The Summer That Melted Everything(24)

“If you made square shoes, there’d certainly be a lot of people tripping.”

“What?” Otis chuckled at Sal, surprised at the loss of the joke. “Say that again.”

“Tripping. Square things on your feet means four corners will have the chance to be successful in eight different ways of making you fall.”

“Well, I…” Otis trailed into his thoughts, which you knew were all square falls.

“How far along?” Sal gestured to Dovey’s belly, as rising and as round as one of the hills surrounding us.

“Just over six months.” She giggled with a slight pig snort.

Dovey was as consumed by physical fitness as her husband. While being pregnant kept her back from the more strenuous activities she was used to, she was still the local Jazzercise instructor and wasn’t without her spandex leotards and leggings, even while pregnant, which made for a whole snake swallowed the world bit.

“Say”—Otis pointed his finger at Sal—“you’re the boy they all been squawkin’ ’bout to be the devil?”

Sal confirmed with a nod.

Otis grinned. “Well, whatcha wanna give me for my soul?”

“Otis.” Dovey grabbed the bulge in his forearm.

“It’s all right, sugar-sock, this kid ain’t nothin’ but two legs of human.”

Dovey wasn’t so sure.

“May I touch your stomach?” Sal held his hand up.

“Uh, gee, I don’t know, kid.” She leaned back, but Otis grabbed Sal’s hand and placed it on her stomach.

“There ya go, kiddo.” Otis beamed. I doubt there’s ever been a prouder father-to-be.

Sal closed his eyes, his hand tenderly cupping her roundness. “It feels like the seven millionth hand.”

Dovey stared at Sal’s hand as she asked just what the seven millionth hand was.

Sal began to speak about a staircase between heaven and earth, and as he did, his words were a little deeper, a little bleaker, a little more crafted to the haunt of what it means to speak fine.

“It is called the Staircase of the Fallen, and it is the way down from heaven for those who are too wrong to stay. Like me.

“You may look up, but the staircase is too high above and too far to see from here. Just floating there by itself like it’s been stolen from home and somewhere there’s a house missing the way upstairs.

“It’s a mean thing, falling down steps, it’s a thing to matter the most. And as I tumbled down this staircase, I felt every step, all seven million of them. The steps are too there not to be felt, they are too edged not to sober you to the errors of your fray. The pain is smart enough to poet out a space, where bruises are verse and rhymes are moans over and over again.

“It’s a terrible thing for an angel to fall, because you cannot survive it by wing. The flight you had before is just a bird magic you’ll never have again. How brief the feather to the angel who discovers discontent. After all, isn’t that what my fall was? My discontent to just be in place, never to change from the one suit of my life. But I was tired of being the obedient son who cheapened his own self by farming his father’s commands. I wanted my own life. I wanted my own good life.

“God is no fool. He has made the fall a touching torture, for with each step, there is a hand that reaches for you in that good, old-fashioned, second-chance sort of way. You reach back and hold tight to it because to do so is deciding to believe that by holding on, you can survive being let go of. But no matter how much you beg, no matter how much of yourself you give to the chance, you are let go of. That is the undeniable torment of the fall. For such a divine event, it’s a rather ordinary agony. To have hope raised, only to realize there is no hope to be had. Hope is just a beautiful instance in the myth of the second chance.

“When I came to the last step, the seven millionth step, the hand that reached for me was unlike the others. It was a five-finger shape and yet it was more. As if it had shaped clay before and gone numb from long hours of creation. It was a hand that brought God to my lips.

“The other hands had always known they were going to let me go, and in that, they were merely cruel. But that seven millionth hand was a hand in the midst of a choice. Would it let me go or would it pull me up? Would it re-feather me? Would it forgive? Would it call me son once more?

“The hand’s first existence was that of warmth. Its second was that of dignifying my hope by holding my hand tighter than all the others. But above all else, the hand existed as that of pure love. I could near all the hearts of this world and never come near being loved like that again. That was how I knew the seven millionth hand was God’s.

“As I dangled there in the sky from His hand, I knew He didn’t want to let me go. But I also knew that if He did not let go, He would be ruined by holding onto me. So in that choice, I let go of Him. I had to, for His sake. I had to fall as the Devil, so He could stay the God.”

Sal opened his eyes, and it was like several rains coming down his cheeks at once. He looked up at Dovey and told her that touching her belly was like holding and being held by the seventh millionth hand.

“Because above all else, it was love. It was love, and that is what I feel inside you now.”

Dovey wiped her cheeks and smiled as she gently laid her hand upon Sal’s. She was about to say something. I thought perhaps sing a lullaby to him, but the shout kept her from it.