CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Twelve hours. That’s how long Ralph claims it will take for us to ride from Charleston to Key West – but only if we drive straight through without making any stops.

I don’t know what universe he is living in, nor do I completely understand the self-sufficiency of angels, but I do not hesitate to let him know that he needs to crunch those numbers again - this time considering certain human and non-negotiable female needs. Doubling that original estimated time of arrival might be a good start, is what I suggest.

It takes about two hours for us to reach the city of Savannah, Georgia, where I insist upon taking a break from the road. We find a charming little restaurant overlooking the Savannah River where we indulge in a leisurely lunch of fish tacos, French fries, and a beverage; one light beer for Ralph, and two Diet Cokes for me.

Sometime later, we cross the border into Florida and, though subtle, the local scenery, attitude, and temperature seem to undergo a more relaxed and laid-back metamorphosis of sorts. We spend one night – in separate rooms, of course - in a Motel Six on the outskirts of Saint Augustine. According to a number of prominently placed road signs, this is where the famous Spanish conquistador, Juan Ponce de Leon, claimed to have discovered the Fountain of Youth back in 1513. Ralph turns into a tour guide at this point, and eagerly informs me that people from all over the world come here just to strip naked and bathe in the supposedly rejuvenating, youth-restoring waters of the modern-day park.

I honestly don’t know whether or not to believe him.

Early the next morning, we are back on the road heading south again. I can’t help but notice the somewhat more obvious changes in the local flora now. Suddenly, the environment seems, well, downright tropical. There is an abundance of Mangroves, Hibiscus, and Orange Trees lining all of the small towns and villages we pass through. Interstate ninety-five reminds me of a plaque-free coronary artery that is pumping us along the beating pulse of the ocean. Mile after mile, the Big Slab parallels the coastline, allowing us to both hear and see the cresting waves that punctuate the Atlantic seaboard.

We approach Miami around one in the afternoon, and I realize that I have not once felt the slightest urge to take a bathroom break since we left Saint Augustine. That’s a five hour journey! Imagine that. Apparently, my kidneys and bladder have been as distracted by the gorgeous scenery as the rest of my senses. I wonder what it is about sultry temperatures, aquamarine water, and salty ocean breezes that allow a person to become completely oblivious to ordinary bodily needs?

I am truly amazed by the capacity of my own bladder to expand to what must be the size of a football by now. I guess it’s a ‘nurse thing’. Normal people probably don’t even think about such things, but I can’t help but be impressed by the efficiency of the human urinary system. Believe it or not, these are the kinds of observations that make me believe in God more than any proclamation I’ve ever heard from a member of the clergy.

“You hungry?” Ralph nonchalantly inquires when I emerge from the restroom.

“Not really,” I say and, once again, I am amazed. We haven’t eaten anything since breakfast this morning, yet, I still feel full.

As usual, Ralph just gives me a mysterious grin.

I spot a row of vending machines located on the far side of the restrooms. Thinking like a typical woman, I figure it might be a good idea to stock up on some snacks and drinks, just in case we get hungry later. Who knows how far it might be to the next decent restaurant once we leave the mainland, right?

“What are you doing?” Ralph wants to know as he watches me stuff a few one-dollar bills into the slots of various machines. “I thought you said you weren’t hungry?”

“I’m not,” I assure him, while cramming the extra supplies into a pannier. “But you never know when something like this might come in handy.”

In perfect unison, we don our helmets and re-mount our Harleys like two old riding buddies who have been traveling these roads forever. I am all set to pull out onto U.S. Route One South for the remainder of our trek, when I suddenly notice a look of concern that crosses Ralph’s normally unlined face.

“What’s wrong?” I call across to him.

“Shut your engine down, will you?” he says with a knitted brow.

I do as he says, and then watch as he revs his engine a few times while sitting there in neutral. “Hear that?” he hollers above the deafening roar of the motor.

“Hear what?” I shout back.

“My engine’s making a weird noise,” he insists, revving it again, more intensely this time.

The rumbling engine doesn’t sound any different to me, and I say so, but that doesn’t seem to impress Ralph. In fact, he seems a bit obsessed with it, if you ask me. Though, deep down inside, I’m quite flattered that he even asked my opinion in the first place. Realistically though, what could he possibly expect me to know about stuff like this? I mean, show me a faulty cardiac monitor or a malfunctioning respirator, and I can probably be of some help. But a motorcycle engine? He’s got to be kidding!

“You don’t hear that strange knocking sound?” he asks, clearly astonished by the extent of my oblivion.

“Nope,” I tell him, shrugging my shoulders. Then I get an idea. I dig into one of my saddlebags, pull out my trusty old Littman stethoscope, and then toss it through the air toward him. “Maybe this will help diagnose it,” I suggest.

Words cannot describe the expression on Ralph’s angelic face when I do this.

“Never mind,” he calls back after a mute moment. A wry smile quivers at one corner of his lovely mouth, and he gently arcs the stethoscope back in my direction. “Let’s keep riding for a while,” he decides out loud. “It’s probably nothing.”

It isn’t long before we cross over into the Keys and Ralph and I ride side-by-side along a mostly two-lane highway. Traffic is sparse and there are endless numbers of bridges that span across picturesque channels and tidal estuaries. Coconut Palms and Frangipani Trees are everywhere, but my favorites are the graceful Sea-grape Trees. They flourish in the sandy soil along the beaches and waterways, some of them sprouting long, voluptuous clusters of grape-like fruit from their centers. Ralph tells me that these are the ‘female trees’ and once again, I’m not exactly sure if he’s kidding.

The colors of the sky are spectacular as we ride into a setting sun. A few rogue seagulls seem to race along beside us as we watch the silhouettes of local fishermen casting their lines into the sea from old, decaying piers.

Never in my life do I recall feeling this incredibly free or … this tangibly close to what I believe to be, well, ‘God’. I am profoundly struck by the magic of this magnificent moment.

Ker-plunk! Ker-plunk! Ker-plunk! That is the dissonant sound that shatters my reverie. I watch in jaw-dropping-silence as Ralph’s motorcycle sputters, takes one long, death-defying gasp, and then conks out right there in the middle of the road … in the middle of Who-Knows-Where.

One look at Ralph’s fallen face triggers my greatest fear; I think we’re in trouble now – big trouble.

Ralph draws in a deep breath and glances upward toward the falling darkness all around us. “See?” He gloats. “I told you my engine was making a strange noise.”

“Well, you’re an angel!” I shoot back out of sheer panic. “Do something!”

Oh, he does something, all right.

Riffling through the contents of his very sparse tool kit, Ralph begins tinkering around with some scary-looking contraptions on the inside of his engine; things that I’d rather not know about. When his efforts yield no earth-shattering results, he pulls out his cell phone and calls someone named ‘Steve’ from his contact list.

“Who’s ‘Steve’?” I ask, before whomever he is, picks up.

“He’s an old buddy of mine down here,” Ralph fills in for me. “He runs a motorcycle repair shop around here somewhere.”

“But we don’t even know where we are!” I whine before I can stop myself.

“Maybe you don’t,” Ralph quips with a wink and a smirk.

A booming male voice picks up on the other end of Ralph’s phone, startling me. Maybe it’s the quiet, wide open space we’re in that exaggerates the acoustics somehow. All I know is that his friend’s voice is so sonorous, I can hear every single word of their conversation without even trying. Good. That means it doesn’t count as eavesdropping – at least, not in my book.

It turns out that old ‘Steve’ is talking from his pick-up truck, currently en route to the hospital with his very pregnant wife, Carmella. “I’d love to help you out, Old Buddy,” I hear Steve tell Ralph, “but I’m afraid it’ll have to wait till first thing in the morning, all right? You don’t mind camping out for one night, do ya? The wife’s in a bit of a snit, being as her water just broke and all. Right now, she’s in quite a bit of pain and cursin’ up a storm here.”

A female shriek, consisting of nothing but expletives, explodes across the phone line at this point, drowning out Steve’s powerful voice for several gut-wrenching moments. When he speaks again, I detect the hint of a proud smile in Steve’s tone. “Carmella’s a Jersey Girl, remember?” he chortles. “And you don’t wanna make them mad, even on a good day, right, Pal?”

Ralph actually has the nerve to laugh at this. “I know what you mean,” he says, a bit too conspiratorially for my taste. “No problem. I’ll call you back in the morning. Congratulations, Buddy. Give Carmella - and the baby - my best regards.”

“Are you nuts?!” I rant, the second Ralph breaks the connection. “There’s gotta be something else we can do! Call Triple A! Call nine-one-one! Call the God-damn marines, for all I care, but I am definitely not camping out here in the wilderness!”

Ralph is silent for a moment. “What’s got you so upset, Molly?” he asks with genuine concern. “There’s nothing to fear. Just think, we can look up at the stars all night. And, thanks to you, we’ve got plenty of food. I can even build a heck of a fire that’ll keep the bugs away … and anything else that might happen to wander by ….”

“You’re insane!” I tell him, as if I’ve just figured this out. “Here I am, stuck somewhere in the middle of this uninhabited, untamed swampland with a raving lunatic!”

I can tell Ralph is getting a big kick out of my hysteria, but he does his best to suppress an amused smile. “With all due respect,” he calmly points out, “I’m not the one who’s ranting and carrying on now, am I?”

The next thing I know, we are gathering palm fronds and other various foliage from the side of the road. We arrange them into a low, flat pile between two tree trunks, and then cover the whole thing with a thin plastic tarp that Ralph always carries with him. Apparently, this is where we will be sleeping tonight.

True to his word, Ralph builds a very well-contained fire. We heat two cans of vending-machine-soup and two cans of vending-machine-macaroni-and-cheese over it, adorned with vending-machine-crackers on the side. I fetch two bottles of water from the pannier on my Nightster, and when I return, Ralph looks at me quizzically.

“Now, what?” I huff.

“You, um, you don’t happen to have any kind of silverware with you, do you?” he asks in all seriousness.

Five minutes later, we are drinking soup directly from the cans, and shoveling in the mac-and-cheese by means of a couple of hospital-tongue-blades that I just so happened to have brought along with me. And, here’s the most astonishing part of all; this turns out to be, by far, the most satisfying meal I think I have ever consumed.

Bellies full now, we lean back against the trunks of two adjacent Saw Palmetto Trees and face each other. “So, Ralph, how do you suppose I knew enough to stock up on food back at that last rest stop?” I warily inquire.

“Isn’t it obvious?” he replies without batting an eye. “True healers intuitively know what they need to bring with them.”

I stare at him pensively, mulling over all that this man has somehow managed to convince me of so far. First, there is the claim that he is an angel whose job it is to protect the healers and travelers of the world. Second, he tends to shed feathers at the strangest moments, and there is this unmistakable sense that he is dying or, ‘transitioning to a different level’, as he likes to put it. And, last but not least, there is the fact that Ralph has chosen me to be the one to take over that role once he is gone.

I figure that now might be a very good time to settle back and have an in-depth conversation about these things. Taking note of Ralph’s relaxed posture, I shift position a bit and I try to imitate it. Moments later, I’m surprised to find that I am more comfortable than I would ever have guessed possible, while one is leaning against the bark of a Saw Palmetto Tree.

“Okay, so, hypothetically speaking, of course,” I begin, “if I agree to replace you as ‘Healer of the Healers’, does that require me to be an actual angel, myself?”

“Trust me,” he says, tracing light circles around his contented stomach. “You don’t have to be concerned about things like that.”

“Will I still be able to fall in love again? Maybe even get married again someday? And what if I decide I don’t like this traveling gig? Am I allowed to quit?”

Ralph ponders my barrage of questions for a minute. “Are you a human being with free will?” he asks.

There he goes again, I think, talking in riddles. I hate when he does this.

“I’m not deliberately talking in riddles just to irritate you,” he quickly amends before I can say another word. “But usually, what you think of as ‘riddles’, are just really the best explanations I can come up with on the spur of the moment.”

I study his earnest expression in the dancing firelight, but I say nothing.

“Don’t forget, Molly,” he emphasizes, “on an awful lot of levels, you and I are universes apart. When you think about it, it’s really pretty amazing that we’re able to communicate at all.”

“Okay. Then, let me give you a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ question, all right?” I bait him. “Will you do that for me, at least once? No abstract explanations or tired cliches this time. Just a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’ is all I ask.”

“All right. I’ll try,” he promises.

“Okay, here goes.” I inhale deeply, and then establish direct and steady eye contact with him. “Have you … have you personally ever met … you know … er … God?”

“Yes,” he succinctly confirms.

“No kidding? Really? Can you prove it? What’s He like? And, by the way, is ‘He’ really a ‘he’? Or is that just some image that religious leaders dreamed up – probably men – you know, just so that we mortal humans could relate better?”

“Whoa! Slow down! Those are not ‘yes’ or ‘no’ questions,” Ralph protests, “and I definitely don’t want to piss you off again by speaking in what you so resentfully refer to as ‘riddles’.”

I am stunned by his choice of words. “Wow. Are angels allowed to say things like ‘pissed off’?” I ask in all sincerity.

“Only when it serves the purpose of a more meaningful method of communication,” he explains. “You see, there are just so many concepts that you humans can’t possibly be expected to understand at this early stage of your development. That is why we in the spiritual world are willing to do whatever it takes to make it a little easier for you.”

“Hmmmmm,” I say, trying to take this in. “Do angels understand everything there is to know in the universe?”

“Well, maybe not everything,” he admits.

“Do angels understand the reasons behind the things God does here on Earth?” I press. “I mean, do you guys know what God has in store for each of us?” Then, I quickly add a caveat. “But if the answer has anything to do with an apocalypse or anything like that, I’d rather not know, okay?”

As usual, Ralph patiently indulges me. “We’re not always aware of God’s hopes and dreams for each individual soul,” he allows, “nor, do we need to be. We completely trust that the Almighty is pretty darn good at running the universe. I know you may find this hard to believe, Molly, but you human beings really don’t have to run it for Him.”

The fire crackles then, casting amber lights and dark shadows across Ralph’s chiseled face. Out of the blue, I sense this enormous, yet indescribable wave of love that seems to flow right through me. It’s definitely not of a romantic or a sexual nature. Oh, no. It’s just this overwhelming feeling of love for this man/friend/angel who I know only as ‘Ralph’. Before I can reign in my emotions, I find myself crying my eyes out over how much I’m going to miss him when he no longer inhabits this tiny corner of the world.

Ralph just sits there watching me weep, as if this is a very good thing. Actually, I kind of think it is too. Then, I find myself thinking back to a specific conversation that we had not too long ago. Had Ralph been right all along when he suggested that I’m afraid of love because I don’t feel worthy of it? Does the very idea of love frighten me so much that I can give it to someone only when I know they are about to die? Is that why I’m feeling all of this tenderness these days for my ailing ex-husband? And for my dying angel?

“So, what happens next?” I blubber. “I mean, what’s gonna happen to you? Please tell me. I need to know, Ralph.”

“I have absolutely no idea,” he contends, completely unperturbed by this. “But why spoil the fun of not knowing, right?”

Fun? Is he serious?

“You call this fun?” I snivel. “All of the fear and anxiety and uncertainty that surround this thing called life? Never knowing how … or, or when, or where it might all just suddenly end?”

Ralph smiles sympathetically at my drama and despair. “Haven’t you ever noticed that the best part of any good story is always the suspense of not knowing how it’s going to end?” he proposes.

“No,” I pout. “I prefer to know that a story has a happy ending before I invest even one minute of my precious time reading it.”

Ralph pulls himself away from his tree trunk and sits up straight now. “Then you don’t know what you’re missing,” he maintains, green eyes smoldering with conviction. “Listen, Molly, there’s nothing wrong with asking questions – lots of them - but you also have to be willing to live into the answers. And you have to trust that there is something much bigger than little old you out there. You are never alone,” he asserts. “You can be absolutely sure of that. And that, my dear girl, is the one and only thing you ever truly need to know.”

I’m about to accuse him of speaking in riddles again, but I find I just don’t have the strength. Fatigue begins weighing down my eyelids, and I am barely able to crawl over to the tarp-covered bed of foliage beside the fire. Beneath a glimmering umbrella of silvery starlight, I curl up into a fetal position and surrender myself to that murky realm which lies somewhere between wakefulness and deep sleep.

A light and feathery object flutters onto my cheek, but I am too exhausted to brush it away. I have no idea where Ralph is right now, and I am only vaguely aware of a soothing, hissing sound that emanates from the campfire as someone … or something … extinguishes it.