Back to the Servite Future: A Divine Comedy
by Mike Quinn
Adam lay alone in his bed. What a relief. The parade of children and grandchildren with their long sad faces had drained him dry. The priest seemed nice but was just as morose. They all meant well, he was sure of that. They just wanted him to live one improbable day longer. But if laughter keeps you going in this world, then its opposite must have the opposite effect. And man, those buckets of tears were giving him a strong push into the next world.
All to the good, he thought. His daughter and grand-daughter will scream and cry tomorrow, but they will soon feel blessed relief at the end of their tiresome nursing duties. And he was ready.
He had lived a long, full life. Definitely long. The quietest and least well-known among his high school classmates, he had survived them all and lived well into the second half of the twenty-first century. No real accomplishment there, despite what everyone told him, but he had also lived a good life. Raised a family and helped them raise theirs. Had been a good husband and had worked hard as an attorney all those many years ago. Some regrets, sure, but nothing major. He still had doubts about whether there was an afterlife. But if there was, he was excited about his chances.
He drifted off to sleep. He was in the middle of one of his usual, incoherent dreams when he felt another in a recent series of sharp gas or heartburn pangs. This one was particularly nasty. To his surprise it didn’t wake him up, but he now found himself getting out of his very first car. What a cool dream! He hadn’t thought about that car for over a hundred years and there it was, right in the parking lot near La Palma Avenue where he used to park as a senior in high school.
Which was also where he was now standing. Well, no surprise there, he had been thinking about Servite right before he fell asleep. The sky had a dreary gray pallor, though, like in an industrial town where factories poured smoke into the air. That did not fit his memory of Anaheim, but hey, dreams are weird. Otherwise, to Adam’s eyes it looked like Servite High School circa 1971. He started walking toward the old school building.
When he got to the little mound in the grass where he used to eat lunch, he noticed a man sitting on one of the benches to his left. He approached the man amid the overall gloom, but he felt no fear or sense of oddity, which was itself a little odd because the man was wearing a toga.
“Hey, are you going to a party or something? You know, toga toga!” Adam smiled at his own witticism but got nothing back from the man at first except a blank stare. Then the man spoke.
“These are the clothes I have always worn, and they keep me loose in my work as a guide. Are you really comfortable in those denim trousers, Adam? I wouldn’t last two hundred years if I had to wear those stupid pants.”
Adam was stunned, his mind struggling to remember some myths or stories he had studied over a century before. Then he addressed the man.
“OK, I got some questions for you. First off, how do you know my name? And also, what is your name? What kind of a guide are you? I sure as hell don’t need a guide here. I mean, it’s been a few years since I’ve been on campus, but I think I know my way around. Besides, who needs a guide in a dream?” He hesitated before asking his last question. “And this is a dream, right?”
For the first time, the man cracked a little smile. “Let me answer your questions in reverse order, young man.” Adam had not heard that last phrase for a while, except in jest from his doctor. He had a sneaking suspicion this guy was being a little sarcastic too.” The man continued. “This is not a dream, Adam, and you definitely need a guide here. By the way, I wouldn’t throw that ‘hell’ word around too loosely, if I were you. My name is Virgil, and I am your appointed guide. That is how I know your name.”
The old memories started flooding back to Adam. “Whoa, aren’t you a famous Roman poet?”
“Bingo.”
“The Aeneid?”
“My most famous work. I see that your Servite education was not a complete waste of time.”
“But wait, you were a guide in some other story. It’ll come to me.”
“Maybe I spoke too soon about your education. It was the ‘Divine Comedy’ by Dante. I played a starring role.”
“Yes, yes, the three books,” Adam shouted. “Paradiso!” He hesitated. “Is this paradise?”
“Does it look like paradise?”
Adam’s face was ashen. “Inferno?”
“No, but there’s still time,” Virgil responded. Satisfied with Adam’s look of despair, he went on. “That was a joke. We don’t get a lot of opportunities for humor down here. No, in your case it’s Door Number Three.”
Adam noted that Virgil was smiling all the time now, seeming to enjoy himself immensely. Adam struggled to remember the name and then blurted it out. “Purgatorio!”
“Ding ding ding,” Virgil shouted back as his smile widened even further. “Let’s take a walk back to the athletic fields while we discuss your immediate future.
Adam’s mind raced as he walked alongside Virgil, trying to summon back his dormant skills as a trial lawyer. “Look, Virgil, I thought God was all-merciful. I mean, I freely admit that I wasn’t perfect in my life.” Virgil nodded in what Adam thought was an awfully quick sign of agreement. “But I also believe that I tried to repent for my sins and errors. I tried to make amends to people I hurt; not always, but when I was aware of the pain I had caused. And finally, even if I didn’t cover over all my wrong tracks, doesn’t a lifetime of at least trying to good and provide service to people weigh in the balance against any evil I have done?”
Virgil stopped and turned to look at Adam. Adam realized that they had reached what should have been the beginning of the athletic fields but were instead standing at the edge of a large abyss. He saw now the reason for the endless gray sky. Plumes of smoke were billowing out of the abyss. He felt a chill as he heard distant cries and moans from inside the abyss.
“Adam, you don’t need to write a brief for yourself. The Big Guy knows it all and He is indeed merciful. This would be a very short conversation if we were having it before I kicked you into inferno. Your life has been mostly well-lived, and the moral character you formed at Servite – and sculpted afterwards – is in fact admirable. It is, at least, forgivable.
“That is why your stint here will be short. There was just some unfinished business you left here, back in high school, that got overlooked. You won’t be alone. If you look down there through the smoke, you can see most of your fellow graduating class of 1971.”
Adam looked over the edge of the abyss and was amazed to see that Virgil was correct. This gave Virgil the opportunity to give Adam a swift kick in the rear and send him on a slow and increasingly heated descent. Adam looked back up and pleaded with Virgil.
“But how will we know when our time has ended?”
“You will hear a thunderous voice over the abyss, announcing that your time of suffering has come to an end.”
“The voice of God?” Adam asked in wonder.
“Don’t be ridiculous. The Big Guy doesn’t mess around down here. “He will send a messenger.”
“An angel of God?” Adam asked, again in wonder.
“No, just a regular guy who is already upstairs. Pretty amazing, though, and I have to say I haven’t seen this for a few centuries, but this guy has been granted the authority to decide when to call the timeout for all of you Servite boys down there.”
Adam was sweating hard now and could only get off one more question. “But what words will this guy say, and how will we know it is him?”
“Oh, you will recognize the voice. The words are strange to me but I memorized them for you. Here they are:
Good enough, students, good enough
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