Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

Just as he was wondering about this he heard the sound of a gorgeous chorus. It was making a joyful noise. “Oh dem golden slippers,” the chorus sang, “Oh dem golden slippers.” It’s the Heavenly Choir, Ellerbee thought. They’ve actually got a Heavenly Choir. He went toward the fence and put his hands on the smooth posts and peered through into Heaven. He heard laughter and caught a glimpse of the running heels of children just disappearing around the corner of a golden street. They all wore shoes.

Ellerbee walked along the fence for about a mile and came to gates made out of pearl. The Pearly Gates, he thought. There are actually Pearly Gates.

An old man in a long white beard sat behind them, a key attached to a sort of cinch that went about his waist.

“Saint Peter?” Ellerbee ventured. The old man turned his shining countenance upon him. “Saint Peter,” Ellerbee said again, “I’m Ellerbee.”

“I’m Saint Peter,” Saint Peter said.

“Gosh,” Ellerbee said, “I can’t get over it. It’s all true.”

“What is?”

“Everything. Heaven. The streets of gold, the Pearly Gates. You. Your key. The Heavenly Choir. The climate.”

A soft breeze came up from inside Heaven and Ellerbee sniffed something wonderful in the perfect air. He looked toward the venerable old man.

“Ambrosia,” the Saint said.

“There’s actually ambrosia,” Ellerbee said.

“You know,” Saint Peter said, “you never get tired of it, you never even get used to it. He does that to whet our appetite.”

“You eat in Heaven?”

“We eat manna.”

“There’s actually manna,” Ellerbee said. An angel floated by on a fleecy cloud playing a harp. Ellerbee shook his head. He had never heard anything so beautiful. “Heaven is everything they say it is,” he said.

“It’s paradise,” Saint Peter said.

Then Ellerbee saw an affecting sight. Nearby, husbands were reunited with wives, mothers with their small babes, daddies with their sons, brothers with sisters — all the intricate blood loyalties and enlisted loves. He understood all the relationships without being told — his heightened perception. What was most moving, however, were the old people, related or not, some just lifelong friends, people who had lived together or known one another much the greater part of their lives and then had lost each other. It was immensely touching to Ellerbee to see them gaze fondly into one another’s eyes and then to watch them reach out and touch the patient, ancient faces, wrinkled and even withered but, Ellerbee could tell, unchanged in the loving eyes of the adoring beholder. If there were tears they were tears of joy, tears that melded inextricably with tender laughter. There was rejoicing, there were Hosannahs, there was dancing in the golden streets. “It’s wonderful,” Ellerbee muttered to himself. He didn’t know where to look first. He would be staring at the beautiful flowing raiments of the angels — There are actually raiments, he thought, there are actually angels — so fine, he imagined, to the touch that just the caress of the cloth must have produced exquisite sensations not matched by anything in life, when something else would strike him. The perfectly proportioned angels’ wings like discrete Gothic windows, the beautiful halos — There are actually halos — like golden quoits, or, in the distance, the lovely green pastures, delicious as fairway — all the perfectly banked turns of Heaven’s geography. He saw philosophers deep in conversation. He saw kings and heroes. It was astonishing to him, like going to an exclusive restaurant one has only read about in columns and spotting, even at first glance, the celebrities one has read about, relaxed, passing the time of day, out in the open, up-front and sharing their high-echelon lives.

“This is for keeps?” he asked Saint Peter. “I mean it goes on like this?”

“World without end,” Saint Peter said.

“Where’s…”

“That’s all right, say His name.”

“God?” Ellerbee whispered.

Saint Peter looked around. “I don’t see Him just… Oh, wait. There! ” Ellerbee turned where the old Saint was pointing. He shaded his eyes. “There’s no need,” Saint Peter said.

“But the aura, the light.”

“Let it shine.”

He took his hand away fearfully and the light spilled into his eyes like soothing unguents. God was on His throne in the green pastures, Christ at His right Hand. To Ellerbee it looked like a picture taken at a summit conference.

“He’s beautiful. I’ve never… It’s ecstasy.”

“And you’re seeing Him from a pretty good distance. You should talk to Him sometime.”

“People can talk to Him?”

“Certainly. He loves us.”

There were tears in Ellerbee’s eyes. He wished May no harm, but wanted her with him to see it all. “It’s wonderful.”

“We like it,” Saint Peter said.

“Oh, I do too,” Ellerbee said. “I’m going to be very happy here.”

“Go to Hell,” Saint Peter said beatifically.

Hell was the ultimate inner city. Its stinking sulfurous streets were unsafe. Everywhere Ellerbee looked he saw atrocities. Pointless, profitless muggings were commonplace; joyless rape that punished its victims and offered no relief to the perpetrator. Everything was contagious, cancer as common as a cold, plague the quotidian. There was stomachache, headache, toothache, earache. There was angina and indigestion and painful third-degree burning itch. Nerves like a hideous body hair grew long enough to trip over and lay raw and exposed as live wires or shoelaces that had come undone.

There was no handsomeness, no beauty, no one walked upright, no one had good posture. There was nothing to look at — although it was impossible to shut one’s eyes — except the tumbled kaleidoscopic variations of warted deformity. This was one reason, Ellerbee supposed, that there was so little conversation in Hell. No one could stand to look at anyone else long enough. Occasionally two or three — lost souls? gargoyles? devils? demons? — of the damned, jumping about in the heat first on one foot then the other, would manage to stand with their backs to each other and perhaps get out a few words — a foul whining. But even this was rare and when it happened that a sufferer had the attention of a fellow sufferer he could howl out only a half-dozen or so words before breaking off in a piercing scream.

Ellerbee, constantly nauseated, eternally in pain, forever befouling himself, longed to find something to do, however tedious or make-work or awful. For a time he made paths through the smoldering cinders, but he had no tools and had to use his bare feet, moving the cinders to one side as a boy shuffles through fallen leaves hunting something lost. It was too painful. Then he thought he would make channels for the vomit and excrement and blood. It was too disgusting. He shouted for others to join him in work details—“Break up the fights, pile up the scabs”—even ministering to the less aggravated wounds, using his hands to wipe away the gangrenous drool since there was no fabric in Hell, all clothing consumed within minutes of arrival, flesh alone inconsumable, glowing and burning with his bones slow as phosphor. Calling out, suggesting in screams which may have been incoherent, all manner of pointless, arbitrary arrangements — that they organize the damned, that they count them. Demanding that their howls be synchronous.

No one stopped him. No one seemed to be in charge. He saw, that is, no Devil, no Arch-fiend. There were demons with cloven feet and scaly tails, with horns and pitchforks — They actually have horns, Ellerbee thought, there are actually pitchforks — but these seemed to have no more authority than he had himself, and when they were piqued to wrath by their own torment the jabs they made at the human damned with their sharp arsenal were no more painful — and no less — than anything else down there.