My Friend Zabar, first story in the Angel Zabar series
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My Friend Zabar
On Brown's Mountain, my father and I built our house out of slab lumber. When the sawmill
was busy, Mr. Pucket, the man who ran the rip saw, would give my Dad the slabs just to get
them out of his way. Slabs are mostly bark, but there's enough good wood in them to use as
flat boards, provided you don't want anything fancy. And since all we wanted were four walls
and a roof to keep the wind off our backs and the rain off our heads, we were thankful.
Brown's Mountain was the official name of the place, but most folks who lived in the area
called it Ghost Mountain. I never asked why, and I don't remember anyone ever offering an
explanation. The two-lane blacktop that circled the mountain had been built by the logging
companies but was taken over by the county after the mills closed down. To get the timber
down to the mill at the base of the mountain, the loggers had cut a road across the mountain
that connected with the paved road. It was on this road, almost at the top of Ghost Mountain,
that Dad and I built our slab home on three acres of good land.
Dad had befriended Jim Brown, the largest landowner in the area, and thus he was
privileged to buy the prime land. This event was lucky for me, since my Dad and I didn't see
eye to eye on the practice of drinking. Dad drank, but Jim didn't drink. So when I wasn't in
school or doing chores, I was with Jim hunting or working in his cornfields.
Looking back, I now know that Jim wasn't tall enough to touch the sky – but he had certainly
seemed tall enough back then. I can't remember him ever wearing shoes and, to my
knowledge, he never struck another person. My fondest memory of Jim came at the end of a
cold winter's day. We were returning from a failed hunt. Not a single rabbit to show for three
miles of hill tramping and six hours of braving below-freezing temperatures. When I
expressed my disappointment, Jim smiled and touched my shoulder with his huge hand.
"Boy, a good day is one spent in good company."
Jim always put things differently than my Dad did. Back then, I didn't understand why this was
so. Today, I know that Jim spoke from the heart, while my Dad spoke his mind. This would
be the last summer I would get to spend with Jim. He would die in his sleep late that fall –
and I can't imagine God taking Jim in any other way.
Had I known that my time with Jim was so short, I would have stayed and helped him shoe
the mules instead of taking off on my own to explore a cave I'd recently spotted. But I had to
explore the cave alone, because there was no way Jim would ever squeeze his ample frame
through the small opening.
I reached the cave early in the morning and set about exploring. Jim had said it would be
damp and hard to see in, not worth the effort. After about twenty minutes in the dark, I decided
he was right, crawled out again, and went to my most favorite spot anywhere in the world -
Jim's grandparent's old home.
It usually took about two hours to walk from Jim's house to his grandparent's place. But
starting from the cave, it took a little longer. By the time I stepped out of the forest and into the
house's clearing, the morning sun had moved past the oak and hickory-treed hilltops. The
six-room house had all but fallen in. A woodshed, a small orchard and a hand-dug well that
lay dangerously open occupied the clearing. I guess the old house was a hundred yards or
so from the path I always used since it was the only entrance into the clearing without having
to go through saw briers and knee-deep ground cover where timber rattlers lay in ambush
for rodents.
As usual Mrs. Brown (Jim’s grandmother) and her two children were working in the flower
garden just off to one side of the house. Walking toward the house, I called out: "Mrs. Brown,
I'm back!"
And as they had done every other time I had come along, they didn’t answer, but went inside
the house. Jim had once told me, "Boy, just because she doesn't answer, it doesn't mean
she doesn't hear you."
A second-year fox squirrel barked at me from one of the few pine trees in the area. I stepped
onto the first of four steps leading to the porch that had once spanned the entire front of the
house. The old step groaned under my weight, and I stole cautiously up to the porch and
across the brittle wood to my favorite place. There was no need going inside the house
because it was a dark maze of fallen in walls and ceiling timbers. Wherever the Browns
went, you were not going to find them, or least I had never been able to find them.
What was left of a windowsill made a nice backrest, and the sun, which moved lazily
westward, provided not only warmth, but also a protective shield that worked like a blanket on
my bed. Nothing – not the worst nightmare or the most horrendous creature ever to draw
breath – could harm me when I was under this blanket, inside this radiant shield. I was in
the perfect place to watch the clouds lumber by overhead. I wondered where the clouds were
going and where they had been.
The fox squirrel was having a good time perched on his hind legs and barking at me. He
kept a safe distance, but didn't try to hide among the nearby foliage. A shadow passed over
him, and I watched as a red tail hawk dropped out of the sky and silenced him in mid-bark.
The bird stopped to eat his prey right there in the clearing. He plucked away at his lunch
seemingly unaware that I was watching. Or aware, but unconcerned. He had seen me long
before I saw him.
My eyes began to grow heavy as I surveyed the surrounding area. From my favorite spot I
could see the small flower garden, the resting place of Mrs. Brown and two of her three
children. Jim once told me that his father had gone hunting and had been spared from
joining the trio in an untimely death – but then suffered for the rest of his life, stricken by guilt
over surviving, over returning from hunting and finding what he had found.
Someone – drifters, the sheriff had surmised – had murdered all three of them and dumped
their bodies in the woods before escaping. After Jim’s Dad (a boy of fourteen then) had found
the bodies, he went and got the sheriff. After the lawman and two county officials had finished
their examinations, they had buried the bodies near the house as the boy had requested.
Jim never said if the drifters were ever caught, but I somehow always knew that they weren't.
To me – now – what had happened to Jim’s family was wrong, but that they should be buried
by their home was definitely right. How could they not be at peace in this place? The sweet
aroma of summer flowers and honeysuckle blossoms tickled my nose. The garden was
always clean and tidy.
I fell asleep while watching the hawk, while thinking of Jim's dead forbearers, and also
feeling lucky, privileged – blessed, I guess – to be alone here under the gentle warmth of the
sun on this slice of earth.
When I awakened, it was with a feeling of slight unease. I opened my eyes, and standing
before me was a man who looked even taller than Jim. He was dressed in logger's clothes,
and he had one foot propped up on the first porch step. I stared at him and blinked; and the
way he looked at me, he wasn't expecting me to say anything.
"My name's Zabar," he said simply. Then he climbed the steps to the porch and sat on what
was left of a wooden bench.
A long silence passed. I was about to ask him if he was looking for Jim when he suddenly
said, "Bobby, do you love God?"
"So you're a friend of Jim," I said.
"Why do you say that?"
"How else would you know my name?"
He didn't answer that. Instead, he repeated his question: "Bobby, do you love God?"
"Sure," I said. "Do you?"
"Would you like to work for God?"
"You only know how to ask questions?
"Bobby, that should be an easy question for you to answer."
"I guess so," I told him, "but it'll have to be after school. Does Jim know you're here?" I
invested some authority in the question– me, the self-appointed gatekeeper.
Zabar smiled. "I'm sure Mr. Brown wouldn't mind."
"Well, he's kind of funny about this place. Some of his family was killed here." I winced at my
own words. Shouldn't have said that – don't know why I did. That was family business.
Zabar gazed at the flower garden for a long while. "Bobby, I'm glad Jim told you about Vera
and the children. It'll help you to understand what I came here to tell you."
"You're the logger who's been trying to buy Jim's trees, aren't you?"
"Those flowers are beautiful," Zabar said.
"You're wasting your time. Jim'll never sell you so much as one tree."
More smiling. Zabar was good at smiling. This wasn't a smile meant to persuade or soften
me up in any way. The smile wasn't a weapon; it was merely there, like the trees and the
clouds and those flowers, a bottomless representation of calm. It certainly didn't match his
rugged logger's clothes.
"Are you angry with me?" he asked.
"Jim and I don't much like loggers."
"Why's that?" he asked, but I could only shrug in response. It didn't feel right, ascribing to this
man the ills of loggers.
"How do you and Jim feel about angels?"
"Is that what you are? You sure don't look like an angel."
"I can look anyway you want me to look. I just thought you'd be more comfortable with this."
Zabar held out his arms as if to say that this presentation – that he himself – was just for me.
Fine. He wanted to try and fool me. He thought I was . . . dumb. "What does God look like?" I
asked him. My reasoning here: a logger wouldn't know what God looked like.
But this man acted as if that was a really good question and answered it. "To you, God would
look like he was your older brother, with every feature so perfect that not even a tiny change
would be needed."
"I don't have an older brother," I told him. "But I guess a logger wouldn't know that."
Zabar turned his head and spoke to some invisible companion, "I'm doing the best I can
here."
"Who are you talking to?" I asked, but now he looked as if he were listening to that invisible
companion's response.
Finally he turned back to me. "You like apples, Bobby?"
"I figure a real angel would know whether I liked apples or not."
"Angels know only what they need to know, Bobby. Your taste for fruit is not such a thing."
He stood up, and then motioned for me to follow him to the small orchard. He crossed the
yard to a tree and plucked an apple. I'd never seen apples on that tree before. I didn’t even
know it was an apple tree. And I'd always walked past it on the way to the porch.
He passed me the apple, and I just stared at it.
"Go ahead," he said, and I couldn't help but think of the Bible stories of the Garden of Eden
and that talking snake that got the man and his wife into trouble.
I bit into the apple anyway. I liked apples almost as much as I liked plums, and this had to be
the best one I'd ever tasted. I ate the whole thing and wiped my hands on my shirt.
A blue-black lizard was playing catch-me-if-you-can with another lizard a few yards away. I
tossed the apple core in their direction and said, "Okay, Zabar, are there people living on
other planets?"
"If you listen to my answer, that must mean you believe I'm an angel." The sentence came
out sounding like a question.
"No sir, not at all."
"Just testing me?" he said.
"I guess so." I wanted another apple, but felt it would be impolite to pluck one.
Zabar said, "There are people not of this world. Is that something that interests you?"
"Not really. What interests me is, why did God let those drifters kill Mrs. Brown and her
children? Those men deserved to be tracked down and have their eyes gouged out."
"I can tell you mean that, Bobby."
"If’n you’re an angel, you know I do."
"First of all, it is the drifters who you should take pity on. They haven't known a moment's
peace ever since they killed those people. They feel empty inside. The worm of hell eats at
their soul day and night."
"Good," I said.
"On the other hand, their victims have known only immense joy. God does not take from one
and give to another. What God provides are choices."
"It sure don’t sound like Mrs. Brown and her babies were given any choices."
"True. This would be the day the drifters had to choose. They could have repaid the Brown's
hospitality with gratitude and enjoyed God's favor, or—"
"So that's what happened?" I said. "The Browns took them in and then got killed for it?"
"Like I said, the drifters could have enjoyed God's favor, or they could have done as they
chose to do – and then suffer for it, as they have every day since. Each act, good or bad, big
or small, is judged. Those who invite evil are dead long before they die.
Regardless of how much they obtain from the trusting and the unsuspecting, their bounty is
never enough. Their lives are filled with wants and fears. A hundred thousand tongues
cheering them do little to ease the pain of knowing that they are wicked. They actually
despise those who cheer them. In private, they regard their followers as imbeciles."
He began walking toward the porch. I followed him and said, "Zabar, I reckon you're not a
logger."
"Why thank you," he said with a chuckle.
"But if you're really an angel, then I'd like—"
"You'd like me to tell you if you're going to heaven or hell."
For a long while I couldn't say anything. I stared at him with my mouth hanging open, and he
looked as if he watched people get hit with such bombshells every day. He wordlessly let my
new understanding settle.
"Whether you go the heaven or hell," he said, "depends on the choices you make."
Then he took a stick and drew two circles in the dirt. One, he said, was heaven, while the
other was hell. He used the circles to point out that one could know the peace and joy of
heaven or suffer the pains of hell and damnation long before actual death.
This mini-sermon wasn't a lecture; it was a simple and intuitive sharing of truth. I didn't
interrupt him, and he didn't stop to ask questions. When he was finished, we sat in silence –
the same blessed silence I'd been enjoying before I dozed off and he showed up on the
porch. We sat there and watched the sky and listened to nature. The silence must have
lasted an hour. The sun was dipping behind the woodshed when he finally spoke again.
"Bobby, you are to witness death, both far and near."
"Who's gonna die?" I said.
"These deaths will be significantly more painful for you than your own demise. You will
spend much of your life alone, but you aren't being punished. You're being prepared. You like
Batman and Robin comic books, don’t you? How would you like to work with me?"
I swallowed hard. Prepared. This was why he had come here, to tell me this. His visit was
the start of something. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
"Yeah, I do like them. They are fair and not afraid to do what’s right. Zabar, you tell God I’ll be
glad to do what I can, but I’m not too smart and school work takes almost all my…"
But he left. There's really no other way of putting it. He just left. Like the Browns, one moment
he was there, the next moment he wasn't. The porch's wooden planks absorbed him like a
sponge absorbs water.
The following day, I asked Jim if he had ever met a guy who dressed like a logger and called
himself Zabar. He said he didn't believe he had. I was sure that if Jim had met Zabar, he'd
certainly remember.
For my part, I knew that I would meet Zabar many times over the years to come. I knew that
Zabar was offering me something better than a peaceful porch on which to sleep away a
summer afternoon. He would show up whenever he wanted to, and he would allow me to
witness events that would change lives and demand my understanding. Just when he would
show up, I couldn't say. I only knew he would be returning. And I was eager to be there
waiting when he arrived.
On Brown's Mountain, my father and I built our house out of slab lumber. When the sawmill
was busy, Mr. Pucket, the man who ran the rip saw, would give my Dad the slabs just to get
them out of his way. Slabs are mostly bark, but there's enough good wood in them to use as
flat boards, provided you don't want anything fancy. And since all we wanted were four walls
and a roof to keep the wind off our backs and the rain off our heads, we were thankful.
Brown's Mountain was the official name of the place, but most folks who lived in the area
called it Ghost Mountain. I never asked why, and I don't remember anyone ever offering an
explanation. The two-lane blacktop that circled the mountain had been built by the logging
companies but was taken over by the county after the mills closed down. To get the timber
down to the mill at the base of the mountain, the loggers had cut a road across the mountain
that connected with the paved road. It was on this road, almost at the top of Ghost Mountain,
that Dad and I built our slab home on three acres of good land.
Dad had befriended Jim Brown, the largest landowner in the area, and thus he was
privileged to buy the prime land. This event was lucky for me, since my Dad and I didn't see
eye to eye on the practice of drinking. Dad drank, but Jim didn't drink. So when I wasn't in
school or doing chores, I was with Jim hunting or working in his cornfields.
Looking back, I now know that Jim wasn't tall enough to touch the sky – but he had certainly
seemed tall enough back then. I can't remember him ever wearing shoes and, to my
knowledge, he never struck another person. My fondest memory of Jim came at the end of a
cold winter's day. We were returning from a failed hunt. Not a single rabbit to show for three
miles of hill tramping and six hours of braving below-freezing temperatures. When I
expressed my disappointment, Jim smiled and touched my shoulder with his huge hand.
"Boy, a good day is one spent in good company."
Jim always put things differently than my Dad did. Back then, I didn't understand why this was
so. Today, I know that Jim spoke from the heart, while my Dad spoke his mind. This would
be the last summer I would get to spend with Jim. He would die in his sleep late that fall –
and I can't imagine God taking Jim in any other way.
Had I known that my time with Jim was so short, I would have stayed and helped him shoe
the mules instead of taking off on my own to explore a cave I'd recently spotted. But I had to
explore the cave alone, because there was no way Jim would ever squeeze his ample frame
through the small opening.
I reached the cave early in the morning and set about exploring. Jim had said it would be
damp and hard to see in, not worth the effort. After about twenty minutes in the dark, I decided
he was right, crawled out again, and went to my most favorite spot anywhere in the world -
Jim's grandparent's old home.
It usually took about two hours to walk from Jim's house to his grandparent's place. But
starting from the cave, it took a little longer. By the time I stepped out of the forest and into the
house's clearing, the morning sun had moved past the oak and hickory-treed hilltops. The
six-room house had all but fallen in. A woodshed, a small orchard and a hand-dug well that
lay dangerously open occupied the clearing. I guess the old house was a hundred yards or
so from the path I always used since it was the only entrance into the clearing without having
to go through saw briers and knee-deep ground cover where timber rattlers lay in ambush
for rodents.
As usual Mrs. Brown (Jim’s grandmother) and her two children were working in the flower
garden just off to one side of the house. Walking toward the house, I called out: "Mrs. Brown,
I'm back!"
And as they had done every other time I had come along, they didn’t answer, but went inside
the house. Jim had once told me, "Boy, just because she doesn't answer, it doesn't mean
she doesn't hear you."
A second-year fox squirrel barked at me from one of the few pine trees in the area. I stepped
onto the first of four steps leading to the porch that had once spanned the entire front of the
house. The old step groaned under my weight, and I stole cautiously up to the porch and
across the brittle wood to my favorite place. There was no need going inside the house
because it was a dark maze of fallen in walls and ceiling timbers. Wherever the Browns
went, you were not going to find them, or least I had never been able to find them.
What was left of a windowsill made a nice backrest, and the sun, which moved lazily
westward, provided not only warmth, but also a protective shield that worked like a blanket on
my bed. Nothing – not the worst nightmare or the most horrendous creature ever to draw
breath – could harm me when I was under this blanket, inside this radiant shield. I was in
the perfect place to watch the clouds lumber by overhead. I wondered where the clouds were
going and where they had been.
The fox squirrel was having a good time perched on his hind legs and barking at me. He
kept a safe distance, but didn't try to hide among the nearby foliage. A shadow passed over
him, and I watched as a red tail hawk dropped out of the sky and silenced him in mid-bark.
The bird stopped to eat his prey right there in the clearing. He plucked away at his lunch
seemingly unaware that I was watching. Or aware, but unconcerned. He had seen me long
before I saw him.
My eyes began to grow heavy as I surveyed the surrounding area. From my favorite spot I
could see the small flower garden, the resting place of Mrs. Brown and two of her three
children. Jim once told me that his father had gone hunting and had been spared from
joining the trio in an untimely death – but then suffered for the rest of his life, stricken by guilt
over surviving, over returning from hunting and finding what he had found.
Someone – drifters, the sheriff had surmised – had murdered all three of them and dumped
their bodies in the woods before escaping. After Jim’s Dad (a boy of fourteen then) had found
the bodies, he went and got the sheriff. After the lawman and two county officials had finished
their examinations, they had buried the bodies near the house as the boy had requested.
Jim never said if the drifters were ever caught, but I somehow always knew that they weren't.
To me – now – what had happened to Jim’s family was wrong, but that they should be buried
by their home was definitely right. How could they not be at peace in this place? The sweet
aroma of summer flowers and honeysuckle blossoms tickled my nose. The garden was
always clean and tidy.
I fell asleep while watching the hawk, while thinking of Jim's dead forbearers, and also
feeling lucky, privileged – blessed, I guess – to be alone here under the gentle warmth of the
sun on this slice of earth.
When I awakened, it was with a feeling of slight unease. I opened my eyes, and standing
before me was a man who looked even taller than Jim. He was dressed in logger's clothes,
and he had one foot propped up on the first porch step. I stared at him and blinked; and the
way he looked at me, he wasn't expecting me to say anything.
"My name's Zabar," he said simply. Then he climbed the steps to the porch and sat on what
was left of a wooden bench.
A long silence passed. I was about to ask him if he was looking for Jim when he suddenly
said, "Bobby, do you love God?"
"So you're a friend of Jim," I said.
"Why do you say that?"
"How else would you know my name?"
He didn't answer that. Instead, he repeated his question: "Bobby, do you love God?"
"Sure," I said. "Do you?"
"Would you like to work for God?"
"You only know how to ask questions?
"Bobby, that should be an easy question for you to answer."
"I guess so," I told him, "but it'll have to be after school. Does Jim know you're here?" I
invested some authority in the question– me, the self-appointed gatekeeper.
Zabar smiled. "I'm sure Mr. Brown wouldn't mind."
"Well, he's kind of funny about this place. Some of his family was killed here." I winced at my
own words. Shouldn't have said that – don't know why I did. That was family business.
Zabar gazed at the flower garden for a long while. "Bobby, I'm glad Jim told you about Vera
and the children. It'll help you to understand what I came here to tell you."
"You're the logger who's been trying to buy Jim's trees, aren't you?"
"Those flowers are beautiful," Zabar said.
"You're wasting your time. Jim'll never sell you so much as one tree."
More smiling. Zabar was good at smiling. This wasn't a smile meant to persuade or soften
me up in any way. The smile wasn't a weapon; it was merely there, like the trees and the
clouds and those flowers, a bottomless representation of calm. It certainly didn't match his
rugged logger's clothes.
"Are you angry with me?" he asked.
"Jim and I don't much like loggers."
"Why's that?" he asked, but I could only shrug in response. It didn't feel right, ascribing to this
man the ills of loggers.
"How do you and Jim feel about angels?"
"Is that what you are? You sure don't look like an angel."
"I can look anyway you want me to look. I just thought you'd be more comfortable with this."
Zabar held out his arms as if to say that this presentation – that he himself – was just for me.
Fine. He wanted to try and fool me. He thought I was . . . dumb. "What does God look like?" I
asked him. My reasoning here: a logger wouldn't know what God looked like.
But this man acted as if that was a really good question and answered it. "To you, God would
look like he was your older brother, with every feature so perfect that not even a tiny change
would be needed."
"I don't have an older brother," I told him. "But I guess a logger wouldn't know that."
Zabar turned his head and spoke to some invisible companion, "I'm doing the best I can
here."
"Who are you talking to?" I asked, but now he looked as if he were listening to that invisible
companion's response.
Finally he turned back to me. "You like apples, Bobby?"
"I figure a real angel would know whether I liked apples or not."
"Angels know only what they need to know, Bobby. Your taste for fruit is not such a thing."
He stood up, and then motioned for me to follow him to the small orchard. He crossed the
yard to a tree and plucked an apple. I'd never seen apples on that tree before. I didn’t even
know it was an apple tree. And I'd always walked past it on the way to the porch.
He passed me the apple, and I just stared at it.
"Go ahead," he said, and I couldn't help but think of the Bible stories of the Garden of Eden
and that talking snake that got the man and his wife into trouble.
I bit into the apple anyway. I liked apples almost as much as I liked plums, and this had to be
the best one I'd ever tasted. I ate the whole thing and wiped my hands on my shirt.
A blue-black lizard was playing catch-me-if-you-can with another lizard a few yards away. I
tossed the apple core in their direction and said, "Okay, Zabar, are there people living on
other planets?"
"If you listen to my answer, that must mean you believe I'm an angel." The sentence came
out sounding like a question.
"No sir, not at all."
"Just testing me?" he said.
"I guess so." I wanted another apple, but felt it would be impolite to pluck one.
Zabar said, "There are people not of this world. Is that something that interests you?"
"Not really. What interests me is, why did God let those drifters kill Mrs. Brown and her
children? Those men deserved to be tracked down and have their eyes gouged out."
"I can tell you mean that, Bobby."
"If’n you’re an angel, you know I do."
"First of all, it is the drifters who you should take pity on. They haven't known a moment's
peace ever since they killed those people. They feel empty inside. The worm of hell eats at
their soul day and night."
"Good," I said.
"On the other hand, their victims have known only immense joy. God does not take from one
and give to another. What God provides are choices."
"It sure don’t sound like Mrs. Brown and her babies were given any choices."
"True. This would be the day the drifters had to choose. They could have repaid the Brown's
hospitality with gratitude and enjoyed God's favor, or—"
"So that's what happened?" I said. "The Browns took them in and then got killed for it?"
"Like I said, the drifters could have enjoyed God's favor, or they could have done as they
chose to do – and then suffer for it, as they have every day since. Each act, good or bad, big
or small, is judged. Those who invite evil are dead long before they die.
Regardless of how much they obtain from the trusting and the unsuspecting, their bounty is
never enough. Their lives are filled with wants and fears. A hundred thousand tongues
cheering them do little to ease the pain of knowing that they are wicked. They actually
despise those who cheer them. In private, they regard their followers as imbeciles."
He began walking toward the porch. I followed him and said, "Zabar, I reckon you're not a
logger."
"Why thank you," he said with a chuckle.
"But if you're really an angel, then I'd like—"
"You'd like me to tell you if you're going to heaven or hell."
For a long while I couldn't say anything. I stared at him with my mouth hanging open, and he
looked as if he watched people get hit with such bombshells every day. He wordlessly let my
new understanding settle.
"Whether you go the heaven or hell," he said, "depends on the choices you make."
Then he took a stick and drew two circles in the dirt. One, he said, was heaven, while the
other was hell. He used the circles to point out that one could know the peace and joy of
heaven or suffer the pains of hell and damnation long before actual death.
This mini-sermon wasn't a lecture; it was a simple and intuitive sharing of truth. I didn't
interrupt him, and he didn't stop to ask questions. When he was finished, we sat in silence –
the same blessed silence I'd been enjoying before I dozed off and he showed up on the
porch. We sat there and watched the sky and listened to nature. The silence must have
lasted an hour. The sun was dipping behind the woodshed when he finally spoke again.
"Bobby, you are to witness death, both far and near."
"Who's gonna die?" I said.
"These deaths will be significantly more painful for you than your own demise. You will
spend much of your life alone, but you aren't being punished. You're being prepared. You like
Batman and Robin comic books, don’t you? How would you like to work with me?"
I swallowed hard. Prepared. This was why he had come here, to tell me this. His visit was
the start of something. Nothing was ever going to be the same again.
"Yeah, I do like them. They are fair and not afraid to do what’s right. Zabar, you tell God I’ll be
glad to do what I can, but I’m not too smart and school work takes almost all my…"
But he left. There's really no other way of putting it. He just left. Like the Browns, one moment
he was there, the next moment he wasn't. The porch's wooden planks absorbed him like a
sponge absorbs water.
The following day, I asked Jim if he had ever met a guy who dressed like a logger and called
himself Zabar. He said he didn't believe he had. I was sure that if Jim had met Zabar, he'd
certainly remember.
For my part, I knew that I would meet Zabar many times over the years to come. I knew that
Zabar was offering me something better than a peaceful porch on which to sleep away a
summer afternoon. He would show up whenever he wanted to, and he would allow me to
witness events that would change lives and demand my understanding. Just when he would
show up, I couldn't say. I only knew he would be returning. And I was eager to be there
waiting when he arrived.
We hope you enjoyed My Friend Zabar and are
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excited about reading the other stories in Bob
Miller's An Angel Named Zabar. Amazon.com,
Best price - Best Service. Thank you.