Walk to me is what I am told, but not by sound. It is instead a knowing that feels surer than words could ever feel, one that pulls me forward in my darkness with no thought of danger or fear. What hellish shadows that grope for me are cast aside by a light that grows from a pinpoint to a star to a sun to something beyond my telling. It moves toward me as I move toward it, and the warmth I feel is the love I always handled but never embraced.
The man’s back is to me, his face hidden by long strands of black hair. I hear the clanging of the hammer in his hand as it is brought down upon an anvil, black and worn from countless ages of use. The mangled metal upon it glows red. Even from this distance, I feel its heat. He swings the hammer in a CLANG I cannot fathom.
Is this real? I ask him.
I know no unreal, he says.
What are you making?
All things new.
I do not face him. I cannot. And yet I know he smiles deeply and always has, even in his mourning.
What is taken away I will give back a hundredfold, he says, and he brings the hammer up and
CLANG
down again.
He moves. The light from the metal consumes me. I raise my hands to shield my face as he places something upon the anvil. A box. My box.
You need all you have, says the man. You have all you need.
From the shadows comes a form that shimmers from spirit to flesh. Strong and young and so, so alive. He carries in his hand a section of rubber hose attached to a Y-shaped piece of wood.
Grandpa?
My grandfather smiles and says, The peace you wish for the world begins inside yourself. He hands the slingshot to the man.
CLANG
Now a little girl from behind me. The bristles of the paintbrush she carries sweep against my arm. Who we are is not who we should be, Mary says, and skips past me to the man. He stretches out his hand and takes the brush, placing it on the anvil.
CLANG
Willa walks across the room in front of me, singing a verse that is not a hymn, but a Psalm—You have taken account of my wanderings; Put my tears in Your bottle. Are they not in Your book? She gives the man the card she had given me.
Alex is beside me, my letter finally in his hand. There is no greater pain than love, he says, and there is no greater joy.
The man takes the letter.
Jackie’s mother walks past, a small wooden cross in her hand. Our troubles do not test our faith, our troubles make our faith.
Ms. Massachusetts hands the man the tip of her fingernail—We are separated only by our prejudices, she says, and then she is gone.
CLANG, CLANG, CLANG, CLANG
Pine needles from Rudolph, who says there are worlds I do not see and yet see me. Napkins from David Walker, who says the wheels of history are turned by the hands of the ordinary.
The woman from the mall gives the man a hat and tells me we all will stumble without one another.
There is Jordan, sweet Jordan, who hands over a piece of bubble gum and says, We are each other’s angels, all of us, and our questions lift us upward.
There is Logan, still in his dinosaur costume and with a golf tee in his hand, who says that every day can be a day of birth to who we are and a day of death to who we were.
And there is one final person. Standing alone near me. He walks to me and smiles, then places his hands on my shoulders.
You’re good, Andy, Eric says. It is not a question now. Not a dying sort of wondering. It is truth and it is fact and it is good.
Eric walks to the man and hands him the key chain. The man takes it in one hand. Resting the hammer on the anvil, the man reaches out with his other hand and rests it on Eric’s shoulder. He gives Eric a squeeze and a pat, much as a proud father would give his son for a life well lived and a purpose fulfilled.
Eric takes his place among the rest as the man lifts the hammer one last time and
CLANG
molds it into the metal.
It is finished, the man says.
He turns his face, plain but kinglike, and invites me to him. He raises the work of his hands.
A mirror.
It gleams by an unseen light and catches the reflection of the Old Man. I touch my face and he touches his, and I know they are both one and the same.
He points beyond where we stand toward the darkness. Two paths appear before me: one narrow and steep, one wide and flat. The man says, Walk on.
I don’t know the path, I answer.
The man smiles as a light now shines upon the wide path. A figure is bathed in white, arms outstretched. She faces me.
Elizabeth.
Gone are the glasses and the streak of gray in her brown hair. Gone is the rumpled denim shirt and the untied tennis shoes. She is not Elizabeth as she was, she is Elizabeth as she is.
The man says, The world is not solid, Andy. Keep to the deep places. See a new way.
He reaches to touch my face and my heart bursts, too big for my small body. I look into his eyes and think to myself that this is love and this is companionship and I have never been alone.
Never.
I walk toward Elizabeth.
She opens her arms to greet me.
The man smiles.