Sam gazes at the stars. Says nothing.
‘Are you thinking about turning pro, or are you intending on quitting football altogether?’
‘Quitting, I guess.’ The stars blur. Sam pinches away tears. ‘It’s
… complicated. I… I don’t think I can compete at the same level anymore.’
‘Because of one off game?’
‘Dad, I can’t… I just can’t do it anymore.’
‘Well, you know what? I’m glad.’
‘You are?’
‘Sure. For someone sitting on top of the world, you don’t seem very happy.’
‘They’ll label me a quitter.’
‘Who cares? As long as you know it’s not true.’
‘A lot of people will be very upset.’
‘Yes, the world will certainly be disappointed, but the sun should still rise, and the birds will still sing, so how bad can it be?’
‘I feel like I’m letting everyone down. Maybe I should just suck it up and deal with it?’
‘Maybe it’s time you asked yourself why you’re playing football?’
Sam looks up. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Do you remember Rabbi Steinberg’s sermon on Tikkun Olam and Tikkun Midot?’
‘Not really.’ Sam grins. ‘Sorry. Guess I didn’t make a very good Jew either, huh?’
Gene ignores the remark. ‘ Tikkun Olam means to mend the outside world. Tikkun Midot deals with acts of internal healing. Tikkun Midot is a self-awareness that enables you to reach beyond the natural and instinctive, past the reflexive and knee-jerk responses, in order to refine the soul. It means we have recognized the need to turn our lives in a better direction.’
‘I thought I was going in the right direction.’
‘Success and prosperity doesn’t necessarily equate to living a good life. Something’s obviously bothering you about your future. Whether you choose to play football or not should be your decision, not your peers’. You can’t allow your friends to make their agenda yours. I think Philip Roth expressed it best when he wrote, “The human stain that touches all that we do is inescapable.” Do you understand?’
‘All but that last part.’
‘What Roth was saying is that placing great faith in human beings is not only impossible, it’s downright foolish. Everything we touch as humans is stained. Roth saw modern man falling into the same rut as Abraham-creating and serving lesser gods-false idols that neither redeem nor save us.’
‘What does any of that have to do with me?’
‘Think about it, Samuel. Look at what you’ve become. You were born the false idol, a mythical twin worshiped by the masses. You successfully escaped to a different identity, but like some insecure Hollywood actor, you still covet the spotlight. It’s like you’re afraid to let go, afraid to disappoint. None of this attention is real, son. Fame is fleeting. The only thing that counts is what’s on the inside.’
Gene looks up at the moon. ‘You know, I’ll never forget the night you and your brother were born. Such a crazy time. Sylvia and I watched the whole thing on TV. There must have been ten thousand people surrounding the hospital. Rabbi Steinberg told me the air literally seemed charged with electricity. And everyone inside-the doctors and nurses, President Chaney, all those nosey reporters and the armed guards-all were anticipating this wondrous miracle. Your poor mother, she was exhausted and in pain, but she hung in there, refusing any drugs… so afraid it might affect the birth. Anyway, the blessed event happened, and they finally showed footage of your mother holding you in her arms. I remember looking at you, so innocent, wrapped up in that tiny blanket, and I thought to myself-this is a special child, a gift from God, but from here on out, it’s downhill all the way. Because how on Earth could any child, or any adult for that matter, live up to the expectations humanity seemed to be placing on you and your brother?’
Sam sits up. ‘It always played with Jake’s head-all those crazy expectations. I think he was trying to become something everyone wanted him to be. Somewhere along the line, he just lost it mentally.’
‘And isn’t that the reason you wanted out of that life, to escape all that craziness?’
‘Yes.’
‘Looks to me like you jumped from the frying pan into the fire. Samuel “the Mule” Agler-everyone’s all-American hero. To do Tikkun Midot means to overcome our less worthy instincts, not to succumb to peer pressure.’
Gene Agler stands, brushing away the sand. ‘When I was eleven, two boys at school beat me up pretty bad, just because I was Jewish. For a long time after that I remember feeling ashamed of who I was. One afternoon my father gave me a card and inside was a poem. “Be your own soul, learn to live; And if some men hate you, take no heed. If some men curse you, take no care. Sing your song, dream your dream, hope your hope, pray your prayer.” ’
‘Whatever you decide, Samuel, do what’s best for you. Do what’s best… for your soul.’
A wisp of thought, in the consciousness of existence.
Jacob?
Are you out there, son?
If you are there, I have no way of knowing.
The Abomination has blanketed my senses, shielding your thought energy from me. While I cannot hear you, I pray you might still hear me in the hopes that my experiences on Xibalba can protect you.
At one time we spoke of love. It’s important you understand the power of the emotion, and how its absence can taint the soul.
As Michael Gabriel, I had lived an existence devoid of happiness-a lonely childhood, followed by a bitter adolescence. I was life’s victim, my later years spent in isolation in a mental asylum. Even those precious few moments spent with your mother were fleeting, the pain of her loss filling me with an angst I cannot put in words or thoughts.
Was it mere coincidence that the Guardian arranged a shared existence with the Mars colonist, Bill Raby-himself filled with an emptiness as bad, if not worse than my own? No, I no longer believe in coincidences.
But it was not just Bill Raby who experienced this heaviness of heart, nearly every colonist marooned on Xibalba shared the same unspoken feeling. It was a feeling of shame, of survivor’s guilt, magnified beyond the scope of human despair.
Nine billion people on Earth had perished so that a chosen few could survive. Many of us had ‘conspired with the Devil,’ meaning we had been selected for Mars Colony based neither by lottery nor merit, but by political affiliation, by favoritism and ethnic background. We survived because of who we knew and how much money we had so that we could manipulate the selection process.
Now, marooned on Xibalba, the immorality of our affairs was tearing us apart inside.
Not all of us, I should say. Your cousin, Lilith, and her son, Devlin, along with their ‘coven’ of friends, seemed quite content with our bizarre predicament.
The rest of us, however, were left to wallow in our existence. ‘Live for those who died,’ became our creed. And so we faked our joy, pretending the whole affair back on Earth was just a test of survival.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily… life is but a dream.
Was Bill Raby’s existence but a dream?
Was Michael Gabriel’s? Can one truly exist without love?
Yes, but it is a self-imposed hell.
It was your love that saved me, Jacob, but in your unselfish quest to release me, I fear you have condemned your soul to the same purgatory, the same ultimate destiny.
You cannot simply be Hunahpu, you must retain your humanity. Step into the real light. Allow yourself to love again, or you will find yourself on the same path as your cousin, Lilith.
Having said what I needed to say, I’ll return to my journey on Xibalba.
Each of the alien planet’s days was divided into three shifts consisting of labor for the collective, personal time, and more labor, for it was essential to our existence that our first crop yield a bountiful harvest.
During these first six months, I was assigned to a habitat shared by seventy-eight single men and women.