“Been a while since something happened. Is it wrong for me to feel excited?”
There comes a noise from the hallway, a stumbling and gasping, and a moment later the receptionist staggers into the room. He holds a Glock out before him. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I’m so sorry. I tried to stop him.” He sniffs his bloodied nose.
“It’s all right,” Sarin says, and her eyes settle on Juniper. “The big man and I go way back.”
Chapter 7
JUNIPER IS AN UGLY MAN—he knows this—with the close-together eyes and craggy brow and weak chin that bring to mind a 50,000-year-old cave dweller. But as a child, in Texas, before his features hardened and thickened, there was something impish about his appearance that might have contributed to his fame.
Heavenly Visitor. That was the name of the book, based on his experiences, published when he was six. He was swimming in a lake, wearing his snorkel and fins, pushing through a thick section of lily pads with the hope of scaring up turtles, when a canoe struck the back of his head and knocked him out. No one realized what had happened for several minutes, his body face-down and floating among the plants. By the time they pulled him out, he had no pulse and his body had purpled along the edges. His father pumped his chest and blew breath back into his lungs—until at last he rolled over and gurgled up a puddle of lake water.
He died. For over ten minutes. And then he came back. That’s what they told him when he woke several hours later at St. Hannah’s, in the children’s ward, in a hospital bed hooked up to an IV. They said he was a miracle. They said he was God’s precious little angel. And he believed it. Because of the light. It hadn’t been the kind that waited at the end of the tunnel. It had surrounded him, poured through him, a sun-currented ocean. It felt like the beginning of good, as when his mother started his bath or opened the oven to pull out cookies or punched the power on the television to tune in to his favorite program.
He had always been an incorrigible liar. He saw a lion in the woods. He found a twenty-dollar bill on the sidewalk, no, not in his mother’s purse. He didn’t know who punctured the couch cushion either. A black-haired bully named Marco punched him in the nose, and just because the principal claimed no one named Marco went to his school didn’t mean it wasn’t true.
So when his parents seemed keenly interested in this light—calling it the light of heaven—he kept going. He gave them what they wanted to hear. Yes, that’s right, he had hovered over the lake and watched his father pump his chest, and then—uh-huh, definitely—there had been angels, one who appeared beside him and took his hand and told him not to be afraid.
He goes by Mike these days, but back then he was Timmy. Timmy Milton. And Timmy Milton’s words came tentatively at first. The concussion made his head hurt and his lungs felt bruised, but the way his parents and the nurses gathered around his hospital bed roused him. They pressed him gently, but he could tell how excited they were, their eyes brightening, their breath held.
Every Sunday they attended the massive Cornerstone church complex off the freeway, and he now shared the same version of heaven the Cornerstone minister had shared in his sermons, along with a few improvements. Heaven was everything they hoped for, a city in the clouds where a warm breeze blew, and he had never felt so safe and happy in all his life. Mr. Meow was there. So was Pop-Pop—but he wasn’t old and crooked in his wheelchair anymore. He was strong and wearing a white uniform with stripes on it. When his parents exclaimed, “His naval uniform, it must be true, how would Timmy know that otherwise!” Juniper did not remind them of the black-and-white photo albums his father kept in his office closet. And then he mentioned the baby and they went quiet. “Was it a baby girl?” his mother asked, and he said yes because he could tell by her tone that he ought to. She seemed happy, Juniper said, but he never learned her name—and his mother began to cry and said, “That’s because we never had the chance to give her one.”
They cried and hugged him and called him a dear, dear, special, God-blessed boy.
The Cornerstone minister declared little Timmy a miracle, a messenger of God, and by the time he left the hospital, a crowd of reporters from the local and national news had gathered. There was no going back on it now. None of it was true—nothing except for the light, a sense of goodness and energy that lingered with him—but the more Juniper told the story, the more true it seemed. Everyone wanted it to be true, and he didn’t want to disappoint them.
They asked him about the angels, and he said they looked like beautiful people, except when they were moving, and then they looked like flashes of light. They asked him about Jesus, and he told them about the bearded man on the white horse that made no noise when it galloped. Jesus smiled down at Juniper in a way that made him feel fizzy, like when you sip a soda, and told him he had to go back home to see his parents, who loved him very much, and do a job. A very important job.
“What’s that? What job did Jesus Christ tell you to do?”
“Tell everyone about heaven,” he said. “Share the good news.”
The interviews led to the book, Heavenly Visitor, penned by his parents. And the book led to the national lecture circuit. He had an agent and manager and lawyer who referred to him sometimes as a brand. His mother homeschooled him as they traveled from parish to parish, sometimes with six hundred people or more in the audience. He learned how to attach his own lapel mic and apply his own foundation before he stepped out under the bright lights. He learned not just to tell his story, but to sermonize. He let people touch him, and he would touch them back, cupping a cheek, and they would close their eyes and smile as if the Holy Spirit coursed through him.
And maybe it wasn’t the Holy Spirit, but something lingered in him, as if he were a man struck by lightning who retained some spark in his fingertips. He saw things sometimes. A gray shawl shimmering around an old woman in a wheelchair—and an orange glow crackling around a baby at the baptismal font. Shadows would gather where none should be. A whisper or a scream would turn his head and reveal nothing. He sometimes dreamed things before they happened. He worried more than once that he might be crazy, but when every day you’re told you’re special, a messenger of light, it’s a challenge not to believe it.