A Smattering of Angels

As the door closed behind the last student of my last Philosophy 404 class for the day, I crossed the classroom and looked out the window through the blinds. It was a typical, frozen, late October day in the Midwest. The whole world was covered with sparkling crystal overlaying a smooth white sheen. “Man it’d be nice to just chill.”

I heard it just as I said it, and the notion made me laugh. I’d prefer to hibernate until April, but that wouldn’t do my weight any good. I never really expect to keep the weight down during the winter, but I figure I have to at least show it I’m serious and it’s still on my radar. Maintenance is maintenance, both as boring and as necessary as the word itself.

I walked over to the gym, opened the locker I keep there, and got dressed for my afternoon run in Jacob’s Ladder Park.

I never really enjoy running in sweats. That sheen of sweat that builds up inside them can give me a chill that lasts all day. But there wasn’t much chance of overheating on a day like this. So over the long johns and electric socks I pulled on my heavy, slate grey sweat pants and shirt. Then the grey hoodie with the university logo on the front.

As I stepped into my favorite old Reeboks without untying them first, I grinned. Here I was closing in on my 59th birthday. I had a whole passel of grandchildren already, and still my mom crossed my mind, wagging one finger and warning me I’d break the heel of my shoe if I kept doing that. I kept that advice in the same mental bin with all the things that would make my face freeze in a certain way.

One time as I was climbing the huge old maple tree in the back yard, she came out on the porch and wagged that same finger. “If you fall outta there and break both your legs, don’t you come runnin’ to me!”

The ironic thing was, the absurdity of that statement coupled with the serious frown on her face made me laugh so hard that just after she turned and went back into the house, and I mean just after the screen door slammed shut behind her, I fell off the limb I had clambered onto. I landed flat on my back and knocked the wind out of myself. I thought I was going to die, but at least my legs were intact.

I never told Mom about that, though I’ve never been quite sure what tiny seed of compassion kept me from telling her. More than anything back then I wanted to point out the absurdity of her statement, but something stopped me. I’m glad. Now more than anything I’d like to have her back for an hour, or even a minute. Just one more time I’d love to hear some of her absurd advice that made so much sense. I’d like to wrap her little body in my arms in a massive son-hug and kiss that frown.

Of course, I know as sure as I’m breathing if I did that she’d push me away and frown even harder. “What is wrong with you?” she’d say. She had to be tough, she thought, after Dad had died three years earlier. “Supper will be on the table shortly. Go wash up.” But I like to think when she turned away she smiled.

I pulled myself out of my little reverie and pulled on a Fargo: The TV Show watch cap that a warped buddy had given me, then pulled the hood up over that. I let the drawstring dangle. I’ve always had this uneasy notion that if I tied something beneath my chin it would find a way to choke me to death. And then because grey blends into white so well, I slipped an orange vest over the whole thing. Before I left the locker room I put my right foot on a bench and stretched my hamstring on that side, then did the same to the left. Then I was finally ready. I went out the side door and padded across the snow.

The campus and Jacob’s Ladder Park overlap, and I stepped onto my usual trail about twenty yards off to the side of the gym. I looked around for a moment, put my hands on my hips and twisted my torso a few times, then set out at an easy pace. Especially on a day like this, you have to warm up to the run.

The holly bushes were white round lumps with occasional electric, sharp-tipped green leaves or red berries poking through. The maple and oak trees were barren of leaves and their few branches topped with snow. The irregular vertical valleys between the ridges on their trunks were snow filled as well. Now and then snow melted into a drop off a branch above me and froze into a bit of ice again as it fell past my face to the wet, salted asphalt trail passing beneath my feet. All of that and the quiet carpet that used to be a lawn melded into a scenic byway and moved past with my early, lumpy, jerky gait.

Occasionally a bulge in the the snow on the path belied a burrowing tree root. For a quickly passing moment I’d focus on that and lengthen or shorten my stride just enough to miss it or at least step on the flatter end. Other than that, watching to avoid the occasional miniature skating rink was pretty much my only task.

The air began stinging and slowly numbing my nose, mostly in the center cartilage below the bridge and right around the edges of the nostrils. It was what my neighbor, a Midwesterner from birth, liked to call “brisk, heh heh,” which means it was swimming with microscopic ice crystals and he was overjoyed that I had to put up with it.

One time when we both happened to be in the woods on our own side of the barbed wire fence, the same guy had asked where I was from originally.

I said, “The Sonoran Desert in southern Arizona. It’s really hot there.” That was a mistake. He heard an invitation to a game of one-upsmanship and felt entitled him to dredge up that same old tired BS.

“At least it’s a dry heat,” he said. “It’s really miserable out here in the summer, what with it bein’ a hunnert an’ fi’ty in the shade an’ two hunnert percent humidity.”

Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating what he said just a bit, maybe, but with his condescending attitude in fourth gear he might’ve used those numbers.

Anyway, I said, “Oh yeah, yeah, you’re right. It is a dry heat. ‘Course you know what that means in practical terms, right?”

He shook his head, the condescending grin still in place. “Whyon’t you tell me?”

“Well, you know how out here even on the hottest day of summer you can roll down the window of your pickup and go faster and you’ll cool off? I mean, isn’t that right?”

“Yep.” And I swear, he swelled his chest and stuck his thumbs in his suspenders.

“Well in southern Arizona you roll the window down and go faster, you’ll bake like a chicken.”

The condescending smile was replaced with a frown. “Really?”

I hadn’t thought it would be that easy. That surprised me. Jeez, I didn’t want to hurt the guy. “Uh, yeah. ‘Course it’s better if you can get someone to turn you every half-hour to avoid getting too done on one side.” I grinned.

He didn’t grin. He didn’t smile. He looked at the ground, shook his head, said, “Doggone,” and turned to walk back to his house.

Well, I tried.

Anyway, the air was cold at the molecular level, but at least it was clean. As I started to settle into a good rhythm I picked up the pace just a bit, chasing the personal bit of fog forever dangling just before me. Clean is like cold. It isn’t a quality in its own right, but the absence of dirt or smells or anything else that taints the surface or, in this case, the air. Even the usual stench from the steel mill down the road had been pressed below nose level by the cold air.

A half-hour in, my nose and cheeks and lips were numb. Under my watch cap my ears were numb too, my sinuses and my forehead were a solid block and my eyes felt like they were were icing over. But also finally my stride was right, my legs were flexing, and my arms were pumping exactly as I needed them to.

My Reeboks were touching asphalt with a great rhythm that smoothed out more with every step. Then as I went around a fairly tight curve to the right I put my full weight on my left foot on the downhill side of a bulge that flowed directly down to one of those solid ice puddles.

As my left foot was beginning to slip down off the little bulge my right foot passed it and landed on the ice and I torqued both knees and slipped hard across it. For a second I imagined my feet shot out from under me. The memory of falling out of that tree and landing flat on my back flashed through my mind, followed by a memory of another time on ice covered asphalt when my legs had flipped out in front of me so the tops of my shoes were facing me on a horizontal plane for a second and my head slapped hard to the asphalt.

Anyway, I recovered quickly and didn’t even twinge my back and no matter the weather, this is when the run is good.

Times like this, reality folds into imagination and back into reality as the movie that is the world moves past me at my own special rhythm and pace. It takes on a red and blue hue and that eases into purple and everything smears with time and speed as the world moves past.

Times like this I’m alone in the world and I am the world, all-encompassing and invisible. If there are others around, their presence doesn’t affect me. My blood is moving red and blue through my veins with the same rhythms that I’m moving through the world and the world is moving through me and the universe is good.

Times like this, nothing exists but the next step, the next step, the next step, the next breath, the next personal little cloud of fog.

Times like this, memories and dreams and smiles take over, and there is nothing else in the world.

Times like this—

A tiny little girl-dream stepped out  from an intersecting path. I stopped, slid and teetered up on my tiptoes, slid and stumbled a step to the left in a successful effort to avoid smashing into her. “Holy—”

“No!” She smiled broadly, one small hand and her index finger extended. “Don’t say it. That’s not nice.”

I put my hands on my hips, cocked my head and frowned, my breath coming in ragged, heavy gasps. “What?” I took a half-step back and looked her over. She wasn’t quite three feet tall. I made her for three years old, four tops.

She was dressed in tiny little blue jeans and an incredibly blue jacket lined with pure white faux fur. A bright pink shirt peeked out from inside the lapels of the jacket. The hood was pulled up to form a halo around her face which, to my mind, was absolutely deserving of a halo. She was beautiful in a classical, perfect way. Was I looking at Plato’s archetype for beauty?

I looked past her, scanning the park for her parents. There was nobody in sight. Seriously? In this weather? There were only trees, the blue-grey sky. Weird. Blue sky, still no clouds, but no sunlight reflecting off the snow either.

I looked down at her. Careful to watch my footing and my balance, I crouched. “Who are you? I mean, are you lost?”

She shook her head. A few strands of fine, strawberry blond hair snuck out from under her hood. One seemed to lay directly across the center of one eye. “Nope. Nothing like that.”

Cute kid. Presumptuous, but cute. Those few strands of hair and the hood itself framed the most beautiful blue eyes and the fairest skin I’d ever seen. Of course she had fair skin. Like I said, she’s what, three?

I leaned over just a bit and looked past her again, then twisted my head to the left. There was nothing there but the winter blanket and the highway beyond it. None of the cars were slowing, and none of the people inside seemed interested in the slightest. I looked back at her again. “So what, then?”

She cocked her little head to the side. “What do you mean?”

So cute. “Well, if you aren’t lost,” and I leaned right and glanced past her again, this time for other adults and maybe for a hidden camera, “then who are you? I mean, aren’t you a little young to be out here by yourself?”

She giggled. “You guys really are all about perceptions, aren’t you?”

Vaguely I said, “What?” She had an incredible vocabulary for a three year old.

I looked to the right. There was the path she’d been on. A snow-covered wooden bench was set to the left of the intersection of that path and the one we were on now. I looked beyond it into the trees again.

There was some underbrush, but it was sparse enough that it wouldn’t make a good hiding place, at least not for long, given the propensity of muscles to cramp when kept stationary too long. Okay, so nobody was settled into hiding there.

I returned my attention to her path again. No people, no critters, no birds in the trees, no footprints, nothing. Only a few flakes of snow drifting from the sparse canopy overhead to the trail below.

She shrugged. “Perceptions. You know. You see me out here and automatically assume I should be with an ‘adult.’” She actually used her fingers to make the air quotes around the word.

I frowned. “I don’t think I understand.”

She grinned. “I guarantee you don’t.” She reached up and took my hand then turned and started walking toward the bench near the intersection of the trails. “Here, let’s sit down and I’ll try to explain it.”

“But there’s snow on—” And just like that, the snow that had been on the bench was gone. And the bench was dry. And when I sat down, it was warm to the touch. Weird.

She turned her back to the bench, placed her palms on the edge of the seat, and hoisted herself up next to me. Then she looked up at me. “See, not everything is as it seems. Now you guys spout that all the time, as if it’s some sort of unique knowledge, but the problem is, you don’t really believe it.”

She shrugged. “But it’s true. Let’s use right now for example. How old do you think I am?”

“Three.”

Again she giggled. “Nope. Wanna try again? Take into account my height and my physical appearance, but also my vocabulary and my use of the language.”

Okay, so maybe a really small twelve? No... I can’t think of a twelve year old with that good a vocabulary.... “Y’know, I think it wouldn’t do me any good.”

She nodded. “Probably not. Like I said, with you guys it’s all about perception. I look like a three-year old human, and that perception overrides your ability to get beyond it despite any contradictory evidence, even when that evidence is overwhelming.”

My voice quiet, I said, “So how old are you?”

Yeah, that’s another human trait. Even though I was certain nobody else was around, still I kept my voice quiet because I felt weird asking. Like if you’re quiet enough, even the person you’re asking won’t hear it except just enough to be able to respond. And I guess maybe it tells the other person you’re conspiring to keep her secret.

Besides, this girl was obviously older than she seemed, but she was still female, and you just don’t go around asking females their age. So after I asked how old she was, I added, “I mean, if you don’t mind my asking.”

She shook her cute little head, a beautiful, sparkling glimmer in her eyes.

Then the glimmer flashed and disappeared into a blazing white-hot splotch across the front of my forehead but on the inside. She had no more physical appearance. She was gone but still there. Her voice took on a somber tone, more serious than the depth of the sea and broader than the span of the Milky Way. It came from the rim of a deep echo, not like sound bouncing off a canyon wall but like light coming from billions years beyond our galaxy, out beyond where you have to stop when you’re trying to think your way across the universe.

She said, “Like you, I have always been. But I’m coming around again pretty soon.”

Then the heat and the flash disappeared. Goodness things happen quickly here, I thought,  and then she was smiling at me again, that same little slip of a girl. She was standing in front of the bench and that glimmer was dancing in her beautiful little blue eyes again, and that same strand of blond hair was laying across her right eye. Incredible.

For some reason I was lying on the bench. I didn’t remember lying down. I looked straight up through the trees and they faded to my periphery and the sky had gone mostly white but it still didn’t look like clouds really.

Something stung the back of my hand and I wanted to slap it, thinking it was a bee or something, but the sting was gone and bee stings last awhile and then it was just okay and I thought maybe pretty soon I needed to get back to my run.

I turned my head to the right, hungry to see the little girl again. Anxious. And I had to tell her too, you know, I was gonna continue my run ‘cause she was so obviously all right it wasn’t even funny. I mean, really, it wasn’t.

And there she was, all three feet some odd of her, and in the most adorable moment I’ve ever seen she bent her cute little wrists and gestured, waving her tiny hands down along her sides, like a tiny model showcasing herself. “This cute little person you’re seeing here, this is all you need to know right now. I’m gonna be your seventh granddaughter, and this is how I’m gonna look when I’m about three years old. I’m pretty sure they’re gonna call me Julia. That’s a pretty name, isn’t it? And there will be a few others after me, but you won’t get to meet any of us if you don’t do what the doctors tell you.”

Then, inexplicably, she started breaking up, not her self but her voice, like she was on a staticky radio. “Gran-grandpa, it just ain’t your t-t-time yet. We know you-you-you miss your mom and your dad and your brother and you sister and all the others, but we’d-we’d-we’d miss you if you went ahead and left now. So just just hang-hang around for now, okay?”

I stared at her. “But—”  

She put her little index finger on my lips. She was still smiling, the glimmer still in her eyes when she said, “Shh. It was just-just a little bump on the head. You’re smarter than that. Knock it off. See you in three years.”

And she faded as a new world came to life around me. Antiseptics, a sheet, my feet, tubes, people dressed in snow. No, white. Blue scrubs.

A thumb on my lower right eyelid, a cool white light, a voice. “He’s gonna be fine. I’ll check back in the morning after rounds.”

The fingertips on my right hand brushed cloth as it was moving past. I gripped it, pried open my left eye, dropped open my right. “Doc?”

“Well hello there.” It was a nurse. She was smiling. “You want me to get him?”

“No. Is Julia here? Little girl, three, blue coat?”

She shook her head. “No sir, I haven’t seen anyone like that.”

I smiled and closed my eyes. “Good. She’ll be here in three years.”

* * * * * * *

A Note from the Author

Although this is a work of fiction, it was inspired by the photo I used for the cover. The photo is of my seventh granddaughter, Julia Stanbrough, and it was taken by my second granddaughter, Amberly Cobb