The Heavens Rise

gripped the railing in front of him to make sure he was still standing upright.

“Holy crap. You’re . . .”

“Alive?” the man said.

“Yeah. Something like that.”

“Well, it’s been interesting, to say the least.”

“Jesus Christ. I can’t even remember the last time I saw you—” Anthem started descending the steps, quickly, as if he thought the ghost of Marshall Ferriot might vanish before he reached the bottom. But Marshall kept talking, his voice sounding fairly earthbound, if Anthem said so himself.

“PE. Senior year, first semester. Neither one of us played football, so we weren’t exempt. You convinced Coach Clary to let us do badminton ’cause everyone thought it would be a breeze. And he agreed, so you were this big hero. Then he showed up the next day with an eighty-page packet on the history of badminton and told us there’s going to be a test the next week. Suddenly you weren’t such a hero anymore.”

“Right! Shit, man. Good memory.” Once they were face-to-face, Anthem clapped one of Marshall’s hands in both of his. But after a few pumps, he realized the guy seemed a little thin and weak, so he let up.

“Yeah, well, for me, it’s like it all just happened yesterday.”

“Marshall Fuckin’ Ferriot. Pardon my French, but welcome back to the land of the living, my friend!”

Anthem didn’t know the guy’s whole story; they’d never said more than a few words to each other back at Cannon. (There’d been too much other shit going on that summer for Anthem to keep tabs on some suicidal classmate-turned-vegetable.) But he knew the highlight reel; the coma, the father killed by the fall, the move to Atlanta. Kinda odd that Ben had never talked about any of it to him; he was usually all over that kind of scandal.

“You look good, man,” Anthem said.

“Do I?”

“Yeah . . .”

“I’m sorry about Nikki.” Anthem must have flinched, because when Marshall spoke again, he dropped his voice to almost a whisper. “I know it was a long time ago, but I just found out recently, given my . . . situation . . . My memory of the days before the accident, it’s not really that good. The doctors say it should improve. But it’ll take time, I guess. I just wanted to say—”

“Right. Yeah. Thanks.”

“So the police . . . they never found anything?”

“Some pieces of the car. That’s it.”

Marshall winced and shook his head. “Sorry, man,” he whispered.

“Is that why you—” Anthem looked around, as if it might be possible Marshall Ferriot was meeting someone else at this late hour, across the street from Anthem’s apartment. “You just wanted to give your condolences? Or are you here to see Tim?”

“Tim?”

“My neighbor. Lives downstairs. I don’t think he’s home though.”

“Oh, no. I’m here to see you.”

“Yeah?”

Marshall struggled with his next words, hands wedged deep in his pockets, shoulders slumped, staring at the bricks under Anthem’s feet. “I saw something,” he said finally, slowly and deliberately. “When I was under . . .”

“Under? You mean, like, in a coma?”

“Yes. I don’t know what it was, exactly. But it involved you and I felt like it would be irresponsible of me not to tell you about it.”

“You mean, like, a vision or something?”

Marshall straightened and looked him in the eye. “A message,” he whispered.

Anthem felt like he’d been doused in cold water, and it must have shown on his face because Marshall winced and looked away suddenly. “This is ridiculous. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have come. It’s late, and you don’t need me . . . I mean, it was years ago and it was . . . I’ll just . . .”

As Anthem watched the guy hurry toward the back gate, he found himself struggling to remember exactly how many days had separated Nikki’s disappearance and Marshall’s flying leap? A crazy, Hollywood-inspired image blazed bright and big in his too-sober mind: Nikki’s soul zipping past Marshall’s in some realm beyond this one, like those bright pulses of light at the beginning of It’s a Wonderful Life.

Angels, he remembered. Talking angels is what they were.

“Hey!” Anthem shouted.

Marshall stopped walking.

“Look, uh, we’re a dry house. But maybe I can offer you a Dr Pepper? How’s that sound?”

“Dry?”

“Yeah, I gave up the hard stuff a while back.”

“I see . . .”

“So what do you say, huh?”

“I think that sounds great.”

23

No Dr Pepper,” Anthem said. “Sorry. False advertising. How ’bout a Coke?”

“Water’s fine,” Marshall answered, distracted by a stack of papers sitting on Anthem’s kitchen counter.

“It is the source of life, after all,” Anthem said.

“You can say that again,” Marshall muttered before he thought better of it. “The River’s Response,” proclaimed the headline atop the first page. “What’s this?” he asked.

Anthem waited for Marshall to take the bottle. “Aw, Kingfisher published this article that had all kinds of bullshit in it about the pilots association. But they let me post a response on their website a few hours ago.”

“That’s nice of them.” Marshall could not have cared less about the article itself. It was the comments that got to him. Anthem had printed out every last one. (Well, one hundred as of 2:30 that afternoon, according to the time stamp on the last one. Who knew how many there were now?) With a few outraged exceptions, they all said pretty much the same thing: Anthem Landry was a bona fide hometown hero, sticking up for local workers. Sticking up for New Orleans.

My hero, my God, my angel.

The thought of anyone calling Anthem Landry a hero tempted Marshall to force the man in question to yank a meat cleaver from the block of knives right next to him and drive it once through each eye; two quick stabs just like the ones their housekeeper used to inflict on the plastic wrap around the cases of water bottles that were delivered to the house.

How does one destroy a hero? Let’s see. Let me count the ways . . . There were so many possibilities they all overwhelmed him. So many sharp edges, so many sudden drops, so many cars, so many flammable substances. Hell, the entire apartment itself was laced with one of the best weapons of all: electricity. But while all of those deaths might make for a delightfully hideous scene when the police arrived (or someone from Anthem’s family, if Marshall arranged it properly), were they a fitting fall for a hero?

“A hundred comments,” Marshall said, but he was setting the papers down on the counter as if he’d just realized they had shit stains on them.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Anthem said. Then he tapped his Diet Coke can against Marshall’s water bottle in a quick, perfunctory toast before he took a slug. “Never fancied myself much of a writer. That was always Ben’s beat. You remember Ben Broyard, right?”

“Kinda.”

The apartment wasn’t quite the pigsty Marshall had expected, or hoped for, but it was certainly threadbare.