Marvin Finds a Home by Patrick Sean Lee (ebook offline .txt) 📕

        Maribeth was a tough young woman, not given to outbursts of tears or emotional displays, but she found herself near to crying. It was as if Marvin had been her most beloved grandfather, and had just announced he was leaving this life forever. Of course he had just announced the opposite, but with a sincerity and eloquence reserved for scenes in wonderful movies and great plays. She was moved ever more deeply than she could imagine, and she turned to her father for a consoling touch of his hand, or a look of empathy. She received both. As if to emphasize his action, the governor spoke out as Marvin reached the doorway.

        “Mr. Fuster, please wait a moment. My daughter might be right. Your presence here in our home for one evening would certainly not put us out,” he looked to his wife, “Would it dear?”

        “Well…I don’t know,” she answered. “We…he…”

 
        Maribeth, who was standing near to her mother, now, took hold of Trish’s arm and interrupted. “Oh Momma, please. You must. Look at him!”

        The governor continued. “I haven’t any idea what this grand plan is that you’ve alluded to, but there is enough of the evening left for you to tell me a bit more about it. You’ve gotten me very curious. One evening in a comfortable bed, in a comfortable house. Tomorrow, you can have breakfast with us, then leave. Tonight, our home is yours. What do you say?”

        Marvin turned back to them, but did not answer for a moment. He looked first to Maribeth, who had folded her hands to her mouth. Grandfather was not dying at all.

        “I think I could find a job. I suppose I could, and pay for the books, if you think I should. I don’t know about the other store, but who knows?”

        Looking, then, to the governor (who did not have the slightest idea what he had just said), he stated, “It would be a great relief, to be honest, to stay here tonight. I have already fallen very much in love with the bed in your basement, and a hot shower first thing in the morning would be a blessing, to be sure. Are you certain, though? I might be a thief in the night, for all you know…or worse.”

        “I think that you are not, but I will know by the end of the evening, be certain of that. The Governor’s Mansion is a fortress, and where it is nearly impossible to break into without many eyes seeing you, it is more difficult still to escape from with a bundle of silver…or blood...on one’s back. In any case, I believe that despite whatever you may have been in the past, you can be trusted tonight. Have you eaten yet?”

        Thus, Marvin’s banishment back to the street was stayed, and in the process he was able to fill his belly with cold (but delicious) roast beef, hot rolls, potatoes and corn, and a gallon of milk. He told the governor, who listened with rapt attention, the entire story of what had happened to him that day. Everything, that is, except the ill-fated mission to acquire a new suit of clothes. That, he hoped, might be saved for the ears of a priest.

        Maribeth and her mother sat quietly all the while, and listened intently. Marvin was able to relate the story with an analytical eye for detail, which astounded even himself. It was a far more interesting tale than he had been able to tell Maribeth only a few hours earlier, filled with descriptions of the angels and the buildings and the wakening mood of the city itself, as though he were Shakespeare or Dickens, and he was dictating to a scribe. To the further amazement of the family, he gave a very short, but fact-filled explanation of the probable link between the fourth and fifth dimensions, and the causes of cellular degeneration which were impacted by the connection of those realms. They found themselves at a loss to even inquire about any of it, but were nonetheless in awe of his obvious brilliance. It was Maribeth’s suspicion, and hope, that her parents would be infected, and adopt him by evening’s end, and if the debacle at the clothing store could be kept secret, there was every reason to expect that the three of them would be caught up in Marvin’s fantastically impossible journey and find themselves coming to rest on a cloud, somewhere high above the stratosphere.

        At the end of the tale, Marvin sat back in his chair, delighted by his newfound narrative abilities. Maribeth smiled and looked to her father for some reaction. His eyes were stretched wide open and his mouth drawn tightly shut. The only comment came from the lips of Trish.

        “Oh dear.”

Partially hidden by a column separating the rooms, Maribeth shot Marvin a questioning look. He stood frozen, the color in his face drained.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

He replied, “Not a good time to meet your folks, dear. I’m getting out of here.”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute. What’s the matter?”

“No time to explain,” he whispered. He bent down on weak knees and began to collect the books hurriedly. “Here,” he said thrusting “Mitochondrial Mutations In Primates” at her. “Just say you dropped this. Don’t mention me.”

“But…”

“Maribeth? Is that you, darling?” Trish Harris’ voice whirled down the length of the entrance hall and round the corner where her daughter stood, newly in possession of a book Marvin never expected to lay eyes on again (and which she had no inclination to ever read). He had turned by then and was on his way back to the rear hall. The question in his mind was, should he even bother to go downstairs, or simply continue on to the rear door, the garage, the driveway, and then to the street beyond? At the far end stood Anselm. He wondered nothing at all.

Maribeth shouted, “Wait!”

The sheer volume of her statement—the announcement to the first family and their visitors because of it— answered Marvin’s question. He bounded the distance to the door, balancing the weight and mass of the books in one arm, extending the free hand toward the knob when he drew near it. The hand met Anselm’s midsection. Quickly then, Marvin’s full body. He bounced backward, landing on his rear, dazed and confused, his wrist nearly broken when the hand it carried met the angel’s unseen body. He sat for a moment watching the multi-colored stars whizzing in front of his eyes.

“Ohmagosh! Marvin!” Maribeth was at his side by the time Betelgeuse fell below the horizon, and the sun began to brighten the old man’s eastern hemisphere. She fell to her knees and put a hand to his cheek. “Oh, when will this knocking yourself out come to an end?”

Soon, hopefully. The brain, even the super-brain, can only take so much abuse. He wasn’t thinking this, however. He really wasn’t thinking much of anything at all this time around. Marvin’s brain in the space of less than a week had been spilled out onto the ground, stuffed back into his fractured head by the best and most expensive doctors in town, been packed with two or three gigs of the world’s greatest literature—and now this.

Anselm waved a finger over him. He hadn’t intended for Marvin to meet a stone wall, forgetting momentarily that he was indeed that wall. Even angels are capable of miscalculation.

Marvin shook the remaining stars away, and realized what had happened, at least in the preceding moment. To him. From his perspective he’d simply run into the door. Something similar had happened a few years back when he had lifted a turkey from the frozen section at the Piggly Wiggly Market, and then made a mad dash for the rear door leading to the alley. That time he’d wound up out cold for twenty minutes as a result, and soon afterward spent a month in jail for shoplifting. Sitting in jail he wondered why he’d been so stupid to have stolen a turkey to begin with, having no way to cook it. Couple that with the fact that it was mid-January, colder than the hubs of hell, he was sleeping beneath the loading dock (colder than the hubs of hell), and that the frozen turkey would remain frozen until May at the earliest…

Just a crazy impulse. A genetic predisposition to steal.

“Are you okay?” Maribeth asked him.

“Yeah, I’m fine, I think. Help me get these books…”

“Just lie still for a minute. You might have suffered a concussion,” she said, forgetting for the moment that her father and mother, a Major from the Salvation Army Mission, and an officer of the law were likely…well, there they were before she had time to forget.

“Maribeth! What on earth is going on?” Mums.

Time for a bit of creative thinking, Maribeth was thinking. She rose to the occasion as the Major prepared to offer appropriate biblical verses, and the cop scoured Marvin’s vaguely familiar face with his eagle-sharp eyes.

“Who is this?” Richard Harris demanded. “What’s going on here?”

Maribeth addressed them. “Daddy, Mums, I want you to meet Mr. Marvin…”

“Fahl-graf…stad,” Marvin blurted. Professor Fahlgrafstad. Forgive me. I fainted. The heart, you understand.”

“Oh dear,” Trish Harris said, bringing a hand to her mouth. She knelt quickly beside her daughter, readying to help the stricken man. The Major had long ago forgotten all about Marvin Fahlgrafstad-Fuster, and fortunately for the then-naked Marvin, the incident at the Mission had gone unnoticed. The cop narrowed his eyes. Something was terribly familiar about the face.

“What is he doing in our home?” Richard took the reins.

Maribeth was cooking by then. “He came by with his books to…umm…show me what…he’s been reading. Up. On. Oh, it’s wonderful, Daddy!” She spoke more quickly, now, with confidence, having gotten past the clumsy part of her lie. “He’s exploring the mysteries of the human gene. Stuff. I don’t really understand it as well as he does, but he wants me to be his…lab assistant over at the university. Isn’t that a kill? Me? Your only daughter?”

This seemed to excite Trish. “Oh my, yes. But I had no idea you were studying science, darling. When did this come about?”

The cop crinkled his mouth, stepped forward, and peered more closely at Professor Fahlgrafstad. “You look awful familiar. Have we met somewhere?” His tone was anything but pleasant; in point of fact, downright suspicious-sounding. Marvin smiled dumbly, as if his encounter with the door still