Hell Can Wait

by Theodore Judson

  “Stephen is not an artist,” said Maternus. “He does not find amusement in your faults.”

  “What faults?” asked Shen, and he bothered to look surprised.

  “I will leave you to ponder that, sir,” said Maternus and abruptly left the boardinghouse.

  The long walk to his apartment in a winter snow storm put the Roman into a dark mood that lonely Tuesday evening. He ate a light meal of Thompson grapes and the unhomogenized cheese he had purchased in a specialty grocery, and listened to the classical music station for only half an hour before retiring to bed. Sleep, he told himself, had always been the one refuge a weary soldier could rely upon. He succeeded in falling into the realm of Morpheus and swiftly found himself lying in an unfamiliar stubble field, shivering from cold winds hitting him from several directions. Into this bleak landscape appeared lovely Maria, her face as luminous and as warmth-giving as the sun. When Maternus rose to greet her she gave him an angry glare and pushed him away. “I am here to show you this,” she somehow told him without speaking words. She bent on one knee and on the dry ground drew the letter J with her finger.

  “That was not a letter in our language,” said Maternus. “The English took it from the Greek gamma.”

  “Pay attention,” she told him, again without moving her lips. “Mr. Worthy said you would find advice here in Aurora. Think of the letter J.”

  Maternus looked at her shining face and her long hair moving with the wind and wished she would kiss him but at the same time knew she could not. “I do not know any letters J,” he said.

  Maria arose and walked away from him. Before she disappeared into the haze at the edge of the field she turned and gave him a final thought. “You are no longer a brute; still you are not overly sensitive to certain clues.” Moments later she vanished into the cloud, and Maternus was sitting upright in his bed.

  “Who or what do I know that has a J in its name?” he thought.

  He knew a Jack, a teenager who sold shoes at the mall, a friendly young pup battling acne. Then there was Miss Jane Austen; she was unavailable at the moment. And Juanita at the rest home. Finally there was Stephen’s Uncle Jerry, the wretched man Mr. Worthy had intimated was bound for Hell. Maria would not have him turning to Jerry for advice.

  “No, wait,” he told himself. “Go back. Juanita at the rest home. Maria wants me to speak to Juanita!”

  The notion seemed absurd when he first considered it. Upon thinking some more, he realized Juanita was exactly the person Maria had intended. The mental verification of that suggestion came to him so quickly he wondered if Banewill had not spoken the truth when he accused the angel of cheating, for now Mr. Worthy seemed to be using Maria to guide Maternus to his third triumph. Maternus was made to see a golden opportunity and exploit it as quickly as he could. He did not consider why the angel wanted to throw the contest in his favor. In the morning, he went to the rest home and sought out Juanita in the rec room.

  He laid out his dilemma to her, leaving out the supernatural parts and substituting his affection for Stephen as the motive for wanting to attach his friend to the haughty Miss Roberts. Juanita had lived a long time and had more outlandish schemes dropped in her lap. She agreed to help Maternus before he had properly asked her.

  “I’ll to speak to the young man,” she said.

  “Ah, that will be a problem,” said the Roman. “He will not come into a rest home. He says they remind him of his mortality.”

  “Jesus,” said Juanita and crossed herself after taking the Lord’s name in vain. “No wonder you can’t get him with this librarian woman — he’s a wimp. Take me to the woman first, then. You won’t mind pushing me, will you, my love?”

  Physical exertion was nothing new to Maternus, and pushing her two miles to the library did not seem an extraordinary request to make. During the long walk there he further explained Cecilia and her friend Lucy, and Stephen’s interest in the former.

  Cecilia was surprisingly open to Juanita when she and Maternus approached her at the circulation desk. The Roman did not know of the special attentiveness public servants give to the handicapped. He thought the librarian was simply being extraordinarily pleasant when she came around the long counter and knelt beside the elderly lady.

  “Is this your mother, Matt?” she asked.

  Juanita had been born in a small village near Guadalajara and her complexion was considerably darker than that of the square-headed soldier born on the empire’s northern frontier. Neither she nor Maternus, however, was offended by the query.

  “Like a mother, dear heart,” said Juanita.

  “Are you looking for anything in particular?” asked the librarian. “I’m here to help you.”

  “Just between you and me, dear heart,” said Juanita, “I’m an old woman interested in romance.” To Maternus she said, “Why don’t you go find something to read, Matty? We ladies are going to talk about what they have here I would want to look at.”

  The two women spent nearly half an hour in the romance section of fiction. Upon emerging from the stacks, Cecilia and Juanita were conversing like two old friends. The rest home resident was the image of confidence as Maternus wheeled her away, after she and Cecilia had exchanged goodbyes and the librarian had declared Juanita “the sweetest thing.”

  “She’s not going to be any problem,” Juanita told the Roman when they were again outside. “The girl’s a little full of herself, but she’ll do.”

  “She agreed to see Stephen socially?” asked Maternus.

  “Yes. She just doesn’t know she will. I think I need to talk to this girlfriend of hers next. You up for the walk?”

  “This is nothing,” said the Roman. “I once carried an officer over my shoulder for eight leagues through a burning forest while I fought off the enemy’s rearguard with my free hand.”

  “Were you only fifty years older or were I that much younger, you would be my kind of man,” said Juanita.

  After another seventeen blocks of pushing, they found Lucy at the condominium. The nurse was out of bed but not yet ready for her shift at the hospital that afternoon. She was as happy to meet the effervescent Juanita as her friend the librarian had been, and she was more than happy to ask the increasingly pleasant looking Maternus in for some tea. They sat in the overly decorated living room and chatted for a longer space of time than Maternus could have filled with words, even under the threat of certain death. They remarked that the weather had been pleasant, and Juanita mentioned an article she had seen in the Post concerning nurses’ salaries in the Denver area. Both the soldier and his elderly friend declared the herbal tea Lucy had served them was delightful, though Maternus, in fact, thought it tasted like boiled grass.

  “Why don’t you stay here and watch some television while Miss Lucy and I have a chat in the kitchen?” Juanita asked the soldier at a critical juncture.

  So he sat and watched Maury Povitch announce maternity test results to bickering couples recruited from the nation’s noisiest public housing projects, while Juanita had the second secret conversation of that morning.

  “She’s not going to be a problem, either,” Juanita told him as they wheeled away from the condominium an hour later. “This is going smoother than I figured. Now, if there’s time, I want to meet this Stephen person we’re going to make the luckiest man in town.”

  By the time they arrived at the weedy lawn in front of the boardinghouse Maternus had only ninety minutes remaining before he had to be at his job at the school. Jerry was thankfully out cruising by grade school playgrounds in his Lincoln, and Shen was deep into a creative episode inside his bedroom. Stephen was thus by himself when he came to the front door in his ragged jeans and PHISH shirt to let Maternus and Juanita inside. The old woman observed his fine yet matted wad of blond hair, his sloping shoulders, recessed and unshaven jaw, bare feet, and the nervous mouth that quivered somewhere between a welcoming smile and a grimace of despair.

  “Madre de Dios!” said Juanita and crossed herself. “
This is him?” she asked Maternus.

  “This is Stephen Kent, madam,” said the Roman.

  “Dear heart, what do you do for a living?” was the first question she asked him as they remained at the front doorway.

  Stephen shrugged and said, “You know, I sort of take care of the house.”

  “Jesus mio,” she whispered. “This is going to be a big problem,” she said to the Roman. “Stephen,” she said, turning to the disheveled man in front of her, “do you really want to grow old and die alone in this crappy house?”

  This was not a question one usually poses to a stranger. However, Stephen was one whose life had strayed for a quarter century from the realm of normalcy, and it seemed not so extraordinary to him. He nonetheless had to take a couple seconds to think of an appropriate answer.

  “I guess not,” he decided.

  “Then this is going to be your lucky day, precious,” said Juanita and wheeled herself through the doorway, causing Stephen to jump aside lest she run over his bare toes. “You might as well go on to work,” she told Maternus. “Mr. Stephen and I are going to have a very long talk. Get some things straightened out. I’ll telephone the people at Shady Grove, and you can take me back when you get off.”

  “If that is what you want,” said Maternus.

  “Why are you stooped over like that?” she asked Stephen. “Bend a little lower and you’ll be walking on all fours. You are a man, aren’t you?”

  “Well, yeah,” said Stephen.

  “Then get your back straight,” said Juanita and poked him in the side. “Stand up.” The ever-passive Stephen lifted his shoulders in response and assumed the pose of one standing at attention. “See,” she said, “doesn’t that feel better? What’s that smell?” she asked as she wheeled toward his room. “Don’t tell me. I know what it is. That business will have to stop if you want to win Miss Roberts.”

  That night at nine o’clock, when Maternus returned to the boardinghouse, Stephen had packed his possessions in a pick-up truck he had borrowed from someone named Arthur, and Juanita announced Stephen was leaving his Uncle Jerry’s house that very night.

  “First you boys will take me home and then Stephen can take his things to your place, dear heart,” said Juanita. “Another day in this hole and he’ll be dead.”

  “But … my apartment is small,” said Maternus. “I have only the one bed.”

  “You were in the army,” said Juanita. “I’m sure you boys will think of something.”

  That night and for the next eight days Stephen’s worldly goods — most of it old pants and back issues of Heavy Metal magazine — occupied a quarter of Maternus’s living space. During that time the Roman slept on the floor while Stephen took the bed. That was not so bad. Maternus had made his bed on the cold ground when he was with the Augustus Legion, and had endured frostbite in winter and snakes and spiders in his bedroll during the summer heat. But he had never before endured anyone who snored quite like Stephen Kent. In the middle of the first night the Roman dreamed there was a bear in the room with him and did not realize he was hearing Stephen hold forth until he was fully awake.

  “I have adenoids,” said Stephen when Maternus roused him.

  “Everyone born with a pharynx does,” said the Roman, rubbing his weary eyes. “I know. I have read Mr. Grey’s book on human anatomy. Adenoid starts with an A and therefore comes early in the book. Are you going to keep making that sound?”

  “I saw a commercial once for this spray you squirt down your throat,” said Stephen. “It’s supposed to cure you.”

  “Are there merchants here in the city selling the spray at this hour of the night?”

  “Sure,” said Stephen. “Walgreens is open twenty-four hours a day.”

  “I am getting my jacket,” said Maternus. “Give me the product’s name, and I will buy you a month’s supply.”

  Maternus walked to the store on the silent streets of Aurora and purchased two quarts of the magical potion. That was only the beginning of the eight difficult days with Stephen. In the morning, they walked to the rest home — and Juanita had apparently made such an impression upon Stephen he now went inside Shady Grove, albeit with considerable whining about death — and the old woman announced that Maternus should help Stephen get a job.

  “Dear heart here knows how to cook. Your school hires cooks,” she said and stuck out her hands at her sides, her palms turned up.

  “We are, in fact, hiring cooks,” said Maternus, and thought such convenient circumstances must again be Mr. Worthy’s doing. “We also ask prospective employees to take a drug test.” He glanced at Stephen’s pupils, which were uncharacteristically normal sized that morning. “I have doubts…”

  “That’s why you are going to help him,” said Juanita, and held up a small plastic bag with an air-tight seal across its top. From how she smiled at him, Maternus knew she meant more than she was saying.

  “I don’t follow you, madam,” he said.

  Juanita had to explain further what Maternus was to do with the small bag, the same bag Stephen was to carry to his job interview. By Friday Stephen was laboring in the school’s cafeteria. He sweated like a soggy sponge as he shoved trays of canned corn into the tall convection ovens and hauled buckets of creamed spinach to the steam trays on the front line. Given that Stephen had not worked outside his uncle’s house in many pot-addled years, Maternus expected the shuffling weakling would be overwhelmed by the complaints of the other cooks (all of them female) and would soon quit. By Saturday Stephen had a tidy haircut to accompany the clean-shaven face he now took an unnaturally long time examining in the mirror every morning. On Sunday Juanita accompanied Stephen to the mall and supervised the purchase of a dark blue suit. Maternus did not know what transpired during the daily visits Stephen made to the rest home; from the snatches he overheard whenever he went to drop Stephen off in Juanita’s room or when he picked his friend up, the Roman understood she scolded Stephen a great deal about his posture and personal hygiene.

  On the next Wednesday morning, Maternus was seated at his library table, reading Leaves of Grass and feeling ready to be distracted. At ten thirty, in walked Stephen Kent, dressed in his new suit and accompanied by Lucy. They sat at a table some thirty feet from Maternus in front of the periodicals. Lucy was making seven gesticulations for every one the more docile Stephen created, and she was laughing as freely as she had when the group went to the motion picture theater. If appearances have meaning, she was pleased to be in the presence of this version of Stephen.

  Cecilia left her station behind the circulation desk and stole closer to the unexpected couple by creeping through the stacks and peering at Stephen and her roommate through the gaps in the books. After several apparently happy minutes, the nurse left her place beside Stephen and strolled over to Maternus. Once Lucy was out of the way, Cecilia made herself visible at the far end of the magazine racks, and, after circling Stephen several times like a bird of prey eyeing its next victim, she sat beside him.

  “What is transpiring?” Maternus whispered to Lucy. “Why is he not at work?”

  “The teachers have an in-service conference today,” said the nurse. “No children at Susan B. Anthony. I guess they don’t tell the janitors anything.”

  “What is he doing with her?”

  “Wait and see. Your friend Juanita planned this.”

  As had happened on the day Shen dressed Stephen in motorcycle leathers, the people Maternus was attempting to eavesdrop on were too far from him to be heard properly. The Roman gleaned that Stephen was having difficulty breathing during the first portion of the conversation, for the thin, blond man kept dropping open his mouth like a bass out of water and sucking in gasps of musty library air. Suddenly, Stephen straightened his spine, and he seemed to grow a foot taller.

  “I have a job and a place of my own to live and I’m taking care of myself and I would love to take you to dinner this Friday night,” Maternus heard him clearly declare.

  The nurse and
the Roman leaned in the direction of the other table, yet they could not catch Cecilia’s reply. After several more minutes of quiet talking, the librarian returned to her circulation desk, taking care to touch Stephen’s hand as she stood upright.

  Stephen was excited, and something beyond that, when Maternus returned to the efficiency apartment that night after work.

  “I’ve got a date,” he declared at once to the soldier. “Cecilia Roberts. We’re going to see the traveling production of Annie Get Your Gun. Could you loan me seventy dollars until payday?”

  Maternus gave him all of the eighty-four dollars he had in his wallet.

  “Take your time repaying me,” he said. “I do not expect to need that money anytime soon.”

  That night as Stephen lay on the fold-out bed and the Roman lay on the floor, the cook and potential lover whispered in the darkness, “Women. Who knew they were this easy?”

  Maternus awoke sitting on the ground beside Mr. Worthy. The Roman was wearing the pilgrim’s white coat and cloak he had worn when he had been killed in the Circus Maximus. He and the angel were somewhere far from Colorado, in a meadow dotted with wildflowers of every color. Peacocks with their fans unfolded and white deer were ambling through this land of endless spring. Music — Maternus recognized it as something by Vivaldi — was playing somewhere in the distance. The sky overhead was entirely a shining blue topaz, save for the fat, white clouds that were tinged on their edges with golden shadows.

  “How do you like it, friend?” the angel asked him.

  “Where is Mr. Banewill?” asked the Roman, momentarily shielding his eyes while they became adjusted to the light.

  “He cannot come here,” said Mr. Worthy. “This place is reserved for our kind alone.”

  X

  One Never Gets to Heaven Alone

  “Tell me, does Cecilia really marry Stephen?” Maternus asked the angel the instant he had his thoughts about him.