My Return to Hell

This story is inspired by an old joke that exists in many forms. If I did my job right, you will recognize the joke. If not, well, I'm sorry.

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I know what you're thinking. It isn't that hell. I live in Hell, Michigan, a small town Northwest of Ann Arbor. Look it up. I'm an electrical engineer and I work at the university. The physics faculty dream up pie-in-the-sky ideas and I make them reality. This particular reality was a tall order, but I'll get to that.

Oh, yeah, my name is Richard and my wife is Karen. Well, she was my wife. Actually, she just was and now she isn't anymore. Let's just leave it at that for now.

This particular project that I just finished was as much an adventure as it was a job. One of the big geeks in the Physics Department (yeah, they know I call them that) came up with this cockamamie idea. He wanted to measure very-low-frequency oscillations of the Sun. Why? I don't know. He wants it. I build it. I go home at night, work in my garden, and play with my wife. That's the deal. These oscillations are so low in frequency that you need weeks of uninterrupted measurements. Well, you can get twelve hours on a good day, but you can't watch the Sun steadily and without interruption for weeks, right? Wrong. You go to the South Pole in summer when the Sun never sets. That was the adventure.

You know the expression, "...when hell freezes over!"? Yeah. I've heard it a thousand times. I live in Hell, remember? Well, Hell Michigan is damn cold in the winter and Hell freezes over for months. If I have to go to the South Pole in summer, it's their summer and not mine. So I have to go when it is winter in Hell, then it's summer at the South Pole which is even colder than winter in Hell, and then I go back to winter in Hell!

When the time came I left my warm bed and my warm wife, and I started the journey to the South Pole. First, you fly to Hawaii and spend a day in the tropical sun. Then you fly to New Zealand where the National Science Foundation stages their flights to Antarctica. I spent a week getting trained in how not to die at the South Pole. The place sounds more inviting with ever lecture (not). Eventually, when the weather was good, I boarded a transport for McMurdo and from there we flew to the pole.

I'm at the pole for three weeks and it's a miniature city down there! Half of all of us at the pole, and that includes me, are sleeping in walled tents. I'm camping out at the freakin' South Pole! I take advantage of the long days to get the telescope assembled and work as fast as I can. The drive mechanism requires precise calibration to track the Sun from that latitude and the data downlink has to be established. It would not be overly difficult in a temperate climate, but everything at the pole takes three times as long. Don't get me wrong; it's a story I figure I can tell for the rest of my life. Still, I have a warm wife back home and I've got some catching up to do!

We have email at the pole and I get messages from my wife on a regular basis. I tell her I'm ok, but we keep it short. I mean, what's to tell? "It was cold today. I worked to assemble the telescope. I ate dinner with the guys. I slept in the friggin' tent." Tomorrow, the message will be the same.

By the way, you know what's the most popular movie at the pole? It's John Carpenter's "The Thing". I kid you not!

Anyway, I'd been three weeks at the South Pole and the job was done. I hadn't heard from Karen for about 3 days, but I was headed home and that was good enough for me! I got to Aukland and I took a few days to defrost. The heat felt good. I went to the beach and just lay in the sun. I needed a deep thaw and time to count my fingers and toes. When you get a woody down at the pole, you worry that maybe it's just frozen. Still no word from Karen and I was beginning to worry.

Three days in the New Zealand sun and I was headed home! I contacted the department and asked them to call my wife. She needed to know when I'd be home. They never got back to me. One flight after another, I passed the hours sleeping. Homeward bound, Hawaii was just a transfer point. I wanted to be home, to kiss my wife, and sleep in my own bed.

That brings me to my return to Hell.

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I stepped off the plane in Detroit and took a relaxed walk to the baggage claim. I was hoping to see Karen when I passed through security, but she wasn't there. To say I was disappointed would be an understatement. I'd been busy and she'd been distracted during the last weeks before I left and I was hoping that five weeks away might have improved our priorities. Then I spotted Gail, one of our very best friends. She works in the nursing school at the university. Gail and her husband, Jack, were like members of the family. It wasn't unusual for Karen and I to be sitting in our living room or out on the back deck when Gail and Jack would walk into the house and say, "Knock, knock!" Close friends don't wait for an invitation to come in.

Seeing Gail made me feel both happy and worried. I gave her a hug, kissed her on the cheek, and asked, "Where's Janet? I haven't heard from her in a week."

She looked a bit nervous, like she was searching for the right answer to my question. She smiled and said, "She couldn't make it. I came instead." She put her hands on both my arms. "It's good to see you. I'm glad you made it back okay."

"It was an adventure, but not what you might expect. It was more tedium than excitement. And it was cold; it was always cold!"

Gail giggled at that remark. "I'm glad you kept your sense of humor." She looked in my eyes for what seemed like a very long time as if trying to say something. "Let's get your bags."

We did, and then we sat for a cup of coffee before heading out to the car.

"So what did I miss?"

Gail just stared at me. She didn't blink, she didn't look away, and she didn't even close her mouth. There was sadness in her eyes. "Dick, I don't know how to tell you this. Those apple trees you planted behind the garage aren't going to make it. They're gone."

"They're gone? How do apple trees go? What happened to them?"

"They caught fire and burned."

"They burned?"

"Yes. There was snow on the branches, but the fire was just too intense."

"What fire? Why was there a fire behind the garage?"

"There wasn't a fire behind the garage. The garage caught fire and burned. The fire jumped to the apple trees and then they went up, too."

"The garage was on fire? How bad was it?"

"It's gone."

"Oh, God!"

"Your Mustang was in the garage at the time."

"My car? Is it ok?"

"I'm afraid it's a total loss. The roof of the garage collapsed on the Mustang and then the fire consumed it."

"Oh, shit! My apple trees, my car, and my garage are all gone?"

"I'm afraid there's more. The fire trucks drove onto your front lawn to put out the fire and they destroyed the gardens you've been building the past few years."

"The gardens are gone, too? How did the garage catch fire?"

"The fire jumped from the house to the garage."

"My house was on fire?"

"Yes. It was a total loss."

"My house burned?!"

"Well, it wasn't so much the fire as the explosion."

"My house blew up?"

"Once the house blew, whatever was left burned pretty quickly. Now that I think about it, it was probably the explosion that set the garage on fire."

"How did the house blow up?"

"There was a gas leak and then a spark set it off."

"There was a gas leak? What caused it? Was Karen having work done at the house?"

"Not so much at the house as in the house. More specifically, she was having work done in the bedroom when it happened."

I just sat there staring at Gail, afraid to ask the next question. She was shaking. I took her hand to calm her and I waited for her to speak. When she finally spoke again, it was slow and measured.

"While you were gone, Jack was going over to help Karen with some chores around the house. It seemed like the whole time you were gone she had different chores she needed done. One day she was worried about the furnace and another day she had a clogged drain. There was a faucet that leaked and the walk needed to be shoveled. This day there were some boxes in the attic she wanted down. Jack kept going over to help her. Sometimes I'd go, too, but this day I had to go to the office. I got finished early, so I drove over to your place. It wasn't long after that when the explosion happened."

"You must have just missed being killed by the explosion! What got the three of you out in time?"

"I was never in any danger. It takes time for the gas to build up."

What did she mean by that? "It takes time..."?

We sat in silence for a moment as I thought about how I'd not heard from Karen in a week. Now I was seriously worried. "Were Karen and Jack in the house?"

"Oh, yeah, they were in the house all right." I saw a flash of anger cross Gail's face and I could tell that she was reliving that day in her mind. "I let myself in like we usually do. I didn't ring the bell or wait by the door. I heard them as soon as I entered the house. I walked back to your bedroom and there they were. My husband and your wife were fucking like two animals. He was running his mouth and she was encouraging him."

"Karen and Jack were cheating on us? I can't believe it!"

"Believe it. After about a minute of just standing there and staring at them, I remembered that I had my cell phone. I recorded them. I got them on video and audio." Gail held up her phone and I watched a movie of my best friend fucking my wife. I couldn't believe it, but there it was. "They were trash-talking us both! Jack was calling you the `cuck' and she was calling you `dumbass'. They were laughing the whole time they were fucking." She paused for a moment. I could see her pain and I knew the story she was telling me was true. I could see it on her phone with my own eyes. "He hasn't shown me that much enthusiasm in years. Then, Jack started calling me `a lazy fuck' which made Karen laugh even more. I think Karen's laugh hurt me almost as much as what Jack said about me. I was filled with anger and pain. I never thought she was capable of betraying me like that. I never knew he felt that way."

Gail was hurting and I was stunned. Karen's betrayal was playing out before my eyes as I watched the images on Gail's phone. The betrayal by her husband with her best friend was almost more than she could bear. She was close to breaking down and my own emotions were all over the map.

"They thought they were so superior to us! They never even knew I was there. I turned and started walking back to the front door. As I passed through the kitchen, I thought about that fancy gas stove that Karen was so proud of. I turned on all five burners and then I doused it with water. The flames went out, but the gas kept flowing."

I looked at Gail incredulously. Did she just admit that she killed my wife and her husband?

I was numb. The video had already ended and all I could think about was that I hated Karen like I've never hated anyone in my life. A wife's adultery does that to a man. It robs him of his self-respect and his sense of worth until there is nothing left but hate.

I felt drained of life like I was just an empty shell of what I had been not thirty minutes earlier. I sat slumped in my chair with my head hung down, thinking of how my life had changed in just these few short minutes. Nothing would be the same again. Everything I had was gone.

Gail put her hand on my arm. "Let's get you back to my place. I'll fix dinner, get you fed, and then you'll feel better in the morning."

As we walked out of the terminal and headed toward her car, she took my hand in hers and pulled my arm to the side of her breast with the other. "Tomorrow morning you may decide to turn me in to the police for what I did. I won't blame you. Just promise me one thing?"

"What's that?"

"Promise you'll sleep in my bed tonight. I need that. They took everything from me with their betrayal, their laughter, and their mockery. I need you to give me back some of what they took from me. I need to have you in my bed, if only for one night. I need to feel wanted, to feel desired, and to be forgiven." We walked a few steps more and then she turned. She looked at me with a sad smile and said, "I am not a lazy fuck!" She was on the verge of tears.

"Gail, you are the sweetest woman I've ever known... and one of the sexiest. Karen and Jack were cheaters. Their opinions aren't important."

We continued walking to the car and I was starting to think I didn't blame her one little bit for starting the explosion. I lost a cheating wife and a friend who betrayed me. Was that so bad? Insurance would replace everything else. I could get a new car, but I knew I was going to miss those apple trees.

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Okay, I know I skipped the part where the narrator needs to sit with the police and answer questions, and where he will play dumb and ask the police what happened, and I know that spending the night at Gail's place will look suspicious. For all I know, modern gas ranges may automatically turn off the gas if the flame goes out. Relax! It's fiction and I was hoping for a happy ending in more ways than one. Like I said, he lost a cheating wife. Was that so bad?