The Hard Way Back to Heaven. Karl Dehmelt

      Harlan smiles again, and imitates the boy’s noise.

      “Tell them thank you. Is your father still enjoying his job at the station? Has he gotten any trouble lately?”

      The boy’s eyes break from Harlan’s, looking down instead at the arms of Harlan’s chair.

      “There’s always trouble somewhere. He’s been away a bit more, with summer just starting. He hasn’t had many issues that I know of, so I guess that’s a good thing.”

      Harlan’s right hand, the fingers permanently hardened from their years of use, contains two rings. One is a silver band. The other is gold, with a blue sapphire set in the center. Three rows of miniscule diamonds, with three stones set in each, adorn either side of the sapphire. Even under the awning of the porch, the sun still reflects off the gems. For each beam of light that passes Harlan by, with each taillight glinting in the sun, he still holds the rays which come from that ring on his pinkie finger.

      A silence descends. Harlan sighs.

      “Nathan,” Harlan says.

      “Yes, Mr. McGregor?” Nathan jumps a tad. He’s been staring at the ring on Harlan’s hand.

      “Would you mind having a seat for a moment?” Harlan looks up at the boy and grins, warm and inviting as a grandfather. An empty chair sits directly to Harlan’s right.

      Nathan walks up the stairs, coming out of the sun, and sits down in the chair next to Harlan. Today marks his fourth visit to the property, and the first time Harlan has asked him to sit.

      “Nathan, how many times have you been here to cut the grass?” Harlan asks, casting his gaze to the street. A blue Jaguar, a mid-2000s model, drives up the road, around the bend, and out of sight.

      “Four, including today.”

      “Four.” Harlan mouths the number, inspecting it like the contents of a car hood.

      “Did I ever tell you about that tree there?” Harlan asks, gesturing towards the apple tree. He knows the answer.

      Nathan frowns. “I don’t believe so.”

      It’s a small tree, dwarfed by the others in yards around the neighborhood. Each branch sticks out. The wood is soft, but sturdy, to bend but not break in a strong wind, even after storms. Harlan walks out and checks on that tree every morning, and the damned little brave thing never wanders off.

      “A long time ago,” Harlan says. “I planted that tree. It must’ve been at least thirty years by now. It grew from this little shrub into what it looks like today. Really, it stopped changing about fifteen years ago. I’d say that for as long as I’ve had that tree, it’s always dropped these apples, Nathan. They are still some darn good apples if you get them at the right time.” Harlan laughs, a genuine sound seemingly trapped inside of him for weeks. Nathan smiles in appeasement.

      Harlan rises. The muscles that had worked for him his entire life work once more, leaving the chair. Usually, Harlan is inside again by 10 to make breakfast and clean the house. There is no use in waiting when he knows nobody will show up. As he stands, he is resolved: he and Nathan will still be standing out front, so he can continue to wait as he’s outside.

      Harlan walks down the steps that connect to the path cutting through the middle of the yard, carefully placing each foot up and down. His feet remember not to trip over the ground. He had done it once before, and it had hurt him a great deal, a nice fracture in his hip.

      Walking over to the apple tree, Harlan suddenly feels small. He’s around six feet tall when not slouching, but the apple tree is at least twice his height from base to tip. The branches reach down to shake Harlan’s hand, their particular wood swaying gently in the breeze of the morning. Small budding flowers have appeared on the tree, waiting for the apples to follow. Little spheres are forming in anticipation.

      Harlan reaches his right hand up to one of the branches. He plucks one of the flowers from the stick fingers, greeting it in a way he hadn’t in years. It releases from the tree effortlessly, with the smallest tug separating it from the mother branch.

      Nathan walks up beside him. Nathan sees a look of wonder on the old man’s face. He does not see Harlan smile—truly smile—often. His mood is usually jovial, but to see the emotion of the old man’s face turned into such wonderment at something so small as a tree strikes Nathan as peculiar.

      Harlan turns, the small flower in hand. He holds it in front of his face.

      “My grandson used to love these things. He’d pluck them off and bring them to me when he was real young. When he was able to reach them, the lowest of the low hangers, and pluck them off, you should have seen the look on his face.” Harlan laughs.

      “I didn’t know you had a grandson.” Nathan says. The old man had never talked about his personal life before.

      “Yes, I do.” Harlan says, letting the leaf float towards the ground as he turns back to the tree. “He’s about your age. You’re a senior?”

      “I’m a Junior, actually. Next year will be my Senior year.

      “I see. Alex just graduated high school. He lives about forty minutes away from here, in a small town.” Harlan’s smile dissipates, and the leaf falls to the ground on the calming pillow of gravity.

      It lands on the grass gently, finally at rest.

      The chimes on the porch trill.

      “That was a long, long time ago.” Harlan says.

      Harlan hears the laughter of a boy. It starts softly, but soon echoes towards him through time, air, space, and light. It carries a name with it on the breeze: Alex. Harlan catches the thought for once, not letting it escape or slide away from him like the song. He can hear the song playing too, emitting the notes of time and the bars of a different life. They dance and pirouette around the yard, closing in just as the hypothetical ends of the world have done on the porch before for Harlan. These are benevolent, these specters. Light, love, freedom, youth; all words accompanying the sound of laughter. Harlan looks at the top of the tree, how it seems to bend willingly, not afraid to lose its original form, for change is gorgeous.

      However, as the good things come, Harlan suddenly feels a chill. It is a warm morning, but Harlan is cold. It dilutes the laughter of the boy, and a smell seems to drift from the house. Ghosts are now all around him, smiling at him, staring at him. Harlan has waited so, so long. And he will keep waiting, until it’s Tuesday afternoon again.

      Distinctly, Harlan hears a voice say, “May 19.”

      “Mr. Harlan?”

      Harlan does not hear Nathan. Instead, the faces Father Time so graciously blurred sharpen in his mind’s eye.

      One name escapes his mouth, as the memories crash down like discordant music:

      “Michael.”

      Part I

      August 14, 2009 — May 19, 2010

      1

      August 14, 2009

      Driving through the southern edge of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, greatness grows in secret. Majesty inhabits the fields of the area’s farmers, in the faces of parents whose children graduate from the local high schools, every hope and dream nestled into opportunity. Some people claim the only way to find a great life is to leave the small towns, but the truly knowledgeable understand the value of simplicity. In one particular town, nestled into an area about 40 minutes north of Philadelphia, happiness is a rich crop, only harvestable by those with observant vision.

      It is August. September has not yet awakened from its slumber to steal the children off to school again. The leaves on the trees are still as flush as emeralds. The agrarian land has weathered countless storms. There’s a spirit intrinsic to the farmhouses, built into the wood and sewn into the pastures. Those who discover the soul of the land are rarely apt to stray.

      History