“Could be at any moment? Could take a while?” He smiled. “We’ve got time.”
Kevin raised the glass for another sip, but put it back down.
“There’s one thing I want to know. What would happen if I wouldn’t die in that chopper? If I somehow made it through the war?”
Hank leaned back from the bar counter and stretched.
“Ah, yes, the famous ‘what if’ question that’s on everyone’s mind.” He faced Kevin with a serious face. “To tell you the truth, you’re lucky you’re here. Went out with a bang while young. Your future wouldn’t look too bright. Sure you’d marry that nice piece of ass---, oh, I’m sorry Fred, ---that nice girl, Tiffany. Happiness would last about a year. She’d give you your first kid and gain forty lbs. Fifty more after the second one. You’d start finding her revolting and by the time you’d hit your thirties, both of you would sleep in separate beds. You’d lose your second kid to a heart disease. Drinking starts. Causes you to get into an accident at your construction job. You become crippled. Bed ridden. Don’t see a penny from insurance. A failed lawsuit empties all your savings. Depression hits. You ignore your wife and son. Tiffany leaves you. Years go by. Your first kid hangs around with bad company. He ends up killing you. Suffocating you with a pillow in your sleep to try and cash-in your meager life insurance. Why? To pay off his drug debts. And that’s where your life would end. At the age of 43.”
“Wow,” Kevin said after hearing his sadly-ever-after life story that never came to be, “just wow.”
It makes me kind of happy I didn’t dodge the bullet. Or a Soviet RPG rocket in this case.
“I have one more question.”
“Fine,” Hank said, “but just one. Then we start prepping you for your judgment.”
“Yeah, it’s about that. After I’m judged and enter through a door behind me; what will happen to you…, Sir?”
Hank wanted to correct him about not being soldiers anymore, held that thought for a second, then brushed it off.
“Well,” he sighed, “like other guides in other bars, I’ll still be here. Waiting for the next one. I was told by, them, the whole company I had under my command will perish at some point in that useless war.” He sighed again. “Some already came and went before you arrived, Kevin. Edwards, Campbell, Riviera, Hudson,... You’re my number eight so far. Others still roam somewhere beyond this place. But they’ll all come to me, eventually.”
Hank became quiet. Secluded. Slouched across the counter, supporting himself with elbows, he squeezed his fist and pressed it against his mouth. Kevin noticed a watery sparkle at the edge of Hank’s eye.
“I miss Beth, Kevin. And my boy Sammy.” A single tear ran down Hank’s face. “Been here for what feels like eternity. And yet, I still remember the scent of Beth’s hair. Her soft skin. I remember hearing Sammy’s cheerful laugh when he came home running to tell me he got all straight As on his report card.”
Hank faced Kevin. Tears were making their way down both his cheeks. “Kevin?”
“Yeah?”
“If I ever get out of here, do my righteous work to the powers that be, and get a chance to walk through door number one; I just want both Beth and Sammy there waiting for me.”
“I’m sure you’ll be reunited with them, Hank,” Kevin squeezed Hank’s forearm.
Hank wiped the tears away with his sleeve.
“Alright, enough of my whining. Let’s have another drink and then we start on you.”
Fred stopped wiping the counter and refilled the glasses of his two patrons. Hank and Kevin toasted and emptied.
“Right,” Hank rubbed his hands, “here’s a little tip I can give you. They sense everything that’s in you. That is you. Happiness, grief, fear, you name it. What they are looking for the most, are the bad things you did. You did do them. Everyone does. But if you have any regret, desire for penance, or, best of all, tried to make things right while you were alive, it counts to your final score.”
Kevin was caressing his chin and thinking about something.
“You mentioned murder before. How does one make that right?”
“I can give you an example one of the other guides had,” Hank said and leaned on the counter.
“What? You guys talk?”
“We’re kinda linked in some form of a higher level that---,” Hank wanted to say something else, but cut himself off. “---doesn’t matter. Anyway, there was this mobster during the Prohibition. Had to kill some moonshiner because the mafia boss said so. After he emptied his Tommy-gun into the moonshiner’s chest, he felt terrible. Spent the rest of his days sending money to the widowed wife in secret. And, wouldn’t you know it, boom!, got a first door pass.”
“Interesting.”
“Indeed. So, what’s on your mind?”
Kevin thought for a moment, dating back as far as his childhood memories could take him.
“There was this one time, when I was seven, I stole a pack of Long Chews from the local drug store.”
Hank let out a heartfelt laugh.
“You felt bad about it?”
“Yeah.”
He felt awful, in fact. A scarring experience. Once he brought the stolen goods home, he sat on the bed and chewed a few. A feeling of throat burning came from nowhere. He thought what his mother, who worked two jobs, would say. What the good reverend would say. Hell, what would Jesus say? As tears forced themselves out, the Long Chews lost their fruity taste. In tears, while sobbing, he fished out a quarter from his porcelain piggy-bank account and went back to the drug store. At the store, before he entered, he saw Mr. Benson, the clerk and drugstore owner all-in-one, talking to the sheriff (who turned out to be just a customer at that precise moment). Kevin thought of the worst outcome. Striped prisoner clothes, a ball and a chain, swinging a pickax in a quarry for the rest of his life. Nevertheless, he swallowed hard, walked in and confessed his crime as he placed the half-empty Long Chews and a quarter next to the register.
Face the fire!
Mr Benson didn’t yell. Sheriff didn’t pull out the handcuffs. What they did, however, was giving Kevin his first real man-to-man talk about his wrongdoing. But they also said what he did afterwards, was the right thing to do. Thus, Kevin Wright never stole anything ever again.