Mulak Reader - The End

I had fun writing this story, and got a lot of letters (most of them favorable) when it appeared in The Drummer. Who says heaven is a place where you drive around on a cloud and play a harp all day? Also, it was a strange coincidence that the initials of the protagonist match those of a little-known outdoor writer from Chicopee.

The End

           "The whole point is that a cheap suit is

            still a cheap suit, even if it's made out

            of one hundred dollar bills sewn together."

The leaves were still thick on the aspens, and Stanley was having trouble keeping track of the dog. There were woodcock here—he had taken eleven just yesterday—but he wasn't going to see bird one if he couldn't get that damned puppy under control. Tucking his gun into the crook of his arm, he dug out his whistle and gave a couple of angry blasts.

Nothing.

          That dog can't help but hear the whistle, he thought. She's gonna pay for ignoring me.

          He needed this sort of problem right now like he needed a third nostril: With birds everywhere, this could be another golden opportunity to make up the difference for some of the days his limit went unfilled... But where was that damn dog? Stanley was exasperated. This early in the season, it seemed there was always something—if it wasn't the heat or the rain, it was stupid game wardens with  nothing better to do than check bird hunters. Not that Stanley ever got caught—he was too smart for that—but aggravations, it seemed, were everywhere. He'd worked with this new puppy through the summer, and she was fine most of the time.  But when the birds were thick she'd get excited and run amuck like she was doing now.  Old Spotty used to do that until the day Stanley lost his temper and beat the dog to within an inch of his life. Spotty never ran off again after that.

He heard the puppy's bell off to his right. Deliberately, he broke a whippy branch from a birch tree and set off toward the sound. A woodcock bounded up from underfoot, twittering and twisting up through the branches overhead. He tried to get his shotgun to his shoulder, but was fouled by some leafy brush. When he yanked at the gun he only succeeded in snapping back a branch that hit him full in the face and knocked off his hat. The bird vanished beyond the treetops. Through clenched teeth he muttered a curse that was a mixture of two contradictory sexual deviations. The sound of the dog's bell came from just beyond an old broken-down stone wall. He picked up the switch with a renewed purpose.

As he stepped across the wall, his foot caught on an unseen twist of rusted barbed wire and pitched him forward. He steeled himself for a bone-jarring fall, but strangely he fell quite painlessly. Stanley scrambled up, still intent on catching the puppy. As he started off he glanced back to see if anything had fallen from his pockets in the spill.

          There, lying face-down across the wall, was a man. "What the hell...?"  He stepped closer, unsure of what he was seeing. This guy hadn't been there a moment ago. It appeared to be a hunter: the man wore a canvas coat like his own, although it had a jagged tear through the back, and briar-proofs, also like his own. But just why he was sprawled across the wall was unclear. A growing seep of red edged the hole in the man's coat, and wasn't that the butt of a shotgun protruding from under the figure...?

          He realized then who the man was.

          With the toe of his boot he moved the man's hat so he could see the face. His suspicions were confirmed: it was himself.

          "I must be crazy," he muttered. He stood listening to his own thoughts for a moment, then breathed out a nervous sigh and sat down on the wall. He couldn't take his eyes from the figure—it appeared he'd fallen on his gun and blown a hole through his chest. But it couldn't be... He shook his head.

"I guess this is it," he concluded out loud. "I must actually be wack-o. Funny, I don't remember going bananas... But, then again, if I am insane, what do I know?"

          His puppy came in, tail between her legs. She approached the prone figure, head down, expecting a whipping. He whistled to her, but wasn't heard. "C'mere, Belle." For a moment the dog looked at him, but her eyes were focused beyond, searching for something unseen. "Belle.  C'mere, girl." The dog backed up, hackles raised, then lifted her head in a howl. He got up and approached the dog, but Belle turned and ran off.

          So much for man's best friend, he thought. The dumb dog is acting like she's seen a ghost.

          He pondered the idea for a moment.  Is that it?  Am I to be the ghost of Tripwire covert?  He returned and sat next to himself.  Crazy or not, things appeared pretty real; a genuine-looking puddle of blood had formed and was dripping from one of the rocks under the body, already attracting a few equally real-looking flies that buzzed around, and the smell of burned gunpowder was pungent in the air. He didn't feel insane—not that he expected that nuts actually felt crazy, either. But he reluctantly admitted to himself that there was more than an outside chance he was actually... dead.

          Dead, huh?  Hmm.

          The end.

          He hadn't really expected it this soon. He remembered grumbling about the extra charges for the accidental death benefit on his life insurance. Hmm. And just last summer his agent had talked him into mortgage insurance. For that matter, the company had insurance on his loan at work, too. "Hey, all right!" He smacked his fist into his open palm. "For once I'm gonna make out like a bandit!" But his grin faded.  "Of course, if I'm really dead..."

          He heard someone coming through the woods. Whoever it was drew closer and walked directly to where Stanley sat on the stone wall. The man was definitely not a hunter—he carried a briefcase and had on a pinstriped business suit, wing-tip shoes, and a Hawaiian shirt that seemed incongruous with his otherwise somber attire. He withdrew a notepad from the pocket of his suit coat.

          "Stanley John Marinski?"

          "It's Stanley J. Martin now. I had it changed a few years back."

          "Stanley John Marinski, nevertheless. I represent the Eternal Afterlife Corporation, and am here to escort you to your final reward, as it were."

          "You're an angel?"

          The man allowed a momentary look of disgust to cross his face. "We prefer to be referred to as executive afterlife planning co-ordinators, but yes, I am what you might call... an angel."

          "So I'm really dead, then."

          Expressionless, the angel stared at him for a long moment before shaking his head, then reached into his briefcase and drew out a plain white envelope. The initials 'S.J.M.' were scribbled in one corner. "Mister Marinski, in this envelope are our plans for your future time here in eternity. While your demise was rather sudden, we are eternally vigilant here at E.A.C., and maintain a continually updated list of our prospective clients." The spiel seemed recited by rote. The angel tore open the envelope and examined the note inside with all the interest of someone glancing at the contents of a handkerchief into which he had just blown his nose.

          "Wuzzit say?" Stanley asked.

          The memorized statements continued. "E.A.C. is pleased to announce that you have been awarded our plan 'J' with options 3, 4, and 7."

          Stanley held his breath for a moment. "Okay. Lay it on me: What does that mean?"

          "In brief, it means that your wishes have come true."

Stanley blinked.

          The angel took his arm and led him away from where the motionless body lay draped over the wall. As they walked, the angel referred to his notepad. "You have often wished for a perfect dog? You are to have one..."

          "Really?"

          An English pointer appeared, white with unusual black markings, and walked at the angel's side. Stanley noticed that the dog marched in step, almost military fashion; left...left...left-right-left...

          "The endless season you frequently wished for?"

Stanley shook his head bashfully. "Yeah, but I never paid no mind to seasons and such..."

          "An endless season is also yours: Here at E.A.C.'s hunting grounds, there is no closed season. And best of all, Mister Marinski, the wish you often made for unlimited shooting is also true: there are no bag limits."

          Okay, so what's the catch? thought Stanley. This sounds too good to be true.  Either there ain't any birds, or I've got to use a .22 short rifle on them...

          "Nothing of the sort, Mister Marinski."

          Holy shit! He can read my mind!  Stanley thought. I mean - Holy smokes! He can read my mind! 

          "Certainly." The angel did not even glance at Stanley, but the pointer seemed to scowl up at him. "We have arranged a rather fine gun for you to use." He handed Stanley a 20 gauge side-by-side.

          It was indeed a fine gun, the sort he had always wished he could afford. The walnut was well figured, the checkering clean, the engraving immaculate. Stanley took a pair of shells from his coat pocket, and when he closed the action on them the crisp solid click said 'quality' with a capital 'Q'.

There's the rub, he thought. Ammo. All they're gonna give me for the rest of time is what's in my jacket.

          "Yes." the angel answered his thought.  "But that will hardly be the problem it at first appears. Please look in your pocket." Both empty shell loops were now full again. Stanley smiled.

          As they walked, the cover became unfamiliar. They stepped across a small stream and came to a vista that looked out across acres of pasturelands, some overgrown to birch and popple, others laced with alder lined brooklets. There were abandoned orchards and little tag swamps, and other than a few tumbledown fences and stone walls, the cover stretched to the horizon without any signs of people: there wasn't a house or a paved road in sight. Here and there a tree colored the scene with it's autumn foliage, but most were bare.  It seemed to be early November, and looked to Stanley to be a woodcock hunter's paradise.

          "Here we are," spoke the angel. "There is an abundance of some sort of little bird for you to shoot..."

          "Woodcock?" Stanley crossed his fingers.

          The angel referred to his notepad. "Yes, woodcocks." From his briefcase he withdrew a small box with a single pushbutton on its face. "This is a call box, Mister Marinski." He handed the box to Stanley. "If you should find you require my assistance for any reason, you need only push this button."

          Stanley took his eyes from the vista for the first time and glanced at the box.  "You say this place goes on forever and is full of birds, that I've got full shell loops for the rest of time, and there ain't any limits?" He smiled. "Why should I need to contact you?"

          The angel paused, fingering the bottom point of a gold star pin on his lapel.  "Something might be in need of... adjustment." He turned to leave.

          "Say, what's the dog's name?" Stanley called after him.

"Dyabel."

          Strange name for a dog, he thought. It almost sounds Polish. "Well, we'll get along just fine, won't we, fella..."  He reached out to pet the pointer, but instead the dog bit him on the meat part of the hand. Stanley jumped back. The skin was not broken. Although he had never owned one, he'd always heard pointers were feisty.  The dog stood glaring at Stanley. "C'mon, fella." He started down the hill toward the endless covert. The dog accompanied him, not quite at heel.

          Oh boy, he thought. Heaven! I never figured I'd make it, and I certainly didn't think it'd be like this. I don't know what I expected, really—maybe that I could hunt with Spotty again, like in 'The Road to Tinkhamtown'. He flexed his hand, examining the bite. No complaints, mind you, but I figured it'd be a place where I could smoke Camels again without rotting out my lungs, and put salt on my eggs without worrying about cholesterol or hardening of the arteries... maybe a chance to find out what happens to all those partridge that seem to vanish from the face of the earth after I flush them once... Ah, and Cynthia Murphy—How many times have I wondered what she would have been like... Or what if I'd gone to Saint Mike's instead of into the navy?

His thoughts ran to the thousands of other questions for which only heaven could hold answers. Yes indeed, I'll have some questions for that angel when I see him again.  But first I'll get some shooting in—maybe a few hundred years of so.  Stanley chuckled to himself.  Even his hand felt better.

          The pointer charged ahead as they entered the first stand of popple. The dog was lovely to watch: efficient and graceful, casting 30 yards to either side of him in a series of figure 8s. They hadn't gone 100 yards when the pointer struck scent and slid into a classic point.

          Stanley shook his head in amazement: he had never seen anything quite so pretty. He stepped in front of the dog and a woodcock took flight into the branches above. The double swung effortlessly and the bird fell at his shot.

          He was about half way to the spot where the bird had come down when he realized that the dog was still standing as if on point. He had never known a dog that was actually steady to wing and shot, but was seeing one now. He spoke almost apologetically: "Oh, okay... Go fetch, fella." The pointer dashed out and brought in the bird. Stanley was impressed.  "I think I'm going to like this."

          As with every other woodcock he had ever shot in life, he turned the bird over in his hand to see if it had a leg band. This one had one. "Look at this!" he spoke aloud. "I've been waiting all my life to shoot a banded bird." He paused, listening to his own words. "Longer, I guess." 

He looked closely at the tiny leg band. It read 'E.A.C. game farm'. A stocked bird! How tacky. But Stanley was euphoric, and neither biting bird dogs nor stocked woodcock could dampen his spirits.

          Throughout the day, as he walked from one point to the next, he noticed that all of the little unpleasantries of hunting had been removed; What remained of the autumn foliage was pretty but obstructed no shots, no branches swatted him as he moved through the woods, even in the thick stuff, all the birds were sitting just right (even the three partridge the dog had pointed), and surprisingly he hadn't missed a shot. Even his bootlaces were staying tied. When his foot slipped off a rock while crossing a brook and he went in up to his knee, he scrambled out, cursing. He expected a bootfull of water, but when he felt his socks they weren't even damp. Looks like they've thought of everything, he thought to himself. What a pleasure this is - it's almost like heaven.  He chuckled at his own joke.

          I guess I wasn't as bad a guy as I thought, he reflected.  I always said you gotta look out for yourself, 'cause nobody else is gonna. It looks like all that crap about givin' your money away and that stupid Golden Rule business is for suckers. Ha. I always knew it. And those nature-fakers with their game laws must have been way out of line, too. 'Glad I never paid much attention to that sort of thing. He nodded his head self-righteously. Yeah, I always played it 'first come, first served,' I guess I was right. Why else would I be in heaven?

          The pointer continued to hunt flawlessly, and was a joy to watch. When Stanley made another attempt to pet the dog, the pointer backed away growling, baring his teeth. He was ten times the dog Spotty had ever been, but still in all it would be nice to have the old Brit back again, working the cover in his pokey sort of way, bumping a bird as often as he pointed one. I'll have to ask the angel about that, he thought, Right after I light up my first Camel.

          The next shot was a double, with woodcock going out in opposite directions.  He dropped the left bird easily, but his barrels caught on a branch as he swung to the right, and when the gun went off the shot was behind the bird. But the

woodcock took an abrupt turn in flight as they sometimes do, and was crossing back when the pattern caught him in a puff of feathers.

          "Now ain't that a piece of luck!"  Stanley grinned as the pointer delivered the bird to his hand.

          Within the hour, the same thing happened again. Stanley became suspicious.  On the next shot, he deliberately aimed above the crossing bird, and sure enough, just as he pulled the trigger the bird climbed and was caught by the shot pattern for his 17th straight shot without a miss. Stanley shook his head in disgust. "That ain't no fun." His elation was quickly evaporating.

          They were crossing through some old birches minutes later when the dog stopped in mid-stride, pointing to his right. As Stanley approached the deadfall that the dog indicated, a grouse ran out from under the stump and took flight straight away from him. The shot was an easy one, but Stanley pointed the gun back over his shoulder and fired. Very quickly, the grouse turned and flew 180 degrees to the rear and managed to get hit. Eighteen in a row.

          The pointer brought the grouse in, but Stanley turned his back. "Eat the damn bird, for all I care."

The dog dropped the bird and bit Stanley on the calf. 

"All right! All right!  Gimmie the bird." Only when he took the grouse and slid it into his gamebag did the pointer cast off through the cover again. "I'm going to have a talk with that angel about you, you S.O.B.!" He yelled after the dog as he bent to massage his leg. "You can't pull this crap with me. You're through!"

          The dog went on point again, not 50 feet from where Stanley stood shouting.  He started forward, then stopped. This stinks, he thought. Taking this many birds ain't much fun if it's legal. I'm a fun kinda guy: I need a limit to break and some rules to ignore. He looked to where the pointer stood on point. An' a dog that's having a good time being a dog, not some mechanical game warden. 

Stanley turned his back on the dog's point and went to sit on a rock outcropping, tossing the gun down. 50 feet away the woodcock bounded up in front of the dog, and as the gun struck the ground it went off. The bird folded, centered by the pattern. Nineteen for 19.

          "You call this fun?" Stanley muttered. "Birds that commit suicide...  Dogs that got no respect..." He dug out the box that the angel had given him and pressed the button with a vengeance. "I'll get Spotty back." The muttering continued. "He never growled at me 'cept once in a while when I'd get drunk an' kick him one..."

          The angel's distant voice emitted from the box: "Hello. I'm either not in at the present or cannot come to the phone. At the sound of the tone..."

          "A damn answering machine!"  Stanley shook his head.

"...please leave your message and I may or may not get backto you.  Beeeeep..."

          "Angel?" Stanley spoke into the box. "It's me, Stanley Martin..."

          "Yes?" The angel was suddenly standing next to him.

"Hey, look - I've gotta talk to you." Stanley scrambled to his feet. "Things are almost too perfect here. I mean, it's nice and all, but this sort of never-miss shooting and this mechanical dog act ain't what I'm used to..."

          "Isn't that what you wished for?"

          "Yeah, yeah... But what'd I know?" Stanley waved in dismissal. "I know I never admitted it, but it was nice to miss once in a while—it made the really good shots all the sweeter. And Spotty—He died last year: he ought to be around here somewheres—I'd like to have him back.  He wasn't the best dog ever, but I kind of liked him, an' we had fun. Know what I mean?"

          "E.A.C. has already approached a Spotty Marinski in regard to the matter.  Evidently, Mister Marinski, Mister Spotty did not much care for you during your previous existence: He refused."

          "Why that son of a ..."  Stanley caught himself.

          The angel stood indifferently. Stanley's voice grew louder and higher as he continued. "Okay, forget Spotty. Look, I'm not going to make believe I enjoyed it, but getting scratched and swatted by briars and branches was a real part of woodcock hunting, too... Getting hung-up in the brush so you couldn't shoot, and having the little buggers dodge out of your pattern now and then, and getting caught off guard when a partridge goes out... Even getting your feet wet makes you appreciate the days when you manage to stay dry."

          The angel shrugged. "Plan 'J', options ..."

          "To hell with that!" Stanley nearly shouted. He grabbed the angel's shoulder in desperation. "Look: Somebody made a mistake about me—A big mistake. I don't deserve all this. I used to break the law a lot—I mean, all the time. It was a hobby with me. And I never had much use for my fellow man. And I used to poach—Really; trout, birds, deer... you name it. All that Christian foolishness about faith, hope, and charity and don't covet your neighbor's wife?  Hope, I had, but the others? Forget it. I used to covet all the time...  Does your boss realize all this stuff?"

          "E.A.C. is well aware of your mortal performance evaluation scores. So?"

          "What do you mean, 'So?' Look, somebody made a mistake about me. I'm telling you I don't belong here." He grimaced a moment, then added desperately, "I should be in... in the other place."

          For the first time the angel smiled. He chuckled. His smile broadened into a grin and his chuckle became a laugh that became a whoop of hilarity that finally doubled him over in a fit of hysterical laughter.

          After his desperate plea, Stanley was aghast at the angel's reaction. "What's so funny?" He demanded.

          It took a moment, but the angel controlled his laughter long enough to blurt out a reply: "This IS the other place." The whoops of laughter resumed.

          Stanley turned his back on the angel. Beyond a deadfall, 20 yards away, the pointer stood on a classic point, head high, nostrils flared, tail nearly straight up, on foot just off the ground. The sight made Stanley sick to his stomach.

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