Foreward
This is a short story. I hope you enjoy it. It is not like anything else on this blog. If you’ve come here hoping for a new post like my others, I’m sorry to disappoint you. If you’ve come here hoping for other short stories like this one, I’m sorry to disappoint you.
My Folly
“Could you spare a buck for bus fair?”, asked an old man on the street corner. He was bent over and holding a battered cane. Tattered mismatching clothes hung from his thin body.
My budget for the month was already accounted to my last dime. But, what can I do? How can I refuse, when I myself had begged on corners of streets to eat for the day. Shuffling through my wallet I had a ten dollar bill and some change from a morning coffee, “Here’s thirteen dollars. It’s all I have on me. Hopefully that will get you where you need to go”.
The old man smiled, showing his teeth that he hadn’t been able to care for in a long time. I was already running late so I turned quickly and stepped into the street while I heard horns blaring and tires squealing on the asphalt.
I looked up to see what the commotion was about. In front of me there was a large wooden desk. A young man sat undisturbed behind the desk. Or maybe it was a middle aged woman. If they sat in front of me right now I still couldn’t describe them to you they were so incredibly ordinary looking. I saw a neatly stacked set of wooden rectangles behind them. To their right a foot-high stack of folders. To their left a smaller stack of tickets. Immediately before them a folder lay open on the desk. I was seated in a chair in front of the desk and didn’t see anything else around. No street, no old man, no honking cars or trucks.
“Brickmold, reincarnation, or a visit paradise for 10,000 years before being cast into outer darkness”, said the staffer behind the desk without looking.
“I’m sorry?” I answered in confusion. How did I get here? My head had a slight ache.
“It’s too late to offer apologies after you’re dead”, answered the deskperson, “would you like a brickmold, a reincarnation , or a visit paradise for 10,000 years before being cast into outer darkness”, in a tone that I would say was becoming agitated, except it was clear they had said that phrase so many times they were now incapable of saying it in any tone except the monotonic rhythm they’d used so many times before.
“Brickmold?”, I wondered to myself, but apparently too loudly because the deskperson answered.
“A rare choice, but here you go”. They turned around and picked up one of the wooden rectangles. I could see now that it had handles on both ends, and an internal rectangle open to the top and bottom, exactly the size of a brick.
“I’m sorry, but”, exasperated at afterlife bureaucratic misunderstandings apparently being a possibility, I struggled for words, “what am I supposed to do with a brickmold?”
“Make bricks with it”, the deskperson looked at me for the first time, up and down, “that’s pretty self explanatory in the name, ‘brickmold’”.
“Right, but”, I trailed off, not knowing how to argue anything. Or what even the point would be. I looked to my right and saw a second desk I hadn’t noticed before. Staffed by another deskperson, identical in ordinariness but somehow distinct from my deskperson. Sitting in front, a man I can only describe as gluttonous. You may think I’m being mean or uncharitable in my description. Please trust my goodwill that if you looked upon this person, ‘gluttonous’ would be the most charitable description you could muster. For I do not mean simply outward physical appearance. This man’s demeanor, his very eyes looked hungry, hunting for the next convenience to consume.
The same choices were rattled off to the man in the same monotonous rhythm as I had. And the man answered quickly, “a visit to paradise! Obviously, does anyone pick anything else?” Promptly his deskperson picked up one of the tickets at their desk and handed it over to the man.
Still wondering what to do I now looked to my left and saw a third desk, a third deskperson, and a sharply dressed woman in a suit sitting before it, seemingly ready to sign some multimillion dollar business deal. Again I heard, “Brickmold, reincarnation, or a visit paradise for 10,000 years before being cast into outer darkness”, rattled off by her deskperson.
“Reincarnation”, the woman proudly answered, as if she had hacked the system and had it all figured out. “What are my choices?”
Her deskperson began going through the stack of folders to their right, “I have multiple Oriental positions open, let’s see, an Eastern European farming family too. Oh interesting, I have an Icelandic opening, don’t see that everyday”.
My deskperson caught my attention by speaking, “You can’t stay here forever. Please take your brickmold and move along”, holding out the brickmold for me to take.
I stood and took the brickmold they offered to me. Not quite sure where exactly to ‘move along’ to, I turned around to see if there was a way forward that direction. I saw an endless field of light brown clay. I turned back and saw more clay. Clay to the left. Clay to the right. Flat and soft clay. No desks. No deskperson. I was alone.
I was alone in a field of clay with a brickmold in my hand. High above me, faintly in the clouds, I could see a shining city. I thought that must be heaven. And the purpose of my brickmold became clear, I hadn’t measured up in life so I must close the gap in this purgatory after death. One brick at a time.
I started my first brick. Filling the mold with the clay. Slumping out the damp brick on the ground. My cornerstone has been laid. Or is it a corner brick? I’m no mason. But I knew I couldn’t stack wet bricks on top of one another. I wondered how long it would take to dry them.
I began making many bricks, ten in a row with ten columns beside. After making one hundred bricks in this way, I returned to my first brick to see if it was dry. Being still wet, I made another hundred bricks in the same way before returning again.
I made nearly one thousand bricks in rows and columns before the first brick was dry to the touch. I was still no brick expert. Surmising there may be a difference between dry and fully hardened, I decided to continue making bricks before using any. I must have an excellent foundation, rushing at the beginning may double the work near the end.
After making ten thousand bricks, I returned to the first row of bricks to begin the tower. I realized I had no mortar. Nor any idea how any sort of mortar could be made. The only thing around me was clay. And besides I had no tools for laying bricks with mortar. Even if the tools and materials all fell on my head from heaven, would I even know how to use them?
After long consideration, I thought there was nothing for it than to just dry stack these bricks in a pyramid shape. Hopefully that would be stable enough. I knew I would need an immense base. So my first thousand bricks I laid in a straight line. The next thousand I laid beside it. I realized I should offset my bricks but, not having half-bricks I wondered how. Wedging a brick between two others, jutting out about halfway, and striking it with a fourth, I was able to make a decent pair of half-bricks.
After laying these two thousand bricks I realized that, while an impressive tower it would make, it would be a paltry height in light of what was required to match my goal. I returned to making bricks by the ten thousand, laying the prior batch in my tower after setting a new one to cure.
I laid one hundred thousand bricks end to end. It now took half the day to walk its length. Although, “day” is not the right word. There was no night here. I was never hungry or thirsty. Always tired, but never needed slumber, nor even seemed to have the ability to sleep when I laid down. There was plenty of time to think while walking. I could only mark the passage of time by the shadows the bricks cast. Though it seemed ambiguous where the light came from, feeling like it came from everywhere all at once. The subtle shadows pointed first on one side of the line of bricks and later the other, eventually circling back around to the start.
I thought about the dimensions of my tower. How high would it be? I couldn’t quite remember my geometry. I drew out a pyramid in the clay. I drew the height as a line coming down. I didn’t want to reinvent geometry, but had a vague remembrance. I drew the pyramid again, this time with the base exactly the length of my two feet, one in front of the other. The height I drew and put my foot beside it, matching its length exactly. So, my pyramid would be about half as high as it was wide, depending on the angle I chose to build to. I started to think a pyramid half as high as half a days walk wouldn’t be nearly tall enough.
I walked back to where I was making new bricks, determined to make a bigger foundation. I laid a second hundred thousand bricks. Instead of making bricks in one area and carrying them to place, I now simply made bricks adjacent to where they would be placed. I waded off the end of my tower edge in this way, making brick after brick, one after another. I didn’t bother counting now, I would go mad if I tried. Instead I counted by days making bricks. I knew ten thousand bricks took slightly less than a day for me to make, since I’d gotten so much practice. Doubling the side length of my tower would take over two weeks just to make the bricks.
But what is time in this place? I doubled it and doubled it again plus some extra for good measure. I now had to walk a week straight to cover the length of this one side of my tower.
Save those second thousand bricks I prematurely laid, after all this work I had but one row of my tower. Not a whole layer, just one row of one layer! But what is time in this place? The deskperson didn’t mention any time limit like the visit to paradise had.
I took my brickmold back to the start. I began making the bricks for the second row. Brick next to brick, all drying in the light, marching off to infinity. Or more accurately, a few days walk. Once I reached the end, I walked for a week back to the start and began placing the now well cured bricks in their row. As I walked back again, as I had left my brickmold at the start, I realized I was spending an extra two weeks walking for no reason. I ought to think of it more like mowing a yard than writing lines of prose, making bricks all the way down as well as all the way back before placing bricks back and forth so there would be no walking without working.
I did just that for a while until a difficulty arose. As I worked deeper into my tower’s foundation, I had to walk farther back to the edge where I dug more clay for bricks. Not wanting to dig a hole in the middle of my towers foundation! Progress slowed with each row laid. Halfway through the base of my tower I considered trudging the other direction to where the final edge of my tower would lie. But hiking three days straight into a landmarkless field of clay made me nervous. Once I lost sight of my tower, how would I find my way back? How would I measure the distances correctly? Better to slog through the progress I had than lose all of it.
It took several years to lay that first layer. But it was done. I rested in the knowledge that the first layer had the most bricks in it, so the next layers will become easier and easier to finish.
I began the second course of bricks. For variety, I placed the bricks at a ninety degree angle to the first course, so my first row of the second layer ran across all the rows of the first layer. It was a breath of fresh air being able to make and lay bricks in such a rapid succession again, the way I had been able to years ago at the start of my building when I made bricks down and then back to then lay them all the way down and then back to do it all again.
A few weeks less than several years and I finished the second layer of my pyramid to heaven. A few weeks less than that and a third course rose from the ground. There was a point a few layers up where I spent exactly one year to lay one layer. The pyramid was rising at an exciting pace now. Well, exciting for one already decades into solitary madness.
I neared the top of my pyramid now. A ten foot by ten foot square was the summit. And my goal shimmered a clearly unreachable distance away still. A measly five additional feet to cap this pyramid off would be as effective as a single grain of rice given to a starving orphan. Or as effective as those thirteen dollars I gave to that beggar? Discouraged, I laid on the top of my tower. How long had it been? A century? More? Why would I think penance so simple or purgatory so short?
I descended to the base of my tower. Along two edges I began filling in the great trenches I had dug clay out of while making bricks, preparing a wider foundation to extend my pyramid. I added row upon row of bricks to these two sides. Each row at the bottom, many miles long, would add a few inches of height to the top. And I built more and more. Clay, bricks, time; I have thought all my thoughts and only have routine left. Put clay in the brickmold. Carry a brick. Place a brick. Walk and walk. The centuries wound on as I built a larger pyramid with my first pyramid as its corner.
Again I stood at the top. Again heaven was out of my reach. I descended further. It took a full month to reach the bottom. I made more bricks. Like a sole surviving ant, toiling on their deserted colony’s hill, I built more. Why did I continue? What Sysaphusian task had been born of a single word? “Brickmold”, I had said. Why not visit paradise for this whole time? Or reincarnate? I would rather be abused for a lifetime than suffer this another millennia. Or just send me to Hades. Maybe a nice crow could come peck my liver out everyday, that sounds more enjoyable than this. “I don’t mean that”, I apologized to no one in particular. I still had a chance after all, hadn’t I? Diligence and hard work, that’s all I needed. A millennia turned as I built a larger pyramid with my second pyramid as its corner.
Again I stood at the top. Now on a mountain Everest would wilt under. Now a monument Olympus Mons would be shamed beside. Now a tower Babel’s architects would covet. Again heaven was out of my reach. Again I descended further.
“I can’t do it”, I screeched while trodding down. I could not continue this insanity. I could not move another mountain to gain a single inch, followed by two mountains for a second inch, it was too much. Perhaps I had missed something.
At the bottom I began experimenting other building techniques. I tried making a single column, which was stable enough but I had no way of climbing it. I tried making a spiral staircase around the column but either the upper steps kept collapsing onto the lower steps, since nothing supported the outer edge, or I destabilized the column by my weight being so off center. I attempted an open circle of bricks, like a well built upwards. If I put some of the bricks in sideways to make small footholds I could climb up the interior. Except there was no way into the base of this well-tower to begin the climb.
I attempted ways to make arches, thinking I could make an entrance. If I first built a supporting scaffold of brick, I could make an arch big enough to crawl into after laboriously removing the scaffold bricks. Making six archways with some extra interior thickness of the columns would make a near circular base that I could get into to climb the well-tower. Making the interior as narrow as possible while still allowing easy climbing and descending would reduce the bricks needed to build. Also, while experimenting I realized I needn’t make the circle of bricks solid. I could easily leave half-brick gaps, stacking the next brick so it just barely bridged two below it, alternating the gaps. This saved a great deal of bricks, which would be extremely useful with how long it took to reach the top of the pyramid.
And so, I trudged back up towards the top of my pyramid to build this new tower on top of it. I could only carry two bricks at a time. Not wanting to spend a decade building just the six arches for me to crawl into, I began borrowing bricks from my pyramid. I could remove some and leave the pyramid a step pyramid like those of the Aztecs rather than the smooth pyramids of Egypt I had started with.
Brick by brick I built this new tower from the top of the pyramid. I reached a sickening height. Then dizzying. Then so absurdly high that it felt like I was standing in a well at ground level. The clay ground stretched out in every direction and my pyramid was so far down beneath me it was almost imperceptible. I gazed up at heaven high above me. An uncomfortable thought entered my mind. I descended further. It took over a year to reach the bottom of my tower now. I had stolen every brick I dared from my pyramid.
I made two bricks, then I picked up the two bricks destined for the top that I had made years earlier for this day. I had learned how to climb the well-tower with two bricks. I looked up at heaven again with the same uncomfortable thought.
While still standing on the clay, I stretched out a brick in my hand. At arms length, the brick perfectly covered the city. Perhaps I could gauge my progress. If objects farther away appear smaller, the closer I get the larger it will be and the less my brick will cover when at the top of my tower. I began my heavenbound ascent.
Another year later, I stood again where two years earlier I had just finished laying a circle of bricks in my well-tower. Before placing the bricks I had carried all this way, I raised my arm, just as I had done at the base, with brick in hand. At arms length, the brick perfectly covered the shining city, just as it had at the base. I was no closer. I screamed. I yelled like a she-bear finding a dead cub. Like an air raid siren mounted atop its post.
I slung the brick off the edge with what remained of my strength then collapsed onto my face, slumped over the edge of my great folly.
A voice spoke to me from the other edge of the circle, “Why do you weep, my child?”
“I can’t do it myself!”, I howled before I even wondered how there was a voice besides my own. Anguish, true despair, suppresses all logical questions. And it had been so long since I’d spoken aloud, it was a wonder I had a voice still. That I still remembered the language I learned so long ago. Was this my language? It felt strange in my ears. Yet I understood the words perfectly.
“You never could little one”, He said with such searing truth it cauterized my wounded heart. But spoken with such tender love, like a cool salve on a burn. “Do you know me?”
I looked up at the voice. But I could not look. He was blindingly bright. I could have looked directly at the sun more easily than to look upon this man.
“How can I know you?”, I said, still with some bitter tears on my tongue. Hanging my head back down.
“You gave me thirteen dollars on the street corner before the accident”, I shot my head around to look at the man, who surely couldn’t be the same haggard and bent over old man I had given that pittance to those millennia ago. He continued, “and I remember you helped me cross the street in front of the courthouse when my eyes had failed me”. That had been a middle aged woman, they can’t be the same person. “And I was a hungry teenager, turned out of his home the day after Thanksgiving. That leftover Turkey you gave me on the ride to a safehouse filled me like you can’t know”. The man trailed off as though he had thought of seven more examples, but instead of listing them he simply looked at me and asked again, “Do you know me?”
“How can I know you?”, I answered, still in confusion and doubt.
“Believe. Know by faith what you have not seen with your eyes”, and without looking away from me, he asked again, “Do you know me?”
I knew, and was afraid to know. “How can I know you?”, I answered the third time.
“Call on my name”, he said simply.
I knew. I knew I had fallen short. I knew I could not do it on my own. I knew there was no other way. I swallowed and hung my head, “Christ Jesus, please”, I trailed off with too many words to say. He answered, “Rise up. Pick up your brick”.
The brick I still had was now solid gold. I obeyed, but struggled under the weight. I slowly and carefully crawled out of the circle of bricks, up onto the edge. He instructed, “Give it to me, my child”. I gave it to him. “Look behind you”, he said and I turned around. We were no longer perched atop a lonely, useless tower, but on a solid street paved with gold.
On each side there were houses. Beautiful and big. But not uselessly large like mansions of earth. They lacked no rooms needed, but no useless rooms were present. Each room large enough to enjoy without being the cold, uninviting, overly large rooms the wealthy of the world pretend to own. The houses were just as close as three best friends would want their houses to be together. Never so close as to feel crowded. Never so far as to be inconvenient for a walk on a cool day together as neighbors.
In one direction the road continued over a small glassy stream before branching into more streets. The other, it ran a few paces before trailing off where it clearly needed to be paved further.
“Take your brick and place it”, he told me. I took it, ready for the weight of solid gold, but it was now lighter than imaginable, lighter than the clay bricks I had moved so many of. A foam brick even would have felt heavier in hand. I happily placed it, extending the pathway in paradise.
“So heaven is”, I wondered if such silly questions were allowed, but asked anyway, “still under construction?”
“I said I would prepare a place with many rooms”, he answered, “did I say I would build the Kingdom of Heaven alone?” He smiled at me.
I pondered a great many things. How meaningless all the things I had done, both in death and in life, had turned out. But yet what impact they all could have when given to him beside me.
“Before you come to rest here, there is one more thing you should see. Migdalel will take you.”
And beside me another bright man stepped into view. Though less bright, he was still as bright as the sun. I squinted at the man to see. Was this my deskperson who gave me that brickmold? Without a word Migdalel gently touched my arm and we were away.
We alighted in a hospital room. The person in the bed was unrecognizable. To put it simply, they looked like they had been run over by a truck. Many machines hooked to the patient in the bed beeped and whirred, clicked and cycled. Dripping medicines and saline into the patients veins. Pushing air into the patient’s lungs before releasing it.
My breath left me as well. The patient in the bed was me. “Am I,” trailing off, I changed my question, “Was any of that real? The desk? The brickmold? The tower?”
Migdalel answered, “You aren’t able to understand my answer yet. Trust in time all this will make sense. ‘With the Lord one day is as a thousand years’, as it has been written.” Migdalel continued, “The doctors refer to your body as ‘brain dead’. Silly. If they had half a brain between them—anyway, you weren’t brought here to listen to me. They’ll be disconnecting their life support machines soon, and what’s left of you on earth will follow your brain.”
I looked upon myself. My battered body. Brain dead. But not dead? Then I had a memory of a parable my Lord once taught of a man finding the truth about life only after death, like me, and he had asked for someone to be sent to tell his friends and family. Maybe, like in that story, it wouldn’t make a difference. But maybe.
A boldness welled up within me that I didn’t recognize. “Didn’t he raise Lazarus from the dead? Didn’t he say faith can move a mountain?Are there not more people to be reached here in life?”
“‘The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few’”, quoted Migdalel, “if you are asking for more time on earth, that is not for me to grant. It will be difficult, but you might lay back down into your body and pray to our Lord. I will wait with you”.
I laid myself down. After the out of body experience this “in body” experience was even more surreal. I heard doctors enter the room, but couldn’t see them. I couldn’t move my eyelids. They began disconnecting me. My breathing stopped. My heart was slowing down. I faced an impossible thing, to live in spite of dying. But I had faced an impossible task already. And this time, I was not alone. “Christ Jesus, please”, I began my prayer.
