Almost Heaven (25 page)

“This information does not come from me, but from a colleague familiar with that history. He gave a full report of the activity surrounding his own charge who, at the time, had interaction with yours.”

“Explain.”

“As a youngster your charge was included in a musical endeavor with several others, and it was one of them who, shall we say, led him astray.”

“How so?” I said.

The imp chuckled. “You really do want the juicy tidbits, don't you?”

“I want to know the story. What happened?”

“I would have to read you reams of files. It would certainly cause you to distrust not only your charge and his motivations but also the very One who called you to protect him. Tell me this: why would the Almighty be so interested in one who had fallen so far? one who had so degraded himself as to become involved in a bevy of immoral behavior?”

“Perhaps my charge repented. This is something the Almighty delights in doing—forgiving those who have trespassed against Him.”

The imp rolled his eyes and his tongue as he said, “Forgiveness. The great mantra of the whole race. They want to forgive everyone. They want to absolve the murderer and the child rapist and the jaywalker and put them all on even footing. And if someone does evil to them, they tie themselves in knots because they cannot truly let go of the anger and resentment. It is such an insidious spectacle. Lucky for you and me that we don't have to entertain any of those thoughts, eh?”

As the demon spoke, I had a fleeting thought. While all of this was happening to Billy—if it did really happen—I was engaged in battle. Our side had again been victorious. But at what cost to Billy? And who had ordered me to this post, knowing the danger Billy would be in? knowing there was someone in the group who would lead him astray?

God Himself.

I focused my thoughts. “We are different from the humans; this is true. But the Almighty says He uses the weak things of this world to praise Him.”

“If I hear that one more time, my insides will explode. It is one thing for the humans whose eyes are clouded by their limited vision to believe that twaddle about the low being high and the high being low, but for you—an intelligent being who can
see
—for you to believe it and defend it stretches the bounds of credulity.”

I didn't answer, for my insides roiled with answers that sprang from the ages. I could have spent the next hour recounting the stories of humans who had fit into the holy rubric he demeaned. But this information also brought the questions focused on one life instead of the great circumference of humanity. I was learning about Billy and how his life intersected with the purposes of his Creator. I pondered all of this but kept silent, and he read my silence as a victory.

“He is ours,” the demon said. “Totally and irrevocably. Your charge pretends to serve his heavenly Father, but he is really serving himself. He is trying to expunge all of the things in his past for which he feels remorse. He is making up for everything evil he's ever done or thought about doing every day he gets up and strives and does his service to the King. He is not praising God with his being; he is selfishly assuaging his guilt through his own power and confession.” The demon laughed derisively.

“Perhaps the most important thing is not what he has done but what was done to him.”

“Victim status, then. ‘Woe is me; I've been violated by evil people. I had no control. I had no say in the matter.' If I were to read to you the transcript, I'm sure you would never look at your charge the same way again.”

The demon retrieved the report, or what he purported to be the report, and it was then I realized the truth. The demon had agreed to this meeting, had engaged with me, to keep me from the task I had been given. He was plying me with information to ensnare, not for an attack on me, but on Billy.

I hastened my return to the hills with the demon's voice echoing its accusations. It does not take long for an attack to become effective. What I found there showed what a tragic mistake I had made in listening to the evil one.

19

When a new mailman showed up driving the route one Monday, I didn't think much about it. He came late in the day, but few people are as fast as Callie in their sorting and delivery. She took time off every now and then and was off every other Saturday. But when he came earlier the next day, I went out and asked what was going on. He was a young fellow from Barboursville who had started part-time and was now full-time in Dogwood. He said Callie hadn't been to work since Saturday and they hadn't been able to get ahold of her.

I called her house but there was no answer, so I called her parents and her mother answered.

“Billy, we've been so worried. Her car's gone and the door is locked tight and there's no movement in there at all. She's never done anything like this before, not letting us know where she is or if she's okay. I've called the hospitals . . .” Her voice broke. “We just can't find her. I swear I don't know what to do. Have you heard anything from her?”

“No, ma'am.” I told her about the last time I had seen her at the mailbox.

“We're real worried. I think something's happened. We called the sheriff, but he said they have to wait a certain amount of time and that she'll probably show up.”

I took a deep breath and looked at the programs ready to go on the machines. “Tell you what. Let me go over to her place and see if I can find out anything.”

“Thank you, Billy.”

I started the next preaching program and set up my reels of music. The way I'd set it up, if there was more than twenty seconds of dead air, the first music reel or whatever was on machine number one would automatically start. To play music in the afternoon liked to kill me because I knew I'd get phone calls from people telling me they missed the second part of some message, but I saw this as an emergency and knew the people would understand if they knew the situation.

Sometimes I'd get a call from Callie on her cell phone when I played the wrong program. Half the time I was just mixed up, but many times it was because of the fatigue or my blood sugars that were out of whack. She was an angel on my shoulder trying to keep me on track.

* * *

Callie's trailer was supposed to look white and blue, but mostly it was a rusty red. One of the metal panels had come loose from the roof and turned up like a cowlick on a country boy. I checked her mailbox and there was a pile of stuff. I knocked, but there was no answer and the metal door didn't have a window. I pulled a loose cinder block over to the trailer and stood on it to see into the kitchen. The sink was full and on the table was the book I had given her. But there was no sign of Callie.

I cupped my hand over the window and looked closer. By the sink was an open prescription bottle. My heart skipped a beat. I carried the cinder block to the living room window. The drapes were open there, but she wasn't on the couch. Then I moved to the back bedroom and looked in the window, but the blinds were closed. The window was the kind you crank open and there was a little crack there. I pulled it open a couple of inches.

“Callie? You in there?”

A familiar sound came from the room—my radio station playing through the tinny clock radio. The preaching had stopped and the music was going.

I had to pull at the blinds through the ripped screen and broke a couple of the slats. I let my eyes adjust and saw her unmade bed. There was a long lump on it that I thought was her at first, but I realized that was one of those body pillows under the covers.

“What do you think you're doing?”

I grabbed my chest and took a breath. I hadn't noticed the woman standing at the end of the next trailer. “Just trying to find Callie.”

“She ain't here,” she said. Her voice was like gravel and her stare could have stopped a freight train. She had one hand in her apron pocket and the other flicking a cigarette.

“Are you sure?”

“Haven't seen her for a few days. Who are you?” It was more of an accusation than a question.

“A friend of hers. I talked with her mother and she told me she was missing.”

“A friend don't go breaking in to a house.”

I finally noticed there was something making her apron stick out. Something hard. And it was pointed right at me.

“What's your name?” she said.

“Billy Allman.”

She squinted. “You the fellow on the radio?”

I nodded.

“Say something else.”

“It's fifty-three degrees in Dogwood, relative humidity is 73 percent, and we should get a shower a bit later in the day.”

She took her hand out of her apron. “You
are
him.” She laughed and a cough accompanied it. “You sure don't look like I thought you would.”

What do you say to the expectations of casual listeners?

She wore a tight-fitting smock and shuffled through the crabgrass in faded pink house shoes. She held out nicotine-stained fingers and shook my hand. “Opal Walker,” she said. “I've known Callie since she moved in.”

I recognized the last name. Her son, Graham Walker, had gotten in trouble with the law and was doing time at Pruntytown. Anybody who knew about her pretty much stayed clear of her. That Callie would befriend her was not a surprise. She was always the one to believe the best about people and see them as needing the Lord. To be honest, Opal was right in my target audience, though she didn't know it.

“You listen to my station?” I said.

“Anytime I was over at Callie's, she had it on. She talked about you something fierce. Just a walking billboard. Like you hung the moon over the mountain.”

“When was the last time you saw her?”

She thought a minute. “Saturday. She came home from work and then went out in the evening.”

“I don't want to alarm you, but I saw an open bottle of pills by the sink, so I'm trying to get inside and make sure she's not lying in there.”

Her jaw fell. “Well, I got a key.” Opal turned and hobbled back toward her trailer. “She gave it to me just in case.”

She returned with a key ring that had a frog on the end of it. Callie always liked frogs for some reason.

Opal followed me to the front door and I had to work on it to get it open. When I did, an odor hit me and I turned. “That doesn't smell too good.”

Opal cursed and grunted as she pulled herself up into the house. I picked up the medicine bottle and didn't recognize the type of pills they were. Opal, however, sounded like she should have been a pharmacist. She knew they were for depression and surmised that Callie hadn't told anyone about it.

I studied the bottle. There were still pills inside. “If she'd wanted to OD, she would have taken all of them, wouldn't she?” I said.

Opal grunted.

I moved past a sink piled with dishes. The drain was stopped up and the water standing there could have explained the smell. At least that's what I hoped. I went through the living room and could tell Opal followed by the creak of the floorboards. I prayed the cinder blocks would hold.

The bathroom door was closed tight, but all the other doors were open. I saw into the tiny laundry room, a pile of clothes sitting there in front of the stacked washer and dryer.

I put my hand on the bathroom knob and stopped. There was something in that trailer other than the smell. Something dark. I don't much go in for the warfare stuff and praying the devil away, but it was almost like you could cut it with a knife. I breathed a prayer and asked God to keep my mind clear.

“Callie?” I said.

Hearing my own voice just about made me jump and I could tell Opal was skittered by it. She was breathing hard behind me, a mixture of asthmatic breaths and phlegm.

“Go on and open it,” she wheezed.

I turned the knob and pushed.

A small tub with the shower curtain drawn. All Callie's hair stuff by the sink in a basket. So much hair stuff.

I moved across the linoleum, praying,
Please, God, don't let her be in here.

I took the shower curtain in my hand and like that scene in
Psycho
where Janet Leigh finally dies and grabs it with one hand, I pulled it back.

Empty.

I let out a sigh and Opal did the same. “I thought for sure she was going to be looking up at us from that tub.”

I left the bathroom—Opal had to back out for me to get past her—and checked the bedroom and the rest of the house again just to make sure. Callie wasn't there. I turned off the clock radio and went back to the living room.

“It's a peculiar thing,” she said. “I knew she was in a bad way, but I never thought she would up and leave.”

“What do you mean, a bad way?”

“She always took such good care of herself. But of late she just let her hair go and she'd wear the same outfit days in a row. Wasn't like her.”

“What do you think happened?”

She shook her head. “Your guess is as good as anybody's. My big concern is . . .”