Lorrie Moore - 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories

He lay down in the fire. He lay down in the slimy excrement and noxious puddles, in the loose evidence of their spilled terror. A few damned souls paused to stare at him, their bad breath dropping over him like an awful steam. Their scabbed faces leaned down toward him, their poisoned blood leaking on him from imperfectly sealed wounds, their baked, hideous visages like blooms in nightmare. It was terrible. He turned over, turned face down in the shallow river of pus and shit. Someone shook him. He didn’t move. A man straddled and penetrated him. He didn’t move. His attacker groaned. “I can’t,” he panted, “I can’t — I can’t see myself in his blisters .” That’s why they do it, Ellerbee thought. The man grunted and dismounted and spat upon him. His fiery spittle burned into an open sore on Ellerbee’s neck. He didn’t move. “He’s dead,” the man howled. “I think he’s dead. His blisters have gone out!”

He felt a pitchfork rake his back, then turn in the wound it had made as if the demon were trying to pry foreign matter from it.

“Did he die?” Ellerbee heard.

He had Free Will. He wouldn’t move.

“Is he dead?”

“How did he do it?”

Hundreds pressed in on him, their collective stench like the swamps of men dead in earthquake, trench warfare — though Ellerbee knew that for all his vocabulary there were no proper analogies in Hell, only the mildest approximations. If he didn’t move they would go away. He didn’t move.

A pitchfork caught him under the armpit and turned him over.

“He’s dead. I think so. I think he’s dead.”

“No. It can’t be.”

“I think.”

“How? How did he do it?”

“Pull his cock. See.”

“No. Make one of the women. If he isn’t dead maybe he’ll respond.”

An ancient harridan stooped down and rubbed him between her palms. It was the first time he had been touched there by a woman in sixty-two years. He had Free Will, he had Free Will. But beneath her hot hands his penis began to smoke.

“Oh God,” he screamed. “Leave me alone. Please,” he begged. They gazed down at him like teammates over a fallen player.

“Faker,” one hissed.

“Shirker,” said another scornfully.

“He’s not dead,” a third cried. “I told you.”

“There’s no death here.”

“World without end,” said another.

“Get up,” demanded someone else. “Run. Run through Hell. Flee your pain. Keep busy.”

They started to lift him. “Let go,” Ellerbee shouted. He rolled away from a demon poking at him with a pitchfork. He was on his hands and knees in Hell. Still on all fours he began to push himself up. He was on his knees.

“Looks like he’s praying,” said the one who had told him to run.

“No.”

“Looks like it. I think so.”

“How? What for?”

And he started to pray.

“Lord God of Ambush and Unconditional Surrender,” he prayed. “Power Play God of Judo Leverage. Grand Guignol, Martial Artist—”

The others shrieked, backed away from him, cordoning Ellerbee off like a disaster area. Ellerbee, caught up, ignoring them, not even hearing them, continued his prayer.

“Browbeater,” he prayed, “Bouncer Being, Boss of Bullies — this is Your servant, Ellerbee, sixty-two-year foetus in Eternity, tot, toddler, babe in Hell. Can You hear me? I know You exist because I saw You, avuncular in Your green pastures like an old man on a picnic. The angeled minarets I saw, the gold streets and marble temples and all the flashy summer palace architecture, all the gorgeous glory locked in Receivership, Your zoned Heaven in Holy Escrow. The miracle props — harps and Saints and Popes at tea. All of it — Your manna, Your ambrosia, Your Heavenly Host in their summer whites. So can You hear me, pick out my voice from all the others in this din bin? Come on, come on, Old Terrorist, God the Father, God the Godfather! The conventional wisdom is we can talk to You, that You love us, that—”

“I can hear you.”

A great awed whine rose from the damned, moans, sharp cries. It was as if Ellerbee alone had not heard. He continued his prayer.

“I hear you,” God repeated.

Ellerbee stopped.

God spoke. His voice was pitchless, almost without timbre, almost bland. “What do you want, Ellerbee?”

Confused, Ellerbee forgot the point of his prayer. He looked at the others, who were quiet now, perfectly still for once. Only the snap of localized fire could be heard. God was waiting. The damned watched Ellerbee fearfully. Hell burned beneath his knees. “An explanation,” Ellerbee said.

“For openers,” God roared, “I made the heavens and the earth! Were you there when I laid the foundations of the firmament? When I—”

Splinters of burning bone, incandescent as filament, glowed in the gouged places along Ellerbee’s legs and knees where divots of his flesh had flared and fallen away. “An explanation ,” he cried out, “an explanation! None of this what-was-I-doing-when-You-pissed-the-oceans stuff, where I was when You colored the nigger and ignited Hell. I wasn’t around when You elected the affinities. I wasn’t there when You shaped shit and fashioned cancer. Were You there when I loved my neighbor as myself? When I never stole or bore false witness? I don’t say when I never killed but when I never even raised a hand or pointed a finger in anger? Where were You when I picked up checks and popped for drinks all round? When I shelled out for charity and voted Yes on the bond issues? So no Job job, no nature in tooth and claw, please. An explanation!”

“You stayed open on the Sabbath!” God thundered.

“I what?”

“You stayed open on the Sabbath. When you were just getting started in your new location.”

“You mean because I opened my store on Sundays? That’s why?”

“You took My name in vain.”

“I took…”

“That’s right, that’s right. You wanted an explanation, I’ll give you an explanation. You wanted I/Thou, I’ll give you I/Thou. You took It in vain. When your wife was nagging you because you wanted to keep those widows on the payroll. She mocked you when you said you were under an obligation and you said, ‘Indirectly. G-d damn it, yes. Indirectly.’ ‘Come on, sweetheart,’ you said, ‘you’re awfully g-d-damn hard on me.’”

“That’s why I’m in Hell? That’s why?”

“And what about the time you coveted your neighbor’s wife? You had a big boner.”

“I coveted no one, I was never unfaithful, I practically chased that woman away.”

“You didn’t honor your father and mother.”

Ellerbee was stunned. “I did. I always honored my father and mother. I loved them very much. Just before I was killed we were planning a trip to Phoenix to see them.”

“Oh, them . They only adopted you. I’m talking about your natural parents.”

“I was in a Home. I was an in fant!”

“Sure, sure,” God said.

“And that’s why? That’s why?”

“You went dancing. You wore zippers in your pants and drove automobiles. You smoked cigarettes and sold the demon rum.”

“These are Your reasons? This is Your explanation?”

“You thought Heaven looked like a theme park!”

Ellerbee shook his head. Could this be happening? This pettiness signaled across the universe? But anything could happen, everything could, and Ellerbee began again to pray. “Lord,” he prayed, “Heavenly Father, Dear God — maybe whatever is is right, and maybe whatever is is right isn’t, but I’ve been around now, walking up and down in it, and everything is true. There is nothing that is not true. The philosopher’s best idea and the conventional wisdom, too. So I am praying to You now in all humility, asking Your forgiveness and to grant one prayer.”