Etta sometimes feels her thoughts as tangibly as the doves flying out of a magician's hat. That real. She is not expecting anyone out her lonely dirt road up a hundred and fifty-nine steps through the firs on this light-and-shadows day. She is sunken in the green armchair, watching the windows which face the mountain in a full beatitude of lonely grace. Over the arm of the chair Jane Eyre is opened to the middle. She has just read the part where Jane supernaturally hears Mr. Rochester's voice calling out to her across the ethers: Jane! Jane! Jane!
     The gentle tap-tap-tap was so unlikely that at first she assumed it was the fire shifting in the grate. The knock is not repeated, but the presence of strangers seeps into the room and finally reaches her. She rises and moves towards the door, retying the fuzzy pink robe, the one that makes infinite pink lintballs which she likes to pull at for the pleasure of the tearing fibers. A small airy pyramid of them rests on the flat arm of the chair, pink against green.
     The kittens pounce in a herd behind every step to catch the strings hanging down the backs of her Moroccan slippers. Six black kittens, a very pink robe. Not another sound from outside.
     The huge door creaks like the door in a Gothic novel. Temporarily blinded by the pillar of October sunlight that streaks in, it takes a moment to see their faces; the glittering pine needles behind them make haloes around their silhouetted heads.
     "Hello," she says, after a long, beautiful arc of time, as they come into focus. Two men in old-fashioned-looking black suits and white tennis shoes are standing there. Actually one old man and a boy.
     The creaking of the door seemed to choreograph the growing of their smiles. The trees sway together like backup singers. Etta can hear the two breathing, knows the full-chested pleasure of oxygen moving into leg muscles from the ascent. Their response time is just slightly longer than in normal interactions, as though they are listening for their next lines.
     "Hello," the old man says with great tenderness, so meaningfully in fact that Etta looks closely at him, thinking perhaps he is a grandfather or forgotten beloved uncle. He is not. She is reminded of the many different lonelinesses for which she has cried herself to sleep; his face is the reminder. He has a face like Nat King Cole sings, melancholy in syrup.
     "We've come here to talk to you about your soul," the man says. The boy's cheeks and upper lip are covered with a soft yellow fuzz. Etta has always imagined her soul as an opaque, tadpole-shaped ghost that floated inside her like the bubble in a shampoo bottle.
     "That's wonderful," she says. There are magazines in the man's knuckly hands. The boy's face nourishes her; she is sure he is the important one: the old man is the magician, taking her attention away, and the boy is the magic trick that will burst into rabbits when she is not looking.
     "Do you know, personally, who Jesus really is?" the man asks. His sincerity is colossal. The comb tracks in his grayblack hair are like the furrows a plow makes in a new field. Through the slightly swaying branches the sun causes a blob of light to appear and disappear from the side of his face, as if God is flashing a message to Etta.
     "I love Jesus," she says, meaning it with all her heart. Suddenly she is worried for the boy. He is like a canary poised at the opened door of its cage. Why won't he fly? The man's voice answers for her: it is a warm sleep that you never want to wake from. The kittens, which have all been hiding behind her robe, start to come out into the sunlight; they surround the boy's white sneakers and sit between his feet.
     "Do you have assurance that if you died today, you know you'd be in heaven with Jesus?" the man asks, and the thought is so appealing that she can't answer immediately. She closes her eyes and lets the cool breeze lift the hair off her forehead and she is there: Etta, the boy, and Jesus together in Heaven.
     "I think my soul is in good hands," she finally says. This is a good answer; the old man immediately begins leafing through his magazines as though he knows he has one that will exactly address her particular emptiness. Because his hands are shaking, she vows to read every word.
     Behind them, coming up the steps, is Etta's black cat, with something in her mouth. As she gets closer, Etta sees that it is half of a gopher. The bottom half. The cat drops it on the deck behind the two visitors. It is chewed cleanly through so that it seems you could pick it up and flex it open like a crushed Dixie cup and have a cavity in the middle as big as a thumb. Only Etta notices. The cat comes up to her, full teats swinging, and rubs against Etta's pink robe.
     "Only 144,000 will be chosen, and we who are chosen know it with the certainty of that blue sky," the old man says, handing her a magazine with a color photo of a huge blue eye and a title that reads, CAN YOU SEE YOUR OWN BLINDNESS? Etta looks up at the sky. It certainly is blue. A large white lenticular cloud moves slowly across it. She looks back at the gopher. The red blood on the edges still looks wet. She imagines it jumping up on its back legs and running to find its head. Resurrected. With that thought, a dove lifts its wings in her and its wingtips brush her insides.
     "Wouldn't you like to have that kind of certainty?" the man asks. The boy follows her eyes and turns to look where she is looking, and as the old man's question hangs in the air, the two young ones gaze upon the gopher like it was the meaning of their lives.

Contents

 Zoe

 Mullery