Even now, I struggle to keep this accidental abomination from claiming more lives. I sit beside you, Jacob. This is a nice room. Bright. The winter sunlight off white snow is hot in here. Moist peat and potted plants make a smell like summer. Your mother calls it her greenhouse. Your father used to call it Jamaica – his tropical paradise.
He lies in a cold place, now, in God’s Acres. They had to use a coffin-shaped metal dome burning gasoline for two days to thaw the ground where they dug. The dirt is freezing again above him. You stood through two different wakes and a long funeral. You shook lots of hands and hugged lots of backs, but didn’t even get to see him, what was left of him. It was a closed casket. He was there, but all you could see was the shiny box of puce-colored steel. Now, you can’t even see the box. It lies in a cold place. You’ve been to the brown rectangle of ground every day after school. Earlier today, you had lain down on it. Even now, black particles of earth cling to your jacket hanging by the back door. Mother will be home soon. You’ll be able to see her pull up the long drive just beyond the bank of windows. If you’re still here. It would be a real shame for her to see the red all over the glass. It would be a shame to ruin her greenhouse, your father’s Jamaica. In your right hand, you hold your father’s deer rifle, barrel pointed up toward your shoulder. In your left, you hold a religious tract you found in the Take-One bins at Sentry Foods. The rifle is loaded. So is the tract. Its lower edge is rumpled in your hands, sweaty with the January sun. You read:
Why do bad things happen to good people?
There is a one-word answer to that question: Sin. When the first humans sinned, they brought evil and death into the world. Since that time, sin is part of us. The Bible tells us, “There is no one righteous, not even one” (Romans 3:10). Why do bad things happen to good people? Bad things do not happen to good people. No one is good. Sin is part of us. Evil is part of us. When bad things happen to us, we merely reap the harvest of our evil.
Don’t believe it, Jacob. You father didn’t die because he was evil. He didn’t die because of something he had done or something you had done. He died because I failed. He died because God blinked. Don’t believe this tract. Small minds and smaller traditions. Don’t believe it.
Can I keep bad things from happening to me?
There is a one-word answer to that question, as welclass="underline" No. God’s laws are immutable. Water does not flow uphill. The sun does not shine at night. Time does not run backward. Nor does sin lead to happiness. The Bible tells us, “The wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). And because all of us are sinful, we cannot prevent bad things from happening. Our works cannot save us, for they are sinful and lead only to more evil.
Your eyes are streaming tears now. You’ve positioned the gun barrel in your mouth. Don’t do it, Jacob. No. Keep reading. It gets better. Even in its perverse way, this tract holds forth something that might pass for hope. Keep reading, or better yet, throw the tract away. Your father’s death wasn’t about sin and evil. It wasn’t about deserving to die and being under God’s sentence of doom. And, no matter what happened to your father, your job, Jacob, is to live.
I never knew that before. I, myself, never knew that fact until the night your father died, the night I ceased to be what I was and became something new. I had always thought that mortals were those creatures defined by their dying. But being human isn’t about dying. It is about living.
Your finger tightens on the trigger.
Don’t do it, Jacob. Don’t think of him burning on the hood of his truck. Think of him laughing in this room, his tropical paradise. Think of your mother, driving home even now. Think of your little sister, and your girlfriend, and your best friend. Think of all the living. You can’t do this. This breath can’t be your last. This bright space cannot be turned dark.
Or, perhaps, it can.
“Mother of God,” Donna said.
She stood beside the microwave, watching a bag of popcorn rotate on the turntable. Small pops shook the bag as, kernel by kernel, the corn burst. Their little heads blew apart, and they became white snacks. Donna’s eyes shifted from the popcorn bag to the Burlington Gazette. Her thumb pinned down a Blake Gaines byline – CORONER RULES SUICIDE FOR TEEN.
“Did you see this?”
“See what?” asked Azra from the love seat.
“The guy who hit my tree? His son – Jacob, sixteen years old – killed himself yesterday afternoon.”
“Yes, I saw.”
“Says he turned down counseling at the high school. Says his friends had seen him going to the cemetery every day after school. Says his mother came home from working at Sentry and found him. Can you imagine how horrible? A husband and a son, in two weeks?”
“Horrible.” February was black and cold in the windows behind him. The popping corn had reached a frenzy, steam venting out the end of the bag. Donna pulled it gingerly from the microwave. “Why couldn’t he have said yes to counseling? Why couldn’t his friends have stayed with him? Why couldn’t his mom have taken time off work?” The steam scalded her wrist. “He shouldn’t have been alone.”
Azra stared at the TV. It showed a black screen with small lines sparking atop it, the DVD paused just before the opening credits of a Great Performances production of Tennessee Williams’s Orpheus Descending.
“He wasn’t alone.”
“What?” Donna called from the kitchen.
“You can’t stop a suicide.”
She emerged from the kitchen and tore open the popped bag of corn. “What do you mean?”
“Even if you could roll back time, could reassemble the kid’s head and plead with him not to do it, he would do it anyway. Even if you appeared before him, an angel of God, and ordered him to live, he would die anyway. A suicide wants death more than anything else in the world. You can’t dissuade that kind of desire.”
“They have no idea,” Donna said, her voice growing bitter, “no idea what they’re doing to the people they love.”
“Who?”
“Suicides.” She paused. Her eyes grew gray with memory. “God, I would have done anything to save him.”
“You didn’t even know him.”
“I’m not talking about him,” Donna snapped. Then her tone softened. “I’m sorry. Just remembering my brother.”
“Oh, yeah,” Azra said quietly. “Right. Kerry.”
“Yeah. His name was Kerry.”
“I’m sorry.” He drew a deep breath. “We don’t have to watch. If you need to talk-”
“No.” She sniffed. “I just need some napkins. You can start the disc.”
Azra pressed the Play button. The title appeared, glowing in the midst of the stark darkness. Orpheus De- scending. In parentheses beneath these words appeared Williams’s original title, (Battle of Angels). Donna returned from the kitchen, settled into the love seat next to Azra, and set the warm bag between them. She looked up in time to see the fading title sequence.
“Do you believe in angels, Donna?” Azra asked.
“Me?”
“Do you believe in angels?”
“Yes.” She considered between bites of popcorn. “Yes. I suppose I always have.”
“Do you believe they can appear to humans – to us?”
“Yes.”
“And intervene on our behalf?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t they? Why don’t they intervene more often? Why don’t they save us? Why don’t they?”
Munching on popcorn, she stared at Azra’s intensely angry eyes and said, “We have to live. They can’t step in whenever someone’s tire goes flat. We have to live.”