Nanowrimo - 24

Pennsylvania finally provides a vista with some variety from the flat-scape we’ve been crawling through. I never thought I’d be glad to just see hills again. This is also a state with two major urban areas book-ending a whole lot of backwater. So, when it’s time to stop and get a motel room we tell Wolf to crouch down in the car (with extra orders to stay there no matter how much he wants to get his wild animal self on). I feel horrible asking him to hide, but the lady running the place even gives Jack and I a funny look as we ask for a room. She eyes our left hands with a theatrical suspicion and provides us with the keys to a room containing two single beds. Knowing what I do about mortal sexuality, this attempt at control seems a rather futile gesture. Oh well, if all she has in the world to obey her orders are the crumbs, let her have at it. I’m just glad that the room is at the end of the low, ranch style building. Without much effort we sneak Wolf into the room under the cover of dark.

Even curled up on the cat-scented floor and despite the parched air of the room, I drift off into a dead sleep within minutes. At times I’m dimly aware of the television’s noise. The boys are scouring the channels to see if there is any national news about “vampires”. I’m resting, blissfully lost in the soft blackness of night when something that feels like the ground shaking calls me back.

Against the window I see what looks like a boulder, rocking back and forth and producing a mewing sound. For a few minutes I stare at the shape, wondering if it’s just a branch moving outside? Sleep does funny things with perception. I don’t register that it’s Wolf until I’m right next to it and that familiar musk of sweat and French fries on his skin greets my nose. He’s curled up in a ball, sobbing.

“Artie! What’s the matter? What’s wrong?” I try to put an arm around him to calm him down. He just seems to start crying harder.

The booming male voice of daylight hours twists in his throat and he can only manage to let out a squeal. “I killed my momma, miss. I did that! I couldn’t stop myself and she didn’t even know what hit her. I can’t believe I killed my own momma!” From there his words break down into incoherent pleas for his mother to forgive him.

“Listen, Artie, you didn’t understand what you were doing, yet!”

“I done sent her to hell! She belong to the devil now!”

“NO! Listen to me! We are not creatures in league with Satan! That’s just the same superstition that people used to have about black folks. Saying they had no souls. Or how they used to say that women were all in league with the devil because of Eve’s sin. It’s just some limp piece of mythology called out in the service of a whole lot of fear and ignorance. Listen to me!” I grab his chin and make him look into my eyes. “There is no devil. The only devil in the world is in our own mind. It’s those thoughts and actions that keep us from getting closer to God. There’s no way you could have sent your momma to the devil be cause hell and the devil DO NOT EXIST.”

“You said you is a minister.”

“I am. I’ve been a Unitarian minister for, well, almost one hundred fifty years now. I’ve seen a lot of what folks might call evil in my day. But I don’t see that in you, Artie.”

“But how could I have killed my own momma! What wrong wit me? What kinda monster I become?” his chin threatens to break into sobs again.

“You didn’t kill your momma, Artie. You can’t really kill someone. None of us ever dies. You ended her time in an earthly body that she had been using, but she was never just a body. None of us is. The bigger part of her is soul and that soul lives on. And where her soul lives is a much nicer place that what we experience while in our bodies.”

Even through the dark I still see some doubt in his eyes. But he’s calmed down enough to listen to me. “If the soul place be so nice, why come to earth at all. Why not just stay there?”

“Now there is a month of Sunday talks in that question! I wish I could put it real simple for you. But the soul place lives always inside all people. They come to earth to feel what it’s like to get in touch with it again for the first time. Like falling in love all over again.”

“I don’ gets it.”

Of course not, I realize. He’s really just twelve. The man’s never fallen in love before.

“I know. I know. It took me a long time, too. But, Artie, listen to me. Your momma forgives you and wherever she is, she’s blessing you. The love of a momma can’t be killed.”

“OK, miss.” I’ve managed to calm him down some. But somehow I’m not sure if I’ve really reached him, at least not yet. I’d like to convince him of his own comfort, but he has to earn that within his own mind.

I let him be in his own silence and return to my patch of carpet to sleep, again. From the other bed I hear a soft sound of irregular breathing. Jack is crying.