This is Installment Nine of the novel Rose and Justice. It includes Chapters III.i, III.ii, and III.iii. It is 5,818 words long. As installments are posted, links for each will be added under the tab labeled “The Novel” at the top of this page. Enjoy!

III.i

            The Light Council was not elected.  It consisted of beings who had reached complete enlightenment and then returned to earth, not just for love, but for the ultimate love of all beings and the overwhelming desire to assist them in their journey toward the light.  When these beings returned to the Light world, they were automatically accepted as members of the council.  No announcement was made.  No one would come to them and inform them of their position.  It was just automatically known to all in that world, including the being newly admitted to the council.

These beings were never referred to by their last earth names, but rather by the Light title they naturally possessed.  Therefore, Jesus was referred to as Teacher, Mother Teresa was Mother, Gandhi was Mahatma, Buddha was Enlightened One, Martin Luther King, Jr. was Father, and Mohammed was the Prophet.  These six had in some way given their entire lives to elevating the consciousness of the world — some through human death, others through long human life dedicated to teaching the truth and justice of love.  Their word was not questioned in the light world since all knew their spiritual evolution to be so complete that they were incapable of making a wrong decision.  Thus, all of their decisions were unanimous and final.

Hal and Malcolm sat in the circle waiting for the council to complete their morning meditation.  There was no separation from the great six when one was called into their presence; you simply joined their circle around a large white bowl of glowing water.  There was no sense of sitting in judgment when one came to the Light Council.  Judgment was a human invention.  The Light Council needed only truth.

The Enlightened One opened his eyes first and mentally called the others out of their state of nothingness.  “Our guests have arrived.”

“Do you know why you are here?”  Mother asked gently.

“I have no idea.  I am sure there must be some mistake.”  Malcolm piped in.  He knew he would be going back, but he was determined to fight it to the end.  Hal just sat quietly knowing he would have to bear witness to Malcolm’s indiscretions.

Mother spoke gently, “Do not lie to me, my son.  You do know why you have been asked to meet with the council, and there is no good reason to resist the inevitable.”

“You have manipulated the destiny of another being,” Mahatma intoned.  “You have shown resistance to the way of the Light since your last incarnation ended.   You have insisted on remaining in a combative state even on the plane of no conflict. Therefore, you must return again to learn the lessons you have thus far refused to accept in your soul.”

“Please, no.  Give me one more chance.  I promise to love everyone, even if they treat me badly.”

“And in your very words you express the lesson you still have not learned,” Teacher said.  “No one treats you badly, Malcolm.  They simply reflect back to you what you impose on your own existence.  If you would be wise enough to take my advice, then I would suggest that you begin setting your intention now for an incarnation that will be filled with lessons so that you might just get to stay the next time you are fully realized on this plane.”

“Oh, Jesus,” Malcolm muttered.

“Yes?”  Teacher asked.

“Oh, uh, . . . nothing, Teacher.”

“And now for you, Hal,” Mother said.  “It is with some sorrow that we inform you that you, too, must return.”

“Begging your pardon, my Mother, but . . . what??”  Hal was stunned.   There were no secrets on the Light plane.  All knowledge was available to all beings if they simply asked for it.  He could have known he was destined to return if he had inquired of the Light, but it was a possibility so far removed from his thoughts that he hadn’t even considered it.

“You even more clearly manipulated the destiny of others.  Your evolution was so near completion that, frankly, we had you pegged for the council at some point in the future.”  Father spoke.  “But, regardless of your rather benign and certainly well-intentioned misuse of light principles, you would have chosen to return anyway.”

“I would have?”  Hal asked in disbelief.

“Yes,” said the Enlightened One.  “Your soul had already decided even if you were not yet consciously aware.  You were going back to help Juliet — yet another small bending of the rules.”

“Therefore,” Prophet interjected, “you will both be sent back to learn a great lesson from this particular event.  Hal, you will be returning to assist in the muddle you have helped to create for Romeo and Juliet.  And, of course, to learn.  Always to learn. You will see just what it is you have done to two lovers who so desperately want and deserve to find each other after so much time of searching.  You will see that a love destined to be fulfilled on the mortal plane has been given overwhelming obstacles because of the both of you.”

“Oh, my god, no,” Hal felt a greater pain than he had ever known in the Light world.  His pain had nothing to do with his return to the weight and restriction of a physical body.  No, it was based solely upon the way his desire to assist Juliet was going to cause her pain and trouble.  If the council spoke of hardships for her, than they were sure to come.  His heart was breaking for what he had done to Juliet.

Mother reached out her hand and placed it on the back of Hal’s neck.  She stroked his hair and spoke quietly.  “Already you feel the pain of being human.  You acted from a human place, Hal.  You acted from a human place and yet with spiritual wisdom and love.  You knew that the Light would bring all things to their natural and perfect conclusion, yet your love for Juliet was so strong that you felt you knew her needs better than the Light could know them.  Even love has consequences, my child.”

Teacher took Hal’s hand.  “You have a specific mission on this trip, Hal.  If Romeo and Juliet can fulfill their love on earth in spite of the incredible odds against them, then you will have completed it.”

“But, wouldn’t that be manipulating their destiny?”  Hal inquired.

“No.  You have a mandate from the Light.  You are going to provide balance to the predicament they will find themselves in.  If it had not been for your involvement on this plane, their job would have been much easier on the earth plane.  You must do everything you can to make that right.  And, Hal, it won’t be easy.”

“So, what’s my mission?”  Malcolm asked.

Mahatma answered for the council.  “Your mission is to learn to live in the Light.  Hal is going for Juliet and Romeo.  You are going for yourself.   You are going to the same place so that you can learn from Hal, if you choose, and also from Romeo and Juliet. You are going to learn that war in any form is in direct opposition to the Light and the most unloving of all behaviors.  Your war is within yourself, Malcolm.  Thus, you know of no other way to interact with others than through conflict.  War and Light cannot inhabit the same place.  Violence always happens in the dark.  And the Light is simply illuminated love.  To live in the Light, you must learn to love, not fight.  Be certain that you meditate as much as you can before you return so that you will be certain to truly learn that lesson this time, my friend.”

And this was how it came to be that Malcolm returned to the earth as the second son of Jared and Melinda Malone – Marshall Jared — and Hal returned to earth as the first child and daughter of Aaron and Mary Malone — Hannah Elizabeth.

III.ii

            Hannah Elizabeth Malone was three years old and learning to eat on her own.  It was a task replete with problems for the toddler.  For one thing, her mother had to get her to stop humming long enough to make the attempt.  Hannah was born with music in her soul and seemed to sing her first word rather than say it, the first “ma” a pitch-perfect G followed immediately by a second “ma” that slurred up to a C.  The only music available on the Malone compound came from the radio in Uncle Jared’s house, and Hannah would often be found changing the dial from conservative talk radio to a music station any time she could get into the main house undetected.  She had honed in on that device like a needle pointing to magnetic north almost as soon as she could walk.  She wasn’t choosy in her musical tastes — she would listen to rock or classical, country or pop, although Uncle Jared flew into a rage the one time he had caught her singing along with the latest R&B star to hit the airwaves.  Hannah could hear a song once and remember it word for word and beat for beat from then on.

Once, when Uncle Jared had allowed the children to go into town for the weekly supply trip, Hannah disappeared from the small pack.  Aaron and Jared took all the children back to the truck and left Clete, Jr. in charge while they began a sweep of downtown Brunswick looking for her.  They had searched several businesses on the Gloucester Street when they came across the small girl in Manley’s Music Store.  She was sitting at a piano, with every employee of the store gathered around her, and playing the melody line of Mozart’s Andante from Piano Concerto 21 in C flawlessly.

Jared had jerked her by the arm without a word.  The manager of the store followed him out, trying to reason with him the entire way.

“Is this your child?  She’s . . ., well, she’s a prodigy.  There’s no other word for it.  Please consider getting some lessons for her . . . or a piano.  I don’t even care if you buy it from me, just get this child a piano.  Talent like hers is one in a million.  Sir!  Please, sir.”  As Jared began walking down the sidewalk with a smiling Hannah in tow and her father, Aaron, walking three paces behind as if he had done something wrong, the store manager shouted after him, “She can come back anytime!  She can just sit in the store and play anytime she likes!”

Jared did not buy a piano.  Even if he had believed it was a worthwhile investment, he would never spend so much money on a worthless child like Hannah.  He inwardly blamed her blindness on Aaron’s weakness.  He believed that Hannah’s visual impairment was some kind of genetic reproach against his brother and his brother’s wife.  He was incapable of understanding that Hannah’s blindness was the very reason for her musical prowess and her ability to see things Jared would never see.

“Now, Hannah Elizabeth, settle down and focus on your plate.  Here, touch it.  Your pork chop is on the left side, the peas are on the top of the right side, and your mashed potatoes are at the bottom.”  Mary Malone struggled with her child for well over 30 minutes until she had the idea that would work.  She assigned each section of the plate a song.  From then on Hannah fed herself, humming between bites according to where she had retrieved that bite from the plate.

Mary struggled with opposing feelings where Hannah was concerned.  She loved her child more than she would have dreamed possible.  Even with her blindness, Hannah seemed perfect to her.  Yet she felt a sense of shame around the others, knowing they either pitied her or blamed her for her child’s seeming handicap.  Thus, Hannah grew up believing that love was something that must be hidden.   Yet, she felt it so purely that even with the lessons of her environment, she could hardly help but express love to those around her.  From the beginning, Hannah’s most prominent personality trait was a gentle kindness that endeared her to even the most closed hearts.  All except Jared, who refused to see any good in her at all and continued to believe that she was an indictment against her parents.  The only way it would have been worse would have been if she were a boy — a blind boy, all that wasted maleness.

Jared had at first refused to allow his sons to play with their cousin.  This had little to do with her blindness.  He simply believed that young boys should have no interest in girls until puberty at least.  But he couldn’t police everyone on the compound 24 hours a day and so Hannah spent quite a bit of time with Justice and Marsh.  Justice was four when Hannah was born and he watched over her like she was his little sister.  He was learning the ways of his father, yet adored his little cousin in a way he couldn’t begin to understand, yet alone explain.  Justice’s brother, Marsh, was exactly three days younger than Hannah, right down to the minute, and this was a source of constant irritation for the youngest Malone boy.  Whenever he was difficult to deal with, which was often, Hannah would remind him that she was the oldest and he should listen to her.  She never did this haughtily, but rather as a kind reminder.  His reply was often an echo of his father’s beliefs, “Well, I’m a boy, so you should listen to me.”

Justice learned his father’s ways and followed them because that was all he knew.  Jared allowed the boys very little exposure to life outside the compound, so they could hardly be held responsible for the rigid beliefs they inherited.  Had Jared known the true heart of Justice, he would have been very disappointed.  Justice did what was expected and said all the right things, but he felt no passion about life on the compound as his father did.  Mostly he felt that something must be happening beyond the fence that he was missing.  From the time he could walk, he was in constant search of a way to sneak away, if only for a little while.  As a very young boy, his escapes were limited to Saturdays in town with his father.  As he grew, his excursions would become increasingly more daring and more secretive.

Marsh, on the other hand, believed everything his father told him, held it like a precious gem, and produced it again, verbatim, at every opportunity.  He lived under the heavy shadow of being the second born in a family that followed the right of succession almost as religiously as the English monarchy.  His adoration of his father was a subconscious begging, a repressed plea for attention and love clouded by the belief that it was nothing more than a strict adherence to the chain of command.  Marsh needed love more than anything, but hid that need under an aggressiveness he thought his father would admire.  He detested Justice’s status as the heir apparent, yet held an unexplained attraction to his big brother.  There was a part of him that would have plotted Justice’s demise had it not been for the mysterious fact that Justice was the closest friend he had.  It was Justice who seemed to understand Marsh with an intuition that was almost psychic.  Marsh felt immense love for Justice, yet despised the firstborn Malone.  It was a paradox that would haunt him for years.

III.iii

           Hannah Elizabeth was missing.  It was two days after her 10th birthday and the day before Marsh’s.  She had been playing in the sandbox with Marsh when a rabbit had grabbed Marsh’s attention and he took off in chase, wishing he had the .22 rifle he knew he would get as a present tomorrow.

Every Malone boy got a toy gun at birth, a pellet gun at the age of five, and his first real gun, a .22 rifle, on his 10th birthday.  Once he had received his gift at the noon party, his father would spend a good hour teaching him how to handle, clean, load, unload, and, finally, shoot his gun.  Then father and son would go hunting until the sun went down.   On this excursion of male bonding, Jared would give his son the same talk his father had given him on his 10th birthday.   Over the course of the afternoon, he would explain how the younger Malone was now a young man and that he had been given a proud legacy which it was his duty to preserve and protect.  Marsh would be told how the government had stolen his family’s land and that the laws of society were designed to benefit Jews and mud people, not real Americans like the Malones.  And it would be explained how it was the mission of his young life to counteract to the best of his ability every attempt to bring down the superior white race.  Finally, he would be given the mantra of the Malone clan in an almost ceremonial procedure that included him kneeling before his father and repeating the words he already knew so well, but would say for the first time aloud tomorrow.  “I live and I would die for God, family, and race.”  Marsh couldn’t wait for this twisted Malone version of a bar mitzvah.

But, for now, he was in deep trouble.  He had not been directly told to keep an eye on Hannah, but it was always understood that she was less capable and therefore needed the protection of the boys.  That would have been understood in the compound even if she wasn’t blind.  She was a girl, and that was enough to determine her need for protection.

“Damn it, son.  You’re gonna’ be ten tomorrow and not even man enough to watch out for your cousin.  I don’t know if you’re ready for a rifle or not.”

“I am, papa.  I really am.  I was only gone for a sec.  She jes’ scooted out like a greased pig.  You know how she is, papa.”

“I know, boy,” Jared eased up on his son.  He was determined to find the little girl and protect all Malones, but Marsh was much more valuable to him, and he couldn’t quite find it in his heart to be too hard on the boy for losing a little blind girl.

Jared gathered the men on his front porch.  Mary Malone was close to hysterical with worry.  Aaron was worried, too, but never showed too much concern for Hannah in front of Jared.  He knew what his older brother thought of his imperfect daughter.  Jared had even hinted to Aaron several years back that he ought to consider having Hannah’s tubes tied when she got older, “so she won’t have more blind babies.”  Aaron inwardly refused and vowed to never do as his brother suggested, but he couldn’t quite defy Jared to his face.

The men, including Clete Camden, Jr, who was now 20 and considered a full-fledged man of the compound, and Justice, who was 14, set off to methodically sweep the 48-acre compound.   It stirred Marsh’s blood that he was not allowed to go along.  In 24 measly hours, he would have passed the first mark of Malone manhood and probably would have been one of the search party.  But, partly because of his current status as being officially still nine years old, and partly because he was held responsible for this crisis, he was left at the cabins with the women and the growing cadre of smaller children which had begun to populate the Malone village.

A thorough search of the 48 acres, including each of the 12 buildings, took the party of eight an hour.  This was a procedure they practiced routinely so they could determine any breach of security within a short time.  It was done quickly, but without any chance of an oversight.  Hannah had truly disappeared, a seemingly impossible task, and in a relatively short time — it had only been an hour and 25 minutes since her absence was discovered.  It would have been difficult for a sighted child of 10 to get on the other side of an almost impenetrable fence that was quite a distance from the circle of cabins in such a short period.  How Hannah had accomplished it was beyond Jared Malone’s comprehension.  The only other possibility was that she had waded into the marsh and drowned, an option they had each thought of but no one had yet voiced.

The men met back at Jared’s front porch within minutes of each other with the same report: no sign of her.  They fancied themselves all expert trackers, so this was an exasperating situation.  After they had discussed their options, or lack thereof, for almost 15 minutes, Justice finally spoke up in a quivering voice.  As the youngest, he was not expected to even voice an opinion.  His words now grabbed the others’ attention.

“I . . . I think I might have an idea.”

“What?  What did you say, boy?”  Jared asked in a rough manner.

Justice swallowed hard and spoke with a little more conviction.  “I said, I think I might have an idea.  About how Hannah might have gotten out, I mean.”

Jared’s eyes narrowed to slits.  He lived in constant suspicion of everyone and everything.  “Out with it, boy.”

Justice looked at the ground.  “There’s a spot.  In the fence.”  Justice gulped hard and labored on.  “It’s near the, . . . near the east watchtower.  You can get out if you know where it is.”

Jared Malone walked slowly to his son as the rest of the men held their collective breath.  They had all seen his temper and waited for the firestorm certain to land on the boy’s head.  But, Jared spoke with a quiet and controlled voice, almost a whisper.  “And how do you know about this ’spot’ in the fence?”

“ I . . . I just know, that’s all.”

Jared stared at the top of his son’s head for a long tense moment.  “Take me to the spot.”

“Yes, sir,” the reply was inaudible, but no one questioned Justice’s answer.

“The rest of you men get the four-wheelers and start searching outside the compound.  Two teams.  One leaves from the south gate and sweeps around to the east side.  The other head to the north side and sweep east.  Take the dogs and be sure to check the marsh.  We’ll meet up at the east wall by the watchtower.”

“S-s-sir?”

Jared turned around slowly.  “This had better be good, boy.”

“The spot.  It’s too small for you to get through.  You’d be stuck inside the fence, sir.”

Jared quickly calculated the amount of time it would take to enlarge the hole in the hard timbers fencing in the east side and considered the increased effort in patching up the hole.  He hesitated, then decided.  “I’ll go with the south team.  Justice, you go through your spot.”  He said the words “your spot” with such venom that Justice knew he was going to pay dearly for his secret once Hannah was found.

It was about half a mile from the east side of the Malone compound to the Atlantic Ocean.  The first stretch of land was a marsh little visited by any other than biologists and the most hardcore fishermen.  Once you crossed Ocean Road, the ground was more solid and a narrow residential community was all that separated you from the dunes spotted with wild sea oats and occasionally loggerhead turtle tracks.  The marsh was federal property and it was against the law for anyone to have a gun on this tract of land.  All the men knew this.  And all knew better than to ask about leaving their guns at home.  Jared cared little for the law and would probably shoot a federal agent before handing over his weapon.  But this particular marsh was rarely visited by anyone.  On the off chance that a St. Simons police cruiser was poking down Ocean Road, the men were quite capable of evading an officer’s eyes.  Jared had grown up as a regular marsh rat and had trained the men to be the same, such that they would be aware of any other human long before the other human was aware of them.

Justice paused at the small hole in the fence.  He didn’t use his secret passageway to freedom often — he mostly just felt better knowing it was there — but when he did, he always left his gun leaning against the fence inside the compound.  He didn’t relish getting into trouble and hated his gun besides.  He often wondered why his father measured manhood by an instrument of killing.  They shot wildlife for food and even while eating the deer or rabbit Justice could only think of how one-sided the fight for life had been.  He secretly believed that if his father were a real man, he’d catch the rabbit by hand and even the playing field a little.    But this time, Justice knew his father would ask about his gun once they met up outside, and he was already in for the tanning of his life.

Justice scooted the gun through, then flattened out on his belly to inch through the hole.  Within the year he would have had to enlarge it to keep up with his own growth, but he knew plans for that project were futile now.  The hole was almost directly underneath the east watchtower.  Jared had taught his son too well.  Justice knew that the men in the tower always looked out, away, beyond.  By making his escape 30 feet directly beneath them, they never saw a thing.

Justice didn’t really care for the marsh much.  It seemed so big once you were in it and he felt so alone here.  From the watchtower, there was a clear view of the grass and water, the high spots and low spots.  Justice could easily determine a trail to Ocean Road that would only include a little wading.  But, from the ground, the marsh stretched out like a wet grassy puzzle.  Once he had snuck out at night and about wet his pants at the sight of marsh grasses swaying in the moonlight.   What drew him to this place was a mixture of variations on the same theme.  He was away from his father.  He was on property that any other citizen could be on if he or she so chose.  He was able to look in the direction of Brunswick and Savannah and Atlanta and, though not seeing them, not see a wall either.  That one short wiggle on the ground brought him freedom.  His father talked a lot about freedom.  Justice always felt it ironic that his father was the barrier which kept that feeling of liberty so elusive, more so even than the fence.

On the few rare occasions when Justice had dared to use his secret door to freedom during the day, he usually stayed close by the fence, hating it and somehow needing it at the same time.  It was his prison and his shield of security.  Everything beyond it was unknown and a little scary.   Twice he had dared to venture as far as the shore.  Both times had been of equal magnitude.  The persistent waves and salty air were like the sound and taste of a kind of freedom with no borders at all.  He could just barely make out the northern tip of Jekyll Island on his right, but other than that there was only ocean, an ocean that seemed to go on forever.  He had paid enough attention when his mom gave him geography lessons to know that if he could see far enough and if his vision was subject to gravity then he would see the western coast of Africa.  But it was the idea of infinity that was real to him as he watched the sea meet nothing but sky in the distance.  He had been lucky enough to spot a school of porpoises on one of his two trips to the ocean.  He had seen them before in Postell Creek, the north border of their property.  They often swam up the tidal rivers, but seeing them in the ocean was different somehow.  They seemed to be playing as they leapt from the surf effortlessly and then slid back into the depths.  Justice had remembered feeling jealous of the way they so easily accepted their freedom.

The day Hannah disappeared was a beautiful day in early April and Justice wished that he was out on his own under other circumstances.  He couldn’t even enjoy his freedom today, proving it was his father and not the fence that kept him imprisoned.  This trip out of the compound was a sweet sorrow, a blessed excursion through the wetlands and a mournful goodbye.

Why had he told Hannah about the hole in the fence?  And how had she gotten to it so quickly?  He had known she would never tell, but now she had inadvertently caused the truth to come out.  He wouldn’t blame her for this; finding fault wouldn’t erase the tape of the past few hours.  He hadn’t really needed to tell his father about the fence.  The men would have begun a search outside the compound eventually anyway, and he knew his father wouldn’t stop until he had discovered just how she could escape the fence and marsh that held them all in so well.  He also knew that a secret his father uncovered would bring twice the fury as a secret he willingly told.

Justice moved through the marsh with his thoughts on his father, but his awareness on the water.  He needed to find Hannah.  It was the only possible way to reduce his punishment at this point.  And, besides, he loved his cousin dearly.  He was worried about what his father would do to him later.  But, he was much more worried about Hannah.  Finding a safe walkway through the marsh was difficult enough for him, a trained young man with all of his faculties.  He knew one thing about Hannah, however, that his father didn’t.  Blind though she was, she was also extremely savvy and capable.

Justice moved swiftly and methodically for twenty minutes.  He didn’t call out for Hannah.   He knew that if she was out here, he could find her.  He got to Ocean Road and wondered if it was possible that she could have gotten this far.  He crossed the street knowing that Hannah would not have known to listen for cars and the thought made him shudder.   A small park separated the houses on his left from those on his right.  To his right, in the middle of a development of rental cottages, was the old Coast Guard station.   The park was the route he had taken to the ocean on his other trips and the most direct, although he was uncertain just how directly Hannah would have traveled.  The land had changed when he crossed the road and the park was heavy with live-oaks, the Spanish moss draping off of them like it had rained on God’s canvas before the paint was dry.  He got momentarily detained by a copperhead in his path and wondered if Hannah was capable enough to avoid a poisonous snake she couldn’t see or hear.   But his concern about this ended quickly when he saw the back of her dress.  She was standing, the front half of her hidden by a large oak, and she appeared to be playing a hand-clapping game with an imaginary friend.   When Justice got within 20 feet of her, he propped his gun against a sego palm and called her name so she wouldn’t be frightened about someone approaching her.

“Hannah Elizabeth!  It’s Justice.”

“Justice!   I knew you’d come.”

“Hannah, what are you doing?  You’ve got the whole com –”

“This is my new friend, Rose.”

Justice stopped, stunned, speechless.  The first thing that struck him about Rose was the last thing Hannah could possibly have noticed.  She was black.  The second thing that struck him about Rose was that she was as beautiful as her name.  No, more beautiful.  By any name, she would have been as beautiful and perfect as a rose.  The third thing that struck him about Rose was that she carried a copy of Gone With The Wind under her arm.  It struck him as odd because it was the only novel his father had ever read.

“Hi.  I’m Rose.  You must be Justice.  Hannah has told me about you.”  Rose stuck her hand out to shake.

Justice closed his gaping mouth and looked at her hand.  It was slender and graceful.   He reached out slowly and took her hand in his.  Hers was the softest skin he had ever felt.

“Hannah didn’t tell me you were so quiet.”

“I, . . . uh, Hannah, we better go.  Everybody’s looking for you.  We’re both in a heap of trouble.”

“I just wanted to see the rest of the world, Justice.  You’re not mad at me, are ya’?”

“No, I’m not mad.  I don’t blame you a bit.  But, we really gotta’ scoot now.”

“It was nice to meet you, Justice.  I always hoped there would be justice somewhere in the world, and now I’ve found you.” Rose smiled.

Justice smiled quickly, then grabbed Hannah’s hand and led her away as she hollered her goodbyes to Rose.  Justice fought the incredible impulse to turn around.  He felt as if he had never seen beauty until today.

Rose watched the pair until they disappeared across the road and into the marsh, a strange place to be walking she thought.  The boy, Justice, somehow compelled her.  Was that a gun she saw him stoop to pick up?  He was just a boy of 14 or so, and she was 19, a sophomore at Spelman.   Yet, she felt an odd urge to call him back, to be in his presence again.  She felt almost embarrassed at her internal reaction to this boy, and a white boy at that.  Surely, she must have been reading too long in the sun.  Maybe it was her subconscious urging her to put down her book and interact with people, like her mother was always harping.  Whatever it was, it didn’t seem to leave for hours, and over the years she occasionally would think of the boy by the seashore.

© Deborah E. Moore – 2011

This is Installment Eight of the novel Rose and Justice. It includes Chapters II.xi and II.xii. It is 3,503 words long. As installments are posted, links for each will be added under the tab labeled “The Novel” at the top of this page. Enjoy!

II.xi

Rose Jackson sat in the low crook of the live-oak where she did all her best reading.  She was only five and yet was happiest alone with a good book.  Phillip had become concerned with her in the last year.  She had withdrawn.  She was not moody or depressed — she always had her ready smile for him every time he saw her — she had just moved inside herself, somewhere so deep that Phillip couldn’t reach it.  She was a child like no other he had ever known — no, she was a person like no other he had ever known.  He often felt that she was older than him.  She saw the world in a way he thought he could only dream of.  In one way, Phillip felt he was losing his daughter.  In another, he felt he could be closer to her than ever if he listened to her every word as Plato had listened to Socrates.

Rose was reading Keats.  Her five-year-old mind didn’t quite understand all he was trying to say, but something in her spirit was drawn to his rhythms and his words.  Her reading choices were always an interesting mix of Romantic poets and Nancy Drew.  She was as likely to bring Thomas Hardy home from the library as she was the Hardy Boys.  She had outgrown Dr. Seuss by three and now bounced between Charlotte’s Web and The Canterbury Tales with an ease that indicated an intelligence beyond her parents’ ability to recognize it.  Marabelle was half-convinced there had been a switch in the maternity ward.  The only thing she knew about Keats was that his first name was John.  And if you had asked Phillip if he knew Keats, he would probably look pensive, scratch his chin, and say, “Didn’t he play shortstop for the Dodgers?”  But Rose had asked for a library card for her fifth birthday.  Marabelle had been only shocked; Phillip was downright speechless.  He prodded her for other hints — the latest doll, an Easy-Bake oven — but she merely replied that she “would like a library card, please.”  Phillip and Marabelle had purchased a few toys and items of clothing, mostly to appease themselves, but Rose didn’t light up until her father handed her a library card in her own name.

Phillip took her to the library every Saturday morning before their weekly lunch together at a fast-food restaurant.  She would not read her newly checked-out books over lunch.  That would be rude and, even at five, Rose was anything but rude.  But she would take them in the restaurant and stroke the covers like they were made of silk while eating her hamburger.  Phillip knew that she couldn’t wait to get home and climb up in “her” tree with her latest literary acquisition, so he ate his burger quickly and drove her back to the house.  He would often sit in the den and watch her perched in the live-oak, wondering what else she was learning and how much he still didn’t know about her.

Rose concentrated on the page as she always did.  From the time she had learned to read, she had been able to focus completely on the words in front of her without even seeming to be aware of any distractions around her.  She was like a little adult in her ability to still herself — no, she was much better at it than most adults.  She almost seemed able to control what her brain acknowledged, not even processing that which she wished to ignore at the moment, yet allowing those things she needed to be aware of to enter her gray matter.  That was how she was able to read at a level of deep understanding and still hear her mother call her when supper was ready.

But as she sat in the tree on this particular Keats afternoon, she was startled by a sudden lack of concentration.  The words slowly became fuzzy.  At first, she was not even aware that she had drifted away from the poem.  Her eyes steadily raised until she was staring over the book at the Magnolia tree in the far corner of the yard.  She felt something, she couldn’t say what, but she knew that a subtle change had just come over her.  The poetry became unimportant in that instant.  Deep within her a stirring began, a movement in her soul that somehow told her that from this moment her life would be about something different than it had been about before.  She sensed a presence, a feeling that she wasn’t alone.  She had no idea what it all meant, but she just knew something had changed.  She knew that this something was elusive, but she also knew that she had to find what it was even if it took her whole life.

II.xii

Jared Malone sat on the top step of the wooden porch surrounding his cabin.  He stared at the gray Spanish moss that hung from the live oaks surrounding the cabin clearing, but didn’t really see it.  Instead he saw the ocean.  That mental image was the handiest for him if he wanted to avoid what was immediately around him.  If he had been paying conscious attention to the screaming coming from inside his house, he would have walked down the path to the tower almost a quarter mile away, climbed it, and actually seen the ocean.  But he had long ago learned to block out what he didn’t want to be aware of, and so the screams existed only on the dark and hazy fringes of his consciousness.  In his trance of imaginary water, he thought about surprisingly mundane things — checking the fence on the north side of the property, getting with Tom about the night watch schedule, what was needed on the weekly supply trip.  He did not think about his child being born.  Nor did he think about the agony that Melinda was enduring as she attempted to give birth without the benefit of drugs.   Betty Vale, acting as midwife, had given her two large shots of Jack Daniels.  It might as well have been water — at least then she wouldn’t be so damn thirsty.

Jared took a long swig from the half-empty bottle of Jack he held loosely in his right hand.  It was the same bottle the midwife had confiscated moments before for “medicinal purposes.”  The bottle he now held was the closest thing he had to a connection with his wife’s birthing experience.  It was the closest he wanted to get.  Jared held ideas in his mind that had nothing to do with the times in which he lived; they were direct descendents of the ideas held for Malones for at least five generations.  Like the land he owned outright since his father passed away the previous spring, Jared’s thought processes were his birthright, his inheritance, and the legacy he would pass on to his own son.  It was sure to be a boy.  Malones always had boys, and Jared was the manliest of the Malones.  Incorrectly assuming that the gender of his child was directly attributed to his own level of testosterone, Jared didn’t even consider the possibility of a girl.  As he took another swig of bourbon, his trance broke and he heard Melinda clearly for the first time.  He stood slowly and arched his back in a stretch then ambled away from the cabin down the tower path.  In his mind, having babies was as much women’s work as cleaning toilets, and he wanted nothing to do with it.  In fact, he now felt a little odd at having been that close to the process as long as he had.

The path to the tower was famous in the Malone family history.  It had been a deer path centuries before, then used by the Creek tribesmen who used to roam freely in Southern Georgia.  After that, the Spanish had traveled it until James Oglethorpe, the British general central to so much of Georgia’s history, had fought for and won the path and the Island with the help of British regulars and Scottish Highlanders from Darien.  After the Revolutionary War, great plantations sprung up on the island and planters on horseback used the path to travel between Kelvin Grove and New St. Clair.  There had never been any attempt made to drastically alter it.  Jared’s father had put boards across the low spot where marsh water tended to back up, but other than that the only changes to the path were created slowly through use.  This path was the oldest on the property and most well preserved.  Other paths had been carved out over the years and access roads had been cleared and graveled, but the tower path was almost sacred.  Jared would never allow it to be tampered with.

Every time Jared walked the path, at least twice a day, he thought of his father and his grandfather.  It was along this path that the adolescent Jared heard the stories of his family heritage, and it was on this path that he had followed his male ancestors, both living and dead, a million times to fish for mullet and kingfish in the tidal rivers and marshes that were the offspring of the Atlantic.  It was here that he had walked, .22 rifle over his shoulder, in search of the rabbit, squirrel and deer which would feed his family.  The west side of the compound was mostly salt marsh.  Along this part of the path, Jared had spent his life among herons and egrets, competing with them for shrimp and oysters.

His family had escaped the Scottish Clan Wars and come to the new world generations before.  His distant ancestor, a grandfather with about eight greats in front of the title, MacDonald Malone, had been a corporal with the Darien Highland Independent Company, the same Scotsmen who came to the aid of the British and helped drive out the Spanish at the Battle of Bloody Marsh.  MacDonald Malone returned to Darien and raised up good little Scotsmen for several generations.

Jared’s great-great-great grandfather, Marshall Malone, was a gambler of considerable talent.  During a high stakes poker game in Brunswick, he had won 250 acres of Kelvin Grove off an intoxicated James Postell.  The planter was not typically much of a drinker, preferring to collect seashells instead, and considered the rare inebriated gambling episode the greatest shame of his life.  But, he was a gentleman and determined to make good on the bet he could have easily covered with cash.  He promptly deeded to Marshall Malone the 250 most useless acres of his 1600-acre plantation, mostly salt marsh, almost uninhabitable.

With the stubbornness of a good Scotsman, Marshall carved out an existence on what few high spots he could find on the land.   He would be damned before he admitted he really hadn’t won much off the bet.   The great irony of the situation was that the land he had won included the site of the Battle of Bloody Marsh, the same conflict his earlier ancestor had fought in so bravely.  It was also the twist that would set the Malone family on a path of hatred and distrust.

Marshall Malone had been raised with the stories of how his family had owned fertile and abundant land in Scotland that had been stolen from them.  The legacy he received was a love of land second to no other love in his life, not even the half-Creek woman he had married.  Maris was a gentle woman who had the native appreciation of land, an appreciation that could not conceive of the concept of land ownership.  The land was not to be owned.  It was to be used, replenished, cherished, and protected.  Both of them loved the land, but from different ends of a spectrum.  Maris wished to give to it and receive from it.  Marshall wanted to possess it and guard it.  And this he taught to his son, who felt it deeper and taught it to his son, who felt it deeper and taught it to his son.  Jared’s father had just taken full possession of the land after the early and sudden death of Jared’s grandfather when the government condemned and purchased just over 200 acres of the Malone family property for an historical battle site park and protected wetland reserve.  They had been paid well, but no amount of money could ease the pain and anger that began to blossom like a cancer in the Malone family tree.

With the money from the federal government, Jared’s father built a twelve-foot wall around the remaining 48 acres in the areas where the marsh didn’t make it impossible.   And started buying guns.   Jared was the fifth generation of Malone men to occupy the 48 acres of loblolly pines, saw palmetto, live oaks, and salt marsh, land not really good for anything except owning.  Once a contractor had approached Jared about selling, but Jared had simply escorted the overdressed man off his property, ready to do so at the point of a gun if necessary.

By the time Jared was eighteen, he had inherited a burning hatred of the government and just about everyone and everything that did not conform to his view of the way the world should be.  He began to accumulate a small group of friends that more closely resembled a band of followers.  As each one joined Jared’s circle, a cabin was built on the property.  Melinda and the other wives came from the same pool of like-minded people and accepted completely the men’s total dominion over their lives, thoughts, and actions.  That was the only way it could have worked.

When Jared was 24, his father died the same kind of unexpected early death of his father before him.  By the time Jared turned 25, there were 10 people living on his compound.  Bob Vale and his wife, Betty, lived in the cabin closest to Jared’s.  In a clearing 200 yards away were two more cabins where the others lived — Jared’s brother, Aaron, and his wife, Mary; and Clete Camden, his wife, Cherise, and their four-year-old son, Clete, Jr..  Several storage buildings completed the small village, including what could only accurately be called an armory, where guns and ammunition were kept, inventoried, and regularly added to.

The men took turns hunting game, fishing the marshes and seining for shrimp, digging wells, maintaining the buildings, and standing guard against some imagined enemy.  The women sewed, cooked, cleaned, chopped wood, bore children, and attended to every personal need of the men.  They grew everything they ate, kept 4 – 5 cows at any given time for milk and meat, raised pigs and chickens, and managed to keep a six-month supply of meat in the smokehouse.  They lived in a prison of time, not progressing with the rest of the world and, in fact, completely resistant to anything that resembled a break with Malone tradition.

Once or twice a month, Jared and the other men would go into Brunswick and stock up on essentials they couldn’t grow — flour, sugar, corn meal.  They could have gotten everything they needed on the island, but Jared was paranoid about island residents knowing anything about him or his compound.  He insisted on going to Brunswick and feeling the comparative anonymity brought on by crossing the Frederica River.  The money for these few supplies always came from Jared’s pocket.  He never had a lot on him, but always enough, and no one questioned where this seemingly endless supply came from.    When each new member joined Jared’s little group, they added whatever money they had to the pot.   Beyond the supplies, the only expenditures were for guns, ammunition, and occasionally a johnboat or four-wheeler.  Jared was the undisputed leader and in control of all assets and decisions.  By 27, as he waited for his first child to be born, Jared was the master of a small empire of unknown worth.

He reached the end of the path and climbed the wooden ladder to the platform 25 feet in the air.  His brother, Aaron, was standing watch.  Aaron had his back to the ladder, automatic rifle over his shoulder and a pistol in his holster, as Jared climbed as silently as a cat onto the platform.  He came up right behind Aaron, stood almost breathing on his neck for a long moment, then grabbed Aaron’s left arm and wrenched it behind his back while reaching around to pin his right arm to his chest, all in about a half second.

“What the fuck?”  Aaron struggled, then turned as Jared released his grip.  “Goddamn it, Jared.  You scared the shit out of me.”

“I’m kinda’ worried about you, little brother, lettin’ somebody sneak up on you like that.  It may not always be your brother doin’ the sneakin’.  You’d do well to remember that.”

Aaron rubbed his arm and nodded his agreement.  Jared was rarely disputed.  He had the natural air of command that all leaders possess, but his 6’5” frame and 240 pounds didn’t hurt either.

“I didn’t mean to cuss you, Jared.”  Aaron always seemed to be apologizing for what Jared did to him.

“Forget it.  What are you seein’ out there today?”  Jared grabbed the binoculars and focused on the ocean.  The tower sat on the extreme east side of the property.  You would have had to cross a salt marsh, Ocean Road, and a small residential area before reaching East Beach and the Atlantic, but from the tower there was a clear view of the ocean.

“Not much.  Coast Guard cruiser’s been by three times.  Wonder what they’re up to?”

“Probably lookin’ for people exercisin’ their constitutional rights so they can arrest them.”  Jared was not making a joke.  He said this with the seriousness of conviction.

Aaron was quiet while Jared scanned the water and then broke the silence with the news he had heard in town.  “There was a girl in Brunswick got raped by a nigger last night.”

Jared slowly put down the binoculars and stared at the sea with a gaze of steel.  It was his firm belief that the complete degradation of the south had begun when the Emancipation Proclamation went into effect.  The government was his prime target mostly because it seemed so willing to aid and abet, in his mind, the rise of inferior races, like the Blacks and the Jews.  Whether he heard of a black person rising in society or confirming what he was convinced was their true character, his blood would boil with five generations of anger.  “Where’d you hear this?”

“I saw Jack McCafferty at the post office when I went to get the mail this mornin’.  He told me about it.”

“They know which nigger it was?”

“Nah.  The girl just said he was black.  You know they all fucking look the same.  Especially at night.”

“Goddamn it!  This whole damn country is being run over by a bunch of mud people who don’t even belong here.  This is our land, god damn it, and I’ll be damned if I let them rape our women, take our land, and then live off our tax money.”  Jared paused to breathe heavily in anger for a moment then spoke again.  He didn’t normally get involved in anything that took place outside the compound, but prided his own willingness to engage in vigilante justice when he felt it was required.   “You get a message to Jim McCafferty.  You tell him to let us know anything he knows about this and we’ll take care of it.”

“I’ll do it today, Jared.”

Jared turned to leave.  As he stepped on the first rung of the ladder, Aaron asked, as an afterthought, “How’s everything going with Melinda and the baby?”

“She was havin’ him when I came here.  I guess I’ll head back and see if she’s done.”

By the time Jared returned to the cabin, such a rage had stirred in him that at first he almost didn’t notice the way the screams from the cabin had changed.  Instead of Melinda’s clawing, desperate yelps, there was a weak and piercing cry of arrival.  Jared entered the cabin and walked into the back room without knocking and with the same assumption with which he entered any space.  The midwife was cleaning up blood and mucus.  Melinda sat up on the bed trying to get her newborn to nurse for the first time.  She looked like she had been beaten.

Jared walked to the edge of the bed and peered over into the bundle in Melinda’s arms.  “Boy?”

Melinda smiled.  “It’s a boy.  This is your son, Jared.”  She almost said the name she had picked out, Marshall Jared Malone, but something stopped her.

Jared nodded, then turned and walked away.  At the door, he turned back just long enough to say, “His name is Justice.”

© Deborah E. Moore – 2011

This is Installment Seven of the novel Rose and Justice.   It includes Chapters II.ix and II.x.  It is 4,869 words long.  As installments are posted, links for each will be added under the tab labeled “The Novel” at the top of this page.   Enjoy!

II.ix

Rose Jackson stuck her finger in the icing on the back edge of her birthday cake, then tried to smooth it down so her mother wouldn’t notice the indentation where the missing icing had once been.  Unfortunately, her efforts only seemed to make the situation worse.  She employed the index fingers of both hands and proceeded in pulling away an entire section of icing, leaving the chocolate cake exposed.  The deep brown of the cake looked even darker than it actually was in contrast with the yellow icing.  She crammed the newly-freed icing in her mouth with one hand and tried to fix the problem with the other.  It was not working.

“Rosalind Kate Jackson!  Get away from that!  How many times have I told you to stay away from that cake until your friends get here!  Now, what are your friends going to think when they see a birthday cake with a big old hole in the back end?  Go wash your face and hands, and don’t touch anything!  This entire house will be a sticky mess if you touch one thing between here and the bathroom!”  Marabelle shoo-ed her daughter away and did her best to salvage the confectionary Mickey Mouse.

Rose scooted out of the dining room with her hands held awkwardly up in front of her, a sign to her mother that she would touch nothing until she had washed her hands.  Her face had that same look she always wore, the one that always turned Phillip to mush, and the one Marabelle purposely ignored when she really wanted to discipline her daughter.  It was a look that could soften the hardest heart.  Phillip loved that look almost as much as he loved his daughter.  That is why Marabelle was the disciplinarian when it came to Rose.  In order to do right by her daughter, she had to make certain she didn’t look at her face when she really needed to get a point across.  The problem was that Rose sometimes felt her mother didn’t really see her.  Marabelle loved her daughter every bit as much as Phillip did, but in order to do what needed to be done out of love, she would create a gulf between them that would last for years.

The look was not the typical innocent face every guilty child innately puts on when caught red-handed.  Nor was it the defiant look that children used who didn’t have a mother like Marabelle Jackson.  It was a look of such simple confidence and acknowledgement that it took the person on the receiving end completely off-guard, even if that person had seen it a million times.  It was a look that said, “I’m listening.  I know I did wrong.  Tell me how to do it right, and give me the punishment I deserve; I can take it.”  When the look was combined with Rose’s big round brown eyes, perpetual contented smile, and the funny way she would always cock her head a little to the left as if to hear better, it was downright deadly.  Phillip loved it and was scared by it all at the same time.  He couldn’t imagine any 13-year old boy being able to resist it.

Rose entered the bathroom and stepped up on the stool she used to be able to reach the sink.  She briefly wondered how she would be able to turn on the water without touching anything.  She thought the conundrum through, then leaned forward and squeezed the cold water knob between her wrists, trying to turn it by moving her arms in opposite directions.  Someone much bigger than her had obviously used the faucet last because the knob was turned tightly off and wouldn’t budge.  She tried it a few times with no success until she heard her father’s voice behind her.

“Whatcha’ doin’, my little Rose?”

“Tryin’ to turn on the water so I can wash my hands.”

“Why are you doing it that way?”

“Because Mama said I wasn’t to touch nothing until I washed my hands.”

Phillip bit his bottom lip to keep himself from laughing, then said, “Anything.  I wasn’t to touch anything.”

Rose turned around.  “Why?  Did you stick your finger in the icing, too?”

Phillip burst out laughing.  “No, I didn’t stick my finger in the icing.”  He turned the water on.  “But, it certainly looks like you did, little Miss Sticky Hands.”  He leaned over his daughter and washed her hands the way he had taught her how, by soaping up his own hands and rubbing them on Rose’s.  They usually ended up doing more giggling than washing, but the job would essentially get done.  When they were finished rinsing, Phillip grabbed the towel and dried Rose’s hands, finger by finger.

“This is the finger you never point.  This is the finger you get in trouble for.  This is the finger somebody will put a ring on, one day way off in the future.  This is the baby finger, to remind you that you will always be daddy’s baby.  And this is your thumb, . . .”

Rose interrupted.  “The finger that’s not a finger, it’s your thumb!”

“That’s right, my little smart girl.  Are you ready for your party?”

Rose smiled.  “Yes. I been ready for the party all week!”

“I’ve been ready for the party all week.”

“You, too?  It’s gonna’ be lots of fun!”

“You are something else, you know that, girl?  Come here and give daddy a hug.  You’ll never get too old to give your daddy a hug, no matter how many birthdays you have.”  Rose squeezed her father’s neck and held on for a long moment, like she always did, which made Phillip’s heart grow bigger every time.  Phillip stood up straight, lifting Rose up in his arms as he did so.

“Daddy?”

“Yes, baby?”

“Will I ever have too many birthdays for you to pick me up?”

“You most definitely will.  But then you’ll be picking up your own little ones, so you won’t miss it so much.”

Rose thought about this a minute.  “Well, you can pick up my little ones too so you won’t miss it so much either, o.k.?”

Phillip grinned broadly.  “There’s nothing I’d love better, baby.  But, that’s a long way off.  I’ve still got a few more years of picking you up, Rosebud.  You haven’t blossomed yet.”

“It could happen soon though,” Rose spoke seriously, like a pint-sized CEO discussing a merger.  “I’m five, you know.”

Phillip gave a feigned start of surprise.  “Five?  When did you turn five?”

“At 7:35 this morning.”

Phillip walked down the hall, tickling the love he carried in his arms.  “That’s right.  At 7:35 this morning.  Not 7:32.  Not 7:33.”

“Not 7:34!”  Rose interjected, then they said it together, “7:35, on the dot!”

As they entered the living room, Phillip prayed he could be there for the next 50 birthday parties Rose would have.

II.x

            Chris Columbus stared across his desk at the two beings.  Malcolm was well known to him, and just about everyone else in this place.  He was a troublemaker and due to be sent back any day now.  In fact, when the two had first entered his office, Chris thought for certain that it was Malcolm’s time.  He had begun to smile at the prospect of sending Malcolm back to learn the lessons he still so desperately needed to learn.  As the official registrar of return trips at the return tunnel, Chris had seen all kinds of Beings return for many reasons, both voluntary and involuntary, and he knew Malcolm was destined for a few more earth sessions.  It wasn’t that he didn’t like Malcolm; everyone settled eternally in this place was accepting of everyone else.  He just knew that Malcolm would be ever so much more enjoyable after he learned a few more lessons.

But it was the other being who was requesting a return — a being still not even fully awakened.  Chris shook his head in frustrated hesitation.  “I must tell you that there are great risks in returning before you have fully awakened.  In fact, it could be downright disastrous.  I’m not sure I want that on my record.”

Romeo leaned forward.  “Look, all I know is that I have a true love and I have spent several miserable and futile incarnations looking for her.  In fact, I have been looking for almost 400 earth-years.  She is on the earth-plane now, and I must get there.  Do you want me to wait another 400 years?”

Chris paused, then settled forward.  “No, but that’s not my call anyway.  This is completely your decision.  I just have to make certain that I have informed you of the problem you could, and most likely will, encounter along the way.”

“Well, what are they?”

Chris let out a big rush of air.  “Well, when you return before you have completely awakened, you are almost certain to regress in your journey.  In other words, you will have to relearn lessons you have already learned.  You will not be as advanced in the understanding of the Light as you are now.  In fact,” Chris leaned further over the desk, “you might be downright ignorant.”

Romeo glanced at Malcolm, then turned back to Chris.  “Love conquers all, right?  I’ll take that chance.  What else?”

“Well,” Chris continued, “you are increasing the chance considerably that you will be born into a family you do not know.  Ideally, returners are placed with those whom they have known in a former incarnation.  Any rush job carries a great possibility that you will be placed with people you have never known before; in fact, you might be placed with beings who are on their first go-around, and that can be very scary.”

Romeo thought this over for a minute, then had an inspiration.  “Are you the one who registered Juliet’s return?”

Chris paused.  “I’m really not at liberty to discuss anyone’s return trip with you.  It’s against our most basic rule — the rule not to interfere with destiny.”

“But,” Romeo became excited, “if you know, you can tell me how to reach her.  Don’t you see?  You are the one who can take me back to my true love.  Doesn’t that mean anything to you?  Malcolm says that true loves are destined to meet again.  If that’s so, then won’t you be fulfilling our destiny to bring us back together?”

“It’s not quite that simple.  You see, your destiny is to learn all the lessons you need to learn on the way to getting back to each other.  Yes, you will eventually be together, but if I were to rush or hinder that in any way, then I would be playing with your destiny.  That would get ME sent back, and I can tell you right now, I’m not going there again.”  In his complete commitment to not interfere with destiny, Chris would not tell Romeo about the alchemist, though he was fully aware of the powers to be tapped in the Mystic Wood.

Malcolm was getting impatient with this runaround.  It was part of his plan for Romeo to get sent back as soon as possible, before Hal even knew he was Here.   He had to interject.  “Look, the boy is obviously desperate.  Just send him back.  Anywhere, it doesn’t matter.”

“The east,” Romeo jumped in.  “It must be the east.”

“The east?”  Chris smiled.  “My dear boy, the east is eternal, as is the west.  No matter how far east you get, you can still go east.  What exactly is that supposed to mean to me?”

Romeo thought.  “Well, where did you send Juliet?  Can’t you even give me that much?  Can’t you just put me close to her?”

“You do not yet understand the power of those who are fully awakened.  I am able to completely clear from my mind any information that might break a rule of the Light.  Do I know where Juliet was sent?  Of course.  But since I am determined to not interfere with destiny, then my mind will completely block that information from my consciousness.  So, although I know the information, I am completely incapable of sharing it with you because of the decisions I have made.  Do you understand?”

“Not really,” Romeo looked confused.

“It merely means,” Malcolm said, “that he chooses not to help you.  So, I guess it’s up to me.”

Chris gave Malcolm a look of warning.  “Be careful.  You’re not exactly secure in your position here, Malcolm.”

Malcolm shot Chris a go-to-hell look, even though they both knew it didn’t exist.  “She said the east.  So, if it were me, I would go as far east as I could.  There is a place on earth known as the Far East.  That is where I would go.  I believe the most influential city in that Far East land is Tokyo; that would be my choice.”  Malcolm spoke decisively and smugly.

Chris looked at Malcolm incredulously.  With the infinite wisdom of the Light within him, Chris knew good and well that Malcolm was misleading Romeo.  Although  leading Romeo directly to Juliet would be messing with destiny, deliberately misleading him was impairing destiny to the same degree, not to mention the added feature of an impure motivation.  Chris knew he was looking at a being who wasn’t long for the Light world when he looked at Malcolm.  He hoped he was given the assignment of sending him back; he would send him to Antarctica.

Chris interfered only as far as he felt he could.  “You seem to forget, Malcolm, that in requesting a voluntary return trip, he has no choice.  He is placing himself at the mercy and whim of universal flow.”

Malcolm leaned across the desk conspiratorially.  “And we all know that you can pick any place you wish.  It’s really not all that random, is it, Chris?”  Malcolm practically winked.

Chris cleared his throat.  “I have some input into the process.  But,” he hurried to add, “it is very limited.”

“O.k., then.” Romeo said.  “You heard the man.  Send me to Tokyo.  Please, sir.”

Chris looked long at the man across the desk, a man so desperate to have his plea answered and yet so completely unaware that it would be the worst thing that could happen to him.   Then he turned to the holographic map of the universe behind him, touched an area of the hologram, and brought Japan zooming into view.

Hal was lounging in the pool and thinking about Juliet.  He could see her anytime he wished, but tried not to be obsessive about it.  He knew that she had incarnated as Rosalind Kate Jackson and that she was happy in a contented but incomplete way.  She was a happy child in a loving family and did not yet feel the need for romantic love.  Yet he also knew that a being searching for a true love would feel the emptiness and hunger from a very early age.  He wished she could find that fulfillment, but knowing that she was given love and cared for eased his mind somewhat.

Hal had checked into D.C.’s life every so often, but the last time he checked, D.C. was a robust, albeit miserable 45-year-old man with twins in college.  He knew it would take several earth-years for D.C. to end that incarnation, and then several Light-beats for him to fully awaken as Romeo.  He had calculated that Rosalind would be about 32 when Romeo was ready to return.  It was a stretch, but true love would not let a few measly earth-decades stand in the way.  His work would not be needed for awhile and, thus, he floated in the pool.

A cherubim buzzed by.  Light-bugs, nothing but light-bugs, Hal thought.  Cherubims were not nearly as angelic as most earth-beings believed.  The fact that they knew about them at all was a huge mistake.  Many, many Light-years before, an Earth-bound agent had sent a fully-realized being back without having received a request for the return.  The trip should have been impossible, but a loophole caused the agent’s misprinted request to be processed, and that’s how Moses came to be floating in some bulrushes.  The loophole was sewn up by the Light immediately, but Moses was already there.  The Light makes no mistakes, so many pondered the notion that the Light had purposely designed the loophole.  It was the only possible explanation.  Yet many still saw it as a huge mistake.  Moses was so enlightened that he began to get bored with the earth-beings’ seemingly infinite ignorance.  So, he started making up rules just to make things interesting.  He decided that most of the blind people he naturally became the leader of didn’t even deserve to live, so he started coming up with reasons to have them all put to death.  If they touched the skin of a dead pig, put’em to death.  If they talked back to their parents, put’em to death.  If they worked on Sunday, put’em to death.  If they slept with someone of the same sex, put’em to death.  Basically, anyone who breathed needed to go back and start all over again according to Moses.  When the people asked who had given these laws, Moses created a being called God and blamed him.  When they asked who God was, Moses made up a story about a Master Creator who put these two people in a garden only to kick them out when they ate the fruit He had given them.  Moses knew that the Light had always been and always would be and that human life was just the incarnation of undeveloped Light working towards complete illumination.  But he was so pissed about being sent back, that he decided to throw a wrench in the works.

Those who had bothered to ask the Light knew that these “setbacks” were necessary to the learning process of the incarnate.  Humans had forgotten their spiritual purpose in the overwhelming physical task of evolving.  It was a “mistake” that had been made for a reason.  Moses wasn’t a rebel; he was simply fulfilling his purpose, just as every other incarnated being had done down through time.  The Light sent other messengers to lead the way after Moses:  Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Galileo, Thomas Jefferson, Gandhi, Martin Luther King — they were all teachers, depending upon who cared to be their students.  Incarnated beings were moving back to the Light, although it sometimes seemed rather slow work.

So, at any rate, Moses had started the talk of the Cherubims and Seraphims, Light attendants whose presence was not meant to be known to the incarnate ones.  Those on earth believed them to be angels.  They were; but they were worker-bee angels, and for the most part, they were quite irritating unless they were actually working on a task.

This particular cherubim buzzed near Hal’s ear.  Hal swatted at it.  “Buzz off, cherry.”

“I have news,” the insistent cherubim buzz-whispered.

“What?  Hitler’s dead?  Old news.  He’s already been sent back as an amoeba, a giant leap up for him, if I do say so myself.  Synchronizing the energy of a single cell is about all he’s capable of at this point in his evolution.”

“Romeo’s here.”  The cherubim buzzed off, disappearing into the Light as quickly as he had come.

“Hey!”  Hal stood up in the pool.  “Hey, you little buzzard, get back here!  What did you say?  Where is he?  Get back here now!”

Hal had dance-walked as fast as he could to the Return Tunnel Registrar.  He burst into Christopher Columbus’ office with an impatience rarely seen up here.  If he had been on Earth, he would have been breathing heavily and possibly even wheezing, but here the only physical sign of his exertion was his wide eyes.

“Romeo.  Have you seen him?  Has he been here?”

“Whoa, Hal!  Don’t be so demanding.  You’re acting like a regular archangel.”

“Christopher, I’m not in the mood for jokes.  This is serious.  Have you seen Romeo?”

Chris pondered the intensity of Hal’s eyes, thought for a millisecond and then decided it was best if he responded forthrightly.  “He was here recently. . . with Malcolm.  He requested an immediate return, even before fully awakening.”

“Has he gone yet?”

“No.  I’m working on the details now, but there seems to be some kind of population control movement going on in Tokyo.”

“Tokyo?  He’s not supposed to go to Tokyo!  He’s supposed to go to Georgia!”  Hal experienced the closest thing to frustration that an enlightened being could feel — a slight twitch in his left eyelid, a rare remembrance of a limiting body.  If he had not been so focused on the issue of Romeo’s return, he would have recognized his need to control the situation.  Control was a strictly incarnate need.  It was also the birthplace of frustration.  Since light-beings knew that controlling another’s actions or behaviors was strictly against the Light, they also knew that any attempt to do so would only result in extreme frustration, the ultimate sign of being outside the law of the Light.  “Where is he now?  Which way did they go?”

“Hal, you know the rules about messing with destiny.  Surely, you don’t want to risk a return trip after all this time.”

“That was the plan, Chris.  I was supposed to guide him back to her all along.  And Malcolm . . . Malcolm!  Ooh, he almost makes me human in the way I feel about him!  He knew exactly where Juliet was going.  I can’t believe he would deliberately mislead Romeo, and I will definitely bring this up to the council.  But, I can’t waste time fuming.  Do you know where they are?”

“All I know is that they were heading in the direction of the forum when they left here.”  Christopher started to say something else, but Hal had rushed out as soon as he heard the word forum.

The forum was always the most well lit place in the eternal Here.  So many beings were gathered there at any given time that the radiance of their internal light would have been blinding to a human.  To Hal it was only a glow that kept him from seeing the other beings clearly.  The idea was that wherever the Light is strongest, the need to see other beings should naturally diminish; when there was Light, who should want to see anything else?  But Hal did.  He tried to focus as best he could on the beings gathered in the forum, but could only see general shapes.  Just as he was about to succumb to a human emotion — desperation — he remembered to close his eyes and focus on the vibrations.  Each being gives off certain vibrations, whether human or a member of the Light world.  Hal became still and centered his thoughts on Malcolm’s vibrations.  His were lower than most — a sure sign of his imminent return.

It didn’t take Hal long to feel Malcolm’s presence.  He was on the steps at the far end of the pool.  Hal dance-walked there as fast as he could.  It seemed to take forever to him, but in earth-time it would have only been a few milliseconds.

“Malcolm!  Where is Romeo?”

“Relax, Hal.  I don’t know.  Who do I look like?  Mercutio?”  Malcolm turned back to the Fountain of Liquid Refreshment.

Hal flipped Malcolm around as if he had grabbed his shoulder.  He hadn’t, of course.  He had merely thought it and it became so.

“Hal!  How dare you!  And you think I’m going to be sent back.  You know how the Light feels about the appearance of physical violence.”

“Malcolm, I’d just love to have a long discussion with you about the Light and return trips, but I have something else in my consciousness right now.  Take me to Romeo or prepare to hear from the council.”

“O.k., o.k., hold your unicorns.  The last time I saw Romeo, he was in the pool trying to swim himself into an awake state.”

“Your willingness to cooperate has been overwhelming,” Hal said and then winced inside.  Malcolm’s sarcasm was rubbing off on him.  He must remember to put distance between himself and Malcolm when this situation was over.  “I’ll deal with you later.”

Hal dance-walked to the pool and found Romeo swimming laps.  Most water-play here looked like synchronized swimming — even more so since Esther Williams arrived — but Romeo’s flailing was more akin to a Labrador puppy chasing a floating stick for the first time.  Hal leapt into the pool.  The earth-effect would have been a slow-motion splash, yet in earth-time he was by Romeo’s side in speed immeasurable by human instruments.

“Romeo.  Romeo, listen to me.”

“Who are you?”  Romeo continued to flail.  “I’m busy.  Can’t you see?”

“It’s about Juliet.”

Romeo stopped abruptly and faced Hal upright in the pool.  There was no bottom.  The pool was infinite, yet no being had to even tread water to remain in one position.  “What about Juliet?  You know something about Juliet?  Who are you?”

“I was Juliet’s guide when she was last here.  We discussed your situation thoroughly, and plans were made.  Malcolm has misdirected you.  I know where you are supposed to go to meet Juliet.”

“Not . . . Tokyo?”

“Oh, for Light’s sake, no.  Come with me.  We’ve got a lot to do and not much time in which to do it.”

“From the gray-speckled boulder, 12 paces along the path, 90 degree right turn and six paces to the patch of clary sage, turn three complete circles, look directly over left shoulder and walk seven paces toward the first mountain laurel bush you see, left turn four paces, right turn three, bend down between the two large elderberry trees and wait.”

Romeo watched quizzically as Hal stared at the mossy ground.  He had returned to the earth plane several times, always at the mercy of the registrar.  He had never heard anything of this alchemist person and sure didn’t know what part of the Eternal Here this boggy quarter could be.  He was about to suggest a return to the forum pool so he could continue to awaken when the door opened.

Bernard Oxley Millwright IV emerged from his moss-roofed home.  “You again?”

“Me again.”  Hal replied.  “We . . .”  He looked up at Romeo who was dumbfounded at the miniature person before him.   “We need to see the alchemist.”

Bernard Oxley Millwright IV stared closely at Romeo, investigated him in a way he had not done with Juliet.   “He’s not even awake.”

“He will be soon enough.  And, well, there are other factors at play here.  Just trust me, we really need to see the alchemist.”  Hal emphasized the word really to impart the level of need.   He knew that remembering the way to the alchemist’s cave was not enough.  If Oxley refused to lend his fairy magic to show the way, then they would simply never find the same hill, let alone the door.

Oxley fluttered his wings and crossed his legs.  He rose to about five feet and hovered.  “Stand up, Hal.  Might as well get off your knees while we discuss this.”  He turned to Romeo.  “What is it you’re trying to do that needs alchemy magic, and why can’t it wait until you wake up?”

Romeo hesitated.  Not being fully awake, he sometimes didn’t think clearly.  “I need to . . . go back . . . and find Juliet.  I have to find Juliet.  I’ve been looking for her lifetime after lifetime.  And now I finally have a chance, but Malcolm led me astray.  I’ve already registered at the return tunnel, but they’re. . . they’re going to send me to the wrong place, half a world away from her.”

“Hmmm.”  Oxley’s wings whirred slightly louder as he moved over to just a few inches from Romeo’s face.   He studied Romeo’s face as if it held a clue of some sort.  “That’s not usually the kind of magic the alchemist does.  It would require a new and unique incantation.”  Oxley flew back a few inches.  “You’re asking for a whole lot of magic, my good man.”

Romeo paused.  He looked Bernard Oxley Millwright IV directly in the eye.  “I’ll take whatever magic I can get.  There’s no way this can be made worse.”

Romeo took the final step down into the alchemist’s great hall and looked around.  He saw the Owl and the books and the tables and the mobiles of the universe.  But there was something else he sensed.  It was an energy.  It was Juliet’s energy.  She had been here, and he could feel it.  A part of her energy was still in this place, like a perfume lingering long after the source has departed.   He closed his eyes and let himself focus on the energy, breathing her in through the very pores of his skin.  When he opened his eyes again, Maria Claricy was standing directly in front of him.

“You can feel her here, can’t you?”  She asked.

“Yes,” he whispered.

“Come with me.  There’s no time to lose.”

© Deborah E. Moore – 2011

This is Installment Six of the novel Rose and Justice.   It includes Chapters II.vi, II.vii, and II.viii.  It is 4,146 words long.  As installments are posted, links for each will be added under the tab labeled “The Novel” at the top of this page.   Enjoy!

II.vi

            D.C. looked around at the other parents attending the Alabama graduation ceremonies.  He wondered if they realized how stupid they all looked, grinning with some extreme level of parental pride he had never known.  As soon as he had the thought, he felt guilty.  He knew that a good father would be smiling like he had won the lottery.  And the father of twins should be doubly excited — shouldn’t he?  Three of his five children now had college degrees.  D.C. 3 had finished college and was selling real estate in Birmingham.  Mary Jo had divorced and moved to Florida to escape Sonny’s harassment after she left him.  Clinton was a Navy lifer who sent periodic postcards from exotic, and sometimes not so exotic, ports.  And the twins turned out to be Harvard material after all; they were both graduating summa cum laude and had received full fellowships to Harvard’s Divinity School.  They seemed destined to spend their lives glued to each other.  D.C. wasn’t sure where they had gotten their brains; he was no Einstein and yet he was sure he was smarter than Sandy.  He often thought that there must be something even beyond environment and genetics that plays a part in determining the outcome of a person’s life.

So, instead of pride consuming his thoughts, D.C. sat through the commencement ceremonies wondering whether or not he really had the guts to leave when this was all over.  All five children would be gone and on their own.  Sandy would be devastated, but he couldn’t seem to muster the energy to care about that.  He knew he would either have to leave or die — and he couldn’t decide which sounded more appealing.

He really wished he had been able to care about his life.  The problem was that it had never really seemed like his life.  He had traveled through it like a ghost who is able to observe but never really experience.  At times he would have welcomed pain just to feel something.  Others saw him as a cool, distant, emotionless person; if they only knew how desperately he cried inside for just one emotion, one true understanding of love.  Everyone around him felt like strangers; he had been uncomfortable, even with his own wife and kids, for his entire life.  He was 46 years old and wished he could be 80.  At least then he knew this life wouldn’t have to last much longer.

He had often wondered about the purpose of his life.  He felt there must be one.  Didn’t every life have a purpose, like Reverend Jones at First Baptist always claimed?   Whatever D.C.’s purpose was, he felt it had eluded him since birth, that it was something he had to go in search of, and yet he was tied by circumstance to the place where he had begun.   He had fathered five children; perhaps that was the only purpose he needed.  Maybe one of the kids, one of the twins most likely, would make such an impact on the world that it would make his life worthwhile.  But even that, he thought, would not fulfill him or make his existence meaningful.  He had always felt his purpose was connected to something bigger, bigger than Cullman, or his marriage, or his kids – maybe even bigger than this life.

Sandy elbowed him when the twins’ names were announced and they walked across the stage.  He straightened up and began clapping politely while Sandy cheered wildly beside him.   She embarrassed him.  He smirked and rolled his eyes.  Then he turned to look at his wife.  She had that proud grin of the other parents, the pride he couldn’t feel, the emotion he would never have.  He stopped smirking and allowed her this moment.  It was probably the most loving thing he had ever done for her.

D.C. 3 had driven in from Birmingham for the occasion and joined D.C., Sandy, and the twins for an after-graduation celebration dinner.  Sandy had made reservations at the nicest restaurant Tuscaloosa had to offer, and D.C. about stroked when he saw the menu prices.  As usual, he said nothing and went along for the ride.  The twins continued to wear their caps and gowns.  D.C. thought they looked like overgrown hoot-owls, but again checked himself to allow others a moment they deserved.  For people who actually felt, who actually lived, graduating from college was probably a big deal and they should be allowed to make complete fools out of themselves if they wished.  D.C. had now made allowances for two real things in one day — he wondered what must be happening to him.  Was it middle-aged mellowness that caused him to suddenly accept others’ emotions?  Or was he actually starting to have compassion halfway through his life?

After they had placed their orders, D.C. settled back into his chair and looked around at the crowded dining room.  He could have taken pleasure in overseeing his successful brood, but instead he felt detached and intrusive; he was a stranger invited at the last minute to participate in an intimate family gathering.  He looked briefly at the far corner table that looked so much like his own — mom and dad, proud graduate still in gown (no cap), and appropriately proud siblings — yet he was incapable of seeing the mirror image.  His eyes moved to a middle-aged couple at another table, probably a retired doctor or lawyer and spouse, and momentarily watched them eat silently, nothing left to say after forty years of wedlock.

The third table his eyes moved to held his attention a bit longer.  Two men sat on conjoining sides of a four-sided table with their backs to the window.  A brief glance showed them to be dressed in business attire, talking intently, and a casual observer would see nothing more than two colleagues discussing the latest changes at their company or a businessman and his client ironing out the details on a big-dollar deal.  But D.C. had spent his life as an observer and looked closer than most would.  He began to notice the nuances a quick glance would overlook.  He saw two men looking deeply into each other’s eyes.  He saw gentle smiles and provocative laughter.  He saw one of the men pick up a packet of sugar to sweeten his coffee and the other man gently take it from his hands, slowly rip it open, and pour it into the cup.  The man who had taken the sugar then picked up a spoon and slowly stirred the other man’s coffee.  It was a simple act that had passed unnoticed by the rest of those in the restaurant, but D.C. slowly realized he was watching two people in love.  He was surprised that his redneck, good-old-boy, Alabama upbringing wasn’t sickened at the sight.  On the contrary, he watched the two and recognized love like he had never known it in his own life.  Two men who could be so visibly in love in a public restaurant in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, must really be in love.  Rather than being repulsed, D.C. could not contain the overwhelming sense of jealousy he felt as he watched them.  Something in them made D.C. suddenly aware of the lack of purpose he had always felt.  They had something he would never know, and if he allowed his Alabama to get the best of him, he’d kick the shit out of both of them for that reason alone.

“Daddy.  Daddy, your food’s gettin’ cold.”  D.C. 3 stuffed a half a cow in his mouth and chewed.

“O.k., I’m gettin’ to it.”  D.C. hadn’t even realized the food had been delivered.  He covered that fact like any proud southern man, by acting like he had realized it and was simply acting against the norm for reasons of his own, thank you very much.  He looked down on the well-done New York Strip steak and couldn’t remember ordering it.  He didn’t really even like beef.  But, what did it matter?  He sawed off a chunk and shoved it in his mouth.  He chewed a few times and let his eyes wonder back to the two lovers.  They were laughing about something.  One of them leaned back in his chair and turned his head.  He looked into D.C.’s eyes and held his gaze rather than turn abruptly away as most strangers would have done.  Normally, D.C. would have averted his glance, pretending that he hadn’t really been staring at all.  But his eyes seemed held by the man’s gentle look.  At that precise moment, D.C. realized he was not breathing.

D.C.’s gasps finally caught Sandy’s attention.  She screamed and began shouting for help.  D.C. 3 and the twins all jumped up and then realized they had no idea what to do.  A waitress ran over and helped by shouting, “Call an ambulance!  Oh, god, call an ambulance!”  The retired doctor turned out to be a retired lawyer whose sole focus at this moment was trying to determine if the restaurant could be sued.  The two men ran to D.C.’s side.  The one who had caught his eye pulled him up from his chair and grabbed him from behind.

“Trust me,” the man whispered in D.C.’s ear.  “I know exactly what I’m doing.”

The man wrapped D.C. in a hug from behind and began exerting force with his joined hands.  D.C. was no medical expert, but he knew immediately that the man’s hands were in the wrong position.  He was too high.  The thrusts were hitting D.C. in the sternum, stopping against bone instead of pushing any air up from below the ribcage.  D.C. began struggling to move the man’s hands downward.

The man just whispered again, “Trust me.”

D.C. heard the words ringing in his ear as he passed away from that life.

II.vii

Rosalind Kate Jackson made her grand entrance into the world in the eighth hour of her mother’s labor.   Her father giggled like a schoolgirl as he held her for the first time and ran the tip of his finger gently under her creamy brown chin.  She was lighter than his boys — more like her mother’s coloring — and yet looked somehow more African.  She was a regal queen of the Nile wrapped in a blanket, just waiting to be placed in a basket in the bulrushes or perhaps in a manger.  She was, from the very first breath she took, her father’s savior.  Phillip knew that Rose, as he would always call her, could be nothing other than his most beautiful and precious flower, his place of perfect joy, the justification for all his life had been.  After years of wondering why he had been born, he looked once at Rose and wondered why man was born to die.

He reluctantly left Rose with her mother and drove back across the causeway to check on the boys.  Their grandmother would be almost homicidal after a morning alone with all three boys.  They were decent kids, but they were kids, and mornings in general made them grumpy.  Phillip, Jr. would be twelve in a month, Paris was eight, and Peter had just turned four.  Although Marabelle now had four children, Phillip knew it felt like more to her.  With each child so evenly spaced, the last twelve years of her life had been a continuous cycle of pregnancy, nursing, diapers, the terrible twos, preschool, and then all of it over again.  Phillip did everything he knew to be the kind of man a father and husband should be.  Every Saturday for twelve years had been mom’s day off.  He took the boys marsh fishing, or to a band contest, or employed them in the building of the new deck or the room they had added to the house three years before.  With the difference in the boys’ ages, it was sometimes difficult to keep them all happy for five or six hours.  About the time Phillip, Jr., was beginning to get interested in action movies, Peter and Paris were still best entertained with animated features.  Phillip had trained Phil, as the oldest boy was called, to be a patient and understanding young man.  He was to help watch his brothers and be willing to put aside his own desires for the sake of the younger boys.

“Son, do you think I really want to see yet another Disney movie?”  Phillip had explained to his frustrated son one day not long before Rose was born.  “That’s part of the responsibility of being older.  They don’t understand.  You do.”  Phillip dried an errant tear from his son’s cheek and softened his tone.  “Hey, why don’t I pick you up from school next Friday, and we’ll go spend an hour or two at the pinball machines in the arcade.  Whaddaya’ say?”

Phillip had always been sensitive to his children’s needs and, true to his word, he was there when the school bell rang that Friday afternoon to pick up his number one son.  He knew when to talk gently and he knew when to lay down the law.  He had never spanked his boys; it seemed to him to resemble too closely the beatings his ancestors had received from the whips of their “masters.”  He valued the history of his family’s education and believed that a learned man could do more with words than any brute could do with a whip or fists.  And he believed strongly that the best way to raise responsible young men who would never lift a hand to a woman was to never lift his hand against them.  He smiled every time he looked over his boys’ report cards and noted their superior marks in conduct and citizenship.  To him, those were just as important as the A’s they brought home in science, math, and English.

Phillip walked through the front door of his home and suddenly felt his fatigue wash over him.  He hadn’t even needed to hold it at bay during his sleepless night; he simply hadn’t felt it.  Now his spirit released the hold it had maintained over his body.  He was home, and his inner core, associating this place with peace and relaxation, finally let his body take over.  He was tired, yet it was only 9:00 a.m. and his mother would be wanting to get back to her own home.  The boys would be rested and ready to rumble.  Somehow, Phillip would make it.  He knew he would feel better when he got the boys ready and headed back to the hospital, back to Marabelle and his little bud of a Rose.

Phillip kissed and thanked his mother.  He had to do so with her in motion.  It wasn’t that she was that anxious to end her sole possession of the boys; she was on her way to see her first granddaughter.

“Take your time, Phillip.  Why don’t you take a little nap?  Marabelle needs her rest and anything beyond that I can take care of.  Don’t feel like you have to rush back to the hospital.”  Cynthia Jackson whirled out the door and didn’t wait for an answer.

When she was gone, Phillip was surprised by the emotional response he had — he was jealous.  The first Jackson girl in five generations was certain to be claimed by every living member of the family.  He felt a strong desire to hold her in his arms and tell everyone else to back off — this was his girl.  He tried to stop this thought.  He knew it must be his fatigue talking since he was not prone to such possessiveness.  Yet, he couldn’t quite expunge the feeling completely.

He made the boys change from their jeans to slacks and button-down shirts and gathered all three in the large master bathroom for a small splash of cologne.  They were lined up before the vanity looking confused.  They couldn’t understand the fuss over their appearance, yet somehow, today, they liked it.  Phillip stood behind them straightening shirts, smoothing hair, and “stinking them up,” as Peter called it.  The four Jackson men were face to face in the mirror.

“Now, boys, listen to me. . . Phil, did you use deodorant? . . .o.k., listen up.  You’re going to go meet your little sister for the first time.  She’s just two hours old now.  She’s going to need you boys to look after her.  Your mama’s gonna’ need you, and I’m gonna’ need you.  Girls are different from boys.  They’re . . .well, they’re softer. . . and they cry a little bit more, and . . . well, they’re just different, that’s all.  I know you boys look out for each other, but you’re gonna’ have to look out for your sister in a different way.  You can’t pick on her like you pick on each other.  You have to be sweet to her.  Lord knows, you boys could use a little practice being sweeter.  Who’s to say but what this won’t even make you a little sweeter to each other?  That wouldn’t be so bad.  Anyway, a man’s always a better man when he’s got a woman to look out for.  And good boys are the ones who look out for their sister.  So, I don’t want you treating her like a new stuffed animal you just got for Christmas.  You are to treat her like a china doll, do you understand?  This is our Rose.  This is our baby girl.  God gave you a baby sister to teach you how to be real men.  And God gave Rose three older brothers so she’d have lots of Jackson men looking out for her.  See?  God knows what he’s doing.  Haven’t I told you that?”  Phillip turned his three boys to him and got down on one knee.  “Alright, let me look at you.  Wow, those Jackson men sure are handsome devils.  O.k., now do you boys understand what I’ve been telling you?”

“Yes, sir,” they answered in a chorus, and Phil’s voice cracked for the first time.

Phillip smiled and led his boys out to the car.  He held his eldest son back while the other boys climbed in the back seat.  “Phil, remind me sometime this week that there’s a little talk you and I need to be having.”

As Phillip drove to the hospital, he smiled.  He had always wondered if he could really face that first discussion about birds and bees and the like.  Now that he had a daughter, he could hardly wait to get Phillip, Jr., alone for a nice long chat.

II.viii

            Romeo struggled to awaken.  He knew he was back in the place of no struggle, yet he fought even against the peace to come quickly back to his fullness.  He didn’t yet know why he fought so hard to reach full consciousness, he just knew he must not loiter here.

Everything looked strange and familiar at the same time.  He was standing erect in the airy space, as if he had never actually laid down for this sleep.  He felt nothing except a slight lump in his throat.  He swallowed hard, twice, and felt it clear a little.  There were figures dance-walking in the distance that he thought he might recognize if only he could get a little closer.  He began to walk, and then run, and for the longest time he was getting nowhere fast.  He could feel a sparkling glow come from his eyes, but still felt the choking gall in his throat.  He was beginning to feel the light, sense the light, see the light, but it was only a dim candle beckoning from the distance.

Romeo ran as hard as he could, for days or months or years, he couldn’t tell.  Every time it felt like years, he ran a little faster.  Somehow he knew that now was not the time to tarry.  He was still in the phase of awakening where he seemed to know nothing, yet an intuitive whisper seemed to be urging him on.

The figures slowly moved closer and became more clear.  One moved towards him more quickly than the others, and he thought that being seemed familiar somehow.  He began to call to the figure.  He yelled with what sounded like a guttural groan.  He cleared his throat and yelled again.  He thought that maybe this time it was louder.  He continued to call out, feeling more strength each time, until the figure was suddenly standing clearly before him.

“You don’t have to yell!  I can hear you.”

“Where am I supposed to go?  I know I need to be somewhere, I just don’t know where exactly.  Please help me!”  Romeo pleaded with the figure.

“Calm down, everything in due time.  You still need to awaken fully, although you seem to be making great time with that.  You’ve been here many times before.  You know the protocol, and it will all be clear to you again very soon.”

“Please help me speed this along.  I know you can.  And somehow I know that I need to hurry.  There is no time to waste, but I’m not sure why.”

“You are right.  You must hurry and the reason is love.  Your eternal love is waiting for you back on Earth right now.  You mustn’t dally.  If we can get you fully awakened in a timely manner, we can get you back there and all that is good will be complete in you.”

“Who?  Who is it?”  Romeo pleaded.  “Was my love here?  How can I find that person?  How will I know her or him?”

“You will know her.  She is already incarnate again, and she is female.  She is waiting for you and before you left the last time, plans were made, plans to meet again.”

“Please tell me the plan.  Tell it to me now so that I don’t have to waste time on details when I fully awaken.”

“Well, it was sketchy, but the plan was that you were to meet in the East.”

Romeo paused and felt a new surge of awakening flow through his being.  “The east.  The east is the sunrise, the new light.  It is the east . . . and. . . . she is the sun.”  Romeo grew very excited.  “It is the east, and . . . Juliet is the sun!  Where is she?  Where is Juliet?”

“Calm yourself! If you get too excited, you’ll delay the awakening.  Everything in good time, D.C.”

Romeo looked confused. “D.C.? Who is D.C.?

“That is who you were in your last incarnation.”

“I . . .I don’t remember that at all.”

“You wouldn’t.  It wasn’t very memorable.  In fact, you know very little of the lives you have lived since you last saw Juliet 380 earth-years ago, give or take a few.  They just simply didn’t matter because you never reached your goal.”

“Are you saying that I have spent almost 400 earth-years looking for my true love?”

“Certainly.  And you would spend 400 more years if that was what it would take to find her.  Once you have a true love, you are never complete until you have reached peaceful perfection with that person in the eternal Here.  You will keep searching until you find.  It’s a comforting thought, really, the idea that you will indeed eventually find.  Until then, you just keep looking.”

“How many times have I gone back?”  Romeo was still not yet awake and couldn’t remember anything except that small memory he had of Juliet.

“Oh, gosh, I’ve lost count.  You’ve been all over the Earth.  You looked so hard and for so long that your last life was spent in one place.  You wanted to get out and search for her, but you were just too tired.  Funny, I never would have thought to go there for rest.  That body is so heavy.”

“Listen.  Can you help me?  Is there any way I can speed up this process and get back down there?  I’ve got to get down there.  If I remember the way time passes up here, Juliet has grown up quite a bit just in the time we’ve been talking.”  Romeo’s voice had an edge of desperation to it, a plea just below the surface of the sound that came through louder than his words, especially to someone who was reading his thoughts and paying very little attention to his verbal clamor.

“Well, there is a way.  As you know, there is always a way.  But it’s risky.  I wouldn’t suggest it as a first course of action.”

“I don’t care.  I’ll take the risk.  Just get me back there.”

Malcolm smiled smugly and replied, “O.k.  Follow me.”  Then he led Romeo to the return tunnel to register for a very un-magical return trip with bad odds.

© Deborah E. Moore – 2011