Redemption

by Sean Huxter

Download a Palm OS e-Book version.

"You're on your way to Stan's," I said to the fat man walking down his driveway. I was standing beside the driver's side door of his car. He eyed me suspiciously.
"Oh, yeah?" he said. "What's it to you? Get off my car, asshole!"
"I'm a guardian angel," I said. I knew where he was going. I knew his routine. I knew everything about him.
"Yeah, and I'm the Mother Theresa," he said with a grunt. "Get off my car, buddy."
"Let me prove it to you," I said. "Let me take you to meet someone I know. It's on the way."
He stared at me with one half-open eye. The other was closed to block out the low sun behind me. He paused and noticed I was blocking his door. I guess he thought that the only way he'd get into his car was by humouring me. "Ok, angel. Prove it to me," he said. I stood aside, letting him in the car.
I climbed in the passenger side, and he started the engine.
"You're Michael Wilson," I began. I didn't expect that to impress him. It didn't.
"Yeah, that's what it says on my mail box, angel. You'll need more than that. But I'll give you a ride to Stan's if that's what you're looking for." He drove off the driveway onto the lawn-lined street and headed towards the city.
"Ok, I guess I deserved that. The proof will be in the meeting of two people. It's just a few blocks before Stan's. It won't take a minute." Stan's was a drink joint. One of the seedier places. A place where you go to drink alone.
"You go to Stan's every night about an hour after work," I started again. "Your wife, Stella, hates your going there, but she tolerates it just to get you out of the house for a few hours."
"Hey, watchit, angel! I can put your lights out right here!" He took a turn onto the main strip, just ten blocks from Stan's. He was getting angry.
After a while I pointed to a building and asked Michael to pull into the parking lot. I wasn't surprised that he did what I asked. I guess I was making him curious.
"Now what? he demanded impatiently.
"Come with me. Half a minute, I promise." I got out of the car. He waited a while, then followed. We walked to the rear of the building, and into a door in the back. There was a lineup of shabbily dressed men, women and a few children, with plates in hand. The room was set up cafeteria style. Tables and chairs were crammed too close together, and too many of them were occupied.
"What is this?" Michael whispered angrily. Let's go! I got some drinking to do!"
"This is a soup kitchen. I'm sure you've heard of them, or at least seen them in movies," I jeered. "But I'm also sure you've never been near one, at least not that you knew of. You pass this place twice nightly. Once on the way to the bar, and once on the way home."
"Yeah, so?"
"You make a comfortable living, and you have a lovely wife and two beautiful children. You'll never need the services of one of these places." I was beginning to sound preachy, and regretted it. I knew I would have to take more care. I wanted to keep his attention, not shut him out completely.
He looked around. I could see the disgust and horror in his face. He couldn't even imagine eating here, and he couldn't imagine that all these people and more ate here every night, for all of their lives.
"No, I never knew this place was here. Why are we here, angel?"
"Let's take a seat. The people I want you to meet will be over in a minute, after these last few are served."
We sat down in the middle of the room, in the middle of the poor, the homeless, the down-and-out; those who had the bad luck of having a bit of bad luck.
"You know, Mike, they say that each and every one of us is only two pay-checks away from the street." I thought that would make him think.
"That so?" His discomfort with looking around worsened, and he stared down at his hands, folded in front of him on the dirt-stained, pressboard table.
"Here they are now," I said to him, indicating a man and a woman in aprons walking our way from the kitchen area. I said, louder, "Greg, Nora, meet a friend of mine." I indicated my captive guest. "This is Michael Wilson. He lives a few blocks down, in East Meadows. He's a stock broker for Steiner and Ross in the city."
That raised Mike's eyebrows a little. He looked at me as if I was going through his underwear drawer with a microscope. "Mike, this is Greg and Nora Downing. They run this place." Greg extended his hand.
Mike shook Greg's hand unenthusiastically. Nora smiled and said, "How do you do, Mr. Wilson." Mike grunted.
So, Greg," I asked. "How's the biz?" I saw his face flinch, and was sure Mike saw it too.
"Same as ever, Phil. Same as ever." Greg's discouragement revealed itself openly in his voice. Mike took notice. "Our funding was cut once again today. And two of our volunteers have quit."
"Sorry to hear that, Greg. I wish I could help."
Nora cut in with: "Volunteers are great, you know, and they help a lot, without pay, but most of them come here with high ideals, they're out to change the world. Then they see the world they have to change and cut out. Who can blame them, really." Her voice was sad. She, like Greg, was being beaten down by their hopelessness.
"Still," Greg continued where his wife left off, trying to inject something positive. "We are managing for the moment. Today the beef we were promised from the grocery store in behind didn't come through, but we had enough cans of soup to take up the slack."
He looked around. Like yawns, that's contagious, and soon we were all scanning our surroundings, watching the hungry people eat ravenously, food that didn't look all that appetizing. The noise was getting to Mike who was itching to make himself scarce.
"How's little Rosy?" I asked Nora.
"She's walking now, and getting as big as a horse." Nora's eyes lit up whenever she talked about their two year old daughter. "I hope you can come by soon to see her."
"The last time I saw her, she was still a baby," I said, laughing. Rosy was a beautiful child.
"Do you have children, Mr. Wilson?" Nora asked.
"Yeah, two," he said. "David and Sara. Nine and twelve."
"Oh, that's wonderful. You must be so happy."
I liked that bit. Mike sat suddenly back in his chair and tried not to react like he did. Nora noticed, of course, but didn't let it embarrass her. "That's wonderful," she repeated.
"Would you like to join Mike and myself for a drink at Stan's, Greg? Nora?" I asked. Mike didn't like that.
"Sorry, Phil," Greg said. "Nora and I have about an hour's work to do in back before we can get home to Rosy. The work never ends here. Especially now. Hey, listen, though. We'll catch you later this week. Our volunteers aren't here to help, so we can't leave right now."
I understood. That relieved Mike. I stood up. "If I can find you more volunteers, I will," I said to the couple. Mike stood as well.
"Nice meeting you guys," Mike said quickly. Nora and Greg smiled again, and stood to shake hands once again with Mike. Then Greg and Nora walked into the kitchen and we sidled past the rows of fed, but still hungry people.
Once outside, Mike walked straight for the car. "You bastard, what was that all about?"
I followed quickly behind. "I wanted to prove to you that I was a guardian angel, idiot! Remember?"
"You didn't quite do that, now, did you?"
"I'm not finished," I said. Mike stopped and turned around, confronting me.
"Look, buddy... Phil. Whatever your name and game are. Leave me out, will you? I'm going to Stan's. Now piss off!"
Mike opened his door and started the engine. "Nice people, weren't they?" I shouted.
Mike took his hand off the gear stick and unlocked the passenger door. "Yeah, they were nice, you want me to admit it, yeah, they were nice. Pillars of piousness, salts of the earth! What do you want me to say?"
I climbed in. He drove us to Stan's where we took a small table. We sat, not talking. Mike ordered a shot of whiskey. When it arrived, I reached over to it, picked it up, examined the glass. It was covered with dishwasher grime. I put it back in front of Mike. Then I started.
"You think I'm trying to get you to compare yourself with those two and come up short, don't you? You think I want to shame you into being someone else, and not the drunken bum you really are. Well, Mike, this is deeper than that. I don't want you to become someone like Greg or Nora. Because I know that will never happen. I'm an angel, remember?"
"Yeah, right, I forgot. You're an angel," he said, sarcastically. "You can see the future, right, how silly of me..."
"Yes, Mike. In fact I can." He looked at me like I was a madman he'd tolerated a bit too long. "I can remember the future as well as the past. I have that power."
"Because you're a guardian angel, right?"
"Right," I said. "How am I to protect people if I can't foresee what's going to happen to them?"
Mike just laughed with disgust. He wanted me out of there. Soon. But his mind was on Greg and Nora. And Rosy. He admired them. I could see it in his eyes.
"You know, I still remember when Dave and Sara first walked." It was barely louder than a breath.
He was offering something. I was stunned. I didn't see that coming despite what I'd just told him.
"I'm sure that at one point I was just like Greg," he said, very quietly. "But it's too late."
"I know."
That stopped him. He looked at me and his eyes got red, then his face.
"What's the deal, here, angel? You telling me it's too late for me to change? You're not supposed to say stuff like that!"
"Why not? It's the truth, isn't it?" My eyes were like ice, and he could feel the cold on his skin.
"What the hell was that show over at the kitchen for, then?" Mike was shouting now.
"Greg and Nora?"
"Yeah! What of them?"
"You like them, don't you?" I shouted. "Deep down, you respect them." I stood up in a fighting stance.
"Yeah, so what if I do?" Mike stood to meet me.
"Well, as I told you, I can see the future. Tonight you'll drink here for about forty minutes. You'll leave polluted!"
"And?"
"After that, you'll drive home. Only you won't make it! Tonight, you'll kill Greg and Nora as they're driving home from the soup kitchen. It's already written into the future. I've seen it!"
It was minutes before Mike slowly sat back down, disbelieving. We sat silently for at least ten minutes. I wasn't about to break it. I was waiting for Mike to say something.
When he did finally say something, it was very meek. "Can't the future be changed?" There was a pleading in his voice. It said that he believed me. He believed that I was an angel, and that I wanted to save his life, to change him back to the way he was, when he was like Greg and Nora.
"Mike, Time has vast inertia. It takes a significant force to change its course."
"How significant?" He was begging me now.
"That depends on how much you want to force the change, Mike."
"I don't want those people to die. I'll do anything."
"Then lift your glass, Mike. Make this your last one. Perhaps that will be enough to change the future for Greg and Nora." I coaxed him to take that one last drink.
He drank it quickly, as if he suddenly hated everything about it. In about ten seconds he knew it was poisoned. He didn't taste the cyanide, but he was feeling its effects. His muscles were failing and his breathing was becoming difficult.
"Poison!" he whispered, haltingly. "How could you poison me? You're my guardian angel!"
"You don't understand, Mike. I'm not your guardian angel, I'm theirs. And I do whatever it takes to protect them."
That was the last thing he heard. I left the bar and walked to the soup kitchen. I met Greg and Nora, and accepted their invitation to come home and see Rosy. I hadn't seen her in such a long time.

All content of these pages © Sean Huxter.