Emails from Hell, part ten.

Our correspondent in Hell has sent me another dispatch.

{beginning of email}

            As I mentioned a while back, most of the people in Hell seemed to be in a continuous, continual, constant, unremitting hurry to do the same pointless thing over and over. Sort of like their human lives. But I saw one ordinary man—no this, was no Noah or General McArthur—who was sitting with a dazed look on his face. A woman sat beside him. I just had to go ask them for their story.

            “I was a computer software designer,” the man said. “But that’s not what got me sent to hell. I got sent to hell because I was a negligent parent.”

            “Me too,” said the woman who had obviously been his wife.

            “Now, that,” I said, drawing myself up into dudgeonly pride, “is a legitimate thing to be condemned for! Anyone who abuses, or even neglects, a little child…”

            “Whoa,” said Karl. “You might want to hear their story.”

            “Well, then, please continue, Mr…” I tried to cover my embarrassment.

            “I am Monsieur Royal,” said the engineer. “And Madame Royal. Among the Americans, the French are famous for being liberals. You know, not too many of us go to church, and the ones who do are unlikely to be fundamentalists who attack other people’s beliefs. And this goes for the way we raise our children also. We considered ourselves to be typical French parents, though of course many French families are dysfunctional, as in any society. When I was raising my daughter…”

            “Just one child?” asked Karl. “That explains part of it. You were not fruitful, did not multiply and fill the Earth. You did not have your quiver full of sons and daughters.”

            “According to the fundamentalists, I am supposed to just say, I love my husband, and then let him insert his organ into me as many times as he can.”

            “I love my cigar, but I take it out of my mouth once in a while,” said Karl.

            “Wrong Marx,” I said. “That’s a Groucho line. But, please continue.”

            “Failure to be prodigiously fecund was not the charge leveled against us when we were sent here,” said M. Royal. “It was, as I said, negligence. We raised our daughter with discipline, but it was a spiritual kind of discipline. Not religious, but spiritual. When she did something wrong, as every child does, we let her know we were ashamed of what she did—not of her, but of what she did—and then we would explain to her the reason or reasons why what she did was wrong. Mostly having to do with love and respect for other people. I don’t think we had to physically punish her. Is this correct, mon aimée?”

            “Oui,” Mme. Royal said.

            “Oh,” I said. “So you did raise her with self-discipline. Very well. What was the problem?”

            “Well, it says in the Proverbs, chapter 17 verse 24, he who loves his child will not spare the rod.”

            “Right,” I said. “Discipline shows love. I still don’t get it.”

            “Do I have to explain everything to him?” asked M. Royal.

            “Yes,” said Joe.

            “We never used the rod on our daughter,” M. Royal said.

            “But, that phrase is figurative! Oh,” I said, suddenly realizing my error. “So the fundamentalists will not allow any parents into heaven who have not beat their children physically with a rod or other blunt instrument?”

            “You only need to do it once,” said Mme. Royal. “That is enough to get you into heaven on a technicality. Unless there is something else the fundamentalists do not like about you.”

            “Like being a French liberal,” said the General.

            “Well,” I said, “It’s not so bad down here. Tell me. How did your daughter turn out?”

            “Oh, she’s doing fine. A little wild sometimes, definitely offbeat, as you Americains say. She is currently the environmental minister of France.”

            “Well,” said Noah, “that does it. She will be down here before too long. Please remember to invite all of us to the reunion party when she gets here.”

{end of email}

Emails from Hell, part nine.

{beginning of email}

            As we sat there with General McArthur, we saw a man in a robe coming along. His robe was all the colors of the rainbow. And with him was a flock of the cutest animals you ever saw. Kitty cats with big eyes, puppies with big eyes, hamsters with big eyes. Animals that would have torn each other to pieces in the wild but as a result of human domestication and the influence of Heaven, they played with one another in peace. The lion and the lamb, as described in two places in the Old Testament, followed. Then along came lobsters and octupuses and levitating fishes. I was puzzled, because this was supposed to be Hell.

            The man drew closer and wished us an effusively good day.

            “Good sir!” I called out. “I think I know why your robe is all the colors of the rainbow.”

            “You do?” he said in a piping voice. “What do you think the reason is?”

            “You are or were a member of the GLBT community.”

            “The what? Never heard of it,” he said.

            “Okay, let me guess again,” I said. “You are Joseph with the Amazing Dreamcolor Coat right out of Genesis 37.”

            “Wrong again,” he said. “I am Noah, and the rainbow was associated with me a long time before Joseph or the BLTs.”

            “You should have guessed it, with the animals,” Joe whispered to me.

            “Please explain, Mr. Noah, why you are in hell.”

            “I built an Ark—actually, I contracted the work out—and saved two of every kind of animal from dying in the Great Flood.”

            “So how did you get them to all come into the Ark?”

            “It was a miracle,” said Noah.

            “Two of each species of insect?”

            “It was a miracle.”

            “Two of each species of spider?”

            “It will always be the same answer. It was a miracle. I still don’t know how it happened, or how we found places to stash all of them.”

            “Very well. But how did that get you sent to Hell? Oh, wait, I know. It’s when you got drunk afterwards.”

            “No, that wasn’t it. As I said, I saved two of every species of animal.”

            “Am I missing something?” I asked.

            “You most certainly are,” Noah said. “Every species. Not just the ones that humans found useful, but even the rattlesnakes and the mosquitoes and the spiders. They each had their place in nature, regardless of their utility to humans. Why, you may ask.”

            “Why?”

            “Partly because no one could know which species might be useful later,” said Noah. “We had to look all over the place to find the flatworm Caenorhabditis elegans, and we never knew why. But nowadays it is one of the favorite animals that scientists use in genetic research. Same thing with that fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster. But also, it is just because God had this idea that if He made it it was good.”

            “I still don’t see what was so bad about that,” I said.

            “Do I have to explain everything to you?” asked Noah.

            “Yes,” said Joe.

            “Well, it’s like this. The fundamentalists who decide who goes to hell believe that most species are useless, and that it is not worth the trouble or the cost to save them. You saw how much the conservatives despised the Endangered Species Act in the United States! God did not ask me if I could afford to save all of them, or even if I wanted to. But you just let an American environmentalist say that we need to save the Lesser Prairie Chicken, for example, and the conservatives start howling like extinct dire wolves—Canis dirus—and calling them godless communist atheists. See, they believe that God wanted me to save all the species so that American conservatives can let them go extinct in the twenty-first century. I, sir, was the original bleeding-heart environmentalist. And so, here I am.”

            “Well,” said Joe, “being as you know all the different kinds of animals, can you recommend what kind of meat we can have for lunch?”

{end of email}

Emails from Hell, part eight.

Here is another email I received from our correspondent in Hell. Guess whom he meets this time!

{beginning of email}

            “HUT, two, three, four, HUT, two, three, four…” The man, wearing what appeared to be a World War Two American Army uniform, marched along. As he drew closer, I saw that his simple uniform bore a lot of insignia. He turned and saluted us—me and John and Joe and some others—and kept marching.

            Curious, I called out to the man. He stopped, at attention, then turned in military style toward me. “At ease,” he commanded himself. Then he slouched a little and sauntered over to us. He sat down.

            “You wouldn’t mind telling me who you are, would you?” I asked.

            “MacArthur, Douglas, General, serial number 3-point-14159.”

            “A nice round number,” John whispered to me.

            “If captured, we can only tell the enemy our name, rank, and serial number, which they can read off of our dog tags,” said General McArthur.

            “I would say I was surprised to see you here, General, but I just finished speaking with the pope. You were one of the most famous men in American history, but coming right after His Holiness…”

            “Right.”

            “Well, sir, might you tell me why you are down here in Hell?”

            “I served at the command of a socialist president, for one thing,” the general said.

            “Ah, yes. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, author of Social Security, the New Deal, and lots of social services. I assume I will meet him sooner or later. Socialist as he was, he was so popular that he had to die to get out of office, and Americans had to add an amendment to the constitution to keep it from happening again. Four terms! You said, for one thing. What other reason?”

            “I was the Supreme Allied Commander in Asia,” he said. “Eisenhower’s counterpart.”

            “Yes. Go on.”

            “In August of 1945, the Empire of Japan surrendered unconditionally.”

            “Yes, they did. Soon afterwards, the Japanese people heard the voice of an Emperor, for the first time in history, telling them they had to accept this defeat. Go on.”

            “Unconditionally,” said the General.

            “Your point?”

            “That means that our troops could have run all over the place raping and pillaging to their hearts’ content.”

            “But,” I said, “they didn’t. Two reasons. First, they were for the most part humanitarians, and they did not want to act like madmen. Second, you commanded them not to. At first, some of the American soldiers consorted with Japanese women, but not, as I understand, by force. But then even that stopped. But what I don’t get is how that landed you in Hell.”

            “Well, I disobeyed the Bible,” said the general. “In Deuteronomy 7:2, God commanded the Israelites to show no mercy to the inhabitants of the conquered land, to utterly slaughter them, and to make no treaties with them. I disobeyed all of those commands. We showed mercy to the Japanese, and even helped them start their economy back up. We made treaties with them and even wrote their constitution for them. This constitution included a provision that they would not have an army capable of fighting outside of Japan itself, a provision that persisted until the year 2016.”

            “But, sir!” exclaimed I. “That was a brilliant move! Japan grew rapidly and became one of America’s best allies, which was important for our security and for world peace! Why, sir! They loved you! When you said you wanted to run for president, some of them put up campaign banners for you! The banners said…”

            “Yes, I know,” said the General. “They said, we play for your erection.” John started laughing but the General said, “No, seriously, they did. But great idea or no, it was a direct violation of God’s command.”

            “In the Old Testament, not the New,” I said.

            “The fundamentalists who get to choose who goes to Heaven and who doesn’t use Old Testament rules,” the general reminded me.

{end of email}

Emails from Hell, part seven.

When we left off from part six, the group of friends in Hell had grown to include the unnamed narrator; the Apostle John; Joe the Two-Spirit Native American; the Apostle Andrew; Mickey the gay man; Moses; Karl Marx (who thought he was Groucho); and now the woman Philomena.

{beginning of email}

            John took us all over to his telescope again.

            “I don’t think I want to see this again,” I said.

            But John swerved his telescope around to see a different part of Heaven.

            “I should have known there was more than one part of Heaven,” I said.

            I looked into the ocular of the telescope. I saw a bunch of old white-haired men sitting around with beatific and empty looks on their faces. Now, I tried to figure out what group of people could consist exclusively of old white men…

            “Popes!” I said.

            “You got it,” said John. “There is a special Heaven for popes. Nothing much happens there. They just sit around and watch white smoke coming from the Vatican chimney.”

            “Are they all there?”

            “No,” said a voice from behind me. “I didn’t-a make it-a.”

            Here was a Pope I actually recognized. Pope Francis!

            “What are you doing down here?” I exclaimed.

            “I had-a a master’s degree in chemistry and-a told everybody about-a the global warming and how it would hurt-a the poor people of the world-a,” he said.

            “That can’t be the only reason,” I said.

            “No-a,” he said. “I also asked-a for forgiveness for the Church-a.”

            “You mean, from the Church.”

            “No-a, I said-a, for the Church-a.”

            “For what?”

            Francis looked at Philomena. “Did-a this guy get-a his history education in-a Oklahoma?”

            “Okay,” I said. “Let me guess. Those Catholic conquistadores killed a lot of Native Americans. So your holiness…”

            “Don’t-a call me that.”

            “So you asked the Native Americans to forgive the Church for that. And, let me think. Oh, yeah. Catholics killed a lot of Protestants. Especially in France in the late middle ages. The French Catholics killed a lot of…who were they? Huge Nuts?”

            “Huguenots,” said Andrew.

            “St.Bartholomew’s Day Massacre and all that,” I said.

            “So you do-a know.”

            “When did you ask Protestants for forgiveness?”

            “The January of-a 2016.”

            “Did the Church-a, I mean the Church, get forgiven?”

            “The fundamentalists wouldn’t hear of it-a, and they’re-a pretty much in charge-a here.”

            “And so here you are,” I said. “It must be quite a shock.”

            “It’s-a not so bad here,” said Francis. “A lot of people here-a have issues to-a work-a through, and I enjoy-a helping them-a, just-a like I did-a back on Earth-a. Say-a, Philomena, we can have a little talk-a if you like.”

            “I would be happy to,” said the history teacher.

            “So, I’m-a doing about-a the same thing-a I did on Earth. I was-a happy then, and am-a happy now. So…” He drew himself up to full height and cleared his throat. “Don’t-a cry for me Argentina…”

{end of email}

Emails from Hell, part six.

The sixth in a series of email dispatches I have received from our correspondent in Hell.

{beginning of email}

            As Joe, Andrew, and I came back from lunch, we saw the spirit of a young woman sitting on a rock, looking very despondent. I started to ask my companions why she was sad, but Andrew said, “You’d best go talk to her yourself.” They left me alone.

            I walked up to the young woman and introduced myself. She looked up and gave me a little smile, then resumed her somber, pensive stare at nothing. I could tell that while she was alive she was attractive in a petite, small-faced sort of way. Maybe it was her big eyes, but I had the impression that she did a lot of thinking and reflecting back before she was in hell, too.

            “So,” I said, “I’m new here, so you pretty much know what I’m going to ask you.”

            “I was a history teacher,” she said.

            “That doesn’t exactly answer my question. Why should a history teacher be in Hell?”

            “I was a history teacher in Oklahoma,” she said. “Does that help?”

            “Not really,” I said.

            “I taught AP history,” she added.

            “As in, advanced placement?”

            “Yeah. High school kids could take AP courses and get college credit. It helped to reduce college expenses and also it helped them get into the better schools. I didn’t get paid very much. Teachers in Oklahoma barely get paid enough to survive on.”

            “But, it sounds like you were doing a valuable service to your students,” I said. “I still don’t understand. How could the conservatives—the ones who get to determine who goes to hell or not—possibly object to that?”

            “It was the content of the course,” she said. “That’s why they outlawed it.”

            “When did they do that?”

            “January of 2016. I stopped teaching it when it was outlawed, but I was still guilty of having taught it.”

            “You put some stuff into your course that the conservatives didn’t approve of?”

            “Actually, it is a nationally standardized course. I only taught what the course required. Oh, and I didn’t get paid much.”

            “So, let me get this straight,” I said. “The conservatives in Oklahoma sent you to hell for teaching a nationally-standardized history course. So, what was in this course that they could have objected to so strongly?”

            “They said that high school history teachers should just teach good things about what white Americans have done, and none of the bad things. So, during the course, I taught that Europeans introduced diseases such as smallpox that killed up to 90 percent of the Native Americans. I taught about the genocide—I didn’t use that term at the time; I do now, because it doesn’t make any difference anymore—of Native Americans at the hands and bullets of the white Europeans and, later, white Americans. And I taught about slavery. And I didn’t get paid much. Did I say that already?”

            “But, those things all happened, didn’t they? Slavery and all?”

            “And more, but I could barely scratch the surface of the evils that white oppressors inflicted upon non-whites.”

            “Well, if you were to not teach those things, what exactly were you supposed to teach?”

            “Watch your head,” she said.

            “That’s impossible. Nobody can watch his or her head. Your eyes are inside of your head, and you can’t see your own head…Ouch!” A large object hit me on the head that I was not watching. It knocked me to the ground. Of course, being a spirit, I could not die. I looked at the object. It was a large, leather-bound book. I heard loud laughter from above me, coming from Heaven. I looked up and saw the spirit of a fat white man pointing at me and laughing more.

            Then I looked at the book. It was engraved, Oklahoma Version of American History. I went over to pick it up. I opened it randomly in the middle. It was a pop-up book. Up popped a cardboard cartoon version of a Pilgrim man with musket and white collar and black hat. There was also a cardboard cartoon of an Indian, with feathers, begging him for mercy. I read the accompanying text. “The Pilgrimes brought Christianity to the Injuns, and if they had only humbly accepted it, this glorious gift from the Conqueror God, then it would not have been necessatory to kill them.”

            I opened to another page. Up popped the cardboard simulacrum of an Indian with sores covering his skin. The text read, “God sent smallpox and other diseases as punishings against the Injuns for not accepting His Holy Word.”

            Another page showed a well-dressed, clean black slave smiling as he picked cotton. “Most slaves had a lot better life on the plantation than they did back in Aferca.” Right then, from inside the spine, a Confederate flag on a penile pole popped up just as straight as you please.

            Another page showed Native Americans being herded into forts by white soldiers.

            “This must be the Cherokee Trail of Tears,” I said.

            “Every tribe, all five hundred of them, had their own Trails of Tears,” said the teacher.

            The text said, “While in forts and later on reservations, the Injuns lived on welfare handouts from the white government. The government gave them flour, salt, oil, and baking soda. They should have been thankful that we encouraged them to invent frybread.”

            On another page, a big penile oil derrick popped up. The woman gagged just a little when she saw it. “That was my least favorite part,” she said.

            The text read, “The Injuns in Oklahoma had land with oil under it that they could not use, so the white Americans had to take it away from them.”

            I was getting tired of this. As if she read my mind, the woman asked, “Are you getting tired of this?”

            “This is what they wanted you to teach?”

            The voice from Heaven laughed loudly again.

            I hurried to the end. The last page said, “All true history comes from the Holy Bible. Throughout the six thousand years of human existence, white people have been God’s people, starting with Adam and Eve…” Who were, of course, standing right there, in the altogether but tastefully hidden by leaves and fruits and snakes and mushrooms and beavers.

            I slammed the book shut. At that moment, I noticed a little filament connecting the book to Heaven. The filament yanked the book right back up to the fat man, who threw it back down. This time it handed on the woman and squished her. She was a pile of guts, but slowly she reformed into a woman—even her spirit-clothes were clean again—and the book flew back up to heaven. The man threw it down again, and pulled it back up.

            “You should get out of here,” I said.

            “And go where?” she asked.

            “Advanced placement classes help students get into good colleges, and help them afford college, any college. Oklahoma legislators were willing to close that door of opportunity for their own students?” I was puzzled.

            “They considered it a small price to pay for proving to everyone that they were God’s chosen people on Earth,” she said. “They underfunded education, refused to raise the minimum wage, refused to allow unions, gave the oil companies anything they wanted—they basically insured that Oklahoma would be a source of cheap labor and raw materials for the rest of the nation and the rest of the world.”

            This time the book hit me. After I reformed, I answered her question. “Join us. John, Andrew, Joe, Mickey, and the others. We’ll form a little discussion group and go around looking at things. And if the book lands on the rest of us, I think we would gladly put up with it for the pleasure of your company.”

            “That is the nicest thing anybody ever said to me…”

            I told her my name. She was Philomena. I think she had been black back when she was on Earth, but she had blanched so much from depression that it was hard to tell.

            “One last question,” I said. “Doesn’t that man up there ever get tired of throwing the Book at you?”

            “No,” Philomena said. “These are the people who seriously think you can be happy by sitting around the glassy sea and chanting praises to the Lamb with the Seven Horns nonstop forever.”

            We rejoined the others and I introduced her, to the great pleasure of my friends.

{end of email}