Marshall Ramsey

Click on photo to see the real church where this window is.

An early snowfall had blanketed the forested hills of Vermont.  A big black sedan roared through the small town, ignoring the ice and slush on the road until it was too late.  There by the bridge over the river, its driver missed the curve, lost control and hit a telephone pole head on.  And for reasons only known to God and BMW, the airbags did not fire.  The drunk driver’s head impacted the steering wheel with a bludgeoning blow.  It was like a scene out of “It’s a Wonderful Life” except there was no wonderful life in the car.

The driver awoke dazed in his crushed vehicle.  Falling snow landed on the steaming remains of the engine, making a cackling sound as if fate was laughing at his stupidity.  He blinked a couple of times and tried to get some sense of awareness of his situation. He smelled gas, which awoke his need for self preservation.  He poured out of the car and onto the snow.  Stumbling to his feet, he threw up and limped toward a light past the Green.

The stone church blended into the white and gray countryside but it’s bright red door beckoned like a snow-covered siren. He wiped his forehead: A warm, syrupy goo flowed into his eyes and face — he was bleeding profusely. When he grabbed the door handle, his hand was the same color as the painted wood.

He stumbled inside.

The nave was dark.  The interior of the church was old black oak with exquisite stained glass from nearly every period of stained glass art.  But all were dark. It was 5 a.m. and the sun was far from rising.  His blurry vision focused at the end of the church. There, over the altar, was a precious stained glass window designed by the brilliant designer Louis Comfort Tiffany himself.  The risen Christ looked out on the nave with arms raised as if to suggest an invitation for comfort. He limped toward it.

There, on the alter, world-renowned CEO Bradley S. Hollingsworth collapsed into a bloody heap on the polished oak floor.

While it would be cliche to say his life flashed before his eyes, that’s exactly what happened.  He awoke in the gym of his elementary school. The vast room smelled like varnish and Bradley looked down at the red rubber ball in his hand. He was twice as large as the other children on the other side.  Battle-ball was his favorite sport.  He found one overweight kid he loved to pick on and threw the ball at his face with all of his might. “TAKE THAT TUBBY TEDDY!” he mocked. But when the ball hit the boy’s face, HE felt the pain. His nose exploded and he saw a flash of light.  He experienced shame and the embarrassment for the first time in his life.  He felt what Tubby was feeling.

He opened his eyes again only to find himself on his high school bus.  Two seats up in front of him was the Autistic boy who he used to love to make fun of.  Bradley started taunting the child and suddenly, he felt the confusion. The rage. The fear. He couldn’t escape the pain of the laughter. What was going on?  “Make this nightmare stop!” he screamed.

He woke up in the sheets of his bed.  “Good, it was just a dream,” he thought. But to his horror, there lying next to him was the young nubile assistant from accounting. NOT AGAIN! He panicked as the door flew open. There stood his wife, the love of his life, erupting in waves of tears and anger.  Suddenly his heart felt her heart’s anguish. Her sense of betrayal. Her pain.

He sat at his mahogany desk and signed some papers. The U.S. Government had just bailed out his company.  Too big to fail, they called it.  His bonus was going to be too big to cash, he snickered. But to get that bonus, he had to lay off thousands of middle-class employees, casting them in to the sea of the Great Recession. “They’re only numbers,” he reassured himself as he signed the final approval of the massive layoff.  Suddenly he felt the fear and uncertainty of all 34,000 of the employees whose life he had just ruined.  He fell to the floor in anguish.

The door of the church flew open but not because of the wind.  A bright red glow had replaced the snow as two men in black overcoats walked down the rows toward him. Neither had faces. Bradley felt fear like he never had before in his life. His skin burned as they grabbed his legs and started dragging him back out of the church.

Bradley, having run out of options for the first time of his life, reached his hand up toward the Tiffany Jesus and cried out the only two words he could:

Forgive me.

A white flash lit the dark nave with the brilliance of a million suns. The two men screamed a banshee’s scream as they disintegrated into a pile of black ash. Bradley was bathed in a warm glow.  For the first time in his life, he felt empathy. And then he felt peace.

The next morning, a policeman found the crumbled BMW and called an ambulance. The policeman and the EMT’s followed the trail of bloody footprints through the white snow to the little gray stone church.  As they walked into the dark nave, they saw the spectacularly illuminated Tiffany Jesus.  And beneath it, bathed in a sunbeam pouring through its priceless stained glass was the body of a forgiven Bradley S. Hollingsworth.

About how I came up with the idea for this story.

When I was a janitor, some people looked at me and saw a janitor. And some people looked at me and saw a person. This story is dedicated to them.

Karl tied the plastic black bag in a knot and then carefully put it around the lip of the barrel.  His barrel — it was gray, and on the handle hung a feather duster, extra bags, a rag and a spray bottle of window cleaner.  The bell rang and high school students started pouring out of their classrooms. As they headed home, Karl headed to work.

Occasionally a kid would throw a piece of paper in his barrel or bump into him accidentally. But for the most part, no one spoke to Karl. He was just an old man pushing an old barrel.  Karl was invisible.

Karl didn’t mind.  He was just glad he had some place to go every night. Richard M. Nixon High School was Karl’s home away from home.

Karl had ten classrooms and a hallway to clean. On that hallway were two bathrooms. And every Friday night, he helped buff the cafeteria.  It wasn’t a complicated schedule  — Karl did his job well.  He pushed his barrel into the first classroom.  The silver-haired lady did not look up from her grade book. “You need to do a better job with the chalk tray,” she said in a terse way. Karl emptied her trash, smiled and said, “Yes ma’am.”  The lady looked up at the janitor and then back at her book without a sound.

The next room there was a balding man who taught math.  “You forgot a piece of paper on the floor last night.  You want me to report you?”  Karl looked at him and meekly said, “No, sir.”

The students had long since left the building by the time Karl got to his last room.  In there was a young teacher who had her head down in her arms. When Karl stopped pushing his barrel, he heard a muffled sobbing sound.  He loudly cleared his throat, partly just wanting her to stop. Crying made him uncomfortable.

“Oh. I’m sorry you saw this,” the young teacher said while wiping her eyes.

“No problem, ma’am.  My secret.”  They were more words than Karl had said to anyone in the school in a year.

The teacher looked at Karl and unloaded her soul on him. “I’m just not cut out for this.  The kids don’t listen. I’m a failure. No one likes me!”

Karl laughed, causing the teacher’s eyebrows to drop under her nose. He then said, “You’re not a failure.  You’ll be back tomorrow. A failure would quit. You’re not a quitter. So you’re not a failure.”

He emptied the trash, wiped the chalk tray and headed out the door. “I believe in you.  Of course, I’m just a janitor.”

The teacher wiped her eyes and stared at the old man as he pushed his barrel toward the custodian closet.  Who was he?

Day after day, Karl looked forward to room 210.  Everyday she would be in there working. Everyday they’d discuss some part of life.  One day, she asked, “Why are you a janitor? ” Karl just smiled and said, “Enough about me, tell me about your day.”

Karl was invisible — except to one young teacher in the 200 hall.

One day during his dinner break, a light knock startled the other custodians. Karl got up slowly and walked over to the door and opened it.  It was his teacher. “I brought you dinner.” She held a complete turkey dinner.

Karl’s eyes twinkled.  “Thank you. It’s the first home cooked meal I’ve had in years.”

The other custodians whistled and taunted, “Karl’s got a girlfriend! Karl’s got a girlfriend!”  Karl smiled and took a big bite of delicious turkey.

As the year passed, the young teacher gained confidence. Soon Karl overheard the students in the hall talking about her. They said how much they loved how she taught. How much they liked her. And how much they loved her class.

Karl smiled a knowing smile.

On the last day of school, the young teacher waited for Karl to come into the room.  She had a small present, wrapped in foil paper and a bright red ribbon. But Karl never came.  She scratched her head and headed down to the theater for the end of the year faculty meeting.

The principal got up, cleared his throat and said, “I hate to start out on a sad note, but we lost one of our own last night. Karl the night janitor passed away in his sleep.  I’d like to have a moment of silence in his honor.”

Only one person really knew who he was. Only one person sobbed uncontrollably.

The silence and sobbing was interrupted by a door in the back of the theater opening.  A man with an expensive suit and a manilla envelope walked into the room.  He paused halfway down the aisle and spoke:  “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I’m looking for a Emily Rae Smith.”

The young teacher blew her nose, raised her hand like a schoolgirl and said sadly, “That’s me.”

The lawyer walked over to her and pulled a letter out of the envelope and started to read.

“My dear Emily Rae,

Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven. But in the meantime, this will make your life on earth much easier. Thank you for your friendship.  Thank you for noticing me.

Karl

Emily Rae pulled out two more pieces of paper. One was a cashier’s check for $20 million. The other was a newspaper clipping that read, “Local man invents amazing new adhesive.”  Karl Matthew had been a successful chemist who held dozens of patents. When his wife died, he got sick of sitting alone in their empty mansion. So he took a job as a night janitor.  Every night he came to the school to be around people.  And since he had no living relatives, Emily Rae became the family he no longer had.

“You’ve inherited it all young lady,” the lawyer continued. “Congratulations. Karl thought the world of you. He said you were the best teacher he had ever seen.”

Emily Rae sat there stunned looking at the check. The rest of the teachers sat there even more stunned and just stared at her. And on that day at Richard M. Nixon High School, the invisible janitor became a legend.

Water bugs zipped across the surface of the stream’s pool, making tiny waves that traveled to the sides of the rocks. Light filtered through the trees, creating spots on the water’s surface. He could see his face. And then he saw her beautiful face.

The noise of the stream had masked her approach. She was a year older than him but he had been love his whole life. (Or so he thought.) He knew that he had loved her as long as he could remember.

And lately she felt the same.

She was blonde, freckled and thin. And she possessed the most beautiful smile he had ever seen.  He was 17 and she was 18: This was the last summer before she went off to college.

They had spent every summer of their lives on this stream near the Smoky Mountains.  Her grandmother’s cabin was next his parent’s place.  Every school year, the thought of her blue eyes got him through the dreary gray of winter.

Now it was time to say goodbye.

They sat on the rock and splashed their bare feet in the cold, mountain water. She told him that she was going away to school. Far away.  His heart suddenly grew as chilled as the mountain stream’s water. Warm water flowed down their cheeks.

The next year, letters were exchanged and phone calls were made.  But a trip to Europe kept her face out of the stream that next summer. Distance and absence started to fray the strands that tied them together.  She met a senior from Burlington, Vt. And one day he got the phone call.  She was getting married.

That next summer, he sat on the rock by the stream and looked at the reflection of his face in the still pool.  He waited, but hers never appeared.

He also eventually married. She was a wonderful woman he had met in school. That next summer, his parents sold their cabin and eventually developers clear cut the property upstream. The clear stream’s water became muddy. He’d never see her reflection in the pool again.

As the years passed, he and his wife raised a beautiful family. He was blessed to be successful in business and accumulated a huge fortune.  One of his company’s first purchases was the land where the stream ran. He replanted the woods and donated the land to the National Park. The once-muddy water began to run clear again.

His beloved wife died the fall of their 50th anniversary.  Breast cancer had taken her from him and his children were now scattered across the nation like dandelion seeds in the wind.  By the next summer he realized he was alone. Very alone.

So he came back and sat on the rock.  The rock by the pool. The rock next to where his old parent’s cabin had been.

Water bugs zipped across the surface of the stream’s pool, making tiny waves that traveled to the sides of the rocks. Light filtered through the trees, making spots on the waters surface. He could see his face. And then he saw her beautiful face.

Her eyes were just as blue, but wrinkles now surrounded them.  She was still thin, but gray hair had replaced the blonde. But her smile was unchanged. It was as beautiful as ever. He felt her arm slip across his back. Her husband had died the previous year, too, she said.  And she felt like she needed to come home.

The two faces in the water just smiled.  And the water bugs continued to do whatever it is water bugs do.