The Men I Sent Forward (Baer Creighton Book 6)

by Clayton Lindemuth

  “So if you’re not responsible for any of the stuff that physically comprises you when you’re born — the particular arrangement of chemicals that form your body, and if you’re not responsible for the capacity of the brain you’re running, and if you’re not responsible for the program your brain is running at birth… and you’re not responsible for the experiences that shape you… at what point do you become responsible for the wreck you now perceive you are?

  “Because one thing is sure. Regardless of the fact that you didn’t cause your birth, didn’t cause your brain, or your early experiences and are not responsible for them, you alone reap the consequences.

  “This means blame and responsibility are not the same thing, and it’s a quandary that causes many people to never develop into full fledged human beings. See, if you can’t embrace responsibility for things you didn’t do, you’ll never be aware of the miracle implicit in your makeup: the ability to cause yourself to be something different of your choosing. The two are inseparable. You have to accept responsibility for yourself in a certain situation to be able to muster proactive behavior, rather than reactive behavior. You have to reject yourself as you are born or you’ll never actuate your true highest potential. I’m not talking about money or success.

  “This is a profound point, so I’ll make it again. If you embrace your nature as you were born saying this is what God made me, you miss the entire point of human existence. We were created as turds — and if all we do is embrace what we are, well, you’ve heard the saying.”

  Mags folds her hands together and watch my face.

  “Can’t polish a chunk of shit.”

  “I haven’t heard it in that dialect before, but yes. Anyhow, how many people do you see that seem to have all the swagger and self confidence in the world, but all you really see is a shiny chunk of poop? Instead, we ought to think about it this way. All of us are born turds, so what are turds good for?”

  “Fertilizer.”

  “Exactly right. Making things grow. Instead of polishing undeveloped potential, why not become something and polish what you become?”

  “You’re saying I’m no good as I am?”

  “Are you satisfied with who you are? Do you know what you know and own what you own? Or do you sometimes wonder whether you have your values in the right order? Sometimes wonder why you don’t live up to how you see yourself?”

  “Uh.”

  “Yeah. That’s the right answer. It’s hard because we need to honor potential but not be satisfied with it. We need to love and embrace the turd, while not settling for it. All while the rest of the world is picking at us, probing us for weakness, calling us out for being turds, and ignoring that inside we’re blooming into roses.”

  “What says I got to be a rose?”

  “You don’t like flowers?”

  “It ain’t that. Maybe I ain’t somethin’ nice.”

  Mags sips coffee. “I will confess that some things exist which are perfect, but which are not nice. Let’s not get bogged down. The point is that your existence is not designed to be static. Being the rose is a metaphor. I’m talking about two planes of existence. One is animal, but full of potential. The other is human, consisting of the animal, but shaped by conscious will. Folks locked in the animal place don’t tend to enjoy their lives because beauty always results from order and the animal resents order. The animal can’t even see higher order.”

  “Blind to it, you say.”

  “Whereas people who shape their lives according to their best-conceived beliefs… those people own their minds and walk free.”

  “Sign me up.”

  She smiles. Stops. “Why did you come here?”

  “Uh.”

  “Because that sounded like a smart assed challenge.”

  “Guess I’m sayin’, how’s a person do all that? I been around fifty-two, three year and ain’t figured it out.”

  “You kind of figured it out. At least enough to be unhappy.”

  “Magnificent.”

  “The way you do it is by rewiring your brain. Remember what I said. Your thoughts follow pathways in your brain. You inherit the first of them, then develop the rest as you learn. As you think and stew on things, your brain is literally turning those thoughts into things. Clusters of neurons, like a superhighway of the same thoughts, over and over. Ever get a thought you couldn’t let go of?”

  “I’m familiar.”

  “You have to arrest the process. You have to, in the midst of your thought, say, this thought is untrue. This thought is not me. This thought is not valid, because I’ve mis-associated it with other things. I’ve given this thought the wrong value. And then you have to think of the right value. When you do this over and over, you break down the neural pathways that foster the thought. You literally change your mind. To take it to the next level, do you think God — whatever God you believe in — hates you for being a bundle of potential?”

  “Wait. That’s what you just called a turd.”

  “Right. Does God hate you for being a turd? A mind that isn’t responsible for its birth, learning program, or initial experiences that feed the learning. Does God hold it against you that He made you?”

  “Don’t seem right.”

  “Of course not. Religion is up to you to figure out, but my two cents: I don’t care for the Christian church, but Jesus gets it right. Limited, of course, by the language of the time. Honoring where we came from, striving to become holy and loving while seeing the best in others, that ought to be our ambition. And asking our creator’s help in becoming fully actualized, and his forgiveness for when we err on account of our animal nature… it’s all a loving, growing, nurturing thing.”

  “No fire and brimstone?”

  “No, I don’t think that comes from God. I think it comes from human beings who want to control other human beings. Remember, to a Christian the church isn’t the building, it’s the community of believers. Like any institution, it has the same competing forces as the individuals within it.”

  I nod. Wish she’d say it all three more times, from the start.

  “And your thoughts about justice and killing are related. Just as you have to recognize the truth about yourself — you’re born a turd and remain one until you deliberately become something else — you have to recognize it about other people. They’re turds too — but with potential. And just as your creator doesn’t hate you for being where you are and is always encouraging you forward… He’s doing that for everyone else too. Even the people who hurt you.”

  Look at the ground. The sky. Got a balled-up jumble of underwear in my crack and alla sudden my throat’s a little dry.

  Thought I gave up underwear.

  “That’s what forgiveness is all about. Recognizing that even the most selfish or evil person you ever meet is just like you. Responsible for things he didn’t choose, trying to make his way through a world that keeps screwing him. Trying to take care of himself and the people he loves.”

  “Even the thieves.”

  “Especially the thieves.”

  “The dog fighters. Kid fuckers. All ’em.”

  “All of them. If you can’t let go of the harm they caused you, if you can’t see them as working through the same plight as you, then you’re clinging to the animal part of your existence. The selfish part. You’re being the same thing they are. You’re rejecting the higher plane of love, growth and forgiveness. You’re wallowing in the corruption you claim to loathe.”

  I study my paper coffee cup and a gust knock it over.

  Mags say, “That’s why some people will tell you it’s impossible to feel forgiven until you first forgive. Deep down we know we don’t deserve it.”

  “You buy that?”

  “Me? No. I’m a physicist. I think in terms of energy fields and equations, not signifying networks.”

  “What?”

  “Another time, maybe.”

  “Good.”

  “Baer, listen to me. You came to see me bec
ause you want relief from your mind. Relief from your guilt. You want a path to atonement. This is what you must learn: your atonement is linked to your ability to forgive. Mercy toward someone else is the same as mercy toward yourself, but you have to get out of your own way. Forgiving others isn’t an act of virtue; it’s an act of humility.”

  “Don’t ken your meaning.”

  “What is atonement?”

  “Shit. Like from a dictionary?”

  “It means,” Mags says, “getting right with your creator. Break down the word. At-One-Ment. You can’t be congruent with the Eternal while you’re bubbling with anger, guilt and shame. You have to let go of all of that and accept forgiveness. Like you, the people you hate were born into circumstances they didn’t choose and were programmed from their first sight that girls play with dolls and boys torture bugs. Their environments provided signals and their brains — taught by the people who shaped them, like giving them a map and saying, navigate life this way — their brains computed the scenes, sorted the disasters and chose a life path just like you did, without any divine road map or instruction manual telling them how everything works. You’re the same as the one you hate — and since you refuse to forgive yourself, you refuse to forgive him. But he has the same birthright of forgiveness as you.”

  She’s lookin’ at me and I’m all clevered out.

  “I’ll say it again. Your birthright is forgiveness and you unlock it with genuine humility.”

  “That’s the problem.”

  “Well, it has to stem from humility, from powerlessness.”

  “Ehhh. I dunno.”

  “No other forgiveness is real. You say you forgive and inside nothing changes. The person who harmed you has done nothing to make you feel better. He doesn’t deserve your forgiveness. On the outside you force yourself to give grace, but inside you hold him accountable. This forced grace…you imagine it is a virtue. And here’s where it gets suicidal: you can’t even muster the same forced empathy toward yourself because you think grace needs to be deserved — despite that being precisely the ingredient that is excluded from the recipe. Broken people give grace because they want to cling to the idea they’re better than the one they hate. Please don’t mishear me. I’m not making a moral argument. My world is math and energy. To me, this is all a matter of whether you want to feel right with yourself and the world you live in or not. If you do, then develop yourself. Destroy the bad and replace it with what you value more. That’s how you get right with the world. That’s how you find atonement. Find the humility to rebuild something better.”

  We talk on and on.

  Chapter Twenty

  People’ve cleared out. Streets kept fillin’ up every half hour and now the shadows is long and the air ain’t so comfortable. Mags and me drunk sixteen cups of joe and ate five bagels. Me, four.

  “You’re capable of talkin’ more’n I’m capable of listenin’.”

  “I doubt that very much,” Mags says.

  We sit lookin’ at each other. I got a new understandin’ on things. Or maybe feel I’m at the foot of a mountain and know damn well the trail leads to enlightenment, if I got the gumption to walk it.

  But this mountain I’m about to climb, I don’t know if Mags’ll think I’m headed at the right peak. That’s where I’m about to disagree.

  Long story short, if I wasn’t made to be what I am then I can’t fathom what I’m suppose to be. I don’t know how you add up a whore mother, who was the best lady I ever knew, an electrocuted boy, a cursed and failed life — wrap it all up with a love of sacred truth and a hatred of all things lies…. And loyalty to justice. And the knowledge if I don’t make it just, then it won’t be.

  I don’t see how to get them ingredients to cook up another man but the one they cooked.

  His name ain’t Alden Boone and it ain’t Günter Stroh, neither.

  But me and Mags been touchin’ fingers a couple times and the last she hooked the pinky on mine, I ’bout drug her to the alley for a standing romp. It’s maybe time to stop the philosophysics and loose the animals to the sheets.

  “So how ’bout that pizza?”

  Maggie stands.

  Her head turns.

  I hear the motorcycle engine like a buzz saw.

  Turn.

  See the flashes and hear the snap sounds, not even fuckin’ manly bullets.

  I spin and launch but Mags is already goin’ down. Her head bounce on concrete and she got blood all up her blouse. She stares while red drip out her mouth and nose, until the stare go flat.

  Mags says, “It’s beautiful. Find me.”

  And I understand it couldn’t happen no way but this, and the Almighty just put a big exclamation point after all she said.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  I run at the Eldorado. I was lucky. Afore I met Mags for coffee I found a decent parkin’ space on the road around the corner not but six cars away. Spot the orange ticket on the run. Yank it off the windshield and jump in the car.

  Joe’s ’bout to shake to pieces.

  What the hell was that? A machine gun?

  “Mags is shot dead.”

  Can’t figure the gear shifter for thirty seconds. See the R for Reverse but Mags’ face is blooded up and her eyes faded out like when I watch TV as a kid and the whole station shut down at night, and the tie with the rest of the world vanished just like that. I see Mags vanish and the eyes go dead.

  Hit the gas and try to recall which road is which but all these buildings is exactly the same. Tall and square and ugly like a cancer wart. People like to jump out front the car. Keep turnin’ left and though the traffic ain’t what it was when I fought my way to the coffee shop, my nerves is jumbled.

  “I said they shot Maggie. You got no wisdom on that?”

  And you didn’t shoot back?

  “They was gone too quick. Cafe’s on the corner there and they come around on a motorcycle shootin’. Time I was on my feet they was gone.”

  Joe got his face agin the windshield.

  Are we hunting them?

  “Sit back ’fore I send you through the glass. Accourse we’re huntin’ ’em. They was on a motorcycle. Come right by here.”

  What color?

  “White.”

  You sure? That doesn’t sound right.

  “Was you asleep or guardin’ the station? It was fuckin’ white and the people on it was dressed regular. Blue jeans. Jackets. Helmets cover the face. Shooter was maybe a girl. Skinny with a pony tail.”

  I keep seein’ Mags and after drivin’ three fourths a square and almost turnin’ back where I come, I drive another block and widen the circle. Turn left each time so I sit at the light and watch, but even with a moment stopped and brain space opened up for computin’, it don’t make sense. Shooters ain’t circlin’. But it’s a pattern I can hold and feel like I’m doin’ somethin’ while the disbelief waves through me like a cannon boom ’til the sound cut me down same as lead.

  “I lost my temper, Joe.”

  I accept your apology.

  “You’re a scholar and a gentleman.”

  I keep the distance to the next car and let the buildings roll by.

  I saw Mags die and I saw her happy in it. And I’m the most profane bastard in the world, as part of my mind is on her body and what I’ll never see of it. We was right there and I already see her naked and hungry in the mind’s eye. I go from that to red holes in her blouse and blood drippin’ out her smile. Eyes sparkle but not lookin’ at me, lookin’ at the other side, and somehow she saw me like a ghost in the better world and she turn back to tell me, it’s beautiful. Find me.

  I can imagine all that as true.

  But in this material world I adjust the rearview and check my eyes, see if I’m here.

  Got Mags’s blood on my face.

  I was gonna mention that. Waiting for a better time.

  “Right.”

  I rub Joe’s shoulder. Leave the blood on my cheek where it is.

  Sign point to t
he highway and it don’t seem I can do nothin’ here, plus the likelihood I stumble on the correct route outta this soggy fart of a city is nil, so I cut the wheel and get a bluehair pissed enough to set her bird a-flyin’ and her horn a honkin’.

  Still got Glock in my back and with the right arm in the cast and the left on the wheel, I gotta steer with the knees to fetch the gun. I do. I’m committed. But time I fish it out the ass of my drawers, the bluehair’s braked and turned right.

  Keep the pistol on the seat so the next shithead wants to share an opinion, I’ll have a retort ready.

  “Mags is dead.”

  Come barrelin’ up the onramp and figure if I take the lane, the car that’s there’ll let me. He does and I recognize I’m the asshole in the equation.

  Most wonderful thing in the world is a handful of woman.

  “My mind feels kinda fucked, Puppydog.”

  You hide it… not so convincingly.

  This whole thing’s so big I can’t ken it. How many days I curse the sky just darin’ the Almighty to show himself real, even if he kill me to do it? And now he set up a batch of circumstances so perfect… it’s like a set of straws all criss crossed and jumbled, and I shift six inches right and they’s all lined perfect, or better yet, say somethin’ like Hey dipshit I’m lookin’ at you. Then you go back to center and six inches past and they’s lined up agin and the words say But you never even try to look at Me. And finally back at center instead of a messed up jumble like it was, now it says, Yours Truly…

  And they’s no signature ’cause they ain’t but One can do shit like that.

  The act is the signature.

  Mags is dead and I could bawl like a baby if it wasn’t for the uncanny impossibility of how the whole show unfolded. Like it was staged the same day they stole Fred and put the wrecking ball in motion. Or they arrange the details when I kicked Larry in the nuts. Or maybe from day one, not when my father plant me in my mother but when Adam bent Eve over a rock and fucked not just her but all humanity after, when he plant the first seed outside the Garden.