Deadline (13 page)

Opening a large envelope, he shook his head in wonder as he surveyed someone’s college alumni newsletter with a “great little letter from the president” Jake should turn into a column, the note told him, and also enclosed was a school catalogue in case he wanted to know more about it, and an assurance they’d be glad to give him a memorable tour of the campus.
Right
.

About two dozen big manila envelopes contained special reports on something he’d written on, or should write on, from people who’d be glad to help him anyway they could. It was like panning for gold. There was little he could ever use, but you had to wade through the mud and rocks to find the nuggets. Some columnists dumped their “helpful” mail without reading it. Jake had learned to skim it and hang on to the five per cent he might use.

He arranged the rest of the mail into stacks, by a combination of size and postmark, tossing unopened everything that wasn’t first class. He opened those in business envelopes first. Most of the personal letters were responses to columns. As usual, he shook his head because the writers were talking on and on about his October 18 column, or his October 16 column, and he never remembered columns by dates, just by subjects. If they didn’t make some clear reference to the subject matter, and many didn’t, he had to play Sherlock Holmes to deduce which column they were raving or complaining about.

One letter from a college professor gushed, “You said just what I was thinking, but you said it so much better than I could. Thanks.” One of his favorite compliments, and he got it a lot.

People liked that personal touch with the columnist. Even when they didn’t always like what he said. In his early years, when criticism bothered him more, his old mentor Leonard reminded him, “I used to watch Monday Night Football just so I could take shots at Howard Cosell. They don’t have to like your column, as long as they read it.”

A brief note about Jake’s accident and his friends’ deaths had been put in place of his column last week, explaining why the great bulk of the mail was personal notes of sympathy and encouragement. Included were notes from the mayor, a few congressmen, several athletes, and other luminaries. The ones he appreciated most were from the people who had nothing to gain by his favor. People whose careers or reputations he couldn’t further or derail. These people could have only one motive for writing. They cared.

One note came from a boy whose dog had been run over. Another, a girl whose best friend died of cancer. He read letter after letter, oblivious to the newsroom other than an occasional raised voice, a burst of static from Hector’s command center, or a “Hi, Jake” from the aisle behind him or across the cubicle on Jerry’s side.

Suddenly his wristwatch alarm went off. Only ten minutes left on his meter. Had it really been almost three hours? The huge pile of opened letters and cards said it had. He decided to take an early lunch. He grabbed a bunch of unopened mail and crammed it in his briefcase. Often he ate lunch alone. Today his mail would keep him company.

Walking out the front door past Elaine and Joe, Jake headed to his favorite nearby hangout, the Main Street Deli, up the street and two blocks down. He smiled at Toni, who was talking to a vagrant right across the street. She was a year out of Columbia’s School of Journalism, a talented g.a.—general assignment reporter. She had the hungry, semi-desperate look of a journalist trolling for stories. Jake knew it well. Sometimes you could beat your head on your desk for a story, when all you had to do was take a walk and meet some people on the street, and the stories would materialize.

Jake came up with innumerable columns just taking the walk to feed the meter. The adventures of bicycle messengers; kids who should be in school but spend their days skateboarding in City Square; hotel doormen and the secrets they know; the daily life of a hot-dog and kraut vendor. Profiles, feature stories, columns, all these had come from walking within a few blocks of the
Trib.
Twenty years ago, when Jake was a g.a., he’d hustle around like Toni, reminding himself of Leonard’s five rules of a good story—conflict, impact, timeliness, novelty, and reader interest. Leonard hadn’t invented them, but he’d honed them to an art form.

Jake settled down at the deli, sipping his cappuccino, waiting for his turkey on whole wheat. He read letter after letter. One, whose handwriting and return address (“Vista Manor”) was most familiar, covered with embossed daisies, he opened slowly and laboriously, as if his hands were arthritic. It was from his mother, he knew. The handwriting had deteriorated, the notes were always brief now. She sent them to the
Tribune
, because his home address had changed several times in the last few years, and she knew the Trib was his real home anyway. Her hearing was so bad she didn’t call him anymore, because it frustrated both of them.

Dear Jake, I was so sorry to hear about your accident. Janet called me, and then I read about it. Everyone was talking about it here at Vista Manor. I was so worried. And I was sick about Finney and Greg. I wish I could have gone to Greg’s funeral. I hoped you would come and pick me up, but I guess you were in no condition to do that. Maybe you were still in the hospital? I get confused now, I can’t remember what Janet told me. I read that Finney’s service is on Sunday. Could you come over and pick me up? I’d like to be there, to see Finney’s family again and let them know I care. Please call me or come see me. I miss you. Love, Mother.

The handwriting degenerated as the letter went on, and only the M in Mother was legible. Jake felt the same thing he always felt at any contact from his mother—guilt. But instead of motivating him to action, the guilt paralyzed him. The more time that went by without contacting her, at that retirement home only eighteen miles away, the more uncomfortable when he finally saw her.

He hated such places, even the nice ones, where people’s lives faded to an inglorious end. He hated the wheelchairs and the walkers and the painfully slow shuffling steps of men whose lives were behind them, and fragile bluish gray-haired women looking for someone to talk to and latching on to each new face in hopes it was one that would finally stop to listen. To wait for death seemed so degrading and pathetic. Hospitals were bad enough, but at least lots of people got better and left. No one in those homes got better and left. An occasional call to his mother, once a month Jake thought (though in fact they were several months apart), assuaged the guilt just enough that it didn’t interfere with his life.

He put away the letter from his mother, thinking he needed to give her a call sometime soon, and assuring himself he would, as soon as his schedule allowed. He reminded himself that every month he wrote out a check to the Vista Manor, paying half her rent, supplementing her Social Security check. Feeling better, he dove into other letters, each putting a little more welcome distance from the one with the daisies on it.

Forty minutes later he felt the urge to get back to the office. He told himself he had time to read one more of the two dozen or so unopened letters. He scanned return addresses, looking for something promising. One stood out just because it had no return address. It was a plain white envelope, typed by what appeared to be an old style typewriter, pica in all caps. Crank mail, Jake guessed. That’s usually what no return address meant.

He opened the envelope, and a canary yellow three-by-five card fell to the floor, face down. He gingerly made the awkward motion to pick up the card, reminding himself exactly where he still hurt from the accident. On the card was a single sentence, consisting of only four words, in that same all-caps pica type. A waitress wiped the table six feet from Jake, and happened to glance over just as the look of startled unbelief overtook his face. She watched his eyes widen and his hands shake, and wondered what could possibly be on that card to trigger such a reaction.

“It wasn’t an accident.”

Finney’s engorged senses kept putting him on overload. This place was incredibly beautiful, not just in general, but in specific detail after detail. He had to close his eyes and shut out the spectrum of marvelous sights to choose and isolate which one he would now contemplate and enjoy. Then he’d cover his ears, to focus on one particular sound, freshly recorded in his memory, without being distracted by a thousand others, equally wondrous.

Like a starving man offered an endless smorgasbord of delicious foods, Finney felt overwhelmed by heaven. It was a disorienting experience, but nonetheless joyous and exhilarating. The perspective here had dimensions unknown in the other world. Circles there were spheres here. Squares there were cubes here. Triangles there were pyramids here. And as much as his understanding had increased already, he sensed it was only the beginning; there were other dimensions yet to learn that would amplify the cube as much as the cube amplified the square.

Finney opened his eyes and scanned the horizon for one particular face. It was time to interact again, to gain further reference points that could help him make more sense of this fabulous world bombarding him on every level. It was time to sit and talk again with Zyor. He who had stood at his side on earth by day, and stood by him sleeplessly, thousands and thousands of nights. Zyor, who had left the hospital room with Finney and escorted him through the passageway to heaven’s birthing room. Because his mission on earth centered on Finney, when Finney’s time on earth ended, so did the warrior’s mission, and he was free to return home. He couldn’t get over his initial delight of discovering that the mysterious stranger he’d first seen in the passageway had in fact been with him day and night for many years.

He’d already asked Zyor innumerable questions. Finney’s mind was a sponge, with a capacity to absorb new information beyond anything he’d ever imagined. He resisted the notion he had to get every answer now. It was as if he feared this was a wonderful dream that could end any moment, and any question not asked here and now would forever go unanswered. He assured himself otherwise, but couldn’t escape the feeling this really was too good to be true. But there was no conflict between goodness and truth here, he was realizing. The supply of both was unlimited.

Finney’s eyes caught Zyor, sitting with his massive legs crossed, quietly singing some ancient saga of adventure and conquest. The angel watched him cautiously approach, but the look on Zyor’s face sent Finney a clear message of welcome.

Finney took a breath, then plunged into the bubbling sea of impressions that filled his inner being. “I feel like an orphan who’s grown up in the crime infested garbage heaps of a poverty stricken slum. Someone has come and rescued me, and taken me to a breathtaking palace with a view of the endless ocean and majestic mountains. Neither my mind nor body can diminish the experience, because for the first time in my life, both are as they should be. Do you understand these feelings, Zyor?”

Zyor gave a thoughtful look, and replied, “Not entirely. But the link forged between us in the dark world still exists. I sense these things in you, these feelings you describe, in a way I cannot sense in others of Adam’s race. To a degree, I can experience them through you. Only in faint echoes, perhaps, but they are real nonetheless. I am grateful for what I can learn from you.”

Finney smiled at Zyor’s words. It seemed so ludicrous to think of this magnificent being, so superior in mind and body to the greatest super heroes of Greek myths or comic lore, learning from him. He probed Zyor with more and more questions, his mind ravenously devouring every answer. Yet every answer produced a dozen more questions.

He asked, “Why do I have a body now when the resurrection is yet to come?” Zyor explained this was a temporary body designed for this intermediate period before the plan of God on earth was culminated. He compared it to an Artist’s preliminary sketch of a later masterpiece, assuring him it would pale in comparison to the body that would one day be his. That was impossible to comprehend given its incalculable superiority to his old body. Finney asked, “Did I die early?” Zyor replied, “You did not die early, any more than if you had died at twenty-five or ninety-five. Whoever walks with God is immortal until his work on earth is done. For such a one, there are no accidents.”

Zyor qualified as the most fascinating and insightful being Finney had ever encountered, except of course for Elyon’s Son. Neither Finney nor Zyor tired from their weighty discussions. The dialogue energized them both, as if intellectual exercise were rest rather than labor. Though he wasn’t fatigued, he began to feel like a python swallowing a meal much larger than itself—as though his mind was so full he needed to crawl off to a corner of heaven and lie still to digest it all.

“May I ask you one more question, Zyor?” Finney smiled ear to ear, that same patented grin, realizing Zyor knew as well as he did “one more question” invariably meant many more.

“I was made to serve Elyon and to serve you. It pleases me to answer any question I can.”

“I’ve learned a great deal since coming here to Elyon’s realm,” Finney said. “I understand things so much more clearly than when I was in the other world. But there’s still so much I don’t yet know, so much I fail to understand.”

Zyor looked puzzled. “That surprises you?”

“Well, yes. It does. I always thought when we got to heaven we’d understand everything.”

The angel made no attempt to hide his surprise at this statement. Finney wasn’t sure Zyor was capable of hiding anything. He was what he was, and thought what he thought, with no duplicity or hidden agenda. What you saw was what you got. This was one of the things about him and his kind Finney found so refreshing. It reminded him of Little Finn and his Down’s Syndrome friends. The sheer innocence, transparency, and lack of pretension was delightful. He and Sue had spoken often of Little Finn’s angelic qualities, never realizing until now how literally accurate the assessment was.

“Do you mean,” Zyor measured his next words, “that you thought you would be God?”

“Well, no. Of course not.”