Hell (18 page)

“The first place being . . .”

“About the new Harrowing. Is there a smudge on my cheek?”

Hatcher looks. “Yes.”

“Gray?”

“Gray.” Hatcher draws out his handkerchief and lifts his hand. “Should I . . . ?”

“No.” Carl is emphatic. “Don’t you know what that is?”

Hatcher’s hand recoils. Of course.

“I have to stop with the salt,” Carl says. “It’s cursed. Of course it’s cursed. Pretty soon I won’t have enough brain left to lie.”

“You didn’t actually make up the new Harrowing,” Hatcher says.

“No. I didn’t make it up.”

“So was your source . . .”

“He could have lied to me. Or he could have lied to himself. Or he could have . . .”

“I get it,” Hatcher waves his hand to stop Carl and sits back in his chair. Of course it could all be a lie. He knows this. He always knows this. And yet Hatcher had some sort of intuition about the neo-Harrowing story. And still does. The news nose knows. The freshman J-Schoolers in a couple of adjoining rooms in Elder Hall at Northwestern would chant that out the windows at the passing coeds. Hatcher’s free mind is drifting now, he realizes. It’s also free to nurture hope and free to despair in the hope. But he’s always felt he has the nose. And it knows.

Carl says, “Hell, the
first
Harrowing might be a lie. You’d be surprised who’s still here. Though the biggest guys are mostly out of sight. They’re in their own condo somewhere, jammed in bunks with the biggest guys from all the other religions.”

Hatcher nods. “I’ve heard about that too. I figure it’s because all the rest of the denizens suffer more if they think somehow they got it wrong. If they suspect nobody got it right, there could be some sort of comfort in that.”

“Is that what you suspect?” Carl says. “That everybody is here?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes. Suspect, perhaps. But nobody can say if they’re
all
here. And if all the big guys are indeed in Hell, it doesn’t mean some little guys didn’t get spared.”

The two fall silent a moment. Hatcher looks around the Automat. “Do you know these people?”

Carl says, “Today it’s the writers’ workshop. They’ve all got books. None of them made it into the Big One. Over there, the central table, it’s Tobit and Baruch and Ben Sira. They got into the Catholic Bible, but needless to say that’s cold comfort for them, like being with a university press when they think they deserve Knopf. These three don’t read each other’s work anymore. They just kvetch. If you stand up and look to the far corner, you’ll see somebody these three should have with them, to be fair, since the Catholics published her too. But not only is she a woman, she has a constant companion.”

Hatcher rises and looks across the room. He sees a table with a woman in a gray tunic and headscarf reading from a scroll to a blackhaired, bearded, severed head sitting in the center of the table. The eyes of the man are widening and narrowing and widening again in disgust at the woman’s reading and he interrupts, saying something that she listens to without reaction, and when he stops, she starts reading again.

“That’s Judith,” Carl says. “And that’s the Babylonian general Holofernes, who she seduced and beheaded. I don’t think he keeps his comments constructive.”

While he’s standing, Hatcher looks more closely at the other tables. Many of them have scrolls being read. “You’ve got quite a few Gnostics,” Carl says. “They churned the books out, I tell you. And there’s some guys from Old Testament times who got screwed by the weather or earthquakes or whatever. The Book of Amittai, for instance. The Book of Ishmerai. Lost to the elements. And there are others. They never had a chance. Don’t get those guys started or you’ll be getting the begats and the goat-slaughter procedures all day and night, and they’re all desperate to hear they’re as good as the other guys.”

Hatcher moves his gaze to a nearby table. Three men and a woman. One of the men is reading from a codex and he’s lanky and intense and his long hair falls over his face.

Carl sees where Hatcher is looking. “They didn’t make it into the New Testament. The Gospel of Rhoda. Her last scroll was dropped down a well by Paul himself, who never did trust women. The Gospel of Festus got eaten by a camel. The letters of Silas. Don’t get him going on the first century post office. And the guy reading. That’s Judas Iscariot.”

Hatcher looks at Carl.

Carl says, “You were still alive when his lost codex came to light, weren’t you?”

“Yes,” Hatcher says. “Sadly. It’s embarrassing to get scooped by the National Geographic Society. You weren’t alive then.”

“No.”

“You know a lot about all this, Carl.”

Carl shrugs and turns his face to the window. “I may be a liar, but I’m a good reporter.”

Outside the window, Jezebel’s eight hundred and fifty slaughtered priests of Baal are crowding past, all their wounds still open and running. Unseen to Carl and Hatcher, Elijah is being borne along, squeezed tightly in their midst, cloaked in their blood.

“I can see that you are,” Hatcher says.

Carl lifts his face and then nods toward Judas. “He’s my source on the Harrowing.”

“Judas?”

“Yes.”

Hatcher takes this in. “Would you mind if I talk to him directly?”

Carl laughs softly and cocks his head at Hatcher. “You’re standing on journalistic protocol down here? Asking me?”

Hatcher sees how this would seem odd. He’s not sure he would have asked his reporter for permission only a short time ago.

“Of course,” Carl says. “Go ahead.”

“Thanks,” Hatcher says, and he moves off toward the New Testament table.

As he approaches, Judas has stopped reading, and Rhoda is offering a critique. “Everyone assumes it’s Gnostics because you did it in the third person. You need to rewrite it in the first person.”

“Good suggestion,” Festus says, giving Rhoda a little wink. “Make them wonder. We heard he hanged himself right away. But he took time to write this.”

“Not to mention the irony,” Silas says, also winking at Rhoda.

“What irony?” Festus says with a little more heat than one might reasonably expect. “That’s all you ever say. What’s irony got to do with it?”

Hatcher is beside the table now and the two men abruptly stop their bickering. All four look up at the newcomer in the suit.

“I’m sorry to interrupt. I’m Hatcher McCord.”

“I watch you all the time,” Rhoda purrs.

Festus and Silas both scowl. Judas glances over to Carl and then back to Hatcher. He rises. “I’ll talk to him,” Judas says to the others, and then to Hatcher, “Got nickels?”

Hatcher feels in his pockets. “Yes.”

“Come on,” Judas says, and he leads them to the back wall. He peers through the window of a food compartment and then another and another, moving along the row. “Not much choice today,” he says. “But there never is.” He stops and turns to Hatcher.

“Give me thirty nickels and I’ll tell you anything you want to know,” Judas says.

Hatcher is thrown by this for a moment.

“Just kidding,” Judas says. “I need three. For spinach. We can get two forks.”

Hatcher gives Judas three nickels, and the ex-apostle feeds them into a slot by one of the dispensing doors. “I’m good about sharing,” he says.

They bear their creamed spinach and forks out among the crowded tables, and ahead, a couple of Old Testament guys at a table for two suddenly burst into flames and leap up and run together out the front door. Judas nods to the newly vacated table. “Someone is looking out for us,” he says.

They sit.

Judas sticks one of the forks in Hatcher’s side of the white china Horn & Hardart bowl and pushes it slightly toward him. The dark green of the spinach can be seen in striations beneath the cream, but the cream itself is faintly wriggling. Judas takes a bite and grimaces. “Jesus Christ, this tastes bad,” he says.

He and Hatcher look at each other, stopped by the expletive. Judas laughs loudly. “The Master doesn’t mind. He likes a good irony.”

“He’s coming back here?” Hatcher says.

“For me. It’s the deal.”

“When did he tell you that?”

“His last night. When he asked me to do this thing for him. Somebody had to do this thing so all the rest of you would come to realize who he was. But see, then he couldn’t take me out of Hell the first time round. I just barely got here, and for him to end up being what he had to be, I had to take the heat for a long while. He was crucified for your sins, but I was vilified for your sins. You see what they write about me?” Judas rolls his head. “Oy,” he says. Then he motions at the spinach. “Eat up.”

“No thanks.”

“I don’t blame you. It’s nothing but vegetables, world without end.”

Hatcher nods toward the change booth. “The sign says meat tomorrow.”

“That sign’s always there and it never happens. Just about everyone in this room thinks they’re getting out of here on the next go-round. Most of them are convinced it’s about sacrifice. They didn’t kill enough goats or bullocks, so they need the animals. They need to do their ritual thing to be worthy. The management keeps promising, but come on. It’s not going to happen. Me, however. The Man and I had an arrangement. He needed me to do what I did. I knew His powers. You think I’d send myself to a place like this for thirty pieces of silver? You think anybody’s that stupid? He was the Man. I didn’t have the preaching skills or the church-building skills, but I had the skill to do what needed to be done, even if it was dirty work.”

And what’s going on in Hatcher’s nose? The smell of animate creamed spinach, certainly. And perhaps that is affecting the workings of his deeply intuitive, Northwestern-J-School-trained, field-tested, Emmy-Award-winning appendage, but hearing Judas Iscariot talk of his expectations, hearing his thoroughly adapted voice, Hatcher isn’t sniffing the story so strongly now. Not to mention the irony. Hatcher tries to reason with his nose. Maybe it’s the irony that’s causing the doubt. Judas Iscariot keeping his faith in Hell. Shouldn’t that actually give him credibility? And he’s adjusted over the years, as everyone is torturously required to do. Hatcher’s own Anne rarely sounds the way she must have sounded in the sixteenth century. They all are compelled to watch television, after all. If Judas had the skills he claims were necessary to do what he had to do in his mortal life, then those same skills would turn him into the Judas Iscariot sitting across from Hatcher right now, keeping his faith, talking wise-ass. And gobbling down the rancid creamed spinach.

“You sure you don’t want yours?” Judas asks as he finishes exactly half.

“I’m sure.”

Judas compulsively eats on, though every bite is clearly intensely unpleasant to him. Finally he presses his wrist against his mouth and jumps up and runs out the front door. Hatcher sits and waits and lets the possibilities of this story renew themselves. He looks around at all the others here. Also keeping the faith in their own ways, apparently.

Judas returns and sits. He says, “It’s not that which goeth into the mouth defileth a man but that which cometh out.”

He waits a beat, as if he expects Hatcher to react. Hatcher doesn’t.

“Just kidding,” Judas says. “Man, if I’m to be judged by what just came out of my mouth, forget about it.”

“How do all these others expect to make their sacrifice? Do they think they’ll get a shot at the animals before the kitchen deals with them?”

“They’re not thinking clearly, most of them,” Judas says. “A few think putting their nickels in and pulling out a great piece of roast lamb and then throwing it away would do the trick, under the circumstances.”

“And do you think he’s coming back only for you?”

Judas shrugs. “Who knows? We can only account for ourselves in the end, right?”

There’s one more bite of creamed spinach in the china bowl. Judas has been poking at it with his fork. Now he scoops it up and puts it in his mouth and squeezes his eyes shut at its taste. He swallows hard. “Why’d I do that?” he says.

“You thought someone knew and expected it,” Hatcher says.

“Someone always knows,” Judas says.

Hatcher does not reply.

Judas leans intently forward. “That’s why I’m going to get out. What I did at Gethsemane. He knows why.”

“When will he come for you?”

“Soon.”

“How do you know?”

“There are signs.”

“Like what?”

“I came to learn them secretly,” Judas says. “I’m not at liberty to say. But they’re happening. Patterns of the pain. Certain arrivals to this place. Cadging nickels, how that goes. Things to come. A screaming in the night sky. You have to understand, man. There’s a bunch of holy, picked-out-by-God people still here. Published. And the main players in the books too. All big time. The biggest. Still here. He’s coming for
them
, right?”

“I thought he got them before.”

“So it was said.”

“He didn’t?”

Judas shrugs.

Hatcher presses him. “He didn’t take them out of Hell?”

“Nobody down here knows for sure. I can tell you there’s a bunch of shit-if-I’m-here-and-he’s-here-who-isn’t going on. But I’ve got the faith, man. I’ve got it.”

“So you figure there’ll be quite a few going out next time?”

“Like you said, you’d think the big boys would be gone by now. But they’re not. The direct-from-the-source guys. The holy destroyers of unbelieving nations. The scourge of the infidels and the heretics. And I’m talking the scourgers from
both
sides, from
all
sides. You’d figure somebody got it right. Not a chance. But my guy was full of surprises, don’t forget. He could pick any tax clerk or hothead with fishing tackle off the street. Just get your own shit together is my advice.”

Judas suddenly stiffens and looks down at his stomach. It swells rapidly and presses tight against his tunic and a wriggling begins there, as if the things in the cream of the spinach have suddenly grown up and are ready to raise a ruckus. “Oh fuck,” he says. “I shouldn’t have been saying all this.”