The Trial of Fallen Angels (6 page)

“You’ve been given the privilege, and the responsibility, of replaying the tape for others,” he said.

“I don’t understand.”

“That is what we do here, Brek,” Luas explained. “It’s why we’ve been brought to Shemaya, to read and dissect the record of life and plead to the Creator the imperfect case of the created, as oil and canvas would, if they could, explain to the artist flaws of texture and color, or as string and bow would, if they could, explain to the composer disturbances of pitch and tone. We’ve been appointed to tell the other side of the story, Brek—to explain their fears and regrets, their complicity and victimization, their greed and sacrifice. We’re here to make sure justice is served at the Final Judgment.”

Luas’s words should have literally put the fear of God in me, but, as I said earlier, I hadn’t accepted my death at this point. To the contrary, I’d been waiting and watching for an opening to rejoin the life I once led. Yet what Luas said was so outrageous that my earlier thoughts of fever and illness turned into the possibility that I might have been involved in a terrible accident and suffered a serious brain injury.

Maybe I was in a car crash, or fell off a cliff during the hike up Tussey Mountain. Maybe this is what a coma is like. Maybe when Nana was dressing me before entering the train station, she was really my nurse preparing me for surgery and Luas is my neurosurgeon. Maybe the blindfold he lowered over my eyes is an oxygen mask to keep me alive.

I clung to these hopes now as Luas explained things, terrifying things, I could neither comprehend nor accept—things that could not be so unless I was, in fact, dead.

“Okay,” I said, playing along, afraid that if I let him know I was on to him he might make a mistake during the operation and either kill me or leave me a vegetable. “So you’re my lawyer and you’re trying to help me avoid being sent to hell for sticking my hand in the manure spreader, is that right? Can’t you get me a plea bargain or something? Credit for time served?”

“Hardly.” Luas laughed. “Why did God promise not to flood the earth again?”

A puzzled expression flashed across my face.

“Oh, come now,” Luas said. He removed a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from his jacket pocket and packed the bowl as he spoke. “Surely you know the story. Things only got worse after the fiasco in Eden. Cain murdered Abel, and later one of his children murdered a young child. Humans began mating with beasts and engaging in every sort of debauchery. God was furious—and rightly so. He decided to destroy the lot of us as justice demands, but when the flood waters receded, He felt remorse. Imagine that, Brek. God regrets what God has done. Remarkable, isn’t it? He makes us a promise: ‘I’ll never do it again,’ He says, and He drapes rainbows from the clouds as a reminder. First He decides that extermination of the human race is the final solution—to borrow an ugly phrase—but as soon as He’s driven humanity to the brink, all is forgiven and our survival is guaranteed, even if we return to our wicked ways. Why the change of heart? Why even spare Noah in the first place?”

“I guess because Noah was the only one who obeyed,” I said.

Luas paused to strike a match and light his pipe. “Correct,” he said, “and if Noah had disobeyed?”

“He would have been killed with the others.”

“Correct again,” Luas said between puffs. “Divine justice. But what explains God’s last-second change of heart about the rest of us? It’s because of this astounding about-face that beyond those doors at the end of the corridor, inside the Courtroom, there will be argument for many souls today that they have a place in the Light and, for those same souls, the Dark. They’ll learn their fates today and greet their eternities. You see, Brek, every birth of a human being is a potential crime and a pending trial. It’s the Courtroom, not a pot of gold, that sits at the end of God’s rainbows. God promised us those rainbows would guarantee a place for man in the world of sun and clouds, but He said nothing about the worlds to come.”

Luas rose from the bench and gestured for me to follow him down the corridor.

“Of course,” he continued, puffing on his pipe, “we do not deal here with bodhisattvas or saints, caitiffs or fiends. The conclusions for them are foregone, the judgments obvious and unassailable. Our concern in the Courtroom is for the rest of humanity—the good people who sometimes cheat, the bad who sometimes do good, the billions who failed to sacrifice everything to become priests or prophets but resisted the temptation to become demons or demigods. We put on no false airs here. We do not ask whether there has been renunciation for the Hindu, awakening for the Buddhist, reckoning for the Muslim, salvation for the Christian, or atonement for the Jew. These are mere obfuscations of Divine Law. There is only one question to be answered during the Final Judgment of every human soul, and it is the same question that concerned God before the Great Flood: What does justice demand?”

We stopped in front of the doors.

“Accounts rich and grave are reconciled beyond these doors, Brek Cuttler,” Luas said. “Could you speak honestly of yourself there? Could you damn yourself if damning is what you deserved, setting aside fear and hatred for truth? Could you stand before the Creator of energy, space, and time and save yourself? Could you pass through those doors, knowing your experience of eternity would be forever shaped by what you said and left unsaid? Could you explain what, during your entire life, defied explanation?”

I began to panic. I couldn’t have made up these words if my brain had been knocked around inside my skull during a car accident or falling off a cliff. And I couldn’t have made up the memories I experienced passing through the train shed either—they were too vivid, too exotic, too real. The possibility of my own death was becoming more and more inescapable.

“You’re taking me to be judged, then?” I said, backing away. “I really am going to hell for putting my arm in a manure spreader?”

“Judged? You? Of course not!” Luas said, genuinely surprised by my question. “I told you all that was forgiven long ago. I’m taking you to receive your heavenly reward, Brek, not to send you to hell. You’ve always hoped and prayed you would come here. Shemaya has been the motive behind your every decision and the basis of your every interaction from the moment when you realized you suffered after the loss of your arm, not because you would never again be able to dangle from monkey bars or swing a softball bat or play a violin but because it was unjust that millions of other girls could.”

Luas paused a moment to gauge my reaction and puff on his pipe. I kept my distance, convinced that I was about to be condemned.

“A member of the bar, not the clergy, offered you justice after the accident, isn’t that right?” he continued. “You discovered at an early age that the legal system provides the redemption religion can no longer afford, and that lawyers are the true priests and judges the true prophets. You craved justice more than anything else in your life. And so on the day your childhood friend, Karen Busfield, told you she was accepted into a seminary to become an Episcopal priest, you were filled with despair, not joy. You were already in law school by then. Do you remember how you mocked her? You said: ‘When a child with bruises on her body reveals to you her father did it, Karen, what will you do? Tell her to pray and put it in God’s hands? And when she says she’s been praying every night for ten years but the beatings still continue, what will you say then? God’s hands can’t be bothered with children, Karen. If you really want to save people’s souls from sin—not just the sin of hating others and themselves but the sin of hating the God who breathed life into them and then abandoned them—you won’t pray for them, Karen. You’ll give them one of my business cards and tell them to call me.’”

I stared at Luas, trying to understand how he could possibly know all these things.

“And do you remember Karen’s reply?” Luas went on. “She said you didn’t let her finish. She was planning to join the Air Force, like her father, and become a military chaplain. ‘The Air Force doesn’t call lawyers when somebody misbehaves, Brek,’ she said. ‘They drop bombs on them. Now
that’s
justice.’ And you said to her: ‘They’ll never take you, Karen. They’ll see right through you.’”

Luas stopped to puff on his pipe.

“You understood the great truth of life, Brek Cuttler,” he continued. “You understood that the pursuit of justice is the purest form of religion and the highest human aspiration. You became a disciple of justice. Now the time has come for you to receive your reward. You’ve been chosen to join the elite lawyers of Shemaya who defend souls at the Final Judgment. I was being facetious when I asked you if you could defend yourself in the Courtroom. That always gets the attention of new arrivals. No, the only question now is whether you can walk through those doors if
someone else
depends upon what you say and leave unsaid. If you speak for humanity, not yourself. But this question was answered about you long ago, was it not? My job is not to assess your fitness but to show you the way.”

Luas emptied his pipe into an ashtray on the wall, then slipped his hand into his vest pocket and removed a golden key from which dangled a sparkling Magen David, the crescent moon of Islam, figures of Shiva and the Buddha, the yin and yang, and a crucifix. “This is yours,” he said, handing me the key. “It’s the key to the Courtroom.”

I refused to take it.

“Go on,” Luas insisted. “This isn’t the time for fear and indecision. You’ve been waiting for God to smite the evil and reward the righteous since you were eleven years old and you put those boys on trial for murdering crayfish. How wonderful! To you, even crayfish deserved justice! Rejoice, Brek Abigail Cuttler! Your prayers have been answered! There
is
justice after all! Finally, praise God, justice!”

8

B
ehind my best friend Karen Busfield’s house, beyond the ash piles left over from the old coal furnaces and a small abandoned building, glistened the wide pleasant stream known as the Little Juniata River. The Little Juniata flows north out of the Allegheny Mountains, draining the small creeks and springs that bless the hills and valleys with life, then due south when it reaches Tyrone, Pennsylvania, where my father’s family, the Cuttlers, who were simple farmers, are from. When the Little Juniata reaches Huntingdon, it spills into the big Juniata River, which is a big river only once every twenty years during a hurricane and at other times is just normal-sized, not wide, not deep, and not fast. The big Juniata River continues south until it empties into the Susquehanna River at Clarks Ferry near Harrisburg, and the Susquehanna, which is a big river all year round, continues south until it reaches Havre de Grace, Maryland, where it flows into the Chesapeake Bay. There is a marina there, where my mother’s family, the Bellinis, who were more wealthy and better educated than the Cuttlers, docked their sailboat. And so it was that my father’s and mother’s families were connected in this way, by the rivers, long before my parents met. I remember being astonished when I discovered this relationship on a map, like suddenly recognizing the shape of a connect-the-dots rabbit. I wondered about its meaning, and, like an astrologer searching for signs in the heavens, I began reading all kinds of maps for signs of what my future might bring. After that, when I waded into the Little Juniata River or sailed the Chesapeake Bay with my grandparents, I could not resist wondering where the water had come from and where it was going and whose lives it would bring together.

The Little Juniata River is shallow in midsummer and has a limestone bottom of slippery, moss-covered river rocks. Karen and I could walk for miles through its knee-deep, clear waters wearing cutoff shorts and old sneakers, stumbling, sliding, drenching ourselves, and laughing merrily. We carried our lunches with us and ate along its banks, pretending to be early explorers charting the river for the first time. The aboriginal tribes we encountered, which is to say the boys from the different neighborhoods along the river, tracked our movements warily, as if we really were from a faraway land.

Girls never played in the river, but Karen and I weren’t like most girls—not because we were more tomboyish or brave, but because we saw the world differently. For example, we thought the river was interesting and full of possibilities, which most girls did not, and we believed we had equal right with the boys to play in it, which most girls would not. Ours was a difference of curiosity and perspective.

One hot July afternoon, while Karen and I were exploring the river, we shocked ourselves and the boys by catching crayfish with our own bare hands—no easy feat for a girl with only one arm. Little Juniata River crayfish are difficult to catch. Like handicapped girls, they’re timid little creatures, seemingly aware of their vulnerability and embarrassed by their own bizarre bodies. You must approach them from behind without casting a shadow, while they’re sunning themselves in shallow waters on the mossy green river rocks they try so hard to imitate. They dart backward when frightened, vanishing in a cloud of silt into the nearest crevice. You must be fast, and you must grab them by the large middle shell to avoid their sharp pincers—like lifting a snarling cat by the scruff of its neck. Held this way, they’re perfectly harmless. But make a mistake, and they’ll give you a painful snip and you’ll drop them back into the water.

Karen and I proudly waved our crayfish high in the air that afternoon, cheering and hollering with the excitement of biologists discovering a new species. We examined them up close, noticing how their tails curled into a ball to shield their soft underbellies and their pincers strained to reach back over their heads to nip at our fingers. We stroked their antennae and clicked our fingernails against their hard shells. And finally we returned them to the river, worried they wouldn’t survive if we kept them out too long.

There isn’t much more you can do with a crayfish. You might shake it in the face of a boy to make him wince, but you could embarrass him this way only once, and the consequences for the crayfish were dire. When the boys saw we were still alive after handling the nasty things, they bravely attacked the river and a fierce competition set in. Soon buckets were filled with crayfish and records were made of who caught the most and the biggest. This is where the minds of girls and boys turn in opposite directions. Karen and I were content to study the crayfish for a minute or two and set them free. The boys, on the other hand, weren’t satisfied until they’d tortured and murdered the lot of them. Their buckets became killing grounds.

Karen and I were horrified. We pleaded with the boys to end the competition and spare the crayfish. We tried to wrestle the buckets away, but the boys were too strong. We threw rocks at them and called them names. We even threatened to kiss them if they refused to stop—but it was no use.

Even though we couldn’t liberate the crayfish, I was determined to bring the boys to justice for their crimes. So I established a courtroom of rocks and logs along the riverbank and held trials. I knew just how to do it. My Pop Pop Bellini was a lawyer, and I had seen him, valiant and righteous, cross-examining witnesses. I myself had testified in court about the accident with my arm. So I appointed myself lead prosecutor and told Karen she could be the judge and the jury. To my shock and dismay, Karen betrayed both the crayfish and me by refusing to participate, claiming that punishing the boys wouldn’t do any good. I thought she was sweet on one of them, probably Lenny Basilio, who kept running up to show her his crayfish. Even the boys doubted Karen’s motives, but to their credit they knew they’d done wrong. They’d gotten bored with the killing and thought trials might be fun.

Since Karen wouldn’t help, the boys offered to sit as the jury for one another, promising to listen impartially to the evidence and render a fair verdict. I was against this, but Karen, relishing her role as spoiler, reminded me that a jury is supposed to be composed of the defendant’s peers, leaving me no choice but to agree. I would be both prosecutor and judge, and Karen would sit by and watch.

I put Lenny Basilio on trial first to spite her. Lenny was the weakest and most sensitive boy of the group, the one always being pushed around. He was also the nicest. He’d been afraid at first to catch the crayfish and had to be teased by the others into doing it, but once he got started he became very efficient and caught the largest crayfish of the day—a wise old granddaddy of a crustacean the size of a small baby lobster. Although by far the biggest and most powerful crayfish in his collection, it was too heavy and slow to defend itself against the younger ones and became the first casualty in Lenny’s bucket. Lenny looked genuinely remorseful when the big crayfish died. I knew he’d be easy to convict for the murder.

I called him to the witness stand—a flat piece of river rock resting on a platform of sticks—and told him to raise his right hand. We recognized no right against self-incrimination along the banks of the Little Juniata River. All defendants were forced to testify.

“Do you swear to tell the whole truth, Lenny Basilio, so help you God?” I said.

Lenny shrugged his shoulders and sat down.

I placed his bucket before him, filled with fetid crayfish parts. “Did you put these crayfish in this bucket?”

Lenny looked into the pail and then over at his buddies.

“Remember, Lenny,” I warned him, “you’re under oath. You’ll be struck dead by a bolt of lightning if you lie.”

Lenny let out a whine. “But the crayfish pinched me first!”

“Yes or no?” I said. “Did you fill this bucket with crayfish?”

“Yes.”

“That’s right, you did. And after you filled it, you stirred it up so the crayfish would snap at each other, didn’t you?”

Before Lenny could answer, I dredged through the water and pulled out the lifeless granddaddy crayfish, already turning white in the heat like a steamed jumbo shrimp. Its right pincer had been amputated, just like my right arm. I showed the crayfish to the jury and made them take a good long look at it. Although a few of them snickered and made coarse jokes, the expressions on most of their faces suggested that even they were appalled and saddened by what had happened. Then I showed it defiantly to Karen, who shook her head silently. I turned back to Lenny.

“You did this, didn’t you, Lenny Basilio?” I said. “You killed it. You took it out of the river and put it in your bucket and killed it.”

“But I didn’t mean to,” Lenny pleaded. He looked like he was about to cry.

I dropped the crayfish into the bucket and turned toward the jury in disgust. “The prosecution rests.”

“Guilty! Guilty!” the boys all cheered.

“Just a minute,” I said sagely. “You’ve got to vote on it to make it official. We have to take a poll. John Gaines, what say you?” I spoke the way the courtroom tipstaff had spoken while polling the jury during my trial.

John Gaines glared at Lenny. “Guilty,” he said, leaning forward and baring his teeth for effect. “Guilty as sin.”

“Mike Kelly, what say you?”

“Guilty!” he said with enthusiasm.

“Okay,” I said. “Robby Temin, what say you?”

Robby looked sympathetically at Lenny. “Guilty,” he whispered.

“Jimmy Reece?”

Jimmy threw a rock at Lenny and laughed. “Guilty . . . and he’s a crybaby too!”

The boys all laughed.

I slid behind the judge’s bench and banged a stone against the river rock. “Order in the court!” I hollered. “Order in the court!” The boys became silent instantly. I was impressed with my newfound power.

“Wally Miller, what say you?”

Wally glared back at me, full of insolence and venom. He was the biggest and meanest boy, the bully of the Juniata River. Everybody was afraid of Wally Miller, including me. He had a permanent look of malice about him and a well-earned reputation of quasi-criminal behavior.

“Not guilty,” he said, keeping his eyes fixed on me.

My jaw dropped. Before I could protest, the other boys chimed in: “What? Not guilty? No way! He’s as guilty as the devil!”

Wally held up his hand to silence them. “I said, not guilty,” he insisted.

Lenny Basilio’s face brightened. By some miracle, Wally the bully had actually come to his rescue. It must have been a first. With a warm smile of gratitude and friendship, Lenny virtually danced over to Wally to thank him. But as soon as Lenny got there, Wally cocked his arm and thumped Lenny hard in the chest with the heel of his hand, knocking him to the ground. He leered at the other boys. “Just kidding,” he said. “Guilty. Guilty as hell! Let’s hang him!”

The boys broke into a riot of cheers. “Guilty! Guilty as hell! Hang him! Let’s hang Lenny!”

Lenny scrambled to his feet and backed away. He looked hurt and terrified. Tears spouted from his eyes.

I slammed the river rocks together. “Order! Order!” I said. “Order, or I’ll hold you all in contempt and end this trial right now!”

The boys quieted down, and I turned to Lenny. He looked at me desperately, but I felt no sympathy for him. I was still thinking about what he’d done to the crayfish.

“Lenny Basilio,” I said gravely, “you’ve been found guilty of murdering crayfish.”

Lenny hung his head low.

“Murder is the most serious crime there is,” I continued, “but we can’t hang you, because there’s no death penalty on the Juniata River.”

Lenny perked up, but the boys started booing and hissing.

I slammed the rocks together again. “Order!”

“We can’t hang you, Lenny,” I said, “but you’ve got to be punished . . .” I thought for a moment of what his punishment should be. I looked down at the bucket and then out at the river. “You took the crayfish out of the river where they lived and put them on the land where they died. Justice demands an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. As the judge of this court, I hereby sentence you, Lenny Basilio, to be taken from the land where you live and spend the rest of your life in the river.”

“Throw Lenny in the river! Throw Lenny in the river!” the boys cheered.

Lenny tried to run, but they caught him and dragged him kicking and screaming into the river. He struggled for a while but finally gave up. After dunking him several times, the boys returned to the riverbank, leaving Lenny standing in the middle of the river, looking pitiful, dripping wet, a convicted felon behind bars. I was jubilant. Justice had prevailed. At the age of eleven, I’d won my first trial and my first battle of good versus evil. I had joined the ranks of Mr. Gwynne and my Pop Pop Bellini, of school principals and police officers, of soldiers and superheroes. It was the best feeling I’d ever felt in my life, a glorious moment. I smiled smugly at Karen, who looked on without saying a word.

“Okay, who’s next?” I said, examining each boy before settling on Wally Miller, the bully. I couldn’t wait to convict him and have him thrown into the river. “Wally Miller,” I said, “I charge you with kidnapping and murdering crayfish. How do you plead, guilty or not guilty?”

Wally strutted up to me. “Guilty,” he sneered. “What are
you
going to do about it?”

I turned to the other boys for support, but they stood frozen. None of them was willing to challenge Wally Miller. I said nothing.

Wally laughed. “That’s what I thought,” he said. “You’re nothing but a one-armed freak.” He stepped forward and shoved me with both hands, knocking me to the ground, then turned and had a laugh with his buddies.

I wasn’t about to let him get away with it. I scrambled back to my feet and charged after him. The other boys tried to warn him, but just as Wally turned around to face me, I bunched up my fist and hit him square in the mouth. He fell to his knees. A little trickle of blood oozed from a gash in his upper lip.

Wally was stunned. I was stunned. The other boys were stunned. And terrified. They had just witnessed a one-armed girl whip the bully of the Juniata River. They knew there would be hell to pay for each of them when Wally tried to restore his reputation. One by one, they quietly disappeared into the woods from which they had come. Wally rose slowly to his feet, wiped his mouth, and looked at the red smear on his hand.