The Pearly Gates

“But the day of the Lord will come like a thief, and then the heavens will pass away with a roar, and the heavenly bodies will be burned up and dissolved, and the earth and the works that are done on it will be exposed.” — 2 Peter 3:10-13

I’m shackled up to my feet with a chain ‘round my stomach, rid’in a bus with a band of thieves and murderers to God knows where. The summer sun is dancin’ high above Montgomery as sweet home, Alabama passes us by. It’s my birthday—feels like my last day on Earth.

Sitting chained up next to me are cold-blooded killers. Wife beaters. Deadbeat dads behind on child support. Child molesters rubb’in elbows with shoplifters. Then there’s me. I smoked a plant.

Go’in to prison is just like in the movies. Being the “new fish” on the yellow line in your old duds, walk’in down the tiers while people yell at you, bend’in over buck naked in front of strangers. The older your number gets, the more used to it you are, people tell me. That I’ll get used to it is what I hate most.

What they don’t show you in the movies is just how many prison buses there are, how many people you see shuffling around in chains. It’s like the slave murals you see in museums of chained people be’in marched to an auction block in Court Square. When you get off the bus, first thing you see is a bunch 'a men flash'in rifles, bark'in orders and talk'in shit while they herd you into a cage. It's like you’re part of some exhibit at the zoo.

I remember the dream I had on my first night locked in a cell. Damn, it felt so real. I dreamed the door creaked open. My mama stood there, asking me if I was ready to go home. She’s dead. We’ll be together when we meet at those pearly gates, just like she told me ‘fore the Big C got her. I miss my little girl. I’m dy’in to how she and Nana are hold’in up. Never got that phone call.

My name’s Elijah Brown. It’s June 21, 1982. As of 5:51 a.m. this morning, I’m 21 years old. I’m from Montgomery, born and raised. First time I ever left it. Was a wide receiver for The Tigers ’til six months ago. Pled not guilty to marijuana possession with intent to distribute. In this case, distribution meant shar’in a blunt with my homeboy behind a Burger Chef. Yup. Kingpin. It was damn good too, so good a bunch’a suits chained me to a chair and demanded to know where I got it and who from. Said they’d slap me with 100 more charges if I didn’t name names. Even staged a call to the “U.S. Attorney.” Like I told ‘em, I’m no snitch. So they put me on a bus up up north.

None of the stooges rid'in shotgun know shit besides pat-downs or strip searches; they couldn’t even do that this morning. Hustled us onto the bus without taking us through the metal detectors like they were in a rush to burn rubber. Heard ‘em moan’in about the bus be’in short-staffed today. Gonna be a long ride.

I’m sweating like a preacher on Sunday. I’ve never been in a real jail before—FPC Montgomery, where I was held before, is a summer home for white-collar crooks and potheads—no bars, no cells, no gangsta shit. Saw some ad in the paper months back ‘bout Christ’s Second Coming. Some guru guy thinks he’s gonna descend from heaven, today, during an eclipse. What I wouldn’t give for the Lord Almighty to take me now.

The cream-colored prison bus they packed us into isn’t advertising its cargo, handpicked from a dozen different prisons to save space and money. The windows are shaded so no taxpayer has to see what VIP treatment in the slammer looks like.

There are three rules, same as every trip. Don’t do anything stupid. No talking while the bus is moving. And, most importantly, “Do not, under any circumstances, run.”

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Mama played the quiet game with us when we were little kids. I was so competitive. Always did wanna win. You couldn’t even hear me breathe. I was pretty good at it too—better than my brothers and sisters. Maybe I was, or they all just knew it wasn’t a real game.

I’m as quiet as a church mouse as we bob up and down Route 20. We all keep our heads down to our knees and leave ‘em there like they tell us. Most of us.

Of course, Mason starts talking smack, carry’in on ‘bout the sergeant’s momma. The sergeant shouts a warning, clang'in the barrel of his shotgun against the metal cage. Mason is noth'in but loyal to his captive audience, so he has to follow up with a punchline about the way his daddy should’a pulled out sooner.

The three goons guard'in us—two officers plus the sarge—are dicks. Cops are dicks, turnkeys are dicks, but these stooges are assholes of the highest order. So is Mason, whose smart mouth cost us movie night twice this month. He’s just ask’in for another whupp'in from the tobacco chew’in, mustache-twirling dick runn'in this bus. He’s a string bean who walks like he’s ten feet tall. His temper’s always hover’in between volcanic and incandescent rage.

His favorite spiel is one I can recite by heart: “You might think I'm a dick. You might think I'm a punk,” Sarge would always say, puff’in his ‘lil chest out like an ape, twirl’in a toothpick in his mouth. “You can think whatever you like, but it's going to be my foot on your throat as I'm fuck’in you up.”

Any of us stage a revolt and there would be no damns given. Sarge would pump this whole bus full'a lead. Same for the two upfront. It’s a great job. You travel the country, carry a gun wherever you want, and shoot interesting people.

When Mason carries on, Sarge sits him on the pisser in the back of the bus. Every time someone takes a leak, he’ll have to stand in the corner and wait for one of us to finish, then sit back down. I’m pray’in the toilet keeps work’in. They used to pull over for us at rest stops, but after a guy made a break for it, we could only stop somewhere secure—a jail or maybe a police station. You learn how to hold it, as the song goes.

The only time we stop is at some burger joint where the guards pick up a sack lunch for us. Today, it’s McDonalds. Sarge tells us there won’t be any trash on his floor. We’ll have to show him our lunch, empty wrappers inside. Every man has to account for his lunch and garbage, even if we traded our shit. What was in your lunch better be in that bag by the time he sees it. “I don't care if you get punked for your lunch. You better ask whoever to return your trash so you don't have to deal with me,” Sarge growls.

Like I said, dicks.

For breakfast, a sausage biscuit; for lunch, a chicken sandwich; for dinner, same damn thing. We only get the kid's size cup of water that comes with the meal—I guess that way we wouldn't need to pull over for them to go to the bathroom as often, so we can keep driv'in and driv'in.

Bernie, bless his soul, had to see it all come back up. He was sent upriver for cook’in the books for his dad’s auto shop—got the heart of a poet and the voice of an angel. The cat’s diabetic. Big man’s ‘bout due for his shot and he’s been sweat’in Lake Guntersville for the past hour. None of the loons upfront know their way ‘round a needle; say they’ll send him straight to the infirmary first thing when we get there. Feel like ima pass out myself, we all are. The windows barely open and there ain’t no air condition’in.

The two tatted-up skinheads are the ones giving me the heebie-jeebies right now. From the moment they climbed onto the bus this morning, Idaho and Gunnar—two loudmouth brothers from the Gem State—were chatt’in up the white boys onboard: “How much time you got left? Ever think about escape?” I didn’t think they meant much by it back then. Neither did the guards. The two are always talk’in outta their asses 'bout the New World Order. Bullshit like that.

Neither mofos are bright. They’re Nazis. Matching swastikas on their foreheads, thunderbolts runn'in down their cheeks, and a bunch 'a other shit all glommed together in one big ink blot.

Remember how they looked me over for the longest time this morning like they were try'in to piece together what they were looking at. I’m a very light-skinned Black man. Sometimes I look like a white man with a tan in the right light, but I got my mama’s broad nose and full lips, so for some cats it never adds up.

The two have been dead silent the whole ride with their head on a swivel, like the gears in the heads are actually turn'in. One of ‘em—I can never tell who’s who, they look like twins to me—coughs up someth’in shiny and metal into his hand. Looks like a paperclip the split second I see it before it disappears into the side of his cuffs. I see the glint of someth’in up his sleeve I just know is going to be trouble: a long, mean ass shank.

The chains start rattl'in and shouts ring out from the back of the bus. Bernie’s fad'in fast, eyes roll'in back in his head. “Someone call an ambulance! Pullover, goddammit!” The cat needs help.

The bus screeches to a halt. Sarge opens the cage door and comes storm’in down the aisle, tell’in everyone to simmer down. None one but me notices Idaho slip out of his handcuffs and kick his leg irons off, his wild eyes hon'in in on the kill.

“WATCH OUT, HE’S GOTTA WEAPON!” I shout, the words leav'in my mouth before I can even give a second thought. Instinct, my anthropology professor would call it. Sarge whips his head around just in time to see Idaho lunge at him, shank in hand, aiming for his neck. The two wrestle, stumbling up and down the aisle, swearing under their breath as the shank falls to the floor. The entire bus erupts in shouts when the sky goes dark.

We turn our eyes to the windows where it looks like the end times. High above us, the moon is kiss’in the sun goodnight. The sky looks like a keyhole to hell when a thousand Fourth of Julys bathe the sky in wildfire. We drop our heads and cover our ears while something that sounds like jet fighters howl overhead.

Then we see it. The hulking mass of a 747 drops out of the air like a brick. The plane plants its feet on the highway, howling against the makeshift tarmac as its engines catch fire. It’s coming our way at a thousand miles an hour. The driver slams his foot down on the pedal and disappears in a beam of blue stars.

Right before my very eyes, Bernie vanishes in the same flurry of sparks. He takes his chains with him; like he was never here. I wrestle against my own, stomping the floor and cry’in bloody murder as we collide with a million pounds of screaming steel.

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I wake up with the taste of ash and dust in my mouth, face down in a patch of grass, my head cry'in out in protest. Feel like I was thrown outta window. Prolly was. My wrists are still cuffed, but the rest of my chains must’ve snapped clean off. Pat myself down just to take inventory. Yup, two arms, two legs. Head’s still screwed on, more or less.

Can’t say the same ‘bout everyone else. Behind me, the bus is ly’in its side, sliced open like Christmas turkey, flames lapping against it like a hearth fire. I can see the 747 about half a mile down the highway, nose to the ground, like a dog ly’in on a porch. A charred sign nearby says Route 20…can’t make out the rest. Right across from it is a leafy amber globe perched on a metal stool 100 feet up in the air—looks just like a ripe Dixie peach. Must be in Georgia now. Maybe South Carolina.

“HELP ME!!!” someone screams to me. I spot him underneath a mountain of glass and rebar, beside two crumpled bodies that look like they could’a been the Nazi boys. It’s Sarge. The man is trying to pull himself out from under the wreckage with one good hand, and reach’in out to God with the other. That's when I see it in his eyes—pain, anguish, fear. His lip quivers, tears streaming down his face, like he’s try’in to say something but can’t move his tongue.

His shotgun is ly’in six feet away, bent outta shape like a chewed-up dog toy. A quaint Beretta 92 is lying next to it. For a split second, I imagine what it would feel like to cap this SOB, think’in ‘bout what mama told me—turn’in the other cheek, all that Sunday school stuff. I stagger to my feet, pick up the Beretta, trad'in one last glance with the man before I place it in my waistband. I walk away.

The blood-orange sun is setting over a graveyard of abandoned cars, some of ‘em still idl’in, not a soul in sight. I walk between them, choking on the smell of lead and smoke without a clue where I’m walk’in. Fading rocket trails and mushroom clouds light up the dusk as voices on the car radios are talk’in ‘bout a state of emergency…evacuations…today’s “atomic response.” Holy shit. We’re under attack. Is it the Russians? China? A bunch ‘a lil green men mak’in a house call? If we’re los’in, who’s winn’in?

A flock of copters—look American, U.S. army maybe—drown out my racing thoughts as I look up at the thing behind them. That’s when it bears down on me from 10,000 feet up—a glimmering pearl, a shade of bridal white, clear as a fun house mirror. The thing must be about ten football fields wide. No guns, no engines, no windows. It just hovers like a magic eight-ball on a string as a thousand more of every shade paints the stratosphere.

This one is bigger and shinier than the rest, plus it seems like it’s pay’in special attention to me. The only building I can see for miles is a tiny country church house over the horizon. Not in the mood to hitchhike with Marvin the Martian today.

‘What are you on?! QUIT MESS’IN AROUND!’ I can hear my coach shout. I stumble like I’m runn’in a three-legged race as the pearl hurtles towards me, my legs churn’in like a locomotive. Feel like I’m back on the gridiron, fight’in for a touchdown. Thing’s close enough to make my hair stand up. Closer it gets, the louder the ring'in in my head is. Not far now. I bodyslam the church’s two oak doors, rolling down the aisle straight into a bunch ‘a pews.

I just about scared the only two parishioners in the building to death: a young midnight-haired woman, no older than me, huddling over a little red-haired girl barely five years old facing the brass cross behind the pulpit. She’s stoic, resolute, star'in at that cross like she can feel it look'in back. Reminds me 'a Mama on Sunday. A sickening crack sounds as the ceiling rains daylight on us.

The woman disappears in a burst of blue fire, hands still clasped in prayer, face frozen in a silent scream. In an instant, the girl watches the arms around her turn to air as she stares up. What used to be the church steeple is crashing down on her as I throw my body over her like a raincoat, grabbing her, and rushing her to safety.

Star'in her dead in the eye, I mouth the same thing I always told my own little girl, “It’s gonna be alright, it’s gonna be alright.” She looks at me like I have to make her believe it before a whirlwind of light rips my hand from hers. In the blink of an eye, I see a sea of white.