The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(29)

Before Annie could respond, the river rushed and heavy rains began to fall. Annie was blown sideways, all but blinded by the downpour. She felt a sudden bump on her hip. A large wooden barrel was nudging against her. She tilted its top and pulled herself safely inside. The walls were stained with a brown substance, and there were pillows all around for cushioning, old pillows that Annie guessed were from the time her namesake made her famous passage. Annie jostled to a sitting position, feeling the river rumbling beneath her.

Then, with a jerk, the barrel surged ahead.

She heard the storm and water crashing against rocks, louder by the second, turning ominous, thunderous. She felt something she had yet to feel in heaven: pure fear. The barrel shot over a massive waterfall, out into a moment of such thick, violent noise, it was as if God’s own voice were howling. In that rush, with nothing beneath her, Annie experienced the utter abandon of a free fall. She was helpless, beyond all control.

As she pushed against the walls, she looked up through a spray of white water and saw her mother’s face gazing down, whispering a single word.

“Courage.”





SUNDAY, 2:14 P.M.

Tolbert stepped away from the police officers, walked to the side of their car, and vomited.

He had just seen a carnage that would stay in his mind forever. The green spacious field was scarred with burned patches. At its center lay a passenger basket, charred beyond recognition. Scattered about, in dark, torn ribbons, were the only remains of Tolbert’s once-majestic balloon.

An eyewitness to the crash, a male jogger wearing a yellow Reebok T-shirt, had given an account to the police: “The balloon hit something in those trees and I saw a flash of fire. It came down and hit the ground and shot back up. One person fell out. One was thrown out. I guess the last one jumped. Then the whole thing burst into flames.”

The jogger had taken video with his cell phone and had called 9-1-1. All three passengers, two men, one woman, were rushed to the university hospital.

Tolbert’s shock wrestled with his anger. He couldn’t figure where these two customers had come from. It was so early. There had been no reservations. What was Teddy doing? I was only gone for a few hours.

He ran his palms over his face several times, then walked back to the police.

“If you’re done with me here, I need to get to that hospital,” he said.

“I’ll drive you over,” an officer said.

“All right.”

Tolbert got in the squad car and pushed back into the seat, still grappling with this Sunday-morning tragedy, unaware of the part he had played in it.





The Next Eternity




The wooden barrel crashed the water’s surface and dropped in quiet submersion. Annie yanked herself through the opening into a vast greenish deep; it seemed more like a sea than the base of a waterfall. She windmilled her arms and spun her head, her hair swirling around her like tentacles. Up above, she saw a circle of light, like the fat end of a telescope. She swam towards it.

When Annie broke the surface, her skin was instantly dry. The waters pulled back, and she found herself standing on the shore of a great gray ocean, wearing cutoff shorts and a lime green T-shirt that covered her hollow middle. The sky was a summer blue, lit to perfection—not by the sun, but by a single white star.

Annie felt the sand beneath her feet and a soft breeze on her cheeks. As she moved up the beach a magnificent pier came into view, with gilded towers, spires, domes, a wooden roller coaster, and a parachute drop.

It was an old amusement park, like the one Annie used to visit. It made her think about her mother. They had finally reconciled. A great weight had been lifted. Then she was gone. It felt so unfair. What was the point of heaven and its march of five people if each of them abandoned you just when solace was within reach?

“You need to make your peace,” her mother had said. Why? With whom? Annie just wanted things to stop. She felt drained, weary, like at the end of a long, hard day.

She took a half step and tripped over something in the sand. Looking down, she saw a stone marker. As the seawater rolled over it, two words were revealed:

EDDIE

MAINTENANCE

“Hey, kid,” a gruff voice said, “you mind not standing on my grave?”





Annie Makes a Mistake


She is twenty-five and working in a hospital clinic. Uncle Dennis helped pay for nursing school, and Annie, to her surprise, finds the field a good fit. She always did well in science, so the medical study was painless. But her composure with patients is a revelation. She listens attentively. She pats their hands. She grins at their jokes and shows compassion for their complaints. Part of this stems from a childhood of seeking intimacy that never came. As a nurse, she is actually sought out by patients for attention, comfort, even counsel. She finds herself pleased to give it.

Her supervisor, Beatrice, is a stout Southern woman who wears bright red lipstick and sleeveless blouses, even in winter. She has an easy sense of humor and compliments Annie on her work.

“Patients trust you,” she says. “That’s a big deal.”

Annie likes Beatrice. Sometimes they stay late, talking in the break room. One night, the issue of repressed memory comes up. Annie asks if Beatrice believes in that and Beatrice says she does.

“People do all kinds of things because of stuff they don’t remember,” she says. “Half my relatives, if you ask me.”