Waving her hand before her softly, widely, as if she were trying to send me off to sleep, Citrus says, “What if all this is the true meaning of Paul’s words in his first letter to the Thessalonians when he prophesies that those in God’s church will be caught up together with those who have died in Jesus — caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air?”
She pauses, looking into my eyes intently, a rare thing for a being from this planet, for my eyes are not easy to accept, they are so large, they are so deep, by this planet’s standards, but she looks into them as if she is ready to see me for what I am without fear. And what am I in this place? I grow stiff-fingered at the thought of that question, which Citrus inevitably makes me address. And her question is not a question. I have caught her and others up in the clouds and she is meeting me in the air and she is convinced that she understands all of that in a way fraught with eschatological meaning.
“Jared is here too,” I say.
“Cool,” she says. “Oh that’s cool.”
“But this is not …” I begin and then pause, for I do not know how to address her intense belief.
“It says the dead in Christ have been taken up first. … You have the dead here, too, don’t you?” She is saying that she knows I do.
And I am led to consider in what sense this might be true. I think of Minnie Butterworth and of Whiplash Willie Jones and of Herbert Jenkins who thought I was a hep cat in my zoot suit, and of many others, all dead and buried on their tiny fragment of cosmic rock but alive still in me, in my voice joined with theirs. Metaphorically, that is. For my species also dies. The individuals of all species everywhere in the known universe die. I know what this means. Or, more precisely, I know how little any being knows of what this means.
But living here in the midst of the clouds in this world full of words and passions, I am moved to understand things in new ways. I feel that those individuals I have known here who have died are still alive in more than a metaphorical way, more than as a construct of words. They are real inside me, moving about. Speaking. I hear their voices, even without the aid of my machines. These individual beings are very much alive, in my head and in my place of song and in the very pulse of my fingertips.
“You do, don’t you?” she says.
“Do?”
“The dead are taken up here. They are alive here in the clouds.”
“Yes,” I say.
“Hallelujah.”
But I must be honest. I say, “In a sense.”
She does not take up this qualification. She says, “I will sleep, Lord. Thy will, not mine, be done.” Citrus lies down on her bed, which is notched into the softly glowing walls in this space that I worry now is not sufficient for her, or for any of my visitors. But she seems not to mind. The feeling in me, however, remains. I want to make things good for her. I sit beside her on the edge of her bed. I pat her hand. I wish to use words that will reassure her, give her the hopefulness about the universe that she seeks. In short, I wish to lie. But she and I have our differences on this subject. What is true, if I speak it, will seem hard on her. Still, I find myself caring about Judith Marie Nash’s happiness. I pat her hand some more. I could say these things now that are true: her view of the world is still being directed by her father; I am simply a spaceman. But I remain silent for the moment. Happiness, on this planet, is fragile and fleeting. There are so many souls here, yearning, and I myself yearn to touch them all, to give them peace. But I am simply a spaceman. I am.
There is the sound of a rapid, fleshy fluttering in the room. I look down. I am still patting her hand. At a drastically brisk pace, it seems. I am unaccustomed to the use of this gesture. Judith’s face is turned slightly toward the wall. She glows from the light emanating there. Her eyes are full of tears. And my hand — committed somewhat independently now to this attempt to redeem the gesture of her father on her last night in his house, to give the gesture the sincerity she so desires — my hand pats away furiously. I am desperate to stop her tears.
“Can you help me to do your will? To sleep?” she asks.
I bring my patting hand to a stop. She and I are both relieved. I lift my hand and her eyes are still lambent with tears and I pass my hand before her and her face disappears and my hand moves on and her face reappears and her eyes are closed and she is asleep until I call her forth again. I am content. She sleeps.
I rise and I make my way down the corridor, a faint snoring or rustling of limbs coming from this cubicle and that. They all are sleeping, my guests, my children, and I believe that they are happy, for this moment at least. They are safe. But then I think of their dreams and I think of Citrus’s dream of the man named Jesus and of the nails hammered through his hands and feet and I grow afraid. Is this the role that Citrus would have me play? The stories this species tells itself over and over, through generations, all seem to have certain endings that are inevitable. My fingers grow stiff again in fear. The sounds to the left and to the right, coming from the darkness where these creatures sleep, suddenly drive me forward faster, faster, I am gliding fast, away from the sleepers lest they awaken and see me as Citrus does.
But now there is a turning to the corridor and another and I am before our own living space — mine and my wife Edna Bradshaw’s — and I move through the yielding door and Edna is there. She is sitting on our genuine Early American Reproduction Couch with Comfy Built-In Recliner that we brought up from her trailer after our marriage. Eddie the yellow cat is purring loudly in her lap and she has characteristically left the recliner end for me to sit in. She has declared several times that she loves her one true man sitting in a recliner, especially a recliner that she picked out even before she met that man. It was Fate that brought us together. And the recliner is a sign of that.
“Hello, darling, I am home,” I say.
“Hello, darling, did you have a hard day?” Edna says.
“I am still having my day,” I say, though I know this exchange is supposed to proceed less literally.
“I’m still trying to adjust to that, Desi honey. Are we doing more breakfasts? It’s getting on into the afternoon, isn’t it? Though I never really know up here.”
“Perhaps we will postpone breakfasts for a while,” I say.
“Course, it’s always breakfast time for our guests, isn’t it? Seeing as they’re always just waking up after a long sleep?”
“You are making a happy home for me and for our guests,” I say. “I rely on your judgment.”
This pleases my wife Edna Bradshaw and she beams me a sweet smile and strokes the yellow cat Eddie with increased vigor and she nods her head toward the recliner and waits for me to sit down.
I do. This is a difficult matter for me, but one that I am willing to take on for the sake of my wife Edna Bradshaw. The Comfy Adjustable Headrest thrusts my head forward with extreme Discomfy, from either of its two adjustable positions, and the Doctor Designed Lumbar Control buckles me outward in the middle, perhaps to give the anonymous doctor better access for abdominal surgery, and I pause in this process and Edna says, as she is always quick to do, “Go ahead. Stretch out and relax.” And I do what she is convinced — beyond the powers of her observation to contradict — gives me pleasure. And since she is my loving wife, my presumed pleasure clearly gives her pleasure, so I reach down and throw the handle and my torso flies back and my feet fly up and I am Reclining in Total Comfort, or so is the public assertion of those who make and sell and appreciate this machine. But I am far from that promised state. Far. Though I am now reclining, my head remains slung forward, running a hot flame down the back of my neck, and my midsection remains bulged, though now upward, inducing tendrils of pain to snake off my spine so that I find myself wishing for the doctor to get on with the surgery. And my vision is filled with my sixteen toes arrayed in rigid response to the severity of my discomfort.