So this is hell, Big Jim Carnack, the self-proclaimed Duke of Demolition, thought to himself.
He remembered dying. He remembered the sterile smell of the hospital, with so many doctors and nurses looming over him, so many fruit bowls and flower baskets and potted plants oh-so-tastefully arranged around the room.
Reality had gotten a little weird at the end. He'd drifted through a painkiller haze as endless streams of relatives and business associates trooped through for one last look. They had no hope--he saw it in their eyes. They knew he was terminal. He knew he was terminal. Cancer was like that; it was just a matter of time.
Don Esmond--his junior partner in the construction and demolition business for the last eight years, the kid he'd brought in straight from business school to handle the financial side when the company got too big--shoved his young, tanned, sickeningly healthy face close to Big Jim's. "So this is it," Esmond whispered with a rictus grin. "I get it all, old man. Hurry up and die, will you? My wife and kids are waiting in the car."
I don't deserve this, Big Jim thought, but all the arguments had long ago leeched out of him. He merely closed his eyes. When he opened them again, Esmond was gone.
That was the last thing he remembered.
The next thing he knew, he was walking along a twilit street. Victorian mansions with huge front lawns and wrought-iron fences faced him from both sides, looking not run down, but new, like they must've been at their prime. The soft yellow glow of oil lamps spilled from their windows.
"So this is hell," Big Jim said again, this time aloud. He gave a low chuckle.
His fate had a certain ironic quality. These were the houses he'd torn down his whole life, decaying relics of bygone days when coal had been cheap and ten-room houses the middle class standard--huge, drafty, inefficient monoliths to a lifestyle which no longer existed.
He'd enjoyed destroying them. Was that his sin? He'd made a career in buying Victorian mansions. Abandoned by their owners, too run-down to renovate, they went cheaply at public auctions. His men moved in like a swarm of army ants, stripping everything salvageable. Big Jim had an eye for art: stained glass was a prize plum. Lead-glass fixtures, old tile, old brick, oak floorboards ... it all ended up recycled into the new houses ("a touch of old-time class") his company built on the foundations of the old. He squeezed every penny out of a mansion's corpse before laying it in its grave.
In the old days, before he started his construction company, it had been just demolition and salvage. He'd worked fifteen-hour days with non-union kids he hired at minimum wage. He'd operated the wrecking ball himself, and he'd enjoyed the work, enjoyed the slow, ponderous motion of the ball as it swung back, gathered speed, then slammed into a building with killer force. He'd raised demolition to an art form. Shattering walls without caving in roofs, loosening mortar without pulverizing bricks, knocking out windows one by one: it brought an almost sexual fulfillment, a sense of satisfaction like no other. Was that so terrible?
He thought back to his wife, to his son and twin daughters. They'd seemed happy. He'd given them everything they wanted or needed ... a nice home, a swimming pool, Catholic schools, two dogs and a cat, a car for each of them. Sure, they'd had fights and arguments, but what family didn't? And when his son came to the hospital that last day, Big Jim could've sworn there were tears in his eyes. All past sins had been washed away, forgiven. They'd been friends.
And his wife ... Big Jim knew it had broken her heart to see him in the hospital, slipping farther away each day. But that hadn't been his fault, had it? And his daughters, sobbing in the corner as he made lame jokes ... If there'd been any other way ... if suicide hadn't been a sin...
Perhaps it had been his business dealings that brought him to hell, Big Jim thought uneasily. He'd tried to run an honest company, but he'd paid his share of graft. The construction and demolition business floated on under-the-table cash. Even so, he'd never stabbed any partners in the back (literally or figuratively), never stolen, never cheated on his taxes--never done anything overtly illegal. All he'd done was tear down old houses and put up nice new ones. What had he done to end up in hell?
What if it's not hell? he wondered suddenly. What if it's all been a dream--my dying, everything? He stopped and held up his hands. They'd been yellow-gray and liverspotted with age in the hospital. He'd been sixty-three, after all, not young anymore. But these hands ... he turned them over and over in the dim light. These hands looked young, healthy, like the hands he'd had in school.
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