and demons, but I employ no demons. There are fires, yes, each door burns. Iâve 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.
âI have tried. Iâve 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.â
Mom sighed for us all. âYouâre such a sad little boy.â
âThat ainât what I thought hell would be like at all.â
âWhat did you think it would be like?â Sal turned to me.
âDonât know. I guess I thought demons. I thought proddinâ with cattle rods. I thought just a lot of blood. The way you describe it, itâs even more frighteninâ.â
âYou know where the name hell came from.â He crossed his hands on his lap. âAfter 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 Heâll forgive me. Then finally to one word, Heâll. Heâll.
âSomewhere along the way, I lost that apostrophe and now itâs 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.â
Â
6
Our torments also may, in length of time,
Become our elements
â MILTON, PARADISE LOST 2:274â275
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.
âI could tell by lookinâ at ya that you got some business needinâ to be done in the past,â she said, her faded American flag scarf flapping in the breeze. âLucky for you, that there winda only opens to the world we done had, and Iâll let it go for what it costs to buy a six-pack. You ainât gonna find time travel cheaper than that.â
âDoes it really work?â I asked.
She spoke kindly, if not with some pity, âWhat we doinâ here, mister?â
I scratched my chin through my matted beard. âYouâre selling me a time machine.â
âYou donât have a problem with that?â All her wrinkles seemed to be pulled up with her arched eyebrow. âI got a cane over there you might like. Got some shampoo too. Whenâs the last time you washed this hair of yours?â
She redirected her hand to fan her face. âI hate this damn heat. I mean just look at this ground beneath us.â We both looked down at the cracked earth. âYou know another town âround here has gone completely dry. Everyone in it had to pick up and move away.
âI remember a postcard of Arizona I saw when I was a little girl. Beautiful blue sky, some flowerinâ cactuses. It was the type of place youâd wanna drive your convertible in. A good life place. Turned out, it ainât nothinâ but another hell.â She glanced from me to the time machine. âWhat year is it youâre headed to?â
â1984.â
âOf all the junk I thought Iâd be sellinâ today, I never thought Iâd be sellinâ a time machine.â
After Iâd given her the money, she mumbled with just a bit of grief, âYou know itâs not a real time machine, right?â
I nodded and started to drag the frame back toward my trailer.
When I got home, I used Grandâs old pocketknife to carve May 1984 into the sill.
If I was going to travel back and see my family, I had some cleaning up to do. I went inside the trailer and slipped out