Once there was a man named Emerson. He was strong. He could lift 100 pounds with one arm.
There was just one problem. He worked in an office. So he never got to lift stuff. This made him sad. So he walked to his boss’s desk and said, “Hey, I like to lift stuff.”
“You have to type and talk to people on the phone. That is your job,” said the boss. “You’re not paid to lift stuff.”
So Emerson went back to his desk. He was sad but he didn’t cry.
Then when he was walking home he saw that there was a house on fire. The firemen were not there yet. Emerson walked into the house and saw that there was a woman stuck under a stove. Emerson picked up the stove and threw it out the window. Then he picked up the woman and put her on the lawn. She was OK.
Emerson found out later that the woman owned a car crushing…
Micah stopped and thought for a moment. He stood up from his desk in his bedroom and yelled from the door. “Hey Lexy, how do you spell ‘business’?”
“Business,” said a voice from another room as if she was weighing it on her mouth, “Uh, B-U-S-I.”
Micah walked back to his desk and wrote the letters down then went back to the door again. “Okay.”
“N-E-S-S.”
“Thanks.”
“What’s this for?”
“Nothing,” Micah sat back down before he forgot the last letters.
…business and that she needed somebody to lift cars in and out of the machine. So Emerson quit his job at the office and married the woman. Her name was Iris.
It was for school, but somehow it contained an element of thrill. Micah had to write a story with a beginning, middle and an end. This story had them all. He thought it was pretty good. He never had to do this sort of thing in grade five. He sauntered into the living room where Lexy was reclining, watching Seinfeld, canned laughter emitting from the screen.
“Look,” Micah handed the dog-eared pages to Lexy, “we had to write a story for school. I wrote about my mom and dad.”
“That’s great, let’s see.” She clicked on the lamp and read the story, nodding along. She smiled when she turned to look into Micah’s face. “I like it. Where did you get the idea?”
“I don’t know. It’s just the way I see them. My Dad worked in an office. That’s what you said.”
“I’ve never said anything about car crushers. And I think Emerson liked his job.”
Micah was beginning to believe that Lexy knew nothing about his parents and how they died. All she could say was that it was an accident. He kept a picture of them by his bed. It wasn’t much help either. In it Emerson wore large sunglasses and had a scraggly beard; his mother had her eyes closed and was laughing, her whole face a pink blur as if her features were trying to settle into place.
“What should I write then?” Micah took the pages back.
“Well” Lexy said, seeing that he thought she disapproved. “I think you should leave it as is.”
“But it’s not what they were really like.”
“That’s ok. It’s a story.”
“When can I know?”
Lexy looked back at the TV. This was it. He had to know. I’ve waited so long, she thought, I’ve tried my best. “Okay,” She whispered. She sighed and said aloud, “Okay.”
He was far too big to sit on her lap, so they moved into the kitchen and sat at the table.
“Your father was sick,” Lexy explained. “But not like a cold or cancer. He was on medications but they only helped a little.”
“Sick?” Micah asked, squinting.
“He sometimes could not tell what was real.”
Emerson had not been this way when he married Lexy’s oldest sister, Lexy thought. Iris. He fooled her. He must have had some idea of his disease. He must have. Iris would call her to talk about his bouts of insanity. How he would incoherently storm around the house. Their whole first year of marriage Iris just put up with it. She never made any calls, never took him to see somebody, she just made excuses. But these were old thoughts, memories that had long since died out and faded into unnamed bitterness, then into the last vestiges of mourning.
“So he was like crazy?” Micah asked.
“Well,” she paused, “sorta.”
“Then what? How did he die?”
“He had an accident,” she said as if it settled the matter.
Micah sighed and put his hands on his face. “Not this ‘accident’ crap again. Just tell me what happened. I’m eleven, I can take it.”
“Alright,” She paused gathering the words together like groceries in a bag. “He was frightened of things that weren’t there. He was sick and one day he ended his own life.”
“How d—“
“That’s not the point,” she said, stopping him. Lexy remembered throwing up when she had to identify the body. Emerson had blown most of his brains out. But could she tell him that?
They said nothing for awhile.
Lexy said, “Your mother died having you… But you di—it wasn’t your fault or anything. It was the shock of finding your dad…”
They returned to silence. Micah stared at the table with a contemplative expression as if he was trying to change the color of the tabletop. Lexy craned around to see the clock. It was nearly midnight. She reached out to take Micah’s hand. He moved it away and then got up and left the room. She reached out and clutched his shirt. He stood still, she sighed and let him go, he walked to his bedroom and closed the door.
Lexy’s goal from the beginning was to raise Micah like Iris would have. She never had boyfriends over, she fed Micah well and they went to church every Sunday. A different one every time, but still Micah was going and hearing the ‘word’ every week whether either of them liked it or not. They would leave before the awkward questions and invitations. Rule of thumb: in after the handshakes out before the coffee. She could never help but think about what all the other people must think of their little family. She constantly felt guilt for some unknown sin.
Lexy got up from the table and walked to her room. Light was streaming in through the window from a street lamp passing through the blinds, making lines of shadow. Lexy undressed and got under the sheets. This was when she thought of Iris the most. When she felt inadequate, when dreamy heightened ideals of what a mother should be filled her head, when she knew that only Iris could ever do the job justice.
They had been close before Iris went and married Emerson. Iris had been more than a big sister. Their parents had not been much help before they died. The two of them had had to make it on their own. Then Iris ran off and became a ‘goody-goody’ and the family was just not good enough, clean enough. But in that hospital room it all changed. Apologies happen easily in a room like that. When the past means nothing and the future is short. She died soon after having never seen her son.
Micah laid face up his mind somewhere between anger and tears. He tried to punch his pillow but it didn’t help, so he just tried to sleep. He’d never actually tried to sleep before, staying up seemed to be always the best thing. Now he just wanted the night to be over. He looked to the wall at a picture that he drew in Sunday school, when he was seven. It was a painting of Jesus walking on water, but it looked more like a bearded triangle resting on top of blue spikes.
The teacher had encouraged him, or at least tried to. “Looks great uh…” the teacher searched for his name.
“Micah,” Micah said.
“Micah. Right. Sorry little buddy.”
Returning to the picture, Micah drew brown lines coming out of the triangle and three prongs on the ends as fingers. Now he needed the green for hills in the back ground. Another boy was using the green crayon to scribble circles on a page.
Micah asked for the crayon.
“I’m using it,” the boy replied as the crayon went round and round, shrinking as the wax was layered on the page.
“But your just drawing stupid lines,” Micah said.
In response the boy drew a green line down Micah’s page. Micah pushed the boy and the boy started, with far too much ease, to cry. The teacher came to the boy’s rescue and Micah was brought out to await his aunt outside the sanctuary.
Inside, they were singing a slow, drowsy hymn. Lexy came out to meet Micah following behind the teacher. A chorus of voices sung, “As the deer pants for the water…” The sound quieted when the door to the sanctuary closed, the three of them on the outside.
The teacher spoke to Lexy “You’re supposed to come to the classroom when his number is displayed. He hit my son.”
“Number?” Lexy said, confused.
The voices, old and righteous, surged, becoming more impassioned. Micah heard, “You alone are my strength, my shield…” The voices died back down, blocked by the large wooden door.
The teacher opened the door and the voices became clearer. He pointed to a set of red digital numbers shining on the wall near the empty wooden cross along the back wall of the sanctuary. He closed the door again.
“Every child has a number. Weren’t you told?”
The voices became loud in his ear as if hundreds of voices were singing all around him. “You alone are my strength, my shield. You alone are my strength, my shield.” The line repeated again and again ringing in his head, becoming more shrill and louder with every repetition.
Just then both of the adults turned down to look at Micah, in unison they said, “When your number is called you are suppose to come. Never before though. Never!”
They started to laugh. Micah felt his body falling, the voices fading. He was leaving the church and he was falling rapidly down. It was getting hot and suddenly he realized he was in a cave, red from flames. He could still hear the song repeating like a skipping CD but muffled and far away. In front of him was a man. It was Emerson. Huge drops were dripping from his head. He was in torment, screaming and panting, huge chains tying him down to the wall.
“Never before!”
Lexy was awoken by Micah’s screams. She grabbed a bathrobe and ran in to find him sweating and ranting. “He’s in hell,” he screamed. “I saw him. I saw him.” His breathing was faltered and Lexy could tell that he was still trying to wake up. She sat by him on the bed and pet his wet hair.
She said, “Shh, it’s okay. He’s not in hell.”
“But that’s where,” Micah sniffed, trying to catch his breath.
“Shh, just go back to sleep, okay?”
“He was tied down and burning.”
“No, shh. Go back to sleep.”
“But I…”
His breathing slowly returned. His eyes closed. He slept. Lexy left the door open and quietly walked away.
The next morning Micah walked to school and read over his story. He found an amendment written in a completely different hand.
Then one day Emerson got stuck in the car crusher and died. For some reason he went to hell.
He woke up and had chains on his arms. So he broke them and started to fight all the bad guys that were there. They had horns and claws.
He punched them and threw them in the lava. Then he went to a wall and started to dig with his bare hands. He broke the rock until he got to the other side.
That was where Iris was. She died too but was in heaven. They hugged. Now Emerson was in heaven too.
The end.
Micah scratched out ‘they hugged’ with a pen and placed the story in his back pack.
