Chapter 23

Saturday, April 6, 2002

I awoke from sleep, looked over at the clock on the nightstand. It was a little after one. In spite of our earlier unity, Mary had moved off to one side of the bed. I rolled back to cuddle up to her, reveling in the warmth of her physical presence, the warmth of her soul in proximity to mine. I smiled to myself remembering that once Mary had worried about being a 'Thursday's.' No, I thought as I settled back into sleep, you are going to be a 'most every day' if I can find some way to make it happen.

There was no discernable transition; I was sitting up in my bed, alone. Almost alone, a small rotund man was standing a few feet away; he bore a slight resemblance to Danny Devito, although this man looked more Semitic. That and he was wearing a yarmulke.

"Hello, Tom," the man said.

I looked around. "Where's Mary?" I remember being a little curious, but not as much as I should have been.

"Oh, she's still sleeping. No need to disturb her."

"What are you doing in my bedroom?" I asked.

He smiled, a wry, ironic smile. "I'm God, Tom. I pretty much go where I please."

I smiled to myself. So, I was dreaming! I was going to make a smart comment, but his level and serious expression changed my mind.

"We need to discuss a few things, Tom," he went on.

Okay, a dream. I mentally laughed. Oh well, sure! Why not!

"The other night you talked to Joanna; confirmed something you had begun to wonder about, concerning the first time the two of you made love."

"She wanted me to make love to her," I agreed. "She was curious about the questions she wanted to ask, but pretty sure what was going to happen once the topic came up."

"That's right, Tom. Now I want you to think about why you made love to Sue Ellen the first time; then think about why you made love to her again yesterday afternoon."

I mentally winced. "I did it with my best friend's girl because I wanted to and because she wanted to. We just wanted sex. I'm not proud of the first time or today." It was impossible to forget Sue Ellen and I earlier on Friday. If the first time had been a desire for sex, this last time had been pure animal lust. We'd made love furiously the entire time Tony was in the shower, not twenty feet away; we'd both come the instant he turned off the water.

"I can't justify either time," I said sadly. "I betrayed my best friend twice, just so I could have sex with his girlfriend."

"Did you betray him with Sue Ellen at the party?" the man asked.

There was no way I was going to think of this guy as God. None.

"No. I knew they were apart; Tony had said I could if I wanted to."

"Why do you think Sue Ellen wanted to do it, that first time?"

It was tempting to say because we were both horny, but a few days later, at the orgy, I remember Sue Ellen telling me about Tony and her problems; Tony knew one and exactly one way to make love. The first time Sue Ellen and I had been together, I'd shown her different. And the second time. Yesterday? Well, I guessed you could call it different too.

The man stood silently, watching me. "So now you understand that Sue Ellen and Tony had a problem." His voice was firm and confident.

I'd thought it, there was no way he could have known what I was thinking. Then I remembered that this was a dream. The dream version of God would know anything I did.

"Do you think it was a good idea for Tony and Sue Ellen to break up, even if for such a short time?"

Sue Ellen had me, Tony had Fleur. Mindy had said something about long talks with Tony; I was pretty sure they did more than talk. Mindy had also spent a lot of time with Sue Ellen at the party.

"Tony and Sue Ellen love each other," the man told me. "Right now they are sleeping in each other's arms, blissfully happy, with very large grins on their faces. A long time from now, Tom, their children and grandchildren will gather at their graveside and marvel at how they could build such an enduring love."

I contemplated that; it was, I was sure, my conscience telling me the end justified the means.

"You have it backwards," I was told. "The means justifies the end. Each time you made love to Sue Ellen, she loved Tony more."

"Every time Sue Ellen and I have been together; we came, then she gets dressed and leaves as fast as she can." I heard the bitterness in my voice, and I was surprised. It was something I'd noticed each time; I hadn't realized I was upset by it and how much I was upset.

"One day in not so long, you'll figure out why." He gave a wry chuckle.

"We should move on to other things. Monday you told Eleanor Johannsen that you believed in God. You were quite positive about it. Wednesday, you told Joanna that you weren't sure if there was a God, and if there was, you didn't like him. What happened in the two and a half days between the two answers?"

It was my turn for a wry chuckle. "That would be the two and a half hours I hung upside down. I had time to think, really think for a change. Nothing concentrates your attention like the threat of imminent death.

"I thought about what happened to Jenny, Mary, Elizabeth, Shannon and their father. Jenny's parents, her brother. Roger Parker and Keith Driscoll. I didn't understand how a kind, loving God, who is, according to what I've heard, all powerful, but who allows these appalling things happen to people. And at that, it doesn't take long reading the newspaper before you realize how lucky we are." I was almost crying. "Lucky? Is that what we're supposed to accept? That it's luck or God's Will that things aren't a thousand times worse?

"Is it luck or God's Will that Sam Reese and his parents are dead? Bill Leary? My older brother or sister, whoever it was, cut from Mom's womb, instead of born like JR and me? God's great and wonderful plan?" You can't spit in a dream; probably a good thing, because it still looked like I was in my own bed.

The man shrugged. "I won't justify the nature and shape of the universe. Someday you'll mention this part of our conversation to Elizabeth, the part where I tell you that in not so very long from now, she will put together all the clues from observations in astronomy and cosmology about the shape of the universe, then she'll have a good laugh at what your astronomers are seeing.

"Accept this, Tom: the universe was created. At one point in time, it didn't exist. Then it did. The universe grows and changes, Tom, each moment of its existence. Eventually, the universe will reach an end state. That end state is my goal, Tom.

"It's like taking your car down to the supermarket at the corner. You go out, turn right onto the street, stop at the main intersection, turn right again, go a mile, make another right into the parking lot, park and go inside.

"Those are the steps you have to go through, to go from A to B, Tom. Yes, you can change them. Go left instead of right at the street; you can eventually get to where you're going, but only after a whole bunch of left turns, instead of the much easier right turns and a much shorter route. Or, you can simply start taking random directions; maybe you'll get there, maybe not. There is a best way to go there; there are a large number of other ways to get there, and an infinite number of choices that won't do the job.

"The universe, Tom, is the sum of its parts. Every event has a cause, every cause an event that follows. Each event predicated on the those that went before."

I contemplated that; unsure why I should care. What did this have to do with JR coming into my room to get me in bed? Or making love to my best friend's girl, twice, when I shouldn't have?

"Tom, what is synergy?"

I knew the answer to that. It had come up in connection with Shannon's music. "A plus B should equal B plus A. But with synergy, you get a little something more."

"A sports team, an orchestra; they have synergy," he told me. I nodded. "People have synergies when they work together, isn't that so? In any endeavor."

"They can," I told him. "Although sometimes I think the synergy can be negative." Sam Reese and Yolanda Melendez came to mind.

The man shrugged. "You've studied that, you should know the importance of the sign of a change."

I nodded, yeah, that made sense. Just another direction.

"So, Tom, tell me: Can a person by him or herself have synergy?"

I thought about it, "I guess."

"Michelangelo, Da Vinci. Every artist. A man building a house; be it a lean-to of sticks, a straw hut or the Taj Mahal," he explained.

I had to nod again.

"Tell me, Tom, where does the synergy come from?"

"Inspiration and perspiration," I guessed.

"That's some of it. What's inspiration called?"

Hey, you say you're God. I can connect those dots! "The soul."

He nodded. "And tell me Tom; Monday, you believed in me. Wednesday, you didn't. Why would God be happier with you today, than on Monday?"

"Not a clue," I shot back. "It doesn't make sense."

"Because a person who believes, for the most part accepts those things they believe in. A person who isn't sure, questions what they don't understand. A person who accepts things isn't as able to grow, to see new things or expand their understanding. They just accept. A doubter doesn't get complacent; you've learned lately how bad it can be, when the things you think you know turn out not to be so."

I nodded ruefully. Oh yeah!

"The universe is made up of the sum of everything that is and was. The present exists because of what's happened before. The future depends on today. To get to where the universe should end up, things have to happen. Objectively, some of those things aren't pleasant. Some are horrible; too horrible to contemplate. Yet for the universe to wind up where it's going, they have to happen. It might not seem better at the time, but in the end, it will make it all turn out for the best."

"How can misery and suffering make anything turn out for the better?" I asked. "What good can come from the death of my older brother or sister? A person who never got a chance to live?"

"Gone but not forgotten," the man's voice was gentle. "You remember, and as a result, the things you do will forever be changed by that knowledge. Sure, in a million or billion years, no one will know or care that Tom Ferguson lived; nor that his older sister or brother didn't. But your actions, Tom, will have an impact on their lives; not huge, but it will be there. In cosmology, a little change now means a great huge change a long time later."

I shook my head. "This is just..." I was going to say bullshit, decided I didn't want to find out what the penalty from God would be for cussing to his face. Sure, it was a dream, right? "This is a dream," I repeated my own thought. "I don't believe."

"And as I said, I prefer it that way.

"Once upon a time, Tom, I used some pretty spectacular things to prove my existence. Humans are a particularly stubborn people. Give them any amount of time and they come up with an alternate possibility. Burning bushes and stone tablets written on the Mount. Floods and fire and destruction!" He laughed, shaking his head. "Even parting the Red Sea! That's my favorite! People say it was the tides. Of course it was tides! They think they understand, they believe they know. What they have forgotten to ask themselves, is why there and why then?"

I blinked, and then swallowed. Oh. I could connect those dots, too.

"So, why you?" I looked at him; that had crossed my mind. I was crazy; this was a dream.

"It's very simple, Tom. Unbelievable, but simple. Why not you?

"I'll leave you with some additional things to think about. They are things you can easily rationalize if you want. The first is something your subconscious knows, but your conscious forgot four years ago, today. Then two things that your subconscious couldn't possibly know. A small, trivial gift, then two more that add up to the greatest gift you will ever have, far transcending the one your uncle gave you Thursday.

"First, four years ago today, you were standing in the kitchen, having just gotten your allowance. Your mother was praising you, having given you the agreed upon bonus for good behavior, four quarters for video games, over and above the regular ten dollars."

I remembered those days; I'd gotten the bonus nearly every week.

"You were standing there, the money in your pocket, basking in the glow of good deeds and the anticipation of your just reward. You stood with one hand in your pocket, rubbing one of the quarters, imagining what pleasure it would bring. Your mother decided to show you how to thaw meat for dinner that night, and called you over to pay attention to what she was doing with the microwave.

"She wanted you to push the buttons, so you would better remember how to do it. You pulled your hand out of your pocket, after letting the quarter go, so you could do what your mother asked.

"You heard it at the time, but were intent on something else. You didn't understand until later; the tunk of a quarter landing on the floor, the whisper of sound as it rolled, then a slight ting as it hit the front of the grill at the base of the refrigerator. It didn't make any more sound, because it was swallowed up by accumulated dust."

I remembered, vaguely, Mom showing me how to thaw meat. I didn't remember any particular first time, but obviously there had to have been one. I didn't remember losing a quarter.

"The quarter is still there, under the refrigerator," he told me. "Oh, and the two important gifts? When you were just three, Joanna was due and your parents decided they needed a bigger house. They bought the other half of the duplex." Not exactly earth shaking news, I thought.

"They changed the kitchen. The refrigerator was moved from the old kitchen to the new. The workmen found an accumulation of dust under it, just three years worth. They didn't say anything, just cleaned it up and went away.

"That was three years, this is thirteen years. No one has looked since, Tom. Except it's not just a little dust now, it's a lot. It acts, Tom, as an insulator. It makes the compressor that operates the cooling system have to work harder; so it gets hotter. The dust traps the heat as well.

"It's charred already, Tom. Your mother has mentioned on occasion she smells something burning in your kitchen; your father jokes about if it was last night's or tonight's dinner. Two days from now, almost exactly, it will start to smolder. A half hour or so later, it will burst into flame. A little later, the overheated compressor will crack, allowing the coolant to rapidly escape; that rapid escape will blow the dust all around the room, Tom.

"Your father, Tom, is a good man; your mother has wanted things that he thought weren't really a concern; one of those was fire drills. Your mother was concerned, so he went along. Except, he never thought about it. None of you ever did. The plan is that you all come down both sets of steps and go out the front door.

"No one ever gave any thought about how to get out of the upstairs if both sets of stairs were burning; the steps start not ten feet apart, Tom. Two days from now, you'll get Elizabeth and Mary to safety, then die trying to rescue Jennifer. Mary goes in after you, and she dies. The smoke will be worse in the other half of the house; only your mother wakes up. And she dies trying to get your father awake."

I looked at the man, wanting to punch him in the nose. To rend him limb from limb.

"Oh, and you might want to check the smoke detector in the living room," he continued, offhandedly adding another thought. "Your father put in a new battery on New Year's. Except the battery is defective. None of you have noticed the LED light has been out for two months.

"Sleep good, Tom."

I opened my eyes. I really was sitting upright in my bed; this time I could feel Mary's presence. As always, it was comforting, and I could draw strength from her and gather my wits just from knowing she was there.

I carefully got out of bed, went out to the hall. The door to Jenny's room was closed; she and Elizabeth were asleep within. I went downstairs, peeked into the family room from the entrance hall. Looked up the other set of steps. Mom and Dad, JR and Shannon were asleep up there.

I walked the short distance to the kitchen, wiggled the grate at the bottom of the fridge. I lay down, prone, to get a better grip; finally found that if you lifted up and pulled, it unhooked. Tufts of dust and dirt pulled away; I could smell the faint odor of smoke.

I pulled handfuls of the mess crammed in there. Dust bunnies on serious steroids. I saw the charring; I lost it.

I'd done so many things for so many; I was the rock. The hard one; in all senses of the word. I'd been there for Jenny, for Mary, Elizabeth and Shannon. All the others. I'd sat calmly and quietly in the ruins of my car for more than two hours while men worked to free me, smelling the gasoline that would have incinerated me in a flash if someone goofed. I'd joked with those men.

And now, laying on my stomach on the kitchen floor of the house I'd grown up in, the tears came hard; buckets and gushers, more even than the night Jenny revealed her soul to me.

I didn't hear my dad behind me; I did flinch when the light went on. "Are you okay, Tom?" he asked quietly. He laughed lightly. "I was going to ask something about a reasonable reason my son should be laying on the floor, crying. I don't think I'll ever make that joke again."

I opened my eyes; saw the silver shape, nestled in the dust. I reached out, ignored the searing heat. Instead I flipped the quarter towards my dad.

He fielded it neatly, then cursed and dropped it. "Damn, that's hot!" I could see him sucking on his fingers.

I started pulling on the dirt, more of it. "Help me," I said simply.

He saw what I was doing and silently went and got a paper grocery bag from the cupboard and started stuffing the crud from under the fridge in it. "Some of this is pretty warm," Dad said, his voice thoughtful.

I handed him some of the charred material. He swallowed, looked at me. "Guess I messed up pretty bad," he said quietly.

"Oh, when was the last time you skipped the 'clean under the fridge' task on the list?" I asked, my voice bitter. "No, this one goes to ignorance and complacency. To drive home the lesson, it's what you think you know that isn't so, that is a bigger danger than the true unknown."

Mom appeared, looking at us. "An odd time to clean the kitchen. What's that I smell burning?"

Dad got up, went and hugged her hard, kissed her harder. "Promise me," Dad told Mom, "that the next time you smell smoke, you will kick my lazy butt into gear until I find out what's smoking."

JR came in, yawning. She stooped down, picking up the quarter. "Hey, someone dropped this. Can I keep it?"

"No," I said quietly, "we're going to frame it and hang it on the living room wall, by the smoke detector."

"Smoke detector?" JR replied, looking mystified.

"Come," I showed them the dead detector that had nearly resulted in a lot of dead family members. Long before a good battery was in it, there were a lot of questions that I answered by shaking my head.

I simply shook them off, smiled. "I'm going for a walk."

It was the middle of the night, but Phoenix nights in April are summer nights most other places; almost balmy, in the 60's. I walked.

I don't think I walked more than a hundred yards when I saw the bright flash in the distance, a bit later heard the crash and boom of thunder. I modified my planned route, harkening back to what my dad had told me the Sunday we'd gone over to Mary's. When he walked, we ended up back at the house. I'd gotten us back there, but it had been a long walk indeed.

Now, I'd come another long ways. I started walking around the block, not aiming to go far.

I didn't walk long. I'd been enjoying the growing lightning display to the south; it was pretty clear it was headed my way. I changed to just walking up and down the block in front of the house.

A car pulled up next to me; I glanced at it. The police. I laughed at myself. A month ago, I'd have been nervous and flustered. Now, I was just curious to see if it was going to be Joe Moss or Detective Harris who got out, or Surly and Polite.

"Kind of late, guy," one of the two men in the car told me, leaning out the open window.

"I needed some time to think."

"You have ID?" the policeman asked.

"No." I waved at the house. "The lights are on, my parents are up. We had a small kitchen fire. Close. Real close!"

"And we can just go knock on the door, and they'll know who you are?" the cop asked.

I tapped my pants pocket. "I might have left my wallet in my room, but I brought my keys."

It was I thought, not going to be enough. Still, I found I had a question for them. I walked towards the police car, stopped a few feet away.

"Can I ask you a question?" I asked the cop. He'd opened the door and was getting out.

"About what?"

"What does it take, if I wanted to ride with you? To watch what you do?"

"How old are you?" He was now facing me, looking at me closely.

"Sixteen."

"Not a chance, sorry. They let some Eagle Scouts do it, but they have a special program for ride along. You an Eagle Scout?"

"No, sir. Just curious." I'd asked Johnnie Dugan about it, the police seemed to have the same answer.

"It can get a little hairy, sometimes," the policeman went on. "Couple of weeks ago, my partner and I got a call on a domestic dispute. A guy beating on his wife. We got there, found her beating on him." He waved at his partner. "Howie there, he caught her arm, just before she was going to brain her old man with a cast iron frying pan. The guy teed off on Howie. It took six of us to bring them in."

I saw his eyes were on me. "And you don't even want to think about rolling on a traffic accident."

"Wednesday it took Johnnie Dugan two and a half hours to cut me from my car."

The policeman looked at me closer. "Ferguson?"

I nodded. "Joe Moss asked us to keep an eye on your place. Looks like another of the rapist bastards is gonna make bail tomorrow."

"Which one?" I was curious.

"Asshole Parker."

I could faintly hear his partner say something, and the cop laughed. "Ah, that would be Mr. Parker, of course."

I smiled. "A stupid asshole; I know the guy."

The cop smiled, then his eyes went beyond me. I turned and saw Dad.

"A problem, Tom?"

"No, we're just talking."

"You Mr. Ferguson?" the policeman asked.

"Yes."

"Quite a boy you have here."

There was a spectacular lightning bolt in the south. It had branches and arms that seemed to fill the sky; the thunder was just a few seconds later.

"I'd agree," Dad said, "except that in a few seconds, he's going to be all wet."

The cop grinned. "And I'm getting back in the car and going back on patrol. Have a nice day."

They pulled away, and Dad laid his arm on my shoulder.

"You should come in."

I nodded, turned and walked with him towards the house. We'd just reached the porch, when there was a sudden rush of sound, and it was raining buckets.

"Not a drip!" Dad said with pleasure as we stood in the entrance.

"Thanks," I told him.

He waved at the kitchen. "I've watched you help people the last few weeks. Never dreamed it would be me, next. Like you said, the worst thing is when something you are sure is under control, only to find out it isn't."