James Gardner: Reaper

I could tell this Call would be a traffic fatality. It was a Friday evening in early March, the pavement was icy, and the sun was low on the horizon, at the precise spot to strike drivers’ eyes as cars came around the curve. My compass pointed to that curve and my hourglass was almost empty.

A dozen of my fellow Reapers were already there — we were certainly going to make network news tonight. Most of the other Reapers sprawled indolently on the snow of the embankment beside the road; one boy who looked fourteen years old was showing off by pretending to make angels in the snow. (Of course, his ethereal body left no mark.) He thought making angels was very funny. I was about to instruct him on the way that sacrilegious flippancy can extend a soul’s period of penance when my eye was caught by another Reaper pacing anxiously on the highway’s median.

She appeared to be in her twenties, her eyes as clear as the eyes of doves, her body glorious in a Reaper’s celestial raiment. (Praise God I am no longer tormented by the hormones that inflame a man’s physical body.) Her gaze was fixed on the traffic speeding down from the north; from time to time, she leaned out over the lanes of cars for a better view, like a woman waiting for her lover to appear. Her scythe lay abandoned on the muddy snow behind her.

I thought to myself she must be a newcomer to our Calling, anxious to do it correctly. I do not wish to belittle the angels who supervised us, but they were not good at talking to mortals. They didn’t give clear and specific instructions; they failed to provide the firm guidance that most of my fellow humans needed. As in so many cases where Heaven spoke ambiguously, I was forced to step in and declare the truth more plainly.

“Greetings, sister,” I said in my most comforting voice. “Are you troubled?”

She threw a distracted glance my way, then turned back toward the cars. “I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine,” I said. “You look like a woman who’s worried she’ll make a mistake.”

She gave me another look, but this time surprised.

“There’s no cause for worry, sister,” I went on. “Heaven has made our jobs very simple. The compass leads us to our Charges. The hourglass tells us when to act. The scythe cuts the cord that binds spirit to flesh. Then we may joyously greet the freed soul in the Name of our Lord Jesus Christ who judges most...”

I had lost her attention. She took a few impatient steps away from me and peered out over the traffic again.

I was not upset. I have been ignored before. Human nature is devilishly proud and often spurns those who try to help.

“Are you worried about the violence?” I asked. She moved away from my voice, but I followed her. Many try to flee from unpleasantness when they would be happier facing it. “I realize most new Reapers are sickened by the blood,” I said. “I would guess you come from genteel society and have never seen the horrors of mutilation and disease. I promise you, though, you’ll get used to the ugliness. Everyone does. We may still find it distasteful but not intolerably repugnant. We—”

“Shut up!” she snapped, wheeling to face me. “I’m finding you intolerably repugnant. Blood is just blood. You, you’re—”

A truck horn trumpeted up the road, like Gabriel signaling all Reapers of Souls to their preordained missions. A tractor-trailer had been cut off by a lane-hopping sports car; then there was a chaos of brakes, ice, sun, the trailer jackknifing, the truck heeling over on one side as the driver tried to regain the road. The front grill of the truck passed through my insubstantial body as eighteen wheels of death crossed the median into oncoming traffic.

I forced my eyes to stay open. It was an exercise of discipline. I didn’t want to watch, so I did. The destruction had a brutal sort of grandeur, like a dance of giants: some parts dizzyingly swift, others slow but inexorable. Brakes squealed and horns blared a musical accompaniment on top of an ongoing percussion of metal on metal.

The spectacle was so dazzling, I came close to forgetting my purpose... but then I saw the fourteen-year-old Reaper scrambling into the overturned tractor-trailer and I remembered my duty.

The Reaping was routine — my Charge was a mousy sort of man in his forties, impaled on the shaft of his steering wheel. The sand in my hourglass was down to the last few grains even as I arrived, but I had been a Reaper for nearly a decade and was adept at my work. Reaching into his solar plexus, I found his silver cord, pulled it out, and levered my scythe under it. As the last grain ran out, a sharp clean jerk severed the cord.

I sang a hymn of thanksgiving, as an example to the other Reapers. I tried to raise my voice loud enough for them to hear over the thundering din around me.

The moment the mousy man’s soul slid from his body, he began apologizing. He assumed full blame for the accident... an example of self-centered pride, since he was not the cause, merely the effect. He also assumed blame for unhappiness in his own life and the lives of those he loved, and blame for various future miseries that would result from his death. In short, he was hysterical, and his remorse wasn’t worth a cinder. I left him to babble and went in search of the young woman I’d been trying to instruct.

I found her on the embankment, sitting beside the body of a sixteen-year-old boy. Apparently he’d been thrown from one of the cars in the pileup below us. (Boys his age defy seat-belt laws... more self-centered pride.) His head was bloody, his hair spangled with beads of safety glass glinting red in the sunset. The Reaper woman rested her hand on his arm in a tender way I thought ill advised.

“It doesn’t do to become too attached,” I told her as I drew near. “It can only interfere with doing your duty. You aren’t even watching your hourglass. How will you know when his time runs out?”

“It already did,” she said. She reached around behind her back and produced the hourglass for my inspection. It was as full as a newborn baby’s. “I saved him,” she said, looking at the hourglass as if she could hardly believe it herself.

“I don’t understand.”

“I didn’t take him. The time came and I didn’t cut his cord. After a while, the hourglass filled up again.”

“Do you know what you’ve done?” I shouted at her.

“I’ve saved him. He’s already stopped bleeding.” The boy stirred under her hand. “He’s going to be all right.”

“Nothing is going to be all right! You’ve committed a monstrous sin, don’t you see that? You’re supposed to do penance; you’re supposed to do as you’re told. You’ve defied the will of Heaven. You’ve spit on our Savior’s mercy!”

“He reminds me of my brother,” she said, stroking the boy’s cheek. I turned my head away, sickened. “I’ve been following him for weeks,” she went on. “His name’s John. He hates being called Johnny, but his mother still does it to tease him. He plays hockey... tries different ways to comb his hair to impress girls...”

“He’s an ordinary teenager, nothing more,” I said, grabbing her arm and yanking her smartly to her feet. “You’ve jeopardized your immortal soul on a whim I can’t begin to understand. Don’t you hold your soul precious? Don’t you understand the risks? I had a sister... should I damn myself forever for some woman who merely reminds me of her?”

But it was too late to reason with her. The air around us grew suddenly warm and clean, scented with the breath of roses. I pushed the woman away from me and rushed a few steps down the embankment. For a moment, I glimpsed the radiant hand of an angel reaching out of nothingness to touch the woman’s shoulder. Then she was gone.