Lesefario was a thinking man. A long time dead-they had time; they had minutes, seconds, hours, years; what they lacked were calendars, clocks, only the Speidel niceties, digital readouts, the quartz accounts, only the Greenwich and atomic certainties-he had begun to speculate about the meaning of death. He had never questioned life’s meaning. He had assumed it had none. Life was its own gloss. Where conditions changed you didn’t look for explanations.
He’d lived in Minnesota, a Minneapolis kid, schoolboy, adult. He’d had his friends and later his cronies.
He’d had his shot at stuff, enjoyed much and been disappointed by the rest. He had liked television, a wonderful invention, but had not known when he’d married her that his wife would turn out to be a depressive, a woman who -she couldn’t help it, he guessed, but it made things awful and spoiled everything that should have been fun: their trips to restaurants, their cruise to the islands, their daughter’s childhood was never to be pleased by things, who wore her melancholy like a rash. Life had not signified.
Death was another story, so time-consuming-they had time-so draining, demanding, taking not just his but all their attentions, given over to pain, not causeless sadness like his wife’s but to a suffering like Wallenda stage fright to not knowing from one moment to the next-they had time-whether what had to be endured and would be endured even could be endured. Death made no sense but it meant something.
When Lesefario formulated this last proposition he decided that he must try to save them, to become heroic in Hell who had been a clerk in a Minneapolis liquor store in a red-lined neighborhood, who had opened up in the morning always a little seared of the winos around the entrance, always a little scared of the blacks, always a little scared of people who asked him to cash their checks, always a little scared of teenagers, of minors who showed him phony I.D. cards, of the big, beefy delivery men, of customers, of anyone who would come into a liquor store.
What could he do he asked himself, and why should he do it? Who was he, stuck away down here, stashed for the duration in some nameless base camp of Hell, a thoughtful fraidycat formerly in the liquor trade, or, no, not even the liquor trade, a clerk in the making change trade, whose last human contact would be, had been, with the trigger-happy jerk Lesefario had known was coming for fifteen years? And so seared he knew-because he knew as soon as the guy came through the door he was the last human being he’d ever see, trying to size him up though fear hurt his eyes and Lesefario lost his face like a center fielder a ball in the sun- that even if he lived he would never be able to pick the thug out of a lineup.
Acknowledging even in that first brief bruised view of him all that he and his murderer-did they get goodTeviews? were their names household words? was their health all it should be, or their children top-drawer?-had in common, and if this was the fellow, and if this was it, why shouldn’t the killer be made to feel the force of that astonishing fact?
“If you’re all I have for deathbed-” Lesefario had said.
“Wha?”
“-then I want your attention. I guess most folks die out of their element, D.O.A.”d by circumstance and only-” “Hey you, no tricks.”
“-the night shift in attendance.”
“No tricks I said. Hands high and shut up.”
“Because-” “I’m going to have to teach you a lesson,” the killer said, and cut him down before he could teach the killer one, his last word “because” in a life he’d already decided didn’t make sense. And a good thing, too, Lesefario thought, groping for the last words he still couldn’t formulate, that given months, years, he could not finally have put together. (Though he had an idea they would have been simple. Why had he wanted to make the point that he would have been fifty-two years old on his next birthday?) So who in hell ha ha, he thought-was he, who had missed out on life’s, to discover death’s meaning, or to try to save them? just who in hell did he think he was-the Christ of the Boonies?
So he grabbed the first one he saw, stinging him with his temperature.
“Aargh,” the fellow shrieked, pushing Lesefario off.
“It’s all right,” Lesefario said from where he had fallen in HeR.
“It’s all right. Listen to me. Are you listening? It’s Four fifty-three P.m.” Tuesday, June 27th, Seven thousand, eight hundred four.”
“Say what?”
“The time. Quiz told me the time when he was translated. I’ve been keeping track.”
“The time?”
“Four fifty-four. Yes. It’s too big a job for one man. Tell the others. We’ve got to keep track.”
“Why?”
“Hurry. (Twelve one hundredths, thirteen one hundredths, fourteen one hundredths) Please (Sixteen one hundredths.)” “Why do we have to know the time?”
“Don’t argue. Because the meaning of death -(Twenty one hundredths. And start again one hundredths)-
The meaning of death is how long it takes.”
Quiz was a queer, funny man, Flanoy thought. Still, he might be all right or he wouldn’t be here, would he? He’d been down in Hell with the bad men. Was it a sin not to like an angel? He’d ask Mother Mary.
Maybe he’d tell her some of the wicked things he’d done. Still, he thought, he’d better not say anything that could get Mr. Quiz in trouble. He was the only one who’d known Flanoy.
He knew me when I lived. He heard me laugh, he saw me throw.
In Hell they were chanting the time. The Bakhtiari nomads were chanting, the Finns were chanting.
Frenchmen chanted in French, Dutchmen in Dutch. All over Hell the billions who had died, each in his own mnemonic way, sometimes to himself, often aloud, uttered the special syllables he’d learned would fill up seconds.
“Michigan hydrangeas, Cleveland for its tea,” a woman from the Australian Outback said, while her companion, a performing dwarf for Spanish mercenaries, kept a silent, running tab.
Ellerbee was chanting too.
“Heaven is a theme park,” he tolled, “May was once my wife.”
Lesefario, who had given a downbeat which was already obsolete by the time it reached a party of Greek skiers killed in avalanche and actual days behindhand when it got to a Soviet film star dead of a fever on a trip to Japan and declared he was in contact with Quiz, that though their techniques were primitive he received periodic corrections from Quiz, himself in communication with the sacred authorities, pleading their case, an eyewitness, he told them, to their Devil’s Island circumstance-an eyewitness, a brother.
They must keep counting, Lesefario said. Two A.M. Sunday, July 10th, Seven thousand, eight hundred four. (Four one hundredths, five one hundredths, six one him dr-) Count, count, it’s Houston Control here. The state of the art isn’t so hot yet, but so long as we keep counting we’ll get corrections from Quiz.
Count, any second may be the last.”
“What’s that? Astrology?” said this ancient denizen of Hell.
“No, no,” Lesefario said feelingly.
“It’s important.”
“I’ve seen it all and it’s just another fad,” the tortured man said.
“It’s some self-help, do-it-yourself scam. It don’t mean shit. Crazy Ellerbee had us praying, knees bowed in brimstone. Praying! Turned Hell into bloody Sunday school.
“Sacred authorities’ my third-degree burns!” And Lesefario wondered: Ellerbee? Is that my Ellerbee? Is Ellerbee dead? In hell?
“(Eighteen one hundredths, nineteen one hundredths-)” (But not even his own heart in it, his flash-in-the-pan hopes and heroics extinguished, though he would probably keep counting awhile-they had time-someone trying to keep a rally alive, a plant in an audience milking ovation, a guy at a party gone sour suggesting the song which would bring them together again.) “Mother Mary?”
“Yes, Flanoy?”
“Was Jesus lonely?”
“Lonely?”
“Because he didn’t have brothers. Because he didn’t have sisters.”
“I don’t think he was lonely.”<
br />
“Were there kids to play with?”
“It was so long ago. I hardly remember.”
“You could do lots of stuff in the desert. It’d be just like the beach.”
“Yes?”
“You could go barefoot. You could bury kids in the sand. With a pail of water from the oasis you could make things. Did Jesus do that stuff?”
“I hardly remember.”
“Maybe he didn’t have anyone to play with. Maybe that’s why you don’t remember.”
“He worked with his father. He helped his father.”
“His father?”
“He helped my husband,” Mary said, blushing.
Flanoy nodded.
“Back home there was always plenty to do.”
“Do you miss being home?”
I miss my mother,” Flanoy said.
“Oh, Flanoy,” Mary said, and held out her arms.
The Virgin comforted the sobbing child. She cupped the back of Flanoy’s head in her large soft hand.
His legs, between her knees, his small, slim body pressed against her bosom, made a discrete, comfortable weight. Mary, touched by the child’s sweet, ultimate homesickness, reached around him and took all his weight now, gathering the little boy onto her lap, both their bodies shedding angle, temperature and impediment resolved into the soft symbiotics of need and competence, the tongue and groove aptitudes of love.
This is heresy, she thought, indifferent to the idea, and hugged him closer, all her supple maternals alive, returned from helplessness, fetched back intact two thousand years. Soon his body will begin to bite, she thought, his tears to chafe, yet she made no adjustments, no move to kiss him off with a final squeeze. It was not even a pieta’, no long, lame lapful. Literally, she cradled him in her arms, his knees near his chest, as one might carry a child high up in water.
“Better?” she asked.
“Yes, Ma’am.”
He climbed down from her lap and seated himself cross-legged beside her like a child in short pants. She stroked his head, her fingers trailing a forgetful, comfortable doodle in his fine hair. She dozed.
Christ was there, Joseph was. Flanoy was gone.
“Where’s the child?” she asked.
“Flanoy? Gone off,” her son said.
“He’s a good boy.”
“You’re good to him, Madonna. I was in time for the tableau.”
“He wanted to know if you had playmates. He wanted to know if you were lonely.”
“Who is this kid, Mary?” her husband asked.
“What do we know about him anyway?”
“His name’s Flamoy,” she told him wearily.
“He’s from Minnesota. He’s dead.”
“Big deal. Who ain’t dead?”
“Mother is comfortable with the dead.”
“With you maybe not so comfortable,” Joseph said. “Bamboozler. Do you know how tired the woman gets? What a strain? Come clean, why don’t you? Admit you ain’t him.”
“Please, Joseph. I have a mouth.”
“You got a mouth? Use it. Tell him. Go on. What, you’re so crazy about these people it makes a difference he ain’t Messiah?”
“Oh, please,” Christ said.
“Both of you,” Mary said, “You’re tired,” Joseph said.
“He woke you. This one. Your son, the magic cripple, who bumps into things.”
“Both of you, please,” Mary said.
“We’re going,” Joseph said.
“Get some rest.”
“Flanoy,” she called softly when they had gone, “Flanoy-” Who no longer brought his violin, she noticed, who came now whenever she felt need of him, who seemed to feel her need even before she did, who anticipated it and suddenly appeared and climbed into her lap and asked about them, questions about Jesus, about Joseph, herself, things not in the Bible, how she’d felt when she found out who her son was, if they’d taken vacations together as his family had, if it was always religious, if she’d heard from Jesus when he was in the wilderness all that time, whether she’d believed she’d see him again after they killed him, and trading his history for hers, filling her in on the world, if only his limited experience of it, but knowing more real history from his brief decade on earth than she knew for all her millennia in the sky, and what could she know, Flanoy asked -did history say its prayers?-did she know the slaves had been freed, or the names of state capitals, did she know there was television now, movies-he told her movies he’d seen, breaking her heart as he recounted sad stories about children, their animals, faithful dogs and noble horses, how the children had to put them away themselves when they were injured, the lessons they’d learned, and making her laugh when he told her the comedies-saying, though she knew all about this, how loved she was, how honored, winning her over, as she did him, with confidences, telling his secrets, climbing on her lap as he grew tired, his soft, comfortable body almost meant to be there-and now maybe Jesus had a right to be jealous-and all manner of things spoken of which she had never spoken of, and one day bringing his violin.
“I’ve been practicing,” he said shyly, and played to perfection grand compositions she had never heard, even in Heaven, “Why, you’re so good,” she said, surprised.
“Yes,” he said. I don’t know where it comes from. I think I’m inspired,” and played a melody that left them both in tears, the child so wracked by the beauty that he could not finish.
“Come,” she said, “sit in my lap.”
And Flanoy climbed up and Mary held him, the lovely melody still echoing somewhere in memory, the both of them still listening.
“Ah,” she said.
“Ah,” sighed Flanoy. And afterwards, in the stillness-as if they both heard together not only the melody but when it had stopped Flanoy asked his question.
“Was it like that?”
“What?”
“When God- You know.”
“When God?”
He toyed with the collar of her gown, his gentle fingers lightly tracing the line of her throat, and it was as if she blossomed itch just as he assuaged it, need just as he answered it.
“When God put Jesus in you?”
“When God-?”
“Do you know how He did it? Did you know it was Him? I mean you were a virgin, did you never suspect?”
“You!” she screamed. She Rung him from her lap.
“But what did I do?”
“You’re at me again. Wasn’t one time enough?”
“What did I do? Flanoy asked, crying. I didn’t do anything. What did I do?” he sobbed, and ran from the room.
“I’m carrying His child?” shrieked the Virgin Mary.
God gave a gala, a levee at the Lord’s.
All Heaven turned out.
“Gimme,” He said, that old time religion.” His audience beamed. They cheered, they ate it up. They nudged each other in Paradise.
“What did I tell you?” He demanded over their enthusiasm.
“It’s terrific, isn’t it? I told you it would be terrific. All you ever had to do was play nice. Are you disappointed? Is this Heaven? Is this God’s country? In your wildest dreams-let Me hear it. Good-in your wildest dreams, did you dream such a Treasury, this museum Paradise? Did you dream My thrones and dominions, My angels in fly-over? My seraphim disporting like dolphins, tumbling God’s sky in high Heaven’s high acrobacy? Did you imagine the miracles casual as card tricks, or ever suspect free lunch could taste so good? They should see you now, eh? They should see you now, trembling in rapture like neurological rut. Delicious, correct? Piety a la mode! That’s it, that’s right. Sing hallelujah! Sing Hizzoner’s hosannas, Jehovah’s gee whiz! Well,” God said, .1 that’s enough, that will do.” He looked toward the Holy Family, studying them for a moment.
“Not like the creche, eh?” He said.
“Well is it? Is it?” He demanded of Jesus.
“No,” Christ said softly.
“No,” God said, “not like the creche. just look
at this place- the dancing waters and indirect lighting. I could put gambling in here, off-track betting. Oh, oh, My costume jewelry ways, My game show vision.
Well, it’s the public. You’ve got to give it what it wants. Yes, Jesus?”
“Yes,” Jesus said.
“It just doesn’t look lived in, is that what you think
“Call on someone else,” Christ said.
“Sure,” God said.
“I’m Hero of Heaven. I call on Myself.”
That was when He began His explanations. He revealed the secrets of books, of pictures and music, telling them all manner of things-why marches were more selfish than anthems, lieder less stirring than scat, why landscapes were to be preferred over portraits, how statues of women were superior to statues of men but less impressive than engravings on postage. He explained why dentistry was a purer science than astronomy, biography a higher form than dance. He told them how to choose wines and why solos were more acceptable to Him than duets. He told them the secret causes of inflation-“It’s the markup,” He said-and which was the best color and how many angels could dance on the head of a pin. He explained why English was the first language at Miss Universe pageants and recited highlights from the eighteen-minute gap.
Mary, wondering if she showed yet, was glad Joseph was seated next to her. Determined to look proud, she deliberately took her husband’s hand. So rough, she thought, such stubby fingers. He explained why children suffered and showed them how to do the latest disco steps. He showed them how to square the circle, cautioning afterwards that it would be wrong.
He revealed the name of Kennedy’s assassin and told how to shop for used cars.
Why He’s talking to me, Quiz thought. These other folks couldn’t ever have had any use for this stuff.
He’s talking to me. Quiz was right, but He had something for everyone. He was unloading, giving off wisdom like radioactivity, plumbing the mysteries, and now His voice was reasonable, not the voice of a grandfather but of a king, a chief, someone un electable there always, whose very robes and signals of office were not expensive or even rare so much as His, as if He wore electricity or mountain range or clothed Himself in waterfall. He explained-1 am the Manitou, too” how the rain dance worked. They were charmed. He described how He had divided the light from the darkness on the morning of the first day. They were impressed. He demonstrated how He had done Hell. They were awed.
The Living End Page 9
