Eliot Fintushel 5,400 words

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HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL

by

Eliot Fintushel

Harry S Truman went to Hell, just visiting. All the Democrats who'd voted for
Eisenhower in the 1952 election crowded round the caboose: wouldn't he put in a word for them

with the Boss?

"Hell, boys," Truman said, "I can't even get her to starch my collars up where we are."

Nixon manned the switch tower at the station. He posed on a walkway above the signal

gantry in a high hat with a white tuxedo and clip-on wings. He was very respected down there,

and he had thirty or forty little devils whose job it was just to mop the sweat off his upper lip.

What with the climate in Hell, and this being summer too, it just spouted and spouted like a

break in a damn water main.

Adlai Stevenson was in Hell too. He looked a mess. He just kept running to this devil
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 2

and to that devil asking them if they were absolutely sure this wasn't Heaven. "Goddam

intellectual," was Harry's take on it. "Old Peter probably asked him which way he'd like to go,

and he just hemmed and he hawed in that Hah-vad accent of his till the goddam fire was licking

his fancy ass."

Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 3

There wasn't a single soul there who'd fought in the Korean conflict, of course, not an

infantryman, that is--they'd already been to Hell--but General MacArthur had organized a little

welcoming party. He'd had a bunch of the devils weave crepe paper in and out along the border

of Hell. Every couple of yards they'd planted a picket like a no-trespassing sign, only there was

just this big number on it: "38," a reference to Korea's 38th parallel, of course, the bloody truce

line twixt North and South.

"The sonuvabitch is pretty subtle," Harry remarked.

Thomas J. Pendergast was looking out the window with Harry at that point, the both of

them in the club car eating little sandwiches Bess had packed them and sharing a libation or two.

Harry had insisted that Pendergast be allowed to join him at the border, albeit he stank of

brimstone and steamed yellow steam out his ears, nose, and mouth, and from under his eyeballs;

the stuff curled up out his belt line and down out his cuffs as well, so it was a good bet it issued

from the other orifices too. Harry put up with it: "Goddam it all to Hell, you can't just turn your

back on a man who's always done right by you, now, can you? At least, I can't."

"Harry," said old Pendergast, "I'll never forget how you went to my funeral, and all those

birds from the goddam press roasted you for it for must be a month or more, but goddammit to

Hell, Harry, you were true to our friendship."

"Let's not talk about it, Tom. A man's got to do what a man's got to do, press or no

goddam press, and that's just about the size of it, so let the thing be."

For his part, old Thomas J. averred as how, bad as things were down in Hell, it was

nothing to Leavenworth where he'd landed in '39 for tax evasion. And then there were the

conditions of his parole in '40--no politicking for five years. "If you wanna talk about Hell," he

said, "now there was the genuine article. Pshaw, for a fellow such as myself, this here is a clown

show next to that."

Just then the train slowed for a turn, and they caught a glimpse of Madam Chiang Kai-

shek jumping aboard an open boxcar. She just leapt in, nimble as could be, and then she gave a

hand up to a dozen or so Shungs and Kungs who carried her silk bed sheets everywhere she
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 4

went, in case she ever found a bed, which, of course, by the terms of her enhellment, she never

did.

The sight of the thing, sorry as it was, sobered old Pendergast right up. "Harry,"

Pendergast said, lighting a new cigar with the old one, "we've got an awful mess down here, and

it's going to take some careful maneuvering to get out of it."

"Well, I'm not going to kiss anybody's ass, if that's what you mean, but why don't you fill

me in before we get to Washington." The entire city of Washington was in Hell, of course. It

was the capitol of the place, and nearly everybody who'd ever held public office served down

there now. Naturally, it was just about impossible for that great accumulation of cutthroats to

pass anything, which was just the way it was supposed to be down there, and everybody felt

perfectly at home with it.

"Now, Harry," Pendergast said out the side of his mouth as he lit up a five dollar cigar.

He didn't enjoy them much down there--everything was smoke and ashes anyway--but somehow

the lighting and the sucking and the stubbing of the things seemed to put him at his ease. "Now,

Harry, you know I never made you do a goddam thing you didn't one hundred percent believe in,

or take any money like I myself may have, or go to bed with any of those counterfeit sons of

bitches in the state house just because they had a little influence, but I gotta say, Harry, things

down here are a little different. Things have come to such a pass, Harry, that if you don't get

down off your high horse and do a bit of vaselining and goosing of the local high hats, why, I

can't be held responsible, that's all. There's no telling what may happen. All Hell make break

loose."

"Is goddam Oppenheimer bellyaching again?"

"Yaas he is, Harry. But don't blame the man. He makes a tolerable devil, honestly he

does. The man's on both sides of everything you can think of, just like that Stevenson egg, but

he's being used, is the real point."

"MacArthur."

"Exactly. They're trying to say that the whole thing is your fault. They're trying to say
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 5

that all this--" Pendergast made a sweeping gesture, yellow steam rolled out of his sleeves and

filled the club car, and a couple of angels in the secret service started in to coughing, and they

had to leave. "All this, the fire, the heat, the way everything rots down here, and all the goddam

moaning and weeping and every goddam unpleasantness a man can think of, that it's all because

of you dropping those goddam A-bombs."

"Goddam it to Hell, Tom, I didn't start Hell, for pity's sake. There was a Hell before

1945, wasn't there?"

"Well, Harry, you know that and I know that, but the General's fellows are painting a

little bit of a different picture. They're saying that it's the bombs that opened all this up, and that

you're responsible, and that somebody's got to pay."

"Goddam MacArthur! He never knew the goddam truth from a lie, and damn me if the

thing isn't catching. I suppose that crybaby Oppenheimer is helping right along in this."

"You got that one right. He's crushing the damn numbers to make black white. They're

saying that that Hiroshima business is responsible for everybody's being down here. They want

to get the Boss to reverse the business, to put the devils up in Heaven and to stick you all by your

lonesome in Hell."

"Well, she'll never do it. She never did have any patience with damn MacArthur in the

first place. She saw right through him same as I did."

Pendergast furrowed his brow. The cigar drooped between his sausage lips. Then his

face lit up: "I catch your meaning, Harry. But we ain't talking about your wife Elizabeth here.

No, that's not what they mean by 'The Boss' at all. They are referring to God Almighty."

Harry barely paused to listen but talked on right past him. "No, she won't do it. She's not

that much of a damn fool. This whole thing will blow over in three weeks--do they have any

damn eateries down here? I've got a hankering for a bowl of decent soup."

"You won't find any, Harry. It's all gone to steam down here. Now listen, it's more

serious than what you think. If MacArthur can't get what he wants through the regular channels,

he's going to try to pull a recall."

Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 6

"Of the Boss? Of God?"

"That's it."

"Damnation, Tom, has he got a chance?"

"Well, that's the damn thing of it, Harry. What with the ruckus that Joe McCarthy's been

causing down this-a-ways, and with all the damn bankers and railroad men you alienated during

your terms of office . . . "

"I'm not a damn bit sorry about any of that, Tom, and you won't make me sorry, either,

goddammit to Hell, no matter what. They were robbing the goddam working people blind."

"I know they were, Harry. I wouldn't ever gainsay you on that particular, but the thing is,

Harry, with all those fellows down here, and every mother's son of them just as well connected

as they can be, I'm afraid MacArthur just may have that shot at a recall. And he may end up on

the heavenly throne."

"You're bullshitting me, Tom J. Pendergast."

"Harry, I wish to Hell I were."

Harry took off his glasses and rubbed his temples. "Why can't that sonuvabitch

MacArthur just fade away like he promised he would? I never trusted the bastard farther than I

could throw him, and now you're telling me he may end up God? What kind of a goddam world

is this anyway? Well, I'll tell you one thing, Tom. You'll never see me bending my knee to that

old windbag."

"Harry, that old buzzard MacArthur, him and Thomas E. Dewey, that goddam stuffed

shirt, he's already shut down most of the foundries down here, worked the laborers into a regular

froth. We rely on those birds for all our fire and brimstone and whatnot, and, well, they're not

turning out a rotten egg's worth. He's got 'em demanding higher wages, if you can believe it.

He's saying as how the wages of sin oughtn't to be death at all. They ought to be higher than

that. Can you beat it?"

"Say, maybe we could nationalize Hell, what do you say, Tom? Take over the works,

send in the goddam angels to run things."

Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 7

"I don't think so, Harry. Remember what happened back in '52 when you tried that with

the damn steel mills. Youngstown Sheet and Tube Company v. Sawyer, wasn't it?"

"Oh, don't remind me of that damn thing. Is Hugo Black down here too?"

"Oh my no. The honorable justice is up where you are, Harry. But he has a number of

admirers down here that were pals of his while he was still a Klansman, before he repudiated all

that stuff. They're on the high court hereabouts. They'll buck you sure as Hell on any initiative

you may take in that particular direction."

Pendergast tucked his legs under his chair and tightened his belt a little to try and stanch

that sulfurous steam. "I've got a thought. Is 'the dean' dead yet?"

"By gum, so he is! I ran into him just the other goddam day teaching the heavenly choir

the words to 'Gaudeamus Igitur.' I'll summon him here right away. You're right as usual, Tom.

He's bound to have some suggestions."

Hardly an hour had passed, as the devils reckon it, when Dean Acheson showed up

pumping one of those railroad gizmos straight out of a Buster Keaton film, the kind with the

handle that a fellow pushes up and down to speed the thing along. He was about as sweaty as he

could be. If he had wrung his mustache it would have drowned the entire nation of France, but

the man was too reticent for that. He was wearing his natty suit that he'd had his dead and

sainted London tailor sew special out of the same stuff that angels' harps are strung with. He no

sooner got off that contraption and onto the Presidential train, but he had an entire policy all

worked out.

"We've got to contain them," the dean told Tom and Harry. "We've got to keep them to

their own side of things. This Hellish expansionism will be the ruination of God's world entirely,

and if you don't believe it, read the Book of Revelations."

Pendergast scratched his head, but Harry wasn't fazed a bit. He said, "Yes, I read the

damn thing twice before ever I stepped foot in school, and I believe you've got the right idea,

Dean. Why, those politicians down in Hell, every mother's son of them is a goddam Republican,

except for the goddam Democrats who voted for Ike, and the first thing they'll try to pull is to
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 8

gerrymander goddam Heaven and Hell till you can't tell one from the other. Containment--that's

the ticket."

A railroad stiff in a fancy vest sashayed to their table and set out refreshments, but the

gentlemen took no notice of it. There was a gale of ticker tape bursting outside their window. It

eddied and funneled like minnows in white water; then it cleared, and there was General Douglas

MacArthur himself staring down his nose at them. He had set himself up at the edge of a water

tower and hired a hundred piece band, one to a step, all up the spiral stairs. They played some

Sousa march or other--badly.

All at once a cherub in a scarf and overalls hopped in. He jumped from seat to seat like a

sparrow taking a dust bath, leaking black slop from the spout of an antique oil can he carried in

one puffy pink hand. "Nixon's at the break bar, and goddam Reagan,"--Reagan had been in Hell

for ten or twenty years before his death, the man was so singularly perfidious, a real celebrity

down there, and that's why his mind had gone missing above--"goddam Reagan has jumped the

coupler like William S. goddam Hart, and he's about to slip the knuckle pin."

Had slipped the knuckle pin: the entire car lurched forward. Bottles and tumblers

crashed. Liquor sprayed. Silverware arrowed about. Then the car ground to a halt.

The first thing they saw after the dust had settled was MacArthur's hat floating by the

club car windows. MacArthur must have been in it, of course, but they didn't see the man. All

they saw was that hat of his scraping window to window on the way to the club car entrance.

That hat of MacArthur's was just covered with medals, as many as there could possibly

be. It looked like a molting armadillo. He'd had most of them minted himself in those foundries

he and Dewey had closed down. None of them had come out quite the way he wanted. All the

eagles turned to pterodactyls in the forging of them, and the laurel wreaths that were supposed to

ring the edges came out poison ivy or some such: that's just how things worked in Hell. He wore

them all anyway. It was the accumulation of them that was the main thing, the sheer weight. All

the fellows at Iwo Jima couldn't have raised that mass of badges. The weight of that hat pushed

down the skin of the General's forehead as if it were a pudding that had cooled on a jackhammer
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 9

handle. He had a neck like a hardened silo.

After a little commotion at the club car door, four devils in fatigues paraded in. Their

forked tails were tucked into their pants legs and their horns were hidden in little helmets that

had badges on them like the General's, only not nearly so many. Each of them lifted a bugle to

his scabrous fiery lips and proceeded to play a flourish so discordant and loud that it came close

to shattering Harry's glasses. Acheson covered his ears. Then those devils stood aside at

attention, forming an aisle for General MacArthur to walk in through.

MacArthur strutted in. He was wearing a khaki shirt open down to the third button,

though there was nothing to show off there now; his chest was covered with sulfurous gobs. He

traded salutes with the little devils and ordered them at ease. Then he stood right beside the table

where Truman and Pendergast and the dean were sitting, and he saluted Harry S Truman. Harry

sat there with his hands folded before him on the table, and he let the General salute. The

General saluted and saluted.

Finally, Harry said to him, "Close your shirt, General, and sit your sorry ass down, for

crissakes. You look like a goddam marble statue. And you better unglue the edge of your hand

off that goddam noble brow of yours before some of those harpies fly in and crap all over your

medals." There were indeed harpies, a whole flock of them, King Phineas's birds, flying from

rafter to rafter at the round house not fifty yards from where Truman's car had halted. Each one

of them had a mouth like Martha Mitchell's and the body of a pigeon.

MacArthur said, "Yes, Mr. President, sir," and he buttoned up that shirt and pulled up a

chair. He couldn't have put in a more docile performance if he had been an altar boy.

"General, I understand you're causing some trouble down here about that old atom bomb

business, is that so?"

"Yes, Mr. President. It caused Hell, that's what it did. Oppenheimer has it all figured it

out. My boys down here, they ask me what we're going to do about it, how we can just sit back

and shovel brimstone and roast and walk our treadmills and lie on our spike beds and so on and

not do a thing about it, and Mr. President, I confess, I do not know what to tell them, sir."
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 10

"General, goddammit, tell them to go to Hell." Harry knew that that was a mistake as

soon as he'd said it, but he simply had been overcome by the force of habit.

"They're already in Hell," said MacArthur right on cue, and Harry winced. He said it

patronizingly too, with that same wistful senior-statesman intonation that he'd trotted out for

Congress during the famous farewell address after Truman had fired him. "We're going to fight

this one out to the end, I'm sorry to have to tell you, sir. We're not going to stop until we've

made a Heaven of Hell and a Hell of Heaven."

"That's Goethe, goddammit. What the goddam Hell do you think you're doing quoting

Goethe at me in a goddam railroad car in Hell?"

"Well, yes, sir, I thought it might be appropriate actually to quote that German

gentleman, just as it's appropriate for us to be meeting here in a railroad car like this, because it

was in a railroad car like this that the Germans surrendered to the French in World War I and that

the French surrendered to Mr. Hitler--in the middle of the Compiègne Forest, if memory serves--

at a certain juncture in the second World War. There is a sort of poetry to it. Poetry and history.

Some of us, Mr. President are ever cognizant of history."

"Get to the point, you cockeyed martinet. What precisely are you proposing to do?"

"Mr. President, I'm proposing to keep you in Hell as a prisoner of war, you and all your

entourage, while we cross the Yalu, storm Heaven all the way to the City of God, and plant our

flag there, by Christ. I'm going to be God, like it or not. Now, you can help me, Mr. President,

but you can't hinder me. There's not a thing you can do this time around. It's war to the very

end."

"And how in that perverted cogitorium of yours do you imagine that I could help you,

even if I would, which I goddam sure as Hell never will?"

"Well, Mr. President, nobody here in Hell has ever been allowed to see God, of course--

the present one, I mean--but it's said that He holds you in some esteem. He takes your counsel

seriously, Mr. President, and so I'd like you to personally deliver a little message to Him from

me, explaining the situation here and asking Him to step down peacefully."
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 11

"I'm told you want to keep me in Hell as its sole occupant after all this is over."

"That is negotiable. Certainly, after I am God, I will take into consideration any

meritorious acts that you may have performed on my behalf."

"Certainly. Well, here's my answer, General." And Harry Truman fisted his hand--all

but the middle finger--and briskly shook it in the General's direction.

General MacArthur shot to his feet. He fished a parade whistle out of his shirt, where it

had been hanging at his navel on a lanyard, and he blew the thing till his cheeks nearly busted.

Joe McCarthy galloped in accompanied by a host of anti-Communist devils with all their red

parts painted over with blue and white stripes. They bound Acheson and Pendergast to their

chairs and manhandled Harry S Truman out of his seat and against the wall where they chained

him, wrists and ankles, to a black iron ball the size of Whitaker Chamber's pumpkin, but with no

microfilm inside it.

They led him that way, groaning and straining at his shackles, off the train and out to the

General's HQ that he had set up on the north shore of the fiery lake of Hell. Every step of the

way throngs of people jeered and catcalled and waved the General's private flag that he had

instituted down there: it was a picture of that medal-infested hat of his on a field of red, white,

and blue crosshatches.

Nixon was their cheerleader, hopping up and down in those clip-on wings of his. Reagan

walked up and down the course of the parade with a fistful of ball-point pens and a backpack

loaded with eight-by-ten glossies of himself at the age of twenty-six, asking all the devils if they

didn't want his autograph. He got two or three takers, but, it being Hell, those glossies

spontaneously combusted before he could set his pen to them.

The General's headquarters was being continuously whitewashed by squadrons of devil

enlisted men in shifts. No sooner had they whitewashed a section when the brimstone started

showing through again, and they had to start back at the beginning. It never ended.

They yanked poor Harry inside and half dragged him down a corridor with a high ceiling

of gilded coffers to a brimstone door that had been papered over with asbestos and stained to
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 12

look more or less like oak. They threw him down before it. "It's no damn use," he gasped, his

breath as ragged as a Missouri spring, "I'm never going to help you, MacArthur, not if Hell

freezes over and all the little devils go ice fishing." Then, under what remained of his breath: "Is

deridiculo est, quaqua incedit omnibus."

"What's that?" MacArthur inclined his ear.

"Plautus, you damn beefhead, Miles Gloriosus." Old Harry knew his Latin.

"Now don't let's be too hasty, Mr. President," the General intoned in a perfect counterfeit

of patrician charm, "there's a little something behind this door that may influence you somewhat

in your decision whether to help me out in my proposal."

As his panting abated, Harry discerned the graceful bittersweet notes of a Chopin piano

sonata drifting out from behind that door. He squinted into the middle distance as if to try and

see the score. Hands folded at his sacrum, MacArthur leaned down so that his lips were close to

Harry's ear, and he said, "Go ahead, Mr. President. Take a peek through the keyhole." Harry

struggled to pull himself flush to the door, and he worked his head up to the level of the knob.

He peeked through the hole.

There was no mistaking that nose. All he could see was the nose, but there was no

mistaking it. It was the nose of John Tyler, who was Truman's great grandmother's father and

had succeeded William Henry Harrison as President. Then MacArthur threw open the door for

Harry to see the whole picture: yes, it was Tyler's nose, all right, but it was sitting on the face of

Harry's daughter Margaret, who had somehow inherited the thing.

Poor Margaret was chained to the piano playing the Chopin Harry always loved. All

around her, newspaper critic devils sat cackling and hissing and shouting epithets while they

wrote and wrote on their clipboards. There wasn't a single derogatory remark a person could

apply to any sort of musician that those birds didn't fling at poor Margaret. She played--she had

to--and she wept unceasingly.

"Daddy!"

"Mary Margaret, honey, what have they done to you?"

Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 13

One of the critics turned his spectacles and proboscis toward the doorway where Harry

knelt in his irons, and he said, "Shout all you like, Mr. Truman, sir. Bang and howl too, if you've

a mind to. Anything's better than the amateur crap she's torturing from that poor instrument.

Why, they ought to clap that girl in the hoosekow the way she's attacking the thing. It's a case of

assault and battery."

Harry made for him, fists first, but the iron ball stopped him, and he fell on his face.

MacArthur hastened to him and reached down a hand to help him up, but Harry wouldn't take it.

The General just held his hand there, confident as he could be that the man would take it

eventually.

"Now you know, sir," said MacArthur, "every word of what these fellows are writing is

going to make it into print. It'll be published all over Hell and Heaven. There's no stopping a

free press, of course. And you know how things go around here, Mr. President--there'll be an

endless flow of these fellows' columns. Endless. Forever. Unless . . . "

"Goddammit, General, you've got me by the balls." Harry took the General's hand at last

and allowed him to help him to his feet. His spectacles were wet with tears. His head drooped.

His chest caved in in a way that no one above ground had ever witnessed in Harry S Truman.

MacArthur blew that parade whistle of his, and, mirabile dictu, without one word, the

critics put down their pencils, rose, and filed out. Margaret stopped playing. Her head and

forearms fell upon the keys, producing one last painful block chord from the second D below

middle C to the third E or E# above it.

Outside MacArthur's HQ throngs of devils marched and shouted. "Give 'em Hell," they

chanted.

"Give old Harry Hell.

"He made it,

"He serves it,

"And God knows he deserves it."

Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 14

"Don't you worry about a thing, Mr. President." MacArthur motioned to a noncom

hellion who unlocked and removed Harry's shackles. "Now that you've seen the light,

everything's going to be hunky-dory. Why, I may make you my Minister in Charge of Infernal

Affairs or some such--of course you'll have to live down here and make yourself available for

whippings and so on--strictly pro forma, you understand, to make sure we all remember who's

the boss."

"Listen, General, there's one condition to this business, and if you don't agree to it, the

whole thing's off."

"And what may that be?" MacArthur's lips drew as tight as a ballerina's sphincter. He

raised himself up to his full height, pushing up that extra half inch that he was used to sagging,

on account of all that hardware on top of his head.

"It's just this. I want Margaret to be released into the custody of my wife Bess, into the

personal custody of Elizabeth Virginia Wallace Truman and nobody else. I want her to be called

down here to Hell to do the thing forthwith. When that's settled and Margaret's back in Heaven

where she belongs, by gum, you've got me, and I'll do whatever in Hell you want me to do,

period, end of sentence, end of negotiations."

MacArthur smiled.

The thing was arranged. It was a cold day in Hell, cold for that region. The mercury

hovered just shy of its boiling point. Edgar Hind, an old friend of the Trumans, led Bess's

entourage. During his mortal life Edgar had served as the postmaster of Independence, Missouri,

and he'd been a stalwart of Battery D, Harry's outfit in the war. He got together a squadron of

the boys from the Battery and escorted the First Lady down into Hell.

The devils were so excited to see Bess and those old soldiers tramping in that they lined

the streets of Hell, a million or so thick, cheering and throwing what passes for confetti down

there; actually it's a kind of congealed and pressed sulfur that hardly even flutters. It gobbed up

all over the fellows from Battery D, but they made sure none of it ever touched Bess. She was
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 15

chauffeured in by means of a black Ford motorcar with bonafide angels on the running boards,

two on each side of it, wearing dark glasses and packing heat.

They accompanied her into General MacArthur's HQ, and the General arranged for a

fanfare to be played that was only slightly less glorious than his own. He even saluted as they

played, and all the devils followed his lead.

Hind made his way past a bevy of distracted devil attendants to where Harry stood

pressed between the shoulders of two fork-tailed thugs. "Everything's gonna be okay, Harry,

now the Boss is on the scene."

"I know it is, Edgar." The President winked.

MacArthur was feeling gracious that day. He was about to be God, after all. He opened

the brimstone door himself, then stepped aside.

"Oh, Mama!"

Margaret was handed over.

"Mrs. Truman," said MacArthur, "I'll have to ask you and your daughter and all your

friends here to leave directly. However, before you do, perhaps you would like to share a few

private words and a cup of tea with the President here. Once I'm God, you won't be seeing much

of each other, you know. I'll set you and the husband up at the canteen momentarily. I think

you'll find that we have a few varieties of tea down here that even Heaven would be jealous of."

"Can that," the First Lady snarled. "Just whom do you imagine you are speaking to?"

"I beg your pardon?"

"Little fellow, let me catch you up on a thing or two. I happen to be the Boss."

MacArthur laughed. "Yes, I know. We've all heard that the President calls you that."

"President be damned," the First Lady roared. "I am the Boss for all and any. I am She

Who is, Who was, and ever shall be." She snapped her fingers and the entire edifice of

MacArthur's HQ vanished like a shadow in a shaft of light. The broad cope of Hell, inky and

drear, opened up to a golden empyrean. Angels appeared everywhere. They burst into hosannas

and plucked at their harps so hard that sulfur dust flew up off the brimstone floor of Hell and all
Fintushel, HARRY TRUMAN IN HELL 16

the little devils started sneezing.

Harry just smiled. He reached over to the General's hat, and MacArthur winced like a

career corporal about to be busted to private, but instead of removing epaulettes or badges, why,

Harry added a couple. He found some medallions some damn place--through the miraculous

agency of the Boss, no doubt, and he wedged them into the General's hat amongst all those

others. The added weight just beat MacArthur's limit, and he dropped to his knees like a slavey.

"That's quite enough of that, Harry," Mrs. Truman said. "Let's get back to Heaven with

our Margaret. The Ford is idling outside and there's no sense wasting gasoline on a bunch of

monkeyshines like this."

"Yes, ma'am," he said, and they got into that old Ford, and they trundled back to Heaven.

And that was all there was to it.

###