The Angel of Death
But first, a bit of verisimilitude:
Clara Jane is discovering herself as Human Being, is noticing things she never noticed before. As Clara Rinker, John Sanford’s creation, what she noticed was cops and get-a-way routes, the ease or difficulty with which a knife slit a throat, and the mendacity of the bozos whose deserving throats she slit. Hiding out in Berryville as Jane Smith, she remains vigilant and in character, a serial killer taking time out in the sticks. Her existence as Clara Rinker hiding out as Jane Smith was of no importance to her; her life was of no interest to her: she was simply a machine invented by a paperback writer.
And then John came along with his odd theories and requests, and I had made her into Clara Jane Smith, prospective Church Lady and candidate-enrollee for the Pastors Turner’s Five Finger Exercise class that commences, by and by. Shortly. Oeh.
John Heartbreak has complicated her life because he believes that people in books can be as real as people you might actually know or be related to. For example, John learned more about how to be alive and how to be a man from Woodrow Call, a character in Lonesome Dove, than he ever had from his father Jann Heartbreak, a man that John believed for the longest time was really a Robot Machine from the Planet Norway. Captain Call was certainly more real to John than Jann Heartbreak had ever been.
Without putting too fine a point on it, John is himself a character in a book, but I know him to be real and, if you are reading this book, you will suspect he is real as well. So, who is most real? John Heartbreak the suspiciously human presence you are reading about now, or So and So Next Door who watches television seven hours a day and doesn’t know in what century the American Civil War was fought? Who would you prefer to know?
Clara Jane turns right onto Church Street and passes by Mary Margaret’s long and tidy side yard until she reaches the corner of Church and Shaver Streets. She pauses and looks north and up Shaver. What she sees is three mostly abandoned shacks owned by a Carroll County Public Official—and what a fine citizen and public servant he is. The yards of his properties are a tangled, weedy mess, windows are broken, and trash is strewn about. He certainly cares about the public good, doesn’t he?
Clara Jane smiles at this insult. Before she became Clara Jane and was only Clara Rinker ne Jane Smith it never occurred to her that a place, that space, could be pleasant or ugly. As Jane Smith, she kept her Pritchard Street house and yard tidy the same way and with the same motivation that she keeps her Smith and Wesson .38 clean and well-oiled, out of professionalism, self-respect, and a sense of self-preservation.
Clara Jane had also mistakenly assumed that tidiness and maintenance is the expected norm in Berryville, and that Berryville is not tidy and well maintained has become more and more evident to her, especially as she sees the legally sanctioned shambles the Public Servant makes of Shaver Avenue. She now understands that her anonymity would be more secured by piling dead tires and old sofas and defunct stoves on her porch than by mowing her grass.
Clara Jane has actually considered letting her tidy, well groomed property go to the dogs, but has not done so because she knows it would wound John if she did. Considering the feelings and wants of other people is something new in her life as well. Up until only a few days ago Clara Jane could have dropped a piano on John’s head with no more thought than had she slammed a garden slug. Now, she feels protective of John in the way a mother might feel toward the particularly stupid, runty child that has entered her life quite late in the game after all its siblings are busy My Spacing and working part time at the Sonic Drive In out on Trimble Drive.
She crosses Shaver and passes by an old wrecked house on the corner and continues by the First Christian Church’s parsonage. The parsonage has an acceptable but barely acceptable front yard that would be improved with four flower beds, and the planting of, say, a hedge of forsythias or snowball bushes. (Sorry. I can’t help myself.) Clara Jane passes the parsonage and crosses in front of the First Christian Church where she stops and turns to look at its pretty red door.
The FFC is probably the oldest church in Berryville. Thanks to Robert and Elaine West, it is certainly the tidiest and best maintained. It should be no surprise that John chose it as the Heartbreak’s church home since, after all, CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS. That wasn’t the only reason, of course, but it was a factor: John would no more join a disheveled congregation than he would send his children out into the world with dirty necks.
Clara Jane stares at the church and wonders what it will be like when she, inevitably, goes into it. She is not worried about fitting in. Her success as a serial killer is due in part to her chameleon ability to become her surroundings, although attending church will be a first. The only hymn she knows is “In Heaven There is No Beer” and she is not certain that it is even a hymn. She’ll find out.
The sun is beginning to set, a big nickel dropping into the slot of the horizon. Reluctantly, Clara Jane turns away from the church, heads west on Church Street and picks up the pace a bit. She has an appointment on the Town Square that may or may not involve SHAZAAM but it will certainly (as you know) involve the parting of a soul from its earthly vessel. Clara Jane will be there in—oh, say three minutes—to help it along.
Three minutes is about the length of time it will take Clara Jane to get from where she is, on the corner of Church Street and Springfield Road, to the fountain on the east side of the Square. Three minutes provides enough time for 450 words that could be devoted to more description of Berryville’s maintenance “issues” along the balance of East Church Street. But you don’t want to hear anymore about that particular subject. Do you?
Okay. Fine.
Clara Jane crosses Springfield Road and passes by Hanby’s Lumber Yard, passes the Carroll County Literacy Council, passes Arts of Mud, and passes the bodega and Mimi’s Trunk. All without comment on the tiredness of buildings. Until she reaches the Square. Where she smiles. Again. Her appointment is early.
“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” quoted Robert Oppenheimer, thought Clara Jane Smith. Sixty feet away sat a lumping figure, its back to Wilson’s TV and Appliance, its shoe clad feet stuck in the tepid water of the fountain. It, he, looked over his shoulder at the sound of Clara Jane’s approach.
“Are you the one I’m supposed to meet?” he asked.
“Are you supposed to meet someone?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve just had a feeling all day long that I was supposed to come here and sit by the water and wait for someone. So I’m sitting here, waiting.”
“Why didn’t you take your shoes and socks off?” Clara Jane asked. “It is unusual to see a man of your age soaking his shoes along with his feet.”
“I admit that it is unusual, but it feels good.” The man lightly kicked his heels against the side of the fountain.
“I’m not myself today,” he said, out of nowhere. “I feel as blue as I’ve ever been.”
“Despondent even,” Clara Jane said, nudging him gently, soothingly.
“That word works just as well. You’re right. I am despondent.”
“It started when you went in Heartbreak’s Bookstore this morning, didn’t it?” It is not really a question. Clara Jane is simply reporting.
The man agreed.
“Yup. I went in there with the wife to buy a book and came out feeling all wrecked up inside. Different, anyhow.
“All day, I walked around, following Hazel in and out of junk shops, trying my best to keep her from throwing money around. The whole time, my mind was unsettled. I was thinking about things I haven’t thought about in fifty years.”
Clara Jane slipped her shoes off and settled in next to him on the ledge of the fountain. She dangled her feet in the water alongside his and splashed a bit. “It does feel good, doesn’t it?” she said. “The water, I mean.”
“Yup. It’s pretty good.” The man offered his hand Clara Jane. “My name’s Sodjerberjer. With two Js.”
“That’s a lot of Js for one name,” Clara Jane said, shaking his hand.
“It’s Norwegian. Norwegians have plenty of Js. That’s about what we have as far as culture goes. Them, and Vikings, of course. We are a reserved, stoic, and formerly violent people.”
“John Heartbreak is a Norwegian,” Clara Jane said. “He takes some pride in it.”
“I thought so,” Sodjerberjer replied. “I could tell by the way he sniffed at my reading request. Down his big nose.”
“John’s a big sniffer. This whole book is full of sniffing.”
“What book?” Sodjerberjer asked. He gave her a quizzical look, half smiling. “What book are you talking about?”
“This book,” Clara Jane repeated. “You’re in a book now. A man who lives with John is writing about what John sees through his bookstore’s window. John saw you coming this morning, had thoughts about you coming, and his thoughts about you went into the book.
“Look,” she said, pointing at cars on the road bisecting (gutting) the Town Square. “There goes Steve Hanna.
"And there,” she said, pointing at a red pickup speeding by, “goes Dickie Clark. Steve owns the liquor store and Dickie works for him. Now they’re in the book too.”
“I’ll be darned,” he said, wonderingly. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling so odd all day.
“What’s this writer saying about me?” he asked. “Anything I got to worry about?”
Clara Jane smiled. “Not really. Your worries are over.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This is where it all ends, Mr. Sodjerberjer,” Clara Jane said. “You don’t have to worry about anything, anymore.”
Sodjerberjer nodded. “That’s the funny feeling I’ve been having all day. I’ve been feeling that it’s all over.”
He kicked his heels against the fountain’s wall, splashing. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t take my shoes off,” he said. “What would be the point, after all?”
Sodjerberjer turned to Clara Jane, an intent inquiring look on his face. “Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Clara Rinker,” Clara Jane Smith answered. “I’m the Angel of Death.”
“Not someone you meet every day,” Sodjerberjer replied.
“No, not every day. Just once.”
Sodjerberjer nodded again. “So. What happens now?”
Clara Jane took Sodjerberjer’s hand in hers and held it, gently. “Tell me all about it,” she said. “Tell me all about Sodjerberjer.”
Clara Jane walked up Pritchard Street past four or five weedy yards, past the Heartbreak’s tidy clapboard house and yard, and up to the corner where Pritchard meets Church Street. Mary Margaret’s house is on Clara Jane’s right and the bricked back of the Baptist Church is straight in front of her, marking the terminal end of Pritchard. Mary Margaret’s yard is tidy, but she owns or at least takes care of twenty or thirty cats. These cats come over and sit on the Heartbreak’s front porch early every morning for the purpose of driving Mrs. Heartbreak’s Jack Russell, Jane, insane. All that barking you hear at six o’clock in the morning is Jane off her rocker.
Clara Jane is discovering herself as Human Being, is noticing things she never noticed before. As Clara Rinker, John Sanford’s creation, what she noticed was cops and get-a-way routes, the ease or difficulty with which a knife slit a throat, and the mendacity of the bozos whose deserving throats she slit. Hiding out in Berryville as Jane Smith, she remains vigilant and in character, a serial killer taking time out in the sticks. Her existence as Clara Rinker hiding out as Jane Smith was of no importance to her; her life was of no interest to her: she was simply a machine invented by a paperback writer.
And then John came along with his odd theories and requests, and I had made her into Clara Jane Smith, prospective Church Lady and candidate-enrollee for the Pastors Turner’s Five Finger Exercise class that commences, by and by. Shortly. Oeh.
John Heartbreak has complicated her life because he believes that people in books can be as real as people you might actually know or be related to. For example, John learned more about how to be alive and how to be a man from Woodrow Call, a character in Lonesome Dove, than he ever had from his father Jann Heartbreak, a man that John believed for the longest time was really a Robot Machine from the Planet Norway. Captain Call was certainly more real to John than Jann Heartbreak had ever been.
Without putting too fine a point on it, John is himself a character in a book, but I know him to be real and, if you are reading this book, you will suspect he is real as well. So, who is most real? John Heartbreak the suspiciously human presence you are reading about now, or So and So Next Door who watches television seven hours a day and doesn’t know in what century the American Civil War was fought? Who would you prefer to know?
Clara Jane turns right onto Church Street and passes by Mary Margaret’s long and tidy side yard until she reaches the corner of Church and Shaver Streets. She pauses and looks north and up Shaver. What she sees is three mostly abandoned shacks owned by a Carroll County Public Official—and what a fine citizen and public servant he is. The yards of his properties are a tangled, weedy mess, windows are broken, and trash is strewn about. He certainly cares about the public good, doesn’t he?
Clara Jane smiles at this insult. Before she became Clara Jane and was only Clara Rinker ne Jane Smith it never occurred to her that a place, that space, could be pleasant or ugly. As Jane Smith, she kept her Pritchard Street house and yard tidy the same way and with the same motivation that she keeps her Smith and Wesson .38 clean and well-oiled, out of professionalism, self-respect, and a sense of self-preservation.
Clara Jane had also mistakenly assumed that tidiness and maintenance is the expected norm in Berryville, and that Berryville is not tidy and well maintained has become more and more evident to her, especially as she sees the legally sanctioned shambles the Public Servant makes of Shaver Avenue. She now understands that her anonymity would be more secured by piling dead tires and old sofas and defunct stoves on her porch than by mowing her grass.
Clara Jane has actually considered letting her tidy, well groomed property go to the dogs, but has not done so because she knows it would wound John if she did. Considering the feelings and wants of other people is something new in her life as well. Up until only a few days ago Clara Jane could have dropped a piano on John’s head with no more thought than had she slammed a garden slug. Now, she feels protective of John in the way a mother might feel toward the particularly stupid, runty child that has entered her life quite late in the game after all its siblings are busy My Spacing and working part time at the Sonic Drive In out on Trimble Drive.
She crosses Shaver and passes by an old wrecked house on the corner and continues by the First Christian Church’s parsonage. The parsonage has an acceptable but barely acceptable front yard that would be improved with four flower beds, and the planting of, say, a hedge of forsythias or snowball bushes. (Sorry. I can’t help myself.) Clara Jane passes the parsonage and crosses in front of the First Christian Church where she stops and turns to look at its pretty red door.
The FFC is probably the oldest church in Berryville. Thanks to Robert and Elaine West, it is certainly the tidiest and best maintained. It should be no surprise that John chose it as the Heartbreak’s church home since, after all, CLEANLINESS IS NEXT TO GODLINESS. That wasn’t the only reason, of course, but it was a factor: John would no more join a disheveled congregation than he would send his children out into the world with dirty necks.
Clara Jane stares at the church and wonders what it will be like when she, inevitably, goes into it. She is not worried about fitting in. Her success as a serial killer is due in part to her chameleon ability to become her surroundings, although attending church will be a first. The only hymn she knows is “In Heaven There is No Beer” and she is not certain that it is even a hymn. She’ll find out.
The sun is beginning to set, a big nickel dropping into the slot of the horizon. Reluctantly, Clara Jane turns away from the church, heads west on Church Street and picks up the pace a bit. She has an appointment on the Town Square that may or may not involve SHAZAAM but it will certainly (as you know) involve the parting of a soul from its earthly vessel. Clara Jane will be there in—oh, say three minutes—to help it along.
Three minutes is about the length of time it will take Clara Jane to get from where she is, on the corner of Church Street and Springfield Road, to the fountain on the east side of the Square. Three minutes provides enough time for 450 words that could be devoted to more description of Berryville’s maintenance “issues” along the balance of East Church Street. But you don’t want to hear anymore about that particular subject. Do you?
Okay. Fine.
Clara Jane crosses Springfield Road and passes by Hanby’s Lumber Yard, passes the Carroll County Literacy Council, passes Arts of Mud, and passes the bodega and Mimi’s Trunk. All without comment on the tiredness of buildings. Until she reaches the Square. Where she smiles. Again. Her appointment is early.
“I am become death, the destroyer of worlds,” quoted Robert Oppenheimer, thought Clara Jane Smith. Sixty feet away sat a lumping figure, its back to Wilson’s TV and Appliance, its shoe clad feet stuck in the tepid water of the fountain. It, he, looked over his shoulder at the sound of Clara Jane’s approach.
“Are you the one I’m supposed to meet?” he asked.
“Are you supposed to meet someone?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’ve just had a feeling all day long that I was supposed to come here and sit by the water and wait for someone. So I’m sitting here, waiting.”
“Why didn’t you take your shoes and socks off?” Clara Jane asked. “It is unusual to see a man of your age soaking his shoes along with his feet.”
“I admit that it is unusual, but it feels good.” The man lightly kicked his heels against the side of the fountain.
“I’m not myself today,” he said, out of nowhere. “I feel as blue as I’ve ever been.”
“Despondent even,” Clara Jane said, nudging him gently, soothingly.
“That word works just as well. You’re right. I am despondent.”
“It started when you went in Heartbreak’s Bookstore this morning, didn’t it?” It is not really a question. Clara Jane is simply reporting.
The man agreed.
“Yup. I went in there with the wife to buy a book and came out feeling all wrecked up inside. Different, anyhow.
“All day, I walked around, following Hazel in and out of junk shops, trying my best to keep her from throwing money around. The whole time, my mind was unsettled. I was thinking about things I haven’t thought about in fifty years.”
Clara Jane slipped her shoes off and settled in next to him on the ledge of the fountain. She dangled her feet in the water alongside his and splashed a bit. “It does feel good, doesn’t it?” she said. “The water, I mean.”
“Yup. It’s pretty good.” The man offered his hand Clara Jane. “My name’s Sodjerberjer. With two Js.”
“That’s a lot of Js for one name,” Clara Jane said, shaking his hand.
“It’s Norwegian. Norwegians have plenty of Js. That’s about what we have as far as culture goes. Them, and Vikings, of course. We are a reserved, stoic, and formerly violent people.”
“John Heartbreak is a Norwegian,” Clara Jane said. “He takes some pride in it.”
“I thought so,” Sodjerberjer replied. “I could tell by the way he sniffed at my reading request. Down his big nose.”
“John’s a big sniffer. This whole book is full of sniffing.”
“What book?” Sodjerberjer asked. He gave her a quizzical look, half smiling. “What book are you talking about?”
“This book,” Clara Jane repeated. “You’re in a book now. A man who lives with John is writing about what John sees through his bookstore’s window. John saw you coming this morning, had thoughts about you coming, and his thoughts about you went into the book.
“Look,” she said, pointing at cars on the road bisecting (gutting) the Town Square. “There goes Steve Hanna.
"And there,” she said, pointing at a red pickup speeding by, “goes Dickie Clark. Steve owns the liquor store and Dickie works for him. Now they’re in the book too.”
“I’ll be darned,” he said, wonderingly. “Maybe that’s why I’ve been feeling so odd all day.
“What’s this writer saying about me?” he asked. “Anything I got to worry about?”
Clara Jane smiled. “Not really. Your worries are over.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“This is where it all ends, Mr. Sodjerberjer,” Clara Jane said. “You don’t have to worry about anything, anymore.”
Sodjerberjer nodded. “That’s the funny feeling I’ve been having all day. I’ve been feeling that it’s all over.”
He kicked his heels against the fountain’s wall, splashing. “Maybe that’s why I didn’t take my shoes off,” he said. “What would be the point, after all?”
Sodjerberjer turned to Clara Jane, an intent inquiring look on his face. “Who are you?” he asked.
“My name is Clara Rinker,” Clara Jane Smith answered. “I’m the Angel of Death.”
“Not someone you meet every day,” Sodjerberjer replied.
“No, not every day. Just once.”
Sodjerberjer nodded again. “So. What happens now?”
Clara Jane took Sodjerberjer’s hand in hers and held it, gently. “Tell me all about it,” she said. “Tell me all about Sodjerberjer.”
.
