the throes of something else, something divine? Was he creating this information to shock himself in some way? Or was this information flowing into him from another consciousness, another source? The reality was literally beyond his comprehension.
The dead continued to gather, crowding around him, and fed him with their information. This dead boy had lost his elder sister to pneumonia. This dead woman had loved her neighbor’s husband. The pain from the bullet that had severed Maric’s spine flared strangely in his chest. And as his victims divulged their secrets, they seemed to comprehend Ben’s own secrets as well. They saw the shape of his life, and they understood his unique destiny. Their natural anger and recrimination gave way to a more tragic acceptance of his ignorance. They didn’t forgive him, they communicated. But they didn’t doubt he was real.
He felt the need to tell them something. He didn’t want to apologize, exactly, because he knew it was too late for that, and what choice had he had in the creation of his fate? But he felt the need to utter some words to commemorate this ultimate congregation of enemies. Probably there was a prayer for this moment, a kaddish for himself and his collective victims. A blessing for the greatness of their shared creator. But if there was, he didn’t know the words, and he couldn’t make any sounds, anyway. He still had no thro
at.
He turned to his angel in wonder and shame.
What can I do? he said.
There’s nothing to do, she said. You’re doing it.
I want these people to hear me, he said.
They hear you, she said. They know what they have to say.
I want them to know I saved people, too.
No, she said. You actually didn’t save any.
But—how can that be?
Killing isn’t saving. Killing can’t give life.
But more people would have died. Many more.
How could you ever know that? There is what is. That’s all.
She didn’t say any more. She just turned and left the room. The dead were turning away, too, returning to their tables, and Ben understood it was time for him to leave. He followed his angel into the darkness, and soon the sounds of the dead were fading away, replaced by his own footsteps on the slick, damp stones. The orb returned, floating at his shoulder, shedding light on the steps, and Ben hurried to keep pace with the angel as she slid through the stone maze. She was going quickly, losing herself in the shadows and reappearing just as she slipped around corners. The sound of voices whispered through the cracks in the walls, the muffled voices of Doobie, Slick, his nephew, Aaron. It seemed he was being haunted by the living now.
At last she stopped, and he managed to catch up. They’d arrived at a new room, much smaller than the other, with walls of similar stone. It was dank, like all the other rooms, and had wet straw on the floor, and a vibration of terrible doom.
Where are we now? Ben said. He was breathing hard, and he didn’t like this room. He couldn’t see into the corners, it was so dark, and the walls seemed incredibly thick. They might be a mile underground, for all he knew. This was not anyplace he wanted to be.
This is your room, she said.
But I don’t like this room, he said.
You don’t have a choice, she said.
I can’t have a different room?
No.
He peered into the shadows, trying to gauge the room’s dimensions, but the darkness was too immense. Could he get used to this room? He couldn’t say. He couldn’t even get a fix on the edges in any direction.
How long do I have to be here? he said.
That depends, she said.
Does everyone have a room like this?
No.
Ben peered again into the shadows, finding nothing, and when he turned back he found that his angel had changed. He wasn’t sure when it had happened, but she was no longer a simple peasant girl anymore. She was at least twelve feet tall, and she was emitting an intense white light. He could barely look at her without blinding himself in the whiteness. He raised his hand, squinting into her light, trying to find her, but she was no longer there. Inside the light, her features were shifting. For a moment he glimpsed rainbowed ram’s horns, fish eyes, rotten teeth. There were goat features and snake scales. The fire coming from her was not only bright but hot, and he had to draw away. But still the room was impenetrably dark.
Now is the time, the angel said through her shining flames. I hope you’re ready.
The time for what? he called. The fire was so powerful, he could barely hear.
I think you know.
Are you taking me somewhere else?
No. It all happens here now.
Am I going home?
No. You’re never going home.
I’d like to go home, please. One more time.
She smiled sadly and expanded toward him, aflame. He tried crawling backward, but there didn’t seem to be a floor anymore. The room had become all empty black space.
Is this going to hurt? he cried.
I’m afraid it is. Very much.
And again the face of the angel turned inside out, mashing inward, and coiled with many colors. Turquoise and magenta and ebony and violet, the colors of a mandrill, the colors of a rare, poisonous fish. Flames shot from her shoulders and off her head, and she grew even larger, in explosive blasts, tearing out of herself, until she shone like a white-hot star.
Ben, crouching in the void, could hear the roar of flames all around him. And as the flame grew hotter, devouring all, the angel touched him, and the physical pain was beyond all comprehension. It was everywhere, like a knife scraping the inside of his veins. He’d never felt the underside of his skin, but he did now. Layer after layer peeled away, more layers than he could imagine having. The pain poured through his body, concentrating in different centers, his thigh, his stomach, his back, a roving tornado of pain. He felt his bones being pulled out of his body with pincers, the ganglia of his veins dragged out of his muscles. The nets of his fat were ripped from his meat. And somehow when his body was gone the pain remained.
Still his mind and his vision were there. He could see light. People talked about seeing a light in death, but this wasn’t the light they described. It wasn’t some aqueous pool of light overhead, some gentle light at the end of the tunnel. This wasn’t the cool, white light surrounding laughing loved ones as they welcomed the departed into the pearly gates. This light was like fireworks. The most incredible, gorgeous display he’d ever seen. He could see many-colored explosions in his vision, streamers, bursting geysers, blossoming flowers, pinwheels, and jellyfish. He saw slow trails of pink and yellow and gold smearing against the warm blackness. It was the Fourth of July times ten thousand. Soundless, shimmering, beautiful light. It was the light of his own life pouring through his body’s many branches and roots.
All the while, the waves of pain came and went, a crashing ocean of pain, for hundreds of years. The fireworks burst and sizzled behind his eyes. And between the rushes of pain, through the pyrotechnics, a final taste filled his mouth, a sweet taste, a taste he knew. But what? And a thousand years later the answer finally came. The taste of clean, sweet honey on his tongue.
27
Sometimes Aaron wondered how this city once must have smelled. Back before internal combustion, before asphalt roads, before the oil derricks, back when the orange blossoms and bougainvillea were in bloom, the lavender and eucalyptus, and nothing had trampled it all down and beaten it all to shit and fucked it over until there was almost nothing left. It must have been like heaven on earth in Los Angeles until the people came and paved it all over. If it was this heavenly now, imagine what it must have been before.
Aaron was sitting in his backyard, soaking in the sun through the lemon tree. On the end table were his cup of black coffee and his juice and his everything bagel with chive cream cheese. The newspaper was within arm’s reach, but he hadn’t touched it yet; he was too satisfied simply to sit.
He wasn’t even supposed to be in L.A. this afternoon. The plan had been to vacate the city two days earlier and cross the border into Nogales yesterday. After Nogales he and Joel were planning to cruise down the middle of Sonora before bending over to the west coast, ending up in a town called San Blas, beloved by the more robust hippies on the gringo trail. From there they would putter over to Guadalajara and Mexico City and end up in the Yucatán, visiting pyramids.
All was in readiness. The van he and Joel had bought was ready to go, all packed, freshly tuned, sitting in Joel’s driveway. But the very day before their departure date, everything had come to a sudden, grinding halt when Aaron had received the call about his grandfather.
Grandpa Sam was dead. After eighty-seven years, he’d died as he’d lived his American life, in his recliner, watching CSI: Miami. According to Temo it was a peaceful passing, but of course he would say that.
Aaron was saddened by the news, of course. He loved his grandpa deeply. But his death had not been unexpected, and in a way it was surely for the best. For the past three months, Grandpa Sam had been struggling, and he’d taken a few perilous falls. The hospice nurses had been coming around, helping with the cleaning, leaving trays of green beans and meat loaf, reporting to his mother that the time was most definitely coming close. The Chabad people had been sniffing around, too, talking about
G-d and the new temple they were building, trying to coax Grandpa Sam into donating his house to their organization, which had pissed him off greatly. He might have been old, but he was not confused: My house goes to my daughter. Never talk about my house again.
He’d always been such an indestructible barrel of a man, and in the past three months, he’d become frail, unable even to walk around the park one time. “What happened to Samuel?” he’d said. “What happened to Samuel?” The answer was, he got old.
In the Jewish faith, Aaron had learned from his uncle’s passing, a funeral occurs as quickly as possible after death. Grandpa Sam had died on Wednesday; thus, the funeral was scheduled for this very Friday afternoon. His departure for Mexico with Joel would still be able to happen by the end of the week, only a few days later than expected.
Sitting under the lemon tree, he tried to feel the proper reverence and nostalgia his grandpa’s death deserved, but mostly he ended up thinking about his backyard. He’d spent many mornings in this spot, pondering his life. He wasn’t sorry to be leaving, though, even if this spot knew him so well. Had he made the right decision? That was another question.
The decision to go to Mexico had come in a kind of flash. It had happened back in July at the sun dance, a very interesting ritual. The day had been everything he and Karl had been led to expect. Late in the morning, out in the desert, a paunchy, heavily modified dude had hooked himself to a juniper tree and proceeded to shuffle in ever wider circles under the thrumming sun, over the hours entering a trance of endorphins. The dance had gone all day, the man’s nipples distending and bleeding, his voice moaning and chanting, and the crowd had been rapt, amazed.
