by Kit Duncan
"You'll sleep in here on the feather bed," Sallie escorted me to the spare bedroom later that night. "Sorry 'bout the mess. I keep most of my mending in here. Extra blankets in the closet if you get chilly. Well, you sleep tight, Honey. See you in the morning."
She hugged me and kissed me on the forehead, and I suddenly felt very lonely.
I slept hard that night, the way you do when you're exhausted. In the morning I woke up late, the fragrance of a huge country breakfast wafting all through the house. I shuffled sleeply into the kitchen.
"Well, there you are, Sleepy Head!" Sallie sang out. She and Silas were halfway through breakfast. An empty plate was already set for me.
Silas smiled politely at me, then went back to the newspaper he was reading.
"Coffee?" Sallie offered.
"No, thanks," I said.
"Hmmm," Silas mumbled.
"What?" asked Sallie.
"Looks like John Steinbeck's coming through end of the summer. Pushing his latest book."
"Oh, good!" Sallie exclaimed. "That last one was the best he ever wrote. And he's so much fun to be with. Think we can get him back over for dinner?"
"Dunno," Silas said, and he turned his paper over and kept reading.
"Steinbeck?" I asked. "The writer?"
"Oh, yes," Sallie said. "He comes through, what, about every five or six years, Sy?"
Silas nodded and grunted.
"And he still writes?" I asked
"Why, what else would he do?" Sallie asked. "Now, some authors, they maybe write for one or two lifetimes, then they're done with it. Steinbeck, my goodness, I think he's written every lifetime he's lived. And, of course, he writes here in eternity. Just keeps getting better! Don't you think so, Sy?"
Silas murmured something through his paper, and Sallie looked back at me.
"Now, Sugar," she smiled at me, "What you got on docket for today?"
I had just taken a bite of toast and chewed as quickly as I could while figuring out how to respond.
"Docket?"
She nodded.
"I'm not sure," I said.
"Well," she patted my hand as she stood up and began moving dishes to the sink. "Reckon you'll figure it out as the day goes along."
I ate another piece of toast and two pieces of sausage, and Silas kept turning the pages of his newspaper. Sallie was standing at the sink, humming, and looking out the window, glancing down at the dishes every now and then. Suddenly, she dropped her dish rag and a fork into the sudsy water, wiped her hands on her apron excitedly, and exclaimed, "Oh, Silas! Look! The storks!" She ran out of the kitchen and we could hear the front screen door slam behind her.
Silas looked up, then casually folded his paper and set it slowly on the table. "Well," he said, with a blend of exasperation and affection, "There'll be no peace around here 'less we go have a look."
I followed him out onto the porch. Sallie was looking up into the sky, cupping her hand over her eyes to shield them from the bright morning sun. At first I didn't see anything unusual. Then she pointed and squealed, "There they are! See!?"
I followed her finger. I could barely make the birds out at first, but then they became larger against the canvas sky. I counted five, six, seven.
"And, oh, Sy, look! Twins!"
She was right. Each of the storks, except one, was carrying a single bundle from its beak. One of the storks was carrying two bundles.
"Is this for real?" I whispered to Silas. This just felt entirely too hokey to me. Storks carrying babies in Paradise. Ridicules!
"'Fraid so," Silas whispered back. "Must seem a little queer to you, huh?"
"Like something out of a fairy tale," I said.
"Well," he turned around to go back inside. "There's a lot more truth in fairy tales than most people know." The screen door slammed behind him.
"But storks?" I said to the empty air.
Sallie watched the lanky birds make their way high above the bluebonnets until they disappeared over the horizon. She sighed a happy breath, sat down in the rocking chair, and closed her eyes. I sat in the wicker chair next to her. When she opened her eyes again, she smiled at me.
"I love the little ones," she said.
"Had any of your own?" I asked, and immediately worried I was being too personal.
"A couple," she said. "Before I met Silas. He's not patient with youngsters. Says they're too much like newbies."
"What's wrong with newbies?" I asked with a frown.
"The problem's not with newbies. It's with Silas. He just gets impatient with all the questions. But I tell him, 'It's the business of old souls to educate young ones.' And not just the business, mind you," Sallie said. "It's a great honor, a wonderful honor, to be entrusted with teaching. Not everyone's cut out for it."
"But if Silas isn't, well, appropriate, for the work, why keep sending him newbies?" I asked.
"Oh," Sallie laughed. "That's what's so comical. He's one of the best teachers in eternity! And deep down, I think he loves to do it. It's just a paradox, I reckon. I've never understood it, don't know as if I ever will. No, not in a million years, probably. If he'd just get his impatience in check, why, I expect he'd be a marvel! He can be a cranky ol' bird sometimes," Sallie laughed, "but you'd have to search a long ways to find his equal. Just a dab short-fused from time to time."
"Well, yeah," I agreed as respectfully as I could.
"I expect his impatience is his little cross to bear, until he gets tired enough hauling it around it to set it aside. And I have to say," Sallie grinned, "he has gotten somewhat better over the centuries. Not much, mind you. But a little."
"So," I asked, changing the topic. "Where do babies come from?" I laughed at myself as soon as the question came out, and Sallie giggled, too.
"Baby souls blossom out in an unsteady rhythm around here. Every few years or so a few of 'em just sort of squeeze into existence. There's a little patch between Paradise and Heaven…."
"Not a cabbage patch!" I laughed, but I was afraid she'd say yes.
Instead, Sallie's face suddenly looked very serious. "No, no. Not cabbages! My goodness, what a silly notion!"
I shrugged and smiled, a little embarrassed.
"But, no," she continued. "It's just a little oasis of sorts, with a big pond, some trees, flowers. A garden, really. And the storks flock around there quite a bit, too. Anyhow, the new souls just sort of blink into existence. I'm not sure that's the best way to describe it, but that's what happens. Like a little poof."
"But where do they poof from?"
"Each soul," Sallie leaned forward in the rocking chair, "is made up of little tiny fragments of all other souls in the universe. And from time to time, the universe just kind of burps them into existence. That's the best I know how to explain it."
"So they don't actually have mothers and fathers?"
"They have thousands of parents, thousands of siblings. Millions. Billions. No soul is designed in isolation, Honey."
"But then," I asked, "Who raises them?"
"Why, anyone in Paradise or Heaven who wants to. I'm afraid the folks in the Basement don't qualify to parent new souls. I think you can understand that."
"Yes," I nodded.
"If a person or a couple wants to raise a soul, they just get their names on a list, and at the right time the stork delivers the soul to them, and they teach it what it needs to know until its first incarnation."
"So all souls incarnate?"
"Well," Sallie said, "Most. Not all. Some just don't have the ambition for life, and I guess there's nothing wrong in that. Why, a couple of Cornelius' boys have never left home. Spiritual laziness, seems to me, but they're good men, nothing wrong with them, hard workers, really. Just don't have a taste for living, is all. They're very big on what they like to call 'feeling secure,' but to my way of thinking, security keeps you clinging to side of the pool instead of swimming. More fun to swim, I say. But I reckon it takes all kinds to make up an eternity."
"And you still have contact
with the two you raised?" I asked. Now I was sure I was being too personal, but Sallie never showed it in her face.
"Well, when you can catch them home!" she laughed. "One of them has been incarnating and reincarnating almost nonstop since the middle part of the Shang Dynasty. I get postcards from her ever so often."
"And the other?" I asked.
"Oh, he's a rascal, that one," Sallie said. "Stayed tied to my apron a little too long, I'm afraid. Finally I had to shove him out of the nest, told him I wanted to reincarnate and he'd be well advised to get a life himself."
"Did he?"
"Eventually," Sallie said. "After I died and came home he was still there. We had an argument, I can't even remember what it was about. He left in the night, said he was just going to jump in the pond and be done with it." She laughed.
"Did you hear from him again?"
"Oh, yes. He visits fairly often. Once he finally incarnated he couldn't get enough of it. He's on his twelfth life right now. Gets himself in trouble now and then, but he always bounces back. He's got a good little ol' heart."
"So," I asked, "You're his mother?"
"Yes," she said as she closed her eyes and started rocking. "I'm what we call his first mother. So yes, God help me, I am his mama." She chuckled a little.
We sat quietly, each in our own thoughts. I heard the back screen door slam, and a few minutes later the rhythmic sounds of a push mower.
"Anyway," I said, "Storks bringing babies - why, that's the silliest thing I've ever heard!"
Sallie didn't open her eyes. "No sillier than how babies are born in life." She said. "Now that's just plain messy!"
CHAPTER TEN
