I am so fucking screwed.
revelation
I am at mile marker seventy-seven.
The gray sky opens up and rain falls down.
I stand on the river’s edge.
Feathers. Crosses.
A truck crashes and flips into the water, its rear angled up.
I am in the river.
A shadow of a figure stands on the road, watching.
“Benji,” a voice calls. It is not my angel.
My angel, I think, confused.
The water is up to my chest. It’s cold, causing my teeth to chatter. The mud in
the riverbed is up to my ankles and is as strong as it’s ever been. Each step is nearly impossible. My legs strain against the suction and current.
“Benji,” the voice calls again.
It’s coming from the truck.
A strong arm around my chest and I’m pulled away, away, away.
I am wary of him over the next few days. There are times I wake up in the middle
of the night and he’s gone, following threads only he can see, the nest outside my bedroom door empty. These are the moments I feel relief I won’t admit to out loud, a small part of me thinking it might be okay if he doesn’t come back. This can’t last long, I tell myself. People will begin to ask questions. My mother and the Trio will begin to ask questions. How long can the name Cal Blue and the person behind it hold up to inspection? He can only end up bringing my carefully constructed world crashing down, and I don’t know if I have the strength to build it up all over again. So it’s good, I think, looking down at the blankets on the floor outside my door. It’s good he’s gone. He doesn’t belong here. He’s an angel. I am a little speck of dust that means nothing. This won’t be any more than that. He is big and bright and strong and powerful. And I am nothing.
But that’s only a small voice. Inevitably, I’m up and pacing the floor in the living room in the dark, glancing out the front windows every few moments into the night, hoping to see a large figure ambling up the driveway toward Little House. The longer it takes, the more I begin to eye my keys hanging on the rack. What if he’s hurt? I ask myself more than once. What if he’s lost? What if he’s trying to find his way back to Little House and he can’t? What if he needs my help? And, as if he can hear me thinking, as if he understands I’m about to break, that is the moment I see him, a flash of the red rust on his head, his creamy skin illuminated by the moon and stars. Relief washes over me. These are strange feelings, new feelings, feelings I don’t think I can or even should be having. I watch him for a moment as he moves toward me. I think how handsome he is, how strong he looks. I think how the small voice that wants him to leave is undoubtedly right, but I will ignore it for as long as I can, because I don’t think I can go back to the way things were. Being alone, being haunted. I allow myself to think these things for just a moment, because any longer will be too much for me to handle.
As he approaches Little House, I melt back into the dark, down the hall, stepping over his blankets and then shutting the door behind me. I crawl into bed and lie on my side, facing the door. Moments later, I hear footsteps walking down the hall gently, as if he is trying to be quiet so he doesn’t wake me. Shadows shift across the floor as he stands in front of my bedroom door. And then his voice, softly saying, “I’m back, Benji. I’m here.”
The first night he said this, I was sure he’d seen me in the window, that he knew I was awake. But then he said it again the next night. And the one that followed. And the one after that. Finally, on the seventh night, I stayed awake as long as I could, to see if I could hear him when he left. It was just after midnight when he stirred. He stood and leaned against the door. “I’ll be back, Benji. I promise. I will come back.”
But regardless of when he leaves or when he comes back, he knocks on my door shortly before dawn, waking me from a fitful doze I’ve just fallen into. “Benji?” he says. “It’s almost time.” And then he walks down the hall and out the door.
There are moments when I tell myself to stay in bed, that I don’t need to put myself into this any further. It doesn’t mean anything, I argue with myself. It can’t mean anything. But then my feet find the floor and I’m standing before I can even think about it. I walk down the hall. I take my father’s jacket from the coat rack and slip it on. I put on the old work boots by the door. I go outside, the sky already beginning to lighten in the east. The grass is slick with dew. The stars are still visible overhead, though they are now fading.
I reach the ladder and climb up one rung, and then two. There is movement above me and I look up. The angel Calliel is there, hand outstretched. There is no hesitation now as I reach up, his big paw engulfing mine. He pulls me up the rest of the way and then moves back to his perch at the edge of the roof. I sit a few feet away from him, but by the time the sun shoots itself above the horizon, with that first blinding ray over the Cascades, I’m pressed up against him, his arm heavy across my shoulders, my head in the crook of his neck.
I asked him once why he wanted to see the sun rise every morning, what it was that caused him to be out here at the crack of dawn every day. He watched me for a moment before looking back at the horizon. “Its beauty,” he said. “It reminds me every day that there is beauty in the world. That even though it may feel like we are alone sometimes, we are never truly alone.” The sunlight hit his face and his red hair and beard turned to fire. He looked down at me again, pressed up against him. “Why are you here every day?” he asked.
I looked into his dark eyes and said the first thing that came to mind. “Because you’re here.” I immediately blushed, realizing how the words sounded. The smile that bloomed on his face was bright and knowing. I looked away, but not before he pulled me tighter against his chest.
The times he disappears during the day are more difficult, because those are the times I worry most about his visibility. He tells me he’ll be fine, that he isn’t doing anything that will bring more attention to himself, but that does little to calm me. Whenever the threads call, he follows. There are times we’re in the middle of a conversation when he breaks off, staring off into the distance. “I have to go,” he says after a moment of silence. “I’ll come back, I promise.” Sometimes he asks for the keys to the Ford, but most of the time he takes off on foot. I watch him and contemplate following. I even tried to, one time, but he moved so quickly I lost sight of him within minutes.
He never tells me what he did, and I never ask. I don’t feel it is my place to, nor do I think I have a right to know. But things happen around Roseland that I can no longer associate with normalcy. The Wallace family was displaced after their house burned down one night, a freak electrical thing. They escaped through the window. The house burned to the ground, but the Wallaces were safe. Mr. Wallace later said that he’d awoken because of what he thought was a hand on his shoulder, but no one had been there.
How lucky! breathed the town. How fortunate! said its residents. God must have been watching over the Wallace family that night—it’s the only explanation!
I thought there might be another explanation, as Cal had come home that night smelling of smoke.