UNDERSTANDING

 My limited study of evolution convinces me that Homo sapiens have a genetic urge to understand. Both religion and science grew from the earliest efforts to control, in the first case and learn in the second. How does this apply to the current state of America?

It doesn’t seem conclusive to me simply to say Donald Trump is crazy mean and getting worse. I’ve scraped my mind and can’t imagine an historic member of the United States House of Representative or Senate who would not speak out against the current shenanigans. Now there are 217 in the first case and 53 in the second. Their silence drowns out the cries of the hungry, sick, and misbegotten. Why?

Our ancients discovered early on that neither sympathetic (imitative) nor contagious magic resolved emergences due to the weather. Later, science helped by uncovering the causes and developing protections.

It makes more sense to understand that our current crisis evolves not from the mind of a madman but the orchestrations of an international cabal of oligarchs who seek a world more from the minds of Orwell and Huxley than those of Locke or Mill. Their operational strategy follows Capone more than Lincoln. They understand very well how to impose silence and guarantee obsequiousness.

Doesn’t that make more sense?

GETHSEMANE

 Last week I travelled through the forgotten part of our state, the Arkansas Delta. I passed through a community named, of all things, Gethsemane. Folks there pronounced it “Gessymane,” as in, “He’s from over ‘bout Gessymane.”

Years ago while travelling through I would see homes scattered around and even two grocery stores. One would see neighbors visiting, children playing, and machinery serving family farms. Over the years the stores disappeared, then the homes and people, and then the farm equipment as corporate farming reduced the work force and equipment required to feed the world. Eventually, all that was left was a road sign noting “Gethsemane.” On this trip through, the sign had disappeared.

The Garden of Gethsemane holds deep significance in the Christian religion as the place where Jesus Christ experienced profound emotional and spiritual struggle.

It is important in the Christian religion as it represents anguish, sorrow, resolve, human weakness, but spiritual resolve.

For Christians, Gethsemane serves as a powerful symbol of prayer, obedience, and perseverance in times of trial.

It dawned on me as I travelled that lonely stretch of highway, that my America has lost, sadly, the physical reality of Gessymane and now seems bent on abandoning the spiritual value of Gethsemane.

A SHORT STORY

 

MEMORIES OF A COUNTRY CHURCH

By Jimmie von Tungeln

Mama used to say us girls picked on Eula Faye or else egged her on, but I can tell you that she gave about as good as she got. Like the time we stole her Bible verse. We all had a good laugh out of it at the time but we didn’t get ahead of her. No sir. Not at all.

Now there are those who wouldn’t think this little episode was important. They have never lived out at the end of the world where everybody you knew was either direct-kin or step-kin, or sometimes both. It didn’t take much to create a story that would last forever. Particularly if you were as poor as we were.

After Daddy died, Mama raised us as best she could. While she didn’t hold out much for preaching, or churches in general, I think it had something to do with the hardness of her life, she did send us off to church when we got to aggravating her.

Ever third Sunday Brother Elmer Tisdale would ride out from Caldron with his old mare pulling his wagon and hold services in Pleasant Grove Church. I guess this must have been about 1930. I couldn’t have been over twelve or thirteen, I reckon since I was married and gone by the time I was sixteen.

The church was nothing but a little frame building set off from a cemetery that went way back almost to the civil war. My granddaddy had been a charter member but he had died young so Mama could barely remember him. The church building rested under the shade of three enormous oak trees. We kids called them “The Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost,” but not around any grown-ups for they had no sense of humor whatsoever about religion.

We would gather up around nine-thirty in the morning and have an hour of Sunday School before the services began. Mama made us leave early to get there to serve the complete sentence. Naturally she didn’t trust us as far as she could spit and I can still see her on the porch as we took off, threatening to cut a switch and wear us out if we didn’t get there in time.

The older ones were gone by then and it was just Sister and Jim and me had to go. Mama made us because she said it wouldn’t do us any harm and might do us some good. She was welcome to her opinion. We had our own, but we went just like she told us to.

We dawdled around as much as we could. Jim would usually cut us off some grapevines to smoke on the way and we would make up all sorts of imaginary trips that we were really going on. None of them included a church house. Hog Eye Bend Creek would be the River Nile and a clump of oak trees would be a pyramid. We used clouds for the Alps and the road we were on was the main street through Paris. For a bunch of country kids, we weren’t bad at making things up.

Anyway, Hattie Ruth Turner taught school up at Armistead so they had her teach Sunday School to the girls on preaching day. There were about seven or eight of us. Eula Faye was distant kin and her daddy had a pension from World War One. They also owned a grocery store out on the state highway, so they was about the richest family in the community. She was a round-faced thing with freckles ever place they had a spot to be in. Her mamma kept her hair done up in curls to tight I bet you could have played music on them. She kind of had this little bounce when she walked and we would giggle that someday she might just bounce off like a rubber ball. She would hear us and say that rich women in the city walked like that. We liked her okay, I reckon. We didn’t mistreat her. It was just that she would sometimes create the opportunity for a laugh or just create one on her own.

All the girls had to have a Bible verse memorized to recite first thing in Sunday School. This was supposed to help us into Heaven in some way, but it wasn’t real clear to us how and we didn’t care much for it. It might have been due to the lack of scriptural resources available to a bunch of little country kids. Some of those girls were from families that couldn’t even afford a Bible. We had one but our step-daddy wouldn’t hardly let us touch it. So we were in a constant of agitation about it. It sure wasn’t our favorite part of this whole salvation thing.

Miss Hattie, since she was a regular school teacher too, had to remember what side her bread was buttered on so she would always let Eula Faye go first. We would start to snicker even before she stood up. We met in the back of the church house and the boys in front. Eula Faye would make sure the boys were watching her and then when the room got real quiet, she would brush a hand across her hair and say it just like some movie actress.

“Jesus wept, John 11:35”

She got away with it ever Sunday.

Then we would have to stand up and quote some regular verse. And you weren’t allowed to repeat someone else’s choice. It got to where it played on our nerves.

Well this one Sunday, we fixed it up so Sister held Eula Faye up outside the door on some pretense and she hadn’t come in when we started. So Eloise Covington jumped up and asked if she could go first. What could Miss Hattie say?

Eloise was in on it, see? She stumbled around until she saw Eula Faye come in then Eloise shouted out loud enough for the whole church to hear: “Jesus wept, John 11:35”

You could just about see the color drain out of Eula Faye’s face when she took her seat. We swallowed our giggles until our stomachs started to swell, expecting to see Eula Faye have a nervous breakdown. But she didn’t miss a beat when Miss Hattie called on her. She stood up and took a deep breath. The boys knew something was up and had all stopped talking and were watching like a bunch of hounds at hog dressing time. She nodded to them as if they were her audience and then gave us her best “You ain’t seen nothin’ yet” look. Then she announced to the world, as if she might be telling the Red Sea to part.

“Moses crept, John 3:15.”

She said it real loud and then just set back and smiled the same as if she had just recited some long-winded psalm. We all broke up laughing until Miss Hattie stared it out of us. The boys didn’t know a Bible verse from a horse-collar so they mostly just stared with their mouths all open. Then it was all over and we re-commenced our recitation period. Miss Hattie never let on like anything unusual happened at all.

That was the day we knew it wasn’t going to be easy to get something by Eula Faye. But Sister and I laughed all the way home over it anyway. Jim just smoked a grapevine and looked puzzled over the whole thing.

YOUTH

 Pardon the Repeat for long-time readers, but it is that time of year again for one of my favorites.

No Vacation for a Pirate

By Jimmie von Tungeln

             The following happened in different times. Not ancient times, just different times. Most mothers were home all day then. Most fathers were away working. Children followed their own instincts and must have been particularly annoying. Mothers missed no opportunity to be shed of them for a few hours, or even all day. As I was to learn, it was also a time set aside for my religious instruction, specifically for a consolidation of my vague images of Hell, in form of a particularly nasty institution known as—one can still almost hear thunder and the neighing of horses at the mere mention of the word—Vacation Bible School.

            Perhaps the ill-timing of it all fueled my extreme reaction. They seem always to plan these things in summertime, and this was a particularly bad bit of scheduling. It seemed to be set out purposely to interfere with the duties of a group of ten-year-olds who had no other mission than protecting both the physical and reputational well-being of their community. We had, over the last few months, coalesced into the sort of group about which folk songs were written during the Dark Ages. We were heroic. We were virtuous. We were protective of our lands and people. In short, we had responsibilities, and they didn’t include religion.

            A group of invaders from north of Bayou Bartholomew, for example, was in the process of building a raft with which to ravage the settlements to the south. This was the established territory of our little band of privateers. Who would stand between the invading hordes and our men and women folk if we were to be called away? There were forts to be built, traps to be laid, and counter-offensive craft to be built.

            The alternative spelled utter disaster. Ben Shannon explained it to us as we gathered around a hastily built campfire near the bayou’s edge. He was not our leader, per se, just older and more educated. “They’ll come rapping and pillaging our women,” he said. “At tar’s pure histry.”

            We shuddered at the thought as our blood ran hot and fired our anger like an open circuit suddenly lighting a darkened room. Rapping and pillaging indeed! (As adults, when we absorbed the difference between rapping and raping, many of us would come to think we would prefer the latter, but that’s a story for another day.)

            Pirates were only a part of our problem. At the same time, a group of rustlers from the Union Community had begun to range perilously close to our hideout on Ferdinand Thompson’s land. We had to settle affairs with them once and for all and it wasn’t going to be a sight that innocent folks should witness.

            On top of that, a group of semi-professional baseball players from the Hog-eye Bend area was threatening to descend upon the field on the edge of Ridgway’s dairy land and issue a challenge to any locals brave, or dumb, enough to meet it. We weren’t the type of fellows to back away from anyone, even from a team that reportedly fielded a player who could re-wrap a baseball with electrical tape so tight that it hit almost like a new one. We’d knock his fancy ball right back in his face.

            In the midst of all this, the two Hester boys, O.G. Stanford, Bobby Joe Benson, his brother Robert, and I all heard the sentence pronounced.

            “Unity Baptist Church is having a two-week Vacation Bible School and I have signed you and your sister up,” my mother said. She said it so softly and matter-of-factly that she might have only been stating we were having leftovers for supper. It failed to even register in a mind that was filled with sword-fights, running gun battles and strikeouts.

            “That’s nice,” I heard myself say, not realizing the doom to which I had just sentenced myself.

            I forgot it all until the next Sunday evening. I had lived through another Sabbath and was preparing to assume my duties as the gang’s quartermaster the next day. In my kit, I had packed a penny-box of matches and a book of cigarette papers filched from my father’s grocery store. Eddie Holland had been swiping pinches of Bull Durham from his daddy for weeks now and we had the goods to provide a swell smoke for the entire gang. I also packed away a five-cent package of firecrackers left over from Christmas and a picture of a Marilyn Monroe in a bathing suit that I had torn from a Parade Magazine. I had my Uncle Jack’s survival knife from the Korean War and a magnifying glass that was useful for starting fires, and also for frying ants. It was going to be a good Monday.

            Then I heard my mother yell from the living room, “Jimmie get in there and lay out some clothes for Bible School in the morning. Misses Cochran’s coming at 8:30 and you better not make her wait.”

            My blood froze. Bible School? Was she kidding? I answered back immediately in my best pirate voice. “Huh?”

            “You heard me.”

            “Did you say something?”

            “Now don’t even think about opening that little smart mouth of yours to me. You get ready.”

            “Aw momma.” Did she want to be rapped and pillaged?

            “Don’t you ‘aw momma’ me. I gave them a love offerin’ and you’re goin’.”

            “But Sonny Averitt has a new snake and he said we could come over and look at it in the …”

            “Don’t make me have to come in there.”

            So, the gang of prisoners dutifully reported outside the church next morning. There were five of us—Bobby Joe had rubbed some mustard in his eyes and convinced his mama that he might have the “chicken pops.” True pirates are born to embrace suffering.

            Anyway, we lined up as if we were awaiting the boat to Devil’s Island outside the church door. They let all the girls in first, including my sister who was older than the rest of us and ended up being a sort of guard for the duration, in addition to her normal job of reporting my every movement and utterance to the authorities at home. There were about 10 of us boys in the group, and not a happy face among them.

            Finally, our teacher, a Misses Krebbs, appeared at the door and bade us enter the foyer. Once that far inside, she stopped us and, as we huddled in a tight bunch near the coat racks and tables piled with offering plates, taught us the daily prayer we were to utter before we entered the church each morning.

I am a sinner, let me pray,

God has given me this day.

At every step, I’ll stop and say,

He will guide me all the way. Amen

            I think she made it up herself because she seemed mighty pleased with it. After a dozen or so tries, we got to where we could say it together and she allowed us in the church.

            Miss Krebbs was a stout little woman with reddish hair pulled into a bun. She had obviously been through this before, for the first thing she did after she sat all the boys down in the back of the room—the girls were already up front singing songs—was to single out the baddest looking boy in the room. He was a big boy, older than the rest of us, named Terry Clayton and was from the east side of town where they raised the tough ones. We learned later that he was in Vacation Bible School as an alternative to reform school, so he was prepared to endure a good deal of unpleasantness. It started immediately. Miss Krebbs brought him to the front of our little group. He turned and faced us with magnificent defiance, and we all envied his “look.” She then presented him as the type that would reap great benefits from the coming experience. She patted his back. He turned a crimson red, and those of us who were experienced in the ways of the truly fearsome saw dead bodies and raw bloody veins swirling in his head.

            Next, she looked at him and asked, “What do you expect to get from coming to vacation bible school,” she asked.

            Well, she might have just as well asked him what he thought of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Here was a boy who had never planned even a half-step beyond his immediate existence in his life. He turned even redder and finally looked at the floor.

            Miss Krebbs made him suffer for what seemed like minutes before she sat him down, broken and humiliated. Then she asked, “Who in here loves Jesus?”

            Every hand shot into the air.

            I won’t go into great detail about the ordeal that followed. As the remnants of our little band proceeded, without us, to build a raft capable of transporting the band all the way across the bayou to intercept the interlopers, we were cutting out pictures of the prophets to paste on large poster boards. The only part of our day that offered any chance of relief for our tortured mind was singing. It didn’t take long before we discovered that we could change the words of songs ever so slightly without drawing the attention of Misses Krebbs or one of the other guards. Of course my sister was a little more worldly-wise than the adults so we had to be extra careful. She knew the easy ones such as Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear. We did manage, though, to slip by her such gems as Flour in the Mud.

            But our pleasures were few, all in all. Once, we had to study the Book of Job, which consisted pretty much of a story about how God and the Devil took bets on how this poor guy named Job would act if they played tricks on him. I guess they thought it pretty funny. Actually, we had done the same thing a few times with our gang’s favorite jester, Buddy Austin. We would, for example, twist him up in a bag swing and let it twirl him around a bunch of times and then take bets on how far he could walk before he fell. It was a kid’s game, at best, but I still think we showed more decency than the other two I mentioned.

            The study of poor Job did provide one bit of drama. Toward the end, when the unfortunate man had endured almost more than humanly possible, Misses Krebbs stopped the discussion and asked who could provide an explanation for it all. Well, old Terry Clayton just sat there for a few minutes. We were ten days or so into the sentence by then, and I suppose the imagined peace and manly freedom of reform school were beckoning him like the Sirens of Phorcus.

            He all of a sudden blurted out, it was the first time he had spoken since his opening day humiliation, “I guess it means that when you have nothing to lose, it’s better to be the shooter than the dice.”

            It was the last I saw of him until a number of years later when he stopped me for speeding. He was five years in the police force by then and let me go, a favor from one victim to another.

            On another occasion, they brought in this carpenter who was going to show us how to work with wood. We thought this was going to be really neat until we found that the project would consist of building crosses and not anything useful.

            I immediately got crossways with our instructor because he didn’t like my choice of wood. I was, and still am, partial to the darker woods like walnut. He claimed we should use lighter wood to symbolize the purity of Christ. Jesus!

            After a few days of sawing and bending a number of nails, our crosses began to take a number of shapes, few of them recognizable as the stated intent. On top of it all, the man refused to answer any questions of a practical nature, such as tips on building rafts or stockades for a hideout.

            As the end of our cross-building approached, O.G. Stanford finally asked Misses Krebbs what the finished products would be used for. She didn’t hesitate a second. “You are building them to be donated to the poor colored churches in town.”

            We just looked at one another. Hadn’t these people suffered enough already?

            The absolute most idiotic thing about the experience was that Misses Krebbs never even learned my name. She knew my sister’s name, and she knew our relationship. But for some reason, she insisted on calling me Jimmie Valentine, for the pure sadistic pleasure of it I suppose. I still have, among my clippings about the Tet Offensive, my photos of a storm at sea, and the results of a tornado which I survived, a small folded certificate stating that Jimmie Valentine had, indeed, survived (it actually says “graduated from”) Unity Baptist Church Vacation Bible School.

            Ten week days passed like turtles doing the shuffle and the worst ten years of my life neared its end. In this case with “Boo-Hoo Day.” That’s the day they wrap it up with a children’s sermon from the church’s preacher and, traditionally, all the girls get “saved,” some of them for the fourth or fifth time, boo-hooing louder each time. All the boys declined the honor except for Johnny Staples and that is a complete story in itself. Let’s just mention he later went to California to become an actor and salvation probably held him in good stead.

            For the rest, we returned to our gang to learn that, in our absence, the remnant members had discovered that rafts made from green pine trees don’t float well enough to support the weight of a pirate gang. To make matters worse, Ferdinand had discovered our cowboy hideout on his land, torn it up, and reported the discovery to my father to whom he handed over the bottle containing a half-inch of bourbon that someone, we denied any knowledge, had been carefully collecting from throwaways for months. Of course the baseball game had to be forfeited and our team was forever known and “The No-shows.”

             A pretty sad experience? Yes, in many ways. The gang never reorganized. The next summer my father secured me a job working on a milk truck and a succession of summer, then part-time, and finally full-time employments followed until one day I awoke to be staring at the face of a grown man in the mirror. Sadly, it was not the face of a pirate. It was a face, however, honed to some degree from raging along the banks of Bayou Bartholomew, once, with a ragtag gang of fierce warriors, protecting an imaginary group of innocent women from the prospect of rapping and pillaging. So I am glad of my youth, even with that summer’s terrifying experience. Outdoor freedoms such as we enjoyed back then seem to have disappeared along with pirate gangs and second-hand baseballs.

Were there lessons learned? There was one, After enduring Misses Krebbs, and vacation bible school, there was never any doubt in our minds about the true horrors of Hell. That has always provided a little touch of religion in the night.

We could have been playing with piglets.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 CHANGE

We hear old sailors speak of a sea change. We hear philosophers talk about paradigm shifts. We hear the malevolent talk of alternate facts. Old folks on the porch simply say, “Things aren’t like they used to be.”

People in their senior years have seen a lot of change. I only know about America. And here:

Time was a man could murder his wife for supposed infidelity and have a fair hope of acquittal.

Time was an African American family couldn’t enter a fine restaurant or sit in the main lobby of a movie theater.

Time was a judge, always a male, would award a man who had kicked a wife and child out to make room for a younger woman would set the child support payment at less than the cost of daycare.

Time was one could only marry the person they loved if that person was of the opposite sex.

Time was a company could work men in unsafe conditions for less than sustenance pay and have parks named after them for the profits they earned.

Time was we felt that bedrock slums were fine for families simply labelled as "those people."

Time was prominent pastors encouraged parents to beat their children in order to maintain discipline.

Ooops. That time is still with us.

Anyway … the point is this. When I hear someone say, “Let’s make America Great Again,” I want to know what America they are talking about.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 WORDS

My friend from another galaxy, the Alien C. W. still drops by to see me from time to time. Here is what happened today as I was trying to understand our modern times.

C.W. often becomes confused by our language so so I was scarcely surprised when he showed up at my door dressed as a monk. He smiled and raised his hand in a gesture of forgiveness as I opened the door.

“Sed do absolutionem, fili mi,” he said.

“Get the hell out of the hall before someone sees you,” I said.

He looked confused.

“What is this ‘hell’ that I can remove from your corridor?” he said.

“Give me a break,” I said as I ushered him in.

“How does one ‘give’ an act of forcing a division?”

I grimaced. He sat and arranged his monk’s robe carefully before speaking.

“I have been learning Latin,” he said.

“Marvelous.”

“Your modern English derives largely from that forgotten language, I understand.”

“Quite so.”

“So why all the confusion about word order?”

“Confusion?”

“Yes. In Latin, if one combines the words ‘house’ and ‘cat’ the order would make no difference.”

I thought for a moment, then said, “You have a point there.”

“And the combining of two innocent words for off-pigment purposes is beyond my understanding.”

“How so?”

“For example, you take a valid term used to describe a prolonged period of high winds.”

“You mean ‘a blow’”?

“Yes, my son.”

I ignored him.

“And then you attach to it the term used to describe what one does for a living …”

“That’s quite enough,” I said. “My wife is sleeping in the back room.”

“Speaking of your wife,” he said. “I have heard her on occasion use a term that I find particularly baffling.”

“And that is?”

“She refers periodically to a “Sin Erase Date.”

“Yes.”

“And that means?”

“That refers to the date that a politician with a checkered personal life uses to pinpoint the exact moment when he or she embraced a religious dogma.”

“I don’t understand.”

I explained. “That is the date before which one cannot question the politician’s past since, at that time, he or she ‘found religion’ and was absolved of all previous bad behavior.”

“Sort of a ‘Get out of Hell Free’ card?”

I smiled. “Sort of.”

“Does your so-called ‘news media’ fall for it?”

“Ask George W. Bush.”

He sighed. “I see.”

“Has this been any help?”

He went into repose as I continued with the headlines.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

BELIEFS

My parents had their own view towards religion. They claimed it and defended it when pressed, but in popular parlance, “took it with a grain of salt.”

One, Sainted Mother, grew up in a strict Baptist environment. Father attended a rural Methodist church but back in those days there wasn’t a lot of difference.

As I say, they supported religion but didn’t let it dominate their existence. They dragged us to church each Sunday morning and, on rare occasion, Sunday night. They didn't go in revivals and other extracurricular activities. They ran our little grocery store six days a week.

They were honest and caring to those in need, but this evolved more from the cultural surroundings than from the religious banter of a Sunday morning. In fact, of the few types of people on earth my mother despised, one of the most prominent was what she called “religious fanatics.”

These days, that would apply to most evangelicals and they would not be offended, if fact would be pleased, with what they felt was an honorific.

Religious fanatic.

That included about anyone who brought up the subject in ordinary conversation without being prompted.

That included those who would “stick their nose into someone else’s business.”

That included those who denied their children the fun of—because the Devil lurked there—going to a swimming pool or movie theater.

That included people who funded a church while their children went hungry.

Were my parents perfect? No, far from it. They would never have countenanced an African American as president and would probably have gone to voting for the dark side of America.

The lure of bigotry was a failure, one that was supported by their religion.

They weren’t averse to corporal and abusive punishment.

The appeal of physical abuse was a failure, one that was supported by their religion.

On the other hand, they never failed to provide help and comfort to the least of those among us.

The appeal of kindness was a blessing, not one universally supported by their religion.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 HYMNS

 Still thinking about the little white church as I remember as child. Actually I don’t remember much about it. When I was just getting old enough to remember things, all the young adults who had grown up with the church, and moved to the city, started their own church. It will warrant its own time later.

What I do remember, and treasure to this day, is the music.

There is something unexplainable about those songs that leapt from the pages of the Baptist Hymnal.

Something so primal and emotional they seem to me more spiritual that many of the passages in the Bible.

There was so much joy unbridled in the likes of I’ll Fly Away that it makes a mockery of the hateful, venom-spewing tirades of modern TV evangelists. No matter if one has suffered greatly in life, or has enjoyed its many blessings, “Like a bird from prison bars has flown, I’ll fly away” can, depending upon the singer, voice freedom from an unkind world or the promise of continued happiness in another.

Among the hymns was one written by an African American after he learned that he just lost his wife and unborn child, who met the tragedy with Precious Lord take my hand.

They don’t write them like that anymore. As a speaker whose name I can’t remember once said, the likes of “Just as I am without one plea” type offerings has given way to “Jesus is my boyfriend” babblings. Another said that “Comparing the old hymns to the modern ‘praise music’ is like comparing a Shakespearean sonnet to a Halmark greeting card.”

I’ve made a long journey intellectually from that little white church to a life of secular humanism. I deplore the hatred and divisiveness that erupt from so many modern evangelical meetings. I can’t reconcile the screeching of a Kenneth Copeland with the Sermon on the Mount. I’ve lost friends over the misanthropic shrieks of so-called Christian Nationalism.

I still like those old hymns, though.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

FELLOWSHIP 

My earliest memory of religion involves a small Baptist church in a rural county of southern Arkansas. The congregation met in a small white building, but not every Sunday. Preachers were scarce so the roving evangelist only appeared on certain weeks. The seats were hard, and the sermons were long the old folks always said. They also said the Klu Klux Klan would make an appearance if the teenaged boys became obstreperous. (There weren't enough African Americans around to keep them busy, so they reverted to maintainers of discipline.)

My great-grandfather had once preached at that church when called. He was a charter member, a veteran of the Confederate Army, a father of eight, and a part-time minister. My Sainted Mother never knew him so his life remains obscure. His obituary only stated that "he never participated in any of the neighborhood brawls."

Good for him.

My memories of the religious activity of that church limit themselves to a rather pleasant experience as I recall. They involved "All day singing with dinner on the ground." Dinner, of course meant the midday meal at that place in those times.

People from near and far would come to sing from the Baptist Hymnal. Women would spread some of the finest meals on the planet. Kids would play, often with others they had never met. The air throbbed with love and harmony. It must have been a grand experience in order to implant its memory on a toddler's brain.

I took my sister and a great-nephew (who was graduating from medical school) there recently. The old building is gone except for the slab, a slab that looks pitifully small. A larger white building houses the congregation now. Looking at the grounds, I felt pleasant memories, despite having attended there the funerals of loved ones. For a second or two, I heard voices singing, friends greeting friends, and children shouting with the joy of playing games.

I think America could benefit from a return to the days when religion sometimes made people happy.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 SECULARISM

This time I think we have gone too far. It seems, at least according to the internet, that a representative from one of our political parties has insisted that we must become a “Christian Nation.” He also said women have to have babies or they won't count, or maybe only as 3/5 of a person. We'll get to that later.

Meanwhile, I dunno.

I am not up to the task of being an evangelical voter. Now there may be some folks who are, but I am fairly weak in spirit, physical strength, and financial resources.

First, we would have to become a forgiving nation, to wit:

Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”

“No!” Jesus replied, “seventy times seven!” Matthew 18:21-22:

Now take those people who stormed our United States Capitol on January 6, 2021. If we were a bona-fide Christian Nation, and there were statutory punishments in place for un-American activity, I suppose I could forgive them. If I had to, and if the penalties for non-Christian behavior were severe enough, I suppose I might make it twice or even three times. But let me tell you, before we got to 70 times 7, I would fall by the wayside and who knows? The man (?) who called me a sucker/loser for serving in in foreign war? Rather than forgive him, I might find myself in a cell with a big bully in a white robe wanting to show me the “treasures of the universe.” Just maybe.

We couldn’t get divorced as citizens of a Christian nation, except for adultery. Of course we could make it unilateral, i.e. an option only available to men. Now I don’t want to. Get divorced, that is, hard to imagine a set of circumstances under which I would. No, wait a minute. I beg your pardon … If I were to ever catch her watching Fox News, I’d be out the door in two seconds flat and nobody could blame me. So, there are two major points of concern.

Here’s a third: I’d have to give away all my belongings. That’s one of the plainest demands within the scriptures. Now if I gave away all my money, I’d have to rely on non-believers to take care of me.

Oh gosh. The meek would inherit our country. I find those people tiresome in their nondescript little houses and their weekend family fishing trips.

Peace makers! Who needs them? Halliburton stock would be worthless.

In seeming contradiction to some of the other mandates, we would have to be a more vengeful nation. I guess we could keep a war or two going. That would require a reinstatement of the draft probably. I’ve been through that, so it might not affect me. On the other hand, remember the Volkstrum. If I did get pulled in, I do have a problem with this stricture that would become part of our legal system.

Now, therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known a man by lying with him. But all the young girls who have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves. (Num. 31:17-18, Revised Standard Version.)

We now come to my final question. Whose Christianity? I am not going to hand out The Watchtower on Saturday morning and miss the Bowery Boys movies on TCM. Just get my cell ready.

Also, if the Mormons win out, I think I should rather live in the Windward Islands than wear Magic Underwear. My wife might go along with the harems if she could be First Wife, but she’s not about to accept that secondary citizenship business.

Snake handling? Forget it.

And, so help me Charles Darwin, I would rather be locked up in the Opryland Hotel with a dominatrix on steroids than to be in the same room with Joel Osteen

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 ALMIGHTY WILL

One reads many strange things these days about how people view the will of their particular god.

Some condone sending a 12-year-old girl into full-term pregnancy, perhaps to die giving birth to a rapist’s child, because their god views all babies as precious. More precious than the mother? It would seem so.

Some say that the murder of children, as in the annihilation of all of Jericho’s inhabitants, was intended as a blessing to the children as they would see paradise, guaranteed.

Adults avowed the same for the children marched in lines to clear minefields in the Iran-Iraq wars. They even threw in some virgins to await the boy-children in Paradise.

The Spaniards, it is said, guaranteed the salvation of babies of native South American peoples by bashing the babies' heads against walls.

The death and suffering of children seems to be a favorite method of showing kindness.

Now we also read that a god directed a bullet, fired by a madman, away from a favored leader and into, instead, an innocent bystander. Anything, it is avowed, is permitted for a good photo-op.

Tsunamis and tornadoes, likewise, spare the chosen.

All in all, it seems that a member of the Almighty Club is granted the most extreme methodology in the execution of any chosen chore.

Followers are not at any liberty to question this process. In the words of a character from a popular TV series, “His ways ain’t our ways.”

All alone in a dark place, though, we might wish that some almighty might be more like Mr. Rogers and less like Charles Manson. After all, an end achieved by a blessing would be as worthy as an end achieved by a bullet.

MEMORIES

 VACATION BIBLE SCOOL

No Vacation for a Pirate

By Jimmie von Tungeln

             The following happened in different times. Not ancient times, just different times. Most mothers were home all day then. Most fathers were away working. Children followed their own instincts and must have been particularly annoying. Mothers missed no opportunity to be shed of them for a few hours, or even all day. As I was to learn, it was also a time set aside for my religious instruction, specifically for a consolidation of my vague images of Hell, in form of a particularly nasty institution known as—one can still almost hear thunder and the neighing of horses at the mere mention of the word—Vacation Bible School.

            Perhaps the ill-timing of it all fueled my extreme reaction. They seem always to plan these things in summertime and this was a particularly bad bit of scheduling. It seemed to be set out purposely to interfere with the duties of a group of ten-year-olds who had no other mission than protecting both the physical and reputational well-being of their community. We had, over the last few months, coalesced into the sort of group about which folk songs were written during the Dark Ages. We were heroic. We were virtuous. We were protective of our lands and people. In short, we had responsibilities, and they didn’t include religion.

            A group of invaders from north of Bayou Bartholomew, for example, was in the process of building a raft with which to ravage the settlements to the south. This was the established territory of our little band of privateers. Who would stand between the invading hordes and our men and women folk if we were to be called away? There were forts to be built, traps to be laid, and counter-offensive craft to be built.

            The alternative spelled utter disaster. Ben Shannon explained it to us as we gathered around a hastily built campfire near the bayou’s edge. He was not our leader, per se, just older and more educated. “They’ll come rapping and pillaging our women,” he said. “At tar’s pure histry.”

            We shuddered at the thought as our blood ran hot and fired our anger like an open circuit suddenly lighting a darkened room. Rapping and pillaging indeed! (As adults, when we absorbed the difference between rapping and raping, many of us would come to think we would prefer the latter, but that’s a story for another day.)

            Pirates were only a part of our problem. At the same time, a group of rustlers from the Union Community had begun to range perilously close to our hideout on Ferdinand Thompson’s land. We had to settle affairs with them once and for all and it wasn’t going to be a sight that innocent folks should witness.

            On top of that, a group of semi-professional baseball players from the Hog-eye Bend area was threatening to descend upon the field on the edge of Ridgway’s dairy land and issue a challenge to any locals brave, or dumb, enough to meet it. We weren’t the type of fellows to back away from anyone, even from a team that reportedly fielded a player who could re-wrap a baseball with electrical tape so tight that it hit almost like a new one. We’d knock his fancy ball right back in his face.

            In the midst of all this, the two Hester boys, O.G. Stanford, Bobby Joe Benson, his brother Robert, and I all heard the sentence pronounced.

            “Unity Baptist Church is having a two-week Vacation Bible School and I have signed you and your sister up,” my mother said. She said it so softly and matter-of-factly that she might have only been stating we were having leftovers for supper. It failed to even register in a mind that was filled with sword-fights, running gun battles and strikeouts.

            “That’s nice,” I heard myself say, not realizing the doom to which I had just sentenced myself.

            I forgot it all until the next Sunday evening. I had lived through another Sabbath and was preparing to assume my duties as the gang’s quartermaster the next day. In my kit, I had packed a penny-box of matches and a book of cigarette papers filched from my father’s grocery store. Eddie Holland had been swiping pinches of Bull Durham from his daddy for weeks now and we had the goods to provide a swell smoke for the entire gang. I also packed away a five-cent package of firecrackers left over from Christmas and a picture of a Marilyn Monroe in a bathing suit that I had torn from a Parade Magazine. I had my Uncle Jack’s survival knife from the Korean War and a magnifying glass that was useful for starting fires, and also for frying ants. It was going to be a good Monday.

            Then I heard my mother yell from the living room, “Jimmie get in there and lay out some clothes for Bible School in the morning. Misses Cochran’s coming at 8:30 and you better not make her wait.”

            My blood froze. Bible School? Was she kidding? I answered back immediately in my best pirate voice. “Huh?”

            “You heard me.”

            “Did you say something?”

            “Now don’t even think about opening that little smart mouth of yours to me. You get ready.”

            “Aw momma.” Did she want to be rapped and pillaged?

            “Don’t you ‘aw momma’ me. I gave them a love offerin’ and you’re goin’.”

            “But Sonny Averitt has a new snake and he said we could come over and look at it in the …”

            “Don’t make me have to come in there.”

            So, the gang of prisoners dutifully reported outside the church next morning. There were five of us—Bobby Joe had rubbed some mustard in his eyes and convinced his mama that he might have the “chicken pops.” True pirates are born to embrace suffering.

            Anyway, we lined up as if we were awaiting the boat to Devil’s Island outside the church door. They let all the girls in first, including my sister who was older than the rest of us and ended up being a sort of guard for the duration, in addition to her normal job of reporting my every movement and utterance to the authorities at home. There were about 10 of us boys in the group, and not a happy face among them.

            Finally, our teacher, a Misses Krebbs, appeared at the door and bade us enter the foyer. Once that far inside, she stopped us and, as we huddled in a tight bunch near the coat racks and tables piled with offering plates, taught us the daily prayer we were to utter before we entered the church each morning.

I am a sinner, let me pray,

God has given me this day.

At every step, I’ll stop and say,

He will guide me all the way. Amen

            I think she made it up herself because she seemed mighty pleased with it. After a dozen or so tries, we got to where we could say it together and she allowed us in the church.

            Miss Krebbs was a stout little woman with reddish hair pulled into a bun. She had obviously been through this before, for the first thing she did after she sat all the boys down in the back of the room—the girls were already up front singing songs—was to single out the baddest looking boy in the room. He was a big boy, older than the rest of us, named Terry Clayton and was from the east side of town where they raised the tough ones. We learned later that he was in Vacation Bible School as an alternative to reform school, so he was prepared to endure a good deal of unpleasantness. It started immediately. Miss Krebbs brought him to the front of our little group. He turned and faced us with magnificent defiance, and we all envied his “look.” She then presented him as the type that would reap great benefits from the coming experience. She patted his back. He turned a crimson red, and those of us who were experienced in the ways of the truly fearsome saw dead bodies and raw bloody veins swirling in his head.

            Next, she looked at him and asked, “What do you expect to get from coming to vacation bible school,” she asked.

            Well, she might have just as well asked him what he thought of the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Here was a boy who had never planned even a half-step beyond his immediate existence in his life. He turned even redder and finally looked at the floor.

            Miss Krebbs made him suffer for what seemed like minutes before she sat him down, broken and humiliated. Then she asked, “Who in here loves Jesus?”

            Every hand shot into the air.

            I won’t go into great detail about the ordeal that followed. As the remnants of our little band proceeded, without us, to build a raft capable of transporting the band all the way across the bayou to intercept the interlopers, we were cutting out pictures of the prophets to paste on large poster boards. The only part of our day that offered any chance of relief for our tortured mind was singing. It didn’t take long before we discovered that we could change the words of songs ever so slightly without drawing the attention of Misses Krebbs or one of the other guards. Of course my sister was a little more worldly-wise than the adults so we had to be extra careful. She knew the easy ones such as Gladly, the Cross-eyed Bear. We did manage, though, to slip by her such gems as Flour in the Mud.

            But our pleasures were few, all in all. Once, we had to study the Book of Job, which consisted pretty much of a story about how God and the Devil took bets on how this poor guy named Job would act if they played tricks on him. I guess they thought it pretty funny. Actually, we had done the same thing a few times with our gang’s favorite jester, Buddy Austin. We would, for example, twist him up in a bag swing and let it twirl him around a bunch of times and then take bets on how far he could walk before he fell. It was a kid’s game, at best, but I still think we showed more decency than the other two I mentioned.

            The study of poor Job did provide one bit of drama. Toward the end, when the unfortunate man had endured almost more than humanly possible, Misses Krebbs stopped the discussion and asked who could provide an explanation for it all. Well, old Terry Clayton just sat there for a few minutes. We were ten days or so into the sentence by then, and I suppose the imagined peace and manly freedom of reform school were beckoning him like the Sirens of Phorcus.

            He all of a sudden blurted out, it was the first time he had spoken since his opening day humiliation, “I guess it means that when you have nothing to lose, it’s better to be the shooter than the dice.”

            It was the last I saw of him until a number of years later when he stopped me for speeding. He was five years in the police force by then and let me go, a favor from one victim to another.

            On another occasion, they brought in this carpenter who was going to show us how to work with wood. We thought this was going to be really neat until we found that the project would consist of building crosses and not anything useful.

            I immediately got crossways with our instructor because he didn’t like my choice of wood. I was, and still am, partial to the darker woods like walnut. He claimed we should use lighter wood to symbolize the purity of Christ. Jesus!

            After a few days of sawing and bending a number of nails, our crosses began to take a number of shapes, few of them recognizable as the stated intent. On top of it all, the man refused to answer any questions of a practical nature, such as tips on building rafts or stockades for a hideout.

            As the end of our cross-building approached, O.G. Stanford finally asked Misses Krebbs what the finished products would be used for. She didn’t hesitate a second. “You are building them to be donated to the poor nigra churches in town.”

            We just looked at one another. Hadn’t these people suffered enough already?

            The absolute most idiotic thing about the experience was that Misses Krebbs never even learned my name. She knew my sister’s name, and she knew our relationship. But for some reason, she insisted on calling me Jimmie Valentine, for the pure sadistic pleasure of it I suppose. I still have, among my clippings about the Tet Offensive, my photos of a storm at sea, and the results of a tornado which I survived, a small folded certificate stating that Jimmie Valentine had, indeed, survived (it actually says “graduated from”) Unity Baptist Church Vacation Bible School.

            Ten week days passed like turtles doing the shuffle and the worst ten years of my life neared its end. In this case with “Boo-Hoo Day.” That’s the day they wrap it up with a children’s sermon from the church’s preacher and, traditionally, all the girls get “saved,” some of them for the fourth or fifth time, boo-hooing louder each time. All the boys declined the honor except for Johnny Staples and that is a complete story in itself. Let’s just mention he later went to California to become an actor and salvation probably held him in good stead.

            For the rest, we returned to our gang to learn that, in our absence, the remnant members had discovered that rafts made from green pine trees don’t float well enough to support the weight of a pirate gang. To make matters worse, Ferdinand had discovered our cowboy hideout on his land, torn it up, and reported the discovery to my father to whom he handed over the bottle containing a half-inch of bourbon that someone, we denied any knowledge, had been carefully collecting from throwaways for months. Of course the baseball game had to be forfeited and our team was forever known and “The No-shows.”

             A pretty sad experience? Yes, in many ways. The gang never reorganized. The next summer my father secured me a job working on a milk truck and a succession of summer, then part-time, and finally full-time employments followed until one day I awoke to be staring at the face of a grown man in the mirror. Sadly, it was not the face of a pirate. It was a face, however, honed to some degree from raging along the banks of Bayou Bartholomew, once, with a ragtag gang of fierce warriors, protecting an imaginary group of innocent women from the prospect of rapping and pillaging. So I am glad of my youth, even with that summer’s terrifying experience. Outdoor freedoms such as we enjoyed back then seem to have disappeared along with pirate gangs and second-hand baseballs.

Were there lessons learned? There was one, After enduring Misses Krebbs, and vacation bible school, there was never any doubt in our minds about the true horrors of Hell. That has always provided a little touch of religion in the night.

EPIPHANY OF THE DAY

 SCIENCE

Interesting evening. While waiting for some soup to cook I flicked on the TV at random and was too lazy to change channels.

Well let me tell you.

It was a documentary featuring grown men, some with PhDs behind their names claiming that the Jewish book of Genisis actually spelled out dependable and reliable history. Yep. The universe is not billions of years old (Old Age Paradigm “OAP”) but thousands of years old (Young Age Paradigm “YAP.)

The reason, they claim, that we base scientific claims on the OAP is that scientists are too “invested” in it to admit they are wrong. So, facts must be tortured to comply with it.

The documentary aimed solely at torturing facts to comply with the YAP.

Time about is fair play, I suppose.

Of course, there are troubling issues like the dating of rocks based on radioactive decay.

No problem, the YAP scholars say. The Creator simply altered the time frames for radioactive decay from initial to present. A million years in in the early stages of a rock was only a second or two, depending on how busy the Creator was creating the 350,000 species or so of beetles, (Order Coleotera).

That, of course, reminds one of when British evolutionary biologist and geneticist J.B.S. Haldane quipped that if a god or divine being had created all living organisms on Earth, then that creator must have an “inordinate fondness for beetles.”

Seems the dinosaurs were around until the flood, that wondrous event that created the Grand Canyon in a few months, not the ridiculously long time espoused by mainstream science (MS). The canyon and other majestic features are just remnants of the flood’s subsiding, according to their better science (BS).

I went to sleep thinking about the fact that, in my state of Arkansas, tax dollars that I have worked hard for are going to private schools that teach BS.

An Alarming Epiphany

 AN ALARMING EPIPHANY

After working my way through Steven Plinker’s “Blank Slate” and following his recommendation to “The Nurture Assumption” by Judith Rich Harris, I’ve come to the unsettling conclusion that our actions depend, for the most part, on evolutionary psychology. Exhaustive research finds no demonstrable impact by the home. It explains so much, like how the military can turn average young people into raging warriors with a few weeks of manipulation. More alarmingly, it explains why people I once knew as caring, compassionate, and thoughtful individuals now embrace a culture of hatred, violence, and cult obedience.

We don’t have to take people forward, just help them step backwards toward the evolutionary psychology of tribalism, xenophobia, and violence. Going back is a much easier task than going forward. What we call moral improvement or the advance of civilization consists of difficult and slippery reciprocal agreements:

• We won’t attack your village if you won’t attack ours.
• We'll leave your property alone if you leave ours alone.
• We won't try to kill you if you don't try to kill us.

We achieve harmony not through some quest for righteousness but through actions that move us away from our primitive nature and toward a stable environment. Unsettling, but enlightening.

 THE SECOND COMING

III

               "Dammit, I thought you was shot," said Clifton.

                "No, I think he just got scared and pulled the trigger."

                "I don't blame him," said Clifton as he watched the light in the sky. "I don't like the looks of this at all."

                "Neither do I," I said. "Do you really think it's the end of the world?"

                "Could be," he said. "Got to happen sometime. Let's head down to the Church."

                "That ‘age of accountability thing,’" I asked, "Are you sure about that?"

                "Oh yeah," he said. "Besides, we never done nothin'. Don't reckon they can get you for just plannin' to do something can they?"

                "Heck, I don't know," I said. “They can tell what you’re thinking can’t...”

                "Dang, look at the people!"  Clifton interrupted. Sure enough, with a full moon out now you could see pretty clearly. There was a file of people ahead, and every time we passed a house, another family would emerge from the front door and join the throng. They seemed to be in a trance of some kind. They walked stiff legged, like they were walking in their sleep maybe. Nobody said much and everyone just looked straight ahead except for the kids, who were taking everything in.

I began to recognize so many shapes on the road up in front of us that I guessed the whole county was turning out, white and black alike. They were all in the same group. Nobody said anything. They still just looked straight ahead.

 We stayed behind the line so we could see. We eventually got to the Centerville crossroads. At this point, the black families peeled off to the right towards their church. As they reformed, I could hear them beginning to sing. Then I could hear a shout or two. It seemed to me at the time that they almost sounded happy. Clifton and I stopped to allow the stragglers to get ahead of us. I glanced around, sort of hoping it had gone.

It was still there – if anything it was even closer.

                "Maybe it is the end of the world," I said.

                "Look at Grandma and Grandaddy!" said Clifton, pointing at Uncle T. J. and Aunt Hallie who were in a crowd about twenty feet in front of us and visible now in the.  "They still got their nightclothes on!"

                Sure enough, both were dressed like they were ready to step right into bed. We surmised that they, like everyone else had been surprised by the spectacle in the sky and, assuming the worst, had rushed out without bothering to change. As we began to recognize more of our friends and relatives, we marked a variety of dress as if the end of the world had truly caught everyone unprepared.

                "Let's hang back, I got to figure this out," said Clifton. We sat down under a tree. Then he looked at me like there was some the answer to some long-hidden problem surfacing in his mind. "By the way, who was that man come to meet Gehaw?"

                "You wouldn't believe it if I told you," I said.

                "God almighty, look a yonder!"  Clifton said, pointing to the shy where the light had appeared again, this time making a beeline for the crowd of travelers who filled the road. There was a mixed chorus of screams, halleluiah’s, prayers and singing as some dove for the ditches on either side, some grabbed one another, and some just fell to their knees to wait for the worst.

                Clifton and I just stood back behind the rest, taking in the scene.  I guess we felt a little secure because of our age. Or maybe we relaxed in the knowledge that the most important sin of our lives to this point had been curtailed before it really got under way. But I also think maybe there was a slight flash of understanding, some hint of familiarity in the movement of the light that the others, occupied as they were with the prospect of such an imminent and lasting judgment, missed. We each guessed it at the same time.

Clifton grinned. Nobody else seemed to have noticed.

"This is going to be good," he said.  "Let's get to the Church and get a good seat for it."

                "All right," I said, and we set out across the open cotton fields.

                When we got there, we didn't go inside. Instead, we went to the dark side of the building and found a good strong limb in an oak tree. From there we could see almost the whole inside. The windows were open, so we wouldn't miss a word. This was going to be some show all right.

By the time we got settled, the Church was half full and people were still streaming in. Preacher Hargraves was already in the pulpit, his face flushed red like it did when he got filled with the Spirit. His wife, Preacher's Gracie, was pounding the piano like it was the devil itself. She was one of the fattest women in the county and watching her bouncing around on that piano seat sent Clifton into a spell of laughing that I just knew was going to get us caught.

“Shut up,” I said. He just laughed harder.

                "Fall down and repent!" Preacher was saying, and several people took him right at his word. They fell right down in front of the pulpit. A couple of them began to shake and jerk uncontrollably.

This seemed to satisfy the preacher, so he continued.

"I have seen the light of salvation in the eastern sky." 

                "Gloree!" someone shouted from the pews.

                "Praise his name brother!" Preacher said.

                "Oh Lord, have mercy," said another, "I been a bad sinner and I ain't ready."

                "He hears you Brother.” Preacher was getting warmed up now.

“Who's next?"

                "Been a liar," said another.

                "Oh Lord I've stole from my neighbor."

                "Pray to Him brother"

                "Lord I'm a drunkard."

                I recognized that voice. Before I could get a good look, I heard another just as familiar.

                "Lord I just got done lyin' to you that my husband was sick when he was dead drunk instead,"

I could see the two of them, Mamma and Papa kneeling near the back with Uncle T.J. and Aunt Hallie who had just come in. I couldn't hear the rest of what they said on account of Clifton was laughing so hard.

                "Stop it," I said.  "They're going to come out here and get us."

                "I can't help it," said Clifton who had tears streaming down both cheeks and snot starting out of his nose he was laughing so hard. I wouldn't look at him now for every time I did he busted out all over again. Then I would get the giggles.  Inside they were heating up so that we could just hear snatches.

                "Stole a hog!"

                "Adultery!"

                "I ain't been to Church....."

                I can’t quite describe it. Clifton was limp by now. He laid back against the limb and just watched, sort of like he was daydreaming. The noises and the music reminded me of a carnival. Maybe like when you stand beside a carousel and watch the people glide by to the music. It all began to flow together.

                Then we heard another voice we recognized, this one clear and strong above the rest to the point where the other voices stopped and even Clifton sat up. 

                "I thank I kilt my daughter tonight."

                It got real quiet. There was no sound but for the insects.

                But Preacher didn’t seem to want things to calm down. He took over again before things got too quiet and addressed old man Ratliff from the pulpit.

"Ain't nobody gonna die ever again, brother." He added quickly, "Help me pray for this man!"

                Then the din started up again and we couldn't hear any single voice, just the crying, singing, praying and shouting of a hundred voices seeking salvation in that delta night. It was if the earth had opened and the sins of the earth were being poured out of that little country church.

Clifton and I just sat back in amazement, knowing that we would never see anything like this again. 

                "Is he in there?" Clifton whispered over to me.

                I didn’t say anything. I guess I didn’t have to. I guess it was just the way I was watching him and laughing.

                "You're lyin," he said, but when he looked and saw I wasn't I could tell that he was as shocked as I had been although being older than I was and all, he didn't shock as easily.

                "I'll be damned," he said.

That seemed to end it for him.  "You reckon we ought to stop them?"

                "Guess somebody ought to so's they can go home,"

We slid off our perch and walked around to the door of the Church. Actually, they had begun to wear down a little themselves, having gone at it for nearly an hour. They heard us open the door and, all at one time, looked around at us. Here stood two young boys instead of the heavenly hosts that they had expected so earnestly. You could see surprise as if it had been painted on their faces.

The noise had died away like a summer storm does when it moves off into the east.  Even Preacher's Gracie quit playing the piano. She just leaned over against it and you could hear her breathing real heavy above everything else.

The preacher was the only one who seemed to want to keep it going after we walked in.

                "You boys better get in here and pray," he said. "Ain't you seen the Lord on his way here?"

                "Where?" said Clifton from the back of the room.

                "In the sky, boy. Ain't you seed it?"

                "I seen a buzzard with a fire tied to its leg," said Clifton.  "That's all I saw."

                "A what?" said a voice in the crowd.

                "A buzzard," said Clifton. He looked toward the pulpit. "If you can't tell the difference between a buzzard and the Lord coming, you ain't much of a preacher."

                "Oh lord.  Hush Clifton," said Aunt Hallie.

                There was this funny sound like everyone in the room drew a quick breath at once.  They stared at us like they expected us to bust into flames. I expected them to start up again with us at the center of things.

                Then I think the truth must have pierced that room for I heard Uncle T.J. "You hush woman. By God I thank the boy's right."

                The room got quiet again.

                "I thought there was something funny about it myself," said a voice I didn't recognize."

                "Are ya'll goin to listen to a couple of sneakin' kids over a man of God?" Preacher was pleading now but he knew it was over, too. Then I heard Papa.

                "I wanna go home and go to bed, Mamma."

                “Sure you do,” she said quietly. “Let’s get on back to the house.

                We moved away from the door as she and Papa walked out. She didn’t say anything to me but gave me a look that said plenty. The main thing it said was to never mention this again. I watched them disappear into the night. She had her arm around Papa and was leading him home like he was her son instead of her husband.

                Then it all began to break up.  It was pretty plain that no one wanted to talk to anyone else, didn't want to see anyone else really - just wanted to get out of there and without once raising their eyes to meet anyone else's. Preacher eased toward the back door with his Gracie behind him. Clifton and I faded back into the darkness and waited in the hope that something else of a lively nature might occur. But it was all over.

                Everyone has realized by now that it wasn't the second coming that they saw in the southern sky that night but just a coal-oil soaked rag set fire and tied to a buzzard's leg by, as it turned out, Fish Johnson who thought it was wondrously funny until they almost sent him to the penitentiary over it.  We all walked home a little thoughtful, though, having been forced by the events to confront our own personal sins, or, in the case of Clifton and me, our intended sins.

                As I said at first, nobody ever mentioned it much. I never talked about it at all as long as Mama and Papa were alive. He, by the way, never touched whiskey again. Preacher disappeared the next day. He left Gracie and she taught piano lessons for a while and then disappeared herself. The harrow handle that Gehaw ran into when the shotgun went off was, we found out later, bent over even with the ground and people used to walk by the house just to look at it.  She wasn't dead at all but was all right after a few days and back with the mules.

Of course we never did see her take a bath, or even want to, really, after that night. We never mentioned it again. I never even told Clifton what her real name was, not that he would have had any interest.

                Clifton and I had more escapades but I never saw him with as much spirit. In fact, I think he sort of lowered his sights after that. It was as if he knew he had been part of something big, maybe even bigger than Hog Eye Bend itself for that matter. We might find it dangerous to try to top it.

                I've thought about Clifton a thousand times, I guess, particularly as he looked that night going home, his hands stuck in the pockets of his overalls and his feet shuffling along and the dust of the delta rising in the full moon's light behind him to form a diamond-like mist that seemed to want to hang there so it, too, could glory in the moment.  It was a grand one for him and I'm glad he had it before the Japs got him.