Robert Butler - Hell

They do not stop their fucking but they do both turn their faces to Hatcher. The faces show no trace of pleasure, of course.

Hatcher finds himself compelled to shoot his cuffs. He pats his pockets, but he can find no smokes, so he simply squares his shoulders and says, “I thought we had an understanding, doll. But what do you expect in this crazy world? I don’t blame you. You figured you had a chance for happiness and you took it. Me, I can only offer you a long shot. The longest of long shots. A way out of Hell. So here I am. But you have to make up your mind now. Because chances have a way of disappearing on you. Especially when the odds are long.”

Hatcher hears himself. He’s not saying this quite the way he expected.

But Beatrice seems to get it. And she doesn’t. “I can’t go with you,” she says, her voice quaking from the boffing being administered by Virgil. “I can’t. The ship’s going down and all the lifeboats have sailed.”

From behind the closed closet door, where last time a Renaissance Pope imitated a police car siren, Celine Dion begins to sing, “My heart will go on.”

And Hatcher backs out of the room, closes the door, turns, and takes one stride and another down the hallway, passing the door behind which, if he stopped to listen, he could hear the beating of his own heart.

When the Fleetwood takes the sharp left turn as Peachtree Avenue Street Street turns into Peachtree Way on the run up to the corner of Lucky Street, Hatcher opens the driver compartment partition and sees the back of a crowd up ahead. Before they pound through the candidates for Heaven, he tells Dick Nixon to pull over to the curb and stop.

Hatcher grabs Anne’s hand and throws the door open and they slide out of the car and move quickly up the street. The back of the crowd is all cloaks and animal skins and sackcloth tunics, and as Anne and Hatcher approach, they can hear a clamorous bleating as if from a vast drove of goats, and Hatcher thinks of animal sacrifice — this has been an ongoing theme of the past few days — and he wonders if there are actual goats now being slaughtered to buy the Old Ones a way out of Hell.

But that’s not it at all. He and Anne reach the back of the crowd and start pushing their way through the rough cloth and the skins and the fetid stink of ancient bodies, and it’s instantly clear that the sounds are coming from the Old Ones themselves. They are huddling hard together and lifting their faces and crying like goats, and it’s tough pushing through, the bodies are thick and unyielding, and Hatcher vaguely remembers a Bible verse about the Son of God coming in glory and separating the sheep from the goats, and Hatcher feels in his chest and in his arms and in his throat and behind his eyes a powerful swelling of belief. He believes. Yes. He believes that a way out of Hell is just ahead, and he presses in front of Anne and holds her hand even more tightly and he puts his shoulder heavily ahead of him and he pushes hard and they are moving, the bodies are sliding aside, parting like the sea, and he and Anne break at last from the drove and into an empty stretch of street, empty but for half a dozen bearded men in tunics cracking whips and driving back this crowd found unworthy of Heaven.

One of these goatherders cocks his head in surprise at seeing these two Moderns fly out of the crowd, but he does not try to stop them. And Hatcher and Anne rush on toward another crowd of the Old Ones in front of the Automat. Hands are shooting up and waving and falling and shooting up again and the cries of this crowd are “Me!” and “Me!” and “Save me Lord!” and “I am worthy!” and “I am worthier!” and “I am worthiest!” and a body — a very old man in a bear skin — comes hurtling out of the crowd and he is carried along toward the drove of the damned faster than his feet are moving, and he is already bleating, and another body flies out, a woman in a long dark robe and with a scarf covering her face and her goat voice is thin and full of vibrato.

Hatcher and Anne reach this other crowd and stop. Hatcher looks around for Judas. He is about to call for him, but Anne pulls at Hatcher’s hand. “Over there,” she says, and she draws him to a thickening of this crowd, and the two of them stretch up and they look and they can barely see the very top of a liver-brown head of hair in the empty center of this crowd — distance is being kept from this man — and the man cries in a loud voice, “Ye fed me!” and another man’s voice yelps in joy, and the loud voice cries, “Go ye forth to the Chariot of Fire,” and Hatcher can see the tops of the heads of the far part of the inner circle of the crowd open for the chosen one making his way toward Lucky Street. And then the loud-voiced man cries, “Ye gave me no meat!” and another voice wails in anguish but the wail quickly morphs into a goat cry and a body flies from the crowd and back down Peachtree Way. Hatcher and Anne look at each other with the same thought. Are we hearing the voice of the Son of God? Even as they think this, Hatcher also thinks the voice sounds faintly familiar and he tries to remember some moment, somewhere in his earthly life — did he have a miraculous encounter? — did he actually hear the voice of Jesus in his life?

“We have to get closer,” Anne says.

Hatcher takes her hand and steps before her and reaches forward to try to part the bodies in front of him. But he feels Anne’s hand wrench out of his. He looks back to her.

“You need both hands,” she says. “I’ll be right behind you.”

He nods and begins to turn.

“Wait,” she says, wrenching him around. “This,” she says and she lays her hand on his tie.

He looks down. The powder-blue shocks him like blood from an unexpected wound.

He grabs at the knot at his throat and tears it open, untangles the tie, and stuffs it in his jacket pocket. “I never did…,” he says. “I never even… I never.”

“That’s for Him to decide,” Anne says.

They look at each other and then in unison they strike their chests three times in the mea culpa.

And Hatcher is ripping and shoving and punching and pounding his way through the crowd, one layer, and another, and once, he glances quickly back and Anne is there, shoving away, and another goat is identified up ahead, and another sheep — Hatcher is no longer listening to the words of the Son of God, not till he can stand before Him, not till then, but he knows the work of winnowing is going on and Hatcher plays over a little litany of I-nevers as he struggles with the crowd, which still has many layers before him.

Now a voice nearby says, “He’s on the move,” and another takes it up, louder, “He’s moving!” and another shouts, “He’s done! He’s leaving!” and then a wild chorus of “No, Lord!” and “Take me too, Lord!” and even “I’m more faithful than that camel turd you just chose!” and even “You’ll understand if you just read my book!”

And the crowd surges and carries Hatcher along and he senses his crowd skills are still good, though they let him slide out of the flow, not with it, but that might be okay, to get to the margin of the crowd and head for the Chariot on his own, but as he feels he needs to make a move to the side and get out, he reaches back for Anne and grabs a hairy man’s arm — Esau’s, in fact — which pulls away, and Hatcher looks over his shoulder and Anne is nowhere in sight and the crowd is surging forward and she is nowhere and he calls out “Anne!” but the sound is lost in the din of the men all around him.

She’s gone. She’s lost to him for now. So he presses toward the edge of the crowd, angling through the seams, and as he moves readily, he thinks that maybe it’s for the best, surely it’s for the best, surely she will have a better chance if she’s not in the company of Satan’s anchorman, but surely he has a chance too, surely the Son of God has seen into his heart in Hell and knows he’s been trying to separate himself from the spirit of the place, and didn’t he do something pretty good against the odds down here? Hatcher thinks so, but he can’t remember now, he can’t quite remember what it was, exactly, but surely God knows, surely God can see into his heart, can hear his mind.