Only the Angels Sing

ONLY THE ANGELS SING




Mind


The Colonel used to run things in Bergville. Accompanied by his walking stick—marked by its carved brass lion’s head planted firmly atop—the Colonel was a familiar sight to the people who chose to make this dying town the site of their courageous lives.

There was no public past to the man with the military title and the faintly British accent. The oldest people in the town, those who had nursed it through an Industrial Reformation, a Great Depression, and two World Wars (and in doing so earned the right to remember these events in capital letters), knew of the man with the walking stick only as a permanent fixture; he had been younger once, but so then had his chroniclers, and the mighty river of time had worn away their memories in its current, sifting and cleansing and polishing and sorting.

What was known was that upon the lapel of the greatcoat the man habitually wore shone a clusterous Medal of Valor. Oddly enough, the name of the country it was from had never been documented.

What countries bestow such things?

The Colonel had earned it leading a massacre, he once told Doc Whitley—the town’s only habitually sober physician. The damn thing must have weighed five pounds.

The medal earned a great deal of respect from everyone. Walking down the sidewalk with the peculiar listing gait it caused in his stride, the Colonel was sure to be granted a deferential space in which to pass. As surely as the bank and the post office and the brand new light posts on First Avenue, the man was a fixture of Bergville; he was regarded as much more reliable than any of the other three.

Insofar as anyone knew, the only friend the Colonel had was a purebred mastiff dog. He called the dog Brutus, but the dog never evinced the slightest indication that he thought of himself by that name. Every single day at five in the afternoon the old man and the dog took a walk through the streets of the dead town, never following the same path from one day to the next. Brutus barked at everyone and chased cats and squirrels and all the other dogs of Bergville but still no one disliked him and no one complained. And here is the reason why: Brutus had once saved little Ellie Jenkins from drowning in the Jenkins well. He showed up in the yard of the Perkins house, the Jenkins’ nearest neighbors, and set up such a caterwauling—and a strange type of ruckus it was—that an exasperated Mrs. Perkins, intent solely on shooing the bestial nuisance out of her yard, found herself commandeered into providing two opposable thumbs and a weary but serviceable cerebral cortex. The Jenkins girl was mixed up about the whole thing afterwards though, kept saying it was the Colonel who had saved her, had appeared at the top of the well wearing a halo around his noggin and told her not to be frightened, that he was going to get help for her and she would be just fine...

Thus did Brutus earn his regal status.

The dog’s sire had been with the Colonel in the massacre. That was in the Barbados, where the colonel’s government had had a vested interest in the continued health of the sugar crops, a vitality which the indignant native slaves of the islands had decided to abrogate. All of this happened back in 1892. Perhaps it was the islanders who inspired the workers of the Carnegie Steel Company in Pennsylvania to go on strike that very same year; unlike the Barbados slaves, the steelworkers could not be allowed to become fodder for a public massacre, but the national guardsmen sent in to “restore order” did manage to kill a few before beating the rest into submission.

Bergville is about forty miles from the scene of that heinous crime.

One particular springtime evening at five o’clock, the Colonel and Brutus held up their constitutional to speak with two men holding a heated political debate on the corner of Fifth Street and Vine. Tom Jenkins, little Ellie’s father, was an irreligious man who considered FDR to be the closest thing to the Second Coming of Christ someone like him might ever know. While his partner at the hardware store—Matthew Warren—was convinced that Calvin Coolidge was the last president who knew the first damn thing about how the government of the United States of America actually worked.

As a consequence, it was a droll and frequent occurrence to come upon the two men haranguing one another.

The Colonel strolled right on by, first allowing Brutus to do his business on the fire hydrant close at hand. Then he stopped, and he turned to face the two citizens.

“What the devil is all the bloody talk about politics good for? You imagine yourselves part of the Great Experiment, do you? Rot! Your “Great Experiment” has had as much effect on common men such as yourselves as piffle in a windstorm.”

Uncomfortably, the two self-made statesmen looked at one another, as though to pass the secret message: What does this old man with the foreign accent know of our grand and glorious system?

...but they did not speak, only stood and fidgeted, hemmed and hawed like nervous schoolboys; their conversation was a thing like a single tool jealously shared between two mechanics... like two blind men arguing over a pair of glasses they cared little for the meaning of their words, finding comfort instead from the mere act of speaking. Thus they engaged in a common sort of verbal diarrhea.

Their newfound commentator assumed he had been given carte blanche to expound on the value of his wisdom and experience.

While Brutus sniffed with interest at the crotches of the two erstwhile civics authorities, his nominal master set about providing their enlightenment.

“What you don’t realize, gentlemen, is that the only worthwhile system is the system which does nothing worthwhile. A bit odd, eh? A veritable conundrum in logistics. That is something I am an authority on, you know. Logistics. I won’t tell you why, of course, but you can be sure that I am. I take logistics very seriously.”

Matthew Warren, Tom Jenkins’ partner at the store, cleared his throat and made bold to speak. He never got the chance.

“You listen to me and you’ll see, right enough. I’ve lived quite a piece, gents, quite a piece—and now I find myself in a position to divulge the results.” Just then, Brutus quit his snuffling and sat back on his enormously well-padded haunches, looking expectantly at the Colonel; a lightning bolt would have been asking too much of the small village of Bergville, so the old man settled for the attention of his canine companion.

“It all comes down to Jesus, don’t y’know.” This observation caused a flinch, and then both men leaned in a bit closer and listened attentively. “Jesus Christ was a master of logistics. I don’t think you men knew that before, did you? I don’t think anyone knows that.” Tom Jenkins scratched his balding pate and Jacob Warren pulled at his freckled cheeks with a free hand while Brutus continued blinking and drooling happily. But no one said anything.

“You pay heed now, you two. This is none of your idle chit-chat I’m giving you, here. I’m not just blowing piffle in the wind, here. You two may even decide you owe me something after this.”

Abruptly, the old man’s visage took on a queer twist and his eyes spun crazily. Then he stood a little straighter and his voice became crisp, commanding.

“Bergville is full of revelation.”

The Colonel reached out and punched Tom Jenkins in the chest for emphasis. Brutus got up off his haunches and barked with excitement, his tail waving back and forth in the Midwestern night air. Tom’s partner threw his arms around the Colonel, but got whacked in the shins with the heavy black walking stick. “I want your attention here, gents! You mark me well this day—it might just change the course of your lives. You two need to grow up. Imagine, standing here on a public street corner, wasting your time debating useless institutions. Piffle! What really counts is style. It’s not what you do, it’s how you go about it, don’t y’know. Politics is a boorish man’s game, gents—there’s no style! They’re all mindless fools, Democrats and Republicans alike.”

Here the Colonel took a breath and glared, then continued, less energetically than before. “Now logistics on the other hand—logistics is the ultimate achievement in style. Picture it gentlemen! There’s Jesus, the Lord our Savior, faced with the prospect of converting an entire world—that’s what it was to him, you know, and a hostile world at that—I’ve faced such a thing. I know what Jesus Christ went through; the stress, the sheer pain of such a thing, is hideous.” Indeed, pain was written now upon the Colonel’s face, and his voice rasped and caught.

“And yet, the crucible of our testing contains enlightenment within... I discovered the divine nature of logistical study when undergoing my own trial. I am a patriarchal figure in this town, and like those Biblical forefathers of old, I bring prophecy to my people. We are all of us troops in the war of light and darkness, and the side will win that knows logistics best.”

Unbeknown to the Colonel, Mr. Tom Jenkins’ grandfather had been a laborer at the Carnegie Steel Plant during the riot of 1892. Without warning, his mind formed the image of his elderly lecturer in the uniform of a Pennsylvania state trooper, swinging a billy club and kicking prone children in the ribs.

“You hold on there for just a minute, Colonel. There are good politicians and there are bad politicians, same as anything. You don’t know doodly-squat about the true nature of our glorious nation, nor the men who run it.”

Looking faintly pained, the Colonel offered a tart reply. “It’s rather obvious isn’t it?” When his listeners merely looked puzzled, he observed, “One needn’t be a cultural scholar to see the truth in what I am telling you two. The Great Experiment is an unmitigated failure, gents. You can’t separate democracy from capitalism any more, and the latter is most certainly a logistical dead end.”

Here, Brutus barked once again, to lend emphasis.

“Jesus Christ could have told you two thousand years ago that your daring doctrine would not work, could not work, because of the logistical problems involved. An organization is only as intelligent and capable as its members. When great numbers of people become involved, power must be distributed to all or to one. The first is a hive mentality, the second a monarchy. Of the two, we must surely choose the latter. That is the path of light.”

As though he had just finished leading a group of lost and weary travelers down a treacherous winding path in the stillness of a moonless night, the Colonel took a step, and staggered, then righted himself, visibly straightened his shoulders, and collapsed on the sidewalk before the two stunned Christians.

At that moment, Tom Jenkins had a peculiar thought (a rare and miraculous enough event in itself). He thought: Logistics, is it? I suppose that might be possible... here all this time I’d thought it was hardware. Jesus Christ would have known about hardware.

Beside him, his partner silently echoed his thoughts. While at their feet, Brutus sat down and began to howl.



Spirit


In the drawing room of her renovated Victorian American home on Poplar Street, Mrs. T Luntz heard the cry of Brutus mourning his master and ran to the window to pull back a bit of lace and obtain a glimpse of the ruckus.

Mrs. Luntz was a scandalmonger, and a widow. News in Bergville was the proprietary bailiwick of T Luntz. Had she had her own newspaper, her motto might well have been ‘All the news that’s fit to whisper’. Everyone called her Teely and patronized her residence shamelessly when information and updates became necessary; folks in town used to say that T Luntz knew what a body was going to do long before they did it.

Her husband had been killed in the riots at the Carnegie Steel Factory in 1892. She received a check every month for one hundred and sixty-two dollars in compensation for the death of her husband.

Does this seem fair?

Who ever said life was fair?

T was acquainted with the Colonel through her own daily constitutionals. The two old harriers would blindly pass one another on the sidewalk, and then, as though the invisible hand of pride itself had taken hold of their impetuous bodies, they’d each come to a deadly halt, slowly turn about—like a pair of nonchalant but wicked deadly cats, cannily using their peripheral vision, convinced they can make you believe they’re looking at anything in the world but you—and then, finally, with a combined hauteur unmatched by any ten Bergville citizens—or felines—they would make contact. These became electric moments for bystanders and onlookers.

T was born into the household of an aging liberal and domestically dictatorial Wall Street entrepreneur who made good money, lots and lots of good money. His wife was the daughter of a Virginia coal miner. She had been voted Miss Norfolk County of 1932, had attended Norfolk High, where in her senior year she had proudly led her compatriots in the school cheer: “We don’t smoke and we don’t drink—Norfolk, Norfolk!"

As a child, T’s mother had told her over and over again, “Don’t you dare do it, girl. Don’t you dare do what I have done.” T hadn’t the foggiest idea what her mother was talking about.

Inordinately tall, yet habitually stooped over, T Luntz was the product, on her father’s side, of a long line of prolific Jewish farmers who had worked the land of the Siberian steppes for centuries before the Bolshevik revolution of 1918 had persuaded them to emigrate; some went to Europe, and others to the United States of America. Even as he amassed his wealth, Mr. Luntz held on to the memory of his heritage, if only to remind himself and his family of how far he had come and ensure that he would never go back.

“I should have stayed in Virginia and married a coal miner, T. Money can’t buy happiness.” In this manner did T’s mother reinforce the conundrum of her own apparent contentment.

Mrs. Luntz gave her daughter a name she thought would make it easy to get into a fine college with. She thought T Luntz had an aristocratic ring to it, which says a lot about the level of sophistication of your average Virginian.

When her daughter T looked out of her window and saw what had transpired on the lawn just in front of her house, her blood began to boil and her ears began to ring and a message she had never before heard began to repeat itself over and over in her head: God is waiting just for you. God is waiting just for you. God is waiting just for you.

Consider the implications.

T ran as fast as her aging varicose legs would carry her to the coat closet in the foyer where that most ubiquitous of American devices—the First Aid Kit—awaited. Snatching the tiny medical suitcase from its resting place on the floor of the closet, a T Luntz who had not existed a few moments before turned and sprinted for the front door. Virginians might not be sophisticated, but they knew how to handle emergencies, especially when God had a hand in...

...Once upon a time in a dream, an old, upstanding woman who had been married to a common steelworker died and went to Heaven. The woman dreamed of her own death and subsequent miraculous resurrection; when she arrived in Heaven, Jesus Christ was there. And He said to her, “Be at ease, my child. Rest now, and be at ease.”

The old woman, of course, was T Luntz, and the dream was but a thinly veiled transmission from her own subconscious, which might go a long way toward explaining the message which thundered in her ears as she burst out the front door: God is waiting just for you. God is waiting just for you.

Under the circumstances, what’s a body to do?

Tom Jenkins was standing over the Colonel’s prone body when T arrived on the scene, while his partner Jacob Warren had run off to find help in some improbable place. The new Mrs. Luntz, the one who had matriculated into life mere moments ago, knelt at the side of the collapsed old soldier and lifted his weighty head into a gentle lap accustomed for many years now only to the presence of a sewing basket or a bowl of pea pods. She began to hum softly, slowly, still but for her head, which began rocking from side to side in time with her crooning.

From where he had been sitting and howling his misery to the world, Brutus crept to her side. With each peculiar shuffling canine step of submission he parodied a very aged human who no longer cares to move swiftly, no longer has any reason to hurry. Then he became quiet—he looked into the eyes of T Luntz and he lay down then on his belly and put his head on his outstretched paws and watched carefully to see what might come next.

The First Aid Kit sat on the grass next to the old woman, while dusk continued to lengthen shadows all around. She did not reach for it. She did not even think of it again once she had let it go. She really wouldn’t have known what to do with it had she tried. The damn thing was too complicated.

Tom Jenkins loomed over the birdlike woman on the lawn with his hands jammed uncomfortably in his pockets, his face screwed up in utter and timeless male consternation. He didn’t know what was happening or why—had neither instigated nor controlled it—and consequently he was completely at a loss as to what should be done next. A moment ago, the world had been a sane, comfortable place to be. Now a curious and charismatic old man lay crumpled, perhaps dying, on the lawn of an eccentric old woman who was well known to be the man’s nemesis.

Logistically, Tom thought, we are in a tight spot.

He knew of T Luntz, certainly, but had never partaken of her garrulous services. He was uncertain whether she was more kin to the nightingale or the vulture. But he dared not interfere. Already, Teely’s transformation could be felt...

What makes a saint a saint? What sort of questions are on the job application? What is the ideal resume made of? And what is the kicker? What distinguishes a good Samaritan from a truly sanctified person?

The hardware politician watched, strangely averse yet rapt, as Teely’s hands stroked the Colonel’s white hair—unhurried—keeping pace with the rhythm of the tuneless humming coasting from her throat, as she tranquilly rocked to and fro like an angelic metronome. He noticed that her hands were incredibly white. Not pale, but white, as fresh-spun cotton and Georgian marble. They danced with one another, those hands, like Fred and Ginger lighting up the stage—they weaved and they bobbed, never rushing to the next step but so certain where it lay that one never even brushed the other in passing. Something had happened to those hands recently, and now they carried on of their own volition, anointing whosoever they lit upon.

In Teely’s brain, the message softly continued: God is waiting just for you. God is waiting just for you.

The carol, wherever it came from, was legitimate.

As Jacob Warren came rushing up with young Tess Callaghan at his side—she was a nursing student at the local high school’s vocational extension—he heard a low moaning sound, and watched with disbelief as the Colonel sat up and opened his craggy, weary eyes. At the same exact moment, T Luntz closed her own, and slowly, ever-so-gently, folded over on the lawn next to him like a fine linen napkin, with nary a sigh to mark her last breath on earth.

Before she left, her hands raised themselves up, and delivered a benediction to the world.

Foregoing human symbolism in favor of a more primal expression, Brutus once again began to howl in misery.



Body


The girl Jacob Warren found when the Colonel collapsed was ill-prepared for converging with human calamity this early on in life. Tess Callaghan had worked her way up to teenhood with nary a glimpse of the Grim Reaper—had lived, in fact, what most would call a charmed life. Hunger had never ravaged her, love had always held her, and personal disaster of even the most trivial sort was fundamentally foreign to her. Tess was just a beginner. Her family was honest and kind, her friends upstanding, and all in all, her days passed in fulfillment.

Even happy people can find ways to grow.

Breathing hard from her mild asthma, Tess arrived on the scene with an aplomb entirely out of keeping with her years. Many young women would have exhibited all the ineptitude and hysteria expected of them by those of the male persuasion. Not Tess. Tess had little respect for men. She found them to be too slow in the things that really mattered, and full of bluster and frantic blindness when trapped by circumstances beyond their control.

Tess felt that true divinity lay with the women.

When she looked at the aged couple broken upon the clover-scented lawn, she saw in her mind’s eye a great granite statue called “Madonna and Child”. She couldn’t remember where she had seen a picture of the statue, but as always, it moved her, only this time a little more.

“Mr. Warren,” she whispered, “I don’t think I can help anyone here. I think it’s already been done, y’know?” Then, moving ahead as though to belie her own words, the youngster knelt down at Teely’s shoulder, coming to rest as gently as a pigeon returning to the coop, and slowly, ever-so-slowly and with the greatest loving care, put a hand to the creased and desiccated neck of the old woman, where there was, of course, no pulse at all.
“What is it Tess?” said Tom Jenkins stupidly, blinking his eyes. “What’s the matter with her?”
“She has no pulse.” Tess intoned.

“Aaaaooaaoa.” When he heard this pronouncement, the newly arisen Colonel, who had faced death before and taken it with an unfailing cavalier fortitude, let forth a long groaning sigh like unto the last breath of a Highlands banshee.

“Aaaaaaaooooaaaaoaa!” –while Brutus ran ‘round the assemblage barking and stopping suddenly to shake his head and roll his eyes only to tear off madly once more, ‘round and ‘round the tiny band of humans who remained poised on the edge of disbelief.

In times of stress, Tess invariably thought of her father, because this calmed her. Why, she could not have said.

Tess’s father was a soft-spoken, wise and authentic man of only forty-two years hwo was generally regarded as a mouse. He was a teacher at Bergville High, and was well known about town.
Fixing now on his image left Tess all unaware of Brutus’ mad rushing and the open-mouthed gaping and palsied twitching of the hardware kings.
A beautiful and model father who had always been willing to listen but had never provided the restrained, Spartan image his daughter quietly craved, Mr. Callaghan was an unfulfilled dreamer. Like a series of special delivery packages laid at destiny’s door, life had dropped off inspiration after inspiration at the entrance to his head, not one of which had ever been taken inside and unwrapped.

Tess never stopped to consider that her reliance on her father in times of anxiety contradicted her derogatory notion of men. Asked if she thought whether her father was womanly, she would have emphatically denied the characterization. But Tess sometimes thought of her father as the Madonna.

At the same time, there lay a certain undeniable hint of contempt at repose within the deepest layers of Tess’s hindbrain; she, however, never saw the trees for admiring the forest. Certain gestures, stray remarks, momentary poses struck in the heat of battle—all these were part of the systematic fabrication of a mental picture of the man with the soft hands who could always make Tess laugh, always smooth away the cares and tribulations of a happy life, and still remain, somehow, different from other men.

As Brutus began the last moments of his stalwart and worthy life, the young nursing student found herself curiously relaxed. There was, after all, little for her to do here—miss Teely had done it all, previously, so that Tess might be spared the shock of an early maturity. Everything was going to be all right, there would be no further need here of a woman’s aptitude, and the figure of her father which had been coalescing in the never-never region of her mind became unnecessary. Not that Tess thought about it in these terms herself. She simply decided these men could make do for themselves from here on, somehow, because they were married—except for the Colonel who had Brutus instead.

Just then, Brutus collapsed and began bleeding about the mouth.

At the sound of his master’s voice—frightening in its ungodly wailing—the poor, noble heart which powered his unflagging spirit began to falter.
Heaven would surely rejoice this day, receiving thus two such pure and fine souls into its bosom.

So thought Tess Callaghan.

Clutching T Luntz’s hand and throwing her other arm around Brutus’ massive neck, Tess looked up and about at the resigned and slow faces of the two men who had gotten her into all of this. She was beginning to feel a touch of panic and wonder at the mystery of death, like the first time she fell off her bike, or the first time she cried, or the first time she knew she did not come from the stork’s bill. Misery and loss were not part of Tess’s budding emotional repertoire and this abruptly dead old woman and an innocent dog slowly perishing were more than unfair, were downright cruel. There lay a malevolence in the flesh here, somehow; a power had reached out and laid a twist on the meat of these two mortal animals. But one could only warp that which already contained the seeds of distention within. What had once and for always struck Tess as a divine breath on earth—the miracle of biology—began to take on a sinister aspect. “Why now?” thought Tess. “Why ever?” What supernal force could possibly be responsible for this travesty? Whose idea was death? Well now, who indeed, but the Lord our God? In that moment of reflection, Tess hated God, a thing she had never done, nor imagined herself capable of. With the rapidly cooling flesh of miss Teely and the heaving and sweltering fur of Brutus beneath her gifted hands, Tess was abruptly saturated with an acute corporeal awareness, a rare gift indeed at her tender age. Immediately, an overwhelming sadness descended on her, and then was mixed together with an immense joy, and neither one made any sense to her at all.

In death lay tragedy unspeakable and a divine gift beyond reckoning. And that was enough somehow. Tess laughed out loud and thought, God really is a man after all.



Synthesis


On the day Bergville held its annual parade commemorating those laborers killed in the Carnegie Steel Mill rioting, Main Street began to stir with the first rosy hints of daylight. The stirring itself was a placid movement, modeled after an unhurried and well-lived artisan preparing for the day’s creation. Like hundreds of other small towns spread across the cherubic face of America, Bergville knew exactly where it was heading and how soon it would be getting there.

One old woman would never see the debarkation.

T Luntz had been buried just a week before, in an open casket service at the Morgan Bros. Funeral Parlour fourteen miles away in Hoverton. Nearly the entire population of Bergville had attended, and there was general agreement that the Reverend Albert Sweeney had outdone himself, calling down judgment from Heaven and demanding mercy from Hell—avoiding mention all the while of war, pestilence, and famine—and still reminding those in attendance that death was His gift just as surely as life.

The Colonel had wept, something no one could claim to have seen him do before, while Tess Callaghan and her family sat near and offered condolences, small wordless gestures and posturings designed to soothe and inure him.

Even the Reverend, though, could not say whether the Colonel’s grief was directed at the large open casket, or the small closed one standing nearby, as closely attended during the procession as that of the legendary T Luntz.

Brutus watched the mourners pass by his casket (for his soul had not yet passed on from his body—things work a little differently with dogs and death), and as each figure passed, they left a stirring of their own mortality. Returned by their ripplings to the day his heart seized him Brutus found himself reminiscing on a copasetic lifetime of fire hydrants and terrorized cats. He heard a sound in the air, saw through his closed canine eyes a shimmering patch of light, tall and forgiving, floating in the air alongside of his death bier. He gazed curiously at the wavering apparition which slowly made its way into the crowded room. He wanted to bark, and then he wanted to wag his tail, and he felt a great urging to run to the Colonel’s side, but he could do none of these things; he watched with anticipation, and could not think why.

After a moment, a glowing figure shaped itself morphous, and it was of course Jesus Christ, come to collect the sainted soul of T Luntz.

Jesus took notice of the great mastiff, and spoke to him.

“Rest easy, noble servitor, for thy time is upon thee, and a greater good will surely come to thee.” The voice carried, and the words resonated, and Brutus marveled at the power of human divinity, having once mistaken it for divine humanity. “Where go the efforts of any child of God toward a greater understanding, there go my Father’s blessings. Know that thy comrade, the Colonel, is remembered in grace, and so for all his mortal brethren, quest as they may.”

He had watched them play, watched them fight and toil and weep, born witness to their feats and their foibles. He had witnessed their sinners and Samaritans, and always had he reserved judgment, thinking that one day it might all come clear. Now, Brutus thought, bathed in the light of their moral suzerain, these humans he had so looked up to might be made comprehensible.

“Will it be painless?” he thought.

“There is no hurt in the afterlife,” Jesus replied.

“Do they deserve it?”

“Yes, they do.”

“I have served and been content, Christ, and that is enough for me—but tell me if you may, what makes them as they are, always seeking and tinkering and arguing for more?” Brutus’ furry soul cocked its ears a bit in anticipation.

“It is I, good Brutus. I am the Light, and the Way, and they seek to know these things. For thee, it is enough to simply live, but for them, answers must be made, and questions too.”

“I don’t understand.”

“That is well for thee, who should toil in peace during life’s coursing.” Jesus shuffled his feet, shrugged. “My Father has many mansions, and people would know them all.”

“And is it then only in death that they may rest?” Brutus’ incorporeal tail drooped at the thought.

“Yes. Yes it is.”

“T and the Colonel and Tess all found you in different places, or so it seemed to my feeble brain. How can this be?”

“I am found in the place most like to the one who seeks me out. I am a part of what they think, how they feel, what they do... In the end, it matters little, for they will order my Father and I as they would, and no two will agree.”

“I thank you, Jesus Christ, for tarrying and telling me these things. I think I will go now, and carry your words with me.”

“Then go on, worthy Brutus. Be at peace, and forget these humans who have confounded the nature of thy own world. Their place in the order of things is a strange one, and its conclusion is unwritten. Take with thee what few insights I have offered, and forget that you knew them.”

Brutus prepared to depart then, but the voice of the Christ stopped him. “One thing, oh servant of man, before you should go forever... while the Spirit of my Father—who knows all things—is at home within me, it was not allotted that I should know the paths of all things, for I am also the Son of Man. Can you tell me of you own fate? What have you to look forward to?”

“I have never stopped to ask, Jesus.”

“Are there among your kind no tales told of what life is for, and what will come after?”

“I have indeed heard such, but the teller was rabid, and I did not concern myself. For us, and the cats, and the other beasts I have known, it is enough in the doing, and not the knowing. Our notion of the future is hazy and ill-defined, and we are comfortable with that.” A happy drool escaped Brutus’ jowls.

“You fill me with a wonder, Brutus, to be so at ease with the chaos and mystery my own children cannot abide.”

At this moment the Colonel and Tess Callaghan approached the caskets of their dead compatriots, the pre-recorded strains of Beethoven’s Requiem rising and falling in the background. The Colonel tottered, and Tess clutched his hand more tightly in her own. The faint smells of lilacs and flea powder made Tess wrinkle her nose slightly.

“What was it for, Tess? Why did they live and die here?” The Colonel shook his head abruptly, the way Brutus had been wont to do when suffering the pestilence of a horsefly. “Logistically it’s a bit confusing, you know. Two of His finest, given in return for one ancient, doddering old man?”

“Now that wasn’t it at all, Colonel, and you know it. Don’t say these things. It was their time, and He took them.” Tess spat the male pronoun as she would spit a tack that had got turned ‘round in her mouth—gently, carefully. “You were a soldier, you can understand what it is to persevere in the face of mystery, to carry on even when there are no apparent explanations for the purpose behind it all.” Belying her own words, Tess looked down at the floor, shook her head ruefully.

“Piffle, child,” the Colonel softly spoke. “Life and death are supposed to be more than—what is that?” The Colonel became rigid, Tess looked up in alarm, and there before her eyes was a vision of Christ, taken from two millennia of frescoes and murals, floating just off the floor between the two caskets. Tess thought He looked a bit like her father, and saw traces of her mother as well. “How queer...” she breathed. But to the Colonel, He was just as He should be—wise, holy, vulnerable... he whacked Him across the shins with his walking stick, and it passed right through, causing him to stumble and nearly fall. “You can’t have them! Do you hear? You can’t take either one of them unless you take me as well!”

“Colonel, hush, please,” Tess whispered urgently. Amid the mourners, a mumbling arose. The people stared at the old man and the young girl, wondering, questioning. The Colonel began to weep violently and buried his face in his hands. The mourners in their pews looked away. Jesus watched in love. Eventually, He passed His hand over the Colonel’s brow, touched His other hand to Tess Callaghan’s breast, just over her heart, then turned and quietly, slowly faded into eternity.

The Colonel lived semi-contentedly a dozen more years. Tess became a doctor. T Luntz went to Heaven and met a coal miner there. And of Brutus, only the angels sing.