Thoughts on Sports

As far as I can remember, my infatuation with sports began when I was about eight years old. That was when my grandfather introduced me to football. He would spend hours watching games in his recliner, and I could not understand his fascination with them although even then I knew I enjoyed being physically active and also loved the energy of attending high school football games in person as I did with my grandparents on many Friday nights although I did not understand the rules of the game in those days.

But one day, my grandfather sat me down with him and explained what was happening in a game on television as we went along. As I came to understand the game, I came to love it as well. I remember the first football game I actually watched on television and understood. The game was between the Atlanta Falcons and the Miami Dolphins in 1980. I remember the Falcons narrowly losing that game, but they went on to have an outstanding season, and I watched every game faithfully. Faithfully is actually the wrong word to describe how I watched football games that year. To say I watched them passionately is more accurate. I went online to review the scores of the games that season and was amazed that I could specifically remember watching many of them twenty-nine years later. I was heartbroken when the Falcons were beaten in the first round of the playoffs that year in a barnburner of a game with the Dallas Cowboys. I remember Cowboys’ wide receiver Drew Pearson catching the winning touchdown from quarterback Danny White in the waning minutes of the game and bursting into tears to see my Falcons lose. But many of the names of the Falcons players that year are permanently imbedded in my memory: quarterback Steve Bartkowski, star running back William Andrews, short yardage specialist Lynn Cain, the veteran center with missing front teeth Jeff Van Note, star offensive tackle Mike Kenn, wide receiver Alfred Jenkins, two outstanding rookie linebackers Al Richardson and Buddy Curry, Coach Leeman Bennett and even their kicker Tim Mazzetti and punter John James come immediately to mind as I’m writing this.

I also became a Georgia Bulldogs fan that season. By a spectacularly happy accident, that was the year they went undefeated and won the national championship behind the running of a spectacular Freshman named Hershel Walker. The single play that probably cemented my love of sports forever occurred that year when the Bulldogs played the Florida Gators and were behind by the score of 21-20 with less than two minutes remaining in the game with the Bulldogs backed up on their own nine yard line. Any Bulldog fan old enough to remember that play probably remembers exactly where they were when it happened. Georgia quarterback Buck Belue threw a short pass to wide receiver Lindsay Scott who promptly ran 91 yards for a touchdown. Legendary Dawg announcer Larry Munson became so excited that he broke his chair and declared “there’s going to be some property destroyed tonight.” The play, which sent me into a state of ecstatic joy that day, is now one of the most classic in Bulldog history. The Bulldogs completed the season with a 17-10 victory over Notre Dame in the Sugar Bowl and Hershel Walker went on to have one of the greatest college football careers of any player ever.

After the football season ended, baseball came around and I became just as passionate about the Atlanta Braves. I collected baseball cards fanatically and learned the meanings of every baseball statistic. The Braves were a sub-par team, but I still remember many of the players during that golden year for me. Bruce Benedict played catcher. First Base was manned by Chris Chambliss, second by Glenn Hubbard. Rafael Ramirez played shortstop, Bob Horner was at third. Claudell Washington roamed leftfield while right field was manned by various players including Brian Asselstine, Rufino Linares, and Terry Harper. The star of the team in those days, Dale Murphy played center and the team was managed by the now legendary Bobby Cox. The pitching staff featured Rick Mahler, Phil “Knuxie” Niekro, and Gaylord Perry as starters while Steve Bedrosian, Gene Garber and the mad Hungarian, Al Hrabosky made up the bulk of the bullpen.

Watching sports and rooting for my favorite teams is still something I enjoy tremendously, but it doesn’t match the wonder and intensity I had as a child when every game seemed like the most important thing in the world. These days I have a much more cynical view of professional and big time college athletics and marvel at the over-emphasis it seems to occupy in our society with the tremendous amount of money involved and the attitude of entitlement that so many athletes seem to have. But when I’m caught up in the midst of a game, these thoughts go out the window.

I was around the same age when my enjoyment of watching sports also translated into wanting to compete in them. I have to believe that my love of sports had to have truly come from within myself because no one else in my immediate family seems to share this interest. Unlike many other dads, my dad had very little interest in helping me become a star athlete. I only remember him playing catch with me on rare occasions. My mother had no special interest in sports either and though my grandfather enjoyed watching sports, he considered them strictly a spectator activity and even offered me a hundred dollars one year not to pay football, an offer I declined. I had big dreams when it came to athletics and played them as passionately as I watched them. But for me there was always a disconnect between my desire to excel in sports and my personality. I have always been a very introverted kind of guy and because of that, I found the environment surrounding organized sports to be intimidating. In high school, I was really an outstanding basketball player, but in many games, my stage fright from playing in front of large crowds compromised my talents. Although I did play some good games my senior year and made all region, I did not perform as well as I could have simply because I tightened up so much in games.

My shyness affected me in football too, at least in my senior year. I’m not exactly sure what happened that year. I played on an outstanding team that lost the state championship in overtime by the narrowest of margins and I started at defensive end for that team. But I did not play at the level in my senior year as I did in the years before. I often had the feeling I was faking it that year. I didn’t care for the hoo-ra aspect of the sport and felt like a bit of a misfit because of it. I didn’t feel much in common with the other guys on my team who were a loud and boisterous group for the most part. I also felt at a loss to be the vocal leader that I thought my coaches wanted me to be. I often wonder if I had played that year with the same unbridled enthusiasm I had in years’ past if it would have made the difference in my team winning the state championship.

The one sport where I came closest to performing to my potential was track. I ran the mile and the 800 meters for my school, and rarely had any competition in either event until the state meet. I ran mostly against my own standards, and felt that it was my entirely my world. I had no coaching to speak of, but designed a makeshift interval-training program of my own. I ran as hard as I could every time I practiced, and felt like a failure if my time didn’t improve every time I raced. From a psychological standpoint, it’s easy for me to understand why I excelled at track more than team sports. In track, I didn’t have to worry about getting nervous because of a crowd or showing the proper amount of enthusiasm and leadership. All I had to do was go out and run by myself on my own terms.

Ironically, the only thing that held me back from real accomplishments in running track was a lack of competition and an absence of coaching. Apparently, the private schools in North Georgia put a greater emphasis on track than the ones in my region because in spite of completely dominating the competition in my own region, I only managed to finish 3rd in the state meet although I beat my personal best by seven seconds. My best finish at state was fourth in the 800 in spite of also running my personal best in that race. I feel that if I’d had any competition in my own region and had received some real coaching, I could have earned a scholarship. Having said that, the fact that I was able to win so consistently and practice exactly how I wanted was what made running track enjoyable to me.

These days, at the ripe old age of 37, staying in shape is still important to me although I’ve packed on some pounds in recent years. I still love to watch sports and compete in them when I get the chance. But at times, I engage in a kind of existential debate with myself about why sports or participating in physical competition really matter. If all professional and big time college sports were to disappear from the face of the Earth tomorrow, would it really cause a detrimental effect to society? If Georgia beats Florida or vice-versa, is it really of any consequence? So many people pour their hearts and souls into these games while their comparative importance seems trivial. What if people put forth the same amount of energy into making the world a better place rather than competing in games? Isn’t there something sad about someone who measures a part of their self-worth by how well a team they’re following does in a sports game when, in reality, that sports team’s performance has no actual bearing on anything in that person’s daily life?

On the other hand, perhaps a society’s interest in sports says something about the vitality of that society. Would a society that showed no interest in sports be the equivalent of a child who showed no interest in playing? Maybe sports serve as sort of metaphor for the human condition, and maybe our interest in them stems from something ingrained in our DNA from our evolutionary past. I know that my interest in them seems to come from a very basic, primal place. I’m drawn to it like a moth to a flame in spite of any existential philosophizing I might engage in. I think it comes down to a matter of perspective. Sports are a healthy distraction from the harsher realities of life and a way to keep in touch with our physical selves in an age when we seem to be becoming a society of all brain and no brawn. Keeping it in its proper place is simply a matter of perspective. Few things inspire as much enthusiasm and energy in me as following and participating in sports does. It seems to be a part of how I’m wired as a person. At the same time, I’ve broadened my interests considerably as I’ve gotten older and my life no longer centers around athletics as it once did. Still, I always find it comforting to return to, and will probably love sports my entire life. There is something soothing about following sports to me. After a tough day, it’s always nice to come home and turn on Sports Center or whatever game might be playing. It always feels a little like coming home.

Review of South of Broad

I recently completed reading South of Broad by Pat Conroy. Prior to this book, I have read five other Conroy novels: The Great Santini, The Lords of Discipline, My Losing Season, The Water is Wide, and Beach Music. All of these books succeeded in striking a deep chord in me, and in each of them I felt a strong connection between the narrator and myself. Conroy’s past books always seemed to be speaking just to me in some way, like he could have written them with me in mind. Even years after reading them, I think about passages from them in random moments, and get a glimmer of that moving feeling that only great art can give to you.

In contrast, South of Broad had a few moments here and there, but overall, it read like a caricature of his previous books. If the book had been written by the writers of Saturday Night Live lampooning the major themes and character types Conroy tends to write about, they would have hit home with South of Broad.

I was very excited when I first learned that Conroy had published a new novel, his first one in fourteen years, and couldn’t wait to read it. I was actually thrilled with the very beginning of the novel. His opening lines about the revered city of Charleston were classic Conroy.

I carry the delicate porcelain beauty of Charleston like the hinged shell of some soft-tissued mollusk,” he writes. My soul is peninsula-shaped and sun-hardened and river-swollen. The high tides of the city flood my consciousness each day, subject to the whims and harmonies of full moons rising out of the Atlantic. I grow calm when I see the ranks of palmetto trees pulling guard duty on the banks of Colonial Lake or hear the bells of St. Michael’s calling cadence in the cicada-filled trees along Meeting Street. Deep in my bones I knew early that I was one of those incorrigible creatures known as Charlestonians. It comes to me as a surprising form of knowledge that my time in the city is more vocation than gift; it is my destiny, not my choice. I consider it a high privilege to be a native of one of the loveliest American cities, not a high-kicking, glossy, or lipsticked city, not a city with bells on its fingers or brightly painted toenails, but a ruffled, low-slung city, understated and tolerant of nothing mismade or ostentatious. Though Charleston feels a seersuckered, tuxedoed view of itself, it approves of restraint far more than vainglory.


This is my favorite paragraph in the entire book. I find it typically overstated, but also carrying a sincere feeling that lets me see inside the soul of the narrator. But after this beginning, the book never measures up to expectations. The chief reason for this, in my opinion, is that the characters are too stereotypical and one-dimensional to be believed. There is Trevor, flamboyantly gay and a brilliantly talented pianist; his sister, Sheba, equally flamboyant and promiscuous who becomes a famous Hollywood movie star and seems like a mixture of Marilyn Monroe and Madonna made over. There is Leo’s mother, an overly strict and taciturn woman who withholds her love for poor Leo in the wake of his older brother’s death. She is a James Joyce aficionado, a former nun, and a stern principal. Leo’s father, of course, is as kind and understanding as his mother is stern, and serves as the saving grace of Leo’s otherwise awful childhood.

Then there is Ike, his best friend in high school, a star football player who becomes Charleston’s first black chief-of-police, and Chad Rutledge the Tenth, a Charleston blue-blood lawyer and snob and jerk of epic proportions. Leo’s older brother, Steve is a beautiful wonder boy in Leo’s eyes, and his unfathomable suicide is what sets the events of the book in motion. There is Leo’s damaged, personality disordered wife, Starla, a woman who appears only a handful of times in the entire novel and whose fate is painfully predictable. Finally there is the villain of the story, Sheba and Trevor’s psychopathic father, a shadowy, obsessed stalker without a true name or identity and Monsignor Max, a much revered priest whose importance in the story is not revealed until the very end.

Every character in the book is a stereotype in some form and Leo himself is the enlightened, selfless to a fault, tragic carbon copy of the narrator in many of Conroy’s other books, most exactly like Tom Wingo from The Prince of Tides and Jack McCall in Beach Music. It seems to me that Conroy has formed a formula for his books that worked for him and has stuck with it until it’s become painfully stale in his latest work.

The portion of the book that falls most flat, in my opinion, occurs when the group of friends goes to San Francisco in search of Trevor, who is dying of AIDS. Many of the exchanges between the groups of friends were downright painful to read in this section. They speak so sarcastically and downright mean to one another that it is hard to believe they are actually friends who share an unbreakable bond. I almost gave up reading this book all together here because it is filled with such blatant hyperbole and predictability. I only pressed on because of my appreciation of the author’s former works. After the friends return to Charleston, the story becomes more tolerable, but the dialogue remains painful. Every conversation is filled with corny zingers masquerading as wit, prompting much eye rolling and cringing from the reader. “Quit trying so hard, Pat!” I wanted to yell at him. As an aspiring writer myself, I think I would have been embarrassed to let anyone read a work of mine so filled with stereotypes and painfully unrealistic dialogue. I would have been moved to heavy revision, if not to trashing the whole thing and starting over.

The last section of the novel, after Hurricane Hugo ravishes Charleston, is the strongest part of a weak book. Here is where we discover the ironic, poetic fate of Sheba and Trevor’s father and we are told a moving story about God shedding a tear for the beautiful Sheba, setting the monstrous Hugo in motion. I loved the symbolism of this story as well as the symbolic scene of Leo and Molly, Chad’s wife and the narrator’s unrequited love, rescuing a grounded porpoise from the ruins of an old, beautiful Charleston home by carrying it back to the ocean for a fresh start on life.

In the end, I got a little taste of that moving feeling I’m accustomed to receiving from one of Conroy’s books, but was also disappointed that it came in such small doses against a backdrop of formulaic chatter. Although I would have to say this book is by far Conroy’s worst work, I also think it is a testament to him as a writer that I feel so compelled to examine and think about this book in spite of its many flaws. There is something about the author’s prose that drives me to read it even when it’s bad.

Heaven and Hell

Here is my latest short story:

Heaven and Hell


We should have known better.

It should have been the slogan of Hell: eternal regret. We should have known better than to commit sinful acts or to disbelieve in God.

My time in Hell was mostly spent alone in a small cell. No bed or other furniture existed. It was as bright as the sun and nearly as hot. It seemed that I constantly suffocated as my skin melted away from my bones. The pain was awful until I accepted it. I realized, finally, that pain is about perception. I went inside my pain and felt it to the core. I soaked in it. Pain and I became intimate companions. It served as a comforting blanket on a freezing night. It gave meaning to my existence.

Demons came to torture me--dark, faceless beings that exuded fear. They were the essence of terror. Their touch froze my bones even as the room around me boiled my skin. I would scream when they touched me. They would grip my wrist as gently as lovers and stare at me with their featureless faces. Their gentleness made them all the more horrible. Their gaze took me to scenes of torture without the slightest sensation of motion.

Then the real torment would begin. I will spare the readers the details of these tortures. Suffice to say they were horrible. I would beg for the relief of death that never came.

But the time came when I learned to laugh in the demons’ faces when they came, and offered no resistance to their torture. I came to look forward to it. I embraced it with open arms. Pain and pleasure are matters of perception. This was the great lesson I learned in Hell.

God never told me why I was condemned to Hell after my death on Earth. I could only speculate. I had ample time to review my life to understand why I deserved such a sentence. I lived an ethical, upright life. I remained married to the same woman for forty-nine years and was never unfaithful to her. I held the same position as a professor of Philosophy at a prestigious northeastern university for thirty-five years until retiring to pass the rest of my days traveling with my wife and reading all the books I never had time for during my working days. My wife and I had two children who we loved dearly and did our best to parent them the best way we knew how. My children gave me five grandchildren who I adored as a grandfather should. I did not live a perfect life. There was a time when I drank too much. My words were often too harsh towards my oldest son who I demanded much from. I was too competitive in my work. I hated to be outdone by anyone and had a tendency to resent those who proved themselves more talented than I. My intellectual curiosity sometimes gave way to obsession and I might have neglected those closest to me for its sake.

But my wife and I gave our time and money to charities and causes we believed in. We kept an open mind about things new or strange, and tried our best to treat others as we would have them treat us. I believed myself to be a good man whose faults were not so much greater than any other.

I could not imagine that God saw fit to condemn me for the life I lived. It must have been because I did not believe in Him. At least not in the way He was presented by the religions of the world. I thought there might be some divine force beyond the scope of human imagination that set the Universe in motion, but scoffed at the idea of a personal, anthropomorphic god who watched our every deed and judged us when our days were done. I did not believe in the concepts of Heaven or Hell. They did not fit with all that I observed in the Universe. It seemed more likely and rational, that after my death, I would cease to be in my present form. My body and mind would decompose and dissolve into the Earth. I lived a full life of eighty-five years and spent many of my last ones contemplating death and coming to grips with its inevitability. When it came at last, I faced it without fear. I prepared myself for an eternal sleep.

I had not prepared for Hell. My genteel life had not readied me for its horrors. But my study of philosophy had, although it took me a very long time to understand this. Only through acceptance of my fate did I conquer it.

I could not alter the fact of my existence in Hell, but I could choose how I perceived it. My goal in Hell became to accept my fate, to do more than accept it; to embrace it, to celebrate it.

The demons came and did their worst. But I loved the pain and begged for more when they tossed my broken body into my cell again. They increased the frequency of their tortures and I rejoiced.

I sensed the demons’ frustration when they came one day and jerked me away to the top of a cliff so high, the ground below could not be seen. With a gesture of a hand, a demon set my body ablaze. I felt my skin char and smelled the thick stench of my own burning flesh. Another demon picked up my flaming form and tossed me from the cliff. I fell, blazing and laughing with joy at the glorious pain. Was this truly the worst they had to offer?

For what seemed an eternity, I dropped through the void until the fire had cooked away my flesh and blackened my bones. Even then, my marrow boiled and still I reveled in the pain. I felt its sensation to the core. I wanted to glory in my mastery over it, but did not. Hubris would have contaminated my success.

I never struck the bottom of that void, but found myself again in my familiar cell, disappointed. I had wanted to see what lay at the bottom.

It seemed that eons passed before I was disturbed again. Time passed in my boiling, blinding cell and I gave no thought to any possible future, content in my thoughtlessness.

Then, a door opened, and as it did, my cell’s heat escaped and its brightness dimmed. I beheld a vision beyond the door whose reality I did not trust. For a long time, I stared , not daring to move, but at last curiosity got the best of me.

The vision endured even as I stepped beyond my cell. A beautiful tropical scene lay before me. A beach of fine white sand bordered a sea of crystal blue water. The sun warmed my face and a cool breeze blew through my hair. I found myself shirtless and wearing a pair of blue swim trunks, my body as young and agile as it had ever been.

I walked towards the water, luxuriating in the feel of the sand beneath my toes. It seemed strange that such a picturesque place could be so deserted. I reached the edge of the water. It felt cool against my feet. I gazed out into the ocean, wondering at the reality of all of this.

Had God forgiven me? Was this Heaven?

I heard the calls of a flock of seagulls and turned toward them. It had been so long since I had seen or heard the songs of birds of any kind that the sight of them hovering above the sand moved me to tears. I walked in their direction down the beach. Perhaps this was Heaven, but still, it seemed incomplete without someone to share it with.

As soon as this thought came, I had to laugh aloud. I was a man who had endured every conceivable torture to emerge on a beach of paradise, but still had the nerve to complain of simple solitude. But in the distance ahead, I saw the form of another person walking towards me. Even before I could make out her features, I knew who she was. When you live with a woman for forty-nine years, you learn to recognize her walk. My heart leapt in my chest and I ran to meet her.

She ran to me as well. Her beauty was stunning. Her long, dark hair flowed behind her, her body streamlined and slender, so sensuous in the sea-green bikini I remembered from our youth. I wondered if she had endured the same hardships as I since her Earthly death. I wondered if this reward might be as much for her as for me.

We embraced. I squeezed her to my body, and the warmth and familiarity of her touch caused me to forget the horrors I had previously experienced. She was a petite woman, barely five feet tall and a hundred pounds, but hugged me so fiercely, she nearly squeezed the breath from me. We dropped to our knees in the shallow surf, overcome with hysterical laughter that dissolved to tears. We held one another until we were like putty in one another’s arms. The sun crept slowly across the sky and still we embraced, not quite trusting the reality of the other’s existence. Several times I attempted to speak, but no words seemed adequate to express the enormity of my love for her.

The sun fell and a night of a bright, full moon and sparkling stars smiled down.

“I love you, Carl,” she finally said. “I’ve missed you.”

“I love you too, Mandy,” I tried to say. But no words would come to my lips. We kissed and melted into passionate love making on the crystal sand. When it was done, we slept naked and knew no hunger, pain, or the slightest discomfort. Content and full of joy, we lay alone in our paradise like Adam and Eve. If this was an illusion in some elaborate torture scheme devised by Satan, I did not care. I was only thankful for the moment while it lasted.

I woke with the feel of the sun on my face the following morning, still embracing my wife. I could smell the pleasant tinge of saltwater and hear the cawing of seagulls and the rhythmic lapping of breaking waves. I did not open my eyes for a long time, afraid to find its unreality revealed. But at last, I did. Fresh tears came as I saw the beach was the same perfect place it had been the day before.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she said.

“Yes, but not as beautiful as you.”

She laughed. It was an old joke between us we never tired of.

“What shall we do today?” she asked.

“Whatever we want. I’m up for exploring. How about you?”

She smiled with a wisp of sadness underneath. “That’s you,” she said. “You can’t be content to stay in one place and enjoy just being. You have to see everything, examine everything, understand everything.”

“Yes,” I admitted. “It is my nature.”

“Okay, then. Let’s explore, my love.”

I started to walk away from the beach, but she kissed me first and thoughts of exploring were momentarily forgotten. All I wanted was to explore the familiar shape of her body all over again.

When it was over, I was still bent on discovering our surroundings. For ages I had existed in a cramped cell and now was eager to know what Heaven was truly made of. Beyond the shore to the north was a grove of citrus trees, all bearing fruit with such abundance that their limbs bent nearly to the ground.

“Let’s go there,” I told her. “Let’s see that fruit.”

“It reminds me of the apples in the Garden of Eden,” she said.

I laughed. “Are you serious, Mandy?”

“Well…God hasn’t told us not to eat it, has He? I guess it’s alright.”

“No, He hasn’t given us any instructions that I am aware of.”

“Did you not think our time in Hell was instruction enough?”

But I did not wish to think of that time. Hell was in the past and I was in the present. “Let’s go see if that fruit tastes as good as it looks,” I said.

She smiled. It was a queer smile, and not one I liked. But we walked towards the citrus trees and tasted their fruit. Juicy and delicious beyond description, biting into it was pure ecstasy. We only looked at one another, laughing like children and licking our lips. After we ate our fill, I lacked the will for further exploration. We went back to our place on the beach and slept. Later in the day I woke while my wife still slumbered. Being careful not to wake her, I stood and walked far along the beach alone, surveying my surroundings and letting my thoughts flow. I tried to trust this paradise-- but didn’t. Heaven was supposed to be a place of blissful happiness for all eternity. Why then did I feel so uneasy? Why could I not enjoy this beautiful place and the company of the love of my life without tainting it with my own restless thoughts and suspicions? I had once been content in Hell, so why not allow myself to be ecstatic in Heaven?

But I could be ecstatic and still explore. I had been very intellectually curious in life. Shouldn’t my Heaven be tailored to my interests? As I walked along the beach, I noticed a certain sameness of the landscape. The waves broke on the shore in a perfectly rhythmic and unchanging pattern. The sand never varied in its composition or thickness. To the north beyond the beach, the grove of citrus trees appeared to stretch forever like a border, all of their branches bending with the weight of ripe, delicious fruit for as far as the eye could see. I wondered what lay beyond that grove. I thought of how my motivation had been utterly sapped after eating the fruit.

I decided to try again. Leaving the beach, I made my way again to the citrus grove. Standing on its edge, I inspected the trees. They were all of a uniform height and thickness, about fifteen feet tall with hundreds of spidery branches full of fruit, intertwining with their neighbors, forming a barrier thick and strong enough to make passage through them very difficult. The grove appeared to serve as a natural fence. To me, it all seemed by design. I wondered why a man should be barred access to exploring the confines of his Heaven. I determined to see what lay on the other side.

I entered the grove, pushing myself through the branches. The smell of the fruit served to deter me much more than the thickness of the branches. Only an act of will prevented me from stopping to gorge myself. The branches caressed my skin like the fingers of a lover, begging me not to leave them.

But I closed my eyes and forced myself through, at last emerging on the other side of the grove and stared out to see what lay beyond. But as soon as I stood, brightness blinded me; it seemed as if the sun itself resided there. I closed my eyes and covered my face. At the same moment, I felt suddenly ravenous, as if I must eat or die. Angered by this manipulation, I tried to step blindly forward in spite of the brightness and my hunger pangs. But my foot found no purchase. There was no ground beyond. I stood on the precipice of a void. My curiosity sated for the moment, I returned again through the branches of the grove, still resisting the urge to partake of the inviting fruit. I was determined not to give in to the siren song of their appeal. Whether in Heaven or Hell, I would be a man of free will, not to be manipulated by some higher power.

When I reached the beach again, the hunger pangs had subsided and I returned to my wife. I looked forward to telling her about my discoveries and was so deep in thought that the voices of children laughing did not immediately register. It seemed a natural sound for the beach, so it took a moment to realize it was not natural for this beach.

Recognition struck me still in my tracks. These were the voices of my children.

I strained my eyes to see them. They were small dots of motion darting in and out of the water, their mother joining in the play as well. A stiff breeze blew against my face bringing their voices to me in spite of their distance. Thomas and Annie were here! All my former resentment dropped away, replaced with joy. I sprinted toward them. It was Thomas, always the most observant, who saw me first.

“Daddy!” he called. Then he came running to meet me with Annie following at his heels. I dropped to my knees and gathered them against me, smothering their faces with kisses. They giggled and hugged me back. Mandy stood behind them, smiling at our reunion.

“I woke up from our nap and there they were,” Mandy said. “You were gone, replaced by them. I didn’t know what to think.”

“Daddy, this beach is beautiful,” Annie told me. “It’s like Heaven.”

“Yes, it is,” I agreed. I held her at arm’s length and looked at her closely. She looked to be about seven years old. Before my death, she had just turned fifty-eight, an attractive and successful woman with her own psychiatric practice.

“Where were you before you came here today?” I asked.

She looked as if she were about to answer immediately, but then became confused. “I don’t remember,” she said. “I don’t remember anything before today.”

“Neither do I,” Thomas chimed in. “But this is a fun place. I hope we can stay here a long time.”

“What do you make of that?” I asked Mandy.

“I don’t know,” she said. “But why question it? We are here in Heaven with our children. God has been good to us.”

“Yes, He has,” I admitted. But then all the tortures of Hell flashed through my mind. “Lately,” I added.

“Where did you go? I was worried when I woke up and found you gone.”

“Worried? In Heaven? How could that be?”

But she had no answer.

“I went exploring up the beach.”

I thought to tell her about forcing my way through the fruit grove to the void of light beyond, but held my tongue. My wife had been as religiously skeptical and as intellectually curious as I in life, but now it seemed she had changed.

“Come on, let’s take the children to the fruit trees,” she said.

We walked as a family toward the orchard. I strove to share my wife’s attitude. She accepted this place as she saw it. It should have been easy for me to do the same.

Days passed and we lived as a happy family in Heaven. I spent my days loving my wife and children. Our only sustenance was the citrus fruit, but it more than satisfied us. I thought it strange that we never saw fish or any other creature in the limitless sea. Nor did we see any other life at all besides the ubiquitous flock of seagulls that apparently never soiled this beach with their wastes or had any need to eat at all. Each day was identical to the one before.

One night, I slept and dreamed in vivid detail of the demons’ touch. Before the torture came, I jerked myself awake, waking my wife as well.

“What’s wrong, Carl?” she asked.

I said nothing for a moment, but only regarded the multitude of stars in a cloudless sky.

“Talk to me, darling.”

“Tell me about Hell for you,” I said. “Tell me about what you endured there.”

“I don’t remember, Carl. I try not to think about it. We are here now and that is all that matters.”

“Mandy, does this place seem…artificial to you sometimes?”

“Carl, all I feel is happiness. Why can’t you do the same? This is Heaven, for God’s sake.”

“You are right. I just don’t trust it.”

“Go to sleep, Carl. In the morning, you will feel better.”

But I couldn’t sleep and felt no better in the morning.

I would have existed in misery indefinitely had my son not been a boy after my own heart. One day, he came as I stared out at the waves and sat beside me. I ruffled his hair and put my arm around him.

“Daddy,” he said in an eager, secretive voice. “Can I show you something?”

“Okay. What is it?”

He stood and reached for my hand. “We’ll have to walk up the beach. It’s something really neat.”

He tugged my hand, nearly running up the beach. Amused, I kept pace with him. After a couple of hundred yards, he stopped and looked out at the ocean.

“Okay, see how the waves look out there? Do you see the shape they make in the water?”

I stared out at the gently rolling ocean in front of me trying to see it through my son’s eyes.

“Yes.”

“Okay, let’s walk down the beach and keep your eye on the water while we go.”

I smiled as he pulled me down the beach, looking back occasionally to make sure I studied the ocean. I knew what he was showing me. I had found a kindred spirit here in Heaven after all. Finally, he stopped again.

“Look,” he said, pointing out into the waves with excitement. “You see?” The waves are exactly the same as they were back there. And all the water from here to a place up the beach is all the same as it was from there to here. Then it starts all over again.”

I did not wish to spoil his enthusiasm by telling him I already knew.

“My God, Thomas. You’re right. That’s amazing.”

He looked out into the ocean, basking in my praise.

“Let’s go up the beach some more and count the steps before it repeats again. I bet it’s the same distance every time.”

“I bet it is, too,” he said. “How far does the beach go? Do you think we could walk to the end of it?”

“I don’t know, Thomas. Tomorrow, we should find out. Just the two of us.”

“Okay, Dad. That would be awesome.”

He told his mother that night about our plans. She seemed to be pleased and even excited by the idea.

“I hope the two of you have lots of fun!” she said.

But I did not miss the suspicious glance she flashed at me over our son’s head. The next morning, Thomas and I began our quest. We didn’t know how long we would be gone. I would return whenever he was ready. As long as the fruit grove to the north of us persisted, we did not have to worry about out rations. I wondered if it was possible to suffer from thirst or starvation here: I had never experienced either of these sensations thus far except when I passed through the grove. I had a theory of where our beach-walk would lead, but did not tell my son. We had walked for half a day when he asked, “Where do you think this will take us? It’s the same pattern over and over. It gets boring after awhile. It has to change sometime doesn’t it?”

“One would think so.”

For seven days, we walked. My son never complained and I loved him for his adventurous nature. For him, the joy of exploration outweighed the desire to return to the comfort of his mother and sister. Around midday on our seventh day, my theory proved correct. Thomas spotted them first.

“Look!” he said, when we were still too far away to discern their faces. “There’s someone on the beach up there.”

“Yes. I see her too.” I tried to sound surprised, but knew my voice gave away my expectation.

“Hey, and there’s someone else!” We watched as a smaller figure splashed into the water next to the adult one. We moved closer.

He stopped in his tracks. “That’s Mom and Annie,” he said. “But…how could it be? We didn’t turn back. We just walked in the same direction.”

I didn’t give him the explanation. I knew he would work it out on his own.

“Did we just walk in a big circle?” He looked around, a little angry as realization settled. “Did you know it would be like this the whole time? Is this all there is to this world?”

“I suspected, but didn’t know for sure.” I held out my arms. “I think this is it, son. What you see is what you’ve got.”

For a moment, he was crestfallen and then suddenly grew more hopeful. He turned from me and gazed toward the ocean. “What’s out there?” He pointed towards the horizon.

“I don’t know. This might be Heaven, but none of us are able to walk on water.”

“We should find out. Let’s see how far the ocean goes.”

I suspected that this adventure too would not live up to young Thomas’s expectations, but thought it would be best to let him find out for himself.

“Sure, let’s do it, son. Let’s find out what’s out there.”

“What about that way?” he asked, pointing toward the fruit trees. “What’s past that grove?”

“That’s something I can show you.”

“Really? Let’s go see it.”

But before we could go, little Annie came running down the beach, ecstatic that we had returned. Our exploring would have to wait for another day. Annie hugged us both and led us back to her mother. She kissed me, but seemed distant.

“What did you boys discover?” she asked me.

“That Heaven is a small world,” I said.

Mandy laughed. “It may be,” she said. “But it is our world. I would never trade it for another.”

“No…,” Thomas said, his arm wrapped around his mother’s waist. “It should be bigger…” He looked wistfully towards the fruit orchard and back at us, his smile angelic.

The next morning drops of water woke me. I opened my eyes and saw Thomas standing over me, soaking wet and excited.

“Dad,” he said. “Guess what? Last night I got up and went swimming out into the ocean to see where it would go. I swam until I swam in place and could go no further even though I couldn’t see what was stopping me, but I think it might have been an invisible wall. The water looks like it goes on forever out there but you can only go so far.”

“I’m not surprised, Thomas. God does not want us to move beyond our boundaries.”

He looked at me oddly and seemed about to say something else when my wife interrupted.

“Thomas…why are you all wet?” she asked.

“I went swimming to see how far the water went.”

“What? You shouldn’t have done that. It’s dangerous. You could have drowned.”

“No, I couldn’t have. It’s not that far, Mom. It looks like a long way, but it’s really not. That’s what I was just telling Dad.”

“It’s still too far for a little boy to swim. Promise me you won’t try that again.”

“Okay, Mom,” he said, reluctantly. Shrugging his shoulders, he went to wake his sister.

“Do you really think he could drown in Heaven, Mandy?” I asked.

“I don’t know. But I still don’t understand why the two of you have to go around investigating everything. It’s exasperating.”

“It’s just our nature, Mandy.”

“I just see that God has provided a wonderful place for us and wouldn’t want Him to take it away because we can’t let things be.”

“I don’t understand why you trust Him so much. This is the same God who sent us to Hell. We were good, decent people, Mandy. We didn’t deserve to go to Hell. You know that. We didn’t deserve the tortures we suffered there.””Carl, He sent us to Hell because we didn’t believe in Him. You know that.”

“What kind of God sends you to Hell just because you don’t believe in him? Is that really so great a sin? If He’d made Himself known a little more, I would have believed in Him.”

“We should have had faith, Carl. We thought we were so smart, didn’t we? We thought people with faith were the ignorant ones. Can’t you appreciate the irony?”

“Maybe. But this Heaven is boring to me. If God understood our true natures, then He would understand that my son and I enjoy exploring and understanding the world around us. Is that too much to ask?”

“I hope not, Carl. For your sake and Thomas’s. I certainly hope not.”

“Dad,” Thomas called, taking a break from play with his sister. “Are you going to show what’s past the fruit grove today? I really want to see.”

I looked at my wife who flashed me a forbidding look. I had no wish to quarrel in Heaven. Perhaps her mood would change in time and I could grant my son’s request.

“We’ll have to do that another day, Thomas. Your mother wants us to spend the day together as a family.”

“Oh. Okay,” Thomas said. He dropped his head in a way that hurt me to see and went to play with his sister.

But his mother was proud of me. She rewarded me with the warmest kiss she had offered in quite awhile. We passed the day together talking on the beach, and the possibility occurred to me that perhaps Mandy was right. Why should we spend our time investigating and analyzing this Heaven that God had made for us? What was really to be gained by it? I had willed myself to be content in Hell in spite of a life or torment there. What then prevented me from passing my days in Heaven with the same sense of contentment? The day passed and my wife and I made love after the children had gone to sleep. There was the sense between us as we drifted off to sleep that today we had finally been reunited.

In the morning, I opened my eyes and stared up at the perfect blue sky and listened to the familiar caw of seagulls. It was all so redundant, every morning exactly like the last. But that didn’t matter. All that mattered was being here in this beautiful place with the people I loved most. We could live here forever, living our lives in perfect contentment. I lay there letting my mind be at ease and soaking in the familiar sounds and smells of this place. At some point, I drifted off to sleep again until my daughter’s voice roused me again.

“Daddy, do you know where Thomas is?”

“I don’t know. He probably went exploring down the beach somewhere. You know how he is.”

“Yeah, but he’s been gone a long time. He got up in the middle of the night again while everyone was sleeping and I haven’t seen him since.”

“Did he say where he was going?”

“No, he didn’t say. He just got up and left. He thought I was sleeping.”

“Which way did he go?” Mandy asked.

“That way,” Annie answered, indicating directly away from the beach to the orange grove. “Maybe he just went to eat some fruit and then went to sleep over there.”

“Maybe…,” said Annie. But she didn’t believe it. I didn’t either.

‘Take me to see what’s past the orange grove,’ he had asked me. But I hadn’t taken him. I had decided at that moment to abandon my wrong-minded need to investigate everything and to be content with the Heaven God had made for us. Now, I regretted this decision. If I’d taken him, his curiosity could have been satisfied and he would have not felt the need to go exploring on his own. My palms were suddenly sweaty. But surely there was no real danger. This was Heaven. What danger could really exist here? I spotted Thomas’s footprints leading away from the beach toward the fruit grove.

“I’ll find him,” I said.

His prints were easy to follow. I could even see where he’d pushed past the thick branches to the brink of the bright void beyond. The task had no doubt been much easier for him with his small body and the urge to stop and devour the intoxicating, succulent fruit would not have succeeded in stopping him.

“Thomas!” I called, striving to keep the alarm from my voice.

I pushed my way past the orchard, barely noticing my lust to partake of the fruit or the famished feeling in my stomach, and was blinded by the brightness of the void beyond. Trying to shield my eyes, I called him with all the strength in my lungs.

“Thomas! Where are you?” But no reply came. I scanned the grove for the slightest movement or sign of my lost son, but my efforts were in vain. Desperate now, I searched the ground for any sign of his passage. In a moment, I found what I’d been seeking. The ground was soft and oddly muddy beyond the fruit grove making his small footprints visible a few feet ahead. With my heart pounding, I followed the prints with my eyes to the edge of the precipice. His prints stopped there, two small feet beside each other, as he must have looked out over the brilliant valley before him in amazement. ‘Finally,’ he must have thought, ‘something to stimulate my imagination and inspire wonder.’ Beyond the standing prints, there was a final step that brought him to the brink.

Frantically, I searched for return steps, but none were visible. For a moment, my brain refused to comprehend what this meant, but then understanding forced its way upon me. My son had leaped into the void. My son, who had never known pain or feared danger in this world had simply jumped into a bottomless valley to understand it more fully. I stepped in his footprints and tried to see it as he had in that moment before he leapt. I tried to understand this supposed Heaven as he had understood it. This was not a difficult task. Thomas and I were of the same genes and inclinations. Only experience separated our natures. I should have warned him of this danger when he had asked to come here with me only yesterday. But I had refused him and caused him to feel he had no choice but to follow his own curious nature. I was to blame for his actions. I dropped to my knees and wept. I had learned to cope with all the tortures of Hell, but the loss of my son here in Heaven I could not bear. My wife found me there weeping but had no sympathy for my plight.

“You have caused God to take him from us. Maybe now you will finally have the decency to cease your meddling. Hell was not enough to change you. God had to punish you in Heaven as well.”

Her words caused my grief to give way to anger.

“In life, I did not believe in God,” I told her, spitting my words in her face with contempt and fury. “Now I have no doubt of His existence, but He is a hateful God that I refuse to kowtow to for another day.”

“He should have left you in Hell!” she said. “You don’t deserve what He has given us here. He takes your son to teach you a lesson and still you cry about his methods. From now on, I want you to stay away from my daughter and I. Go far down the beach so we won’t even have to see your blasphemous face.”

“That’s fine with me. You are not the wife I loved in life anyway. She has been replaced by a sanctimonious bitch I want no part of.”

She covered her face with her hands and stalked back through the orange grove.

“Wait!” I called. “I didn’t mean that.”

I chased after her for a few steps and placed a hand on the back of her shoulder.

“Get away from me!” she said through tears, slapping my hand away. She ran through the fruit grove and scooped up Annie, who was waited beyond.

“Your father has lost your brother,” my wife told her. “We don’t want to see him any more.”
Annie burst into tears as she was taken away. I emerged from the grove behind them, watching them go. Annie looked at me over my wife’s shoulder with an expression that broke my heart. Helpless, I watched until they were out of sight. When they were gone, I walked down the beach alone, feeling more desolate than I ever had in Hell. With an empty mind, I moved my feet across the sand until well after nightfall. Finally, I ceased moving and sat, wondering if a boy could truly die in Heaven or if he had only moved to another place to explore. I tried not to wish to hear his voice calling from far down the beach, running with all of his youthful enthusiasm to tell me about his latest discovery. Tears welled in my eyes and dropped onto the uniform grains of sand at my feet. They started slowly, but gained strength quickly until great, heaving sobs overcame me. I wept until at some point a fitful sleep claimed me.

My son came in the night. I did not know if his presence was a dream or reality. He came to me shining as brightly as the void in which he had leapt. I tried to gaze at him, but his brilliance was too great. He stood within reach of me in silence and I was too afraid to touch him. I wondered if his fall had transformed him into God’s angel. When he spoke, his voice, unlike his appearance, remained unaltered.

“Dad, I had to see what was at the bottom of that bright pit past the fruit orchard. I didn’t know it would be so far to the bottom. I didn’t know it would make me look like this.”

“What did you find at the bottom, Thomas? Did you see God?”

Thomas shook his shining head and stared at the sand for a moment, seeming unsure how he should proceed.

“I learned some things as I dropped, Dad. I don’t even remember getting to the bottom of that pit. I just fell into the light and felt like everything was still. Even time didn’t move any more. But there was something that showed me things and then I found myself on the beach next to you, shining like I am now with all of this knowledge in my head.”

“What kind of knowledge, Thomas?”

Thomas hesitated again. I was not sure if it was because he was having trouble figuring out how to say what he needed to tell me, or because he thought it would be difficult for me to hear.

“Dad, all of this exists because of you,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean this beach, that water, the seagulls, the sand, the fruit orchard, the pit beyond it, even me, Mom, and Annie are here because of you. It isn’t God that made it and all of us. It’s you.”

“That can’t be true. I don’t believe that.”

“It’s true, Dad. You made even Hell and all the tortures you endured there. Maybe it was God who allowed you to create it, but it was you who did the creating.”

Speechless, I could only stare at him feeling the truth of his words slowly settle upon me.

“Is all of this a dream then?” I asked.

“It depends on how you define a dream, Dad.”
I nodded and closed my eyes feeling conscious of all that surrounded me with the knowledge that all of it was the creation of my own mind, as slippery and unsubstantial as a racing thought that is soon forgotten. Then I smiled and reached for my son. I hugged him and embraced his brightness. For a moment then, the world was transformed into pure light. But that was not what I wanted. Gradually, the brightness faded. When the darkness was complete, peace flowed through me and though my existence did not cease, all conscious thought dispersed from me into Heaven.