—
With no charge in my care, I began, as usual, to wane.
Gravity became ever less compelling, my clothes began to fade, reappear, fade away again. My hearing grew acute, allowing me to track my charge’s progress through the forest by the rustling sounds made by the various animals (a white-tailed deer, two gray foxes, a rafter of wild turkeys) he startled in passing.
Becoming ever less substantial, thereby less bound to any one place, I extended myself outward and saw that, yes, even this, this humble swath of Texas forest, wasless,less than the forests of my bygone days: dead trees leaned against sick trees popping with fungal blooms, the forest floor repellently thick with mounds of dry pine needles. Underground, the strands of the root system ran black; the canopy above was perilously thin;the leaves of the ashes and dogwoods seemed brittle, as if they might shatter at the slightest touch.
Oh, it was true, all true, what Mr. Bhuti had said, and discouraging beyond measure:
This lovely old place, ruined forever, maybe.
—
One last time I shot up, then passed through the second-story wall of the death room (farewell bed, weeping wife, stunned daughter; farewell corpse, hands newly wife-crossed upon the (no-longer-heaving) chest) and blasted up through the ceiling.
Ascending to the tip of the tallest of the five cupola-topping finials, balancing atop it on one foot, I regarded the nearly empty wedding-yard below (wineglass in a flower bed, napkin in the pool, besotted couple slow-dancing to no music at all), the sleepy neighborhood, the flat, flat, light-flecked city of Dallas.
Something was bothering me.
I had perhaps overstepped by my intervention vis-à-vis the Mels.
I’d been, tell the truth, pretty darn rough on them.
And weren’t they alsoinevitable?Inevitable occurrences? Upon which, therefore, it would be impossible, even ludicrous, to pass judgment? And hadn’t I just passed judgment on them? Quite harshly? By lacerating them into sections, hollowing them out, then filling them with concrete, and all of that?
Well, sure.
I mean, I guess I’d kind of dropped the ball on that one.
Therein lay the danger of existing out ofelevation.
Of retaining even a trace of one’s former self:
One’s pity became constricted.
One judged, one preferred; one acted and, in acting, erred.
One screwed the pooch, felt crappy about it later.
So:
The time had come for me to be frank with myself, with that dualwe;to say, to that sweet, treasured-but-harmful Jill-portion that lingered within me still, thatwewere finished, andImust go on without her.
Yes, yes, she seemed to say, I get it, I get that. But just don’t forget me.
But forgetting her was exactly what I meant to do.
—
Centralizing my considerable strength, I exploded upward, holding in my heart the intention of returning to that distant place to which those of our ilk must return when in need of a fresh beginning.
And soon enough was there:
Hurtling toward “Paul Bowman,” who was, as always when I sought a fresh beginning, luminous, spectral, celestial, the size of a mountain, seated at that same (football field–sized) metal table, nervously smoking.
It was, each time, a fresh gamble.
One ran the risk of being rebuffed, and finding oneself consigned to that realm from which no further positive action would ever be possible.
