Opinion & Comment

Hillbilly Hades

APPALACHIAN NOTEBOOK, BY STEVE ODEN

This cautionary tale is about Hillbilly Hades, a place where the spirits of folks in Appalachia go when they've led less-than-acceptable mortal lives.

Not the full-fledged fire-and-brimstone place of eternal torment over which Satan reigns, Hillbilly Hades is a low-rent supernatural neighborhood, mostly populated by the ghosts of minor liars, cheaters, and ne'er-do-wells whose sins don't quite reach the level of condemnation that would qualify them for a one-way trip to the Deepest Pit.

However, Hillbilly Hades is not somewhere you'd like to spend eternity.

Sometimes, spirits assigned to Hillbilly Hades are given chances at redemption. The occasional sinner, for example, can strive to do better and hope to be given a second opportunity. In such cases, the chastened spirit is allowed to return to its earthly body in order to do good works and warn others about the dangers of damnation.

Leroy was a good old boy who fell in with the wrong crowd, failed to resist numerous fleshly temptations, and devolved into a friendless and penniless wreck, without a roof over his head or a warm coat on his back. One freezing night, he fell asleep on the side of a rocky bluff after guzzling a jug of tainted moonshine whiskey. His spirit departed his body, and Leroy woke up in Hillbilly Hades.

"Where am I?" he wondered out lout, trying to peer through a sulfurous fog.

A reedy voice answered, "Howdy, an' welcome. You ain't in Appalachia no more!"

A blue-skinned demon wearing ragged overalls and chewing tobacco stepped forth from the yellow, stinking mist.

"My name is Fool-Yu, an' ah'm yore guide to the painful dee-lights of this here corner of perdition. First off, this place is only for folks from hills and hollers, so if you is a city slicker who landed by mistake, Ah need to send you back to the Shipping and Receiving Department to get the paperwork straightened out. LetÕs see now . . .'

Fool-Yu consulted an asbestos notebook packed with scorched paper. He scratched a talon on his pointed head.

"No mistake here. You got drunk and passed out. Froze stiffer'n a dead possum in a blizzard. Uh-huh, it sez here yore body slid off'n a bluff into the river. Ah'd say you was due for delivery here, all right."

Leroy prayed, "Good Lord, let this be a bad dream, please."

"Hee-hee," laughed Fool-Yu. "We got us a different labor contract down here and a different boss. You better shut up and pay attention. Ah'm here to be yore accursed tour guide."

Fool-Yu wrapped his forked tail around Leroy's neck. Leathery bat wings sprang from his shoulders. The demon flapped into the polluted sky, pulling Leroy along.

"Ah'm s'posed to orientate you. Gonna give you the nickel tour. Here's the first stop."

The demon landed in a dungeon, where two men in white scientist coats thrashed and screamed on their hands and knees. One of them chased bugs - millions of bugs - and sought to smash them with a glass hammer. The other snipped at a rapidly growing vine with a tiny pair of scissors.

"Them fellers is being punished for all the trouble they caused the poor folks of Appalachia. They thought they was real smart. One of 'em, the one with the hammer, had the bright idea to turn loose Japanese lady beetles. Said it would help the farmers an' gardeners. Never said anything about a plague of bugs gettin' in people's houses. Never said anything about how bad the bugs stink, or how the bugs would bite people. He's condemned to wham beetles with that glass hammer and be keer-ful that it don't break. If he breaks the hammer, he's got to lick all the beetles up with his tongue. Let me tell you, them bugs taste as bad as they smell!"

The second scientist, Fool-Yu explained, was the man who imported kudzu vines to Appalachia.

"Darn stuff grows a foot a day, takes over pastures, woods, and crick banks. Hardly nuthin' eats it 'cept billy goats," said Fool-Yu, rubbing his goat-like horns. "That there feller told people to plant kudzu in the first place. His punishment is to keep the kudzu vine trimmed down. Trouble is: we irrigate that vine from the Infernal Sewage Lagoon so it grows faster than normal."

Leroy considered and said: "Don't look like much punishment. I could go for something along those lines."

Fool-Yu cackled, "Oh, it ain't the work; it's the boredom. Plus, heÕs only allowed to snip off a mule hair's width at a time. If he cuts more or less, we throw him nekked in that room over there with the idgits who let the fire ants and the killer bees in the country."

Tortured howls leaked from behind the door. Leroy didnÕt have to use much imagination to guess what caused the racket.

"What can I do to get out of this?" he pleaded.

Fool-Yu said, "You gotta go back and fix something that's turnin' into another mess: the Asian snakehead fish. It's a real nasty critter, that there snakehead . . . got a mouth full o' teeth an' is always hungry. Snakeheads will eat up all the bigmouth bass, trout, bluegill, an' crappie. What's folks in Appalachia gonna fish for if that happens?"

"Snakeheads?" asked Leroy, an impertinent response that caused Fool-Yu to zap him with a bolt of lightning from his crooked talon. When Leroy had recovered, he agreed, with trepidation, to take on the snakehead assignment. . . He'd agree to anything to get out of Hillbilly Hades, but didn't look forward to wrestling with the problem of a legion of slimy foreign fish.

"I'll do my best, but what if I can't stop 'em?"

Fool-Yu stuck out his forked tongue in disgust. "This here was jus' yore first stop on the accursed tour. We call this the Environmental Division. Over yonder in the volcano is the Political Division. If you fail, that's where you'll wind up for eternity. Let me tell you, boy: there ain't no worse place in Hillbilly Hades. Them poor souls over there has been condemned to punishment that gives me the shivers."

What he said next caused Leroy to cringe and determine he would rid Appalachia of snakeheads. "Yep. They is strapped to chairs and forced to watch campaign advertising on TV for eons. All of 'em was political consultants during their mortal lives, so they deserve what they get!"