But that’s not it at all. He and Anne reach the back of the crowd and start pushing their way through the rough cloth and the skins and the fetid stink of ancient bodies, and it’s instantly clear that the sounds are coming from the Old Ones themselves. They are huddling hard together and lifting their faces and crying like goats, and it’s tough pushing through, the bodies are thick and unyielding, and Hatcher vaguely remembers a Bible verse about the Son of God coming in glory and separating the sheep from the goats, and Hatcher feels in his chest and in his arms and in his throat and behind his eyes a powerful swelling of belief. He believes. Yes. He believes that a way out of Hell is just ahead, and he presses in front of Anne and holds her hand even more tightly and he puts his shoulder heavily ahead of him and he pushes hard and they are moving, the bodies are sliding aside, parting like the sea, and he and Anne break at last from the drove and into an empty stretch of street, empty but for half a dozen bearded men in tunics cracking whips and driving back this crowd found unworthy of Heaven.
One of these goatherders cocks his head in surprise at seeing these two Moderns fly out of the crowd, but he does not try to stop them. And Hatcher and Anne rush on toward another crowd of the Old Ones in front of the Automat. Hands are shooting up and waving and falling and shooting up again and the cries of this crowd are “Me!” and “Me!” and “Save me Lord!” and “I am worthy!” and “I am worthier!” and “I am worthiest!” and a body—a very old man in a bear skin—comes hurtling out of the crowd and he is carried along toward the drove of the damned faster than his feet are moving, and he is already bleating, and another body flies out, a woman in a long dark robe and with a scarf covering her face and her goat voice is thin and full of vibrato.
Hatcher and Anne reach this other crowd and stop. Hatcher looks around for Judas. He is about to call for him, but Anne pulls at Hatcher’s hand. “Over there,” she says, and she draws him to a thickening of this crowd, and the two of them stretch up and they look and they can barely see the very top of a liver-brown head of hair in the empty center of this crowd—distance is being kept from this man—and the man cries in a loud voice, “Ye fed me!” and another man’s voice yelps in joy, and the loud voice cries, “Go ye forth to the Chariot of Fire,” and Hatcher can see the tops of the heads of the far part of the inner circle of the crowd open for the chosen one making his way toward Lucky Street. And then the loud-voiced man cries, “Ye gave me no meat!” and another voice wails in anguish but the wail quickly morphs into a goat cry and a body flies from the crowd and back down Peachtree Way. Hatcher and Anne look at each other with the same thought. Are we hearing the voice of the Son of God? Even as they think this, Hatcher also thinks the voice sounds faintly familiar and he tries to remember some moment, somewhere in his earthly life—did he have a miraculous encounter?—did he actually hear the voice of Jesus in his life?
“We have to get closer,” Anne says.
Hatcher takes her hand and steps before her and reaches forward to try to part the bodies in front of him. But he feels Anne’s hand wrench out of his. He looks back to her.
“You need both hands,” she says. “I’ll be right behind you.”
He nods and begins to turn.
“Wait,” she says, wrenching him around. “This,” she says and she lays her hand on his tie.
He looks down. The powder-blue shocks him like blood from an unexpected wound.
He grabs at the knot at his throat and tears it open, untangles the tie, and stuffs it in his jacket pocket. “I never did . . . ,” he says. “I never even . . . I never.”
“That’s for Him to decide,” Anne says.
They look at each other and then in unison they strike their chests three times in the mea culpa.
And Hatcher is ripping and shoving and punching and pounding his way through the crowd, one layer, and another, and once, he glances quickly back and Anne is there, shoving away, and another goat is identified up ahead, and another sheep—Hatcher is no longer listening to the words of the Son of God, not till he can stand before Him, not till then, but he knows the work of winnowing is going on and Hatcher plays over a little litany of I-nevers as he struggles with the crowd, which still has many layers before him.
Now a voice nearby says, “He’s on the move,” and another takes it up, louder, “He’s moving!” and another shouts, “He’s done! He’s leaving!” and then a wild chorus of “No, Lord!” and “Take me too, Lord!” and even “I’m more faithful than that camel turd you just chose!” and even “You’ll understand if you just read my book!”
And the crowd surges and carries Hatcher along and he senses his crowd skills are still good, though they let him slide out of the flow, not with it, but that might be okay, to get to the margin of the crowd and head for the Chariot on his own, but as he feels he needs to make a move to the side and get out, he reaches back for Anne and grabs a hairy man’s arm—Esau’s, in fact—which pulls away, and Hatcher looks over his shoulder and Anne is nowhere in sight and the crowd is surging forward and she is nowhere and he calls out “Anne!” but the sound is lost in the din of the men all around him.
She’s gone. She’s lost to him for now. So he presses toward the edge of the crowd, angling through the seams, and as he moves readily, he thinks that maybe it’s for the best, surely it’s for the best, surely she will have a better chance if she’s not in the company of Satan’s anchorman, but surely he has a chance too, surely the Son of God has seen into his heart in Hell and knows he’s been trying to separate himself from the spirit of the place, and didn’t he do something pretty good against the odds down here? Hatcher thinks so, but he can’t remember now, he can’t quite remember what it was, exactly, but surely God knows, surely God can see into his heart, can hear his mind.
And as Hatcher pops out of the crowd and tumbles to the pavement and skids along, it comes to him in a terrible rush: if Satan can’t hear our thoughts, can’t read our deep inner selves, maybe God can’t either. Maybe it takes meat.
He scrambles to his feet. The crowd is surging past him and around the corner. He is standing before the door to the Automat. But it’s a little late, he knows, to go in and effectively not buy a lamb chop. He takes a step toward the corner and his hands are at his sides and suddenly his left palm feels a complicated metal something. He lifts the hand and finds two car keys on a looped key ring with a heavy bronze fob engraved D CK. Nixon is disappearing around the corner up ahead.
Hatcher follows and he turns the corner and the crowd thickens and he keeps his head down and works hard to push through, and then, as with the first crowd, he breaks into a sudden sizable empty space. Another line of whip wielders is trying to keep order, and again they ignore a Modern coming through, and ahead are the chosen, queuing up. Dick Nixon is hustling toward the line, and now Hatcher feels something, a large physical presence, and he stops and turns his face and looks up, and across the street, sitting in the rubble-filled lot at the corner, looming high over everyone, is a vast, primitive rocket ship, an amped-up Wernher-von-Braun-model V-2 with an extra pair of wings mid-body and portholes all along the side and a door at its base, a narrow door—though wider than the eye of a needle—with a metal staircase ascending to it.
At the bottom of the stairs leading to the door of the rocket, his back to Hatcher, is a man in a flowing crimson robe, the man with the liver-brown hair, which hangs down to his shoulders, the man of the loud voice, the Son of God, guiding the line of the chosen, placing a gentle hand in the small of each passing back. Including Dick Nixon, who enters even as Hatcher watches. Nixon made it. Hatcher tries in his mind to put Jesus with this machine, and again he looks up the long, gray body of the rocket. It is streaked in black, as if with reentry scorch marks. And up near the nose of the rocket is a word in Old German typeface, running at right angles to the ground. Hatcher angles his head to the side to read it: Herausforderer. He can’t figure the word out by cognates. But he thinks perhaps this is the hand of Wernher von Braun showing itself.
And if von Braun is in Heaven making chariots of fire and if Dick Nixon has made it as well, then maybe Hatcher and Anne have a chance.
Anne. Hatcher snaps his head back toward the crowd, but he can see only bearded male faces. He takes a step in that direction. He is about to call out her name. Then suddenly she’s beside him.
“We can approach our savior together,” she says.
“Anne.” He tries to take her in his arms, but she presses away with her hands stiffly on his chest.
“There’ll be time for that later,” she says.
He pulls back his hands.
“You have to get me out first,” she says.
“You may do better going to Him alone,” he says.
Her brow furrows as she contemplates that.
“I’ll follow,” he says.
They turn toward the Chariot of Fire. Jesus is bouncing along the line now, coming in this direction, his exhortations not quite audible from this distance. He has one hand on his beard as he rushes along. His hair does not flow with his steps. Something seems off.
“It’s all about our minds, man,” a voice says behind Hatcher. “It’s all about the human mind.”
Hatcher turns. It’s Judas.
“What we remember,” Judas says in a rush. “What we forget. We choose those things for ourselves and it all has to do with what we want. And what we fear. You know? What drives us. What we gotta have. What we’re scared shitless to have. And they can always fuck with us, the powers that be. The powers can fuck with us because of our minds.”
“Isn’t He going to take you?” Hatcher says.
Judas ignores the question and he talks ever faster. “See, our minds aren’t really us. They’ve got their own agendas. If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, small is the number of people who see with their eyes and think with their minds, if only we could pluck out our brains and see only with our eyes.”
And now behind Hatcher he can hear the voice of Jesus, that familiar voice. “Hurry, my lambs. Hurry. It’s time.”
And Judas says with sudden, calm slowness, “I’ve been through this before, man. I remember now.”
Jesus’s voice is very close and Hatcher begins to turn.
“A hundred times,” Judas says.
And Hatcher is facing Jesus, who is very near. And the liver-brown hair is a bad wig. And the beard is fake. Plastic, hooked loosely over the ears. And inside the overlarge robe is a small, dark-skinned man with a smarmy voice that Hatcher remembers from a special exposé they ran on the alleged fakery and fraud of his miracle services. Jesus is a creepy little self-denominated evangelist named Benny Hinn. Hinn looks Hatcher in the eyes and he says, “Come along, my lamb. Come along.” He looks at Anne. “You too, my dear.” And Hinn turns and he starts pushing the people at the back of the line, and the chosen ones stampede forward for the rocket ship.
“It’s a different dude each time,” Judas says softly. He’s standing at Hatcher’s side now. “They always seem to actually believe they’re the Man Himself while it’s going on.”
Hatcher looks toward Anne, who is standing in absolute stillness at his other side, her mouth tight and drawn down.
And so the three remain for a while. Hatcher McCord, Anne Boleyn, and Judas Iscariot watch as the last of Benny Hinn’s chosen lambs enter the door of the rocket, and then Hinn himself steps in, turning at last in the doorway to make the sign of the cross before disappearing into the darkness and closing the door behind him. Faces appear at the portholes. One of them is Dick Nixon. One of them is Carl Crispin, whose fingers appear beside his chin and wiggle farewell to Hatcher. Then the rocket begins to make a deep, thunderous sound, and it begins to tremble, and great plumes of black smoke roll from its exhaust port, and the rocket begins slowly to lift from the ground, and it rises and rises and the three observers tilt their heads far back watching and Judas says, “We need to go inside now. Quickly.”
And Judas leads them along Lucky Street toward the Automat, even as all the other petitioners for Heaven are surging past them toward the place where the rocket took off. But at the corner, Hatcher stops and turns and looks up at the distant Chariot of Fire with flaming exhaust, soaring high into the powder-blue sky of Hell, glinting in the faux sunlight. And suddenly the rocket vanishes in a vast, booming bloom of white smoke.
“Hurry,” Judas says, pulling at Hatcher’s arm, and the two of them and Anne push through the Automat’s doors just in time to avoid the dense, flaming rain of metal shards and body parts falling all over the neighborhood.
Through it all, through the clanking and thwacking and squinching in the street and through the cries of the Old Ones left behind as they stagger in from the carnage outside, Hatcher and Anne and Judas sit at a back table and say nothing. Eventually, after all the pieces of the Herausforderer and its passengers have finished falling from the sky, and after the ones who were not chosen and who escaped maiming and burying under body and rocket parts out there are sobbing and wailing inside the Automat, Anne turns to Hatcher and says, “I have to go now.”
Hatcher does not look at her. He knows where she must go.
He feels the Cadillac’s keys in his pocket. He knows Dick Nixon is scattered around the neighborhood.
“I’ll take you,” he says softly.
And they rise.
Judas reaches up and touches Hatcher on the arm. “I’m sorry, man,” he says.
Hatcher wants to say something encouraging to Judas, and he begins, “The next time . . .” but he realizes he doesn’t know how to finish the sentence. Perhaps with “. . . it will really be him and he’ll know you.”
But before Hatcher can find those words, Judas finishes the sentence himself. “. . . I will have forgotten all about this.”
Hatcher nods. “Good luck,” he says.
“I hope you’ll remember not to believe me,” Judas says.
“If I do, I’ll remind you,” Hatcher says.
“Deal,” Judas says, and he makes a fist and extends it. Hatcher does too, and they bump knuckles. When he pulls away, Anne is already waiting at the door.
Hatcher crosses the floor, and Anne is looking outside. He stops beside her and she touches the door handle.
“Wait,” Hatcher says. She pulls her hand back. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out his powder-blue tie. He lifts his collar, puts the tie around his neck, lowers the collar, and ties a perfect Windsor knot, growing sadder with each wrap and tuck.
Driving the Cadillac Fleetwood, his head is full of the red and black flying bugs named after the word that is never spoken in Hell, known in some places as honeymoon flies. Hatcher can’t even remember when it was or why he was there, but he was driving a rental car along a highway in northern Florida, and it was the season for these bugs, and when they reach maturity, each finds a spouse and the two of them begin to fuck and they never stop. They attach their bodies, male and female, at the tip and then spend the rest of their lives together fucking. Awake or asleep, sitting on fence posts or flying around, they never stop fucking. And even when the male dies, which, in the natural course of events, always occurs first, the two of them continue to stay sexually connected, the female dragging the dead male’s body around until she lays her eggs. And in their season, they fill the skies, flying around in coupled pairs. You drive your car to a constant ping and ping and ping, the sound of death as you hit and crush the mated couples. And there is no way to avoid this. For you to live, for you to move from one place to another, means you are the bringer of death, the creator of thousands of tragic romances.
It’s the sound Hatcher thinks of now as he drives the Fleetwood. He is driving fast to a constant thump and thump and thump of bodies in the crowded streets of the Great Metropolis. He has to drive fast. He’s sorry to be visiting pain on these denizens, but if it wasn’t him it would be something else. And he knows now that this is it forever. Nothing makes any difference about
anything and you always get put back together to be hurt some more, so he might as well get this over with quickly. He must, in fact. Because inside the car there is only silence. Anne is sitting next to him, and they have nothing to say to each other, and this simple silence now between them as he drives her to the Raffles Hotel to be with Henry for eternity, this silence is the worst torture he has experienced in Hell. If only he could die and have her drag him around forever. Or if they could die together in a rush of wind and a car horn and they could just stay dead, coupled and dead.
And the constant thumping stops. They are free of the city streets and rushing through the desert and the Raffles is not far. And the closer they get to Henry, the more deeply this ongoing mystery settles into Hatcher: why, in life and in afterlife, we seek—we even create—the things that hurt us.
“It won’t be long,” he says.
She does not answer.
He glances at her. She is looking out the side window at the passing wasteland.
“This is the last of us,” he says, softly.
In his periphery he can tell that she turns her face toward him. But he does not look at her. He cannot bear to do that right now.
“Yes,” she says.
“He cut off your head,” Hatcher says, even more softly.
“Yes.”
Then why are you his forever? That’s what Hatcher wants to know. But he cannot summon the energy to ask.
She waits a long while before she speaks. “Will says that April is the cruelest month.”
“That was a later guy who said that. He’s here too, somewhere.” Anne shrugs this off. If she can shrug off Henry taking her head, she can shrug off Shakespeare stealing a good line.
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