Studies in the Hereafter: A Novel

By Sean Bernard

“A whimsical debut novel in which Bernard makes heaven the setting for a story of love and self-actualization . . . highly enjoyable.” —Kirkus Reviews
 
A disillusioned office bureaucrat in the afterlife has come to realize that maybe heaven isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Bored by the endless routine of work, golf, and vegan food, he finds his one saving grace in his Field Studies: detailed reports he compiles on the living in order to determine their best fit in his world. While working on his sixty-second field study, he begins to fall for Tetty, a detached Basque-American beauty living in Nevada, while struggling to understand what she sees in Carmelo, a clumsy scholar obsessed with the elusive Basque culture. When people start going missing from heaven for no apparent reason, the narrator learns that Field Study 62 may hold the key to explaining the disappearances.
 
“A soaring tribute to any human life, in all its flawed glory.” —Diagram
 
“A novel that makes us laugh while breaking our hearts.” —Christopher Coake, author of You Would Have Told Me Not To
 
“Wild and imaginative.” —Charles Yu, author of Interior Chinatown
 
“Welcomingly comic . . . permeated with a sense of intrigue.” —Kevin Brockmeier, author of The Brief History of the Dead
 
“Blends two well-crafted and charming stories together—on one side you have the darkly humorous mystery and on the other a deeply introspective journey of human nature. A quirky but enjoyable read.” —Blotterature

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Aug 15, 2015
• ISBN: 9781597095297

Book preview

PART I

Life

1

Introduction

I’m just a bureaucrat. I live an ordinary life—if you can even call it a life.

Maybe that sounds bad. Personally, when I hear other people say they live ordinary lives, I imagine days of dull routine, the waking up to alarm, the showering, the coffee, the dead-eyed commute to work, the sitting at desk and compiling reports and trying to lower a work-stack that will never end. Middling lunches. Hollow office gossip. Reading too-familiar human interest stories. More gossip. Home. Dinner. Television. Bed. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

When I hear people say their lives are like this, are ordinary, I pity them a bit. Because after all isn’t existence our only chance to touch the trembling mysteries of the soul and the universe and etc?

Then I remember—oh, that’s my life, too.

Pity is pointless. The big wheels keep on turning and the man upstairs or wherever keeps doing his thing regardless. And a routine life isn’t so awful; it’s just how things work now. Routine keeps everything familiar, palatable, soothing. No, it’s certainly not how any of us expected this place to be—we were all hoping for something a bit grander, aglow with effervescence and luminescent wonder. Like neon. Before we got here, we had those standard assumptions about seeing old friends, family members we wished we’d known better, the interesting schoolmates whose schedules never aligned with our own, all those intriguing people we only knew at distance. Romantic interests that didn’t work out when they really, really seemed like they should have. Maybe a famous person! Basically all those folks we’d have hit it off with if only we’d had more time … and now, in this place, there’d be such time, endless time, and each evening we’d head down to the pub and gather fireside on green leather couches, drinking pints of well-poured porters, dark bubbling beers that’d slow us down, slow down existence. We’ve met again! We’re finally together! But also we’re calm and at ease, chatting softly as logs crackle, as the barkeep wipes down the bar, as the Open sign buzzes, and maybe outside it’s snowing, why not, a scene authentic, steeped in meaningfulness.

But no. It’s basically the same life we left behind, albeit with a bit more order and a bit less stress. And sure, the sameness is disappointing, but that other version of this place, that quiet and perfect ideal—such a life would be hard for us to handle. Total calm is not the pace we’re used to. Once, years ago, maybe it was like that here, but we’ve shifted. The population has shifted. Most of us never went on hunts and painted stag heads on cave walls. We didn’t wake to the sound of the sea, didn’t fish with spears and dive for abalone, never floated through the night’s sky gazing wondrously at galaxies and nebulae, romanticizing stars into vast complex mythologies, imagining our own little spot in the firmament.

Instead? We watched reality television there, so we watch reality television here. The programming is mostly public access, but it’s not so bad. I like the singing competition. I was never much for music in my day but wow, these folks can sing like angels. Which goes without saying, but still. So that’s better: the music. It’s true that the food isn’t much to speak of, all vegan and sorely lacking in the spice department. Then there’s the odd fact that the only sport is golf, and I’m awful at hitting that little ball. It takes a disturbing amount of interest to strike it well, and I was never much for caring deeply about the little things.

Then there’s married life. Well. More on that later.

Work is the big kahuna. It’s the complexity that keeps us all going (or distracted, depending on your angle of cynicism). My job is to compile reports on the lives of individuals, couples, and close friends. It’s immersive; the especially challenging reports take weeks to arrange. My company puts out a much better product than our competitors—the other guys work with simple files, kids and ordinary people, mainly, though sometimes they do win the more complex adult bids, which is disappointing. It’s one thing for them to deal with children (the complexity of children is a myth), but it’s near injustice when they handle trickier files. As if a sketchy encyclopedia-style entry can tell you all you need to know about the life of this strange married couple, that complex individual. Right. You in a Thousand Words. I don’t think so. It takes more, much more, I know it does, my colleagues know it does, the Director, everyone at the company knows. Even the Assistant Director, with her leaden head, gets at least that important concept. If someone were to write a report on me, to assess my eternal placement, how I should be situated for the rest of time? I’d want it done as thoroughly as possible. I’d want someone working on it who cares as much as I care. It’s this attitude that makes me good at what I do. A year ago, after I first got here and was stuck doing grunt work, the Director sensed that I had the patience for sifting and organizing information and presenting it with insight, creativity, even a touch of class. Those abilities have led me quickly into the company’s inner circle, and now I’m privy to the latest technologies in field studies. I get to delve deep into the lives of my subjects, really get my hands dirty.

But that’s enough about me, enough about the office, enough about the disappointing-but-oh-well-it’s-not-so-bad-world we’re in: this is the story of my sixty-second field study. At first it seemed like little more than the boring existence of a boring guy named Carmelo, but as I’ve reached into the circuitry of his life and discovered Tetty (whom I’ve had to include, for obvious reasons), he’s surprised me with his stubborn complexity. It’s the first study I’ve yet to compile about love, and already it’s far stranger than I could have hoped.

2

Draft, Entry 1: Narrative 1

Sierra Nevada Mountains, summer, 1986

(Editor’s note: Unlike the canned and skimpy reports composed by our competitors, our studies weave together a multitude of disparate life-strands into singular, thoughtful, artful compilations. To do this we of course use insertions, our company’s most famous feature. We also have access to subjects’ thoughts and conversations, of which we frequently include representational slices so as to create naturalistic vantages. Another and oftentimes even more important component is the narrative: after keen observation, we select and recreate crucial life-episodes that highlight our subjects’ most defining traits.)

The sound that woke him was outside the tent. The old Suffolk ewe with the black hand-shape on the center of her back—she was bawling. He felt quickly for the flashlight that the gas station attendant had reassured him was best for backpacking. As he turned the hand crank, the light wheezed against the darkness. What a jerk, he muttered, unzipping the tent, and he aimed the light into the world and it illuminated nothing of the open country, and nothing awaited him but the cries of the ewe and a cool cut of air. As he strapped his boots on, he recalled the stories he’d read, sheepherders set upon by coyotes, black bears, mountain lions. He reached back into the tent and grabbed the can of pepper spray.

The attendant had joked, That there’s how bear breath smells. Like pepper.

Asshole.

Carmelo buttoned his jacket and shivered against wind and the hiccupping sound of the crying sheep. He’d tethered the flock to a nearby fir and it wasn’t yet dawn but the sky was paling and he could sense their animal forms in the darkness. In the back regions of his mind came thoughts of perception and reality, of imagination and fear. Beyond wild animals he knew that unexplained murders were sometimes committed in these mountains, crazed men with hatchets, I just don’t know what came over me, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry. He wished he had a real knife or, better, a gun.

But he laughed at himself. Me. A gun. Right. He smelled the tiny flock and walked to them across scrabbly earth, hand out to reassure the ewe, still bleating but softly now, and the sheep turned and snuffed their noses into his palm, licking and exhaling hot nervous breaths. Two lambs wrapped his legs, rubbing their thin muscled necks against the seams of his jeans. He tenderly scratched the ewe’s soft ears, tissue-thin, and she hushed, and his own fears ebbed. He wondered what time it was and yawned and felt a little like a child, half-asleep, vague floating memories of camping as a boy. As there came a distant sound he considered that maybe he was dreaming, a dreamlike rumble from the sky—somewhere, a passenger jet. He shined the light upwards and the lousy beam failed to reach the plane, wherever it was, just a sound, like the ewe’s cries, and he thought of Tetty and her dark sullen eyes and wondered if she’d appreciate this, his crazy quest. Driving a flock of sheep across five hundred miles of mountains to show that, after all, he did have a flair for the romantic.

It was the type of gesture—grand, strange, singular—she’d appreciate above all.

Anyway, so he hoped.

The ewe whimpered again and he stared in all directions into the darkness, feeling now another presence. Down in the meadow he saw faintly two struggling forms. He walked slowly. The forms stilled. The sheep quieted. He heard hushed whispers and his nerves tightened. He gripped the pepper spray and when he felt close he turned on the flashlight and bent down, ready to act.

Two backpackers, naked and groping on a sleeping bag, flashed eyes at him.

What the—hey! a man said as they covered themselves with a blanket.

Sorry, sorry, sorry, Carmelo said, retreating.

Sorrygoddamnright! a woman said. You creepy perv!

He rushed back to his tent and, flushed and lonely, waited for the sun to rise.

Two weeks earlier he’d visited his department chair at her home in Pasadena. He’d told her his plans, and in response she’d chuckled.

Good one, Carmelo. I wish we could all just vanish into our research. Wouldn’t life be better that way?

She shook her head, laughing again, and he laughed, too. She was cutting carrots for a stew. It was early evening, and her young sons were watching TV in the living room, the sounds of the alphabet being sung. Carmelo absently flipped a yellow cookbook on the counter. He wondered if his department chair was happy. She was a strange woman for LA: she wore flowing skirts and cheap jewelry, beads and bangles, denim jackets. She seemed like she belonged in Santa Fe or Tucson, a place turquoise figured prominently. Her ex-husband was an entertainment lawyer, their recent divorce a thing she never discussed. For her part, Tetty had never liked her (She’ll try to sleep with you one day, wait and see, Tetty had once observed idly).

The department chair swept the carrot segments into her hand, dropped them into a pot of bubbling chicken stock, wiped her hands on her jeans. "You’re standing in my kitchen, asking me for indefinite leave—to do what, something entirely half-assy?—and from where I’m standing it looks to all the world like you’re judging me."

Carmelo laughed again. But even to his own ears it was unconvincing.

In the living room, one of her sons shouted at the other. No response followed. His department chair stared, waiting, and Carmelo wondered if she respected him at all, if she even cared about him, and then she’d moved onto onions, sectioning quarters with rapid strokes. I’ve got you down for two intro classes, Tuesday/Thursday. One prep, easy schedule. Be sure to call Carl at the bookstore in time, he’s been crotchety lately. I’m being nice here. Within limits, sure, and within reason, but I’m being nice.

Carmelo agreed that it was crazy. Then, firmly, he repeated his plans.

She blinked away onion tears, lifted the cutting board, and slid the sections into the pot. Oh, Christ, Carmelo. You’re young enough to dream but old enough to know better.

It was a good point. But still.

The next morning he drove to the Orange County Fair and walked the dusty agriculture section and touched cows’ noses and stroked the fur of the first llama he’d ever seen. The llama bit his thumb but not too hard, its lashy eyes never leaving his own, and he wondered at the animal’s intelligence. He asked people, How do you buy sheep? and they laughed. A solemn green-sashed 4-H kid pointed him to a bearded man in overalls and Carmelo explained to the man that he wanted sheep, five or so. The man considered him.

What you do, son, the man said, is choose your sheep and then you make an offer.

Carmelo nodded. Could you tell me—how much do sheep cost?

The man laughed. You have no idea what you’re doing, do you? He meant it kindly.

Carmelo stood near the sheep pen and watched as the owners exhibited the animals in ones and pairs. He adored the Columbia lambs with their long legs and soft faces, and the Barbados Blackbellies with beautiful black stripes down their faces, like African gazelles—they smelled pickled, almost like a Greek cheese. The Romney was the standard-looking sheep, a gray fluffy cloud. More than anything, Carmelo had hoped to find and buy Xaxi Ardia, a sheep native to the Pyrenees, because he’d studied Basques, did his dissertation on Basques, drove Tetty away by talking so much about the Basque way of life, about which she knew—and cared—hardly a thing, although all her ancestors, up to and including her parents, were Basques. It was only right to get Xaxi Ardias. They didn’t have any. Carmelo’s hopes began to diminish, but a moment later appeared two tiny lambs with smooth black legs and heads like polished onyx, stubbly white coats of new wool. Suffolks. They were being shown by a girl about fifteen years old. He waited until she left the pen and slouched with several friends. The girls eyed him suspiciously. Carmelo asked her how many she had, how much she would sell them for. She thought about it, then said, in a daring voice, Seven hundred.

He took out a checkbook and all the girls’ eyes widened.

Awesome, Carole, you’re rich! the girls said to their friend.

Carmelo lingered in the dusty loading lot. It smelled rich and dry, cowshit and sunshine. Farmers stood beside pickups, smoking and spitting idly at the ground. He decided against calling Tetty and telling her his plan. He found a Latino farmer and worked a deal for the man to drive the sheep a hundred fifty miles to Acton, a tiny town north of the San Gabriel Mountains, north of LA, the first stop to the middle of nowhere. He asked the farmer to meet him in an Alpha Beta parking lot and drew a map on the fair’s brochure in case the man got lost. Then he drove home and finished packing. He’d already taken out cash from the bank and bought backpacking supplies, a collapsible fishing rod, a fishing guide, trail maps, dehydrated foods and MREs, water-purifying tablets, a Swiss Army knife, books on sheep and the Owens River Valley. He gathered it all into a framed backpack. Then he called for a cab.

The driver stared at him when Carmelo told him where he wanted to go.

You serious, pal? Acton, America?

Carmelo showed him the money and the driver shrugged, and they drove over the mountains and at eight o’clock that night, Carmelo met the farmer in the parking lot. The farmer was eating McDonald’s. Between bites of french fry, he looked down at Carmelo from the driver’s seat. Where now?

Right here.

The farmer laughed at that, then saw that Carmelo was serious. Your life, he said.

They unloaded the five sheep, the farmer helpfully tying a rope-collar on each and looping a longer rope through all five collars, the end of which Carmelo wrapped around the backpack frame. The sheep huddled close about Carmelo’s legs and he stroked their heads when the farmer wasn’t looking. A few late-night shoppers stopped to take in the odd scene, then moved on when nothing dramatic happened. A tall man in denim overalls and a baseball cap wandered in an S-curve until he was close enough to be heard.

Them Suffolks? he asked.

Carmelo nodded.

The man said, his voice lilting, Such are yon sheep of royalty and boyalty. Then he laughed, pulled a crinkled sheet of paper from his chest-pocket, and walked into the store.

The farmer looked at the dark mountains behind, the deserts ahead. You’re crazy.

Carmelo shrugged. The man shook his head, climbed into his truck, and drove away.

Carmelo ate a granola bar. Then he looked at the sheep. They looked at him.

Well, he said.

And he set off.

The sheep headed north without prompting, their gait steady, urgent, moving in tight and certain single file, tugging him along, the only sound they made a muttering in their throats as if dreaming, and listening to their waking dreams Carmelo followed in the rear, tethered by the rope, and he thought of Tetty. He thought of the fight they’d had six months earlier. She’d been reluctant to relocate to California even before they’d gone; after, her resistance only grew. She cut her short dark hair even shorter, stayed indoors while Carmelo taught classes and went to meetings, let her skin pale with lonesomeness. Carmelo tried—too hard—to help her—to insist, maybe—that she enjoy their new setting, their new life.

He’d made dinner. Pork loin. Burned just a touch on the outside, dry inside. He’d cooked pork loin many times before and nearly always it came out too dry because he worried that Tetty was afraid of food-borne illnesses, and if the meat was pink and juicy in the center, which Carmelo thought a good sign, a reflection on his ability to judge doneness, he feared she’d probably insist he put it back in the oven until the meat was white, through and through.

(His odd source of anxiety: once she’d said, Spinach can kill you, you know that?)

As they chewed and chewed the tough meat, he apologized three times. Sorry it’s so dry.

Sorry, he said again.

A moment later: Sorry.

Stop apologizing, she said. It’s fine, she said.

I guess so, he said.

Then the dinging of utensils was the meal’s only sound, a knife-fight in miniature. After dinner, she’d been setting the dishes to dry on the rack. Carmelo leaned against the refrigerator, watching her. She was so much smaller than him, her body tiny enough for scooping over shoulder, spinning in air—once, early on, he’d approached her with that intent, wild-eyed, but she’d leveled his impulse with a stare of such certain denial—and he looked at the pale line of scalp where her black hair parted and he felt annoyed.

You should wipe the plates with a towel first, Tet. Otherwise the counter gets wet, and if the counter gets wet, mold might develop, and if mold develops, we’ll have allergic reactions, and if we damage our lungs we’ll have shorter lives of lower quality. He was joking but he sounded bitter, he felt bitter.

Tetty took a plate from the rack. Oh you mean dry this? she said, pulling it back.

He ducked almost in time—the airborne plate glanced off his forehead and then exploded against the refrigerator. The sound was enormous. Ceramic shards showered his neck and shoulder, itchy flecks cascading under his shirt collar. It felt like blood was gushing from the blow on his forehead but the skin hadn’t broken, just swelled badly.

Tetty stood staring at him. I’m the irrational one, she said. I know, I know, me.

Carmelo was too stunned to speak. He half-ran from the kitchen into the bathroom. He locked the door and leaned over the sink, slapping handfuls of water against his face. That couldn’t have happened. Had that just happened? His fingers trembled as he removed his shirt and patted at it, setting the clinging shards free. He wiped his chest with a damp cloth and his skin shivered, and he realized he was trying his hardest not to cry.

He sat on the toilet, catching his breath.

After several minutes, he opened the bathroom door.

Tetty stood in the apartment doorway, bag slung over shoulder.

She nodded goodbye and left.

A week later, he got a postcard.

Don’t you also think our lives are just too damn boring? Love always, Tetty.

It was a picture of Reno. The downtown sign. Biggest Little City in the World.

Tetty had gone home.

Carmelo and the flock stayed clear of people during the days, off highways, away from society, walking the empty dusty lands that spilled flat and hot between the mountain ranges to the north and south. They passed Edwards Air Force Base, and he and the sheep watched bombers alight, and the dark birds seemed so leaden, so fated and unflapping, and Carmelo told himself as he had for years that this trek, that the Basque way of life, simple and natural, was so much better than the empty complexities of the modern world.

I’m pretty darn glad I’m with you guys, he said.

The sheep glanced at him. Their genes were etched with a trust of men, but this one—small-eared and slightly stooped, a heavy-footed man who gave off worrisome scents of earnestness and despair—well, they weren’t so sure. But they tugged onward, resolute. One evening when they stopped to rest, the slightest lamb bleated at the earth and loosed a pale pile of droppings; the others moved away. The ewe nuzzled it to quiet. The lamb bent its neck and tried chewing at its back right hoof. Carmelo reached to help but the lamb bleated at him, too, its little teeth and black gums suddenly savage. Carmelo backed off.

In darkening evenings he led the flock into towns, quietly, and grazed them in parks, on the wide lawns of darkened houses, on sprouting clover in vacant lots. He’d unroll his hiking socks and the emitted smell was always robust, old mushrooms, and he waved the scent away and popped blisters and flattened the white skin flaps back into place, hoping the new pink beneath would callous before it rawed. One night the ewe stood, nipped at one of the lambs who scuttled away, eyes down in fright. Then the ewe walked to Carmelo and lowered her face, leaned her forehead into the sole of his foot. He rubbed his feet, the soft itchiness of her thin woolen head a simple pleasure. Small moment of miracle. Wonderful.

After a moment the ewe snorted and turned back, nosing the ground for flowers, and crickets shrieked in the bushes, and soon the sheep clustered in sleep, sometimes trembling as one, their muzzles twitching, heads quivering, little clouds of their hot breath puffing from their lips, and an evening breeze trickled over his face and he realized that by the breeze alone he could tell the difference now of being within and without mankind, the dull rich scent of simple earth contrasted with this town, its air laden with an oily, rusty sharpness.

As a boy, at home in his father’s garage, there hung on the walls three mysterious objects: sheep-shears, a red-stitched bota bag, and a fencepost wrapped in barbed wire. In his youth these three objects took on the weight of legendary symbols,