The Trial of Fallen Angels (17 page)

21

E
lymas sits on the rocking chair in Sarah’s room, pushing himself back and forth with his cane against the corner of her crib. He is expecting me. I have made my decision. I must see Bo and Sarah again. The old man’s toothless smile appears when he hears me enter. I’m here to see my husband and daughter, but it feels shady, like a drug deal.

“Shall I take you?” Elymas asks.

“Yes.”

His eyes widen and I disappear into them. I emerge this time in a quiet country cemetery on a sloping hillside bent in prayer against the wooded slope of the Bald Eagle Mountain. I have been here several times before. This is the cemetery near my grandfather’s farm where the Cuttlers bury their dead. It is a pretty place. And sad. The sun this day burns warm and bright, but the graves do not taste the sun or feel its heat. A requiem of red oak trees enshrouds those who sleep here, the paper-thin membrane of chlorophyll demonstrating the easy dominance of darkness over light. But the shadows moving beneath the leaves appear to be of a different darkness and a different light. They flicker over the stones and dance across the grass without relation to the sway of the trees or the stirring of the small memorial flags.

At the end of a row of well-kept plots kneels a man in his fifties. His hair is thinning and his middle thickening. He resembles Bo’s father, Aaron, when I was first introduced to him, pulling weeds from the garden behind their house. The man in the cemetery hears me rustle through the grass and rises to his feet. In his right hand he holds a small silver teacup and in his left a black yarmulke. The cup falls when he sees me, crashing onto a sterling silver tray placed at the base of a small, granite gravestone. I cannot see the name. The collision knocks over a silver teapot and two other cups, spilling their contents.

“Brek?”

“Bo?”

We race around the gravestones to hug each other.

“I knew you’d come today,” he whispers.

I look at him. He appears hollowed out, like he has aged decades, a faint shell of the man I once knew. “Are you sick?” I ask.

“No, why?”

“Because . . . because you don’t look well. You look so different from when we met two days ago.”

“Two days ago?”

“Yes, two days ago, at the playground with Sarah. Have you forgotten already?”

He holds me at arm’s length. “That was fifteen years ago, Brek.”

“No, it wasn’t,” I insist. “It was the day before yesterday. Remember? You had just finished your jog, and we put Sarah on the swing. You told me how you’d been staying with David and that things were starting to get back to normal. You were looking for a job in New York.”

He looks at me as if I am crazy. “I remember,” he says. “That was fifteen years ago, look—”

He walks back to the grave, pulls a copy of the
Centre Daily Times
from beneath the serving tray, and shows it to me. The headline reads “Killer Executed.” The dateline reads “July 21, 2009.”

Bo leads me to the trunk of a large oak tree at the end of the row of gravestones and we sit down together. He’s wearing wrinkled slacks and a polo shirt that look as if he’s slept in them. His face is covered with gray whiskers.

“I got the job in New York but lost it,” he says dejectedly. “I haven’t been able to keep a job for more than six months at a time ever since. No television station will touch me. They’re afraid of people who tell the truth. Maybe I drank a little too much and missed a few deadlines. Television is a sham, Brek, and the news is a sham. It’s all a game.”

I can’t believe how much he’s changed. He’s obviously paranoid, and he twitches involuntarily, like a drug addict or an alcoholic.

“I’m doing fine, though,” he continues. “I’m a counselor at a homeless shelter now. They’re letting me stay there while I get myself together. Good people. I run an AA meeting and keep an eye on things. I’m thinking about doing a documentary. I’ve been talking to some old friends at the station. People think the homeless are animals, but they’re just like everybody else. They had normal lives once—then something went wrong.”

Bo reaches out to hold my hand, but I pull it away.

“Have I changed that much?” he asks.

This isn’t the Bo Wolfson I knew, the man whom I fell in love with and father of my daughter, the brilliant, courageous reporter, the handsome anchor of the morning news who smiled down from billboards with Piper Jackson. “You’ve changed a lot,” I say.

“I’ve missed you so much, Brek,” Bo says. “When I heard they were executing that bastard Bowles this morning, I had to drive up here to see it. I was hoping he might make an apology, but nothing. No apology. No remorse. Nothing. None of his buddies from Die Elf had the guts to show up either. They’ve all crawled back under their rocks. But I loved watching him shake when they fried him. You saw it all, though. I knew you were there. I could feel you in the room.”

“Who, Bo? Who are you talking about?”

“Ott Bowles. That’s why you came back, isn’t it? Because it’s finally over and justice has been served? You can rest in peace now. And I’m gonna make a fresh start. Clean myself up; I’m not that old. Maybe I’ll even get back into the news. I’d be a great producer. I’ve been talking to some old friends at the station—”

And then it occurs to me. Bo knows how I died. Of course. I should have asked him before but our visit was cut short. I can finally find out how I died!

I grab him by the shoulder and shake him frantically. “Bo, was I murdered? Was I killed by Ott Bowles? Is that how I died?”

In the distance, I can see Elymas walking slowly toward us.

“It’s time,” he calls out in a dry, hacking voice. “It’s time, Brek Abigail Cuttler. Come with me. It’s time.”

Bo closes his eyes and covers his ears. “No!” he shouts. “No, not the voices again!”

“Bo,” I cry, “please, tell me how I died. I’ve got to know.”

Elymas calls out again. “Come with me, Brek Cuttler. It’s time.”

I glance down at the newspaper on the ground beside Bo. If fifteen years have passed, then Sarah would be old enough to tell me how I died as well. Oh, how I long to see her. My heart leaps with hope. I shake Bo again. “Bo! Hurry! I have to go. Just tell me, where’s Sarah?”

Bo opens his eyes and drops his hands. He glares at me in disbelief.

“What do you mean, where’s Sarah?” he shouts.

“Where is she?” I plead. “Hurry, I need to see her.”

Bo jumps up from the grass and starts running away, weaving through the gravestones with his hands gripping his head as if he’s in pain. I chase after him.

“Wait! Wait, Bo!” I call. “What’s wrong?”

“Why are you doing this?” he yells. “Please, please just leave me alone.”

He makes a short loop around the graveyard, returning to the headstone and the upset tea service where I first found him. He falls to his knees, tears streaming down his cheeks.

Elymas is moving closer. “Come with me, Brek Cuttler,” he commands. “It’s time.”

“Bo, please,” I cry, “please, it’s all right. Everything’s all right. Just tell me, where’s Sarah?”

He looks up at me in rage. “What do you mean, where’s Sarah?” he screams. “Don’t you know?”

He points at the tombstone. Engraved at the top is a crucifix superimposed over a Star of David. The sight of this heresy startles at first, but the symbols look somehow correct together, as if the perpendicular lines complete the thought of the interlocking triangles and are their natural conclusion when manipulated properly, like a Rubik’s Cube. Engraved beneath them in large block letters across the polished surface are the words CUTTLER-WOLFSON. Beneath these, in smaller letters, is this:

BREK ABIGAIL

December 4, 1963—October 17, 1994

Mother

SARAH ELIZABETH

December 13, 1993—October 17, 1994

Daughter

Hot tea and bees honey, for two we will share . . .

22

I
found Nana Bellini in the garden behind her house, stooped low over a row of tomato vines sagging with ripe, red fruit. Her silver hair, pulled back in a bun, shimmered under the darkening skies of an approaching summer storm. She hummed a tune while filling a small basket with fresh produce, aware that I stood nearby in the cool spring air watching her. Reaching the middle of the row, she twisted off a huge beefsteak tomato, so large and swollen that its skin had split open exposing its tender pink meat inside. She held it up for me to see.

“Even vegetables suffer as much from abundance as from want,” she observed. “Some, like this one, are bold and flashy, taking everything they can. Others sip only what they need, content to share with the community.” She pulled apart a snarl of average-sized tomatoes and pointed to a stunted tomato vine off by itself in a patch of cracked, barren dirt. “And then there are the ascetics, joyfully suffering without any hope of bearing fruit themselves, secure in the knowledge that their sacrifice will make the soil richer next season and they’ll become the fruit of future generations.” She turned around to me. “The wise farmer values them all, equally. If one is favored over the other, the entire garden suffers.”

I drew closer. I wasn’t there to talk about gardening. “Why didn’t you tell me Sarah was dead?” I asked. “Did you really think I wouldn’t find out?”

Nana stopped picking and slid her arm through the hoop handle of the basket so that it swung from her elbow. Flecks of black soil clung to her wrinkled fingers and denim blue skirt. “There was nothing to tell, dear,” she said. “You knew it all along. You didn’t want to remember. You weren’t ready.”

I had nothing more to say to her. She had deceived me. I needed to find my daughter. Sarah had to be somewhere in Shemaya.

I ran off through the woods to the entrance of the train station. Flinging wide the doors, I shouted to the souls inside: “Run! Run now, while you still have the chance!”

But they didn’t dare move. They watched me, unblinking eyeballs hovering in space, with the same suspicion my grandfather’s cattle watched him when he was trying to do something for their own good. There was a time when they would have rushed through those doors, but that was when they still believed mortality was the fantasy. How very real it had become, and how very soon would the Final Judgment be passed upon their lives.

I had entered the train shed without a blindfold because I was searching for Sarah. This was a grim task. I could see in their memories how each had died. There were infants, children, and adults in every horrifying shape and condition, stricken by every conceivable cause of death, wasted away by starvation and disease, blistered and burned, gnawed and digested, shot through with holes, stabbed and sliced, blue from drowning, bloated from rotting, blown apart, hacked, crushed, broken, poisoned, suicides, murders, accidents, illnesses, old age, acts of God. But their stories no longer affected me. Only one story concerned me now. I searched everywhere for Sarah, but she was not among them. Although I wanted desperately to see her, like a parent searching a morgue after a calamity, I was relieved. And then terrified.

What if her case had already been called? What if she had already been judged and gone on without me?

I ran from the train shed, frantic to find her. I could think of only one place left to look.

The golden key Luas had given me turned the lock, depositing me inside the Courtroom. There was no one, just God and me, alone, inside the Holy of Holies. He had taken my daughter. I had come to take her back. I was not as trusting as Abraham with Isaac. I moved to the presenter’s chair and looked up at the sapphire monolith, searching the smooth surface for the slightest blemish that might indicate a hint of acknowledgment or compassion. When I found none, I asked meekly in my nakedness:

“May I see her? I gave her life.”

God looked on, unblinking and unmoved, my existence too infinitesimally small to notice, my plea too insignificant to deserve a response.

“Where is she!” I screamed at the top of my lungs.

The answer came back as a deafening concussion of silence—the silence of God’s love being withdrawn into the infinite vacuum of space, heard by the soul, not the ears, and mourned by the soul, not the heart. I looked around the Courtroom. Its walls pulsed with the purest energy of the universe while just outside, in the train shed, the walls were spattered with the innocent blood of humanity—the blood of those judged against unattainable standards by a Judge who, Himself, was guilty of the crime.

“Where is my daughter!” I screamed again. “Goddamn you! What have you done with her?”

God created all things.

God created evil.

God is all things.

God is evil.

God shall punish the wicked.

Therefore, God shall punish Godself.

I raised my arms as Haissem had done, and in unison with every man, woman, and child since the beginning of time, I spoke:

“I PRESENT GOD, CREATOR OF HEAVEN AND EARTH . . .
HE
HAS CHOSEN!”

The Courtroom shattered into a billion shafts of darkness.

—

I FIND MYSELF
in a beautiful garden paradise. My name is Eve.

I am creation, a first thought, a last, a beginning without end.

I am a before, an after, a space in between.

I am spirit, a single breath of God.

I am love.

“I am love! I am love!” the air sings. And the waters too, and the creatures that swim, creep, fly, and walk. The stones whisper “I am love” as they support the soil, which whispers “I am love” and supports the plants, which whisper “I am love” and support the creatures even as they raise their heads toward the sun, which whispers “I am love” and warms the Garden through which I tread.

Another like me walks in this Garden.

“We are love! We are love! We are love!” we sing. And we
are
love. Love given. Love unending. Love without condition. And the knowing we are all of this, and the knowing that this is All There Is.

And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed.

And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from the man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?

And the woman said unto the serpent, We may eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden:

But of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye touch it, lest ye die.

And the serpent said unto the woman, Ye shall not surely die:

For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.

The serpent coils upon a rock so I may see him more closely.

“That is the only way, then?” I ask him.

“Yes, it is the only way,” he says. “You long for the experience of love. But Love itself may be had only by calling upon that which you are not, for you cannot experience that which is Love until you first know that which is Not Love. Therefore must you separate yourself from Love and enter the realm of Fear and Evil.”

“But what is Fear? What is Evil?”

“All that you are not.”

Adam and I eat of the fruit, and call upon all that we are not.

We hear God’s voice. Adam rushes me among the trees to hide. We tremble and giggle. Our bodies touch the leaves and feel their chill, but also touch each other and feel our warmth. Adam is large, strong, and coarse. I am smaller, weaker, and soft. In seeing and touching him, who is so different, for the first time do I experience and feel myself. We long not to join with God, but to join with each other.

And then we are ordered to leave.

Adam presses his lips to mine. I melt in the taste of his mouth. Now this I whisper: “I love you! I love you! I love you!”

—

NOW I FIND
myself in the fields. They call me Cain, son of Adam.

The wind of the earth is hot and filled with dust. I shield my eyes as I jab a stick into the ground and pour seeds into the holes.

My mother has told me of a place close but far away, a beautiful place, lush and green, where there is always enough to eat and drink, where the wind is cool and clean. She told me she left this place to experience love and from that experience she produced me. She told me that when she created me, when she first laid her eyes on me, she felt what God felt when He created my father. She tells me I am created in God’s perfect image because she and my father had been created so. But I do not see the resemblance.

Abel came after me. My mother and father say they love him as much as they love me, but they have always made his life easier than mine. He follows the herds, while I break the soil. He brings God the fatty cuts from his best lambs, while I can offer only the meager produce from my fields. God is more pleased with Abel’s gifts than mine. I hate Abel.

“Why are you so angry?” God asks. “Are you not also perfect in my sight?”

“Because you love Abel and not me.”

“That is not true, my son. And if you dwell on this, it will be your ruin. Even so, you may do as you wish.”

Abel is weak and easily fooled. I tell him a lamb is injured and lead him into the fields. He does not see me unsheathe my knife. I come up behind him and slit his throat. I watch his blood spill onto the ground. He should not have taken God’s love from me.

Justice is the sweetest fruit in the lands east of Eden.

—

THE COURTROOM REAPPEARS.
I am no longer alone. Luas and Elymas are seated on the observer chairs.

“That was quite bold of you, putting God on trial,” Luas says to me. “What was the verdict?”

“Guilty as charged,” I say. I glare at him. “Where’s my daughter? Where is Sarah?”

“You’ll find out soon enough, Brek Cuttler,” Elymas says. He waves for me to approach them. “Come sit with us. See how God’s justice is done.”

“Ha!” Luas says mockingly. “You haven’t seen anything since the day I blinded you for your insolence, you old beggar.”

“That is true,” Elymas replies, “but justice too is blind, yet she sees more clearly than any of us. And you, Luas, were once blinded for your own wickedness, as I recall. When will you stop thinking you’re better than me? Who’s next on the docket?”

“Amina Rabun,” Luas says. “Hanz Stössel will be presenting her case.” He turns to me. “Pay close attention, Brek. You will be presenting your first client soon. This is the final phase of your training.”

“And if I refuse?” I say.

Luas shakes his head dismissively. “Not possible.”

Soon an older man enters the Courtroom, holding a golden key like mine. He is tall and seems exceptionally weak and frail, but he wears an elegant double-breasted suit in the European style. I recognize him instantly from Amina’s memories as the Swiss lawyer to whom she had turned to liquidate her family’s assets after the war. I know also from her memories that he died several years before Amina.

I am alarmed to learn that Hanz Stössel will be presenting Amina’s case. Although he had been Amina’s lawyer during her life, they did not part on good terms. In fact, Mr. Stössel blamed Amina for ruining his reputation and career and causing his ultimate demise. Amina would not have disagreed. To the contrary, she carried the guilt of Hanz Stössel’s downfall and death with her for the rest of her life. Allowing him to present her case is an obvious conflict of interest. He will do everything he can to see that she is convicted. The unfairness of the trials in Shemaya becomes more obvious, and more appalling. But Luas smiles warmly, either oblivious to the conflict or complicit in it.

“Ah, hello, Hanz, please come in,” Luas says. “We’ve been expecting you.”