How Best to Avoid Dying (18 page)

Her grandfather died, her mom's dad. We drove five hours to the funeral. I held her hand while she cried. Huge sobs, like choking.

A good man. A Christian. Ran the good race set before him
.

She was going to sing his favorite hymn, but couldn't. She was crying too much. Gulping air through the tears.

Her parents stayed with her grandmother and she and I drove the five hours back. She slept. Stretching out across the bench seat of her parents' Oldsmobile with her head on my leg. Soft hair, a little less than brown. So sad. Deep, slow breathing. I tried to match my breathing to hers.

An hour from home, she woke up. We laughed and sang along to a tape. She said she wished she could have sung the hymn, but she knew he'd understand.

It was late when we got to her neighborhood.

“You should stay,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said.

We were quiet for the last few miles, feeling the empty house waiting. Walking in. No one else near. Turn on a light. Have a soft drink.

She took a shower. A long one. And I waited. She came out with a towel. There was steam coming off her skin. Baby powder smell and a different smell, a spicy smell. She loosened the towel. Smiled with one tooth overlapping another, laughed, then serious. Taking the towel off, more steam from parts I'd
never seen, she stood and let me watch. Lying down in the hallway between her room and the shower room. My breathing was fast. Hers was slow. Looking at me. Adult eyes. Asking eyes. Not afraid, willing.

I giggled. Turned my head. Stepped back. When I looked again I saw her eyes hurting, not understanding, me giggling in nerves. She covered herself. She didn't move at first, but her body closed. I was ashamed. Her arms folded over her chest. No more steam. She stood. Wrapping her towel around her. She went into her room. She's married now. She's in Oregon. She has babies. She's in the hallway. She's asking. I'm giggling. Jesus, that was my worst moment. My worst, Jesus. When I remember too much I want to sleep, lose it all for a while. But I'll walk instead.

Texas

Dawn. The sky is coming alive. Black to red to blue. Steps away from Texas. I can see the sign welcoming me, a picture of a flag frozen in wave. I can see the air and light is different across that line. Thanks for the air. Thanks for my legs feeling the road. Thanks that I'll step into Texas, not roll. You have led. I have followed. And all I have found is that I have followed and love you more for it. I thought I'd be leaving sad, but I just found more. Collecting sad faces and carrying them into Texas.

You are a mute trickster, you are promise, you are the hawk and lizard and fly and buzz, you are Pete and a smoking woman and pollen, you are hills and sand and a girl in a towel. You have no name and you have all names.

Today I'll call you Texas. Tonight I'll call sleep prayer. Tomorrow I'll walk some more.

LAZARUS DYING

“Maybe he will return today,” John says. He is standing by the window, trying to peek at the sky above New York's buildings. He has not put his tie on yet.

“It will not be today.”

“Maybe it will be.”

John starts cleaning. Shuffling around straightening cushions and the one houseplant.

“Have you seen my pamphlets?” he asks.

After John's shift at the copy shop, he hands out tracts around the city. Simple little books describing the pains of hell and the grace of the cross.

“They were on the counter this morning.”

“Never saw them,” I say.

They have illustrations so that even the illiterate might be saved.

“If you see them will you place them on my mat?”

“Of course.”

I burn his tracts in the sink as often as I can.

I try not to watch him scurry around. I'm learning to rot.

Two thousand years ago, I was a miracle.

The first thing Jesus said to me when I stumbled from the tomb was, “I wanted to see what four days would do, Lazarus.”

I nodded and brushed some flakes from my skin. He smiled and rested a hand on my back.

“I think I'll keep it to three,” he said.

Pilgrims visited. They'd wait in the shade of a palm tree I planted as a young man. One by one, for a small fee, they would be led by my sisters behind a curtain to see me and ask questions. Some wanted to ask me about Jesus. Most wanted to ask me about death.

“It was nothing at the time,” I told them. “In memory it is a little like biting into an under-ripened fruit, only not just your mouth, your whole body.”

People didn't like this answer. They would grimace, drop a coin in Martha's hand, and head back home. Sometimes a hundred miles away. A hundred miles to find out the afterlife was not yet ready for picking. So I made up different answers.

“There is milk there. There is cheese. It is morning always.” Or “Your mother is there. She complains about you constantly. Already the dead are sick of your name.”

Once I told a man, “Your brother blames you for his death.”

“I had nothing to do with it,” he answered.

“Perhaps you wished it.” I said. “So you might have his wife.”

“I married her out of custom.”

“He visits your room at night. Your brother watches.”

I don't know why I said these things. After this man left, Martha brought me a plate of food. Olives and bread. But I could not eat it.

“The food is sick, Martha.”

“The food is fine, brother. You are sick,” she said. “You need to rest. To sleep.”

“I cannot sleep.”

“Goodnight, brother.”

I could hear Mary and Martha discuss me.

“He is different. He stares,” Martha said.

“He is alive. Is that not enough for you?”

“We were wrong to ask for this.”

“He is a miracle.”

“He frightens me.”

If I was sick, when would I be healthy? The mold did not heal. And no new mold grew. Nothing changes. Until now. Now I'm rotting. I'm learning to die.

“Will you clean up a little today? he asks, tightening his tie.

“No,” I say, sitting still against the wall. Our apartment is one room and one bathroom. John has purchased simple furniture. I refuse to use it, except to hide his preaching bible or holy textbooks.

John lights candles in the morning. “I prefer the soft light,” he tells me. At night John pretends to sleep. He lies still
with his eyes closed for hours and hours. He pretends to be hungry at meals. He reads all the scholarly books on the “historical Jesus.” He claims it's devotion. In truth he wants to see how history is treating him.

“Revelations is popular again,” he tells me. “Must be nigh.”

“Nothing is nigh.”

John is not like me. He was never dead. Never died. You can read about it in his gospel, but John swears that the story has been skewed.

“Peter and I were debating, we were always debating,” John told me. “Peter said he would die for Jesus. I said the greater challenge was to live for him. Jesus heard our talk and granted us both our desires. Me, I live until he returns and Peter was crucified head down. I saw it. Saw Peter scream. But I'm still here. Jesus said we'd compare thoughts at the end of time. He said that. This won't last forever.”

“Jesus was a liar.”

“Never say this. Why do you say this?”

I tug at my ear. It comes off in my fingers.

“You are letting this happen,” he says.

I smile. Bit by bit, I'm learning the secret. It is not trying to die, it is forgetting to live. Every day, forgetting. It is difficult. Two thousand years to learn. But look at me rot. Give me time and I'll be gone.

After my grave, the cattle feared me, wouldn't let me near. Martha did my work. I missed working. Missed coming home tired and pleased. I remember, before dying, coming home to find Jesus sitting on my floor, my sisters doting on him. Martha with
her foods and annoying hospitality. Mary with her submission. If he had touched either of them, they would have filled my home with sweat, they would have disappeared through their pores. This young-eyed lust of unmarried girls.

I walked in and Martha handed me a bowl to wash my face.

“Hello, Teacher,” I said.

“Hello friend,” he said, “Sit. Have some wine and let's talk.”

I laughed. Jesus could have the company of magicians and rich men, but he chose to sit with me. And he laughed. All his philosophy, all his teaching had laughter in it. Just below the words.

Jesus came to Bethany once more after my grave. A meal was planned at Simon the Leper's home. Martha asked me to stay away.

“There is still a smell to you brother. It will upset the Master.”

I sat outside by a window, leaning on the dirt wall. I heard the laughter. I heard the eating. They could smell me through the window. I heard the complaining. It must have been strong. Mary smashed her perfume to cover the stench. She poured it out on Jesus. But Jesus was not fooled. He spoke of death.

“John, bring me back some cigarettes. I'm going to take up smoking.”

“You tried that before. It didn't work.”

“I'm going to try again.”

Do not sleep for a year and you will remember things that never were. Do not sleep for ten years and you will mumble wisdom, cough poetry, and understand none of it. Do not
sleep for a thousand years and God and Satan will dance in your throat.

I have not slept in two thousand years. My head is more blood than brains. You can hear the slush.

News came of Jesus' death. My sisters wept, tore at their breasts.

“Brother, brother. The Master is dead.”

But I did not cry. And I could see they now thought of me only as a monster. Love was gone. Even pity was gone. I went back behind my curtain and stayed there.

Days later there came news of the body being gone. Of Peter seeing something.

“Peter sees what he wants to see,” Martha said. “Always has.”

“John saw him too,” said Mary.

“John will see whatever Peter tells him to see.”

“Martha, it could be true,” Mary said. “Look at our brother.”

“I do not want that to be true.”

Curiosity grew. More pilgrims came to me every day.

But I lied about Jesus, too. I told some he was a demon. Some I told that he was a Roman spy. I told one man that Jesus gave me life so he could share my bed. This man shook his head. “I knew it,” he said. “I always knew it.”

Again, I don't know why I said these things. I tried to love as I loved before. My sisters, my God. But there was no love.

Soon Mary and Martha turned the pilgrims away. My sisters didn't like my answers. They didn't like the way I tried to touch the women or how I bit at the men. They told the pilgrims I was sick or asleep or visiting the Temple. I could hear them whispering, offering figs for the journey home.

Today, like most days, John will preach on the sidewalks and in the subways. Most people ignore him.

“They search for parking spaces with more urgency than they search for God,” he once said.

In the poorer neighborhoods John preaches to junkies and the insane. The gangs know John. When they catch him they tie him up and urinate on him. He comes home smelling. He returns the next day with the same words, the same message. “Where you fear there is judgment, where you hope there is nothing, in that place there is actually love.” They grab him again. He doesn't fight. They take his clothes and send him away naked. He believes he's doing God's work.

“You're deceived,” I tell John as he gathers his scriptures and goes to the door.

“I am happy. You are not,” he says while counting his keys. “Which tree drinks the true water, the strong or the withered?”

“No parables. That's the rule. None.”

“It was a metaphor.”

“It was very close to a parable,” I say.

“You're without hope. You are rot.”

“You'll be the last, you know. There'll be no believers in the world.”

“You said that a thousand years ago.” He closes the door behind him.

I am glad he's gone. The silence helps. I can rot away to nothing today. Perhaps today.

One evening I peeked from behind my curtain. Mary was sewing the hem of the dress she was wearing. She was smiling.
I wanted to sit with her. I would say nothing. I would touch nothing. Just sit near and watch her sew. I tried to remember being in this place, before. Could that be true again? Couldn't I sit still with my sister? I stepped through the curtain. She looked up. Her face stretched in fear.

“Mary,” I said. She stood quickly, dropping the needle.

“Martha is at the market. She'll be home soon,” she said. I moved forward. She stepped back into a wall. “She'll be home soon.”