Better Than Starbucks!

The Girl on the Grass

by Robert P. Bishop

 

Carl jiggled the leash. “Let’s go, Sailor.” His Jack Russell trotted across the kitchen floor and allowed Carl to snap the leash to its collar. Before Carl reached the front door, his phone binged: Sarah Mann, his neighbor.

 

“Afternoon, Sarah.”

 

“Carl, there’s a body on your front lawn.”

 

“You mean a dead body?”

 

“I don’t know if they are dead or not. You’ll see when you leave your house. I wanted to warn you. Your heart, you know.” Sarah ended the call.

 

Carl opened the front door and stood on the porch. He saw the body on the lawn, lying close to the hedge. Sailor whined and strained at the leash.

 

Carl approached the body, a young woman lying on her side with knees flexed. Her hands were clasped together under her chin, as if she might be praying. Her head rested on a gray backpack. Clear, pale blue eyes looked up at him. Carl let some out of the leash. Sailor whined and sniffed her face then sniffed her body all the way to her feet.

 

“What is your dog doing?”

 

“He’s giving you the sniff test. He’s deciding if you’re all right. If you aren’t, he’s going to bite you.”

 

“Oh.” The girl didn’t move.

 

Carl leaned over and peered at her. “I’m just kidding. Are you injured?”

 

“No.”

 

“You’re a girl.”

 

“Yes.”

​

“Are you paralyzed?”

 

“No.”

 

“What are you doing on my lawn?”

 

“Resting. I felt like lying down in this wonderful afternoon sun and resting. It’s a lovely day and your lawn, well, it’s a perfect lawn for lying down.”

 

Carl straightened up. Sailor jumped on the girl’s shoulder, put his wet nose in her ear then licked her face. “My dog likes you.”

 

“I like your dog.” The girl petted Sailor’s head.

 

“Are you an escaped criminal?”

 

“No.”

 

“Did you just get out of a madhouse?”

 

“No.”

 

“Are you on drugs?”

 

“No.”

 

“Then you must be a runaway. What are you running from?”

 

“What if I’m running toward something?” A faint smile flickered then disappeared. “Your dog’s tail is only three inches long. It’s stubby and incongruous. It looks like a handle.” The girl petted Sailor. “Why did you cut it off? That was cruel.”

 

“I got him from the shelter like that.”

 

“Are you going to send me away?”

 

“No, no I’m not. Sailor and I are going for our afternoon walk.”

 

“Sailor. That’s an odd name for a dog. Were you in the navy?”

 

“No, I was in the army.”

 

“What’s your name?” The girl’s clear blue eyes never left his face.

​

“Carl. I’m a retired cop.”

 

“My name is Autumn Rose. I’m not retired from anything.”

 

“Sure,” Carl said. “We’re leaving now.” He tugged on Sailor’s leash.

 

“How long will you be gone?”

 

“About an hour.”

 

“I’ll be right here. I won’t move. I promise.”

 

He smiled. “You can stay here as long as you like.”

 

“I’ll wait for you,” the girl called as Carl walked away.

 

*

Carl thought about the girl as he followed Sailor on the sidewalk. He had seen lots of unusual things during his thirty-nine years as a cop, so the young woman lying on his lawn did not alarm him. It was a new experience, but not an alarming experience. She looked all right. She wore substantial boots in good repair and her clothing, somewhat soiled, wasn’t torn or ragged. Carl thought she didn’t look like a homeless person or even a runaway. Perhaps just a little confused and trying to find her way. But probably not dangerous.

 

Then he chided himself for being foolish. “You’re a cop, for Christ’s sake. Act like one,” he said. “Don’t make stupid assumptions. She might be a serial killer for all you know.”

 

His phone binged: Sarah Mann again. He stopped while Sailor sniffed a bush then raised his leg, peed on it, trotted to the other side and whizzed on the bush again.

 

“Yes, Sarah?”

 

“That person is still on your lawn. Do you want me to call 911?”

 

“She’s a girl. Has she moved?”

 

“No. She’s still lying there all curled up just like she was when you left for your walk.”

 

“How do you know what she was like when I left?”

​

“I’m not spying on you, Carl. I’m concerned about you, that’s all.”

 

Carl sighed. “I know you are, Sarah.”

 

“You can’t let a vagrant cause you stress. She’s trespassing. I’m going to call 911.”

 

“Don’t do that, Sarah. I’ll take care of it when I get back.”

 

“I’m just trying to be a good neighbor, Carl. I worry you might have another attack.”

 

“I know, and I appreciate it, Sarah.” He ended the call.

 

On the return he paused by another bush while Sailor gave it his usual treatment. Carl’s defense of the girl on the grass perplexed him. Why should he object to Sarah calling 911? The girl was a vagrant, and perhaps a fugitive as well. And she was trespassing. A 911 call was the proper thing to do.

 

He felt a twinge of pain in his chest and put a nitroglycerin pill under his tongue and waited for the pain to subside. He was having these bouts more frequently now and wondered if they were a prelude to a second heart attack, one that would kill him this time.

 

The discomfort continued, so he took another nitro and walked slowly, waiting for the pain to ebb.

 

Sarah was right about his heart and he appreciated her concern, even if she tended to overdo it. He had suffered a heart attack four months ago then cardiac arrest in the ER as the staff worked on him. The emergency room staff zapped his heart back to life after it stopped beating. The ER staff told him he had been without vital signs for a full minute before they put the paddles on his chest and hit him with the juice.

 

“You were indeed dead for a minute,” a nurse had told him.

 

Dead. For one minute. He didn’t know anyone who had ever come back from being dead. And he remembered nothing about being dead, either.

 

What interested Carl most about being dead was what didn’t happen to him after he died. He didn’t see bright lights, hear music, or see anything like angels or demons. And he certainly didn’t see any souls, lost or otherwise, wandering about, not even his own. The absence of these features convinced Carl that nothing knowable at all happened after one died, at least to the dead person. Being dead was a blank, a nothingness, incomprehensible. Carl’s experience meant there was no afterlife, and, consequently, no Heaven, no Hell, which also meant no god, no devil. Being dead was just that; it was over, a life ended, with nothing at all following.

 

For several weeks following his resurrection by the ER staff, the knowledge that an afterlife did not exist distressed Carl. No afterlife. That sounded ominous to him and flew in the face of widespread public belief that an afterlife did indeed exist. But Carl had, he believed, irrefutable proof that it did not.

 

He wrestled with this knowledge and wondered if he should do anything with it. He thought about going to churches on Sundays and telling the congregations, as a kind of public service announcement, that they were embracing a belief that was not true. When challenged on his statement, as he surely would be, he would say, “I have empirical evidence to support my statement,” and explain what had happened to him.

 

After thinking about it at some length he determined this was probably not a good thing to do and discarded the idea. After people died, what difference would it make if there were no afterlife? They wouldn’t know it, so he stopped fretting about its nonexistence. Let people find comfort in their own way.

 

His experience brought home something else he had not thought deeply about; he had lived far more years than he had left to live. Carl wondered how much time he had left. He began to dwell on and analyze time. Carl knew time, unlike death, could be experienced and remembered. He knew he experienced something if he remembered it, and to remember something required being alive and moving through time. This caused Carl additional anguish and he wrestled with time until he realized only three simple measurements, known to everyone living, mattered; they were yesterday, today, and tomorrow.

 

Yesterday was time gone forever, never to be retrieved except as something stored in a memory. Yesterday could not be experienced again, but it could be remembered. Carl tried to forget many of the yesterdays that had caused him grief and pain, but some yesterdays he held dear because of what they meant to him and refused to let them go.

 

As for the period of time called tomorrow, well, Carl’s cardiac arrest and brief bout with death brought into clarity that one day there was not going to be a tomorrow for him, or for everybody else for that matter, so he stopped caring about something beyond his control.

 

That left today for Carl, but he wasn’t sure what to do with it. Finally, he decided the only thing he could do was live today as, well, as today. It seemed a laughably simple and trite concept, and good or bad, whatever happened to him today he would embrace as the essence of his life. He could do nothing less, nothing more. Carl decided today, and today only, was all that mattered.

 

*

Sailor sprinkled three more bushes before they got back to Carl’s house.

 

*

The young woman lay on her side, knees still flexed, hands clasped under her chin, backpack under her head. She watched Carl unclip the leash. Sailor jumped on her and started sniffing her face. “I waited for you.”

 

“I see that.” Yep, he thought, lost souls aren’t dead, they’re alive, and I’ve got one right here. He extended his hand to the girl on the grass.

 

“Are you sending me away?” The young woman named Autumn Rose took his hand.

 

“No.” Carl pulled her to her feet. “Get your backpack and come inside.” She followed him up the walk and into the house. Sailor scampered beside her.

 

“Do you have any clean clothes in that backpack?”

 

“No.”

 

“Jeebus,” muttered Carl. “Come with me.”

 

Autumn dropped her backpack and followed Carl down the hallway to his bedroom. Sailor trotted along behind, sniffing her feet. Autumn stopped at the bedroom door and did not go in. “What are you doing?”