God on Emerald Pond

  Deep in the river, there was a light, and I remembered my daughter. Water doesn’t need to believe in anything to flow downstream, and I had never needed to believe in God more. So, I flowed toward the light, and God was there. 

I stepped through a void into our camp on Emerald Pond, and to God, basking in brilliant afternoon sunlight while sitting in my father’s chair. The coffee table between us was ruined but still proudly present, with dents all over the top from a tiny fist holding a large headphone plug. My father had been furious with me then. God seemed furious at me now. I looked at him and waited for him to speak, but all he did was stare.

“Is this heaven?” I asked. 

 He turned a hand over in his lap.“What else would it look like?” He looked up at the loft ceiling and back at me.

“And you’re…God?”

He pulled back a cheek into an “atta-boy” smile and nodded his head slowly. He glared at me from under his bifocals, but then my mother’s cooking wafted under my nose. It was sweet and with a hint of vanilla. I turned away from God.

“You can’t go in there yet…” God said.

“Is my mother here?” I asked him, my longing for mom flaring up into a fire and burning into my throat.

“Yes,” he said, “but you can’t go in there yet.”

I bit my lip and tried to smile through welling eyes. I headed his word and looked out the window.

There, I could see my father, halfway across the pond, casting a fly rod from a canoe. 

My despair worsened. “And my dad?” I asked.

God smirked and shook his head. “Not yet. First, you must tell me why you’re here.”

I looked back to the opening in the room––and the oval of darkness that lead back to the river––it was the only thing out of place in an otherwise perfect home. It stood there like my grandmother’s old mirror had, but matte-black in the middle and with shimmering shards at its edges.

 I walked back over and looked down into the darkness. It was damp as a well, but with a faraway sound of screeching tires and breaking steel. 

I turned back to God. “There was an accident.” I told him, “Please, I need to see my parents.”

“There is no such thing as accidents,” he said, “that’s kind of my area of expertise.” 

“I don’t even believe in you,” I told him.

“I know.” He said.

“How do I know this isn’t a hallucination? Something brought on by a flood of chemicals to my brain?”

“Would that make those cookies you’re smelling any less real?” He asked. 

I didn’t know the answer. 

“You drove off a bridge,” God said.

“Yes,” I said. 

“Why?”

“I was on my way home. I had been up all night with the baby, and it was an accident.”

He gave me a look of compassion as I remembered all the tubes and wires that had been coming from my child. The needle sticks that I had to hold her for. The kisses and the tears and the hollow assurances. I wanted her to sleep so she wouldn’t suffer. Now, I wanted her to wake up. A million screaming “why’s” came to the forefront of my mind.

“Why is my daughter sick?” I asked.

“You’re angry with me?”

“You’re god-damned––.” I stopped and started to cry. He stared. I shifted on my feet. “If there are no accidents, then why’d you put my little girl in the hospital? I had been up all night––I was on my way home…”

“Is that why you’re here?” He asked.

“I don’t know!”

“But, you want to stay?”

“I want to see my mom,” I said, tearing up again. “I need to hug her, please….”

He sighed and put his head back against the chair. “And you’ll want to see your father too, I suppose?”

I remembered my dad, and the days spent hovering over his hospital gowns, the smell of his deodorant, and the hoarseness of his voice when he told me goodbye. 

“Yes, please. Let me see them both.”

“Then, you’ll tell me why you’re here?”

“Yes,” I said. “And then anything...” I wiped at my cheeks with my shirt cuff. 

“Go.” He said, waving a hand and settling down in his chair. “But, don’t take too long. When the sun sets, you need to be back here.”

I agreed and watched him as he pulled a fly-tying kit onto his lap. He clamped a hook in the tiny vice and then started shuffling through some thread and feathers in a wooden box sat on the side table.

I walked toward the kitchen and checked out the window on the way by. Dad had put the rod down and had started gathering his paddle. He looked good––I yearned to see him––but first, as always, I had been a momma’s boy.

###

I walked in behind mom as the oven door banged open, and she leaned in to grab a pan of something. She wore a ruffled dress that I didn’t remember, with an apron tied behind her back in a bow.

“Mom?” I said.

She turned and smiled at me.

I rushed to her and took her in my arms. She had been smaller than me since the time I was twelve, and she was smaller than me now. She shook in my arms as I squeezed her. Then my body cried harder than I thought was possible.

She pushed back and looked at me. “It’s so good to see you.”

“You too mom.” I laughed through a tear. “I’ve needed to see you so bad,” I said.

“Oh…” She whispered, but she never broke her smile. “What’s wrong?”

“I’ve died mom, and the baby is sick. I don’t know what to do.”

She lifted my chin and showed me her face from below. “Oh… Is that all?”

“Is that all!” I said. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Well...” She said. “Dying isn’t so bad. It’s living that’s hard because you have to care, but you also just have to…” She looked me over, “…go with the flow.”

I put my forehead against hers. I started crying again. “I just… I don’t want to lose her.”

“I know dear, it will be alright, you’ll see.” She looked confident and truly happy. I nodded and thanked her.

“Now…Go to your father, you won’t have much time.” She pointed at the sun slivering behind the trees. “You always feel better after talking to dad.”

I smiled and looked at her pan of cookies. “Can I take a cookie?” I asked her.

“Take two.” She said. 

“And the whiskey?”

“In the cabinet.” She laughed. I grabbed a couple of glasses too.

I elbowed open the cellar door and creaked my way down the old wooden stairs. Once on concrete, I was in dad’s woodshop, breathing smells of oak, walnut, and WD-40. The garage door was open, and I exited down the grassy path to the dock. Dad was dragging the canoe up for the night. He looked up and saw me. 

“Hey!” He beamed. “What are you doing here?”

I got to him and wrapped my arms around him. He ruffled his fingers through the back of my hair. I sniffed into his collar.

“I’ve died dad, and the baby is sick. I don’t know what to do.” I looked up at him.

“Whoa.” He grumbled, “Is that what that’s for?” He pointed at the bottle and the two glasses pinched between my fingers.

“You want some? I’ve got cookies too.”

“Not with whiskey…” he said, sitting down. 

I poured each a glass and we sat together watching the sunset. I talked. Dad never said a word.

When the whiskey was gone, and the sun just a pink reflection in the sky, he turned to me.

“You’ve got to give yourself a break son. You’re a good guy––a good husband––a good dad. It’s hard because it’s worth it. You wouldn’t know what the good stuff looked like, if it weren’t for the bad stuff.”

I nodded. And, I felt better. 

“Go, home son. When you come back, I’ll have the porch ready!” He pointed up to the back of the house, and the stilts waiting to be built on.

“What if I’m done now though?”

“You’re not.” He said. “I can see it just looking at you. Go home and just keep doing what you’re doing. You’ll see. It’s all going to be fine.”

I looked up to the house. The lamp was burning orange in the living room, and I knew it was time to go. 

“I love you, dad. Thank you.”

“No problem.” He said. “Now, go and tell the man what he wants to hear, and get out of here.”

“I don’t know what the answer is,” I said.

He shrugged his shoulders. “Then that’s what you tell him.”

I hugged my father one more time. 

“I love you, dad.”

“I love you too.”

  ###

Back in the living room, God stuck a completed fly into a small tin box, and then fished out another hook for the vice.

“Did you have a nice visit?” He asked, looking above his glasses. 

“I did. Thank you.”

“Good.” He tightened another hook in the vice, and then set the contraption on the floor next to him. He put his hands back in his lap. 

“Now, why are you here?”

“I don’t know the answer,” I said. I tried to smile.

He studied me for a moment and then started to laugh. 

“Well, I suppose that’ll have to be good enough.” He said. “Now, go on and get out of here.” He gestured with his chin to the black oval hole in the room. I walked to it and looked in. There were red and white lights flashing off of silver roadsigns down there now, and the sound of a walkie-talkie. 

I turned back to God. “I’m here because I wanted to be here and not there,” I said. “I had been with her all night, and she had only gotten worse. They said she might not wake up. I didn’t want to live in a world where God kills little girls.”

God nodded.

“I didn’t mean to do it, exactly, but I’m here because I wanted to be here. That’s the answer. Now I want to go back.”

“There are no accidents…” God said. 

 I swung a leg into the hole, then pulled over the other. I sat there for a moment, looking down.

“…It’s sort of my expertise.” 

I stayed only a moment longer, savoring the smell of mom’s cooking.

“Thank you, God,” I said, and I shifted my weight. I sped down into the darkness with the air passing faster, colder and thicker. I watched above me, at the light from where I’d come, as it disappeared up and away. I closed my eyes.

There was a jolt and the sound of rattling aluminum and squeaky wheels. A heavy boot hit a hinged bumper that clamored back down. They slid me on a gurney under a bright light. I heard an engine running, and then, a heart monitor beeping.

“Hold on Sir.” A voice said. His voice sounded like God’s. “You’re alright, you’re alright….”

###

The paramedics were friendly, once I’d come to. I wasn’t afraid of their needles or my broken bones. I was afraid of my wife. Afraid I had left my daughter before she had left me. I hoped that if she had gone, that maybe she was at Emerald Pond making cookies.

They rolled me into emergency, it didn’t take long before my wife was there. She ran to me, and cried and shook as hard as I had cried holding my mother back up in heaven. 

 I tried to comfort her. 

“I was trying to call. And then, I called, and I called.” She sobbed.

“I’m ok,” I reassured her, and I tilted her chin to look at me. She was beautiful and glowing more than I’d ever seen her before. 

“How’s the baby?” I asked. My throat caught. I was afraid of the answer.

She smiled.