A Game of Limbo

It happened when I was surfing. The waves were perfect, on whatever day it was. Back home, they throw around the exact time and date, they engrave it in stone, it stays there for the rest of forever, the day Danny Barco died. It's like some sort of gloomy holiday, and they don't write it on their calendars, not because they won't remember, but because they will, and a reminder would feel like a slap in the face. So I don't know for myself, ironically, exactly what day it was. It was summer, I was surfing. I know that much. And the waves, man, they were perfect. “NEXT!” The line shuffles forward. I'm towards the end, I just got here. Like the line for the teacups at Disney World, I thought. Shoulda got here sooner. Except something told me maybe the concept wasn't interchangeable here, you know, the lines at the Disney World teacups and the lines at the Pearly Gates. Yeah... I'll call them the pearly gates, I don't know what else to call them. There's really no way to describe them, or to describe any of this. So I'm just going to call them the Pearly Gates, and surely you've got your own complex idea of what they're supposed to look like, so you can set the stage for yourself. So the guy in front of me, he's wearing a firefighter's uniform, carrying his helmet in the crook of his arm, with ash and soot along the contours of his face. He turns to me groggily in his heavy, scorched boots, a look on his face that resembled the physical appearance of a perpetual shoulder-shrugging sigh, and said “so whaddya in for?” like we were cell mates in a jail sentence that just went on and on forever and ever, so we better go easy on the smalltalk before we run out of topics all together. “Ah, surfing accident.” “Yeah? Where at?” “Oh, just off of Honolulu. Vacation with some guys.” “No kidding. Christ, I've always wanted to go to Hawaii.” I looked around us, bemused. “Ya think it's okay to say that in here?” “Say what?” “You know...” my voice dropped. “Christ.” The firefighter laughed, slapping my back until a smile creeped up on my lips. He threw his head back, and I was positive it was the first time he'd so much as cracked a green since he'd gotten here, however long ago or not that was. “Boy, we're dead! We can say whatever the hell we want!” “But, you know, shouldn't we wait until after we cross through them gates up there...so we don't end up wherever the hell we might end up...” He shook some ash off his pant leg, his smile wrinkling the burns on his face. “If that's the case, then I'm practically certain there's no one in Kingdom Come at all, and everyone's wishin' for ice water in the basement.” He went to work at scraping the smoldering remains of his deathbed off his boots, as if he'd only just noticed the tiny flames still licking at his pant legs. I looked down at myself. I was still wearing my blue striped trunks, and that was it. My feet were scraped a little, but it looked like whatever bleeding that had ensued had stopped by now, and there were a couple scars and cuts along the upper half of my body, one on my neck that stretched down to my chest, another jagged on my ribcage. I touched my face, and my hand didn't come back bloody. I took that as a good sign, though, in retrospect, I'm not sure why I thought it would matter in any way whatsoever, because surely we were all past the point of caring. “So, uh, I take it you died in the line of duty?” The Firefighter turned around, sweeping his hands together as soot fell from his skin. “Yeah, yeah.” He said. “Admirable, eh?” “More admirable than fallin' off your surfboard and drowning.” His eyes squinted and he bit his inner lip, looking at me. “You know, I used to think so, too. That it was important to die for a cause.” He hook his head almost imperceptibly, and scraped a layer of ash off his arm, before stopping suddenly, as if caught off guard by what his body was doing. He straightened himself with a sort of finality, before speaking again. “But you know, I don't think it really matters. Maybe I'm wrong, though. I guess we'll see on judgment day.” “Guess there's not much time to wait, then.” I said, nodding at the Gates up ahead, and he laughed, slapping my shoulder that somehow didn't ache despite the scratches and bruises. “So,” he said, low, his lips barely moving. “What about the rest of them?” “What are they in for?” “Yeah, what are they in for?” I thought about it, and about how it almost seemed like everyone in line had their cause of death written on their foreheads in thick magic marker, and your imagination could fabricate all the little details, but it really didn't need to, because life is simple that way. You die when you're surfing, and you're walking around up here in Limbo or whatever and you're wearing torn swim trunks and there are some cuts and scars along your bare torso and your hair is grimy with saltwater. You can look at the dead surfer boy and in an instant you know, you say “he died when he was surfing, or jet skiing, or swimming” or whatever, the concept is still pretty much the same. And you look at The Firefighter and you can pass your eyes over him in under a second and you know. You don't know the details, but in his case, you don't want to. So you move on down the line. After a while, you stop thinking of everyone in the line as the last thing they did or didn't survive, because all the stories run together, and you begin to understand that it doesn't matter one bit if the man with the cane and cardigan died of cancer or a heart attack, or if you died surfing or jet skiing. So that part of the time wasting passes into something else, and now you and the Firefighter and a Soldier in camouflage and a Little Girl in her pink pajamas and an Old Woman with a quilt around her shoulders are sitting and there's a lull in the conversation when Saint Peter, I think it's Saint Peter, calls out “Number 987850! You're next!” and the Little Girl in the pink pajamas looks down at the slip in her hand with the number on it, and her hand is sweating. “Hey, sweetheart, it was really good talking with you.” The soldier says, and he's speaking real soft and his eyes are almost wet. The Little Girl looks up at him and says “Do you think I'll make it in?” and the Old Woman takes her hand and kisses it until the Little Girl giggles and then says “Honey, you'll make the most darling little angel! Save me a sit, will you?” The Little Girl's eyes begin to brighten again and Peter's impatient up there, his voice on edge when he calls out, again, “Number 987850, please make haste to the Pearly Gates! 987850!” The Soldier, he gets up and he walks with her, because the Little Girl, she's shaking like a leaf. The Old Woman and the Firefighter and me, The Surfer, listen in while Peter and her begin talking. “What's your name, Little One?” he says. “Lucy.” She says. “Lucy Annabell Forrests.” “Hmm...” Saint Peter is stroking his chin and tapping his foot. “And are you the granddaughter of a Mrs. Annabell Forrests, Lucy?” Lucy's eyes light up and I swear she grows three inches taller. The Soldier stands off to the side and watches her, smiling at her when she looks at him. “Yes! That's my Mimi! Is she in there? Can I say hi?” “Soon enough, Little One. But first I just want you to answer a few very simple questions, okay?” “Okay.” “I want you to tell me, Little One, why you deserve to come in.” Lucy looked at the Soldier, who was looking at Saint Peter, and his eyes were drooped. He smiled at her, and with this encouragement, she turned back to the Gatekeeper. “Um...I...” The Soldier stepped forward. “She deserves to come in because she is a little girl who would like to see her grandmother. That's why she deserves to come in.” Saint Peter raises his eyebrows at the Soldier, crossing his arms and twirling the Keys to the gates in his fingers. “But why does Lucy think she should come in?” She looked up at her new friend the Soldier again. “I think I should come in because every night me and momma prayed for Jesus to forgive our sins and I tried real hard not to sin real bad even though Pastor Mike says everyone does it and Jesus forgives all of us. So I think I should come in because I think Pastor Mike was right, you see.” Saint Peter smiled, and the Soldier looked at the Little Girl, and his eyes flickered with all of the things he was still capable of feeling in this purgatory while he watched the little dead girl barter her way into heaven. “That was very good, Lucy. Can I ask you just one more question?” Lucy nodded, her head careening over the top of the gate, I think in some sort of vague hope that her Mimi was waiting just on the other side, and she could see her if she looked hard enough. “Do you think coming here was a bad thing or a good thing?” The Soldier stiffened, his mouth wavering open and close, as he knelt down to Lucy's side. “Don't make her answer that.” he said. Peter twirled the keys. “Please.” He said. “Let her speak.” Lucy looked up at the Soldier and she said, very small, “...I don't know.” “You don't know?” “...I think it was a bad thing.” “Speak a bit louder, my dear, I can't quite hear you.” The Soldier pleaded with the Gatekeeper. “Please, don't make her answer this.” “Lucy can speak for herself, young man.” Peter said. “Perhaps she would like some more time to think about it? She's got...” he paused. “Well, she's got all the time in the world.” The line began moving forward again, and Peter prepared to call out the next number as Lucy and the soldier were shuffled again, towards the end of the line. “Wait!” Lucy called out, squirming out of the Soldier's grip. “I think it was a good thing.” Peter paused before reading out the next number, kneeling to the Little Girl's eyelevel. “And why is that, my dear?” “...because...because now I get to see my Mimi.” Peter smiled and stood back up. He twirled the keys in his fingers before unlocking the Gates, and we all stood back to see what was beyond them, but we saw nothing but white. Swirls of it, just swimming in a vast emptiness, and we deflated in curiosity. But Lucy, she jumped up and down and clapped her hands, and her smile ambushed her entire being. The Soldier let go of her and stood, watching her. She was gazing into the expanse, and we could tell that she was seeing much more than the white, she was seeing her heaven, her own Kingdom Come, her own universe waiting for her to step inside. “Goodbye, Lucy.” The Soldier said very quietly as she stepped away from him, and she turned around to face all of us and said “My Mimi is over there!” before skipping away from us forever. The Gates closed again, and the Soldier looked at Saint Peter. “That wasn't right, you know.” The keys stilled in Peter's fingers. “Young man, she was happy. Did you not see her smile?” “Yeah, I saw it. But it was still wrong.” Peter pulled the next number and unfolded it to begin reading. The Soldier said “There was nothing good in her coming here. She is a Little Girl, and...and...” Peter stopped him. “And she got to see her grandmother again.” “But she would have seen her later! Later, when it was time...she, she still had people on Earth to meet! Friends, teachers, boys, I don't know, a husband! Her kids...” He fellto his knees, his head in his hands. “It wasn't fair! It wasn't her time! There was nothing good from this!” Peter said “Who are you to determine when exactly her time is?” he read out the next number, and an old man, the one with the cane and the cardigan, stepped forward. The Soldier said “There's no good in it, damnit!” he was crying, his fists pounding at the white ground. “THERE'S NO GOOD IN IT!” The Firefighter nudged me. “I've been here a while, man. The trick is not to be that guy.” He nodded at the Soldier. “The Trick, I've noticed, is to be the Little Girl.” I watched the Soldier shake while the line moved on without him. “But maybe he was right...” I muttered. “I mean, what good could possibly have come from that kids death?” I thought about Mitchell Collins, a boy I'd known in elementary school. When he was hit by a car and killed when we were in the second grade, it was my first experience with death. I was confused, and scared, and I couldn't sleep for over a week, even though me and Mitchell were never really friends, more like acquaintances who occasionally shared pb&j's at recess. Every time I closed my eyes, I thought Mitchell was there staring at me, mangled from where he'd hit the windshield. When I went to school and saw his empty desk, it was like he'd been sucked right out of the universe, like he'd never existed at all. No one talked about him, the name Mitchell Collins was like some sort of weird tabboo, and the school guidance counsellors said it was okay to be sad, and that we should all talk to our parents about how we felt. So I tried that. I slept in my parents bed for most of my second grade year, while I tried to understand that Mitchell Collins, the kid that used to make fart noises with his armpit in Music class, simply no longer existed. He was the empty desk, and he was no more. When I thought he was staring at me when I tried to sleep, I'd open my eyes, and there'd be nothing but air in front of me. And I didn't understand why he had to go away. One night, when I'd woken up with a nightmare, my dad went to heat me up a glass of milk and honey, and my mom said “Everything happens for a reason, Danny. And something good comes out of everything bad, even though sometimes it's hard to see the good, okay?” I said “Okay” and drank my milk and tried to go back to sleep, but I kept thinking about what the good thing was that had come out of Mitchell Collins's empty desk. And maybe I just lacked some sort of perspective, and my mom and Saint Peter knew something I didn't, but to this day, I still can't figure out what the good thing was. Because now everyone was silent in music class and I had uneaten pb&j's in my lunch pail. Anyways. The line shuffled forward and we got closer and closer, and still the Soldier sat off to the side, and something told me he'd be there for a while, in this limbo, if that's what it was, waiting to muster up whatever perverse sort of strength that a little girl in pink pajamas had, but a grown man in combat boots did not. When it was the Firefighter's turn, we said farewell, and he patted my shoulder, and said “Maybe I'll see ya around.” “Yeah.” I said. “Take care of yourself.” He laughed at this, patting my arm. “Yeah, man, I'll take care of myself.” So the game of Limbo continued, and Peter said “Hello, young man. What is your name?” The Firefighter, I guess he was smart, and he knew the trick. He knew how to be the Little Girl instead of the Soldier, and he told Peter “The good in me dying in that fire was that my kids didn't have to spend their golden years taking care of their slowly dying Pop. And God knows that was coming, what with all the ciggies...” he let out a laugh. “Anyways, they can live their lives without their Old Man's burden. And that's good enough for me.” When he passed through, I went over and sat next to the Soldier. We watched in silence as the line stayed the same length forever as more people kept showing up and more people kept passing through the gates, or down the elevator. Some of them were the Soldier and couldn't see any good in what had happened to them, but they tried, anyway, because compromises were a small price to pay in exchange for skipping out on eternal damnation. And people kept dying, and the line kept moving on, always the same length, always moving on, interminably and inevitably. Eventually, my number was called, and I stood to go, Peter tapping his foot in impatience while I made my way to the front of the line. “Hey.” The Soldier called out, and I turned to him. “There's no good in it.” He said. “But there is fairness. It's terrible and there's no good in it, but it's nothing if not fair.” I paused, and Peter called out my number again, while the Soldier nodded at the Gates. “Go.” He said. “Make up an answer and tell it to him. But don't believe for a second in what you're saying.” When I made my way to Peter (“Finally!” he'd said, crossing his arms.), I told him the good in my dying young was that it happened while I was doing something I loved. That I was lucky to go out while I was happy. It worked, and now I'm sitting with my grandparents, and we're happy, because it's impossible to be sad over here. In a way, all the stories were right, and there's this revelation and suddenly a lot of things you spend your life questioning make some sort of sense, and even if they don't, you're at ease with the idea that some questions are unable to be answered. That's the difference between the stories and the reality of it: not everything makes complete sense once you're in heaven. What does make sense, is the idea that not everything does. And that is enough. Eventually, I crossed paths with the Firefighter again. There was no soot on his face, and no flames at his pant legs. We embraced, and he asked about the Soldier. “I haven't seen him.” I said. “Have you?” He shook his head. “Did you talk to him before you came over?” “Yeah, he told me to make up my answer, but not to believe it for a second.” “And did you listen to him? Do you believe in your answer?” I thought about it for a long time, before finally saying “No. No, I don't. I think it would've been better for me to happy and still alive than to die being happy. Does that make sense?” The Firefigher clasped my shoulder. “Makes perfect sense. The most sense anything can make!” and I thought about what else the Soldier said, about nothing of this being good, but it being fair, nonetheless. And I understood that maybe that's why he was still over there, still playing Limbo. Because he believed that everything was fair, and in return he believed that it was only fair that he never be saved, that he never be perfectly sinful, that he never wins the game, how low can you go, not low enough. “Anyways, it was nice seeing ya, man.” The Firefighter said, before moving on. “Yeah, you too. Take care of yourself.” And I thought about Mitchell Collins, and the good that might have come. And because I was in heaven and I understood that nothing made sense and that made sense and I was content with all things unsensical, I stopped wondering if there was good in all things bad, because I knew that the answer was irony and a contradiction and the very opposite of everything, and I was okay to ignore it. I was okay to close my eyes and not see Mitchell Collins, who sometimes visited me now, and we talked about all the things he missed growing up, and I was okay not to see his empty chair. Because there was good in everything, if you looked hard enough. And finding that good was wonderful, because it made everything easier. But the Soldier was right. And our answers were a barter. And there's nothing good about a Little Girl in pink pajamas dying, even if it means she gets to see her grandmother again. And there's nothing good about a little boy who used to make crude noises in music class getting run over by a car in second grade. And there's no good about a father leaving his children behind in a house fire, and there's no good in any of it. But it's nothing if not fair. So we go back to our streets of gold, because we don't have to play limbo anymore. And behind the gates, there's a Soldier, and he keeps playing, how low can you go, until eventually, he is going to give up and he is going to take off his combat boots and put on pink pajamas. Because God knows it's easier that way.