I'm not sure what I had expected eternity to be like, but I did not imagine I would be sitting next to a crotchety old man sleeping in a well worn rocking chair on a wind swept porch in the middle of a Texas landscape. Before I had time to contemplate this any further the front screen door squeaked, then slammed, and a woman nearly the same age as the old man walked onto the porch carrying a tray of chocolate chip cookies.
"Hey!" her voice was warm, and cackled with aged joy. "You must be starving after your trip."
She wasn't nearly as tall as Silas, and she was a good five inches shorter than me. She wasn't so much chubby as she was thick. Her hips were wide and round, and the bodice of her lavender gingham dress with tiny flowers reflected an ample bosom, like one might expect on a traditional grandmother. I could barely see her wiry white hair folded in a loose knot under her faded navy blue bandana. Her apron was cream colored and, except for a small grease stain near the middle, spotless.
"Trip?" I asked.
"From Earth. From life. Oh, I'm ravenous every time I get back. Ain't you hungry, Sugar?" She shoved the bowl of peaches aside and set the cookies on the table next to Silas. She added flatly. "I see Silas has been pushing those nasty ol' peaches on you. No wonder ya ain't hungry."
"I only had one," I told her.
"Oh," she exclaimed, "I can't eat a bite of 'em. Gives me gas something terrible. I'm up all night! But you didn't come all the way to eternity to listen to my gastrointestinal problems, did you, Honey?"
"I suppose I didn't," I said. "But I'm not really sure why I'm here, or how I got here."
"Oh, that!" she waved her hand. "Happens all the time around here. Well, more lately than normal, actually. We get a few months' notice, then the newbies just sort of show up. Sometimes the packets run late and we get 'em unexpected. Why, one morning we got out of bed and we had six newbies all at once, two by the locust trees, one in the back yard, three just littering the field out there. Normally we only get one or two at a time but there was a glitch of some sort that day. Why, Rawlings, two farms over, he had three dozen that same week. Liked to have never gotten them all rounded up. Lord, what a mess that was! Here, you help yourself to a cookie, anyhow. They're your favorite, nice and soft, like you like 'em."
I took a cookie and ate it slowly. She was right. It was moist, exactly the way I liked my chocolate chip cookies. I was wondering how this lady could possibly know what I liked, or anything about me for that matter. I was just about to ask when she sat down on the old porch stoop, mopped her forehead with her apron, and started talking again.
"Looks like another beautiful day in Paradise!"
"Aren't all days in Paradise nice?" I asked.
"Oh, lands no!" she said. "Why, we've had hail and storms, and every few hundred years or so we're liable to get ourselves a tornado. Not that turbulent weather ain't beautiful, though," she hastened to add. "Just makes a mess of things sometimes, is all. 'Course, just 'cause a thing's messy don't mean it's bad. Just a little inconvenient is all. Me, I like a good cloudburst from time to time. But ol' Silas, he sees a little puff of cloud in the distance he gets all kinds of twitterpated. I believe he was born in a storm once. Oh, weather just makes a wreck of him."
"So," I asked hesitantly, "You're Mrs Peters?"
She laughed loud, and her head shot back. "Mrs Peters?" she cackled. "I should say not! Oh, that's funny. Sy'll have quite a chuckle of that when he wakes up."
"You're not married, then?"
"Married?" she looked very serious all of a sudden. "Married? Well, now, let me think. Yes. Twice. First time was three lives ago, let's see, where were we? Little town just east of Paris, got married in 1785. Yep. Got hitched four years before the revolution, which unfortunately made me a young widow. He insisted on storming the Bastille with some of his buddies. Always was a little stubborn. I lived another forty-six years without him, and I'll tell you what's the truth, that was one of the longest lives I ever spent."
I sat quietly, mesmerized.
"Normally we get to spend a little more time together when we go down there," she continued. "Well, except our first life together. Very bad timing, I'm afraid. Somewhere in Europe, I can't even remember what country it was now. 1349. Deplorable timing, I'm afraid. We never even crossed paths. Cursed plague - took us both as infants."
"So you don't always get married?"
"No, we seldom get married," she answered. "But we nearly always find each other. Once I was on a whaling crew and his ship had gotten stranded on some ice. He was with his father conducting some kind of research. Oh, Silas made a gorgeous young woman! Still obstinate as the day is long, but, my, he sure made a pretty gal."
I wrinkled my forehead. The old lady looked at me and smiled.
"Oh, this must all seem so peculiar to you, Honey!"
"A little," I minimized my confusion.
"Well," she said, "It ain't no big mystery. Nothing is, once you understand it, you know."
"So sometimes you're the guy and he's the girl?"
"Every now and then. We don't get to select our gender when we return to life. All we get to choose is when to go back, and what planet, and the rest is, well, kind of like fate, I reckon. Why, one time we were both men. I was a poet and he was an actor. We lived in London. Now, that was a little dicey, I can tell you. Let's see, that was sometime around the early seventeenth century, I think. Yes, Yes, Elizabeth was queen. Uh huh, I remember now."
"So," I hesitated a little, trying to balance my curiosity with my desire to not be rude. "You were…?"
"As a three dollar bill!" she cackled. "And I can tell you what, it wasn't no picnic! Wasn't none of those gay rights and tolerance such as there is today. Still, being soulmates ain't something you can just turn on and off. You find your soulmate, poof, you're stuck with each other. For eternity, unless you screw it up."
Silas shifted in his sleep, made a gagging kind of sound that caught deep in his throat and exited through his nose. It sounded like the blending of a pig being poked and a hen being caught by its tail. He shifted and was soon snoring again. The old lady smiled warmly at him.
"Yes," she purred softly. "What a find! Hey, Honey, hand me one of them cookies, will you?"
I offered her the tray of chocolate chips, and she took a handful of them.
"Does everyone have a soulmate?" I asked.
"What's that?" she was chewing vigorously. She gulped, smacked her thick lips together a little, and said, "My, these are tasty, ain't they?"
"I was wondering," I repeated. "Do we all find our soulmate?"
"Oh," she answered. "'Fraid not. No. Most of us do well to just find the love of our life. Soulmates are pretty rare. At least when you're young. Usually takes quite a few lifetimes to figure out how to pull it off. Ain't easy being a soulmate, you know. Why, I went through, let's see," she thought a minute. "Yes, around fifteen, maybe more lifetimes, before I found ol' Silas. He only had a few lifetimes before we met, and that's some kind of record, I believe. Takes a lot of work to do it right. Say," she looked at me, "You got a soulmate? I didn't see nothing about it in your information packet."
"I don't think so," I said.
"Oh, you'd know for sure if you did, at least up here. Now, down there, you don't always know. In fact, the word 'soulmate' is mighty over-used anymore. People fall in love and right away they're professing eternal devotion, but that ain't how it works. Nah, you gotta live a pretty long time together, and apart, before you know for certain.
"Besides, being soulmates ain't necessarily about being in love," the old woman added. "Why, I've known of two mother-daughter teams, and a brother team, and there are dozens of friendship teams. No sex involved at all - just that mighty connection that surpasses time. Hard to explain. But," she paused a little, and a puckish grin sprinted across her face, "I gotta tell ya, I do like the sex. Hand me some more of them cookies, Honey!"
CHAPTER FOUR