It's Hell, Charlie Brown

Chapter 1

Kafka (in The Trial) did not want to write “a fairly witty fantasy"… he wanted to go down into the dark depths of a joke. – Milan Kundera

Chapter 1.

 Good grief.

That was the very last thought that crossed Charlie Brown's mind as the streaking baseball slammed into his throat, two inches above the suprasternal notch, flipping him upside down into the air, out of his clothes, and crushing his trachea, causing severe dyspnea that quickly led to respiratory failure (the upside of hypochondria is never having to wait for a diagnosis), and it was the very first thought that crossed his mind when he awoke sometime later, alone, in this old, dimly lit hospital room.

This was his second thought:

Good goddamned grief.

The game had been early in the morning, but he could see through the tangled blinds of the hospital window, that night had fallen.

Had he really been there all day? He was worried his parents would be worried; he worried often, and often he worried about the worry he caused others, and he worried that one day they would just stop worrying about him at all. He sat up, adjusted his baseball cap, felt his neck, his throat. There were no signs of trauma: no swelling, no tenderness, no difficulty breathing. There was no sign of impact at all.

Strange, he thought. He was sure the ball had hit him in the throat.

But then he'd been sure he had thrown a strike, too.

He had been on the mound, that was the last thing he remembered. Bottom of the ninth, two outs, nobody on, Charlie Brown's team up by one, and Peppermint Patty – the league home run leader - at the plate. Schroeder, catching for Charlie Brown, had come out to the mound for a quick talk, Linus had come over from second. Schroeder wanted to discuss pitch selection; Linus wanted to discuss death.

"Life is fleeting, Charlie Brown," said Linus. "Fleeting and pointless and cruel."

"For Christ's sake, Linus," said Schroeder, "not now."

"Take it easy, Schroeder," said Charlie Brown. "Linus, let's just try to focus on the game, okay?"

Linus had been depressed for months now, ever since his sister Lucy, right in the middle of berating Charlie Brown as she had so many times before, suffered a massive heart attack and died. "CHARLIE BROWN, YOU BLOCK—" she had shouted that fateful day, fist in the air as always, but then she froze, and her face turned red and contorted in pain, and she grabbed her chest, and she collapsed to the ground, never to shout again. They buried her two days later, at the side of the brick wall where she and her friends had spent so much time discussing life and being and existence. The entire town had been devastated, but none more so than her younger brother Linus. His usual optimism and good cheer seemed to have been buried six feet in the cold ground with his beloved sister. For weeks now he spent his days sitting beside her empty Psychiatric Help booth, weeping, shaking his head in disbelief, holding a nickel in his hand and wishing she were there to guide him, advise him, yell at him if that was what he needed. He had brought a black marker with him, Lucy's black marker, and where she had written "The Doctor Is In," he had crossed the word "In" and wrote "Dead."

"There is no good grief, Charlie Brown," Linus had answered him. "Why have grief, why have death, why have loss?”

Charlie Brown had tried his best to help him through his mourning. Knowing Linus's love of Scripture, he quoted to him from the Book of Job.

"The Lord giveth," said Charlie Brown, "and the Lord taketh away."

"Well, then, fuck Him," Linus had said. "And fuck you, too."

But Charlie Brown would not give up. He brought a folding chair to the psychiatry booth, and he sat down beside his heartbroken friend, and every day, from the rise of the sun to its woeful set, he held Linus when he cried, and he handed him tissues when he needed them.

"Good grief," Charlie Brown had said.

"There is no good grief, Charlie Brown," Linus had responded. "Why have grief, why have death, why have loss? Tell me, what could possibly be the purpose? To learn? Can't whatever we're supposed to learn from it be taught in some other way, some way that doesn't wrench our hearts and tear our souls?"

For that, Charlie Brown had no answer.

As Charlie Brown explored his hospital room – there was not much to explore, but for the TV mounted in the corner, tuned to a news station reporting on some war or the other, and no remote in sight - he recalled standing beside the pitcher’s mound, eyeing Peppermint Patty as she warmed up with her baseball bat. Schroeder handed Charlie Brown the ball, called for a fastball low and inside – "A walk's as good as a strikeout, Charlie Brown," he'd said - and headed back to the plate, leaving Charlie Brown alone, the game quite literally in his sweaty hands. It was the first game since Lucy's death, at the recently renamed Lucy Van Pelt Memorial Park, and the whole town had come out to cheer Lucy's team on to victory. Before the game, Charlie Brown had taken Peppermint Patty aside, and asked her not to go easy on them.

"I'm going to win this for Lucy," he said to her, "fair and square."

Patty had smiled.

"No, you're not," she'd said. "But I like your optimism, Chuck."

She was wrong. Somehow, by sheer force of will, Charlie Brown had thrown a no-hitter, and he was now just one batter away from team history. The crowd hooted and hollered as he stepped back onto the mound. He took a deep breath, went into his pitch motion, reared back and threw.

Peppermint Patty calmly watched the ball whizzed by her, a whisper above her knee.

"Strike!" called the ref.

The crowd roared, waving their banners and foam Number One fingers.

"You got this, Charlie Brown!" someone shouted from the stands.

"Keep it up, Chuck!" called another.

Peppermint Patty grinned, knowing Charlie Brown as well as anyone, knowing that being ahead in the count only made him more nervous than being behind. Success secured Charlie Brown’s failure, it always had, it always would. She stepped back into the batter's box, and settled again into her stance, grinning the whole time.

The crowd began to chant – "Char! Lie! Brown! Char! Lie! Brown!" – and Charlie Brown tried his best to quiet his mind. He tried to quiet it of Lucy, of death, of fate. He tried not to think of anything at all. He told himself as he went into his pitch that he deserved this win, that the team deserved it, that the whole town deserved it.

"Strike Two!" the ref shouted.

Now Peppermint Patty smiled an evil smile, the smile of a predator, her eyes narrow as she tapped the plate with the tip of her bat and heaved her bat high over her shoulder, ready to crush whatever he threw.

Charlie Brown swallowed hard, one strike away now from eternal glory, and glanced over his shoulder to Snoopy at shortstop, whose presence always calmed him , even if he could never speak a single word. Snoopy closed his eyes and nodded, as if to say he believed in him. Charlie Brown smiled and nodded back – but it was then that he spotted Violet, behind Snoopy, out in right field, the very position Lucy used to play before she… and suddenly Charlie Brown's legs felt leaden. He felt stuck in cement, unable to move. He remembered Lucy's shiny black hair, and her saddle shoes, and her dress, blue as a summer sky. And then he remembered the day of her passing, and he remembered how she had shoved him to the ground, again, and how she had shouted at him, again, for the ten thousandth time, and how she had berated him and belittled him, again and again, and how awful and ugly those shouts and taunts made him feel -- how they made him feel small, insignificant, how they cut him worse than any sword could, how they made him feel as if all the world despised him and were right to, how they made him despise even himself -- and then he remembered later that night, when he learned that she had in fact died, how he had locked himself in the bathroom and danced, how he had pumped his fists up and down and stamped his feet with joy, and how relieved he felt not just that she was out of his life, but because maybe, just maybe, there was some small justice in this dark and heavy world, and he remembered how he had forced himself cry so others would think him sad, and he had done so not by recalling that she was dead but by imagining that she wasn't, that she had survived, and now the crowd began to chant, "Lu! Cy! Lu! Cy!" and a terrible guilt gripped Charlie Brown's heart as he turned to face Peppermint Patty at the plate. And then all went silent, and he went into his pitch, and he threw, and the moment the ball left his hand he knew it was heat, he knew she could never hit it, nobody could, Strike, he thought, low and inside! and then he heard the terrible crack of wood striking hardball, that sharp crack of failure that resounded all night in his ears, in his nightmares, and so fast did the ball return at him that he didn't even have time to duck, when POW! he felt a blinding thud where it struck him right at the base of his throat, and then he was tumbling through the air, and then his clothes were falling off, and then he was naked, and then he landed on his back atop the pitcher's mound, looking up at the sky, and trying to breath, failing at even this most basic human function, failing and failing and falling, and then the blue summer sky went black, blacker than night, and the whole world went with it.

It wasn't much of a hospital. The bedsheets were stained, the pillows were yellowing, and aside from the red call button on the wall, there seemed to be no sign that this was a hospital at all, short of the constant screams of "Auuugghhh!" that he heard coming from up from downstairs and down from upstairs. But he couldn't fault the care – his throat felt great, as if he'd never been struck at all. People liked to complain about the medical system, and though he knew the treatment he received was in part a function of his being a privileged white male (that's what Marcie told him, anyway), you had to give credit where credit was due. He pressed the call button, anxious to be discharged. A moment later, he heard the jangle of some keys, and the deadbolt on the door slid open, and Linus walked in.

Rats, thought Charlie Brown to see him.

Linus – hair unkempt, blanket dragging on the ground, his countenance as grim and forlorn as the day of Lucy's funeral – was not the person he needed right now. He would have preferred the Little Red-Haired Girl. He would have preferred Snoopy. He would have preferred anyone.

"Well,” said Charlie Brown, "let's get going. My parents are probably worried sick."

"Go?" Linus asked.

"Did we win?”

“Win?”

“The ballgame."

"Ballgame?"

"The ballgame, Linus. This morning? When I got clobbered?"

Linus seemed confused, but after a moment he shook his head.

"Oh, yes," he said. "I mean, no. We didn't finish."

"Didn't finish?" Charlie Brown asked. "There was one out left!"

"Sit down, Charlie Brown," said Linus.

But Charlie Brown was already heading for the door.

"I don’t want to sit down," he said, angered about the loss. "I've been here long enough. Let's go home." He grabbed the door handle and pulled, but the door wouldn't budge.

He tried again, harder.

Linus sighed.

"You are home," said Linus.

"Home?" asked Charlie Brown. "This is a hospital, not my home…"

"This isn’t a hospital, Charlie Brown…"

"It's a hospital, Linus, and they can't force me to stay here, for goodness sake…"

"CHARLIE BROWN, YOU BLOCKHEAD," shouted Linus. "THIS ISN'T A HOSPITAL!"

Charlie Brown let go of the door and turned to him, confusion collapsing into fear.

"Then what is it?" he asked.

"It's Hell, Charlie Brown," said Linus. "We're in Hell."

And now Charlie Brown felt leaden again, just as he had on the mound, and the room began to spin around him, and he opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out, and the world went terribly black again and he fell to the floor.

Linus knelt beside him.

"Good grief," he said.

On the TV in the corner that never shut off, the news continued. Violence. Misery. Suffering.

"Good goddamned grief."

Next:

Chapter 2: The Sin of Linus