Epilogue: The First Trial of Jesse Matthew
June 19, 2015
Blacksburg, Virginia
The Beatitudes
Revered among Angels are the most powerful specters of all the heavens: they are called the Beauties, and with immeasurable tenderness and constancy, they watch over their anguished loved ones.
Noble despite their own tragic deaths, the Beauties are the victims of murderers, terrible illnesses, or shocking and sudden accidents.
Their lost potential is regained and amplified a billion fold. They occupy the entire sky, see the sweetness of human desires, encourage lovers, breathe in the perfume of gardens, love clouds, music, dance, and human eloquence.
They love to see endeavors: carpenters drive home nails, writers edit, window washers make the glass squeak. They love to see advocates: race car drivers whose fast cars sport noble messages, tshirts worn to spread a good idea, scarves and ribbons and bracelets chosen because their colors represent a beloved who is gone.
They watch their families continue to pick up forks and spoons and put their heads on pillows to wake to another day without them.
Earnestness and persistence make them applaud. They know that the highest calling of human beings is service. They know that mechanics and lawyers can be as full of kind assistance as teachers and doctors. They know that some healers requires oil paint or stained glass, and others, circular saws or dental drills. They are in love with the world.
The murdered Beauties lead this rare group.
They appear before their fretful murderers in the dead of night and wake them, considerately. They aren't beyond sympathy for their murderers, and know that their arrival will be almost heart-stopping.
Picture Morgan Harrington, for example, sitting beside Jesse on his cell palette, her pals Hannah, Alexis, Annalee, and Sage standing around her.
"Jesse," she'll squeeze his arm gently, "Wake up, Jesse."
He remembers her.
"Yes," she smiles, "You remember me. No," she answers his next thought, before he speaks it, smiling at the primitive fear, "I'm not here to strangle you."
And before he can formulate the words, she answers: "I don't want anything. I take care of the people you hurt when you murdered me. I just need you to see something. I need you to see what you killed."
"I see you! I see you!," Jesse pleads, like a modern Scrooge.
"No, Jesse," Morgan instructs, smiling to herself that she was going to be a teacher and here she is, teaching the slowest kid in the cell, "There's more."
Looking into The Beauty's eyes, Jesse is swept away from his cell.
He sees himself in his cab that night, seeing Morgan, but he is distracted by a group of laughing kids, who cluster and block his view of Morgan. Morgan goes home.
For what seems the rest of his life, Morgan shows Jesse what he killed.
She shows him her wedding, her children, their first words. He sees her go to Zambia and teach the poorest children on the continent. Her sees Morgan's blonde-headed babies dancing with Zambian children with names like Charity, Lioness, Gift, and Purity. The children move lightly and fast like butterflies.
Morgan's three daughters all look like their grandmama, Gil. He hears their names: Danielle, Gilberte, and Alexis. Her son looks just like his grandpapa, Dan. What's his name? Jesse wants to ask, involved now in this diaphanous story, but the little boy's name always seems drowned out by laughter.
He is the sunniest, most loving little boy, with grass-stained toes and alluring green eyes. He loves people, and even as a young boy he understands trust and loss. He cries when his neighbor's dog dies of cancer. He draws a picture of the dog walking on a rainbow and meeting God on the other side.
Morgan shows Jesse Matthew her family vacations to climb the Swiss Alps with her cousins. She stays with her friends Emerson and Ariel in D.C.; they travel to the Great Wall of China together. Her friends Iris and David take her to Sri Lanka and Nepal. Their friend Ian is there with his partner. Morgan admires their matching emerald rings, and has one made for her best friend, Erin. Morgan's children cannonball into the pool at Helga's Folly. They all sit and drink fresh lime sodas together under the crazy pomelo trees in the Kathmandu Guest House garden.
Morgan's children are teenagers now, almost ready for college. They have strong preferences. Danielle, the oldest, wants to be an oncology nurse. Gilberte is an artist. Alexis wants to live in New York and do fashion design, and live with her famous uncle, her hero.
Morgan's little boy, growing up, says he had always thought he wanted to be a doctor, but when he is 16, he can not deny that he has had a calling, to be a priest. He says he must have inherited his grandpapa's faith. He wants to be like Christ, healing the broken-hearted.
Morgan supports them all.
She skips to the ceremony when her grown son graduates from Divinity School and takes his robes and collar. He will now be called Father.
"I've just received word," her new priest confides as he hugs his beautiful mother. Morgan will soon celebrate her 50th birthday. "I got the job, Mama. I'll be working in Fairfax. There is a lot of anger in the suburbs. I think we can reach a lot of kids."
Morgan, with tears streaming down both sides of her gorgeous middle-aged face, pulls her tender-hearted son from this celebratory embrace. She smiles, and with pride and admiration, confirms, "Yes, my handsome son, I always knew you would." She stares at the extraordinary, devotional light in his kind eyes, and hugs her son again. "I love you, Father Jesse."
At this moment, The visiting Beauties are all smiling at Jesse Matthew, who is propped on his cell palette. He notices that their shadows are incandescent, like cool, evenly burning white shapes of female fire. He can not fathom Morgan's loving eyes, and he is surprised when her ghost, who seems so human, though smiling at him, also has tears running down her insubstantial face.
He is crying himself.
"Don't go!" He begs.
But at that exact moment, the Beauties, with pity in their gentle smiles, their work done, all disappear.
To him, they will never return.
Only his memories of Morgan as a Beauty and the others alongside her, Annalee with her rainbow streak of hair and the design of a jumping horse glowing over her heart, Alexis in pink lipstick, with fine, lean, 17-year-old muscular arms, Hannah tall and cheerful, her 18-year-old smile scintillating, Sage, the brave transgender ghost, beautiful to all, and the legacies of Morgan's family, which he also killed, the faces of these children who were never born, and their bright contributions, remain for him.
In their radiance, and in their radiance vanishing and lost, never to return, never again to wake him softly, they are, for the rest of his life, the worst, and by far the most painful haunting of Jesse Matthew.
Jane Lillian Vance
Vice President, Help Save the Next Girl, and
Morgan Harrington's professor in the last Spring of her life