The Living End Read online

  I was in a Home. I was an infant!”

  “Sure, sure,” God said.

  “And that’s why? That’s why?”

  “You went dancing. You wore zippers in your pants and drove automobiles. You smoked cigarettes and sold the demon rum.”

  “These are Your reasons? This is Your explanation?”

  “You thought Heaven looked like a theme park!”

  Ellerbee shook his head. Could this be happening? This pettiness signaled across the universe? But anything could happen, everything could, and Ellerbee began again to pray.

  “Lord,” he prayed, “Heavenly Father, Dear God-maybe whatever is is right, and maybe whatever is is right isn’t, but I’ve been around now, walking up and down in it, and everything is true. There is nothing that is not true. The philosopher’s best idea and the conventional wisdom, too. So I am praying to You now in all humility, asking Your forgiveness and to grant one prayer.”

  “What is it?” God asked.

  Ellerbee heard a strange noise and looked around. The damned, too, were on their knees all the lost souls, all the gargoyles, all the demons, kneeling in fire, capitulate through Hell like a great ring of the conquered.

  “What is it?” He asked.

  “To kill us, to end Hell, to close the camp.”

  “Amen,” said Ellerbee and all the damned in a single voice.

  “Ha!” God scoffed and lighted up Hell’s blazes like the surface of a star. Then God cursed and abused Ellerbee, and Ellerbee wouldn’t have had it any other way. He’d damned him, no surrogate in Saint’s clothing but the real McCoy Son of a Bitch God Whose memory Ellerbee would treasure and eternally repudiate forever, happily ever after, world without end.

  But everything was true, even the conventional wisdom, perhaps especially the conventional wisdom-that which had made up Heaven like a shot in the dark and imagined into reality halos and Hell, gargoyles, gates of pearl, and the Pearl of Great Price, that had invented the horns of demons and cleft their feet and conceived angels riding clouds like cowboys on horseback, their harps at their sides like goofy guitars.

  Everything. Everything was. The self and what you did to protect it, learning the house odds, playing it safe -the honorable percentage baseball of existence.

  Forever was a long time. Eternity was. He would seek out Ladlehaus, his murderer’s accomplice, let bygones be bygones. They would get close to each other, close as family, closer. There was much to discuss in their fine new vocabularies. They would speak of Minneapolis, swap tales of the Twin Cities.

  They would talk of Ron, of others in the syndicate. And Ladlehaus; had seen May, had caught her in what Ellerbee hoped was her grief on the Six O’clock News. They would get close. And one day he would look for himself in Ladlehaus’s glowing blisters.

  Part II The Bottom Line

  Ladlehaus was chewing the fat with Ellerbee, reminiscing about his days as an accomplice and accessory.

  “You used to be a handbag?” Ellerbee said.

  “A handb-? Oh yeah. You know I never used to get jokes? I could tell them once I heard them, I had a good ear, but I never understood why folks laughed. That’s interesting, too,” he said.

  “If a fellow told a joke I thought it was a true story. I never laughed at punch lines. It was only when other folks were around and I heard them laugh that I knew.”

  ““Folks’?” Ellerbee said.

  “A hotshot accomplice like you says ‘folks’?”

  “Death softens the tongue,” Ladlehaus said, “it kindly’s us.” He barely recognized himself in Ellerbee’s blisters.

  “I’ve aged,” he said.

  “You were aged to begin with,” Ellerbee said.

  “All right,” he said, “let me.” He combed Ladlehaus’s back for a reflection. They were like apes grooming each other.

  “It’s how I got into crime in the first place,” Ladlehaus said, turning around, “not getting the point of jokes, I mean.”

  Ellerbee said, “Don’t squirm. I know what you mean. When you didn’t laugh they thought you were tough. They perceived as character what was only affliction. They hard-guy’d you, they street corner’d and candy stored you. I know what you mean.”

  “They scaffolded my body with switchblades and pieces,” Ladlehaus said.

  “I know what you mean.”

  “They Saturday night special’d me.

  “We can get Ladlehaus,” they’d say. But so tough in their imaginations that at first they wouldn’t risk it.”

  “Trigger-happy. I know what you mean. We can only exchange information. Then what happened?”

  “The usual.”

  “The usual? I didn’t move in your circles. I don’t know what you mean. What was the usual in your circles?”

  “They put me behind steering wheels with my headlamps off and my motor running a half block upwind from the scenes of crimes.”

  “oh yes.”

  “It was progress of a sort, training. Everybody gets better at things, everybody gets the big break.

  Opportunity knocks. I never had a record. Did I tell you? I had no record.”

  “You told me.”

  “I lived to be almost a hundred and died of natural causes-an organic, unbleached death like something brought back from the Health Food Store. And no record.” He looked at his friend, at his cooked face, reduced as ember.

  “You know,” he said, “this is very decent of you, Ellerbee. In your position I’m not sure I wouldn’t harbor a grudge.”

  “It’s too hot to harbor a grudge,” Ellerbee said. It’s ironic,” Ladlehaus said dreamily, “I was an accomplice to your murder and now we’re good pals.”

  “It’s too hot to be good pals,” Ellerbee said, and ran off howling.

  God came to Hell. He was very impressive, Ladlehaus thought. He’d seen Him once before, from a distance-a Being in spotless raiment who sat on a magnificent golden throne. He looked different now.

  He was clean-shaven and stood before Ladlehaus and the others in a carefully tailored summer suit like a pediatrician in a small town, a smart tie mounted at His throat like a dagger. The flawless linen, light in color as an army field cot, made a quiet statement. He was hatless and seemed immensely comfortable and at ease. Ladlehaus couldn’t judge His age.

  “Hi,” God said.

  “I’m the Lord. Hot enough for you?” He asked whimsically and frowned at the forced laughter of the damned.

  “Relax,” He said, “it’s not what you think This isn’t a harrowing of Hell, there’ll be no gleaning or winnowing. I’m God, not Hodge. It’s only an assembly. How you making out? Are there any questions?” God looked around but there were no takers.

  “No?” He continued, “where are My rebels and organizers, My hotshot bizarrerie, all you eggs in one basket curse-God-and- diers? Where are you? You-punks, Beelzebubs, My iambic angels in free fall, what’s doing? There are no free falls, eh? Well, you’re right, and it’s okay if you don’t have questions.

  “The only reason I’m here is for ubiquitous training. I’m Himself Himself and I don’t know how I do it. I don’t even remember making this place. There must have been a need for it because everything fits together and I’ve always been a form- follows-function sort of God, but sometimes even I get confused about the details. Omniscience gives Me eyestrain. I’ll let you in on something I wear contacts. Oh yes.

  I grind the lenses Myself. They’re very strong. Well, you can imagine.

  You’d go blind just trying them on. And omnipotence-that takes it out of you. I mean if you want to work up a sweat try omnipotence for a few seconds. To heck with your jogging and isometrics and crash diets. Answering prayer that another one. Plugged in like the only switchboard operator in the world.

  You should hear some of the crap I have to listen to.

  “Dear God, put a wave in my hair, I’ll make You novenas for a month of Sundays.”

  “Do an earthquake in Paris, Lord, I’ll build a thousand-bed hospital.
”

  “You like this? You like this sort of thing? Backstage with God? Jehovah’s Hollywood? Yes? Or maybe you’re archeologically inclined? Historically bent, metaphysically. Well here I am. Here I am that I am. God in a good mood. Numero Uno Mover moved. Come on, what would you really like to know?

  How I researched the Netherlands? Where I get My ideas?”

  “Sir, is there Life before Death?” one of the damned near Ladlehaus called out.

  “What’s that,” God said, “graffiti?”

  “Is there Life before Death?” the fellow repeated.

  “Who’s that? That an old-timer? Is it? Someone here so long his memory’s burned out on him, his engrams charred and gone all ashes? Can’t remember whether breakfast really happened or’s only part of the collective unconscious?

  How you doing, old-timer? Ladlehaus, right?” Ladlehaus remained motionless, motionless, that is, as possible in his steamy circumstances, in his smoldering body like a building watched by firemen. He made imperceptible shifts, the floor of Hell like some tightrope where he juggled his weight, redistributing invisible tensions in measured increments of shuffle along his joints and nerves. All he wanted was to lie low in this place where no one could lie low, where even the disciplined reflexes of martyrs and sty lites twitched like thrown dice. And all he could hope was that pain itself-which had never saved anyone might serve him now, permitting him to appear like everyone else, swaying in place like lovers in dance halls beneath Big Bands.

  “You, Ladlehaus!” the Big Band leader blared.

  Throughout the Underworld the nine thousand, six hundred and forty-three Ladlehauses who had died since the beginning of time, not excepting the accomplice to Ellerbee’s murder, looked up, acknowledged their presence in thirty tongues. These are my family, Ladlehaus thought, and glanced in the direction of the three or four he could actually see. Their blackened forms, lathered with smoke and fire damage, were as meaningless to him, as devoid of kinship, as the dry flinders of ancient bone in museum display cases. Meanwhile God was still out there.

  “Not you,” He said petulantly to the others, “the oldtimer.”

  He means me, Ladlehaus thought, this shaved and showered squire God in His summer linens means me.

  He means me, this commissioned officer Lord with his myrrh and frankincense colognes and aromatics and His Body tingling with morning dip and agency, all the prevailing moods of fettle and immortality.

  He means me, and even though he knew there had been a mistake, that he’d not been the one who’d sounded off, Ladlehaus held his tongue. He means me, He makes mistakes.

  “So you’re the fellow who spouts graffiti to God, are you?” God said and Ladlehaus was kneeling beneath Him, hocus-pocus’d through Hell, terrified and clonic below God’s rhetorical attention.

  “Go,” God said.

  “Be off.” And Ladlehaus’s quiet “Yes” was as inaudible to the damned as God’s under-the-breath “Oops”

  when He realized His mistake.

  And Ladlehaus thought Well, why not? He didn’t know me any better when He sent me here. He didn’t know my heart. I was an accomplice, what’s that? No hit man, no munitions or electronics expert sent from far, no big deal Indy wheel-man and certainly no mastermind. Only an accomplice, a lookout, a man by the door, like a sentry or a commissionaire, say, little more than an eyewitness really. Almost a mascot. And paid accordingly, his always the lowest share, sometimes nothing more than a good dinner and a night on the town. The crimes would have taken place without him. An accomplice, a redcap, a skycap, a sbuffier of suitcases, of doggy bags of boodle, someone with a station wagon, seats that folded down to accommodate cartons of TV sets, stereos. What was the outrage? Even the business of his having been an accomplice to Ellerbee’s murder, though true, was as much talk as anything else, something to give him cachet in his buddy’s eyes, an assertion that he’d left a mark on a pal’s life. And God said “Be off,” and he was off.

  The first thing he was aware of was the darkness. A blow of blackness-speleological. He was somewhere secret, somewhere doused. Not void but void’s quenched wilderness. All null subfusc gloom’s bleak eclipse. Hell was downtown by comparison- unless this was Hell too, some lead lined heavy-curtained outpost of it. (And Ladlehaus afraid of the dark.) Was it still the universe?

  And then he recalled his heresy-He makes mistakes-and thought he knew. He hasn’t been here, He never made this. And thought: Nihility. I am undone. And bad to laugh because he knew he was right this time. Why, I’m dead, he thought, I’m the only dead man. Hadn’t he, hadn’t all of them, been snatched from life to Hell? He thought of cemeteries. (Why didn’t he know where he was buried? Because he had not been dead, not properly dead.) Of survivors with their little flags and wreaths and flowers, their pebbles laid like calling cards on the tops of tombstones. No one was ever there, that’s why they thought they had to leave their homeopathic evidences on the graves of their loved ones, why they barbered those graves and, stooping, plucked out weeds, overgrowth, fluffing up the ivy over bald spots in the perpetual care. But the loved ones would never know, they weren’t dead, only gone to Hell. (He means me, Ladlehaus thought, He’s quick to anger and He makes mistakes and I’m the only dead man. And Ladlehaus as afraid of death as of darkness because wasn’t it strange that for all his sojourn in Hell he could not recall a moment of real fear?) It was funny, all those Sunday vigils at graveside, solemn funerals and even the children well turned out, sober and spiffy, to say a ceremonial goodbye to a being already fled, the body in the coffin only an illusion, and a lousy illusion at that.” (He’d seen his share of open caskets, the Tussaud effigies actually redolent of wax.) “But no one’s here,” he wanted to shout.

  “Until today there were no dead. We are not a pasty people. We’re brindled, varnished as violins and cellos, rusted as bloodstain.”

  He missed his pain. Settled as stone, fixed as laminate souvenir or gilded baby shoe, Ladlehaus mourned his root-canal’d nerves, insentient now as string. There was not even phantom pain, the mnemonic liveliness of amputated limbs, and if this was at first a comfort-Ha ha, Ladlehaus thought-it was now, he saw-Ha ha, Ladlehaus thought-the ultimate damnation. People were right to fear the dark, death. It was better in land-mined Hell where one had to watch one’s step, where reflex family’d the damned to mountain goats-We were the Goats of Hell, Ladlehaus thought, proud of the designation as the suede and leathered weekend vicious-leaping puddles of booby trap learning the falls. Almost conceited. Not because of the attention but because of immortality in such disaster circumstances. Not survival or endurance but the simple inability to stop the steeplechase, to be forced to run forever in jeopardous double time the spited sites of the Underworld, punished in its holocaust al climate and periled along its San Andreas fallibilities, stubbing his toes on the terrible rimmed blossoms of its buried volcanos, eternally tenured in its hurricane alleys and tidal wave bays. In life he had known the Alcatraz’d and Leavenworth’d, all the Big Housed, up-the-river’d chain-gang incarcerate. Like himself they had fattened on sheer grudge, but what was their grudge to his own, to that of the infant damned and the rite less stricken?

  Temper had tempered him and made him what he had never been as a man, made him, that is, dangerous, lending his very body outrage and turning him into a sort of torch, a real accomplice now to the five-alarm arson of Hell, firing its landscape and using it up with his pain. Which he missed. Because it had kept him company. (What had his friendship with Ellerbee amounted to? Three encounters? Four?

  Perhaps eighteen or nineteen minutes all told in all the years he’d been in the Underworld. Hell’s measly coffee break.) Now there was just-He makes mistakes, what did He think He was proving?-lonely painless Ladlehaus, his consciousness locked into his remains like a cry in a doll. (For he felt that that was where he was, somewhere inside his own remains, casketed, coffin’d, pine boxed, in his best suit, the blue wool, the white button-down, the green tie pale as lettuce. But bl
eached now certainly and in all probability decomposed, the fabric returned not to fiber but to compost, mixed perhaps with his flesh itself so that his duds wore him, an ashen soup, and Ladlehaus only a sort of oil spill tramping his own old beach like a savage footprint. Though this didn’t bother him. He had broken the habit of his body long ago, since old age, before, disabused of flesh, separated from it as from active service.) But it was so dark, dark as pupil, darker.

  “I used to be Jay Ladlehaus.” He paused.

  “Who did you used to be?” There was no answer.

  “So this is death,” he said.

  “Well I’m disappointed. It’s very boring. Where I come from-I come from Hell-it wasn’t ever boring.

  There was always plenty to do. There was fire, panic in the streets, looting weather. You should have heard us. All those Coconut Grove arias. Our yowls and aiees like the scales of terror. The earthquakes and aftershocks. We could have been holiday makers, folks ripped out of time on weekends in nightclubs, families in bleachers collapsing on Bat Day. Titanicized, Lusitania’d, Hindenburg’d, Pompeii’d. And very little grace under pressure down there, forget your women and children first protocols, your Alfonse and Gastonics. Men were men, I tell you. Men were men, poor devils.

  “Well- So what’s happening? Where’s the action? When? Or is it all monologue here? It’s enough to make you laugh-the way they bury us, I mean. Obsequies and exequies. Cortege and kist. Limousines and hearses-death’s dark motor pool. Oh boy. You’d think a government had changed hands. Well- So what do the rest of you Ken and Barbie dolls think? What’s the bottom line, eh?”

  “Oatcakes.”

  “Oatcakes?” said astonished Ladlehaus.

  “Oatcakes is the bottom line?”

  “Oatcakes! Oatcakes!” (There had been darkness but not silence. He’d been distraught, nervous. Well sure, he thought, you get nervous in new circumstances -your first day in kindergarten, your grave. Now he listened, hearing what had been suppressed by his anguish and soliloquies. It was a soft and mushy sound, gassy. Amplified it could have been the noise of chemical reactions, of molecules binding, the caducean spiral of doubled helices or the attenuated pop of parthenogenesis like the delicate withdrawal of a lover. It might have been the sound of maggots burrowing or cells touching at some interface of membrane, the hiss of mathematics.) “Hello?” Ladlehaus called.