ACUTE TRAUMA TO the head swells the brain, choking off those parts that control breathing and heartbeat. Before the brutes had quite finished killing Joey Rice, he slid from terror into insensibility. His body, realizing no recovery was possible, swiftly implemented its self-destruct procedure, releasing it host, the soul, from any further fear or pain.
Untethered, unbound, and still unconscious, the soul of Joseph Rice winged its way across the portals of earth and eternity, and arrived at my doors.
He opened his eyes, his true eyes, and found himself in a grassy field dotted with small white flowers. Bigger by far than Central Park. Birds sang. A warm breeze wrapped itself around him and rustled the boughs of nearby trees.
He found his feet on a path that led to a familiar door. He opened it and went inside.
It was his home in Harlem. His parents’ flat. There was his mother at the table, doing her nightly crossword puzzle. Beside her sat his father, replacing a guitar string. They shared a bowl of popcorn between them on the table. A photograph of Joey in a jacket and tie stood on the mantel.
“Mom,” he called. “Dad. How’re you doing?”
They didn’t look up.
He stood by the table. “Mom, Dad! It’s me, Joe!”
I joined him. No footsteps, but he knew I was there. He didn’t look. “What’s going on?”
It’s better, I find, to let liberated souls figure things out at their own pace.
“Am I dead?”
He turned toward me. I’d taken the form of his dead grandfather, but Joey wasn’t fooled.
“Does it feel like you are?” I asked him.
“No,” he said. “What was that grassy place?”
“Asphodel,” I told him. “Do you like it?”
He seemed unwilling to admit that there is anything to like about being dead. This is common and does not offend me.
“Tell me straight. I’m dead, aren’t I?”
“You are.”
“Then why am I here?”
“It’s where you wanted to be.”
He turned back to his folks. He knelt beside his mother and stroked her hair.
“I’m sorry, Ma,” he told her. “I’m so sorry. I said I’d always look after you.”
She didn’t notice a thing. She did, however, decipher a tricky clue.
Joey’s father got the new string tested and tuned. He fingered a few experimental chords to make sure the strings were in agreement. Joey squeezed his father’s shoulders.
“Dad,” he whispered. “I didn’t make it.”
His father began a song in earnest. “I looked over Jordan, and what did I see, coming for to carry me home . . . ?”
Joey turned to me once more. “It’s going to kill them when they get the news,” he said. “Especially if they hear how it happened. Dad’s heart might not hold up. And Ma—”
He began to cry. I am so often moved by souls whose first concern is not for their own lost years, but for the grief their passing will cause to those they love. It’s more common than you might think. The most ordinary mortal bodies are housed by spectacular souls.
“Swing low, sweet chariot, comin’ for to carry me home,” sang Joey’s father.
Joey knelt beside his father and rested his head on his knee.
“Somebody’s got to warn them,” he insisted, “so the news doesn’t destroy them.”
“It sounds good in theory,” I told him, “but in practice, where death is concerned, it’s quite tricky to pull off.”
“Somebody’s got to look after them,” Joey said. “It’ll be hard for them for years to come.”
“Why not you?”
He stopped and looked at me. “Could it be me?”
I nodded. “Of course.”
“Don’t I have ”—he gestured broadly—“things I’m supposed to be doing?”
I smiled. “Not strumming harps, or stoking fires, if that’s what you mean.”
I liked Joey Rice.
“What else happens here?” he asked. “In Heaven, or the afterlife, or whatever?”
I rose to leave. “The options,” I told him, “are practically infinite. And you have all the time you could wish for to explore them. But anytime you like, you can rest in Asphodel.”
Joey sat in a chair between his mother and father. “I think I’ll stay here awhile.”
“Stay as long as you like,” I told him. “I should warn you: it won’t be easy.”
“Wait,” he said. “Am I supposed to be judged? Have my soul weighed, or whatever it is? Good or bad? Should I be worried about that?”
I shook his hand before leaving the room. “It was a very brief examination,” I told him. “You’ve already passed.”