Sunday Afternoon

         It was a Sunday when I met him, which struck me quite particularly. He was sitting on a painted bench in the downtown city park, swinging his feet back and forth, alternating right, then left, right, left. His legs didn’t quite touch the ground. He reminded me of a grade school kid, the way he sat slightly slouched, leaning against the back of the bench, the soles of his shiny black shoes scuffing rhythmically over the concrete. Really, at a glance, I would have pegged him for about fourteen years old, just out of church, maybe waiting for his parents to catch up to him and take him to lunch, or something along those lines. But he wasn’t fourteen, not by a long shot, to hear him tell it.

         I sat down at the opposite end of the bench from him; It was a big bench, so I didn’t think he’d mind. I always hate it when people sit right next to me in public places when there were plenty of other places they could be sitting that didn’t include the spot nearest to me. Most people have a natural sense of personal space, but some people like to be right inside your zone, like they know you real well, or want to. Anyway, my feet were tired, dog tired, and I wanted to take a load off like anything, so down I sat. The next bench was a fairly long haul down the sidewalk, anyway, and if this guy didn’t like it, well then he could move, I thought.

         We sat there on that bench, the two of us, him swinging his legs and scuffing his shoes back and forth, me silently watching the pigeons pecking the ground and listening to the traffic. I wondered if he had fed the pigeons, or if the seed was already there from someone else feeding them. There are people that will feed pigeons, and people who would just as soon there were no pigeons at all. The people that feed them, well, I think that says something about their character, in a way.

         After two or three minutes, this guy, without looking at me, says “Hullo.” His voice sounds much older than I expect it to, which I guess is when I realized that this guy was no kid. I glance down the bench at him, and he must have seen me do it out of his peripheral vision, but he never turns to look at me. I take the opportunity to size him up better, which is always easier when the other person isn’t staring at you watching you do it.

         I figure he must be pretty short when he's standing up, the way his feet don’t quite reach the ground, maybe five feet, give or take. His shoes look new, polished black leather with clean laces, neatly tied in even bows. He’s wearing black jeans, but nice ones that look new and crisp, like maybe they were tailored or something, I don’t really know. He’s got on a charcoal gray t-shirt and a black pinstriped blazer jacket. His hair is kind of the color of wet sand, a little bit longer than I would ever let my own hair grow, wavy and shiny like a catalog model’s. I notice a few silvery strands at his temple, and a light growth of beard stubble that looks so perfect I think he probably wants it there.

         After I take all this in, which probably takes me a couple of seconds, I say hi back to him and reach up to touch the brim of my hat, until I remember I’m not wearing a hat today. Well, not anymore. That’s one thing about me; I’m not what you’d call a stylish guy, I don’t wear designer clothes or follow fashion trends, not by any means, but I am a man that loves a good hat. I’ve got a fair sized collection of them, too, fedoras, bowlers, stuff like that. Not baseball hats or cowboy hats, don’t get me wrong. Just a nice dressy hat on my head when I go out. I’d had one on today, but I’d set it down on the counter at the diner where I’d had my lunch and forgotten to pick it up again. I never do that, leave things behind like that. I’m kind of, what do you call it, obsessive, about my things. Keys always go in my right hip pocket, wallet in my back left, cigarettes in my shirt pocket, unless I’m wearing a jacket, then they go in the inside left jacket pocket. I’m not the type to lose things.

         Well, whatever, I guess my head’s bean a little screwy since Jean died. I get distracted now, with little stuff. I’ll go out the door, lock it, make it halfway up the block and then forget whether or not I locked it, and have to go back again to check. Now if I don’t make a real point of paying attention to what I’m doing, ten minutes later I’m not so sure about the particulars.

         Anyway, so this guy starts talking to me after that, little stuff, small talk, about the heat, the traffic, not really complaining, just talking. I nod and answer back when I need to, and then he all of a sudden says something that hits me like a grenade going off in my hand. “Jean says hello, Frank,” he says, like he’s telling me it’s going to rain. He sounds the tiniest bit expectant, like he’s waiting to see my reaction.

         I go cold all over, like I’ve been dropped into a tank of ice water. I can hardly feel my hands or feet, even my lips feel almost too stiff to form words, but I manage to get out a strangled sounding, “What did you say?”

         “Your wife, Jean,” he says again. “She says to tell you ‘Hello’, that’s all.” I don’t know if this guy is screwing with me or what, but all of a sudden I’m pissed off, and all that coldness and numbness turns into a fire, an inferno, and I can’t even see straight anymore.

         “Don’t you say her name to me, you son-of-a, who the hell do you think you are?” I’m not really yelling at him, ‘cause my teeth are clenched too tight to yell through, but I think I could peel paint off walls, like there’s acid vapor pouring off me. That’s how it feels, anyway.

         He holds his hands up like he’s all of a sudden real sorry, and I don’t blame him. He probably thinks he’s about to get his ass handed to him. I’m six-three and I probably outweigh this little runt by damn near a hundred pounds. He looks scrappy, but that doesn’t count for much with me, ‘cause I’m quick even though I’m big.

         “Please,” he says, and that takes me down a peg, saying ‘please’ like that. “Please, don’t be upset.” His hands are still up, like he’s trying to calm down an angry bear, which I guess I sort of am. “She came to me just now and asked me to tell you. Jean Antoinette, she says. She says she loves you.”

         It starts to piss me off again when he says her name a second time, but I think maybe he’s telling me the truth, unless this is some kind of sick joke. I don’t think it’s a joke anymore, though. A guy like that, unless he’s got some buddies hanging around nearby to back him up, he wouldn’t go hitting the hornet nest like that all by himself just to mess with my head. “What do you know about my wife?” I ask him, real slow, trying not to growl.

         “Nothing,” he says, and I notice his eyes are gray and sad and honest looking, so I believe him. “Just that she told me to say that to you.” He puts his hands down, folds them in his lap and looks at the pigeons.

         “She told you, huh?” I say back, and it comes out sounding maybe a little bit more sarcastic than I think I really wanted it to. I reach up to touch the hat that isn’t there again, and then a spread my palms out and rub them down pant legs, like I’m wiping sweat off them, which I realize then is exactly what I’m doing.

         “Yes,” he says. “I didn’t mean to upset you, although I realize it must have. I’m sorry”. He keeps staring at the birds and won’t look at me, even though I’m staring at him. I can’t be pissed off at this guy, I suddenly discover. He seems too, I don’t know, too childlike, or too gentle, or something. He still isn’t looking at me, but he seems to be thinking kind, apologetic thoughts toward me. I think he has some kind of foreign accent, but I can’t place it. Not quite British, but similar, maybe. South African, possibly.

         “Who are you, anyway?” I ask, feeling suddenly like I must know.

         “My name is,” he says, and his voice kind of falters. I stare at him. “Garland,” he finally says. “Garland Graves.”

         “Funny kind of name,” I say, louder than I should have, probably. I start to say ‘I’m Frank,’, but I remember that he already knows that. He stands up and takes a step or two toward me. He looks like he has a limp, and I notice the cane leaning against the bench where he had been sitting. He holds his hand out to me, and I reach out to shake it, but I find myself standing up instead. I feel a little embarrassed, but I’m not sure why. I sure as hell don’t need any help getting up, especially not from a limping little shrimp like this guy.

         “Walk with me?” he asks. The whole thing is turning out so strange, I don’t think to ask where we’re going, or why. I just follow along beside him. He walks real slow, on account of his limp, or maybe he just isn’t in any kind of hurry. I have to make myself take little steps to keep from passing him.

         “You from around here?” I ask, wondering about the accent. I think maybe it’s a fake accent, maybe the whole thing is phony, and he’s one of those scam psychics.

         “Not exactly,” he replies, and a think I catch the hint of a smirk on his face. It’s the weirdest thing, but I swear it’s true; I’m looking right at him, and suddenly he doesn’t look the same. He kind of flickers, or shimmers, like a mirage or something, and I think maybe he looks more like a fox. Before I can look twice, he looks like himself again, but then, a couple of seconds later, it happens again, and this time I think I can see right through to his skull, like x-ray vision. I probably turned white as a sheet, ‘cause he notices me watching him and he sees the look on my face, and he sort of chuckles. “I’m not what you think I am,” he says. I don’t really know how he knows that, because I don’t even know what I think he is at this point.

         “Okay,” I say back, and I try to swallow, but all the spit in my mouth seems to have dried up all of a sudden. “What are you, then?”

         “I’m a demon,” he says, just like that, like he’s telling me he’s a banker. That’s the feeling I get from it, though, like he’s telling me what he does for a living. “Well,” he corrects himself, “I was a demon.”

         “What do you mean, ‘was’?” I ask. Suddenly I feel ridiculous for thinking this guy might have been intimidated by me back at the park bench.

         “I’m retired,” he says, which makes no sense to me at all. “I know, I know,” he goes on. “But it’s true. That whole Heaven and Hell thing wasn’t really working out for anyone anymore. It’s all a bit outdated, we thought, so we shut it down. Of course, there isn’t much we can do to get the word out, not so as anyone would believe it, so everyone keeps on praying and confessing and blaming the Devil for their sins, but it doesn’t matter a whit anymore.” He must have noticed that my face was not exactly the face of a person who believes what you are telling him, so he continues on. “It’s true,” he says, and smiles. His teeth are very white, I notice. “I’m in the same boat as the rest of the world, now. Some of them, the demons and the angels, decided to just pack it up and disappear. Eternity gets to some of them, after a while. Non-existence can look pretty promising when you’ve been elbow deep in humanity for a couple of million years or so. The rest of us are here, regular joes like the rest of you.” I think I must have been staring a little too hard, because he reaches over and pushes my lower jaw up to shut my mouth for me. I’m surprised that I don’t feel the need to recoil from his touch. His hand feels just like anyone else’s hand. I don’t even think to be offended by the fact that he touched me, like he was my own brother or something.

         “So, you used to be a demon.” I say it to myself, not really a question, but he nods anyway. “And now you’re living here on earth like regular people, doing regular people things.” He nods again. “But you used to be in the business of devilry?” He spreads his hands wide in a ‘what-can-you-do?’ kind of gesture and smiles apologetically.

         “To be fair, it’s not like I really got the choice. I was kind of groomed for the position, if you know what I mean.” I wasn’t sure I did know what he meant at all, but I nodded anyway. “And I wasn’t so bad, anyway. Whispering doubts into peoples’ ears, causing some minor accidents. I tried to stay away from the serious stuff. I never really felt suited to the job, I suppose. The whole business just wasn’t my thing. Besides, I’m trying to make amends for all that now. Being kind and helpful gives me a sense of purpose about going on with my existence. I guess that makes me not entirely altruistic, but there it is.” I nodded again and looked on down the sidewalk ahead of us, trying to soak all this in. It was a lot to think about.

         Beside me, I noticed that when I looked at Garland out of the corner of my eye, he seemed to be changing nearly constantly. One moment he looked like himself, then next, he had wings, then the fox shape again, then the x-ray vision skull, then black mist, then himself, and so on, sometimes going so fast I couldn’t quite make out what I was seeing. It was like watching the symbols on a slot machine going around and around, only with a lot more variations. Still, it was hard to be freaked out by all this when he was radiating such kindness and goodness.

         “Strange old world,” I managed to sputter. “But what about talking to my wife?” It’s the one thing I can’t really take in, oddly enough.

         “Well, you know, communing with the dead is like riding a bicycle. Once you know how…” His fox-self smiles, showing pointed white teeth.

         “But,” I say, “if there is no Heaven anymore, or Hell, where is she?”

         “She’s here, or in the wind, or in the sunlight on the water, or the meadows of grass, or the lifeblood of the deer.” He spread his hands around in an all-encompassing gesture. “I can’t say for certain, but I think it must be like dreaming.” I must have looked confused, because he keeps talking again. “Like when you’re asleep, you don’t know you’re really asleep, and in your dream you can be in many places at once, or looking down at yourself, or be someone else.” He shrugs.

         For all I know, everything out of his mouth could be a lie, or he could just be way off base, but I like the way he says those words. I like to picture Jean’s soul as a flower, or a breeze through the trees, or a whisper in my ear. It’s good enough for me.

         I realize I’ve been staring at my shoes like I’m trying to burn holes in them with my eyes, thinking about all this. When I look up, Garland is gone. I’m not really surprised. I glance ahead down the street, and I think I see a flicker of a wing and a flash of rusty red disappearing in a curl of dark smoke, but the traffic is in the way, and when it clears, nothing is there. A warm breeze brushes my cheek, and I smile.