Eden

Soul

“You have to let him be himself. He always comes back.”

- Javon Harrison

“Don’t try to drink,” Pat said. “Just wet your lips. Just let me hold this to your mouth.”

Mr. Henley did, and Pat brought the cup to his lips, and then letting it down said, “Do you think you’re ready to drink? When you are just let me know. Don’t even try to tell me. You can just blink. Alright?”

There was a sound from Mr. Henley’s mouth, and Pat nodded and said, “Blink once for yes and twice for no. Just like they used to say on TV.”

He had stopped himself from saying, “Just like they used to say in the séances.” Everyone in this room was too close to the world of the dead to make that kind of joke.

They sat together doing nothing, and Mr. Henley’s daughter said, “Come on Papa. We know you can do it. Open up them eyeballs so we can go home.”

Beside her was a friend she’d brought and she said, “I remember back when I was growing up in the country. We used to have faith meetings all night long, and you know we had one boy, all the bones in hs body were broken, and the doctor said he’d never walk again. But we prayed in the name of Jesus, and he walked straight and tall. So God can do anything.”

Maybe God can, Pat thought, but he won’t. Still, it wasn’t his place to say anything. It was only his place to keep bringing ice to Mr. Henley’s lips, keep making him as comfortable as possible. They didn’t understand, or didn’t wish to, that death came to everyone.

Even Lazarus must have died, Pat decided. After Jesus brought him back, he must have died eventually.

“His breathing’s changed,” the woman who came with Mr Henley’s daughter said. “Things might be getting better.”

“That change of breath is common,” Pat said.

The woman said, “Are you a person of faith?”

Pat would have said, “I’m Catholic”, and this woman would have said it wasn’t the same, because whatever snake handling inbred church she belonged to was real faith. So Pat just said, “Yes.”

“Well, then we just have to believe.”

Pat nodded, and he listened to the changing breath. He wanted them to go, or this woman to go, or more sensible relatives to come, relatives who knew. This change of breath was what the old folks called the death rattle. This was the end. He wanted them to know. He had been the last one at the bed of the dying before. He wanted to be here for Mr. Henley because he had loved the man, because the man had understood him.

Pat had surprised himself by telling Mr. Henley all about losing love and not being sure he would find it again, about thinking he’d had someone and then ruining it and being alone.

“You think that something comes once and it’s gone, but if you live long enough everything comes back,” Mr. Henley had said. “So you just have to live long enough.”

Pat stood up and went to the door, and asked a nurse, “Could you call Dr. Everett in here?”

“Is there something wrong?” Mr. Henley’s daughter said.

“There is something natural,” Pat said, and was surprised he had said it.

He sat by the bed, listening to the wheezing, crackle of breath, and then waiting. He leaned forward. As the door opened and Dr. Everett entered, Pat stood up and nodded.

Dr. Everett bent to check, though he had already looked at his watch. With no sympathy and all precision, Dr. Everett said, “Time of death 12:05 pm.

Life was moving ahead. It was still going on. Rivers were rushing, the wind was blowing. The trees were green. The insects crawled on the ground. Mr. Henley, who had been talking every day, coughing now and again, who he knew was dying of cancer but who seemed full of life, was gone. One day, Pat supposed—no, knew—he would be gone too, and the world would keep on moving. He wasn’t entirely sure how he felt about that.

His eyes burned. He wanted to cry, but he couldn’t .The cry had been dried out of him because he couldn’t do it in front of those silly people. Not that he could have done it no matter how silly or not silly they were. It was, after all, his job to watch the dying and not entertain his tears.

He took out his phone and texted, “What are you doing tonight.?”

He waited, and nothing came, and then he took out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled the thing to the filter before checking his messages again.

“I don’t know,” the message came back from Josh.

“I’d like to see you,” Pat texted back.

He did not wait for an answer. He just used his ID card to get back in the building, and then went back to his last hour of work in the hospice.

Sometimes Isaiah Frey seemedlike someone very old, at least as far as Javon was concerned. He had never really known a grandfather, but it was on mornings like this that Isaiah felt something like one. He was sitting on the sofa, and he had stopped packing. He said, “Do you need to tell me things. Do you need me?’

DJ looked surprised. He blinked. He said, “We always need you. And you’ve been gone. All summer.”

“I’m always gone a little bit of the year,” Frey chided him.

“And you’re going away again,” DJ said, starting to frown. “Aren’t you?”

On the day before he left, before he drove south with that Rob, Isaiah said, “I did leave for a reason.”

“And then we found you and so you’re going even further away.”

“It isn’t like that,” Isaiah said, tenderly And then he said, “Maybe it is, a little bit. I don’t know. All I know is I’m not ready to return yet, and you don’t need me as much as you think you do. At least, you don’t need me around all the time. I’m not going to stay gone, but I need to be gone.”

Javon had never known his father, and he had never known relatives outside of his grandmother, his mother and his mother’s brother, Isaiah Frey.

“When are you leaving?” DJ said.

“When you let me,” Frey said. “And not until then. And even then, I will return.”

When DJ did not speak, Frey said, “Soon you will be leaving me anyway. You are seventeen.”

“I might stay in town. I might go to college in town.”

Frey shrugged. “I would be delighted if you did, but…. I am here. I’m here all day. To be what you need me to be.”

“Well, that’s what I need you to be,” DJ said, almost sounding like a child, aware that he sounded like a child. “I need you to be here.”

“Fine,” Frey said. “Then I need the two of you to go out to McDonalds and get breakfast and get me some cigarettes. And you can be underfoot, just like you always were, but not so underfoot I can’t get work done.”

“When will you leave?” DJ said, turning to go to the door.

“I’m not Jason,” Frey said. “I’m not Jason and I don’t come and go and return when I feel like it. I’ll leave you the address where we’re going, so you can get me if you need me, and if you let me, I’ll leave tonight.”

BROTHERS AND SISTERS
Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.
Not that of ourselves we are qualified to take credit
for anything as coming from us;
rather, our qualification comes from God,
who has indeed qualified us as ministers of a new covenant,
not of letter but of spirit;
for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life

Being here at seven am was the comfort. Sitting here right beside his father, listening to the readings he only half understood, looking at the simple stain glass windows, the terrazzo floors, the modern brass lamps, the statue of the Blessed Virgin, was a relief. It was a small world, a world where he was a sinner, but it was a predictable world, the world, Josh thought, of Mrs. Staff clutching and unclutching her black rosary beads. The world where some things did not exist, and some words had not been invented.

When the woman he could not name said, “…The word of the Lord,” everyone said, “Thanks be to God.”

A moment later, Jeff Carter stepped up and declared at the lectern: “Holy is the Lord.”

Josh responded with everyone else, “Holy is the Lord.”

”Extol the LORD, our God,
and worship at his footstool;
holy is he!”

Jeff Carter raised his hand, and they all declared, “Holy is the Lord.”

“Moses and Aaron were among his priests,
and Samuel, among those who called upon his name;
they called upon the LORD, and he answered them.”

“Holy is the Lord,” Josh said, and told himself to not check his phone for a message. This was, after all, church, and at the moment, after the strangeness of what had passed, to Joshua Dwyer, the quality of holiness was sanity, was self control, was not being taken out of oneself into lust and strangeness and lake water and wet sand and hot come.

On their way down the road, Javon said, “You need to let him be free. You can’t always be afraid that Isaiah’s going to leave you.”

“I’m not afraid.’

“You are,” Javon said. “You’re afraid he’s going to be just like Jason’s sorry ass.”

“Hey!”

“Jason Henley is sorry,” Javon insisted, “and Isaiah has loved you since you were basically a baby. Isaiah took you on because he loves you and you need to not always be clinging to him. He doesn’t always cling to you. Or me. He lets you be yourself. You have to let him be himself. He always comes back.”

DJ said nothing.

“Are you even listening?”

“Yes,” DJ said. “Yes. I heard you. Everything you said makes sense and I heard you.”

“He needs to be free.’

“Of us?”

“You know that’s not what I meant.”

“Then what?”

“Free to do whatever he needs to do? The same way you need to be free.”

DJ sat back in the driver’s seat and pushed his hand through his hair, looking irritated.

Javon said, “You tell him about last night? Are you going to talk about that with him?”

“What?” DJ looked disgusted. “Are you crazy?”

“No,” Javon said, coolly, “I’m not. As people get older, they need space between them to do what they’re going to do,.”

“You think Isaiah’s going off with Rob to fuck random dudes on a beach?”

“I think whatever they do is their business.”