“Now hain’t that the twooth.”
Hell is and is not certain things. Hell isn’t the empty set. Hell has what we call elements in it. We labor to determine which elements. We labor to divine which. Our labor, our divine labor, isn’t aimed so much at not going to Hell, but rather, if we should perchance find ourselves incarnated in either, not to mistake Heaven for Hell, or vice versa.
We don’t want to be in Hell, but believing it is the Garden of Eden.
We have Alex, Slade, Alex’s best frenemy; Eve, Alex’s babe; and Smedley, who might be, incognito, one way or another funding Alex, Slade, and Eve’s lives.
Alex, Slade, and Eve have often been together, talking casually, freely, shooting the Mississippi early morning dew, but this is the first time Smedley joins them.
The four of them are talking about Hell, and why you don’t want to go there. Because it is a bad experience, and what constitutes a bad experience. The setting is a New Orleans whorehouse, in the delta dawn style of a cajun creole cathedral, one with a big stained glass window, rosy as ever Eve was. What is being worshipped, what is being horse whipped, and what is being whore shipped, parcel post.
There’s lots about Smedley most people don’t know. They know he isn’t an ordinary bum because they know he is a Wickersham, and can frequently observe how deferentially Smedley is treated by nearly everyone.
Lots of people believe Smedley is retarded. He doesn’t use words to get his point across. He never seems to have a point. Yet here with the other three, Smedley is using words. Eloquent words expressing well-formed ideas about ethics, enunciated brilliantly. Smedley’s speech on this date is elevating.
“Hell is being asked to do something you don’t want to do and then being forced to do it. Hell is an order dressed up as a polite request. It is an offer you can’t refuse. It is remarkable how often this kind of situation creeps up. I do mean creep! Take a Hobson’s choice… Take it or leave it.
“Hell is being asked to do something you don’t want to do but you’re a little kid who will never grow or develop into adulthood unless you adjust yourself to this kind of Hell-on-Wheels…Training wheels we might call it… Or wheels in the sky, turning incessantly and impetuously. The little kid cries bitterly, and feeling bereft, has no choice, Hobson or otherwise. The dirty deed done, the kid, who has no concept of suicide, and is filled with irrepressible energy, is stunned when the parent clasps him in a great big hug, a bear hug, for choosing to do the thing. The kid hasn’t felt such a good thing, and never expected to feel it now.
“Hell is for children– the children are the ones most painfully trapped– and hain’t it jes like us to think of childhood bliss, serenity, innocence, and freedom! Free to pace from one gray concrete wall to the other, the guards and warden coordinating when to get up, when to go down, when and what to eat, or what to get crammed down your gullet. Woebetide should one vomit, for even that much resistance, so natural a reflex, will be receiving a good hard smack across the face– and then the loving serene command to eat that vomit. Eat your own vomit.”
Slade and Alex had no idea Smedley arranged surveillance of them staying in jail.
“What if, for the sake of thinking things through thoroughly, we frame it as Hell isn’t being asked to do something you don’t want to do and then being forced to do it. You always wanted to do that something, you just didn’t do it out of perversity.
“You love having your face smooshed into moosh, and though the doors of the factory-like school are not inviting, you’ll enter, to ensure your future. Little by little, one word after another, as if to smother, or electrify, as if in neon, lighting the night, as stars and moon, and velvet swoon, would as an adiss, beckon, bright, as if in flight, maybe you can chalk it up to love. Love of duty, from above. Not below, but above.”
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