Hell

by Robert Olen Butler

  “You haven’t had any writers at all?”

  “Herman Melville came in.”

  “Have you seen Virgil?”

  “He’s working on a new novel.”

  “Melville?”

  “Yes.” Sylvia shrugs. “He can’t get past the first sentence. ‘Call me E-mail.’”

  “The old-timers have trouble adjusting.”

  Sylvia waves her hand vaguely at the shelves. “No wonder they stay away.”

  Hatcher looks at the shelves. Each of the books, throughout the shop, has the same spine, a familiar segmented stacking of rectangles, differing only occasionally in color.

  “Every volume I have. Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. It’s all I can get.” Sylvia begins to weep softly. “Is it because of Adrienne, do you suppose? That I’m here, with these?”

  “Adrienne?”

  “Monnier. The woman I was with for many years.”

  “From all that I can tell . . .”

  “My father the pastor . . .”

  “. . . it would have been no different if she’d been man.”

  “. . . perhaps he was right.”

  “Your father’s probably here too. There seems to be a multitude of reasons, for all of us.”

  Sylvia is crying harder and Hatcher steps close, puts his hand on Sylvia’s shoulder. She looks up. “You wouldn’t recognize Adrienne if you saw her? No, of course not.”

  “No.”

  “How about Ernest? Hemingway. Is he here?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “And Jim Joyce?”

  “I haven’t seen either of them.”

  “Perhaps they’ll find me.”

  “Only if they can inadvertently bring you pain, I’m afraid.”

  “Oh, I’m used to that,” Sylvia says. She pats Hatcher’s hand.

  He says, “Virgil is here.”

  “Of The Aeneid?”

  “And The Inferno.”

  “As a character. Yes.”

  “He’s in a toga. His nose is mostly missing, like a statue. If you see him, please ask how Hatcher McCord can get in touch with him.”

  “You’re on the television, aren’t you,” Sylvia says.

  “Yes.”

  “You seem a nice man,” she says. “Why are you in Hell?”

  “I don’t know exactly,” he says. “But if you’re here, Ms. Beach, then I was a sure thing.”

  She pats his hand once more and he gently pulls away. They say good-bye and he goes out her door and up the street, his mind still on the question she raised. The big Why. His second wife, Deborah, fancied herself a writer. Wrote a bad memoir about the two of them, full of lies. Wrote a bad novel about the two of them without enough lies. Creative nonfiction and uncreative fiction. She could be living nearby. Virgil could be nearby. There are people to find, but he isn’t going to do it stumbling into shops and leaving messages.

  Hatcher is approaching the alley now where Virgil first took him. Up ahead, the neon BURGERS sign is popping and sparking and radiating brightly in spite of the intense sunlight all around. He slows. He stops. He waits, hoping for Virgil to appear again. But he knows this isn’t going to work. Then it occurs to him. If the upper management in Hell does not have omniscience and isn’t omnipresent, then they might need some sort of physical record-keeping. Somebody knows where the denizens are. Hatcher presses on toward Broadcast Central.

  Hatcher enters the vast marble-block building that is Broadcast Central, and about three stories up inside the towering atrial reception hall, Albert Speer is chained to the back wall with large feathery wings strapped to his arms and a Nazi eagle’s head fitted on top of his own with the beak curving down in front of his eyes. Broadcast Central is based on a Speer architectural plan, and on most days he is up there explaining his innocence to anyone whose attention he can get. Hatcher glances up at him and Speer shouts down, “You have to understand. I didn’t know how bad it was.” Hatcher never knows how to respond, so he simply lowers his face and passes under the man and through the high arched doorway and down a long, dim marble hallway to the elevators.

  On the top floor he steps from the elevator, neatly but barely missing the abrupt snapping shut of the doors—visitors often lose limbs here and have to wait for the elevator to return to be reconstituted—indeed, the floor underfoot feels blood-sticky even now—but instead of heading for the studio, Hatcher turns toward the corridor of offices. He treads lightly. He feels a blip of pleasure at treading lightly. It will do good to tread lightly so that Beelzebub will not know of his approach. No one will know. It’s Hatcher’s own little secret, moving from here to there. His mind is careening now. He is tiptoeing like a cartoon cat sneaking up on a mouse. He is enjoying this a little too much for his own good. But he settles down as he approaches Beelzebub’s outer door. And there are voices from within. He slows and stops and then eases forward. He is next to the open doorway.

  From deep inside the office, faint but clear, is a man’s familiar voice. “Your situation is very similar.”

  “The superior number two man,” Beelzebub replies.

  “May I ask a blunt question?” the voice says. Hatcher feels close to identifying the speaker.

  “I’ve brought you here for that very thing,” Beelzebub says.

  “I’ve spent an awful long time already down a drill hole full of boiling oil.” Dick Cheney. It’s Dick Cheney.

  “By way of initiation,” Beelzebub says. “You’ll suffer differently ” now.”

  “But to speak like this, when . . . you know.”

  “You’re with Beelzebub now. I’m the Supreme Ruler in this office.”

  “All right,” Cheney says. “Let me ask this. How stupid is he?”

  “Ah. Yes. Well.” Beelzebub hemming and hawing is a new thing for Hatcher to hear. The “he” must be Bee-bub’s boss.

  “With mine, you kept waiting for the slightest glimmer,” Cheney says. “But.” Even outside the door, Hatcher can hear the shrug.

  “Oh I know. I know,” Beelzebub says. “Mine is stupid. Yes. But crafty, I’d say. Smart in that way.”

  “Ah,” Cheney says. “I didn’t have to deal with that.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “We’d float the rumor that in private he was different from what he was in public. One-on-one he was so Texas-backslappy shrewd he was some sort of smart. He liked the reputation.”

  “Flattery then?”

  “Of course,” Cheney says. “But the fundamental process for men like you and me is this. The stupider the president—or any leader—the more power you arrange for him. And the more secretive you make him. Don’t disclose a thing. The insular, unitary leader. Finally he’s got so much in front of him but at the same time he’s so cozily private that even the stupid man who’s too stupid to realize he’s stupid will realize two things. He needs somebody to do the real work for him, and nobody will know the difference.”

  “Yes, I see that,” Beelzebub says. “This is good. Reassuring. I think I’m on the right track.”

  “If there’s anything I can do.”

  “You were a hunter.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll set up a hunting date in the mountains with the Old Man. We can get that Texas attorney you already diddly-plugged and put him out in the canebrake.”

  “Pardon?”

  “No need. You’ll be found innocent down here.”

  Hatcher backs quietly off, down the hall a ways, and then reapproaches noisily. He turns in at Beelzebub’s door.

  Hatcher has only rarely visited this office. The last time, the secretary in the outer office was Messalina, empress of Rome and notable nymphomaniac. Now, crossed on the desktop, are the bottoms of a pair of wide, bare feet, each, however, cloven down the center. They are attached to a large bleached-blond woman with a round, heavily-made-up face rendered oddly beautiful by enormous dark eyes. In between, she is naked, with breasts the size of Iowa pumpkins, and when her eyes move to Hatcher, she demurely dr
aws bleached-blond bat wings from behind her and folds them over her chest.

  Emerging from an inner office are the former vice president of the United States, dressed in the blue jumpsuit of a minion, and the eternal vice president of Hell, dressed in a charcoal-gray pinstripe suit and white shirt with a neatly-knotted maroon tie sporting a McDonald’s Golden Arches motif. Beelzebub’s massive and cratered face bulges above his tightly buttoned collar, with deep-set neon-red eyes and lacquered black faux hair. He sees Hatcher and smiles. “Hatcher, my boy. I think you two know each other.”

  Cheney has a faint red glow, and one side of his mouth pinches up into a smirky smile like his last boss. “My favorite debate moderator,” he says.

  “My favorite puppeteer,” I say.

  “Oh you boys,” Beelzebub says, and he looks past Hatcher. “Lily,” he says to the secretary. “Go to lunch.”

  There is a stirring behind him and Hatcher turns his head to see. The naked, bat-winged blond rises from the chair, sets up a small desktop pedestal sign that says gone for sex, rises from the floor, and thinks of something. In midair she rotates to look at Beelzebub.

  “Need anything?” she says in a venereally husky, chain-smoking, truck-stop-waitressy voice.

  “No.”

  “Fries? A Coke?”

  “I’m fine,” Beelzebub says.

  She nods and then gracefully drifts out of the office.

  “She looks familiar,” Cheney says.

  “She’s the girl of your dreams,” Beelzebub says.

  Hatcher looks back in time to see the furrow of puzzlement pass over Cheney’s face.

  “Literally,” Beelzebub says. “She’s a succubus.”

  Cheney still doesn’t get it.

  “She’s off now back to the mortal realm to fuck the new prime minister of France. In the middle of his dreams, you see.”

  Cheney shrugs.

  Hatcher says, “Perhaps the former vice president will do a ‘Why Do You Think You’re Here?’ interview.”

  Beelzebub says, “Hatcher’s got the nose for news, doesn’t he? What do you say, Dick?”

  Cheney shuffles his feet. “I have no comment on that, really. I had other priorities in life.” His face goes more or less blank, and he waits.

  Beelzebub glances at Hatcher and winks. Then he says, “Well, Dick, thanks for stopping by. Go on out in the street now.”

  Cheney nods and without another word or gesture slides past Hatcher and through the office door.

  “So, my boy,” Beelzebub says. “Congratulations.”

  It’s official. Hatcher takes a deep breath. “Thanks.”

  “I see your minionhood has emboldened you to come by the office.” Beelzebub waits one beat and then another, clearly to make Hatcher worry about his attitude toward this.

  Hatcher is exhilarated to realize that he doesn’t give a fuck. He keeps his face placid.

  “I’m glad,” Beelzebub finally says. “What’s up?”

  “I was interested in my encounter with J. Edgar Hoover.”

  “Ah yes. He has his ways, doesn’t he?”

  “Yes he does. I’d like to do a ‘Why Do You Think You’re Here?’ interview with him. In his office.”

  Beelzebub takes this in, and his face begins to vibrate ever so slightly. His eyebrows are great, flaring arcs of needle-rigid hairs, and the right one lifts high while the left one sinks low. He leans toward Hatcher and cocks his head as if he’s reading Hatcher’s deepest thoughts.

  Hatcher knows better. He cocks his own head now, lifting his own right brow and lowering his own left brow. He leans toward Beelzebub, splitting the slight remaining distance between them. After a long moment of silence between the two faces, Hatcher says, “Hoover and his earthly power are known to a great many of the denizens. Imagine how all-powerful it will make our Big Boss look for everyone in Hell to see Hoover whimpering around trying to understand his eternal damnation. On his own administrative turf.”

  Beelzebub’s eyes widen. Both eyebrows pop up together as high as they will go. He pulls back a bit. “Dude,” he says. “You surprise me. Not surprise, of course. Delight. I am just delighted to see how you are coming along. The surprise I refer to is that your pansy-ass world is capable of now and then sending along someone with something on the ball.”

  Hatcher returns his own eyebrows to their default position and he smiles an aw-shucks smile. “Thanks,” he says, thinking, If any office in Hell keeps track of where everyone is, it’s got to be Hoover’s.

  Shortly thereafter, Hatcher sits down in the recording studio and finds a script waiting for him. Beyond the glass window, Dan Rather is fidgeting in work overalls and a Lone Star Feed & Fertilizer ball cap, trying to figure out the mixing board before him. The former CBS anchor has been around Broadcast Central for a while, but Hatcher hasn’t known where he’s been working, exactly, and when he’s seen him in the halls, Hatcher can never approach him. Rather is clearly banished from the air, and whenever anyone seems to be approaching him, he backs frantically away, crying, “I don’t know the frequency!” With the glass partition between him and Hatcher, however, he stays put but fumbles around at the knobs and sliders on the board.

  Hatcher looks at the script. It’s for the Satan interview. There is a brief introduction—the segment isn’t even called an interview here—and there is the final “Satan wept.” Hatcher is simply to record his voice and the piece will be assembled, with someone else no doubt stepping in technically after Rather has suffered long enough.

  Hatcher puts his headphones on. Rather notices this and reaches to remove his cap. He instantly starts wrenching mightily at it—he’s tried unsuccessfully to do this before—but the cap won’t budge. Finally, Rather puts his headset on over the cap, leans forward, and presses the talk button. “Courage,” Rather says.

  Hatcher doesn’t quite know what he means by this, never did quite know when Rather occasionally used it to sign off from his evening news.

  Rather’s hands are fluttering and hesitating and fluttering again over the mixing board. He says, with his best West Texas twang, “Me and this job are like a hen trying to hatch a cactus,” though the remark seems not to be directed outward.

  “Dan,” Hatcher says.

  Rather looks up.

  “Good to catch up with you,” Hatcher says. He’s not sure Rather recognizes him, though they spent years vying for the same viewers.

  “I’m Hatcher McCord.”

  “I know who you are.”

  They look at each other through the glass for a long moment. “Can I ask you a question, Dan?”

  Rather nods, but he instantly asks his own question. “Are we all here?”

  “We?”

  “The newsmen. In Hell.”

  “I haven’t seen everybody.”

  “Murrow?”

  This is a sad thing for Hatcher. “So they say. When I asked about him, Beelzebub said he was smoking.”

  “Why don’t I think this has to do with Ed’s cigarettes?”

  Hatcher nods at Rather with his face scrunched to say, I know what you mean.

  Rather thinks for a moment and then says, “You know, there wasn’t a single person on earth who didn’t have millions of other people expecting them to go to Hell.”

  Hatcher hasn’t thought of it this way. “You’re right,” he says.

  “Courage,” Rather says.

  “Courage,” Hatcher says. This was the question he had for Rather, about this word. Oddly now, it feels apt.

  “I think I can start this thing up,” Rather says.

  Hatcher picks up his script. “All right.”

  Rather nods and Hatcher begins to read, “When I visited your great Father, the Supreme Ruler of Eternity, in his comfy cozy . . . ”

  Hatcher stops. “Let me start again,” Hatcher says into the microphone.

  Rather’s hands move to the board, and he says, “Whenever you’re ready.” Hatcher looks at the words before him. Until a short time ago, whenev
er they gave him something to say, he’d read it out as is. He dared do nothing else. But all of a sudden, with this typically overwrought script before him plumping up Satan—like so many that Hatcher’s done before—he can barely make his mouth shape itself around the words. He knows it’s because he feels his thoughts are his own. This is a serious danger, he realizes. Breathe free and get burned. He still can’t make his publicly verifiable deeds his own. He still dare not change a thing in his work. He topples his head forward in this recognition. Then he lifts his face once more, takes a deep breath, and looks Rather in the eyes.

  “Hatcher McCord take two,” Rather says.

  And Hatcher starts over. “When I visited your great Father, the Supreme Ruler of Eternity, in his comfy cozy living room, he greeted me with a hug, so typical of his magnanimity.”

  The script asks him to pause. He does. Then he reads, “Not that he didn’t charmingly remind me who was the boss.”

  Another pause. “Then he spoke with passionate eloquence.”

  Another pause, and now the big climax. Hatcher summons his will, unctions-up his voice, and says, “Satan wept.”

  He stops. He looks through the glass, and Dan Rather gives him the thumbs-up. Then Dan looks sharply down at his mixing board with acute concern. “Whoa Nellie,” he says. “It’s doing something.”

  This could mean anything. This could be a routine step in the editing process. The technology around the station often seems to have a mind of its own, or at least an automated sophistication that its surface—in this case, a rather old-fashioned mixing board—does not fully reveal. Or it could easily mean the onset of a bizarre and intensely painful incident typical of life in Hell. Hatcher is calm inside as he waits to see which it is, and this is new. He realizes the isolated privacy of his mind is what lets him wait for the pain without the thrashing panic, but he’s not sure why. Courage.

  And it turns out to be the routine step. “It seems to have just edited itself,” Rather says.

  The two men look at each other and then Rather does the obvious thing. He plays it. Each of them turns his face to his own monitor.