Chapter 6
Aunt Polly taught me this: Any human being can tap their heavenly source while still in human form. She acknowledged the ultimate crises of physical obliteration and passed through the imaginary I-point in the head to the truth on the other side. But it doesn’t require the final crisis. Wait that long and you’ve still got a mostly wasted life. And you needn’t go through what I did—it isn’t necessary and I wouldn’t recommend it. So think on this! You and me (We!) can re-learn our essential immortality—experience it, and express it! Right now—in this finite form. That’s Heavenly Mind. And the practice to that knowledge—bless you, Aunt Polly—I believe I’ll call…headlessness.
Now, let’s see how they receive it.
- From His Recorded Words
Even though he was eventually able to leave the hospital, Danny couldn’t go back to school right away. He needed time to recuperate at home. He called me to tell me he was fine and would be coming to school the next Monday morning. He also told me not to visit since his parents still didn’t want to see my face. I’m definitely not a phone person so that was all we talked. I offered to bring him some library books. He said he was okay without them for now. I know I made a loud “Huh?” noise when I heard that. This was not Danny the Answer-Boy I remembered, and he said something like he’d said at the hospital about not needing the reading so much anymore…that he was enjoying just seeing things, whatever that could possibly mean. Leastwise, he was getting back on his feet.
I had found a local garage that would fix my motorcycle for a couple hundred bucks. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be, but I had nowhere near that much money. So I started pulling some extra hours after school and on weekends back at Dad’s favorite bar, Hambone’s. Ol’ Steve the owner, always wearing that ragged and patched army shirt of his, had me set to work mopping the floors, cleaning up the kitchen—a grimy, smelly hole I couldn’t believe any health inspector had ever seen—and painting some storage rooms in the basement. Sometimes the work would take me out in front of the bar and I’d see Dad hunched over, always with a beer bottle and an empty shot glass. Resting on little ledges behind the bar, all the booze bottles looked like a choir. He’d sit there in front of them. Sometimes he noticed me, not always, but when he did he nodded.
I missed Monday, Tuesday and then Wednesday morning at school that week, so I could put in some extra hours at the bar. Dad approved of my working, so he had no problem writing notes explaining my “illnesses”. And I was pleasantly surprised when one evening, Sally called the house and asked if I was okay, since she hadn’t seen me in school at all. She said, “Sometimes I worry you’ll get into some real trouble, and get yourself thrown in prison or maybe even killed in a fight. You still have quite a rep, you know.” I liked hearing that, all of it. I told her the truth about skipping school to make some money to fix my bike. She asked if I could possibly learn to drive safely, so she could ride on the back sometime. I said, “I’ll even teach you how to drive. You’ll be my next student after Danny.” To which she said, “Well, I don’t know if I’m ready to drive yet, but…” We chatted easily for a few more minutes before hanging up, and I felt pretty good about it, you know, considering I’m a non-phone kind of guy.
During the days I attended school, I didn’t see or talk to Michelle about anything since Danny’s visit with Aunt Polly. I wasn’t avoiding her. We just didn’t mix in the same groups and had different classes. But Tim Hanson I did see a few times. Wednesday afternoon in biology class he asked me how Danny was coming along. He didn’t seem overjoyed when I told him Danny was recovering, but at least he said, “Good”, and for a single extraordinary moment Tim was not a total jerk. But by the next day, that was already changing; something was bugging him. He kept looking back over his shoulder at me, and each time his face showed more agitatation. I ignored it. I didn’t care. I was content to daydream, grab snippets of Conan, and wait for Danny to come back. I got out of Thursday class without further incident.
Then Friday, after the bell rang and everyone crowded out the door to lunch, I got a rough shove from behind. I turned and there was Tim. He was fuming.
“You gotta a problem?” I said.
“Yeah, I guess I do. Let’s talk.”
I stared at him. Tim and I met eye to eye in height, a head taller than the other kids, who were now backing away as they sensed a collision coming.
“Talk?” I said, lifting a fist suggestively.
“Talk,” he emphasized. “Just talk.” He looked at the broadening circle of kids, expecting a fight. “Bathroom, okay?”
I followed him into the boys room. Someone was in there taking a wiz. He must have noticed the bad mood Tim and I brought with us, and he ran out.
“What’s up? You’ve been getting hotter and hotter,” I said. “You want to say something?’
“Yeah. What the hell is going on between your little freak pal and Michelle?”
That was far and away the last thing I expected to hear, and I laughed. “What? What are you talking about? They got to know each other in the hospital when she was visiting her Aunt Polly. You know, Aunt Polly?”
“Listen. All she talks about now is how special he’s become, how deep and in-touch-with-God he is. How he’s been to heaven and back. Give me a break!”
“You’re exaggerating.”
“I’m not. Last night I stopped at her house and she was on the phone with him: ‘Aunt Polly says this, and Aunt Polly says that. And: Please tell me, Danny. What happened in there?’ She wouldn’t get off! She made me wait. Right in front of her! Prattling all that nonsense. And then, when she was finished, she decided she didn’t want to go out after all. Even though I’d stood there the whole time waiting!”
I hadn’t been sure initially, but with his last ramble I could definitely smell the vodka. “What proof is your perfume, Tim?”
“Screw you!”
I said, “Look, I don’t know anything about this. But maybe you should give your girlfriend a little break. You know, her aunt is dying.”
He said almost downcast, “We were supposed to go to the new Spiderman.”
“Look,” I said, “Danny is coming back to school on Monday and you better leave him alone. Things will get back to normal soon enough. You’ll play football. Michelle will do her cheerleading. You’ll take her out on fancy dates. She’ll forget all about this Danny stuff. Everything will go back to the way it was. In the meantime—back off!” By now I was feeling some pre-fight tingles, and not just because of Tim. All this time, I’d been waiting for the return of the old routine, with Danny as my sidekick. Now he’s doing this heaven-boy thing—and worse, he was doing it with the school’s Popular Girl!
Tim leveled a finger at me. “You tell Danny to drop this little attention-getting game. He’s full of crap, and I’m on to him.” Tim pitched his voice in a mocking whine like Michelle, “Tell me, Danny. Tell me. Tell me…”
At this moment, Mr. Tan walked into the bathroom. If he hadn’t, punches would have started to fly. “Hey guys, what’s up? Tim, I just saw Coach Stevens. He’s looking for you.”
“What about?”
“Got me? Maybe it has something to do with you being the quarterback, and there’s a game tomorrow? And you’ve lost three in a row? Anyway he wants to see you before lunch hour’s over. So scoot!”
Tim grumbled okay and walked out. He paused in the doorway and gave me a final dirty look. “By the way, Sally Dygert? She’s slumming your dumb ass. She told me herself. She’s getting kicks teasing some chump from the loser side of town. And she’s laughing her ass off at you. As if!”
“Tim, get out!” Mr. Tan shouted, and Tim spun away, snickering.
I stood there, attempting to calm my breathing.
Mr. Tan said, “Joe, he’s a trouble-maker. Don’t let him bother you.”
“I’m fine.”
“Actually, Joe, I was looking for you ju
st now. Got a minute?”
“Maybe.”
“I hear Danny’s coming back pretty soon. How is he?”
“Fine. He’ll be back Monday.” I was still boiling with anger.
“Michelle tells me he had a genuine NDE experience.”
“Not that again. What is it?”
“An NDE? It means near-death-experience. I just assumed you knew. It’s when someone is technically dead, just briefly, but afterwards they remember the experience. It’s an area of research I’m curious about and—”
“A what? Near-death-experience?” I was fed up. “Mr. Tan, I don’t understand any of this. Michelle has funny ideas about Danny’s accident, but she’s overboard. If you want, he’ll be back on Monday. Then he can answer all your fancy questions.” As I stormed out, I heard him say “Sorry, Joe.”
Later that evening, I called Sally on her cell phone to ask her on a date when my bike got fixed in a couple days. She said she couldn’t go on a date. And she sounded embarrassed. She wouldn’t even tell me why. I asked, and she didn’t have another boyfriend. She just couldn’t. So…cold water in my stupid face. Tim had been telling the truth. She was playing me. I was a fool. Before hanging up, Sally also said, “Sorry, Joe.”