Ushers

by Joe Hill

When someone engineered the deaths of a few dozen people, it was Duvall’s experience that they often wanted to tell. Some were ill with grief and horror, and they needed to confess, the way someone with a stomach bug might need to vomit. It was the only way to expel the sickness that had built up inside them. Others were proud of themselves. They wanted to brag on the clever thing they had done to pulverize twenty or thirty human bodies into small blackened bits.

Martin Lorensen was either an extraordinarily lucky young man or extraordinarily unlucky, depending on how you wanted to look at it. Or—just possibly—luck didn’t figure into it at all.

He was also—and this was the most interesting thing about him, in Anthony Duvall’s view—not dead.

“Four Thousand Weeks, Oliver Burkeman,” Duvall said. “What lasts four thousand weeks?” “A human life,” Martin said. “If you’re lucky.” “Bunch of people on Mohawk 118,” Oates said, “didn’t get four thousand weeks.”

“I think sometimes, once in a while, nearly dying brings a new clarity to a person’s life,”

I’ve never been to a strip club, either, and personally I would’ve preferred that, but my brother is against ’em on ethical grounds. I said he was the most sincere person I know, I didn’t say he was the coolest. This is a guy who unironically bought tickets to see Ed Sheeran.”

It never seemed like dying was anything so terrible. Most of them just kind of quietly . . . went. Like someone blowing on a dandelion clock, gentle as that. You do get used to it. You find out it’s the most normal thing in the world, like sex, or having a baby, or nursing a baby. It’s one of these fundamental human things, reminds you you’re part of nature. We forget that, you know. Or try not to think about it. Which is stupid. It’s better to just be a mammal. You know, take long naked naps in the sun. Never miss a chance to splash in the tide.”

Social media brings out the worst in people. They’ll say anything for the likes.”

“Mr. Duvall, you think there’s something suspicious about me because I wasn’t shot in a school shooting and I didn’t die in a train crash.” He craned his neck and peered around them in an exaggerated way. “Better take a look around. You’re surrounded by people who didn’t die in school shootings and weren’t killed in train crashes. If that makes someone a criminal, you better call for backup. You’re going to be arresting a lot of people tonight.”

“I’m not on the security footage. You know why? Because I’m not a thief and I’m not a drug dealer. What I am is an underpaid counselor who plays pickleball with mentally ill kids all scarred up from their previous suicide attempts.”

“I think,” Duvall said, “that people are always going to want law, and if the only lawmen are white, then it isn’t law anymore. It’s apartheid.”

“Because they had company when they got on board,” Martin Lorensen told him. “They weren’t alone. None of them. When you die, you aren’t alone. They’re always there, at the end, to collect you.”

“I think of them as the ushers. Like at a play—the people who lead you through the dark to your seat when you come in late. I guess there are ushers at funerals too. But maybe you’d call them angels. They look like angels.” “Do they have wings?” Martin nodded and drank some Blue Moon. “Sure do. But not big beautiful white wings, like on the statues. More like pigeons. Gray, but also sort of iridescent. They’ve got eyes like pigeons too. You know how pigeons have eyes the color of new minted pennies? Like that. Metallic. They wear these cassocks, kinda like Jesuit priests, and there’s soot all over them. Soot on their clothes, soot on their wings. Like they came out of a coal mine.”

“Sure. Maybe we emit sin, the way factories emit pollution, and it gets on ’em, the way soot gets on pigeons. Or maybe they take some people to hell and it’s smoky there. I don’t know. You ever see a movie called Wings of Desire?” Martin asked him.

“I’m trying not to notice if they are. I really shouldn’t have done anything. People die. I don’t want to be the reason some live and some don’t. It’s best to just . . . be a mammal. Eat as much fresh fruit as you can. Spend time with trees. Hug the people you love. Accept that death is as natural as the rest of life. Dogs understand that. Cats understand that. Only humans have a hard time with it. And when it’s over, at least there’s someone there. At least you aren’t alone.”

John dumped himself behind the steering wheel, glaring out at the rain, a man who took weather personally.