Hell by Robert Olen Butler Page A

kiss. He turns back to Hatcher. “Next.”
    “Your power is so great,” Hatcher begins.
    “Now you’ve got it,” Satan says. “Good interview technique. Win the heart of your subject with noble cosmic truths about his power.”
    Hatcher says, “How do you choose?”
    “You mean how did I choose you ,” Satan says.
    This time Hatcher has not even a flicker of worry. He swells with the importance of the place of a journalist—his place—in any life or afterlife, ennobled by the fundamental right and need of all people to be fully informed. He straightens his spine and in spite of his charred and denuded head still wispily smoking, he says, “I’m a newsman.” with the intention of going on to explain how he speaks for everyone.
    But before he can, Satan cries, “Right! Righteously right! And an exemplary newsman you are, my boy. Look what you’ve done. You’ve been able to ask the Great Dark Lord all these questions and you only had one little hairdo malfunction along the way. And I’ll make that up to you.”
    Instantly, the pain on the top of Hatcher’s still-smoking head ceases, as does the smoke, and he becomes intensely aware of every hair follicle dilating and excreting. His hair grows and grows and he feels it descending over his ears, the back of his neck, his forehead, and into his eyes, and it falls on his shoulders and finally stops.
    “You see? All fixed. Your girlfriend will absolutely adore it. The first man she fucked had hair just like that. You can both reminisce. Such fond memories. We all have such memories. I sat on a cloud once, metaphorically speaking. I hate sitting on clouds. Fucking idiotic. Strum strum on your harp. Flap your wings. What bullshit. But I have memories just like your headstrong, footloose girlfriend. Or should I say footstrong, headloose.”
    Hatcher brushes the hair out of his eyes. Already he’s wondering who Anne’s fuck with the long hair was and starting to churn about it. I won’t let you do this, Old Man. And the power of having the privacy of his thoughts actually helps him move away from his retrospective jealousy. And this was good, this challenge to him. He needed the reminder that Satan can still see and know. Almost everything, no doubt. He’s just not listening.
    “You’ve been a great newsman today, Hatcher,” Satan says. “What integrity. Doesn’t that make you proud? I haven’t had such fun since I brought old Billy Graham out here—he’s a crack shot—and the son of a bitch tried to get me to do an altar call.”
    Hatcher McCord pictures the aged preacher trying to convert the Devil himself, and inside, Hatcher laughs wryly, sadly, at the quixotic pathos of the human condition.
    “That led to some serious malfunctions of various sorts, I can tell you,” Satan says. “Don’t ask.”
    Hatcher McCord’s interview with Satan is an unparalleled journalistic landmark, and the irony is that he has to keep his biggest investigative break to himself. Fuck you, Satan, he says casually in his head. Hatcher’s head is a precious haven in the midst of the maelstrom of Hell.
    “Not that it pleases me,” Satan says. “I sometimes get a bellyful of the malfunctions. I feel for you all, my little children. You are all so pathetic. I do care.” And Satan digs knuckles into the corners of both eyes. “Boo hoodie hoo,” he says.
    By the genius of his interviewing, he has learned a secret that is both dangerous and empowering.
    Satan abruptly drops his hands and lifts his face. He closes his eyes in faux agony and cries, “Satan wept.”
    Hatcher McCord, whose likeability rating even at the time of his death was second only to Oprah Winfrey . . .
    Satan opens his eyes and lowers his face. Hatcher is not so far gone in the overvoice of his life that he misses this moment. He sorts quickly through what’s been going on and recaptures enough at least to say, “Wonderful. Yes.”
    “Of course,” Satan says. “Of course. But as the broadcast