The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (54 page)

“Welcome to Hell, Mr. Gallatin,” Beeflow said.

Why did I already know that? How did I know that’s what he was going to say and it wouldn’t surprise me?

“It’s the most wonderful place in the world because it’s
your
most wonderful place. Everything is familiar here, you know everyone, the food is gorgeous—”

He was interrupted by the sound of the drowned girl laughing. It was the most beautiful, innocent, sexy laugh I’d ever heard. Her head was thrown back and she was laughing and all I could focus on was her long slim neck. Like everything else there, it was almost too much to take. Since when could the sight of a woman’s bare neck send me over the moon?

“You see, it’s already beginning to affect you. That’s what’s so splendid about it. Because everything here is yours, it would be so easy to slide right into this world and never want to go home.”

“It really is Hell? This is where you go when you’ve been
bad
?”

“Yes. That’s what Mel Shaveetz was saying to you and why the dog started growling at him. If people knew how marvelous this is, do you think they’d work hard at living? Or at being good, achieving something, working for one another? Too many of them would throw up their hands and just wait to die. Or they would kill themselves for the stupidest reasons just so they could come here earlier than planned.”

“Everyone’s Hell is this good?”

“Yes it is.”

“Then what’s Heaven like?”

“Infinitely better. But it is extremely hard to get into Heaven, Mr. Gallatin. It is almost impossible.”

“But a person wins either way: Hell is great and Heaven is better.”

“That should make no difference to you when you’re alive. There is a purpose to living that is far more important than ending up comfortably dead.”

“So what is the purpose of living?”

The people at the table seemed to have forgotten I was standing there and had gone back to enjoying their party. Some of them were singing now. The black guy was playing The Lovin’ Spoonful song ‘Coconut Grove.’ Others were eating big fat chicken legs or steaks; slices of pie a la mode. More than anything I wanted to go over and join them. Like a hungry kid, I was itching to be at that table.

“Pay attention Gallatin! Stop drooling over hamburgers. What I’m telling you is vitally important. People are alive because they have jobs to do. They are meant to improve and broaden the human experience as best they can. The Cylinder is concrete proof of that. After death, mankind comes here if they’ve failed, or to Heaven if they succeeded. But if they knew about this, it would change everything. Dangerously few people would work hard, or dream, or love well and with all their hearts. Because no matter how they lived, they get this in the end.

“Mankind’s progress has been slow but steady. But now Satan is attempting to change that. He
says
there is no more room in Hell and has begun moving the dead back to earth in greater and greater numbers. Those who have already been sent were told the move wouldn’t be permanent. Life on earth is made as pleasant as possible for them by allowing them to create their environment.

“God cannot reason with Satan about this, but we know that is nothing new. This forced relocation has been going on for centuries, but until now God overlooked it because the few that were sent back to earth were regarded by the living as lunatics and ignored. Not anymore.”

“Why? Why is it happening?”

“Because Mankind no longer accepts the idea of Damnation. He no longer feels he deserves eternal suffering for what he did or did not do on earth. Guilt has grown obsolete. In the past, people were so afraid of what would happen to them in the afterlife that they created the most frightening scenarios possible. So when they did die, naturally those things happened to them. They brought their worst nightmares along and they came true.

“No longer. For the common man today, a fire and brimstone Hell has become an old-fashioned idea, and Heaven is a child’s dream.”

“Because we live happier lives, we get to be happier dead?”

“Exactly, and Satan absolutely hates that. When suffering prevailed in Hell, he was satisfied. But since people create their own Hell from what they knew in life, in recent decades it has generally become a rather nice place. He cannot abide that. So he has changed the rules. He is sending the dead back to earth en masse. And it is clear what affect that will have on things there.”

“Why doesn’t God stop him?”

“Because God wants us to stop him. It is part of our ongoing task.”

“How? How are we supposed to stop
the Devil
?”

“We must come up with a plan. Perhaps many plans before one works effectively. Obviously some of them will work, others won’t.”

“Jeez Bill, are we going to have to drag you over to the table with a rope? We even got your favorite over there—potato salad with extra horseradish in the sauce.” My father was suddenly standing in front of me smiling that great old smile that had always made me want to climb in his lap and stay there forever.

“Dad, where’s Mom? Is she here?”

He smiled and threw a thumb over his shoulder for me to look there. Coming out of the restaurant was my mother. A cry rose up in my throat that I was just barely able to hold onto before it spilled out. There she was, looking like she did before the cancer ate her body. There she was in that red and white striped dress, all her black hair long and curly again. Best of all she was chubby like before—“Pleasantly plump” as she called herself. Not the hairless stick-thin woman who turned to the wall one day while lying in her bed and never really turned back, choosing instead to disappear into her sickness and never come out again.

In her hands she held a whipped cream cake. Sort of pale pink on the sides, black bittersweet chocolate on the top. It was my favorite. She had always made it on special occasions. The last time I ever had it was on on our wedding day. Rae got the recipe from her but was never able to make it right. All Moms have one secret recipe that can’t be copied and this was hers. A whipped cream cake.

She went to the table and put it down in front of an empty seat. Reaching over, she arranged the silverware there. I knew she was setting it up for me. Come over and cut your cake she was saying. Sit with your father and me and tell us what your life has been since we left. Tell us about Rae who we always liked and your job and how you’ve filled your days. Because we love you and want to hear everything. How many people on this earth want to hear everything about you? How many people—

“They’re dead. Mr. Gallatin.”

I blinked, looking from my mother to my father. I was in a trance. My mother, my father, her cake, this place—

“They’re dead and you have things to do.”

Beeflow’s words struck my head like a hammer. They hurt that much. I didn’t want to hear them; I didn’t want this picture of my good parents to go away just because they were dead.

“What do you want from me? It’s my parents! I haven’t seen them—Can’t I have five minutes together with my parents?”

“You’re finding reasons to stay here. And the longer you stay, the more reasons you’ll find. It’s very tricky that way. Very seductive. But everything here is from your life, Gallatin, it is
from life,
do you understand? How lucky you’ve been to amass all these fine memories. How good life has been to you. It’s been a good friend. Don’t you owe it something?”

Furious, I turned towards his voice without thinking. And when I saw him, when I saw what he was I began to cry. Because he’d told the truth—he was everything I didn’t want to know about myself. He had no special shape or size. You couldn’t say it’s a man or a monster or a Devil or whatever. He was just it, them, all those things you try to ignore or cover up or argue against or justify or put up a million defenses against just to keep from saying there I am, that is part of me.

But then something amazing happened and I don’t even know if I can take credit for it.
I turned away.
I turned away from Mr. Beeflow and looked back at that table, my parents, and the things that made my life big rather than small and shitty. I saw the good people, the good stuff on the table, the trees blowing in the wind and the smell of spring and food and life ... Despite having “seen” Beeflow, I still had managed to survive and bring all of these beautiful things along to the death that would some day be mine. I was grateful. And I knew he was right—painful as it was, I had to give all this up for now and go back to do what I could to try and keep life as it had always been for everybody.

“Son?” Dad’s voice.

I closed my eyes. “All right, Mr. Beeflow, I understand. Take me back.”

Immediately something warm and familiar licked my hand. This time I didn’t open my eyes. Whatever it was took the hand and pulled it gently to the left. Blind, I walked a few steps, trusting it, knowing that it was Cyrus. It made so much sense—once you made your mind up to go, only your own soul could lead you back to where you began.

“Not so fast, Monsieur. Who’s going to pay for this meal, Bill? The bill, Bill. When you eat at my table, you pay for my cooking.”

The Devil wore a chef’s cap. One of those stupid high white ones that look like something put on the end of a lamb chop at a ritzy restaurant. He wore that white hat and all the rest of his clothes were white too. His face was nothing special—just a face surrounded by lots of white. No, that’s not true—there was
one
strange-looking thing about him—he had two moustaches. Slim little things, they sat one right under the other like lines on a paper.

“I see by your admiring eye that you’re looking at my moustaches. Is this going to be the new trend or what?”

“It looks stupid if you ask me. Plus people can’t grow two moustaches.”

He shrugged and played with both of them. Top one, then the bottom. “But they can grow one really thick one and cut a space in the middle, making levels.”

“It’s still stupid.”

“Every fool’s entitled to his opinion. But let’s get back to the facts—how do you plan on paying for this meal? PS I don’t take VISA or Mastercard.” He laughed and it sounded like someone unscrewing a tight plastic-on-plastic cap. I squinted at the sound but didn’t look away. I guess my face said I was confused, so he took my arm. I tried to pull away but he wouldn’t let me.

“You chose to come here, Bill boy, and now you want to leave which however is a human no-no. Any person who sees this and wants to go back has to pay.”

“Pay with what?”

“Something you love. I’ll let you go back but the price for this meal, this little view you just had, is something you love in life. If you stay here you get to keep all this. But if you go back you’ve got to give me something from your life you never thought you could live without.”

“Mr. Beeflow, are you there? Is this true?”

“Forget it, he can’t help you. Anyway you saw what
he
looked like.”

“You made Beeflow do this too?”

“Yup. He gave up his body. He was a handsome man. A very vain one too. Nothing he liked more than looking at himself in a mirror and admiring the view. I never thought he would do it but sometimes people surprise me.”

Suddenly I remembered Cyrus and looked down at the hand he had been holding. No Cyrus—nothing was there. Only the ground. The ground in this beautiful Hell. Gathering myself together, gathering words in my mouth to make a sentence I never thought I would say in a million years, I took a deep breath and said, “Rae, take my love for Rae.”

He didn’t react immediately. He looked at me hard, like I was trying to trick him. But we both knew there was no way I could trick
him.

“I thought you’d say something like that but it’s not enough, Bill. Try again.”

“I don’t know anything else. That’s about as bad as I can imagine. Not loving my wife anymore? What could be worse than not loving Rae?”

I climbed through the window of Eric Dickey’s house back out into my world and my life. The first thing I smelled there was big thick smoke. It took only a second to remember I’d gone in there in the first place to save Eric and his wife from burning up in the caveman’s fire. Jumping off the porch, I ran around to the back of the house. There was a high pile of wood and other things burning in the middle of their yard. Firemen had a hose turned on it, trying to get it under control. Both of the Dickeys were off to one side on their knees, taking oxygen. There was so much tussle and turmoil out there—people running around, fire being fought, police, firemen and the like. No one noticed me standing there. I couldn’t help thinking that there had been absolutely no reason for me to go into that house because the fire had all been out here. But then if I hadn’t gone in ...

“Brother Bill?”

Brooks came up on one side of me, Zin Zan the other. Neither of them was smiling and neither was I.

“Are you all right?”

A fireman rushed by us and knocked into me hard as he passed but I didn’t react.

“Now I’m your Brother? Is that what you call me from now on? Brother Bill?”

“We don’t have to call you anything if that’s what you’d prefer. Are you all right?”

“You know where I just was, don’t you?”

They both nodded.

“And you both were there once and saw the Devil?”

Again, slow nods.

In the smoke and the fire and the confusion and the running around and the noise that was a hundred kinds of noise, I saw something I hadn’t seen all afternoon although it had been right in front of me the whole time.

“My God, you’re Brooks Collins!”

Half a smile crossed Brother Brooks’s face and then died. He nodded again.

“I have all your albums.”

“Better take care of them—there won’t be any more.”

“You gave
that
up?” A few beats passed until I understood. “That’s what you gave the Devil? Your talent?”

“And the fame. He wasn’t going to let me go just giving up the one. The world today is full of people who have no talent but are famous. No one recognizes me anymore. Only you, but that’s because you’ve been to Hell. You perceive things other people don’t.”