Angel

“Nope, not yet. Well, I mean it is and it isn’t. It is time for you to know but not time for you to go, if you know what I mean.” She leaned forward on her arms and looked deeper into his eyes. His vision blurred a little and he felt dizzy and hot. He reached for his throat with one hand and reached out to grab hold of something, anything with his other, afraid that he was falling. He slumped back into the cradle of the tree and watched her eyes that swirled into two huge black galaxies of voidness. He felt himself slipping simultaneously into both of them. Her soft voice came to him, “Nuke, watch for the lights.” He felt a knot in his solar plexus and swallowed hard a couple of times, not wanting to be there but having no control over what was happening. The first light he saw nearly blinded him. It came from nowhere and from everywhere and it was so blindingly bright that he could not escape from it. When he turned his head it was there. When he shut his eyes as tight as he could, it was still there. It blew into his brain, it went through his skin, it permeated every pore of his body until his body disintegrated and reintegrated as the light and he became pure consciousness. The light pulsated, slowly at first and then gradually increased in its pulsations until it became a steady stream of pure, radiant light. At the center emerged a small red point that expanded into a symbol or letter shaped somewhat like the small case letter “a.” As this symbol emerged, it was accompanied by a great sound of the syllable “ah” which permeated the universe. The reification of the letter, the sound, and the corporeal body of Nuke Dimmitis occurred simultaneously. Nuke looked at himself again. He still had the loud hum of the sound he had heard in his head and, if he closed his eyes, could still see the bright red symbol. As he looked around, everything seemed to be outlined with a golden glowing fire. He looked at Angel and she looked at him.
“What was that?” Nuke asked.
“That was the experience of death which you will know only once more.” She stared at him and stood up. “Now it’s time for us to go.”
“What do you mean, “go?”
“Let’s go play down by that creek you like so much.” She jumped lightly to the ground and Nuke climbed down slowly, still numbed by the experience he had just had. For a kid of nine, this was too overwhelming and he slumped against the tree trunk. She took his hand and led him down Third Street to the little creek branch that went under the road. He had played there many times but this time it, and everything else, would be different. He knew that everything had changed but he didn’t yet realize how he would be affected. He only knew that right now he had to just put it out of his young mind. He let the symbol and the sound dissolve into his being and headed down to the creekbank with his new, if not different, friend. She was a joy to be with and he new that he loved her.
“Hey sissy, who’s your new girlfriend?”
“Oh no, it’s Mitchie!” Nuke tried to crawl into the culvert under the road but it was too late. “Now what do I do,” he turned to her.
“Don’t worry, Nuke, I’ll handle this.”
“You’re not supposed to handle anything, you’re a girl. I’m supposed to handle it but Mitchie is older and a lot bigger than I am and he already beat up half the schoolyard.”
“Don’t worry, Nuke, and don’t fight anymore. After today, you won’t want to anyway.” She pulled him out of the culvert and they looked as Mitchie Caldwell pulled his beat up bicycle up to the culvert curb. The mean look on his face told Nuke he meant business.
“Hey Mitchie, what’s up?” Nuke tried to smile but the corners of his mouth twitched in fear.
“Who’s your girlfriend, sissy, and you better have a good story.” Mitchie swung off of his bike, fists at his side and headed straight toward them. Nuke almost fainted.
“She’s my cousin, Tex, from Texas.” Nuke tried to sound convincing until Angel put an elbow in his side.
“No I’m not,” she said, “I’m his girlfriend, Angel, what’s it to you anyway, Mitchie?”
“Hey, how do you know my name, anyway?” He glared straight at her and then Nuke noticed the change in his appearance. “Oh no,” he thought as he watched Mitchie do a meltdown in attitude and appearance right in front of him, “Not Mitchie, too.”
“No, Nuke, he’s not going to know what you know.” She didn’t say any words, he just heard them in his mind. “Just watch.”
Mitchie unclenched his fists and his shoulders slumped a little. All of a sudden he looked like the child that he was. His clothes were dirty like his face. Nuke knew that Mitchie’s mother had died a year or so ago and that his dad wasn’t able to take care of six kids and work. Nuke didn’t pity Mitchie, he had compassion for him and it appeared that he and Angel were both directing this compassion at the boy like a beam of light. Mitchie pawed the ground with his worn out tennis shoe. He stared at the hole in it and his big toe sticking out. Then he looked up, glancing at Angel and talking to Nuke.
“Uh, uh, ok, Nuke, uh, I uh, was just, uh, wondering what you two were, uh, you know, uh, up to, and uh would you like to uh, come over some time and, uh, see, my big brother’s new uh Harley Davidson?”
“Well, yeah, sure thing Mitchie, I’ll come over tomorrow morning after my paper route.” Nuke smiled this time for sure. He looked at Angel who was smiling, too. Mitchie hopped on his bike and peeled out. He had attached playing cards with clothes pins on the spokes of the wheels that made it sound like a motorbike and he made it roar as he looked back over his shoulder a couple of times and then rode really hard up Third Street toward home.
“Angel, that was beautiful,” Nuke said, “I feel kind of good all of a sudden.”
“A lot better than fighting, isn’t it,” she said, vocalizing this time and she turned and walked into the shallow water of the creek. He watched her a little bit then started to follow. “You can’t come with me, Nuke,” she looked at him and he could see that she was crying. Angel handed Nuke a parcel she held in her right hand. It was a brown leather covering fastened with a leather strap. He looked it over. It looked like a magazine was wrapped inside. Still holding onto the manuscript, Angel put her left hand on Nuke’s shoulder. “This is a gift for you, never let it get away, always keep it in a place where you know it is safe. Later on in your life you will understand its meaning and how to use it.” Nuke knew not to ask any questions, he could tell by her look. She turned and walked down the creek and then she was gone. Nuke never saw her again after that day but he never forgot her beautiful face and the gift she had given him. He would understand a lot more about this day later on in his life.
“Nuke! Wake up man!” Sunny yelled at him from his bike and motioned him over to the shoulder of the interstate. “What are you doing, man, you almost ran off the road.” Sunny pulled off and got off his bike to see if Nuke was ok. “Hey, buddy, hey Nuke.” Sunny waved his hand in front of Nuke’s eyes. “Are you ok?”
“Yeah man, I just nodded off a little. I’ll be all right now.”
“I can tell there’s something on your mind, Nuke, anything I can help with?”
“Nope, just thinking about an old girl friend, Sunny. No problemo.”
“They’ll do it to ya every time, old friend, let’s get back on the highway.” Sunny walked back toward his bike and then turned back around. “Nuke, you do have the manuscript, don’t you?’
“Yeah, Sunny, I’ve got it.”
“We’ve got to get that to Darjeeling tomorrow, no doubt about it.”
“Yeah, I know. Ain’t nothing gonna keep that from happenin’, man.” Nuke accelerated on the shoulder and turned his turn signal on to get back out on I-70 and on to Kansas City where he wasn’t too sure that what was going to happen was going to be good for him or Sunny. He just knew he and Sunny had a delivery to make and he was bound and determined to make it and make it on time like he had promised. When they got to Junction City, or Junktown as Sunny called it, Nuke exited and headed down the frontage road to the Dreamland Motel, where he checked in according to their plan. Sunny continued on, taking the exit at Route 18 and heading to Manhattan where he would spend the night and take in the Bob Dylan concert at Kansas State University before heading on into Kansas City and his meeting with Stephen Darjeeling.