Angels, a story

Angels (Opening)

(The complete story is available in the collection Seven True Lies, which you can buy, either in trade paperback or as an Acrobat download, from my bookstore.)

There is a place in your heart, just before you get to the heart of hearts, a little antechamber where unsavory intentions gather—and linger—for they cannot enter your very heart. It is in this waiting room, secret and small, where you hope that your sister will fall off her stupid pony and break her leg the next time she rides him; where you hope your parents will die in a car accident and leave you destitute and felt very, very sorry for by relatives and neighbors alike, especially by your grandmother who has quite a lot of money she might give you to cheer you up; where the dentist petitions his patron saint to please make his patients eat a little more candy, and brush their teeth a little less; where the cardiologist prays that the junk food merchant will up the fat content in those super sizes just one more notch. This is the little room from where, they say—I read this somewhere not so long ago—that if thoughts could kill, we would de-people our planet in a little less than two hours.

This is the place where I dwell most of my day. I call it my grizzly place. This is from where I cannot help myself. But right now I am lucid.

Some say we were created on the 4th day, but this is not so. We were not created. None of us. We were all one with Michael, who was as God, and whom some call Sabbathiel. We had not wings then. Nor had we bodies. We simply were.

Dad says God created Texans because he needed people who liked Texas. I have no idea what he’s talking about. What’s there not to like? There’s no better place on Earth. There’s no end to Texas. The rest of the world, and that includes Africa—which is mostly a desert as big as an ocean called the Sahara Desert—could just about fit in our back yard, where we have lots of ants.

Some days my grizzly place is crawling with them, with ants, and then I itch and pour gasoline on them and strike a match to them and see them scurry and fry and flee and leave, all of them, except for the crispy ones which lie upside down and twitch for a while with their little charred and wispy legs before they stop twitching and die and smell bad like something left too long in the oven, when Mother starts swearing and Dad starts swearing too for it’ll be a while now before dinner’s ready, she’s got to think of something else she says, and why does she have to do everything, while she slips on those big green and yellow and pink here and there oven mitts and pulls that burnt and smoking and smelly thing out of the oven and tosses it into the garbage with a big fat thud and another swear word or two and some mutter mutter which I don’t really make out along with it, where it still smells of smoke and fire, though it doesn’t smell of gasoline, like dead ants do, and Dad pretends to read the paper.

The best thing in all of Texas is Bethe. That’s what I think. At least when I am lucid, like I am lucid now. For then I can read and think and say and dream and write things down I don’t even understand when the ants re-invade my grizzly place and I have to fetch more gasoline.

I burned down a tool shed once.

By the end of the 4th day some of us had turned into stars.

There are those who speak of this. Isaiah, for one, for he gave the fallen angel a name, he called him the morning star. Other places he calls him the defiant star, the rebel angel. And in this he is right, of course, though he may not know where or how or why: for to be an angel, you must have fallen; defiant, rebellious. I should know.

We have always been superior to man, but not always inferior to divinity.

We were aspatial at first, all of us, neither occupying space nor being enclosed by it. We were nowhere and everywhere, surrounded by nothing, suffusing everything, all two million of us. God’s engine of war.

Some claim we have beginnings but have no end. This is false, we have no beginning. In that we are all as Michael, who is as God.

I think Bethe is an angel. A capital A Angel. Sometimes, when the light falls just right on her shoulders, I can make out her wings. They flutter like a million motes of silvery dust when she moves, and when they do everything is right with the world and there are no ants, not in my grizzly place, not anywhere, and I feel nicely lucid.

That’s when I write poems, like the one which was published in a church magazine last year, or the year before that. “That was a damn mistake,” says Dad, and laughs. “One day we’ll find out where he stole it from.”

I didn’t steal it from anywhere. It was whispered to me.

It was about a capital A Angel, too, but not about Bethe. The poem came to me, almost like a guest, like a wind, and it filled that part of my heart where I hurt the most—which is not my grizzly place, but next door to it, the real heart—and there it whispered and whispered until I had it all remembered.

Then I wrote it down and it came out so nice that Sister Elizabeth at the convent was the only one who believed me when I said I had written it myself, and she showed it to some priest whose name I can’t remember who liked it so much he went ahead and published it in a church magazine which I think was called The Clarion. I’m pretty sure that’s what it was called. I have it somewhere around here if you want to see.

The poem was called “Heavenly Voices” I think it was. I didn’t call it that, I didn’t call it anything, but the priest called it that. Poems should have titles, Sister Elizabeth explained to me. That was last year, or the year before that, before the ants became a real nuisance.

And now Bethe is afraid of me. Not sure what I might do. Alert.

We can converse with each other without the use of signs or words.

We can work wonders. But, says Raguel—who is the self-proclaimed protector of tradition and protocol—not miracles, and then he goes on to define miracles as that thing which angels cannot perform, which I find a bit lame. Saraqael has a better definition. He defines a miracle as creating something from nothing. I hold to that as well, and despite Raguel’s proclamation, I also hold that we can: create something from nothing. We all can, even humans, if they only dared to remember.

Though some do it every day.

Some see us.

Jorge Luis Borges, for his bad eyes, saw us at nightfall, “in that long quiet moment when things are gradually left alone, with their backs to the sunset, when colors are like memories or premonitions of other colors,” he wrote. Few humans have known us better. Had he but believed, he would now be one of us. But he did not, and so he is not.

The Gnostic heresiarchs claimed that the world, which they considered evil, was the work of fallen angels. There is some truth to that.

Bethe’s last name is Gullifer, which is a name that comes from England and which means wolf army, she once told me. “Wolf army?” I said. “You’d never get that many wolves in one place at one time,” I said. “Not to make up a whole army.” For I was sure I had read somewhere that wolves are loners. Well, everyone’s heard of the Lone Wolf, haven’t they? They run in small packs, is what they do, not in armies. And definitely not in Texas. There are too many guns here, by far. Though they don’t eat cows, wolves don’t, so maybe they wouldn’t shoot at them, not for that, anyway. At least I think they don’t eat cows.

“I don’t know,” she said. “It’s just what grandpa says. I’m not even sure it’s true.” And she looks up at me and smiles, and she smells like grass before it turns yellow, that, and flowers, violets, I think. The most wonderful smell in all of Texas.

Well, come to find out, it is true. I checked up on it. This was when they still let me go to the library by myself, before “too many damn books,” as Dad likes to say, got to me.

Bethe Gullifer. Capital A Angel.

Mom calls Bethe’s house “next door” even though it’s a mile and then some away, and that’s not really next door, is it? Although, when you think about it, it really is the next door, at least in that direction.

“Give me Texas any damn day,” Dad likes to say, a lot. “At least we have some space here.” He’s right about that: there’s a lot of space between me and Bethe although there were times there was hardly any.

We’ve lived here forever, Dad says. This used to be his dad’s house, and before then it belonged to Dad’s dad. Now it’s “way too big” for us, says Mom, who cannot have any more children. “He saw to that,” Dad says and looks at me with his dark eyes, sharp and hooded as if his lids were wrinkly skin umbrellas. Mom says Dad does love me, of course he does, he just isn’t very good at showing it, she says. I’d say.

I don’t think he loves me at all. I think he wants me dead. I think there is some sort of race on.

Some call me Gabriel. And they are right, that is my name.

Some call me the Angel of Vengeance. Those that do are also correct, for my main business is returning favors. I lead God’s engine of war.

Michael and Raphael are my brothers. Or sisters. Siblings. We are sexless, you know. Mostly. We can choose, and therein lies our elegance. We can rise above, or swim within, at will, that deep and wide and turbulently ecstatic sea Man calls procreation, that devours him and separates him from us.

Man cannot choose and that is his curse.

Some have blamed me (or praised me, viewpoints vary) for whispering the length and breadth of the Alcoran into Mohammed’s ear. Even Mohammed himself claims that I did.

Let me set the record straight: I did no such thing. The Alcoran was not my doing. I did not even like the man. I believe it was Raphael. Unless, of course, Mohammed made it all up himself. I don’t think so though. I think it was Raphael: parts of that rambling book reek of him and he was hard to find around that time. Away whispering, I’d wager.

Some claim I leveled Sodom and Gomorrah on the direct orders of God, and that, on the other hand, is true. I am not above a bit of honest carnage now and then.

But mostly I, like Raphael, like to whisper.

Yes, I’m sure of it: Dad wants me dead.

Dad has a red-haired friend who is a giant called Barrel. That’s not his real name, but if you saw him you’d know why he’s called Barrel. “He’s got to weigh three hundred pounds if he weighs an ounce,” says Mom. “All muscle,” says Dad. “Muscle, my foot,” says Mom. “Muscle don’t make you seasick to watch.”

“What do you know about seasick?” says Dad, who gets angry and asks dumb questions like that when he’s been outwitted by Mom, which happens a lot.

Barrel probably does weigh three hundred pounds. He is huge. But he is an excellent shot. He loves his guns, Barrel does. Keeps them polished and oiled and true. “Does little else with his time,” says Dad. And then he winks and grins at me, but it’s not a friendly grin, and it’s really meant for Mom. “It’s not like he’s busy fending off women.” Ha, ha.

We’re out shooting bottles, Dad, Barrel and I, although I don’t get to shoot. “Probably kill someone,” Dad says.

And I know—and Dad knows, and Barrel knows—that if I had not stumbled that day, if I had not tripped on that twig, and almost fallen, Barrel would have shot me deader than a lead weight. Christ, I felt the bullet. It damn near parted my hair. I had begun to fall as it came. Had I stood upright, it would have found my brain, head on. I know that for a fact, for Barrel is the best shot in our parts, if not in the entire state of Texas. He’s got trophies to prove it, says Dad, and Mom doesn’t disagree, so I’m sure it’s true. When Mom does not disagree with Dad, what he says is mostly true.

Dad acted real upset that I almost got shot. “What the hell are you doing, man?” he screamed. “You almost shot my boy.” And Barrel, too. Although Barrel probably didn’t act so much as really was upset, for I’m sure Dad wasn’t about to pay anyone for a near miss, and there was no way Barrel was going to aim at me and shoot again, not with me not taking my eyes off of him. Barrel didn’t say a word but climbed into his pickup truck and then there was a lot of dust, and Dad kept saying “It was an accident, son, an accident.” Right.

I’ve been wary of Barrel since. I tend to walk the other way. Run.

Alert.

The complete story is available in the collection Seven True Lies, which you can buy, either in trade paperback or as an Acrobat download, from my bookstore.

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