participated with enthusiasm and great appreciation for all my work. They laughed at my quips and seemed delighted to know the inner workings of my craft.
“So, do you have any questions?” I heard a voice ask.
Joe and I were sitting on a grassy hill overlooking a river that stretched into the horizon. The crowd, the stage, the colorful banners were all gone.
“Where did everybody go?” I asked.
“Oh, they were only there for your speech. Your speech was over, so they left.”
“Just like that?”
“Oh yeah.”
“They seemed so enthused. Were they real?”
He smirked but then quickly changed his attitude. “They were for you.”
This explained nothing.
“So, questions?”
My moment on stage giving my speech had really moved me. “I really made it, then?”
Joe nodded. “Yes, you did. You are now in the Writers Afterlife. Congratulations.”
I smiled. I was happy and then I blurted out, “Am I famous?”
“No,” he quickly answered.
I felt as if I’d been punched in the stomach.
“What else?” Joe asked. “Anything else you want to know?”
“Is my work admired?” I asked.
“No more than it was when you were living,” he said.
“That’s it? I mean all my hard work, all my dreams, all my dedication, and that’s it? I spent my life writing and I’m not famous?”
“Sorry,” he said, though I doubted he meant it.
“Will I become famous?”
“Hard to tell.”
“Was it because I died young? Or that I didn’t write enough?”
“Well, perhaps. William Butler Yeats wrote his greatest poem, “The Circus Animals’ Desertion,” when he was in his seventh decade. Voltaire wrote Candide when he was sixty-four. William Shakespeare wrote his greatest work after he was forty-four.”
“I’m forty-four.”
“You died at forty-four.” He forced a smile. “Any thing else?”
I was getting annoyed. “Hold on. Can you not rush me?”
“Take your time,” he said. He leaned back on his hands. We were sitting on a blanket. He looked around. I could tell he was bored.
“Am I boring you?”
Joe shook his head quickly and sincerely said, “Not at all.”
“It’s not fair.”
“Yes. Bad luck on your part. However, you did have your chance. John Keats died at twenty-six. Percy Bysshe Shelley hardly reached thirty and Lord Byron just passed thirty. And the list goes on for those who wrote wonderful things before forty-four including Nathaniel Hawthorne, Dante. And don’t forget Dante was only fifty-six years old when he died. And Shakespeare was fifty-two!”
“Stop,” I said. “Forty-four is young. It’s too young to die.”
“Once again, compared with what? With whom? The Brontë sisters all died very young, and so did Jane Austen. Vincent van Gogh was only thirty-seven.”
“I don’t care how young these people are. In my world forty-four is young. Imagine what I could have written if I had lived another decade. If I had lived another two decades. I might have written a masterpiece if I had lived longer.”
“Perhaps,” Joe responded dryly. “But you’re dead, Tom. There’s nothing you can do about that now.”
“I could have eaten better, worked out more, prayed . . . whatever.”
“Not sure if any of that would have made that much of a difference in the long run. What’s a few more years in the larger scheme of things? Whatever you think you might have written or imagined you might have created if you’d had more time is irrelevant now. You were young at one time. You had the opportunity and you did write two wonderful novels and several terrific plays. Be satisfied with that,” Joe told me with an odd sense of empathy, as if he had been there himself.
“So, we agree that inspiration does hit many when they are young and some when they are old. Let’s move on, shall we?” He shrugged his shoulders and stood. “Okay, so my duty is to greet you, explain some details about the Writers Afterlife so you can move on into your future.”
“I have a future?”
He smiled. “Of course you do. You paid your dues. You will live rent free and nearly pain free. You will want very little, you will never get tired, you will never experience hunger, you will never miss anyone. In other words, you will lose all the awful things human beings suffer, for the rest of eternity.”
I almost bought into his sales pitch but one part bothered me. “You said I will live nearly pain free. You said ‘nearly.’”
Joe shook his head. “That’s right. There is one tiny unpleasantness you will experience.”
“And what is that?”
“An acute sense of anxiety.”
“From?”
“Never being famous.”
Again I felt as if someone hit me in the stomach. “For how long?”
“For eternity, I’m sorry to say.”
As you’d expect, I was stunned, but Joe managed to motivate me to walk with him to shake off the disappointment. So I walked in silence across the hill. I eventually realized he was giving me a subtle tour of my new home. It was beautiful and green with lovely trees and a blue sky with dancing clouds. The sun felt warm on my face and he was absolutely right. I didn’t miss anyone or anything. I had no regrets. I felt as if the burden of living life had been lifted from my entire being. I was elated and nearly felt light-footed when I walked. All was perfect, as if I were in heaven, except one thing that nagged at me like a tooth that was slowly aching.
“Are you sure I’ll never become a famous writer, posthumously?”
“It’s hard to say,” he quickly stated. “Some up here actually did.”
“I could be one of those writers.”
“You could.”
“I did write some damn good things.”
“You certainly did.”
“You agree they were good?”
Joe kept walking. “I haven’t read them myself, you know, but the word up here is that you had talent and you dedicated yourself to that talent with hard work. But remember, not all in the universe is explainable. Some things just stay a mystery. I mean, I can conjure for you some reasons everything is against your becoming famous after your death, but you probably are aware of them.
“One truth is this: if you had lived another twenty years, you might have written a masterpiece. You might have written it and then died and still achieved fame. Niccolò Machiavelli was a playwright and a writer and he died before his masterpiece, The Prince, was ever published—and look, he’s famous. His name is actually an adjective. Also, if you had lived longer, you might have met someone who’d have made sure your work was produced and published to more critical acclaim. But you, my dear, dead Tom Chillo, must accept the fact that fame slipped by because of your bad fortune.”
I was sullen. The beautiful landscape surrounding me was suddenly meaningless. “I’m sad.”
“You