We Are the Light(10)
“Cain and Abel,” Isaiah said. “You’ve dealt with the first and the hardest case. Now we have to deal with the young shepherd who is little more than a lamb himself. That boy doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, but if recent events have taught us anything, it’s that you never can tell. So let’s think this through and go slow.”
I think he meant that tragedy does funny things to the brain, which I don’t have to tell you. I’m sure Jung would agree too.
That night, when I locked the bedroom door and met with winged Darcy, she pointed out through the window to the glowing orange tent and said, “That boy is the way forward.”
I asked what she meant.
“That boy is the way forward,” she repeated.
“It would be hypocritical of me to keep writing Karl and not engage with Eli, right?” I said. “This is some kind of spiritual test, right?”
“That boy is the way forward.”
Winged Darcy wouldn’t say anything else.
In the morning, Isaiah got up and went to the high school, but the boy did nothing, even when Jill returned at dinnertime and poked his tent some more with the broomstick.
Eli’s been out there in the tent for four days now. No one has seen him exit or enter, and I’ve been watching pretty closely. The whole thing seems strange and—sorry to get crude here for a second—I do wonder how he is relieving himself.
Now that I’ve written you this letter—using our therapeutic connection to fill my tank again, so to speak—I’m going to attempt to speak with Eli just as soon as I return from the post office.
Do you see me when I walk by your home and wave? Sometimes I imagine you peeking through the blinds and smiling back at me. I pass by several times a day, hoping the stars will align, as the old poets say.
I really miss you.
Your most loyal analysand,
Lucas
4.
Dear Karl,
Do you know Sandra Coyle?
She’s a lawyer.
She’s on the school board.
Frosted shoulder-length hair?
Heavy tortoiseshell glasses?
Expensive pantsuits?
Her husband, Greg—the golf pro at the Pines Country Club—was killed in the Majestic Theater and immediately transformed into an angel. I saw Greg fly up toward heaven just like the sixteen others, including Darcy and Leandra.
Did you know that Sandra was the first one to speak with the press about what happened at the Majestic Theater? Only she used plural pronouns, saying things like, “We won’t let this tragedy go answered. We will fight. We will petition politicians. We will make order out of this chaos,” before she consulted the rest of us.
On the internet, there’s a clip of her filmed on the night of the shooting. She’s staring into the camera with her makeup smeared and her hair disheveled and blood splattered across her neck and she’s pointing a long finger at the lens as she says, “Shame on the politicians who make it possible for a teenager to purchase guns and ammunition. Shame on the gun sellers who took money from a nineteen-year-old and clearly insane boy. Shame on the parents who raised this killer.”
Watching the clip made my stomach feel queasy, because I’m not sure you can allocate the shame so neatly and easily. Maybe shame on the town of Majestic for producing Jacob Hansen, who was twenty-one on the night of the tragedy and not nineteen. Was not Sandra herself a member of our community? Maybe shame on the Majestic school system, which I was a part of. I’d spent the majority of my adult life doing everything humanly possible to prevent this sort of tragedy from manifesting. I don’t think I could have tried harder, even though I never worked directly with Jacob. And there were many other people—like Isaiah, for example—who had dedicated their entire careers to producing compassionate young people. Isaiah is in no way deserving of shame.
Sandra didn’t know that her husband had turned into a graceful, calm, and peace-radiating angel with beautiful wings, so I initially forgave her for being so indiscriminately upset and lashing out so haphazardly.
But in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy there was also no way she could have known the facts about how Jacob’s guns were acquired or why he decided to shoot his neighbors while they watched a classic Christmas movie in a historic theater. So Sandra’s righteous rage made me feel more than a little uncomfortable.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand her pain. And I certainly understand the very human need for retribution. But the steadiness and certainty of her hatred—especially after seeing her husband killed right in front of her eyes—felt disconcerting to me, although I didn’t say anything about that at first, except to Darcy, of course, who said, “Sandra wasn’t gifted with a vision. You have the advantage. You mustn’t forget that.”
And I understand that winged Greg couldn’t resist the ecstatic pull of the light and therefore decided to fly eternally toward it, leaving Sandra all alone to make sense of what had happened. Only Darcy was able to temporarily resist the great light’s pull. She’s told me that she won’t be able to resist forever and that I need to prepare for her eventual departure. That’s what we work on every night together in our locked bedroom—our inevitable separation. But I realize that I am privileged. And maybe I’d have just as much hate in my heart—maybe even more than Sandra—if Darce didn’t grant me the ability to see angels and then remain behind while I acclimated to her new reality.