The Voicemail of God

The Voicemail of God

Ever since I can remember, I have been one of those strange people who pick up pennies. I find them everywhere, on sidewalks, in stadiums, on the floors of grocery stores, in parking lots… you get the idea. And it is a rare occasion indeed if I fail to pick them up. Most people, when faced with a copper portrait of Lincoln down by their feet, even if they dropped it themselves, will simply ignore it. After all, you cannot buy anything with one cent; why even bother bending over? I, on the other hand, like to think I am a little more practical than most. When I see one of those poor, unloved little presidents looking up at me, I have to admit that I get a little excited. Well, maybe excited is a bit strong, but you get my point. You see, when I see abandoned pennies, I see free money just waiting to be claimed. The only work required to earn it is bending over, and a simple motion of the thumb and forefinger. Yes, one penny is fairly useless, but I know that by picking up several pennies, the amount of free money I get will increase. I’m a working woman, of course I want free money!
Now, my near-religious collection of homeless one-cent pieces wasn’t always about the money. When I was a kid and still believed in things like luck, one verse was never far from my mind. “See a penny/ Pick it up/ And all the day you’ll have good luck.” I have no idea where I first heard the verse, but what young student with high aspirations can’t use a little luck? I also vaguely recall my mother telling me once that the pennies people find are tossed down by angels in heaven, little gifts for their loved ones here on earth. That was always a novel idea for me as well, since the incredible profusion of coins I found must mean someone up there thought I was pretty amazing. Of course, as I got older I grew more cynical. I knew full well pennies don’t come from heaven. My grandfather had introduced me to the wonderful world of numismatics- coin collecting- and I learned that pennies come from Denver, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. And obviously the reason I find pennies everywhere is not because they were put there specifically for me but because people drop them and just don’t care. I’m not sure when these realizations came to me; likely they did so gradually, and I was not as bothered by them as you might think. After all, I was still getting free money.
I bent down to pick up a penny outside the concert hall that night, and was nearly trampled by a herd of camera-wielding Asian tourists as I did so. As I brought my prize into the light to examine it though, I felt that my near-mortal-wounding was well worth it. You see, the date on this particular penny read 1958 D. (The D stands for Denver, the very earthly place where the penny was made.) For those of you who weren’t taken to a coin collecting club by your grandfather, let me explain. The Lincoln Memorial did not appear on the reverse side of Lincoln cents until 1959, meaning my treasure of the day happened to one of the old pennies with wheat decorating the back. These are, as you probably know, known as wheat cents. The one I now held was not particularly valuable, unfortunately; it was probably only worth about fifty cents, but that was enough to bring a thrill to the heart of a dedicated numismatist.

As far as I was concerned, that might well be the high point of the night, for, once I was finished admiring my new coin, I had to return to my true purpose for being at the concert hall that night: the odious task of seeing a show with my family. Needless to say, I was relieved when the show was finally over, and, after saying my goodbyes and giving and receiving hugs, I was allowed to escape to the sanctity and solitude of my own car. I breathed a world-weary sigh as I sank into the tan bucket seat of my dependable old Ford, and ran my hands affectionately over the steering wheel. It just feels good to be in your own car. Then I leaned against the door and began fishing in my pocket. My hand closed around the wheat penny and I brought it out to admire one more time before I dropped it into a cup holder. It would be safer there; things had a tendency to fall out of the too-shallow pockets of my jeans. Why don’t they give women deep enough pockets anyway?
I would have liked to go home then, to shut myself in my room, put on some music or maybe a movie, and simply recover from the evening’s experiences. But I could not. Nestled in my back pocket were the folded directions to a birthday party. I had said I would attend, and so I would, but this was where my problems began. I don’t do directions. I can neither give directions, nor follow them, and more often than not when I try to do so one party or the other ends up on their cell phone, growing increasingly more frustrated as the conversation progresses. I even gave incorrect directions to my house once. And wasn’t that an exciting experience; they eventually found the error and managed to arrive intact, and when I opened the front door for them I had three separate sheets of printed directions thrust into my face accompanied by a chorus of “Left? Left?!”
So. I had directions. I was meant to use them to get somewhere. Super. The really sad thing is that I was so confident at the outset; the directions seemed simple and I recognized two of the road names. I thought I could follow the directions without trouble. To this day, I swear that I did just that. The evidence says otherwise, however, for instead of an apartment crammed with friends and sushi and baked goods, lit in every widow and blaring music for the enjoyment of the entire neighborhood, I found myself somewhere that was almost certainly a lost piece of the world that may once have been part of a civilization but now definitely was not. Maybe it was because I was in something of a philosophical mood. I was thinking about, of all things, pennies. As I said before, I certainly know that pennies do not come from heaven, but I began questioning how that system would work if they did. What was to stop someone, I wondered, from picking up a penny that was meant for someone else? What became of pennies sent to people who did not bother to pick pennies up? Surely their angels would still try to send them their gifts, but, sadly, they would never be received. How many other people’s pennies might I have unwittingly claimed over the years? As I said, I was in a philosophical mood.
Whether it was because I distracted myself, the directions were flawed, of I was simply inept, I ended up… there. I still have no idea where I was. There was a small block of houses, all clustered together like a herd of water buffalo protecting their young. Separate from those were a church, a junk yard/auto shop, and one of those nameless, locally-owned gas stations with a tiny convenience store and souvenir shop. I found myself wondering what sort of souvenirs this miniscule not-even-a-town could possibly have to offer, and what sort of person would actually purchase something by which to remember their visit. For that matter, why would anyone want to remember their visit? There was nothing notable in the area to be found.
Since the clock in my car was broken- half of the skeletal numbers were obscured by a solid blotch of green light- I glanced at my watch. I then remembered that it was nighttime, which meant it was dark, and pushed the button to light the watch face. I sighed when I saw the hour; by this time, I had been driving aimlessly for over an hour and a half. And, since I had not an inkling of how I had gotten there, I did not know how to get back. I could have (probably should have) used my cell phone then and there, but this was a matter of pride. For once, I was determined to get somewhere navigating on my own. With few enough choices left to me then, I pulled into the parking lot of the gas station, the sole lit structure and beacon of hope in this desolate nowhere.
Inside the shop, I was met with the attendant, one of those men who give the feeling of advanced age and wisdom without actually looking old. Something led me to believe he was the station’s owner, or maybe even the one who had started the business years and years ago. Maybe it was his attire, which simply did not seem quite right. On the other hand, it didn’t fit the image of a business owner either. He wore a pair of jeans that lacked the worn quality one would expect on this sort of man, a Led Zeppelin T-shirt, and a leather jacket that still creaked with newness when he moved. There were also two other men in the shop, younger, I thought, than the first, but who wore a hardened demeanor which I attributed to rural, probably farming, life. I upset a string of sleigh bells as I entered, the cacophony betraying me to the men, and they both turned to stare at me in the fashion that is customary for residents of a small town when meeting strangers in their territory. At first I avoided their gazes by feigning interest in the rows of candy bars, then the dusty shelves of souvenirs. This continued far longer than it should have though, and finally the old man leaned over the counter and asked, with just the slightest southern drawl, “C’n I help you with something?”
Once the invitation was extended, I was quick to snatch it, lest it be retracted due to a delay. “Um, I’m a little lost,” I said. That was certainly an understatement; at this point, I wasn’t even sure I trusted myself to find my car in the parking lot. No sooner had the words passed my lips though than I found myself surrounded by strange men, in a gas station, in not the middle but at the very far end of nowhere. All three of them were, of course, experts in the area, and they all vied for their chance to impart that knowledge. Somehow, eventually, I had procured a new set of directions, this one penciled onto the back of a dirty old grocery list found in someone’s pocket. There was a large gap between “go five miles then turn left at the round barn” and “go all the way to the third stop sign” due to a grease stain that reminded me of a bird, but the directions were legible enough. With this new source of guidance in hand, I thanked the men and turned to take my leave.
“That’ll be two-fifty, miss,” the owner said. That took me completely by surprise. Since when did anyone have to pay for directions? Eager to be on my way again, I dug out my wallet and handed over three Washingtons without argument, and was given a shiny Kennedy in return. Afterward I decided that the sale of directions was how the station managed to stay in business, since they obviously never sold souvenirs.
On the road again, and possessing renewed hope and an amusing story to tell once I finally made it to the party, I drove in high spirits, singing along with “Bohemian Rhapsody.” I was just getting to “Beezelbub has a devil put aside for me, for me, for me…” and had long ago turned at the round barn, or at least a round barn, when my car, all of a sudden, decided to stop.

This was bad. Very, very bad. Not only was I nowhere near anything that resembled human habitation, without even a small town gas station (where they charged you two-fifty for directions) in sight, but I wasn’t even sure I was on a road anymore. I had followed the directions perfectly, but I was definitely off the beaten path. If what I had been driving on was indeed a road, then it was little more that a much-rutted dirt path. There were no signs; in fact, I hadn’t seen any since I left the gas station and started following my new set of directions. All they had given me were landmarks. I sighed, then whined, “Why me?” to the surrounding darkness. Then I talked to my car a little bit, pleading with it to start again, at least until we found a road sign or something. I found out that my car was either unsympathetic or just not a good listener.
It was definitely cell phone time. Thankfully, I come from a family that believes in being prepared. Well, my mom does at least. She was always giving unwanted advice, mainly devoted to health and safety. And for years after I moved out, she paid for a AAA membership for me. For once I was thankful for her paranoia. I took out my cell phone like I was drawing a pistol; I could almost hear the theme song from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. I pressed the button for the phonebook and, lo and behold, the number for AAA was at the top of the list. I pressed then send button and waited for the nice operator to answer the phone and solve all of my problems. First, there was ringing, then the telltale click of the phone being answered. “Hello,” a cheerful artificial female voice intoned. “You have reached the voicemail of…” The feminine voice abruptly switched to a deep masculine one. “God,” it pronounced dramatically. The voice echoed slightly, and then, loud and clear, there came a trumpet fanfare followed by a deafening clap of thunder. I ended the call and stared at my phone incredulously. “What the hell?” I said aloud. That was definitely not AAA.
“If at first you don’t succeed…” I opened my glove box and rooted around in it until I found the plastic bag that contained all of my miscellaneous AAA forms, pamphlets, cards, and whatnot. I figured that I had programmed the wrong number into my phone, a mistake which was all too common but easily corrected. I finally found a pamphlet with a number on it, but only after I had littered my back seat with ones I deemed useless and determined to recycle once I got home. I punched in the number, feeling somewhat less like Clint Eastwood this time, and waited a bit impatiently for someone to answer the phone. It rang four times, then I heard, “Hello, you have reached the voicemail of…” “God.” Trumpets. Thunder. I hung up.
“Damn it,” I said. Whatever I had done when I had programmed the number, I must have done again. I wondered briefly if I might be dyslexic, then dialed the number again. This time I double checked it, and triple checked it, before I pressed the send button. “Hello,” the voice said after four rings. “You have reached the voicemail of…” “God.”
“What the hell?” I cried, frustrated now. I had definitely called the right number that time, so why wasn’t it working? It took me two more tries before I decided the problem was not with me, but with the phone company or something between me and AAA. I seemed to be getting the wrong signal, probably because I was so far from civilization and, thus, a cell phone tower. I decided to try a different number, and chose my roommate. She would never let me live it down, but at least she would help me out. The phone rang four times, and I felt a terrible sense of foreboding as I heard the click of the phone being answered. “Hello,” the mechanical voice said soothingly. “You have reached the voicemail of…”
“You’ve gotta be kidding me,” I said. I tried another number, my parents, and another, my boyfriend.
“Hello.You have reached…”
“Damn it, damn it, damn it!” I pounded on my car’s steering wheel. Maybe that was the sort of thing that made it disinclined to sympathy. I tried every number I had programmed into my phone, and then I tried the ones I had not programmed because I had them memorized.
“Hello. You have…”
AARRGH!” I shouted in frustration. I immediately wished I had put the windows down before doing so; screams of rage sound really loud in enclosed spaces. I turned off my cell phone, feeling a wave of hatred at the cheerful tune it played when it powered down, and threw it on the passenger’s side floor. Then I banged my head against the steering wheel a few times, as if that ever helped anything.
Minutes passed as I forced myself to take deep breaths. When I eventually calmed down, I unbuckled my seat belt and reached down to retrieve my cell phone. It looked so forlorn there on the floor mat that I was instantly sorry I had thrown it; I even felt the urge to apologize, but I managed to suppress that. I wasn’t quite crazy yet. I turned the phone back on and tried once more to call my parents. “Hello. You have reached the voicemail of…” “God.” This time I sat in silence and listened to the message all the way through. Trumpets. Thunder. And then the female voice came back on. “Please leave a message after the tone.” It beeped like any normal voicemail. It was incredibly ridiculous, but, as it was my only contact with anyone, I left a message. I started out coherently enough. “Look,” I said, “if you are God, help me out here! I’m lost, my car won’t start, and I can’t call anyone because I’m freaking’ talking to you!” From there, I grew increasingly more hysterical. I began looking all around me with wide, deer-in-the-headlights eyes, and I described everything I saw in excruciating detail, from the appearance of the road itself, to the kinds of trees and style of fence along it, and even as far as the number of cans and fast food wrappers caught in the unkempt grass. Although I never noticed the beep that signaled the end of my time, at some point I realized that I had to have been talking far longer than any machine would be recording. My phone had realized this for itself; when I looked at it, I saw that it had hung up when its counterpart on the other end did so. I turned it off and tossed it again, this time into the back seat. It could do no more for me. With my options exhausted and my frustration duly vented, I lowered my head to rest against the steering wheel, resigned at last to spending the night there and trying to find my way once the sun came up.

Much later I heard a sound like the growling of some gargantuan hunting cat. Honestly, it would not have surprised me if that was what I saw when I raised my head to look. I was done for the night; nothing else could possibly faze me. As it happened, I was not about to be eaten by a large predator. Instead, I found myself staring into a pair of headlights. Headlights… At first it didn’t register at all, but as I squinted my eyes to avoid blindness, I realized that the source of the headlights was a rather large truck that had pulled up in front of my car, and that the presence of a truck meant that I was, in reality, not the last person left on earth. No sooner had my heart leapt for joy at that prospect than I saw another light, that of a flashlight shining in my side window. A face peered in at me as well, one belonging to a young man, maybe a couple of years older than me, wearing a most welcome concerned expression. When he saw me looking back at him, the look of concern metamorphosed into a smile, and I, giddy with my relief, smiled back. That was all I managed for a moment, just staring at him, grinning like an idiot, until he raised an eyebrow in good-natured amusement. I wondered at this for the briefest moment, then understanding came to me and I exclaimed, “Oh!” and opened the door, feeling a bit embarrassed. “Um, hi…” was my lame introduction.
“Hi,” he said, still smiling. Then his expression turned sheepish, and he held up a cell phone and said, “I, uh, got your message…”
At this, all of my remaining pent-up frustration released itself in a single, penetrating bullet of scathing sarcasm. “You’re God?” I demanded.
In the glow from his headlights, I could see his face and ears redden slightly. “No,” he said. “That… that was just a joke. I didn’t think… well, no one but my friends ever call me…”
“I was trying to call AAA,” I said. “Then anyone. But I just kept getting your damned voicemail.”
“Weird,” he said. “Maybe there’s something wrong with the signal?” He shrugged, lifting the shoulders of his battered denim jacket. “Maybe it was meant to be.”
“Maybe…” I said. “Why not?” I thought; it would make about as much sense as anything. “How did you find me?” I asked after a moment.
He shrugged again. “I live close to here. Drive this way every day.” He looked over my shoulder at my poor, dejected Ford. “So what’s wrong with your car?”
“Not a clue. It just… stopped. And I can’t get it to start again.”
He nodded as if he had expected that and said, “Well, let’s take a look under the hood.”
I nodded myself and hurried to open it for him. Then I held the flashlight while he dove in, almost immediately becoming covered in grease up to his elbows, and began to tinker. A couple of times he went to his truck for some tool or another, and, almost before I knew it, he had emerged from the depths and was wiping away the filth with a mechanic’s cloth. “OK, give it a try,” he said. I must have been motionless in my amazement a second too long, because then he said, “Go on,” and made a shooing motion toward the car. I opened the door and sat sideways in the seat, reaching around the wheel to turn the key. Astoundingly, my car started. I articulated this to my savior, even though he could hear the engine running for himself, and he smiled and told me in technical terms that something had just come loose, probably because of the jarring of the gravel roads.
“Oh, my God!” I started, intending to lead into something to the extent of “How can I ever thank you?”
He interrupted me before I could do so, grinning and saying, “Mike.”
“What?”
“It’s Mike, not God.” We both laughed at the joke. “I’ve got to change my voicemail,” he said.
“Yeah, you should,” I agreed. Then there was an awkward silence during which I imagined the chirping of crickets.
“So…” Mike said finally. “Where were you trying to go?” I outlined my destination for him, and he gave me that all-too-familiar, “how the hell did you get here?” look before saying, “That’s not too far away. It’s a straight shot once you get the highway.”

And so I left. I ended up skipping the birthday party, going home to bed instead. A couple of days later it occurred to me that I should call Mike. Maybe I could buy him coffee or something to thank him, but when I tried my phone, I was again able to call the people my phonebook said I was calling. I tried several times to find my back to that spot, or even the gas station, but I never could. Like I said, I’m bad with directions.
On the other hand, I find myself wondering...