Chapter 7

A Chapter by susan-denham

It was late by the time Kris finally made it to his Momma’s house. The yard was littered with junk: a rusted-through grill, a swing set that hadn’t been used in years, boxes of soda and beer cans for recycling. Kris quietly parked the Charger amid an assortment of other cars in various states of disrepair, some of which ran, some of which did not. The row of cars was a timeline of the Whitlowe automotive history. To the still slightly-buzzy Kris, the row looked like an evolutionary illustration from a natural history museum for cars. His shiny Charger was the highly evolved homo-automobilus; the gutted Chevy at the far end, which literally had a small tree growing through its engine block, was the primitive automobilus neandertal. “Who says we don’t believe in natural selection?” Kris quipped to himself with a faint burp.

A dog on a frayed, muddy rope growled like it meant business. “Buster!” Kris whisper-hollered at the dog, “Buster, it’s me, boy. C’mere. Be a good boy.” A pit-mutt sidled up to him, wagging his entire body. Buster barked happily in the late night, licked Kris’ hands. “Shh! Down, buster. Get down.” Kris had his own key so he let himself in. The door opened about 60 degrees before a pile of something blocked its swing. All of the lights were off, except for one over the stove in the kitchenwhere Kris’ mom was still awake, sitting in a house coat, smoking a Virginia Slim. “Well hey, baby!” she said in her gravelly voice, “You made it. I was startin’ to get worried, Christopher.”

“Hey, Momma,” Kris bent down to hug her neck, “I hope you didn’t stay up on my account.” Kris pushed aside some of the clutter that covered every inch of the kitchen table and put the smaller of his bags down.

“Oh, I was just sittin’ here " meditatin’ a bit. Aunt Ginny’s got the cancer, I think I told ya. And she ain’t doin’ too good.” Momma, adrift in worry, tapped an ash from her long, brown lollipop stick of a cigarette into an empty soda can. “Sit with me, Kris?”

“Momma, I’ve had just about the longest day of my life. I think I am just going to go lay down now if that’s ok.”

“Oh sure, baby. I put a mattress down in the middle room for you. It ain’t much, but I hope it’ll do.”

Kris rose doggedly from the table, “I’m sure it will be great.” He kissed her on her forehead before heading off, “I love you.”

The middle room was sort of a catch-all for any junk that didn’t find a home somewhere else in the house. There was a path to the one closet in the room, and a bit of open space for a chair which faced a computer desk in one corner. Other than that, the old hardwood floors were all but completely hidden beneath a landscape of stuff piled as high as Kris’ sightline. Momma had reclaimed about 18 square feet of floor, and thrown down a twin box spring and mattress.

Kris dropped his bags and fell hard onto the bare mattress. He didn’t even bother to get undressed. As he drifted in to Morpheus’ realm, Kris pondered at length Maggie’s tattoo. Years of religious history revealed to him what the single word was, but he could only wonder as to what meaning it held for Maggie.

- - - -

That night Kris dreamed that he was the beautiful Jesus mosaic at Sacred Heart. He was 20 feet tall and luminous. The warmth of God’s affection shone down upon his bejeweled features, and he refracted that good love onto the myriad people below. The children about him on the wall were all kids from the youth group. They orbited about him in trusting tranquility, safe in the understanding that was their ever-vigilant shepherd and overseer.

In the courtyard below, his subjects came and went with little awareness of the ever-present Jesus-Kris, busy with whatever it was mortals seemed to find important: hygiene and entertainments and tiny injustices. Kris saw himself, as small and full of fear as a filed mouse, walk into the courtyard, look up and marvel. He saw the band of addicts spill out into the courtyard and light up their f**s. He saw the crying girl run inside, her terrible parcel in hand. And from within, Kris heard over and over again Paul Gomez’s jolly observation, “Hey, we’re all angels here . . . we’re all angels here . . . all angels here. . .”

Kris felt an absolutely full sense of contentment. He cared about these people, each and every one of them. This was his place in this world - to watch over them -and he was happy to do it.

The shadows grew longer. The darkness melted across the courtyard, and then slowly, up the wall. Kris began to feel distressed from the oncoming chill. From within the classroom building, with his x-ray empathy, Jesus-Kris felt in himself the agony of the cat with the crushed pelvis. And he felt it when its tiny feline spirit drop like a pearl from the shell of her broken body, the last tenuous vestiges having been squelched out by a withered white electrical cord.

And it was at that exact moment that Kris became aware of another sound. It was as if someone had thrown a switch. This sound was familiar and new at the same time. Kris felt that he had been hearing this sound his entire life, and only just now become aware of it. What was it? It was all around him, but virtually imperceptible, almost a white noise, ubiquitous and ancient. It was like the sound of someone dragging a canvas across a floor. He strained with all that was in him, but it was difficult to hear over Paul’s looping message, “. . . angels here . . . all angels here . . . angels here . . .” He could not for the life of him figure out exactly what the sound was. But he knew at once that he must find the source of it, that it was vital to him. This was nothing less than the sound of Truth.