Angels Unawares

Be not forgetful to entertain strangers: for thereby some have entertained angels unawares.  Hebrews 13: 2

Day One

Joshua Earl dreamed this while sound asleep on his wide bed in the darkest depths of a moonless mid-April night.

He stood alone on the road shoulder at a busy highway intersection beneath a searing and brilliant midday sun. Cars stopped waiting to turn began a chain beside him that snaked off into the glaring distance and disappeared beyond a cluster of pine trees that had somehow survived the assault of highway construction and the daily dose of choking exhaust fumes from stymied vehicles. The sun glinting off the windshields of that chain of cars shaped a diamond bracelet that seemed made just for him to wear in his mind if not on his arm.

He became aware of a denseness in his right armpit and felt before he saw the rough-hewn crutch that originated in his armpit and downward pressed along his right side past ribs and hip and thigh to the pavement at his feet. Well, pavement at his foot, he now saw as he gazed blankly at the spot where the tree-branch crutch pressed into the asphalt. Where his right foot should’ve been was a void. In fact his whole lower leg was gone, nothing but blank air from just above where his knee should’ve been to the empty stretch of pavement between the crutch stump and the sparkling new tennis shoe on his left foot. In that void between lower thigh and road there wasn’t even an empty pant leg flapping. The right leg of his jeans had been crudely cut at the knee and tied off with a piece of twine pulled tight like a tourniquet, a humble white line of defense against the upward march of loss.

In his left hand he held a steel coffee can. A few coins jangled in the bottom when he shook the can. On a piece of paper taped to the can were the handwritten words—Spare Change God Bless. The handwriting didn’t look like his, but he couldn’t say for sure.

The diamond chain of stagnant cars called him forth and he began to walk crutch then foot crutch then foot along the road shoulder beside the cars with the waves of heat rising off their metal flanks and mixing with the fumes drifting lazily skyward from their blackened tailpipes. He thought he should’ve felt discomfort at the heat and choking exhaust. But he felt no discomfort. He thought he should’ve felt the jarring lurch then impact of each clumsy swing then stop of his crude crutch. But he felt no thump. What he felt was floating past the baking cars and over the searing asphalt in conditioned comfort, neither hot nor cold, no sense of the effort of movement but still no question of movement as the diamonds turned to cars that drifted past—silver, white, black, bronze. Every so often metal would strike metal in the bottom of the can and he would look toward the arm that had tossed the coin and struggle to discern the face he knew must be somewhere beyond the shadow of the car’s side window. Try as he might, he could never make out the face. They were all hidden, secret. And he floated past, farther on down the line.

So he focused on the hands and forearms that would emerge from the dark with their offerings—this hand clearly a woman’s and young, with red painted nails and a gold ring on her thumb; that hand pudgy with cracked skin and black grease under torn and irregular nails, the hand of an aging auto-mechanic with a few dimes to spare. He created faces for the hands—a red-haired schoolgirl on her way to dance lessons, a bleary-eyed and balding day-worker on his way home to an empty apartment. He knew his creations were false faces, but somehow the process helped assuage the guilt he felt at not being able to see and thank the real ones.

His floating deposited him beside a limousine with dark-tinted windows that radiated black diamonds from the sun. An arm emerged as if through the tinted glass. The woman’s hand held a bill, a hundred-dollar bill. The delicate but not young fingers let it fall. The bill floated like a leaf, gently back and forth, till it disappeared into the black round hole of the coffee can. It made no sound.

The arm retracted into its tinted-glass shelter. Somewhere up the line a traffic signal switched from red to green. The diamond chain began to move. That reaction reached the black limo. It began to move past.

Joshua felt sudden fury rise in his throat. He wanted to grab the bill and thrust it back into the woman’s hand, back into the shadowy depths from which it had risen. His mouth shaped words—Coins only, coins only! But if the words came forth as sounds, he never heard them.

He tossed aside his crutch and turned to run after the receding vehicle. Then he realized he had no second leg. He would surely fall. He might even die under the wheels of the line of cars now whizzing past in a blur.

But he didn’t fall and he didn’t move. He looked down at his remaining whole leg. It wasn’t a leg at all. It was a trunk of braided woody vines rooted in dark moist loamy earth. And the vines twisted their way up through his pelvis and torso and out his arm sockets and down his now immovable arms. Woody brown vine trunks softened to moist green shoots where his wrists had been, green shoots to tendrils, tendrils to leaves just starting to unfurl. Then from his neck and burrowing through his skull more tendrils thrusting forth in resolute growth, pushing skyward and sunward and out what had been his ears and eyes and nose, his mouth yielding forth not words but all mix of blooms—clematis, wisteria, honeysuckle, trumpet flower: all dangling in a nectar-laden tangle of succulent and fragrant clusters. A hummingbird whirred past, paused and hovered, staring into his eyes turned to flowers, then flew on. A butterfly landed where his nose had been, uncoiled its proboscis and reached into his mouth turned to flower, found some sustenance there.

In the dream Joshua realized—this would be his destiny, his resting place.

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Laura Jackson Earl lay in that embracing fog between sleep and waking. The fog would thin and she would see her surroundings as they were, though with the edges softened and the shadows pregnant with a tension between promise and threat; then, soundlessly and suddenly, the fog would thicken, blocking real sight with dozing and prompting her sleep vulnerable imagination to fill the void where the tangible had so recently resided.

The bed on which she lay was firmer than she was accustomed to and narrow, pushed tight to the wall on one side, barely a foot off the wooden floor that her fingers lightly brushed on the other. The room was small but high, with a narrow band of clerestory windows on three sides yielding grainy gray pre-dawn light. The walls below the windows were solid books, shelf upon shelf, their spines glowing shades of silver and beige broken by horizontal and vertical bars of black. Those books seemed the thickened walls of a fortress, spine melded to spine, an edge-grain butcher-block of strength and hardness to keep marauders out. But as Laura’s consciousness twisted slowly toward sleep, those fortress walls took on the nature of a prison, not to keep danger out but to keep her in, no chance of escape, no view beyond except those lofty windows, and there only sky—blue to gold to pink to silver to black to gray.

She was reading to young children. They formed a loose circle around her hub, perhaps a dozen in all—seated cross-legged, some kneeling, others lying on their stomachs, heads perched on folded arms. Their faces were featureless masks—no eyes or ears or nose or mouth, just skin drawn tight over chin and cheekbone and skull, the skin of various shades: black, olive, tan, pale pink, luminous white.

She read from a big book with a glossy cover. On the open pages were colorful pictures interspersed with large bold text. She read the words in a firm sonorous voice of deliberate cadence but heard no sound and recognized no words. She’d pause in her reading, flip the book and hold it open for the eyeless children to see, moving it from side to side, giving all a good long look.

Reading to children—what an odd endeavor for her. She was a free-lance soil scientist, gathering field samples for analysis, carrying them to a private lab for testing, evaluating the results and recommending remediation to the client paying her fees. She rarely came in contact with children. Truth be told, children rather frightened her. They tended to be so—well, active: darting to and fro, talking nonsensically, watching, moving some more, flitting about like birds in a cage, like birds out of a cage and she’d been the one who forgot to latch the door, her fault they’d escaped and how was she to gather them all back in, safe and sound. Laura couldn’t remember when she’d last read to children, or to a single child, stretching all the way back to when she was a child, being read to, reading to her dolls. What an odd endeavor. What an odd dream.

Yet she seemed fully at ease in this unfamiliar role. Her voice reading the story was expressive and reassuring and all-encompassing. Its tone and its volume spoke the only truth any child ever desired—no harm will befall you in my presence, and my presence will never end. So potent was her offer that the featureless masks evolved features—a nose here, a mouth there, all those paired eyes winking to life: all those eyes, all those famished eyes.

Then there were only two eyes gazing at her. The words of the story fell silent, then the book disappeared, tumbling into the black void beyond her lap. It was only Laura and those eyes, the eyes now faceless, hanging there above her in the pre-dawn grayness, staring down, pinning her like an insect on a foam display board.

Those eyes—first of a child, then a teenager, then an adult.

Those eyes—now long since past their hunger for security, now with a different hunger, now yielding forth something new, something steely blue and unrelenting: now streaming forth the beginnings of blame.

Laura’s eyes, that had been open this whole time staring at the high ceiling that disappeared into the grainy shadows, suddenly clenched hard shut, pressed out tears.

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Laura carried Josh’s breakfast on a tray down the long dim hall leading from the kitchen to his bedroom. The bedroom’s open door beckoned her onward with the warm bright glow of morning light. She made it to the threshold without spilling juice or tea and paused there to let her eyes adjust and the muscles in her face relax. Josh lay on his back in the bed, his graying hair cushioned deep in the pillow, his face turned away from the doorway, his eyes staring out the long picture window to his right. Laura watched her ex-husband for long seconds that seemed like minutes or hours.

His unflinching and obstinate gaze recalled her oldest memory of him. He was a high-school junior waiting beside her locker in a deserted hallway. She’d stayed late to make-up a test; and, though he barely knew her, he’d waited the whole time, at least forty-five minutes—leaning against the wall beside her locker, unmoving, staring at the hall floor. She knew this because she could see his dim figure reflected in the glass of the open door to the classroom. Every few minutes she’d glance up from her test paper and see he was still there, waiting. His patient determination thrilled her but also frightened her a little. Who was this boy who could wait for her like that? Any other boy she knew would’ve been fidgeting after thirty seconds, and gone within three minutes. Who was this tall figure who could wait like that; and, what’s more, would wait like that for her? Only later, in retrospect, did a related question arise—who could bear such waiting? She stepped onward into the room with her tray.

Josh rolled his head to face her and smiled. A penny for your thoughts.

Laura set the tray on his writing desk and went to the edge of the king-sized bed to help him sit up higher against the headboard. My thoughts cost more than that.

Then at whatever cost. Name your price—I’ll write a check this minute.

Viewed your account balance lately? Might not have enough in there.

Josh shook his head. I’ve got enough or I’ll find it. I’ve always been good at that.

She nodded to concede the point, then bent at the waist, slid her arms under his armpits, and lifted his startlingly light torso against the pillow-cushioned headboard. She retrieved the tray and set it carefully astraddle his blanket-shrouded waist, the short legs on either side of the tray puckering the plush bedcovers. Breakfast safely delivered, she sat in the cherry armchair with the cushioned seat and back that was normally beside the desk but had been moved to the near edge of the bed.

His gaze hadn’t left her throughout these efficient actions and settled on her face now. Thank you, he said, but didn’t move to eat.

She nodded. You’re welcome, she said, then added, What thoughts you wanting to buy?

He laughed. This was a new Laura. The old Laura would never have picked up a dropped strand of questioning, never have invited a deeper glance into her workings. At the doorway—your thoughts while waiting on the threshold. You were waiting there so long I considered dragging what’s left of these old bones out of this bed and sweeping you off your feet to carry you over the threshold. His eyes left her face briefly and glanced toward his covered legs. But that wouldn’t have worked very well, would it?

Laura ignored this latter. You saw me?

Of course.

But you gave no clue.

Josh’s shoulders dipped slightly—a shrug or surrender, she couldn’t tell. That small movement seemed to trigger the subtle collapse of his body in on itself. The thin tension of expectation and hope he’d maintained since hearing her footsteps in the hall dissolved in the morning light.

Laura felt this shift—or had she imagined it? I was thinking of my oldest memory of you.

Way back.

Yes, way back. You were waiting for me in the school hallway, unmoving as a statue, for—I don’t know? a half-hour, an hour; in any case, a long time. Just waiting.

How’d you know?

I saw you reflected in the door’s glass.

So I’m not the only secret watcher.

She laughed at that, caught in her own accusation. That was back then. I had to use all the means of discovery at my disposal.

For what?

Laura didn’t hesitate. To bear your gaze.

And now?

She shrugged. What’s to hide?

You tell me.

Laura offered no answer. It was she who now stared out the big window at trees sprouting pale-green foliage against a deep-blue patient sky.

Josh took a few sips of the lukewarm tea. Laura had mixed in a squeeze of lemon and a spoonful of honey. There was a sweetness and comfort to the drink that went beyond mere taste. My oldest memory of you is stored in my fingertips, not my eyes. He set the cup down, raised his hands before his eyes, and watched his fingers perform a silent line dance in the air. At least I have these parts, he said, no trace of bitterness or pity, and their memories.

She faced him again, faced his fingers fluttering in mid-air like tan feathers on a fading breeze. The memory is stored in your fingers not your mind?

Josh let his fingers—fingers, then hands, then forearms—fall silently into the down comforter, the breeze that had held then aloft and dancing suddenly dead. I think so, he said, and that moment believed his assertion. My left thumb stores the actual memory of the hammer blow when I was fourteen and helping my dad mend the river fence; my right middle finger the deep cut from the razor clam I was digging up the summer I was eight; my left pinky smashed in the car door by Angie when I was thirty-five. His left pinky floated up from the covers and offered itself—its last joint kinked sharply to one side—as living proof of the memory. The event stored in the fingertips—the only proof it ever occurred.

Laura was truly intrigued by the idea. And events that don’t have enduring physical consequences—say, a touch of kindness or slap of anger—those are there too, in the appendages?

He nodded, Yes, then paused and added, Well, maybe. He couldn’t help but think of his lower right leg, amputated just above the knee, and the toes of his left foot—gone also. Where then would be his memories of running, swimming, kicking a soccer ball, brushing the leg of his lover beneath the sheets in the depth of a shared night? Those memories now residing in a lab somewhere? Turned to ash and smoke in a biohazard-disposal furnace? Just like that—dissolved into thin air, forever gone? Or maybe, just maybe, forever present—inhaled by himself and all living creatures in trace molecules and atoms floating freely across the globe, fixed now in this bush, this insect, then released again to be used again later and later and later, again and again and again. Ahh, now there’s a thought, a hope, a dread. Breathe deep the countless memories, hopes, and dreams of a long and full life. Breathe deep all he was or ever will be.

Tell me, then, please.

Her voice settled over him from afar, from a distant land or different reality, like his mother’s firm but gentle voice calling to him through the door to his room to rise for school. Josh, the voice said softly. Josh. Time to get up. Time to rise and shine. Time to greet the new day. His mother fully awake and calling, just there behind the closed door, just there out in the dimly lit hall, awake and preparing the way for him to enter the new day. Josh. His mother with bacon already popping and spitting in the large black frypan, eggs mixed in the bowl, plates set on the table. Josh. And he still lodged in a different world, in the tangle of sleep and dream and the slow emerging reality of his boyhood room with its dresser and old school desk and braided rug over worn oak floor. His mother waiting beyond the door—real and hard and permanent as a rock, a granite boulder, unmovable and unshakeable. And he caught up in his web of shifting realities and overwhelming fantasies.

Josh. Laura’s fingers archived new memories as she touched her ex-husband’s shoulder where it emerged from the covers. Josh.

He rolled his head to face her. Sorry. Those pills really work, maybe too well.

She nodded. I know. It’s O.K. Just wanted to be sure you were O.K.

What were we talking about?

She laughed. The memories in your fingers—some ancient and no doubt sordid tale they told about me.

He looked up at her face, so near at hand, her fingers still lightly on his shoulder, as she willed him to remain awake, at least these next few minutes. Was it important for him or her that his consciousness remain with her now—in the morning light in this bedroom with his breakfast on the tray across his lap—rather than drift away to some other world, some safer and softer immersion? Did it matter, really? And if so, why?

Her face was of the girl he’d met when he was sixteen and she fourteen, the girl he’d married the day after she’d graduated high school. The face hadn’t changed appreciably for him despite the intervening decades and the wear of all those years and choices. To be sure, there were a few wrinkles, creases around the eyes, slack skin at the cheek and jawline; but beneath those shallow changes ran a deeper radiance that shone through for him—still the first girl he’d fallen in love with, neither young nor old but eternal in his eyes. And he wondered—maybe memories stored in the eyes, permanent and unchanging long as the eyes gathered light. No, longer than that—past when the eyes stopped gathering light, more vivid in blindness than ongoing sight. Memories stored in the sensing organ—fingers, eyes, amputated toes. Was it good or bad that time and disease could nibble away at memories by consuming the sensing organ or appendage? What were the costs of such an equation; what were the rewards?

Laura sat back in her chair. She’d not force Josh to stay with her if the drugs and his fading chopped-up body elected to take his mind elsewhere. She should be relieved at the prospect—dozing, her ex-husband was no threat to her, no risk of opening old wounds or inflicting new ones. Yet just now a larger part of