Robert Butler - Hell

He pounds his head against the steering wheel. No pain but he jars a little something loose: the driver of the bread truck. It’s about the driver. And Hatcher lays on the horn. He honks it loud and hard and he stops his car and he wants the truck to stop, and it’s Heaven, so he gets what he wants. The truck stops.

Hatcher gets out of his car and closes the door with a tight little thunk, and this sound thrills him as it always did. But he fights off the invitation to mellow out about that. He is standing in the middle of his childhood landscape. The car is ticking as loudly as his Krazy Kat clock with its big black eyes restlessly darting back and forth. And he knows what’s happening. He’s forgetting the ones in Hell. In Heaven, there’s no place for the memories of the damned. They have been judged. They have been placed where they belong in their own torment. The sharp shards of them that still stick in you are things that need to be plucked out. They would only fester. They are the sins of the world. They are the pain and the suffering and the imperfections and they are fading away, happily so, happily happily happily. Hatcher is forgetting everyone.

But not yet. He moves forward, heading for the cab of the truck. He passes before the BREADand the smell of it fills him up so achingly full that he has to stop, he cannot move his legs, he is chewing the air, it is so thick with the smell of the bread, and he knows he can stand here for as long as he wants, he has eternity, he can linger for centuries chewing the smell of bread in the air and it will be as the blinking of an eye and it will only be Hatcher and the bread and the gentle sunlight. And that little voice again: fuck this, who’s driving? And Hatcher’s legs are moving again and he approaches the cab and he is panting, he is this far into Heaven and he is summoning up anxiety and he knows he needs it, he knows that when he fully lets go of the fear and the trembling and the pain, he will lose everyone forever, and his little Heaven voice pipes up that’s good, that’s good, you’re perfected at last and you are pleasing to the one who created you and that’s all you need but he stops by the panel truck door and his heart is pounding and that’s also good, that’s better for now.

The windows are tinted. He cannot see in. He clasps the door handle. And he knows the truck will be empty. There is no one else in Heaven. No one else. Surely the truck is driving itself. Neither was there a driver in the bread truck in the book in the window seat with the sunlight while Hatcher’s… someone was downstairs, and with his… other someone off somewhere… Hatcher pounds at his head with the heel of his hand, trying to remember. And he does. With his mother downstairs. With his father off somewhere. And when the father comes home, he will be worthy of Hell. And Hatcher twists the handle. He opens the bread truck door.

And his father is sitting there. The old man’s hands are clenching the steering wheel hard and he is dressed in a brown uniform with a hat on his head like a police patrolman’s hat and his face turns to Hatcher and the hat has BREADwritten across it and Hatcher’s father says, “You crazy motherfucker what the fuck do you think you’re doing chasing me down and honking your fucking horn you motherfucker I have half a mind to jump out of this truck and kick your fucking ass.”

And Hatcher says, “It’s me, Dad. It’s just me.”

And the old man’s eyes narrow. He can’t quite focus his eyes. “Hatcher?” he says.

“Yes.”

“Where have you been?” his father says. “You’re all grown up.” But there are flames licking up from his father’s shirt collar now, and the face is dissolving, it’s vanishing in the flames, and it is gone, his father has gone back to Hell, and the bread man’s uniform crumples into the seat.

And Hatcher is filled with the smell of bread. And above him is a beautiful blue sky. And up the road is a perfect little village. And he wonders if perhaps there are even people there to give bread to. Hatcher reaches out and picks up the hat. He puts it on his head. He can drive away now in the bread truck. Drive away into eternity.

And on the outskirts of the Great and Placid Metropolis of Heaven, there is the sound of an engine. Not a bread truck. A Maserati. Wailing to the red line and racing like a sonofabitch into town, past the mansions, through the park, past the high-rises and the Great Skyscraper and past all the great shopping and great eating, and Hatcher McCord, along with the great automotive passion of his life, screams to a stop in front of Starbucks. And Hatcher jumps out of the car and he does not get his coffee, which is waiting for him, but instead he dashes up the block and he pushes through the doors of McDonald’s and he whisks past his Big Mac sitting in the center of the center table and past Ronald McDonald who says “Welcome” and Hatcher is around the order counter and one stride into the kitchen before he tosses a “Fuck you” over his shoulder to Ronald. And Hatcher races by the grills and the fryers and he is at the back door and wrenching its handle and it is heavy, this door, fucking heavy, but Hatcher finds the strength and he pulls and pulls and it’s getting easier and the door is open and he is beneath the glare and the buzz of the fluorescent light and dashing along the little back corridor as the door to Heaven thumps heavily and forever shut behind him, and he is opening one more door and he flings himself in, and he stops, panting, in the center of the floor of the only hamburger joint in Hell, and all along its baseboards, ten thousand cockroaches are cheering. Hatcher nods at them and they nod back.

He catches his breath. He is sweating, and his legs are cramping up. But it’s okay. Hatcher moves to the front door, and he opens it, and he steps out. Grand Peachtree Boulevard is jammed with the damned, and they are howling and they are cursing and they are flowing always onward toward something they want but can never name and can never have.

And Hatcher McCord, anchorman for the Evening News from Hell, opens his arms wide, and he cries out above the din, “I love you all.”

The Alleys of Eden

Sun Dogs

Countrymen of Bones

On Distant Ground

Wabash

The Deuce

A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain

They Whisper

Tabloid Dreams

The Deep Green Sea

Mr. Spaceman

Fair Warning

Had a Good Time

From Where You Dream: The Process of Writing Fiction (Janet Burroway, Editor)

Severance

Intercourse

Copyright © 2009 by Robert Olen Butler

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Stayin’ Alive (from Saturday Night Fever) Words and Music by BARRY GIBB,

MAURICE GIBB and ROBIN GIBB © 1977 (Renewed) CROMPTON SONGS LLC and GIBB BROTHERS MUSIC All Rights for CROMPTON SONGS LLC Administered by WARNER-TAMERLANE PUBLISHING CORP. All Rights Reserved Used by Permission You Should Be Dancing Words and Music by BARRY GIBB, MAURICE GIBB and