Hollow

by Owen Egerton

  I shrug. “There’s a lot of science that says otherwise,” I say. “1692. Sir Halley, of Halley’s comet, published a paper titled An Account of the Cause of the Change of Variation of the Magnetical Needle with a Hypothesis of the Structure of the Internal Parts of the Earth. That set the ball rolling.”

  “What about gravity?” she asks. “I mean, wouldn’t a hollow planet just collapse? All the heaviest stuff moving to the center?”

  “Ever ride one of those carnival rides? The kind that spins and pins you to the wall? Earth spins. The force throws matter outwards. Our gravity is in the crust. So dig down deep enough and you’ll come out on the inner surface.”

  “And this is where you’re going? You’re digging a hole to the center of the Earth?”

  “The holes are already there. Hidden all over in caves and mineshafts. Probably even a few in Texas. But the biggest are near the South and North Pole. Symmes Holes. Hundreds of miles wide. Maybe a thousand.”

  “Is this where Santa lives?”

  I close my mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ve never heard any of this before.”

  “The cover-up has been extensive.”

  She nods as she studies me.

  “Are you living on the street?” she asks.

  “I have a place.”

  “Are you on any medication?”

  “Is this a drink or admittance exam?”

  “I’m just trying to figure out what happened,” she says.

  “You know what happened.”

  She chews her cheek and leans back. “So what’s inside a Hollow Earth?” she asks.

  I shrug. “We live on the outside skin of a balloon. Maybe others live on the inside of the skin. Maybe it’s full of dinosaurs and giants or some advanced race or Nazis.”

  “Nazis?”

  “Hitler believed in the Hollow Earth, that’s documented. At least twice during the war, he sent expeditions to the North Pole. Some people speculate that a Nazi base in Neuschwabenland was actually an entry into the Hollow Earth and it was Hitler’s escape plan. Some think he’s there now, hiding out with a few dedicated followers.”

  “He’d be dead by now,” she says.

  “Not if the inner sun prolongs life, as most believe.”

  “When you say most . . .”

  “Most Hollow Earthers.”

  “Oh,” she says, her nod light and condescending. “And you believe all this? Hollow Earth, inner sun, Nazis?”

  “The Nazi idea is just a theory.”

  She stares at me, waiting. I tap the table. She keeps watching me for a long quiet moment.

  “Those emails . . .” I begin. “The notes signed from God . . . I can’t picture who it is.”

  “It could be anyone,” she says. “Some troll read about you in the news and has a hard-on for torture.”

  “I mean, I can’t imagine a person. I try—some kid in a basement or something—but no image sticks.” I pause. “Do you know the second commandment?”

  “No graven images, right?”

  “‘Thou shall not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above.’ You’re not allowed to picture the divine.” I shake my head. “If I could imagine a person, I could dismiss it. But I can’t. I just have these messages from nowhere. And nowhere is everywhere.”

  “Just like God,” she says.

  “How can you argue with what you cannot comprehend?”

  “Dr. Bonds, God is not sending you emails.”

  “Did you know that same verse, Exodus 20:4, tells us we’re also forbidden to make images of all that ‘is in the earth beneath’? It’s true, ‘in the earth beneath.’ The Hollow Earth. I’m breaking this commandment all the time. I’m crafting image after image of the earth beneath. But I don’t hold on to any one image for very long. I imagine crystal cities and singing giants. I imagine flesh-eating insects the size of horses. I imagine oceans of souls swirling. Anything is possible.”

  “In a lecture you said human beings will believe almost anything.”

  “I said human beings have the capacity to believe almost anything.”

  She smiles and drains her drink. “Look at us, Dr. Bonds. It’s like I’m back at school.”

  “My tits hurt, Ollie!” Carrie said, stepping away.

  “I’ll avoid them.”

  “Hell yeah, you’ll avoid them.” We laughed. But it was a tight, mean mirth from both of us.

  Carrie and I had made love twice since his birth.

  Miles was over a year old—first steps and new words. But days had no rest, no pause, and nights were spurts of sleep interrupted by panic yells. Carrie and I were ragged with sleeplessness, both of us sensitive as broken teeth.

  “Do you know how long it’s been since I’ve slept more than three consecutive hours, Oliver?”

  “I know, I know.”

  “I feel crazy, Oliver. Really crazy.”

  We argued in ways we never had—stone-sharp words and boiling silences. I felt thick shame on many of those days, understanding this should be the happiest time of my life, but finding myself overwhelmed and, at times, resentful.

  Carrie’s sister suggested the Cry-It-Out Method. So we bought a book (there was always a book) and chose the first week of winter break to teach the baby how to sleep.

  The book laid out a three-day plan. First night the baby cries and you go into the nursery, you touch his back, but you don’t pick him up. When he cries again, you wait ten minutes before going in to him and again touch his back. Next time you wait fifteen minutes. Night two, you don’t go in at all. He cries. You wait. He cries. We were told this led to self-soothing.

  The urge—animal-deep—is to go and gather your child. To hold him. But we followed the book. We always followed a book. It was hellish, but it was effective. Night three, no tears.

  Strange, but the next few nights I woke to no cries and lay in the silence. No more night vigils. Rocking him, pacing to the rhythm of Iron & Wine ballads. Miles cooing and chewing on my T-shirt. At times I found myself missing the cries and cursing the sleep.

  And even as Miles slept, Carrie and I hardly touched.

  Her desire was gone. A chemical change. This was as incomprehensible to me as losing the desire to eat. Skipping a meal—or several—I could understand. But to lose the sensation of hunger? We had enjoyed so many meals together. And how good had it been to find we were almost always hungry at the same time?

  I was starving. Carrie had no appetite at all.

  “Come on, Carrie,” I said. “I just feel it would bring us closer.”

  “You sound like a sixteen-year-old begging for a hand job.”

  “A hand job would be nice.”

  “You’ve got a hand,” she said. “Use it.”

  “It’s been four months.”

  “You’re counting!”

  “I’m aware.”

  “Jesus, you have a punch card or something?”

  I felt like a sixteen-year-old, the same bubbling frustration, the same conniving, clumsy attempts at seduction. How many mornings did I snuggle to her and have her roll away? How many nights did I touch her back as we stood in the kitchen only to have her flinch?

  Her body had been given over. The entry point had become an exit route. Her breasts, food processors. Her body was for a baby, not for me. I was jealous. Jealous of my infant son. Jealous of the unquestioning adoration she poured on him.

  It was not just the sex I missed. I missed her. I missed her horribly. Missed a shared bottle of wine and late breakfasts and midday movies. And doing nothing. Being in the same space with time to do nothing. I missed her. I missed that life. And I pouted.

  I was afraid. Afraid she’d given up and joined this other tribe—the neutered, bland, minivan tribe. I feared that soon, l
ike a beaten dog, I’d stop pursuing her, stop chasing what I couldn’t have, stop even wanting it. Feared I’d lose my sex and with it my youth.

  I had a wonderful new baby. I was grateful. But there was that spiteful sixteen-year-old in my head frustrated as hell he wasn’t getting laid.

  Ashley took my Wisdom Literature course that semester—three seats in, two rows back.

  She was just another student. A little more attentive than the yawning store-bought blondes and grade-hungry business majors. A little sadder, perhaps. A little more sarcastic. She dressed in browns and black, a mature air, even if it was a bit forced. Pale legs, like yogurt. In colder weather she’d splotch red, yogurt with raspberries. She wore the same slight scent as she does today—cut flowers.

  Ashley did not flirt. I had students who did—the same crafted flirt they had practiced on high school coaches and friends’ fathers. A playful, girlish sexuality asking for treats and special treatment. Ashley did none of this.

  But she did return to my office hours. We discussed her plans to earn a master’s and a PhD in religious studies, we covered other subjects in the class—book of Ecclesiastes, Gnostic Gospels, Tao Te Ching. She told me about her family—a father she despised and a sister she hardly saw. But eventually we always came back to Job.

  “Does Job believe in heaven?” She referred to Job in the present, the grammatically proper way to refer to a character in fiction as opposed to a historical figure. That was my influence. “There’s all that stuff about how brief life is. How death lasts forever. But there’s Sheol. Sheol is like heaven, right?”

  “Sheol is death,” I said. “Not unlike the Greeks’ Hades. It’s not really an afterlife, it’s more a depiction of how these ancients view nonlife. Job calls it ‘the black, disordered land where darkness is the only light.’”

  “So no Hallmark cards saying Sorry for your loss. Your loved one is in a better place?”

  “I doubt there was much of a market.”

  “My mother loved saying that. Anyone—anything died. Your goldfish is in a better place. So very lucky to die.” She bit at her thumbnail. “So Sheol . . . Everyone goes there?”

  “Everyone.”

  “Except God.”

  “It’s the place you go when God forgets your name.”

  When I spoke of belief from a book or a tradition, I didn’t qualify it with According to Job or The Romans believed. I spoke of each religion as my own. Temporarily claiming its beliefs, at least grammatically.

  I can be quoted as saying:

  “God tolerates humanity, but just barely.”

  “We’ve all been reborn countless times. And will continue to be until we attain liberation.”

  “And a horn will be blown loud enough to be heard the whole world over, and the Chosen will be swept up to meet Jesus in the sky.”

  This tendency to slip in and out of religious personas through one lecture simultaneously entertained and baffled my students. They made a game of trying to pin down what I actually believed. They’d quiz me, try to snag me in a trap, like the Pharisees questioning Jesus on paying taxes.

  I was arrogantly objective, convinced that only a nonbeliever may study what others believe. I did my best to be neutral and nonjudgmental. But in truth, I judged anyone who wasn’t the same kind of neutral as me.

  If intensely pressed—usually by a wide-eyed, C. S. Lewis–quoting evangelical with an unquenchable mission to convert their hell-bound professors—I’d confess that my family attended St. Christopher’s Episcopalian church. This relaxed them. But I added that I refused to sign any statement of belief. I wasn’t a believer.

  Part of this was based on my own prejudice against defining members of a tradition as believers. The concept that our beliefs define us as opposed to our actions is a modern Western view I found narrowing.

  But more than that, I believed I believed nothing.

  It wasn’t true.

  I believed, without ever saying it, that the world was basically good. I believed moral behavior was rewarded by the world. I believed cruelty to be its own kind of punishment. And though I never would have admitted it to anyone, least of all myself, I believed that the most horrible things don’t really happen.

  I saw the photos of typhoons drowning entire villages or genocidal wars. Monthly I tithed to charities aiming to end modern slavery or encourage basic health care in poorer nations. But in some deep secret way, I didn’t believe in these tragedies. They were distant, unreal, fantastic. Or, worse, I believed I simply didn’t see the bigger picture, the vague grander scheme that explained these tragedies.

  I had one overarching belief, so basic to my life that I never felt the need to distinguish it as a belief any more than a person would count the sun’s heat as an article of faith. I believed the world made sense.

  As the weeks rolled by, Ashley’s conversation grew more sophisticated, her thinking sharper. The class was now discussing the feminine portrayal of wisdom in Proverbs. Ashley was still on Job.

  “So basically theodicy comes down to this,” she said one afternoon. “God is either all-powerful but not all-loving—he could help us, but won’t. Or God’s all-loving, but not all-powerful. He’d rather us not suffer, but there’s nothing he can do about it. Sadistic or weak, take your pick.”

  “That’s the Epicurean paradox,” I said, a tad smugly. I was usually a tad smug in my office. “But there’s another option. Perhaps suffering is there to teach us something.”

  “Redemptive suffering,” she said, her forehead frowning. “You mentioned that in class.”

  “It’s perhaps our culture’s greatest myth.” I liked that statement. I had said it often. “It’s in every Hollywood movie. The hero has to suffer before he wins the day. And, of course, Christian theology is built on the idea that the God-Man’s suffering redeems the world.”

  “It’s the same bullshit Job’s friends feed him.” She leaned back, propping a foot on the edge of my desk. Her leg, I noticed, was defined, firm, and pale as winter. “Suffering comes straight from God—either to punish us or teach or redeem us. Suffering serves a purpose. It’s bullshit.”

  “In Man’s Search for Meaning, Frankl says—”

  “I know. I know,” she said, rolling her eyes. “The world is meaningless, so we must invent our own meaning.”

  Her foot on my desk, her eyes rolling like some teen told to turn down the stereo, but her mind crafting elegant arguments and questions.

  “More bullshit,” she said. “Instead of inventing meaning, maybe we just to need to come to terms with meaninglessness.”

  I smiled. “You are going to love grad school.”

  She chuckled and the edge of her cheekbones blushed pink.

  I’d all but promised her admission to the University of Texas master’s program for the following fall. In time, I’d oversee her thesis, perhaps her dissertation. We had years ahead of us.

  I watch from the sidewalk as the blond boy crawls on top of the monkey bars. His face shines. The teacher doesn’t see him. She’s with a child in the sandbox. Besides me, a little girl is the only other witness to his feat. She grins wildly at him, clapping her hands. He’s won her heart for life.

  His right hand slips. I call out, seeing what will happen. The teacher looks up as he falls, hitting the ground with a thud.

  “Archer!” I call.

  The teacher scoops him up, hushing his tears. She glares at me, then turns to the building.

  The whole Agape Center smells of popcorn. They cook up a batch up every Friday and play a rented DVD in the gym.

  When I volunteered, a retired actuary named Daniel made the popcorn. He would make one batch with double the artificially flavored butter oil. The popcorn came out wet and delicious. The neighbors loved it. “Ha,” Daniel would call out as he stepped from the kitchen with a tray of bagged popcorn, the paper already tra
nsparent from the oil. “Come and get it.” And they would. They’d rush to it. “Popcorn crack,” he’d say to me.

  Davis spills sweetener. He’s twenty or so, lives at home with his parents, but comes to Agape for breakfast at least twice a week. Half his body doesn’t work and the left side of his face swells like a rotten fruit. Davis idolizes Elvis. Every month or so he dyes his blond reedy hair jet black and twists his body, hubbubbing at the neighbors and high school youth groupers who volunteer on their school breaks.

  Davis tells me he’s engaged. The mother-in-law-to-be doesn’t approve, but he’s engaged. Elvis’s mother-in-law-to-be hated him too. But Elvis didn’t care. Elvis did what he wanted to do.

  As Davis chronicles Elvis’s romantic accomplishments, a man rushes up to us, his two middle bottom teeth missing. His eyes ice blue and wide. “I can’t stay. Wish I could. I can’t stay. I’m off to lunch. You know, I have nine years of college. I have a master’s. I could fix that computer, if it ever breaks. I can. I fixed one for the Baptists. And I play. Cello, piano, bass. I picked up a bass and played. People said, my God, look how you play? Been doing it for thirty years! I can tune that.” He points to the old piano against the wall. “I can tune that, easy. I did that for the Baptists, too. I tuned it and they said, my God, that plays good. And I said yeah. I have perfect pitch. Ahhhh. That’s B-flat. I know. I’ve got perfect pitch. But I still want to improve myself. Still want to further my education. Can’t have enough education. But I can’t stay. Wish I could.”

  Ben comes in from outside, his face swelling around his ping-pong eyes. From the cheekbone up, his face is a red wound bruising purple and yellow.

  “What happened?” I ask.

  “Gravity,” he says.

  As I wait for the computer, I pick up a waterlogged King James Bible from the windowsill. I flip through the wrinkled pages. Blue ink handwriting catches my eye. A scrawled sentence at the top of a page of Deuteronomy.

  Charlie tells me I have twenty minutes on the computer. I have two new emails. Lyle has forwarded an email from Dr. Jim Horner with a single line note “ASKING FOR AN EXTENSION!!!”

  Fellow Explorer, welcome.