Bicycle wheels whirl and crunch furiously on the pavement, accompanied by an increasing staccato.
“Huff puff, huff puff, huff puff.”
His focus on the road ahead narrows and becomes fuzzy. A car passes quickly on the left. On the right pedestrians walk along a sidewalk. A dull thump, thump, thump pumping sound emerges and continues unevenly for several long seconds.
“Ugh…!”
A sharp crashing sound and stinging pain are followed by a dizzying blur, then blackout and profound silence. After an indeterminable while, soft strains of Allegri’s Miserere invade an immensely indiscernible space, infused with enveloping and whirling vapors. The hazy murkiness begins to lighten up, gradually, very gradually intensifying until it reaches a full glare. Two shadowy figures materialize from the obscurity and approach an opening in the clouds, perhaps a gate with a side post. A figure with an elongated headpiece calls from inside.
“Michael! You’re late again! It is almost time to wrap up my shift.”
“Sorry, Peter, last minute congestion and an Expedia reservation screw up with Charon on the River Styx. You know the result of all those Novel Coronavirus variants, everybody’s just dying to get across…”
“Okay, okay. Let’s get this thing rolling.”
Michael hands him a document while Peter directs a question to the other shadow now fully emerged from the chaotic vapors.
“First name?”
“My what? What? My first name?” the second figure responds groggily.
“Come on, yes, your first name. It says here your first name is Tom. Is that right?”
“Yes, it’s Tom, but what is going on?”
“Just processing.”
“Processing what?”
“I’m verifying your eligibility.”
“Eligibility for what?”
“Eligibility to enter.”
“Enter what?”
“The Celestial Gates, of course!”
“Celestial? Gates? Am I dreaming? What’s all this fog? What the hell is going on?”
“I’m sorry, but you aren’t allowed to use that term here.”
Tom still looks mystified.
Peter then turns back to Michael. “Michael, you know the drill. Why haven’t you told him?”
“Sorry, Peter. I only received notice of Tom for my recruitment list at the last second, but he looked like a promising candidate.”
“Arrgh! Now let’s get going here. I’ve got to finish my daily report to the Old Man.”
He speaks to Tom. “I see you have the same last name as one of my favorite novelists.”
“Novel…? What ARE you talking about? Who ARE you? What am I doing here?”
Michael sticks his elbow in Tom’s ribs and whispers, “Not a good Idea to rile Saint Peter. You may end up in the last row of the heavenly choir.”
Tom is still hazily taking in the situation.
“You seem to be a smart guy. You’ll figure it out soon enough.”
Peter ignores Tom’s confusion and then begins reviewing the document.
“Ah, I see that you’ve made good use of your time down there. Put your education and experience to good use helping others. Performed your military and civic duties with honor, frequently assisted and offered to help many, many others. Quite good there. There have been the numerous venial sins. But that of course can be expected for such a long and commendable life. I see you also make an extra effort to help with maintenance at your church and you can handle yourself well with other sometimes difficult parishioners. Very commendable!”
“This must be a MISTAKE! Something is wrong!”
“No, no, I can assure you, my man. No.”
Saint Peter’s face speaks frustration. He has seen this reaction a million times before. It gets a bit old. He states what he has said a million times before, “The Old Man NEVER makes a mistake.”
“Nor do you, Mr. Infallible,” Michael giggles.
“Now Michael, that is only in terms of doctrine. Otherwise, I’m as fallible as the next guy, even more so. Remember my big screw up at Gethsemane?”
“Yeah, bigly. Tee-hee.”
“You don’t have to rub it in.”
Suddenly a small note appears out of nowhere. Michael calls Peter’s attention.
“Look, Peter, at the end of the document.”
Peter looks down at a pink post-it note and reads it.
“Oh boy, Oh boy. How did this slip through?”
“What’s it say?”
“It’s a note from one of our guardians watching over the Grinders, that chatty, filibustering group. I’ve been purposely ignoring them lately after they stopped patronizing my favorite coffee chain. Hmm, nevertheless, it says here that… uh… Tom that YOU recently admitted, in fact, proudly proclaimed in public to be a life-long, card-carrying REPUBLICAN!”
“Of my, that means no Heaven for you buddy.”
Instantaneously out of the misty vagueness a second gate flings wide open with searing flames bursting out. Peter gestures for Tom move toward that gate.
“Now just wait a minute here. I CAN’T go there. This is some colossal mistake!”
“Oh no it’s not. Jesus the man himself said it is more difficult for a rich man to enter the Kingdom, than for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle.”
“Yes, but I am not a rich man!”
“Well, many less well-off than than you have been assigned to the eternal brimstone vacation. Besides the Old Man just released Bible 2.0 on Amazon. What old Joe would call a BFD update.”
Bible 2.0?!? BFD? What the F…
The Old Man finally saw the light so to speak after seeing the Donald’s amazing media success. He saw that he needed more impactful, simplified messages to the masses too busy to read more than a few lines of text. He dropped the Old Testament almost entirely, keeping only a few sections like Psalms, Ecclesiastes, etc., because it is mostly too old. He made the Golden Rule the sole commandment and made sure to emphasize the Beatitudes. The New Testament is now simply ‘A Testament,’ because how can a book written over two thousand years ago be called ‘New.’ He tossed out the Book of Revelations for all its false advertising. And because he felt that Gingrich had just gone too far, he decided to have Jesus update and rerecord the phrase about the rich man and the camel to ‘a rich person or Republican.’“
“Peter, you’re getting carried away again with all your sermonizing. Let’s get back to Tom’s case.”
“In light of this new revelation and the Old Man’s preference, it is quite clear where you should go.”
“Now wait a minute, wait JUST A MINUTE! You can’t send me there! In fact, don’t send me anywhere. My time is not up yet! Though I know I’ve been getting a little winded lately.”
“OK, Mister big stuff. Let’s just verify that.”
Peter starts to take a second look at Tom’s resume and realizes he had inadvertently skipped the health portion because of the repartees.
“Well, yes, Tom, you ARE correct. It says here you could go a few more rounds. There must have been some slip up in creating your list, Michael. Perhaps it’s because of all that Great Resignation we have been hearing about. I have been noticing it getting harder to get competent help.”
“That’s it! I think you’ve hit upon something, Peter, when you bring up competent help. The Old Man wants to expand the choir section, make Charon’s boat can handle more passengers, enhance the River Styx’s flow, improve dynamics of angel wings, and find a way, in his own words, for “that damned Gabriel’s horn” to stop scaring off the Holy Ghost’s doves. Savants like Archimedes, Da Vinci, and Tesla keep coming up with impractical, costly designs. He knows he will not be able to recruit Elon. In short, he needs someone competent to perform quality control. Tom here could be just the ticket.”
“Bright boy! And you know how breezy it gets near the gate, sometimes knocks my mitre right off. I did see some juicy tidbits in his resume. Perhaps he could do something for my gate.”
“Tom worked with procurement and quality control while he did his service using his astute powers of observation and respect for the data to save money and effort. His resume shows he received a patent on “the method and apparatus for enhancing gas turbo machinery flow.”
Peter turns to Tom, “I see Tom, you were still working on your pipe dream up until the last second.”
“Ah, yes sir. Turbo acoustics.”
“Do you think, Peter, that we could do something for him?”
“Well perhaps so and necessity is the mother of invention. Jesus has a new burr in his spur, what he calls his Hail Mary Program. He’s been testing out a conversion therapy with likes of Mitt and Lynn. It is intended to help them amend their wayward ways. Perhaps our Tom here could just qualify.”
“He would need a helper. I could do it.”
“But, Michael, I think you’re too close to his case. You’d have to recuse yourself.”
Recusal. Peter suddenly laughed to himself thinking about that one uppity, duppity Supreme Court justice who refused to recuse himself and of course ended up the eternal hot seat.
“Let’s see now, there’s old Clarence our usual go-to journey-angel looking to win his permanent wings; but he’s currently tied up with working on that clueless banker George. And then there’s Mr. Jordan, but he’s dealing with Aaron Rodgers…”
“How about using our potential intern, Van?” Michael gleefully injected.
“You mean the ornery socialist, the one with that silly faux last name?”
“Yes, yes, I think he would be the perfect choice. Our informant says he and Tom are sometimes at loggerheads over certain pertinent issues.”
“I also noticed that true to form he manages with calm insistence to inject some realism and sound data points into their wide-eyed notions of solving social and environmental problems.”
“And if Van succeeds with the conversion, it could confer on him the route to beatification. It would be an interesting two-fer!”
“Okay then. I will compose and send up to the Old Man a quick Pontifical appeal for Tom and send him back so he can live out his truly allotted time with a very good dose of Our Fathers so that Tom may soon see the error of his political ways and successfully convert. Of course, I need to add our usual disclaimer: Unbiased treatment, no predetermination, individuals are solely responsible for consequences, yada, yada, yada, all results are final. Oh, yes he better get his ticker checked.
Gabriel’s horn sounds a loud, long bellowing blow.
“Break time!”
A blaring braking noise comes to a quick halt with a grating skid. Tom rights himself skillfully from the near tumble but feels a bit wobbly. He shakes it off and straightens his bicycle. That was weird, he tells himself, better get that checked. He then proceeds toward the café patio where the Grinders camp, parks, and removes his helmet.
“Hey folks. Whew, I just had a close call.”
“Oh yeah, what happened?” asks Van.
© 2022, Kenneth Koziol. All rights reserved.
