The Summer That Melted Everything(19)

“Sal?” Dad lightly drummed his fork against his plate. “I’m interested, if you are the devil, that is, what is hell like?”

Sal quickly swallowed his mouthful of potatoes and briefly wiped his mouth before saying hell is a hallway of doors.

“And behind each door is a suffering of the individual soul. One door I opened was to a man sitting in a desert. There was nothing scary about it. There was blue sky. White fluffy clouds. Rose-colored sands. There were no snakes hissing at him. No scorpions about to sting. The heat nor the sun was a threat. A thornless saguaro shaded him, and he was neither hot nor thirsty, as he had a full canteen by his side, would always have it full and by his side, no matter how much he drank. To someone else, that empty desert might have been paradise, but to that man it was absolute hell.

“Another door opened to a woman in lipstick and a dress that would cost the farm. She was sitting in a room full of flowers and tea and those little frosted cakes. She was holding a beautiful, gold-fringed blanket, cradling it as if it were wrapped around a child. You could hear the child, hear him crying, hear him laughing, hear him sleeping even. But never was he seen. All she could do was to stare into the empty blanket and will continue to do so even after grief becomes a word too small for the feeling.

“Another door opened to a day. The third Wednesday in an October. It was a country festival, the Pumpkin Show, they called it, where thousand-pound pumpkins were being judged and autumn leaves were confetti in the air. No one was crying. No one was sad. No one was noticing the man whose hell this was and who stood in the middle of the largest pumpkin pie ever baked and screamed. He screamed long. He’s screaming still, but no one hears him but himself … and me.

“People think hell is about flames and demons, but I employ no demons. There are fires, yes, each door burns. I’ve started none of these fires, not even the one that burns my own door. And just as I cannot put out my own, I cannot put out theirs.

“I have tried. I’ve carried buckets of water to these doors, but the more water I splash on the flames, the bigger they get and I have to turn away in the throbbing torture of it all. I am not the ruler of hell. I am merely its first and most famous sufferer turned custodian with the key to the gate in my back pocket.”

Mom sighed for us all. “You’re such a sad little boy.”

“That ain’t what I thought hell would be like at all.”

“What did you think it would be like?” Sal turned to me.

“Don’t know. I guess I thought demons. I thought proddin’ with cattle rods. I thought just a lot of blood. The way you describe it, it’s even more frightenin’.”

“You know where the name hell came from.” He crossed his hands on his lap. “After I fell, I kept repeating to myself, God will forgive me. God will forgive me. Centuries of repeating this, I started to shorten it to He’ll forgive me. Then finally to one word, He’ll. He’ll.

“Somewhere along the way, I lost that apostrophe and now it’s only Hell. But hidden in that one word is God will forgive me. God will forgive me. That is what is behind my door, you understand. A world of no apostrophes and, therefore, no hope.”





6

Our torments also may, in length of time,

Become our elements

—MILTON, PARADISE LOST 2:274–275

A COUPLE YEARS ago, a woman sold me a time machine at a yard sale. It looked like an ordinary window. The wood spiked along its sides, a result of it being hastily and carelessly removed from the house it once sat in. The glass was filthy, and tape was placed over the hairline crack in the bottom pane.

“I could tell by lookin’ at ya that you got some business needin’ to be done in the past,” she said, her faded American flag scarf flapping in the breeze. “Lucky for you, that there winda only opens to the world we done had, and I’ll let it go for what it costs to buy a six-pack. You ain’t gonna find time travel cheaper than that.”

“Does it really work?” I asked.

She spoke kindly, if not with some pity, “What we doin’ here, mister?”

I scratched my chin through my matted beard. “You’re selling me a time machine.”

“You don’t have a problem with that?” All her wrinkles seemed to be pulled up with her arched eyebrow. “I got a cane over there you might like. Got some shampoo too. When’s the last time you washed this hair of yours?”

She redirected her hand to fan her face. “I hate this damn heat. I mean just look at this ground beneath us.” We both looked down at the cracked earth. “You know another town ’round here has gone completely dry. Everyone in it had to pick up and move away.

“I remember a postcard of Arizona I saw when I was a little girl. Beautiful blue sky, some flowerin’ cactuses. It was the type of place you’d wanna drive your convertible in. A good life place. Turned out, it ain’t nothin’ but another hell.” She glanced from me to the time machine. “What year is it you’re headed to?”

“1984.”

“Of all the junk I thought I’d be sellin’ today, I never thought I’d be sellin’ a time machine.”

After I’d given her the money, she mumbled with just a bit of grief, “You know it’s not a real time machine, right?”

I nodded and started to drag the frame back toward my trailer.