Fantasy

534

Jerry Fieri led a good life and upon its completion arrives at a gate where he takes an oath not to do harm upon others. This was all well and good for Jerry until he learns that others include all the creatures that had lived across all time and across the universe. He is soon taken to his new residence, a forlorn hovel in the middle of nowhere. There he learns that he cannot live forever and that his body requires food to sustain itself.
He determines that there must have been a mistake and that he should have been assigned to a city. Without entering his new home, Jerry decides that he will go to the city and start his life anew there.
The only problem was that Jerry did not know where to go and he quickly learns how immense this new world is. He travels long and far and encounters species from not only Earth’s distant past but also strange creatures from alien planets. Everything that ever lived belonged here but Jerry was to learn one more thing and that was that he did not.

Excerpt
A Good Life


Jerry Fieri led a good life. He stayed true to the tenets of the faith that his parents had reared him in. He had already lived more than the three score and ten that were allotted to most individuals of his time and during that period he remained a devout Catholic and never committed a mortal sin. If he transgressed at all, these acts were always venial and never required more than ten ‘Our Father’s’ for penance. Jerry was a regular visitor to the Confessional and he often had nothing to report to the hidden pastor behind the darkened screen. He still felt compelled to be there. He just did not want to risk suddenly dying with a blackened mar on his eternal soul. When he died he wanted to make sure that St. Peter would welcome him with open arms. He even had a little speech prepared for that auspicious moment.
The friends and associates of Jerry Fieri all believed him to be a fine and upstanding man. He was generous and conducted himself in public in an honorable manner. Jerry worked hard and he married a good woman and raised four beautiful daughters and a son that was the pride of the parish’s football team. His brood gave him many grandchildren whom were eager to see their Poppa, as they called Jerry, at Christmastime and at the annual family picnic in the summer. They often laughed at the way Jerry would go into a frenzy if an errant insect meandered onto the checkered tablecloth that his wife would spread over the table under the elms. He would flail his arms and start swatting maniacally at the insect with a rolled up magazine that he carried in his back pocket for such occasions. If there was one thing that Jerry could not abide by in life it was the annoying insignificant creatures that seemed to always find a passage to get under his skin and drive him to near psychosis. But once the ant, bee or mosquito was dead and gone, Jerry would resume his even-keeled friendly way that endeared him to one and all.
On a broader scale, Jerry never had much rapport with any animals. He did not hate them but ever since his puppy Gabriel was run over during his childhood years he tended to avoid them for he knew the pain that they could unconsciously inflict upon him by the brevity of their lives. As an adult he avoided dogs and cats and the myriad of other creatures that people adopted as pets. The Fieri family never kept any despite the periodic whining of the children beseeching their parents to let them have a puppy or a kitten. Jerry would not even permit them to have so much as a goldfish.
Jerry was blessed and when the time came for him to reap his reward he did so without regretting anything that he had done during his prosperous life. He held no rues about what he left behind. His affairs were in order and he had no unfinished business. He had prepared for this day his entire life and held no doubts in his last breath where he would be after he exhaled.
The transition from one realm to the other was seamless. It was carried out through a traveling dream where he traversed a golden hillside field towards a brilliant dawning sun along the distant horizon. As he walked through the knee-high grasses, he experienced their mesmerizing aroma and felt their dew dampen his shoes. He noticed the dazzling display of butterflies wafting over the meadow, flying in the same direction he was. Their fluttering wings and the silence of their flight added elegance to his journey.
As he breached the hilltop he saw opened up before him the new land and knew immediately that it was Kingdom Come. His mind was in awe and struggled to discover words that could aptly describe the beauty and the serenity that he beheld. It was beyond any descriptive modifiers that could be concocted by the language of man. This was God’s realm. It was as perfect as anyone could imagine.
He became giddy with delight and felt his heart racing as fast as his legs were carrying him. He was young again and he had eternity before him. Gone were the tired old knees and aching back. He was strong and vibrant like he was when he was a green man embarking upon his first days in the construction industry. But there would be no wear and tear upon his joints here that would reduce his prowess with the passage of time. Instinctively, he knew that he would always be a young man and that every part of him would remain hale and charged.



The Gatekeeper


It was not very long after he had plunged downward towards the valley that he encountered someone that he expected. It was the gatekeeper, the one that Jerry presumed was St. Peter, the Lord’s right-hand man.
“Oh, great Apostle and founder of the true church, I cherish you like a father!” Jerry exclaimed, reciting the speech that he had prepared during his life, falling to his knees and taking a posture of abject submission. He extended his arms out to take the gatekeeper’s hand. These gestures had been planned and rehearsed as well.
The gatekeeper took a step backwards and would not allow Jerry to make contact. This dismayed him somewhat and for a moment he felt that he was being rejected from Heaven. A housefly landed on his outstretched hand and tickled the hairs there. But Jerry did not notice for he was in a state of shock at the cool welcoming.
“Peter is not here today,” the gatekeeper said. “It’s his day off.”
This news was rather disappointing to Jerry. One of his fantasies during life was picturing the day that St. Peter would open the Kingdom of Heaven to him. He had never imagined that the founder of the Catholic Church would actually have days off. Without being aware that he had done so, he shooed the housefly away.
The gatekeeper must have seen Jerry’s stilted reaction for he burst out, “Look, buddy, St. Peter is a busy man! You can’t expect him to be here all of the time! You must have noticed during your life that people are knocking off around the clock. If St. Peter were here to greet them all he would never have time to do all those other important things that he has to do around here.”
Jerry had never thought of it that way before and he realized that there had to be some truth in what the gatekeeper said. Still, it would have been nice to have the rock of the church there to greet him on his day of arrival to the afterlife.
“I’m Stan Debrynski,” the gatekeeper said. “I’m a volunteer here at the gates.” Stan still did not extend his hand out to greet Jerry. “Don’t take it personal, buddy,” Stan said. “I just don’t like to catch germs.”
The remark slipped by Jerry who was still wallowing in his disappointment that St. Peter was not here to welcome him.
“It’s my happy duty to inaugurate you into the new world,” Stan said. If he was happy there was nothing on his face that displayed this emotion. His manner was bureaucratic and distant as if he had done this a thousand times and that this was the last thing that he wanted to do.
“There are some rules here to which you must abide,” the gatekeeper continued, almost like this was a rehearsed speech as well. Unlike Jerry’s address, this one lacked any emotional overtones. It was rote and bland. “The first one being that at all times you must respect all life that you encounter here. You shall not harm anything.”
It was a rule that made sense to Jerry but one that he thought was superfluous. He had never harmed anybody during his stint on Earth and he imagined that anybody else that was here would have done the same. If you harmed or hurt somebody during life you would not be coming here. There was another place for those that behaved that way.
“Do you understand this first rule?” Stan asked, implying that he needed some form of acknowledgement from Jerry that the point had been made and that Jerry agreed to the terms and conditions of this rule.
“Of course I do,” Jerry replied. “I wouldn’t be here if I had a problem with that proviso, now would I?”
Stan smirked and continued through the remaining rules of heavenly behavior. Jerry listened to them all and accepted them without question. They all made perfect sense to him. They were, in fact, just good old Earthly common sense.
Once the gatekeeper finished the processing formalities, he said, “Now to assign you some quarters. Do you have any preference as to where you want to live? I see by your dossier that you have spent your life in an American urban locale. Shall I assign you to one of our cities that closely match the conditions to which you are accustomed?”
For some reason the suggestion appalled Jerry. He had lived in Baltimore ever since he was a boy. He had no problem with Baltimore but it was not his vision of what Heaven should be. Heaven always fostered in him images of broad, rural expanses with sweeping vistas under serene skies. Heaven could never be an urban landscape. “No,” he said emphatically to Stan Debrynski. “I want something like I see right here.”
“You want the countryside then? Are you sure?” Stan had furrowed an eyebrow.
“Positive,” Jerry asserted. “Why would you doubt me?”
“I’ve been here long enough to know that one man’s heaven is another’s hell!” the gatekeeper responded.
“Are you allowed to say such a word up here?”
“In some parts no but in other parts yes. Like I said one man’s heaven is another’s hell. Okay, you want something rural. Feral or wild?”
“What’s the difference?”
“Do you want your setting to be agricultural like what you might ascribe to the rolling meadows of Kentucky or do you want to be in a rainforest akin to what you will find in Washington State?”
“Oh, give me Kentucky,” Jerry responded. He did not like what the term ‘rainforest’ concocted in his mind. He was never a fan of rainy weather.
“Are you sure?” Stan said. “You might not like it.”
“What’s not to like?” Jerry grumbled. “Kentucky is what I pictured heaven to be like so Kentucky is what I want.”
“Then Kentucky it will be,” the gatekeeper noted the choice in a notebook that he held in his hand. “I will make arrangements for your transport there. In the meantime, there is some paperwork that you have to complete.”
“What?” Jerry cried. “I am not just automatically whisked there?”
“I’m afraid not,” Stan said. “There isn’t any magic in heaven.” He handed Jerry a stack of forms that was almost a foot thick. “These are all self-explanatory. Just follow the directions written across the top of the individual documents.”
“And I thought that I was through with paperwork,” Jerry complained. He had never liked filling out forms in life although he always was punctual in meeting the schedules imposed upon him by the various governing authorities that he encountered. “Where did you work in life Stan? The IRS?”
The gatekeeper did not react to Jerry’s jibe. “I will see you when your transportation arrives,” Stan said. “In the meantime I have other business to conduct,” he pointed toward someone coming down the hill.

Flies and Forms


Jerry winced his eyes and saw that it was a newcomer dressed in robes and wearing a turban. “I thought that only Christians were allowed here?” he said in dismay. It had always been a tenet of his faith that you had to be baptized and have accepted the Lord as your personal savior in order for you to attain eternal salvation.
Stan did not address Jerry’s comment. He may not have even heard it for he was loping towards the newcomer.
Jerry got to work on the forms. Like Stan had said they were self-explanatory and not very complicated to fill out. There was just so many of them and they all seemed to be asking the same things ad infinitum. Jerry groaned as he completed one form after another. Ad infinitum. He had infinitum to fill them out. Hopefully, it would not take infinitum.
Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Stan and the newcomer. He could not hear what they were saying but he was sure that it was a rehash of the same material that Jerry had gone through. But then to his dismay, he saw coming from some unknown point a large group of young women. They all wore burkas. He could now hear the newcomer shouting with glee and praising Allah for coming through with his promise. This just did not fit Jerry’s concept of what Heaven was supposed to be like.
Stan led the newcomer and his bevy of brides away to some unseen point. This left Jerry alone in the meadow with just his stack of forms. It was so peaceful here. For the first time since he had come into being, he suddenly felt very relaxed. Although he still had more than half the forms yet to complete, he felt that there was nothing pressing or impinging upon him. He could finally live the moment just for the moment’s sake and not have to concern himself with what came after. It was a remarkable feeling. It was a divine feeling. He wondered when he would actually meet the Lord. The almighty savior was up here somewhere. Just knowing this made Jerry gush with warmth and gush with tears. He had never cried as an adult during his life but here he realized that giving expression to your emotions was the most natural thing to do. He was happy. There was no other way to describe it.
As he worked on the forms, he noted that a housefly had suddenly landed on his completed documents and was leaving its own mark upon the uppermost one. Where the fly came from, Jerry did not know. But he did know what he had to do to get rid of it. He took the form that he was currently completing and swatted at the fly with it. The little creature was amazingly fast and anticipated Jerry’s move. It flew away only to land less than a second later on the very arm that Jerry had used to launch his attack.
Grimacing, Jerry tried to catch the fly with his other hand but it was to no avail. The housefly was just too darned fast. How did a housefly end up here in Heaven? The little pests were always finding ways to get into places back on Earth. Maybe this fly had simply lucked out and managed to slip past the checkpoints en route here?
“Haven’t you finished yet?” Stan said upon his return from wherever he had disappeared to.
“There’s a lot of paperwork here,” Jerry replied. “I want to make sure that I fill out everything accurately.”
“Your transportation should arrive shortly. Hopefully you will have everything all done by the time that it gets here,” the gatekeeper said.
“There are some things that I just don’t understand,” Jerry said.
“It’s all self-explanatory. Even a pre-schooler is able to answer all the questions,” Stan replied.
“No, I wasn’t talking about that,” Jerry said. “I saw you just admit someone that is obviously a non-Christian here. I thought that that was not permissible?”
Stan rolled back his eyes. “Are you a bigot Jerry?”
“No!” Jerry cried. “Not at all! You can ask any of my friends back on Earth. They’ll tell you that I am one of the most tolerant men around!”
“Then why can you not tolerate the presence of a non-Christian here? This is not an exclusive country club Jerry. We base our admittance policies on the way a life is conducted rather than upon the philosophies and creeds that may have been held during life. It does not matter what faith one ascribes to as long as there is a purity of heart and a willingness to behave towards one’s conception of what is the common good.”
Stan’s description of the rules ran against what Jerry had been taught during his upbringing but when he listened to the gatekeeper’s words, he discovered that he was innately in agreement with them. He had often wondered how great figures in history that predated the time of the Lord would ever attain Heaven if they were never baptized into Christendom. Now, he had the answer and it was a pleasing answer. It meant that Moses and Noah were up here too somewhere. He wondered if he would ever meet them.
“Now, hurry and finish the paperwork Jerry,” Stan said. “Your transportation will be here soon.”
Jerry started scribbling down his answers as fast as possible. His mind was not really set on this task. He had so many questions to ask that the last thing that he wanted to do was answer questions. “So where did he decide to go?” he found himself asking the waiting gatekeeper.
“Where did who decide to go?”
“The guy with the turban, where did he pick? I sure hope that it wasn’t Kentucky.” The last sentence just slipped from his tongue as if it had slid on goose turd. He knew that he should have clamped down on it before it was issued for other ears.
“And what if it was Kentucky, Jerry? Would that change your mind about going there?” Stan asked. “Or would you start a petition demanding that Armin is not allowed to move into the neighborhood?”
“Of course not,” Jerry said and immediately apologized for his indiscretion. He had never believed that one could be sorry in Heaven.
“Armin chose to live in one of our more arid climates far away from anywhere where he would be forced to abide by the infidel’s way,” Stan answered.
“It seems that I am not the only one whose actions could be interpreted as being bigoted around here,” Jerry sniggered.
“It is sad that we bring our Earthly cultures here along with ourselves,” the gatekeeper sighed. “But we do have the rest of eternity to iron out our differences.”
“From what I have seen back on Earth, it just may take that long!” Jerry responded and noticed something descending the hillside. If his eyes were not mistaken, it looked like a horse and buggy.
“Ah, there is your transportation!” Stan announced. “I hope that you are finished your forms!”
“All but this one!” Jerry replied, holding up the document that he had used to try to swat the housefly.
“What happened to it?” the gatekeeper asked, his eyes agog. “How come it is crumpled?”
“There was a fly bugging me and I had nothing else handy to get rid of it,” Jerry said innocently, thinking nothing of what he had just said.
“You swatted at a fly?” Stan’s tone was definitely harsh.
“There was nothing else that I could use!” Jerry did not understand the sudden change in the gatekeeper’s demeanor.
“Didn’t you vow that you would not harm anything here?”
“Yes, I did, but I did not think that you would mean houseflies! What are they doing here anyway?”
“Everything that ever lived on Earth has been granted eternal life!” Stan retorted. “Heaven is not the exclusive domain of people! Everything has a chance to come here from the minutest viruses to the most colossal of creatures! If they led a good life and behaved according to their instincts then they come to Heaven. If they did not, then they are condemned to eternal damnation.”
This news came as a colossal surprise to Jerry. He would never have believed it had he heard it back on Earth. Back there every fly that he encountered acted the same way as all other flies. They all acted according to their nature. “Does this mean that all flies that ever existed are here in Heaven?”
The gatekeeper nodded. “They are all here. As is every insect, fish, amphibian, reptile, bird, and non-human mammal. They are all here. In fact if there is a domain that is exclusively human, it would be the one that indulges in everlasting suffering.”
“If every bug that ever lived is up here with us right now, I think that there might be suffering in Heaven as well,” Jerry commented, thinking about how much he abhorred the insect horde.
“You get used to it!” Stan replied. “You get to cherish them for their one-tracked personalities and their commitment to industry. You never ever want to harm them!” He took the crumpled form from Jerry’s hand and unfurled it.
“If truth be told,” Jerry said. “I didn’t harm that fly. He was too fast for me!”
Stan’s eyes lifted from the document. “Isn’t it ironic,” he began. “This form here is a sworn affidavit where you are required to pledge not to harm anything up here. Now, give me your John Henry and we can get you on your way.”
Jerry scribbled his signature on the piece of paper and noticed that the chicken scratch that used to be his excuse for handwriting had given way to a beautiful, cursive style that should belong to a poet. It was a young man’s signature and not the lazy scrawl of someone that had lived the full complement of years bestowed upon people.

The Amish Deliverer


The horse and buggy arrived just as Jerry handed the signed affidavit to Stan. His eyes fell on the equine. It was a large, handsome Percheron with a broad, powerful chest that bore the harnesses that strapped it to the black closed-in buggy. It wasn’t the horse that drew Jerry’s attention but the copious amount of houseflies that buzzed around the creature’s eyes. If they had been swarming around him that way he would have gone insane. Stan was right. It seemed like every insect that ever lived was here in Heaven.
“Step in,” Stan said to Jerry. “You are ready to go to your new home.”
Jerry looked at the gatekeeper and realized that he might not see the man for a long, long time. Although Stan was not the friendliest person that Jerry had met, he was still the first one that he had encountered here in the afterlife. This would always make Stan special to Jerry. “I hope to see you again some day,” Jerry said, extending his hand out to the gatekeeper.
Once again, Stan refused to take it. “Germs,” he said.
At the same moment the Percheron decided to relieve himself. At first, Jerry thought nothing of it outside of his usual reaction of disgust at such things but then he realized that this act was taking place here in Heaven. Although he had never thought of it before, he was sure that he would have believed that such things were strictly bound to the mortal coil and not the eternal one.
“What’s the matter Jerry?” Stan asked. When Jerry explained what he was thinking about, the gatekeeper laughed. “Why would we deprive ourselves up here from the pleasures of having a good shit! Now, get inside and be off with you!”
Jerry entered the black buggy. It seemed familiar to him and he knew where he had seen something like it before and that was when he had driven through rural Pennsylvania. There were a lot of these horse-drawn black buggies with the orange highway triangle there. This was an Amish buggy. When Jerry set eyes on the buggy’s driver his suspicion was confirmed. The driver was a man with a straw hat and a long, mustache-less scraggy beard that hung down on his chest. He introduced himself as Ivan Yoder before calling out to the horse to gitty-up.
The buggy was set in motion. All that Jerry could see was the Percheron’s rump sway side to side in an easy canter. At first, Ivan did not say much. He waited for Jerry to lead the conversation but for the moment Jerry did not feel like talking much. He had his thoughts and impressions to wrangle and to fit in to his concept of what Heaven was like. Thus far it was nothing like he had believed. He had never pictured it to be a life in the clouds with singing angels playing harps. But he did not picture it to be this mundane and ordinary either. Thus far, it was nothing more than just an extrapolation of the same things that he would have found on Earth. There was nothing special here.
But then again it was all special. Back on Earth during his lifetime, he had always been living in preparation for the future. He worried himself about his finances, his relationships with others, and the direction in which his country was going. Those kinds of concerns seemed to be gone now. He was able to just satisfy himself with the here and now and not rue over the gone and went or fret about the where and coming. It was an easy feeling and he found that he was quite satisfied just staring out the window trying to look past the horse’s rump at the unfolding countryside.
There were no buildings thus far, just rolling fields divided by stands of tall leafed trees. It was feral country not wild country. This land had been given over to the farmers whom tilled the soil and planted their crops. What he saw out there upon the fields were soybeans, corn, rice lettuce, cabbage and a host of other edible vegetation. This set Jerry to thinking. Why were they planting crops in Heaven? Was someone going to eat them? Did the denizens of the afterlife have to eat in order to sustain their immortality? What if they didn’t eat, what then? Do they starve and die? But how could you die if you were immortal? This confused Jerry and he had to ask Ivan about it.
“Of course, we all have to eat up here!” Ivan said in a slow canter that matched the gait of his horse. “You need your sustenance to keep your head from going dizzy.”
Jerry’s eyes were on the hindquarters of the Percheron. He remembered what had come out of there. If that wasn’t proof that consumption took place in Heaven nothing was. Then he thought about the rest of the horse. There were some cultures on Earth that ate these creatures. Were there cultures up here that did the same or was everybody vegetarians? He decided to pick Ivan’s brain on this topic.
“There are some people here that eat nothing but greens but most of us will now and then partake in a good steak or roast. It can’t be Heaven if you are not allowed to have the occasional feast and it can’t be a feast without meat.”
“But how can that work?” Jerry cried. “If these animals come here to Heaven only to be slaughtered what kind of salvation is that for them?”
Ivan smiled, displaying that he had some missing teeth. Jerry noted this and made a point to himself to inquire about this afterwards once he had heard the Amish man’s explanation about meat eating in Heaven. “There is a lot of what you would call recycling taking place here. The animal that becomes the main course for dinner reappears fully reconstituted shortly thereafter out in the meadows and is as strong and healthy as the day it first arrived in Paradise.”
“But what about the law that says that you cannot harm any living creature here? Isn’t it violated every time you decide to butcher yourself a calf?” It was not making much sense to Jerry. In the back of his mind, he remembered what the gatekeeper had said. ‘There is no magic in Heaven.’
“Oh, we don’t hurt the animal at all, Mister!” Ivan said. “We just wait for it to die. Sooner or later they all do. We have all the time in the world to wait.”
“Nothing lives forever up here? I thought that we are immortal!” Jerry exclaimed. “How can we die? How can horses die?”
“The Lord works in mysterious ways is all that I can say to you,” Ivan replied. “We never have to kill anything here to get our meat. We just find a dead cow or pig lying on the ground and we have our vittles. We never harm anything around here.”
Jerry’s common sense was being harmed by this information. Animals falling dead mysteriously and then resurrecting elsewhere? He looked at the Amish man in his traditional clothing and felt that this fellow would not be the most reliable source of explanations. Anything that Ivan said would be tainted by his backward culture. How did Ivan know that these animals were being resurrected? What tangible proof could he possibly have? He thought that he would be forthright and ask the man directly.
“How could you have attained the Kingdom of God without knowing the answer to that question?” Ivan responded, displaying that there was something more to him than what he had shown thus far. “Didn’t the Lord show you how this was done back on Earth through his example?”
Jerry thought about it for a moment. What did Jesus do or say two thousand years ago that would shed light on why animals would repeatedly come back to life here in Heaven? Almost at once the answer came to him. It came to him so hard that he might as well have slapped himself on the forehead. “The Resurrection! Of course!” he cried and immediately apologized to Ivan for his ignorance. Jesus had shown that it was possible to rise from the dead and that was what these animals were doing here. They would die and then they would come back to life – their former bodies becoming the main course of sumptuous repasts for people to eat while they would be reborn in fresh bodies elsewhere. It was a remarkable system and one that would ensure that there was always plenty to eat while still guaranteeing immortality to the creature that lay down its life.
“It works that way up here with people as well,” Ivan added, almost like an afterthought.
“What do you mean it works that way with people up here as well?” Jerry did not understand.
“We recycle ourselves all the time as well,” the Amish man replied, while jigging the reins to communicate something or other to the horse. They were reaching a crossroads up ahead and the buggy was slowing down to negotiate a turn.
“Do you mean that we die up here too?”
“And are reborn shortly thereafter,” Ivan completed the syllogism.
Before Jerry could scoff at the idea, he felt himself jostled from one side of the buggy to the other. They had not made the turn very smoothly. What was Ivan saying? People die up here in Heaven? Jerry could understand that the animals would die. With their limited intellects, they would not have a problem with continuously starting over and coming to this world brand new. But Jerry thought that he would. He wanted continuity in his afterlife. He did not want it constantly disrupted with deaths and fresh starts.
“And how do you know this?” he demanded to know.
“Because I am on my third cycle,” Ivan answered.
“How long ago was it that you left the Earth?” Jerry estimated that it could not have been that long ago. Despite their antiquated ways the Amish were a modern people with a modern culture. Ivan had the savvy of a twenty-first century human and knew of the latest advances in technology that took place in the mortal world. He could not have been dead that long.
“That I can’t tell you,” the buggy driver said. “You kind of lose count of time up here.”
“But you have already died up here at least twice?” Jerry was focused and he determined that he would listen intently to Ivan’s response. He was sure that he would find a hole in what the Amish man said that would reveal a corrupted thinking process that would bend towards superstition rather than cold, hard facts.
“Twice I died here in Kingdom Come,” Ivan admitted. “Both times were due to accidents, once while plowing when my team trampled me and once in a fire. On both occasions I woke up shortly thereafter in the house of my parents. My body was reconstituted and I bore no evidence of injury or burn. Yet the memory of those accidents lived on in my mind and when I talked about them to my parents, they too confirmed that these unfortunate events took place and that it was not a dream.” Ivan spoke as if he were truly convinced of the veracity of his claims.
But Jerry was far from convinced. He leaned towards the conclusion that the Amish man was either hallucinating or gave too much credence to the nocturnal stories that the mind concocts. Yet, being a religious man himself with the values of his Roman Catholic upbringing, Jerry knew that there was no point in trying to make Ivan see the errors in his judgment. He decided that he would show respect and tolerance to the man’s interpretation of events but he would not adopt Ivan’s worldview as his own. If the afterlife were nothing but a series of disrupted lives, he would have to have firsthand proof of that. “So how long have you been in the business of taxiing the newcomers to their new homes?” he asked, making a wholesale change of topic without properly concluding the previous one.
“It seems to me that you do not want to continue on our line of conversation any longer?” Ivan asked.
“I just want to know more about you, that is all,” Jerry swiftly answered. He could feel that things had suddenly gone sour.
“Like I said, you lose count of time up here,” Ivan answered. Jerry could read in the man’s eyes that he knew what Jerry was doing and that he was disappointed that Jerry would not accept what he had to say.

Stephanie


The rest of their trip to Jerry’s new residence was mostly silent and any conversation that took place between the two men was stilted and awkward. Jerry had lost the trust of his guide and he was never able to regain it no matter how hard he tried. One bit of conversation that at first seemed like it might take root and extend itself into a friendly exchange between the two of them was Jerry’s enquiry about why people still had to work up here in Heaven. Stan had a job at the gate. Ivan was in the taxi business.
“A man would lose the essence of his manhood if he remained idle,” the Amish man retorted. “To be a man is to be industrious.”
“I guess that if we did not have anything to do that we would go crazy from boredom,” Jerry translated Ivan’s words into something that he could understand. He agreed with the line of thinking however he was rather disappointed that the activities one could indulge in here were not what he would call pleasure-oriented. Working a gate or driving people around in a buggy was not his vision of the great paradise promised in the afterlife. They seemed rather mundane and ordinary. “I would rather play though than work,” he said.
“It is up to the people to make Heaven work,” Ivan continued. “It cannot work without them.” He would say no more. His eyes possessed a fire that maybe should have been assigned to that other place. Jerry was sure that the Amish man believed him to be lazy and not worthy of this new world.
Ivan kept silent during the rest of the journey. Jerry tried a few more times to converse with the man but he was met with a stone cold wall that would not allow anything to penetrate. They traversed endless miles of rural terrain. He could see livestock grazing in many of these fields. The beasts seemed content, feeding on the abundant grasses. It made Jerry’s heart feel content in knowing that there was no butcher shop in the cows’ future. They would live out peaceful lives until they mysteriously died to start over again elsewhere. Their former bodies would become the bountiful meals of the people who would happen upon them. It was a good system, in theory. But Jerry still did not believe that it existed.
There was one thing odd about the road that Ivan followed to Jerry’s new place. Not one human dwelling was visible from it. If there were people here, their homes were well hidden. It was one of the questions that he posed to Ivan that never received a response. Jerry had to come up with his own hypothesis. His working premise was that there was so much land here that the houses were hidden beyond the horizon.
There were many horizons along the journey. The land would climb and then it would fall away only to climb once more. It was rolling country just like the Kentucky on Earth. He had been to Kentucky once in his life to see the famous Derby. The experience had been thrilling despite the fact that he had not picked the winner in the race. He remembered that he had been charmed by the terrain and the easy-going nature of the people. He had said to his wife, Stephanie, that Kentucky was exactly the way that he pictured Heaven to be. Stephanie responded that if Heaven were like Kentucky, she would rather take the other option. Stephanie suffered from hay fever and other allergies. Their entire vacation in the Midwest was one long ordeal for the woman.
It was funny but this was the first time since he had arrived into the afterlife that he had thought of the woman that had been his mate for almost sixty years on Earth. They had had a good marriage, one that seemed perfect to those observing it from without. But from within, Jerry knew that it had not been the ideal arrangement. He and Stephanie had grown apart over the years despite staying together. She was an integral part of his life yet as time passed he had found that he could barely tolerate her and he was sure that she had felt the same.
He wondered how Stephanie was doing now after his death. Did she handle it well? Were the kids looking out for her? His children were good and Jerry was sure that they were making her golden years as comfortable as possible for her. He held no doubt that Stephanie would attain the Kingdom of God upon her death. He did not know if he would see her again. She would never select Kentucky as her home in the great hereafter. She would pick something like Baltimore and wonder why he was not there. But then again, maybe they would be together again someday. Eternity was such a long time and anything was possible. As he thought about a reunion with his wife, he felt his heart warm. This warmth told him that yes, he was still in love with her and that he always would be.
Ivan said something to the Percheron and the horse took a sudden turn into a field. There was nothing about this location that stood out to say that this was the place to venture from the road. It was just a stretch of grasses no different from any of the other stretches of grass that he had thus far seen. It climbed up towards a horizon silhouetted by a series of tall elm trees whose sweeping boughs swayed slightly in the gentle breeze. Jerry looked to his driver and asked him if this was where he was taking him. Ivan did not verbally answer but he did bow his head in an affirmative gesture.


The Little House On The Prairie


They reached the crest of the hill. There, the land at once fell away into a picturesque valley divided into several fields of maturing crops. Each field was clearly delineated from the others by the type of plant growing upon it. There was corn, cabbage and cauliflower. Where the three fields met was a small yard of bluegrass and in the center of this yard was a humble little house surrounded by flower gardens. When Jerry saw it he at once knew that this was to be his home for eternity. He was struck by a strange combination of feelings, some comfortable and some edging on the frightening. It was a quaint abode that exuded a distinctive charm and he was sure that there would be those that would die for such a residence. In fact, this was the residence that he had died for. Except, he almost immediately experienced revulsion for the place. It was so small. It was so isolated. It was not what he wanted.
Turning to Ivan, he asked, “Are you sure that this is the place?” He was hoping that maybe the Amish man had stopped here simply just to feed his horse and that they still had some distance to go before they reached Jerry’s new home.
“This is it,” Ivan said but would not elaborate any more. He was still angry with Jerry.
“But I don’t like it!” Jerry cried. “I’d go crazy here before the day is over!”
“It is what you signed up for. If you have any problems with it you will have to go to the city and make new arrangements.”
“Take me to the city right now!” Jerry demanded.
“I’m sorry fellow, I can’t do that. I have another fare and I am running late.” Ivan picked up the reins and gave them a thrash. The Percheron broke into a fast trot and within moments the buggy was charging down the hill and disappeared from Jerry’s sight.
He was alone now, standing on the slope that overlooked his land. Not one aspect of it was attractive to him. It appeared to be a place that demanded a lot of attention from the owner. Someone had to tend to those crops. Someone had to cut that grass and keep that house painted and those flowers growing.
There was not another soul in sight. That someone was going to have to be him.
But all those chores could wait for a moment. He had to take a grip of his senses. Heaven was supposed to be some sublime place where one could expect nothing but positive things occurring. It was where the spirit could relish being close to God. There should not be any negative aspects to it. Thus far, he had encountered nothing but negative aspects, from the houseflies near the gate to the aloof nature of his driver. Hell was supposed to be the house of negativity.
Had he been wrong about his final destination?
Was this not Heaven? Was this Hell?
The isolation of his allotted valley felt cold and godless. It dispirited him. These feelings should never be felt in Heaven. He had to conclude that he had gone elsewhere and that he had been rejected by the Lord and been banished to a miserable existence for his transgressions during life.
But where did he go wrong? He examined the life that he had led back on Earth. He had stayed true to the path as outlined by the good book and the dictates of the weekly sermons. He kept the commandments and he always tried to follow the golden rule. Sure, there had been times when his temper got the better of him but he had always been very swift to atone for them. People had respected him and he had respected people. Why then was he here standing overlooking a desolate landscape? Was this his final reward? It just did not add up.
He heard a buzzing. In the sunlight, he caught a reflection of a pair of transparent wings. These were not made of gossamer. They were not those of angels. These belonged to that most despicable of invertebrates, the mosquito. One was hovering just inches over his exposed arm. It was looking for a place to alight and dine.
Almost at once Jerry went into a fury and tried to swat the buzzer in the air with his open hand. The mosquito was equipped with a hypersensitive ability to detect danger and made some swift and uncanny maneuvers to avoid the brunt of Jerry’s palm. As soon as Jerry missed it, it recalibrated its honing instincts and made a path for the back of Jerry’s neck. Jerry took a swipe at it again and for a moment thought that he had made contact as his cupped hand began grinding against his nape. He wanted to squish the mosquito until its carcass was unrecognizable. Almost at the same time, he recalled Stan the Gatekeeper’s warning regarding harming anything in Heaven. Well it was too bad Stan! He was not going to honor the affidavit that he’d signed. It did not matter that he was breaking a promise. Promises made to him had been broken. Heaven was not what it was supposed to be!
He looked at his bare hand and investigated its nooks and crannies trying to find the remains of the mosquito. All he found were the same familiar wrinkles and lines that he had seen all his life. This was the same hand that he had had on Earth. Rather, it was the same hand that he had had in his younger days. His youth had been restored to him. Regardless, there was no evidence of the insect upon it. The rolled-up remains either were caught in the short hairs at the back of his head or they had fallen to the ground. The mosquito was no longer around. He remembered what Ivan had said about creatures resurrecting elsewhere and wondered if the mosquito was being reborn in some distant swamp.
His property looked like a swamp, a dried-up swamp. What in God’s name was he doing here? Why would he have elected to choose such a locale as his home in the afterlife? Landscapes and scenery look nice in pictures and paintings hanging on a wall. There they seemed tame and conquered. The real thing was altogether different. The photographer and the artist’s eyes failed to capture all the unsettling elements that make the real thing something to avoid and run away from. He could not imagine himself living in the valley below. It just resounded with boredom and with vulnerability. If there were mosquitoes here then surely there would be other creatures of a more menacing stature here as well. If everything that came here from Earth retained its mortal nature then there would be bears and wolves here as well. How was he going to protect himself from these creatures? Even dogs on leads back in the city used to make him feel nervous. He never trusted them and had stayed clear of them whenever they had come strolling with their owners down the sidewalk.
He determined that he was not going to remain in the valley. He was not even going to amble down to the house and take a look inside. This was not going to be his residence in the afterlife. He would go to the city that Ivan had mentioned and fill out the mountain of paperwork that he was sure would be involved in getting himself relocated to some other locale where he would feel a little more at home.
But where was that city? Jerry did not have the slightest inkling. Even though he was standing on a promontory that afforded him a view of the land for miles around he could not see anything at all that remotely resembled a city. He could not even see anything at all that hinted at another human’s presence. Everything was wild here. Everything was feral. How could they have placed him in such a remote setting? Surely, they would have records showing that he had never been more than a hundred feet away from another person in his life. He was conditioned to having others of his kind nearby. He was not a hermit or a recluse by nature. Stan should have had paperwork indicating this back at the gate. Stan should have highly advised against Jerry’s choice. Stan should have strongly endorsed an urban setting for him. But Stan hadn’t. And now, here he was, in the middle of nowhere with no way of finding his way out.
This could not possibly be Heaven, Jerry thought. If Heaven was a place of joy, he had not experienced it yet at all. He had not seen it in the eyes of Stan or Ivan. Both men held work-a-day demeanors and appeared to have a longing to be elsewhere, doing something else rather than what they were doing. Yet, the circumstances of Heaven dictated that one tended to the gate to greet newcomers while the other taxied them to their final destination. There was nothing joyous in any of this.
Could this be Purgatory? He had to wonder. Maybe the way that he had conducted his life had not met heavenly standards but he was still worth saving for eventual entrance into Kingdom Come? He would be the first to admit that his life on Earth had not been exactly saintly. There would not be any petitions in Rome to have Jerry Fieri canonized. He had not always lived his life to the exacting detail of the truly righteous. He had sinned now and then. These were all very minor transgressions and they had always been confessed. He always atoned for them by doing the penance allotted to him by the priest on the other side of the confessional. He had had every right to believe that he would enter Heaven directly and not have to spend some time in God’s penalty box, Purgatory.
One man’s Heaven is another man’s Hell. Stan had said something like that back at the gate. Jerry mulled over these words as he stared down into the valley. And then it occurred to him. The reason that he found this spot so frightening and repulsive was that this was not his Heaven. It might be a Heaven to a Midwest farmer or rancher but it was not a Heaven to a city kid. His Heaven was elsewhere. He had to find the city that Ivan had mentioned and change his address to something with a street number and a streetlight and not something on an unlit rural route.
This was not Hell. This was not Purgatory. This was Heaven and somewhere up here there was a place for him. It was just a matter of him finding it.
But where? What direction?
Did it matter? He had all of time ahead of him. He would eventually find the city and he would eventually finish all the paperwork and he would eventually arrive at the home that was to be his and he would still have all of time ahead of him. What a wonderful concept! He would have an adventure getting there.
Maybe he would even meet some of his boyhood heroes up here along the way. He was a huge baseball fan through life and although he had always rooted for his hometown Orioles he had always secretly been a Yankees fan. Would the Babe and the Man be here somewhere? He had to believe that they were. He hoped that he might find them. And there were others that he would like to meet as well including the Twentieth Century crooners that sang their ways into his heart with their velvet throats. He had always liked singing along with Frank and warbling with Bing. Maybe he would get the chance to do that as well.
All these heroes were city folk. They were not country bumpkins. Why in the world would he have picked Kentucky as his Heaven when his true paradise was the Big Apple? He had obviously not been thinking very straight when he had happened upon the gatekeeper.
But that was okay. He had plenty of time to straighten things out. It was time for him to hit the road and find his way back to where he belonged.
Forever Afternoon


The sun was hanging over the valley. Although he had no way of knowing it, it seemed like it was the afternoon of the day. If the sun were over the valley that would mean that he would be facing west. If Heaven were laid out like Earth that would mean that the city would be to the east since New York was east of Kentucky. He knew that his rationale was flimsy at best but what did it matter? He had tons of time. He would go east.
He made his way back to the road that Ivan had used to escort him here. It was not much of a road. It was more just a set of parallel ruts created by wagons carving their dusty impressions into the grasses. He reached his first decision point. If he went left that would take him back to the gate. There had been no sign of any city between here and the gate. If he went right that would take him into the unknown. Perhaps there eventually would be a city somewhere in that direction. His choice seemed obvious. He had to go to the right and into the unknown. Just the mere existence of this road suggested that it had to go somewhere and that it had been used often enough to make its mark on the terrain.
Before taking his first step along that road, Jerry took one last look at the territory that had been promised him. Suddenly, it no longer held all those grim aspects that made him want to run away from it. It had taken on a semblance of a homey feeling for him and he began to wonder if he were doing the right thing in leaving it. But then he recalled that forlorn, lonely shack in the valley. Who in their right mind would want to stay in such an isolated hermitage? No, it was not a place for him. He would go stark raving mad there in the space of a week for the lack of anything to do and the lack of human company.
Still, as he started along the path, he kept looking back at his land and felt turmoil in leaving it. It almost felt like something there was calling him and begging him not to go. It was a strange feeling and one that took a lot of determination on Jerry’s behalf to overcome. He had not experienced such a trauma since the day that he had moved away from his parents’ place and gotten his first apartment. He had been so homesick that he had only stayed in his apartment two weeks before he found himself knocking on his parents’ door and asking them if he could move back. They did not accept him with open arms the way that he had expected. There had been disappointment in their eyes as if they had failed in fostering a trait of independence in him. Still, they had taken him back and it was a fiasco. He had discovered in those two short weeks that he occupied his apartment that he had changed sufficiently that he could no longer abide by living according to his parents’ rules. They had many clashes and it was not very long before he found himself his second apartment and this time he no longer felt any need to return to the nest.
The little house in the valley was his nest here in Heaven and like his parents’ house back on Earth he knew that it would always be there if he had a need to go back. But on Earth he had never had a need to return and he believed that here in Heaven it would be just the same. Without looking back again, he committed himself to the road and would go to where it took him. Hopefully, there would be a city somewhere out there for him to find.
He walked for what seemed like hours on end as the road coursed a winding, snaky path through rugged prairie terrain that was not entirely flat but was not mountainous either. It was undulating country that could not make up its mind as to what it wanted to ascribe as its main feature. It was far from what Jerry would describe as heavenly land. There was nothing of a picturesque quality to it. It possessed very few shade trees and most of it sat rawly exposed to the hot afternoon sun. The sun had not seemed to move at all during the time that Jerry had beaten the trail. This started the man wondering if the sun was stationary in the sky here in Heaven. Was time at a standstill in a forever afternoon? Was there never morning, evening or night here?
And where was that sun? Was it set up like it was back in his mortal life where the star was at the center of a solar system amid a million other solar systems? Or was it something entirely different here? Was the land that he walked the center of this universe? Would Copernicus have been wrong here? If the sun did not move in the sky relative to the ground then this new Earth was not revolving around it or alternatively the sun rotating around the land. There were alternative celestial mechanics at work here. That was all that he could muster. He did not want to ponder the heavens at the moment. He was sure that he would have plenty of time to do so later.
He continued to trudge on through the ceaseless countryside. He had yet to see anything living that was not plant life. There were no birds to be seen or heard. This land seemed to be devoid of them here. Even the insects that he had seen back at the gate and on his land were missing. He would have thought that the vegetation here would be rife with grasshoppers and crickets. Yet, as far as he could tell, there were none.
And then his foot landed into something. Looking down at it, he saw a disgusting mound of a brown substance wrap around the toes of his boot. He immediately recognized it for what it was – the dung of some ungulate creature, perhaps a cow. Grabbing a handful of some nearby grasses and keeping a gag in check, he started to wipe the poop from his boot, trying to keep his fingers clear of the fecal material. It still somehow found a way to smear the side of his palm and his knuckles. There was no water close by and Jerry went into a panic, as it became his prime motive to cleanse his hand. His eyes started moving in close examination of what was readily available to him in order for him to feel clean again. What his eyes discovered was that the mound he had stepped in was only one of literally hundreds of similar piles. He could only conclude that a herd had been here recently but a herd of what? There only seemed one possible answer and that answer had him so overwhelmed that he inadvertently wiped his hands on his pants. They had to be buffalo or more precisely American Bison.
If this was Heaven and if all creatures came here at the end of their Earthly lives then it made sense that those legendary vast herds of the early Nineteenth century were here. The terrain was ideal for these animals. It would be their Heaven. And as Jerry looked at the brown smudge on his legs, it became apparent that this had to be his Hell. He had to get out of here and he carefully began choosing his path around the copious mounds that abounded here. He still kept one eye above the grasses in case the makers of these piles were nearby. He did not relish the idea of encountering even just one of these beasts. They scared him with their massive heads, powerful physiques and their pointy horns. Being impaled by a set of them would be a nasty way to go.
Soon, the dung piles began to grow sparse and his neck could be held upright, as he no longer had to keep up a constant vigilance of what sat directly on his path. He kept walking forward and onward under a ceaseless unmoving sun. He started to realize that there were demands on his body in the afterlife. His legs were growing tired and weary; his throat felt parched, and there was a burning in his stomach that demanded attention. He was hungry and thirsty. If there was water upon this land, it did not make itself visible. He could not see any streams or standing bodies of water such as a pond or a sinkhole. The only things available that looked even partially edible were the grasses and the occasional dung pile. He could not believe that he had been reduced to such a state where poop was starting to look like food to him. This truly had to be his Hell. He told himself that no matter what, he would retain his dignity and not resort to the ingestion of feces. He started hoping that he would die soon and swiftly so that he could reawaken elsewhere in less dire circumstances. There could be nothing worse than remaining where he was. He was certain that it would take him eons to walk his way out of here. As far as he could see, the land remained given over to the prairie. There was no promise of salvation to be seen.
Salvation.
Wasn’t this supposed to be salvation? Wasn’t this the reason that he had led a pure, fastidious life back on Earth where he rarely allowed himself the so-called pleasures of the flesh? Had he known that Heaven was so bleak he would have indulged more frequently in the gamey opportunities that his previous life had presented. But he had foregone all those lustier activities in order to assure himself an eternal occupancy in God’s country.
God’s country.
Wasn’t that a term used back on Earth to describe unsettled territory where the natural world still remained supreme and had not been pushed aside into obscurity by the industry of man? What was surrounding him was God’s country, pure and unabated. For some reason the old saying that ‘you had better be careful for what you wish for, it may come true’ came to his head. Another bit of wisdom was competing with it and that was the one about ‘if it sounds too good to be true then it likely is’. Heaven, as described by the teachings of his church, was supposed to be such an ideal, perfect world that it was beyond the comprehension of the mortal. Life everlasting in the hands of the Savior was a wonderful concept but how does one make that work? How does a designer ensure that eternity is custom-made to guarantee the user’s continuous and continual satisfaction? Jerry had yet to receive even a gram of satisfaction. His resurrection into the afterlife had thus far been nothing but misery.
Perhaps the blame was his from when he had foolishly told Stan the Gatekeeper that he wanted Kentucky when he should have chosen Baltimore. Or perhaps the blame was on Stan for allowing Jerry to choose without properly educating him on the ramifications of such a choice. Stan was not up on good customer service. Stan had rushed him along without explaining the details. Jerry wished that he could meet Stan one more time and be given a proper orientation of the new world. He was sure that had St. Peter been there, he would not be lost upon a hopeless savannah.


Aping the Apes


He tried continuing onward but his legs ached, his mouth was dry and fetid, and his stomach was so empty that he felt faint. He knew that he had to take some action to remedy the situation. To find food and water meant that he had to keep moving but he had to give his legs a rest first. He thought that if he sat still for maybe half an hour then the strength in them should be sufficiently replenished to allow him to conduct a forage. He plopped himself down onto the dusty ground and shuffled his buttocks until they found a comfortable position. He stretched out his legs and felt the blood re-circulate in them. It was a pleasing sensation. His arms were wedged behind him for support. His fingers automatically started playing with the soil.
They soon attracted ants. He could feel dozens of them exploring the contours and geography of his hands. It was a ticklish, annoying feeling that he soon found he could not tolerate any longer. He cursed the little creatures and was angry that they were a part of Kingdom Come. What was so important about their instincts and experiences that each of them was guaranteed an eternal life? They were nothing more than just animate matter to Jerry. There was nothing lofty about their existence. Surely, it would not matter much if they ceased to continue after their Earthly demise. But God in his infinite wisdom chose to allow them to go on and Jerry started to wonder if his deity had some obsession with never discarding anything. The Lord was a pack rat.
He was about to get up and get away from the ants when he suddenly recalled some of the documentaries that he had watched on television. There were many cultures around the world that saw insects as a food source. Supposedly, there was plenty of protein in them. Jerry had never purposefully ate an insect back on Earth even though he was aware of a statistic that claimed that the average American consumed something that was measured in the scale of pounds in insect matter per year. Grasshopper parts were always getting mixed in to the grains that made bread.
He studied the little red creatures meandering over his hand. They were not as disgusting to his palate as the buffalo dung. He wondered what they would taste like. Surely, there could be no harm in just trying one. He lifted his ant-covered hand to his mouth and gave it a lick. He could feel several tiny chunks stick to his tongue. This told him that he had successfully managed to get them into his mouth. He swallowed. It felt like nothing had gone down his throat but there was nothing foreign on his teeth, gums or roof. The ants must have been consumed but they had done absolutely nothing to stave off his hunger. He would have to eat hundreds of them, he realized, in order to no longer feel gaunt. How did big creatures such as bears and giant anteaters make a living from eating them? They were just too tiny.
Tiny or not, they were the only thing edible around here and Jerry became determined to eat more. Remembering another documentary regarding tool use and chimpanzees, Jerry decided to ape the apes. He plucked a long strand of nearby grass and moistened it with the meager saliva in his mouth and went in search for the anthill. He did not have to go too far. One was only a foot away from the path. He shoved his makeshift straw down into the mound and waited a few seconds before pulling it out. He was expecting to see his straw literally crawling with the ants but when the simian tool was extracted from the insect hill, all that was on it were a few grains of sand. There was not one ant upon it. This infuriated the man. How come it worked for chimpanzees and not for him? Was there something biologically different about ape saliva? Did it possess some fundamental chemical that could not be found in human saliva? Didn’t they say that the chimps were supposed to be humans’ closest cousins? This seemed to be proof that the theory of evolution was just hogwash until Jerry suddenly realized that the chimps had used something else to attract the ants rather than their saliva. They had used some sort of resin or honey upon their straws to draw in the insects. He hated to think that this was proof that chimps were smarter than he was!
But what could he use? There was nothing sweet that he could recognize. His eyes fell onto a heap of buffalo turd. The surface of the mound was visibly moving with a hundred ants on expedition. They were mining the feces and marching it back to their hill. If these creatures were interested in poop then Jerry was no longer interested in them. He was not going to eat secondhand shit. Or firsthand. The ants swiftly disappeared from his menu. He would have to find something else to eat.


Animal Trail


His legs were recuperated enough for him to move onward and under the blazing sun he trekked further down the road.
His newfound strength did not last long. Soon his famished condition and the weariness in his body caught up to him. He was still in no man’s land. He was still upon an endless prairie. Everything was endless here except for his hope. He wished that he could give up and simply die like Ivan said that the cattle did up here. Then, he would be miraculously transported to some place and get to have a fresh start. But when he thought of the bureaucratic nature that seemed to govern Heaven, he realized that they would look at his paperwork and see that he had chosen Kentucky and before he knew it he would be whisked back to that forlorn cottage upon the prairie and be caught up in the same conundrum that he found himself in now. The only way that he would break this endless cycle would be by going to the city and completing the necessary forms that would authorize his relocation.
This realization spurned him to stay moving. The trail that he followed told him that it had to go somewhere and that others had used it in the past. It would not be beaten down if it had been a virgin path. He thought once more of the buffalo dung. Could this be evidence that what he was tracing was an animal road? He looked at his path more carefully and noticed that the ground was broken up as if heavy creatures with hoofs had stridden along it. His heart sank. He was not upon a road made by fellow humans. He was on a buffalo trail. It was probably made by hundreds of these migratory bovines as they moved from one feeding ground to another. A documentary he had seen concerning the vast caribou herds of the Arctic pointed out that these creatures tended to use the same path annually over and over again for thousands of years. Caribou and buffalo were not that far removed on the evolutionary scale and it was quite likely that the bison would have similar migratory habits as their cousins.
Jerry fell to the ground in frustration. This could not possibly be Heaven. God would not mete out such agonizing rewards to those that followed his Word. Once again, Jerry began to wonder if he were not in Purgatory or worse, Hell, itself. But as he sat prone on the prairie floor, his eyes did catch an impression in the dirt that could not possibly have been made by buffalo. The elongated shape, an oval on a diet, could only come from one source. It was a human footprint or rather the impression of a boot. No other animal wore shoes so it had to be human. Jerry crawled up to the marking and felt such elation upon seeing it that he actually broke down and cried. It made him so happy to see it. Someone else of his kind had been here before and he was not alone in this sad world after all. He wanted to rejoice and sing out to Heaven.
But he was in Heaven and Heaven was not what it was marketed back on Earth to be like. He looked at the boot impression once more. There was something familiar about it. It bore an uncanny resemblance to the very boots that he had on his feet. He stood up and forced himself to place his boot upon the imprint. They were of equal length and width. It was like he was standing in his own footprint. But how could he have made that track? He had not been down this road this far before. He could not have been walking in circles for he had stayed true to the path and had never ventured far away from it.
But what if the path itself was a continuous circle and he had been wandering it ignorant of the fact that he had already been here? It was a frightening notion that he sought desperately to dismiss. The terrain, although rather ceaseless in its monotony, did always conjure up new vistas or variations on the theme. He was quite certain that the slope and the arrangement of furrows, vegetation and horizon that he was gazing upon were unique and that this was the first time that he had been here. But he had not preoccupied himself with his surroundings thus far. It had always been background and not front and center to his attention. It could very well be that he had been here before and just not noticed its features. Old fables came to his mind about lost souls that were doomed to continually repeat the same gargantuan task for infinity. Was he rolling a rock up a hill to only watch it come down again? If that were the case then he might as well quit right now and not lose himself in a futile undertaking. He looked up at the sky and imagined his maker there. He shook his fist at the endless sun and proclaimed that he was not going to give him such cruel amusements. He felt rage boiling within him. Screaming his head off went a long way towards dissipating the pent-up hostility that had grown in him since his departure from his mortal life.
He sat down once more and momentarily felt good that he had expressed his anger. But soon this gave way to a colossal wave of sorrow as he realized that no matter how much he complained it was still not going to get him away from his present circumstances. He was in a featureless terrain far away from anything that could give him relief. He was thirsty, hungry, sore and demoralized. He was well on his way towards dying but he realized that that death could be still days away and in the interval he would have to contend with nothing but increasing suffering. If this was the afterlife then he wished that the atheists were the ones that had it right. It would have been far better just to cease to exist after his earthly life had transpired. He could have been quietly rotting in the ground oblivious to everything instead of having to deal with a hopeless struggle to survive.