None of those things will happen now. It doesn’t seem fair. I want to go back home. The backs of my eyes sting but tears don’t fill them.
I’ll miss out on all that. I’ll miss my momma most of all, but I try to take comfort in the hope that I’ll see my grandparents again. I love and miss them. Well, except for Daddy’s side. Papaw Snider died before I was born, but I heard he and the devil drank from th
e same straw. The same could be said for Mamaw Rose, too. She used to call me “Pudge’s girl” and pinch me really hard for no good reason other than she hated Momma. She was horrible, and if evil people get what’s coming to them, she’s roasting in hell. At least I hope so.
As if God heard my unkind thoughts, I am thrown back into the emergency room like a bad penny. The ceiling slams shut, sending down bits of shattered mirror throughout the room. The same doctors and nurses are still working on my lifeless body, but they don’t seem to have noticed the bolt of lightning or the glitter falling all around like polished rain.
What the heck is happening?
“I thought you were a goner.”
I turn toward an older Hispanic man standing in the doorway. He’s wearing a red polo shirt buttoned up to his throat, horrible red-white-and-blue plaid pants, and shiny white golf shoes. He has a huge salt-and-pepper mustache like Pancho Villa and he’s looking straight at me.
“What?”
The man lifts a golf club and motions toward the monitor on the wall. “You almost checked out for good.”
The green line bumps up and down with my heartbeat and I point to myself. “Are you talkin’ to me, sir?”
“Of course.”
“You can see me?”
“You have hair like a peacock.” Well, I wasn’t going for peacock, but I like the comparison. I almost thank him, when he pushes his hands out at his sides. “And grande.”
Yeah, I could stand to lose a few, but he looks like the only exercise he gets is combing that bushy mustache. I keep my opinion behind my teeth because there are more important issues facing me right now. “Am I dead?”
“Not yet.”
“Was my momma in the accident?”
“There was no one else. You came in alone.”
I didn’t kill Momma or anyone else. That’s a relief, and hopefully a good sign for the whole heaven thing. “Am I goin’ to die?”
“Questions of life or death are not for me to know.” He shrugs. “But it’s not lookin’ good for you.”
“That’s what I thought.” I move toward him. “Are you a ghost?” His outline is fuzzier than mine.
“Not exactly.”
“An angel?”
“Not yet.”
“A demon?”
“¡Dios me libre!”
“Are you dead?”
“Most definitely.” His smile lifts the corners of his mustache. “I died on a beautiful June mornin’, the kind you only see if you’re lucky enough to live in Texas. Not a cloud in all that endless blue.” He stares past me, all dreamy-eyed, like he doesn’t see or hear the chaos in the room behind me. “I double-eagled on the eighth. Do you know the odds of hittin’ a shot like that?”
Like I care. I glance over my shoulder at the people working on my body. I have a lot of questions and he’s talking about golf.
“Six million to one,” he answers anyway, and I return my attention to him. “Ten seconds later I was struck by lightnin’ and died before I hit the ground.”
I don’t know anything about golf, but I know a lie when I hear one. I was raised on Texas bool-sheet. I love a good whopper same as anyone else, but this one is so bad, it insults my intelligence, and if there is one thing in this world that gets me riled up, it’s being mistaken for stupid. “Well, don’t that beat all you ever stepped in,” I say, shaking my head like I’m impressed. “What are the odds of hittin’ a six-million-to-one shot, then gettin’ hit by lightnin’ on a sunny day in June?”