The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy (31 page)

“But, Jeremy, don’t you think that’s a little extreme? Blowing up the planet to teach us a lesson?” Mel interjected.

“No, I don’t... but we’ll never find out what really happened. Washington isn’t going to tell us.

“I have one more command: No snake men! I’ve got the Bible in the library; I’ve got the Koran and Buddhist books. Books from every sacred tradition. I command you to read all of them. And if anyone says their way is better than anyone else’s, I want you to kill them.”

“Kill them?” Ellie’s sweet voice shocked Jeremy out of his rant. She had not spoken when he talked about killing before, but now she did. “Jeremy say, ‘Kill them, kill them.’ What is kill?”

Jeremy stopped short. “Uh, kill means to cause the death of something. To take a life. To make something die.”

She scrunched up her face. “Die?”

“Yes. People die where you live, don’t they?”

“No. Pets die. Children die. Grown-ups no die.”

“Grown-ups don’t die on your planet?”

“No die. Never kill.”

“Do they live forever?”

She considered, forehead tensing as she fought for words. “When get old, my people turn dark. When time, they go...” She searched for a way to say it, finally stretching her hand out flat, parallel with the floor and pushing down, as though she were pushing something into the ground. “They go into ground.”

“They become part of the planet?”

“Yes.”

“You can’t kill them?”

“No. Only pets and children die.”

“Well, we’re different,” Jeremy said. “We die and we can kill.” He could see shimmers of gold light around her and outlines of tall, slender people. Her people were studying him somehow. He knew he was being evaluated.

“Jeremy kill?” she said. The air around her roiled as her people clustered to hear what he said.

“Yes. I’m sure that people died when I blew up the school. I didn’t want to kill them, but I’d never used plastics before. We had to get here, El. They would have killed us if they caught us.”

Ellie pulled away from him, standing stiffly. “How kill? Life no yours.” The golden forms around her seemed denser.

“Ellie, we’re at war,” Mel said. “Things happen in war that don’t happen other times. Jeremy would never kill anyone—”

“Yes, I would, Mel, exactly the way I said, if I was in the shelter and people didn’t follow my commands. Everyone could die if one person got drunk and pulled out a gun. Or went into a rage and tore up the computers. I would kill to stop that. And so would you.”

Eliana looked shattered. “Kill? War?”

“It’s not a nice planet, Ellie,” Henry said. “We’re violent. They stole people off the streets back in the city, and out of their jobs. They tortured them and killed them.”

“No!” She put her hands over her ears. “No! Bad. Terr’ble.”

They stared at her. She looked like a confection in her dress and tiara. Her hooves clicked on the cement floor. Tears streaked her cheeks. She looked at Sam Baahuhd with gleaming silver eyes.

“Ah’m no better than any, miss. Ah killed my share, defendin’ my family and this place.” Sam could see the gold forms swarming around him and Rupert.

“How should we handle bad people, Ellie? How do they do it in
your world?” Jeremy asked.

“No bad people.”

“There aren’t any bad people in your world?”

“No. All good. All nice.”

“Well here, they’re not always nice. There are evil people here. How should we handle them?”

“Love them. No let do bad things and love them.”

“Love them?” Jeremy said. “OK. Write it down, Arthur. The people in the shelter are to love bad people and stop them from hurting others by loving them. Figure out how to do that.” He looked at Ellie. She looked away. It jolted him.

“What’s the matter, El?’

She shrugged, “My people talking. Say I no do my job.”

“Are your people coming for us tomorrow?”

“Yes. They come. But I no do job.”

“Will you be punished?”

“What punished?”

“That’s where something bad happens to you if do something wrong. You don’t have punishment in your world?”

“No. Everyone work together, do their job.” She clutched her purse.

“Am I part of your job?” A sober nod. “OK. I’ll finish and see how I can help you. Just a second.” He turned back to Sam and Rupert.

“I just want to do something right, and good.” He felt overwhelmed. “Don’t let me down, Sam. Do it right.”

Sam stared at him. Jeremy realized that he had commanded Sam to do something that he didn’t know how to do himself.

Jeremy looked around at the lab. “There’s just one more thing. The estate. Everything outside this shelter will be burned to ashes. All the trees, everything. The land will be left, and that’s what you’ll have to start again with.

“I’m giving you the estate, Sam. You and your descendants.” Sam looked at him, not seeming to understand what he’d said. “We’ll clear out early in the morning. You can take whatever you want from the house. Take practical things—my mom’s jewels, for one thing. They don’t take much space and you may be able to barter them, when you
get out. Take what you want. It’s all yours.”

Henry interjected, “Are you sure, Jeremy? If Eliana’s people don’t come, you’ll be inside. Don’t you want what’s left of the estate for your heirs, even if it’s just radioactive dirt?”

“I don’t have any heirs. And I’m tired.” His body drooped. “I’ve been talking about what to do if Ellie’s people come; they might not come. I’m not sure I’ll go, even if they do come. Part of me wants to sit out there on that point by the sea and fry.”

“Oh no, son.”

“It’s my choice, Henry. It will be over fast. I built this place so other people could live, and part of me says that’s all I can do.” He looked at Ellie and smiled bitterly. “I don’t believe in angels. I’ve never seen a real angel.”

Henry wondered if he could do something to change Jeremy’s mind. He crept to the open doorway and back up the stairs.

Jeremy kept talking, not noticing Henry’s absence. “If Ellie’s people don’t come, or if they do, I don’t give a shit who owns this place. Arthur, can I have that book to write Sam a deed?”

Light flashed from the pages when he opened it. Jeremy looked at it. All of his commands, everything he said they could and couldn’t do was already written in it, in a luminous hand that cast glowing ripples.

He wrote:

I, Jeremy Edgarton, heir to the Piermont estate in the Hamptons, give it and all it contains to Sam Baahuhd, headman of the village. Sam of the village and his oldest son and their descendants may have the estate forever. In return, they agree to create a decent world when they get out of the shelter.

He was about to sign it, when more words came to him.

If I come back some day, I hope to be welcome and have a home here. I appreciate what you’ve done, Sam, on behalf of my family.

Love,

Jeremy

He couldn’t believe he’d signed it that way. The word love shimmered and sparkled more than the rest. He knew he couldn’t change it if he wanted to.

“I guess love is what’s been missing,” he said. “Hold onto that book.”

Jeremy was stepping toward Sam to shake his hand when music wafted down the staircase. Jeremy spun to face it.

When I see you, the sun starts to climb... When I hold you, that moon is all mine...

The voice was a beautiful tenor, known all over the world.

When I touch you, the whole world smiles, you’re my beautiful, beautiful, beautiful...

The voice soared and flew, a father’s first words to his child.

My beautiful, beautiful brown-eyed boy...

It was a declaration of love with no bottom or top, no beginning and no end. It was Chaz Edgarton singing to his son.

The song flowed down the stairs from the ballroom.

Jeremy turned toward the voice of the father who had betrayed him. Furious, he leapt through the doors, and sprinted up the stairs to the ballroom. “Who put that on? I don’t want to hear that!”

Henry called down, “It’s time that you heard it, Jeremy. Your father wrote that song for you the day you were born. It’s never been released. You need to hear it now.”

J
eremy stormed across the ballroom. He headed for the bank of audio equipment, intent on stopping his father’s sweet voice.

My little brown-eyed boy... You make me feel alive, you make me jitter and jive, you are my beautiful, beautiful... brown-eyed boy.

No one could sing like Chaz Edgarton. No other voice had that softness, the kindness. The love. The heart-expanding, mind-rending beauty.

My beautiful, beautiful brown-eyed boy...

“Shut it off! I don’t want to hear it.”

Henry blocked him from tearing into the cabinet. “You need to hear it. And you need to look at this room.”

Jeremy looked up, and was met by his father’s kind gaze looking down off the wall. The room’s walls were decorated in huge photographs of Chaz Edgarton. Not posters—these were beautifully framed blowups of Chaz, six feet wide and ten feet tall. They filled the spaces
between the arched windows. The images included formal portraits of Chaz holding his sax, singing, pounding the ivories, rocking in clubs. Smiling at his wife. Holding Jeremy. Walking around the estate.

Something gurgled in Jeremy’s throat and he fell to his knees, his arms and torso draped over the bandstand railing. The gurgle became a scream, and then sobs.

Henry kneeled next to him. “That’s good son. Let it out.”

Jeremy turned to him. “Oh... oh... he died. He died.
He died.
” He grabbed Henry and held on, the images bursting in his head. His father’s slumped form in the big leather chair in his studio when Jeremy found him. The rubber hose around his arm, syringe stuck in one of the few veins that blood could still pass through. Tinfoil on the desk, folded where he’d cooked the stuff.

“Son of a bitch! Son of a bitch!” Jeremy pushed himself back and tried to run. Henry grabbed him.

“No running away tonight, boy. This is the last night you can clean it up.”

Jeremy was back on his knees, sobbing. He dropped to the floor, a folded heap, with Henry hovering over him. The song kept playing and that exquisite voice crooned, “My beautiful brown-eyed boy...”

“Please, turn it off,” Jeremy said between sobs. “I can’t stand it.” Henry stopped the recording. Jeremy whispered. “He died. Oh, Henry, he died. I was nine years old, and he left me.” Henry held him.

“Son, your daddy loved you. He loved you like life. You can hear it in his voice; you can see it in his face. Jeremy, there wasn’t a man alive as sweet or kindhearted as your daddy. He loved people, honey, and he loved you.

“That song he wrote for you, he wrote that the day you were born. Your mama was in the hospital, and so was he—a different hospital.”

Jeremy looked up, tears and snot all over his face, Henry’s clothes, and his own. “Here, son, clean up your face.” Henry handed the boy his handkerchief. “Your daddy would have liked to have been there
with you and your mom, but he had to take care of something more important. It was life or death for him. He was tryin’ to kick, Jeremy. And he did kick, that time.

“He wrote that song, son, in the hospital. I brought up the equipment to record it and we did it there. That’s the only copy. He told me to play it for you when you really needed to know that your daddy loved you, and when you could hear how much.”

Jeremy began weeping again. “He died. He left me. With her...”

“Yeah, he died. Most addicts think they can beat it. Just one more hit. They’ve got it in control. But the monkey’s in control, laughin’. Your daddy tried to beat it, son, and he couldn’t.

“Wasn’t all his fault. It was the life, Jeremy. Do you remember those times? The rush for him? The rush to the stage after a performance? The people screaming? All the TV, and radio; all of them calling for a piece of him. And someone always in the corner sayin’, ‘Hey, baby. You need something? I got it. You need a dime, sugar? I got it. Your credit’s always good with me.’ You never heard any of that, did you?”

Jeremy shook his head.

“He swam in it. It was like an ocean tryin’ to suck him down. An’ the women. Jeremy, they’d be in his dressing room, naked, ready to go. In his hotel room, snuck in somehow. In his car. They wrote their names and phone numbers on their panties, Jeremy, and bribed someone to put them in his pocket, hoping he’d call. I don’t think he wanted most of them. He just didn’t want to hurt their feelings by sayin’ no.

“And your mother. Can you imagine how it was for her? Him being rushed by every female in the world? The darker ones saying he’d sold out for a rich honky bitch, why don’t he stick to his own kind? She knew what he was doin’ on the road and in every place they caught up with him. Not to say, he didn’t catch some of them himself. Your father wasn’t a saint, Jeremy.

“She got wild from it. Your mother was always a liberated woman, ready to take who she wanted when she wanted. But she wasn’t like she
was when you were little, runnin’ all the time. Do you remember that?”

Jeremy nodded. “Sort of. I remember her being mad, and her... boobs sticking into me. I remember her holding me.”