Acts of God (18 page)

“Miss Babbie's at the Pearly Gates by now,” Mr. Dudley was saying to cheer up the car. “She's probably through the gates and being fitted for her robes and harp.”

“Can she see us, you think?” Naylor asked, being drawn in against his will. “What you think they eat up there, Mr. Dudley?”

“They have ambrosia and nectar,” he said. “That's what my momma told me they had.”

“They have anything they want, but they don't want anything,” Aurora added. “People don't get hungry in heaven, Naylor. They are too busy thinking about other things.”

“How you know that?” he asked.

“She doesn't know,” Miss Nellie turned to him and put the last word in. “No one knows about heaven, Eli. That's the only good thing about dying. You get to find out what happens when you die.”

THE NEXT NOVEMBER
Naylor got to find out. He went out to his little house behind the kitchen and he lay down on his bed and went to sleep with all his clothes on because he was so tired he couldn't take them off. Then he didn't wake up and we don't know what happens next because no one gets to find out about dying while they are alive.

He was buried next to Margaret and her mother and all three of her mother's husbands and then a whole world was either dead or walking around heaven either thinking about things or hungry or not hungry or busy watching us to see what we are doing.

NATHALIE DUBOIS

ELLEN GILCHRIST
, winner of the National Book Award for
Victory Over Japan,
is the author of more than twenty books, including novels, short stories, poetry, and a memoir. She lives in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

Also by ELLEN GILCHRIST

In the Land of Dreamy Dreams

The Annunciation

Victory Over Japan

Drunk with Love

Falling Through Space

The Anna Papers

Light Can Be Both Wave and Particle

I Cannot Get You Close Enough

Net of Jewels

Starcarbon

Anabasis

The Age of Miracles

Rhoda

The Courts of Love

Sarah Conley

Flights of Angels

The Cabal and Other Stories

Collected Stories

I, Rhoda Manning, Go Hunting with My Daddy

The Writing Life

Nora Jane

A Dangerous Age

Published by

ALGONQUIN BOOKS OF CHAPEL HILL

Post Office Box 2225

Chapel Hill, North Carolina 27515-2225

a division of

WORKMAN PUBLISHING

225 Varick Street

New York, New York 10014

© 2014 by Ellen Gilchrist.

All rights reserved.

“Miracle in Adkins, Arkansas” first appeared (under the title “After the Storm”) in
Good Housekeeping,
© 2012 by Ellen Gilchrist. “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” first appeared in
China Grove,
© 2013 by Ellen Gilchrist. “Jumping Off Bridges into Clean Water” first appeared (under the title “The Bridge”) in
The Washington Post Magazine,
© 2009 by Ellen Gilchrist.
“
Hopedale, A History in Four Acts” first appeared in the
Arkansas Literary Forum,
© 2005 by Ellen Gilchrist.

This is a work of fiction. While, as in all fiction, the literary perceptions and insights are based on experience, all names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

eISBN 978-1-61620-395-5