Robert Butler - Hell

Hatcher says, “So, Carl. You do believe another Harrowing is imminent.”

Carl shrugs and looks out the window. “I’m an awful liar, Hatcher.”

“But you can lie about lying then.”

“I can lie about anything.”

“On air, about this not being a possible story, for instance.”

Carl looks back intently to Hatcher. “Or I can lie to myself. I can lie to you about lying because I’ve lied to myself about lying to you about lying but I could be lying to myself about lying to myself about lying to you about lying which means I lied in the first place.”

“The first place being…”

“About the new Harrowing. Is there a smudge on my cheek?”

Hatcher looks. “Yes.”

“Gray?”

“Gray.” Hatcher draws out his handkerchief and lifts his hand. “Should I…?”

“No.” Carl is emphatic. “Don’t you know what that is?”

Hatcher’s hand recoils. Of course.

“I have to stop with the salt,” Carl says. “It’s cursed. Of course it’s cursed. Pretty soon I won’t have enough brain left to lie.”

“You didn’t actually make up the new Harrowing,” Hatcher says.

“No. I didn’t make it up.”

“So was your source…”

“He could have lied to me. Or he could have lied to himself. Or he could have…”

“I get it,” Hatcher waves his hand to stop Carl and sits back in his chair. Of course it could all be a lie. He knows this. He always knows this. And yet Hatcher had some sort of intuition about the neo-Harrowing story. And still does. The news nose knows. The freshman J-Schoolers in a couple of adjoining rooms in Elder Hall at Northwestern would chant that out the windows at the passing coeds. Hatcher’s free mind is drifting now, he realizes. It’s also free to nurture hope and free to despair in the hope. But he’s always felt he has the nose. And it knows.

Carl says, “Hell, the first Harrowing might be a lie. You’d be surprised who’s still here. Though the biggest guys are mostly out of sight. They’re in their own condo somewhere, jammed in bunks with the biggest guys from all the other religions.”

Hatcher nods. “I’ve heard about that too. I figure it’s because all the rest of the denizens suffer more if they think somehow they got it wrong. If they suspect nobody got it right, there could be some sort of comfort in that.”

“Is that what you suspect?” Carl says. “That everybody is here?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes. Suspect, perhaps. But nobody can say if they’re all here. And if all the big guys are indeed in Hell, it doesn’t mean some little guys didn’t get spared.”

The two fall silent a moment. Hatcher looks around the Automat. “Do you know these people?”

Carl says, “Today it’s the writers’ workshop. They’ve all got books. None of them made it into the Big One. Over there, the central table, it’s Tobit and Baruch and Ben Sira. They got into the Catholic Bible, but needless to say that’s cold comfort for them, like being with a university press when they think they deserve Knopf. These three don’t read each other’s work anymore. They just kvetch. If you stand up and look to the far corner, you’ll see somebody these three should have with them, to be fair, since the Catholics published her too. But not only is she a woman, she has a constant companion.”

Hatcher rises and looks across the room. He sees a table with a woman in a gray tunic and headscarf reading from a scroll to a blackhaired, bearded, severed head sitting in the center of the table. The eyes of the man are widening and narrowing and widening again in disgust at the woman’s reading and he interrupts, saying something that she listens to without reaction, and when he stops, she starts reading again.

“That’s Judith,” Carl says. “And that’s the Babylonian general Holofernes, who she seduced and beheaded. I don’t think he keeps his comments constructive.”

While he’s standing, Hatcher looks more closely at the other tables. Many of them have scrolls being read. “You’ve got quite a few Gnostics,” Carl says. “They churned the books out, I tell you. And there’s some guys from Old Testament times who got screwed by the weather or earthquakes or whatever. The Book of Amittai, for instance. The Book of Ishmerai. Lost to the elements. And there are others. They never had a chance. Don’t get those guys started or you’ll be getting the begats and the goat-slaughter procedures all day and night, and they’re all desperate to hear they’re as good as the other guys.”

Hatcher moves his gaze to a nearby table. Three men and a woman. One of the men is reading from a codex and he’s lanky and intense and his long hair falls over his face.

Carl sees where Hatcher is looking. “They didn’t make it into the New Testament. The Gospel of Rhoda. Her last scroll was dropped down a well by Paul himself, who never did trust women. The Gospel of Festus got eaten by a camel. The letters of Silas. Don’t get him going on the first century post office. And the guy reading. That’s Judas Iscariot.”

Hatcher looks at Carl.

Carl says, “You were still alive when his lost codex came to light, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Hatcher says. “Sadly. It’s embarrassing to get scooped by the National Geographic Society. You weren’t alive then.”

“No.”

“You know a lot about all this, Carl.”

Carl shrugs and turns his face to the window. “I may be a liar, but I’m a good reporter.”

Outside the window, Jezebel’s eight hundred and fifty slaughtered priests of Baal are crowding past, all their wounds still open and running. Unseen to Carl and Hatcher, Elijah is being borne along, squeezed tightly in their midst, cloaked in their blood.

“I can see that you are,” Hatcher says.

Carl lifts his face and then nods toward Judas. “He’s my source on the Harrowing.”

“Judas?”

“Yes.”

Hatcher takes this in. “Would you mind if I talk to him directly?”

Carl laughs softly and cocks his head at Hatcher. “You’re standing on journalistic protocol down here? Asking me?”

Hatcher sees how this would seem odd. He’s not sure he would have asked his reporter for permission only a short time ago.

“Of course,” Carl says. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” Hatcher says, and he moves off toward the New Testament table.

As he approaches, Judas has stopped reading, and Rhoda is offering a critique. “Everyone assumes it’s Gnostics because you did it in the third person. You need to rewrite it in the first person.”

“Good suggestion,” Festus says, giving Rhoda a little wink. “Make them wonder. We heard he hanged himself right away. But he took time to write this.”

“Not to mention the irony,” Silas says, also winking at Rhoda.

“What irony?” Festus says with a little more heat than one might reasonably expect. “That’s all you ever say. What’s irony got to do with it?”

Hatcher is beside the table now and the two men abruptly stop their bickering. All four look up at the newcomer in the suit.

“I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m Hatcher McCord.”

“I watch you all the time,” Rhoda purrs.

Festus and Silas both scowl. Judas glances over to Carl and then back to Hatcher. He rises. “I’ll talk to him,” Judas says to the others, and then to Hatcher, “Got nickels?”

Hatcher feels in his pockets. “Yes.”

“Come on,” Judas says, and he leads them to the back wall. He peers through the window of a food compartment and then another and another, moving along the row. “Not much choice today,” he says. “But there never is.” He stops and turns to Hatcher.

“Give me thirty nickels and I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Judas says.