Stanley Elkin - The Living End

What could he do he asked himself, and why should he do it? Who was he, stuck away down here, stashed for the duration in some nameless base camp of Hell, a thoughtful fraidycat formerly in the liquor trade, or, no, not even the liquor trade, a clerk in the making change trade, whose last human contact would be, had been, with the trigger- happy jerk Lesefario had known was coming for fifteen years? And so scared he knew—because he knew as soon as the guy came through the door he was the last human being he’d ever see, trying to size him up though fear hurt his eyes and Lesefario lost his face like a center fielder a ball in the sun—that even if he lived he would never be able to pick the thug out of a lineup. Acknowledging even in that first brief bruised view of him all that he and his murderer—did they get good reviews? were their names household words? was their health all it should be, or their children top-drawer?—had in common, and if this was the fellow, and if this was it, why shouldn’t the killer be made to feel the force of that astonishing fact?

“If you’re all I have for deathbed—” Lesefario had said.

“Wha?”

“—then I want your attention. I guess most folks die out of their element, D.O.A.’d by circumstance and only—”

“Hey you, no tricks.”

“—the night shift in attendance.”

“No tricks I said. Hands high and shut up.”

“Because—”

“I’m going to have to teach you a lesson,” the killer said, and cut him down before he could teach the killer one, his last word “because” in a life he’d already decided didn’t make sense. And a good thing, too, Lesefario thought, groping for the last words he still couldn’t formulate, that given months, years, he could not finally have put together. (Though he had an idea they would have been simple. Why had he wanted to make the point that he would have been fifty-two years old on his next birthday?) So who in hell—ha ha, he thought—was he, who had missed out on life’s, to discover death’s meaning, or to try to save them? Just who in hell did he think he was—the Christ of the Boonies?

So he grabbed the first one he saw, stinging him with his temperature.

“Aargh,” the fellow shrieked, pushing Lesefario off.

“It’s all right,” Lesefario said from where he had fallen in Hell. “It’s all right. Listen to me. Are you listening? It’s four fifty-three P.M., Tuesday, June 27th, Seven thousand, eight hundred four.”

“Say what?”

“The time. Quiz told me the time when he was translated. I’ve been keeping track.”

“The time?”

“Four fifty-four. Yes. It’s too big a job for one man. Tell the others. We’ve got to keep track.”

“Why?”

“Hurry. (Twelve one hundredths, thirteen one hundredths, fourteen one hundredths)—Please! (Sixteen one hundredths.)”

“Why do we have to know the time?”

“Don’t argue. Because the meaning of death—(Twenty one hundredths. And start again one hundredths)—The meaning of death is how long it takes.”

Quiz was a queer, funny man, Flanoy thought. Still, he might be all right or he wouldn’t be here, would he? He’d been down in Hell with the bad men. Was it a sin not to like an angel? He’d ask Mother Mary. Maybe he’d tell her some of the wicked things he’d done. Still, he thought, he’d better not say anything that could get Mr. Quiz in trouble. He was the only one who’d known Flanoy.

He knew me when I lived. He heard me laugh, he saw me throw.

In Hell they were chanting the time. The Bakhtiari nomads were chanting, the Finns were chanting. Frenchmen chanted in French, Dutchmen in Dutch. All over Hell the billions who had died, each in his own mnemonic way, sometimes to himself, often aloud, uttered the special syllables he’d learned would fill up seconds, “Michigan hydrangeas, Cleveland for its tea,” a woman from the Australian Outback said, while her companion, a performing dwarf for Spanish mercenaries, kept a silent, running tab.

Ellerbee was chanting too. “Heaven is a theme park,” he tolled, “May was once my wife.”

Lesefario, who had given a downbeat which was already obsolete by the time it reached a party of Greek skiers killed in avalanche and actual days behindhand when it got to a Soviet film star dead of a fever on a trip to Japan, declared he was in contact with Quiz, that though their techniques were primitive he received periodic corrections from Quiz, himself in communication with the sacred authorities, pleading their case, an eyewitness, he told them, to their Devil’s Island circumstance—an eyewitness, a brother. They must keep counting, Lesefario said.

“Two A.M. Sunday, July 10th, Seven thousand, eight hundred four. (Four one hundredths, five one hundredths, six one hundr—) Count, count, it’s Houston Control here. The state of the art isn’t so hot yet, but so long as we keep counting we’ll get corrections from Quiz. Count, any second may be the last.”

“What’s that? Astrology?” said this ancient denizen of Hell.

“No, no,” Lesefario said feelingly. “It’s important.”

“I’ve seen it all and it’s just another fad,” the tortured man said. “It’s some self-help, do-it- yourself scam. It don’t mean shit. Crazy Ellerbee had us praying, knees bowed in brimstone. Praying! Turned Hell into bloody Sunday school. ‘Sacred authorities’ my third-degree burns!” And Lesefario wondered: Ellerbee? Is that my Ellerbee? Is Ellerbee dead? In hell?

“(Eighteen one hundredths, nineteen one hundredths—)” (But not even his own heart in it, his flash-in-the-pan hopes and heroics extinguished, though he would probably keep counting awhile—they had time—someone trying to keep a rally alive, a plant in an audience milking ovation, a guy at a party gone sour suggesting the song which would bring them together again.)

“Mother Mary?”

“Yes, Flanoy?”

“Was Jesus lonely?”

“Lonely?”

“Because he didn’t have brothers. Because he didn’t have sisters.”

“I don’t think he was lonely.”

“Were there kids to play with?”

“It was so long ago. I hardly remember.”

“You could do lots of stuff in the desert. It’d be just like the beach.”

“Yes?”

“You could go barefoot. You could bury kids in the sand. With a pail of water from the oasis you could make things. Did Jesus do that stuff?”

“I hardly remember.”

“Maybe he didn’t have anyone to play with. Maybe that’s why you don’t remember.”

“He worked with his father. He helped his father.”

“His father?”

“He helped my husband,” Mary said, blushing.

Flanoy nodded. “Back home there was always plenty to do.”

“Do you miss being home?”

“I miss my mother,” Flanoy said.

“Oh, Flanoy,” Mary said, and held out her arms.

The Virgin comforted the sobbing child. She cupped the back of Flanoy’s head in her large soft hand. His legs, between her knees, his small, slim body pressed against her bosom, made a discrete, comfortable weight. Mary, touched by the child’s sweet, ultimate homesickness, reached around him and took all his weight now, gathering the little boy onto her lap, both their bodies shedding angle, temperature and impediment resolved into the soft symbiotics of need and competence, the tongue and groove aptitudes of love.

This is heresy, she thought, indifferent to the idea, and hugged him closer, all her supple maternals alive, returned from helplessness, fetched back intact two thousand years. Soon his body will begin to bite, she thought, his tears to chafe, yet she made no adjustments, no move to kiss him off with a final squeeze. It was not even a pietà, no long, lame lapful. Literally, she cradled him in her arms, his knees near his chest, as one might carry a child high up in water.