Michael

MICHAEL



Three people approached me as I lay near death. The first was a man I never met. He was in his forties,balding and carrying a hand drawn brochure featuring mailboxes made from abandoned guitars.

“ I want to give you a fair price sir,” he kept repeating to the tree where I was sprawled, my head hanging upside down giving the world a crazy tilt that I began to adjust to, like a ride at the fair. He tried to reach up and place the paper in my hand but I couldn't grip it, my arms and legs were broken but I felt no pain, only a slight jerk now and then reminding me of those last moments before sleep, when your eyes are closed and your feet walk effortlessly up a staircase until a step is missed and you fall, only to wake up sweating, muscles clenched. When I failed to take his offering he sat down on the grass puzzled, alternately scratching the skin on his head and swatting away mosquitoes. It was a summer morning and the swarms were beginning to stir.

The second person was a woman, her eyes very dark and full of tears. They bobbed toward me like flickering lamps at the end of the night, when the food is gone and the laughter swallowed, when the only sound would be grandpa's foot as he scraped it across the floor to lock up, his cane watching from the corner, a forgotten friend his wife now used to chase the crows from the garden.
The woman reached up and touched my face, her hands were rough and I felt my skin try to flinch.

“They weren't always like this,” she pleaded holding up her ruined hands “ I gave up everything for him, to work beside him in the kitchens,” I traced the burn marks with my eyes and watched the tears fall collecting in the grooves, like puddles.
“I gave him what his wife never could.”
She spoke like she believed it. She sat down next to the man with the pamphlets who fumbled around for a handkerchief to give her.

I turned my gaze away from them, and watched the third figure approaching across the damp fields I had been crop dusting only an hour before. I remembered looking out the dirty windows as I released the levers, twenty years of routine moving my hands in all the right places. I remembered looking at the sky and thinking I had never seen such a clear morning, the sun reflecting off the blue was a shield covering something I suddenly needed to see. My eyes has almost adjusted when the plane dropped.

The third person was beside me now. I turned my head as much as I was able and focused my eyes. It was my son Michael. He didn't say anything at first, he stood there overalls neat and pressed as his mother liked them, wearing a felt hat I had never seen before, and chewing a piece of straw like my grandpa had done. I remember grandma swatting him with the cane he had never used and she had inherited, like a lonely child , and asking who was gonna pay the bill when every bad tooth had to be pulled out of the old fools head. I had never taught my son those habits. I was still waiting for him to speak. He seemed to know what he was doing here unlike the other two, arriving in their nightclothes mouthing words but putting nothing behind them. They were still assembling the puzzle that my nine year old boy had long finished and framed. I felt a surge of pride. He was a good boy, and that was the highest praise the men in my family ever offered or accepted.

“That's a proper spot you chose to lie in Pop.”
His voice sounded the same yet the words were not rushed, there was none of his usual eagerness as he would burst in the back door with tales of the walk home and the litter of kittens in the barn. This voice was more deliberate.

“You've got a fine view of the farm,” he gazed out one hand steading the oversize hat on his head
“All the way down to the property line. I can see Ma bringing out the cows.” he looked back up at me “I don't think she knows where you are yet.”
I tried to answer realizing that I didn't know if I could or not.
“You can't.” Michael answered for me. “Your neck's broken.”

The wind suddenly picked up and sent his hat flying. The man on the grass caught it and nodded to as if to say he would hold on to it. He and the woman began to examine it, her rough hands clutching the felt, admiring the detail.

“Look!” Micheal exclaimed “I'm sure glad they caught it, grandpa would tan my hide if I lost it.”
“My grandpa?” I asked without asking.
“Sure. He brought me over here to you. Said we had some things to explain.”
He took the straw from his mouth and walked closer.

“Listen dad,” he began sounding more like the boy I had raised, “You're dead now and there's nothing you can do about it, you can't go back, there is no second chance to wake up again and decide to check that engine one more time OK?” Ma and I will be fine or we won't be, you won't likely know, you can't be looking down and watching that's just the way things are.”
He gestured over to the man and woman sitting quietly still examining the hat.

“You have to choose. Some bits of you, some good parts and some bad are going to go inside one of them. You won't know it but you'll be there. You will live their life not remembering that you ever farmed or flew or made me.”
I looked them over carefully. They were both in good health. The woman a bit lost and lonely but everyone has bad times. I could see they were both good people. Michael had placed the straw in his mouth again and cocked out a hip as he waited. His eyes looked very old in a such a young face and I suddenly felt my first stab of unbearable pain, as I realized no matter what I choose I would never see him again.

“Why are you here son?”
His mouth twitched and I saw a smile start.
“ I knew you would catch on Pa,” he said proudly “ Every one has a third choice, I'm yours.”
“How?” I wondered “How could the choice be so easy? Of course I would choose my son, to live on in him, to never really leave, to be able to see my wife every day even through his eyes.”
Michael's face was suddenly lined and he went over to retrieve his hat to hide it.

“Is that what you choose then?” he asked.
I started to form the word yes, I could feel it taking shape and moving across my silent tongue.
“No.”
Micheal looked up from under the brim his skin unlined and his eyes surprised.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, I'm sure. Thank you son but no.”
Micheal nodded and began to walk away as the other two approached me each selling their good points like eager tradesmen.

“Micheal!” I called out and he turned back silently. “Keep the hat. It'll fit you fine someday.” Our eyes met for the last time. “It suits you.” He tipped it to me and was gone.
I turned away from the chattering voices beneath me and rested my head against the cool bark of the tree that was just beginning to live again after the winter. I knew I had raised a good boy. All the good things I could have given him were planted deep. They would grow without the choking weeds and sins I might have brought. The time I had helped beat up the slow kid in school, the late nights I lay next to a woman I had not given my name to, my simple dream of wanting to be a crop duster and nothing more. The sky above my twisted head was as clear as my reason. We want better for our children.

The man who made mailboxes out of old guitars also played them I found out. We toured the tri- state area enjoying modest success in local hotel bars. I even tried my hand at writing a song. It always made me tear up but I don't know why.
It was called “Michael”.