|
Disruptive
Gale Acuff One day after I die and when I’m dead I’ll rise again, they say so at Sunday School where I guess I believe in God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost or most of the time especially if I’ve eaten breakfast but sometimes I get up late and have to hurry and make it there just in time, it’s about a half-mile walk and I can’t really run in my only good shoes though I can walk pretty fast and I can’t count on Father or Mother to drive me there because they sleep late Sundays and by the time one or the other of them gets behind the wheel I could’ve walked to church and back again about a dozen times but like I say at Sunday School I’m told that I’ll rise again though of course I have to die but I guess that’s the price you’ve got to pay for the Resurrection and not only the Resurrection but for Heaven, too, there’s no Good Place to dwell forever in the House of the Lord unless you lose your life, I think ironic is what that is but anyway Amen, come Lord Jesus and all that though I think that’s the Rapture when Jesus finally returns and dead folks, their souls anyway, zoom toward Heaven but meet somewhere in the sky first, the clouds maybe and I forget what’s next but at some churches, what the Hell, as soon as you’re dead, they say, your soul wakes up in Heaven and has to wait for the judgement of God and if you’ve been mostly good, I guess more good than bad, you can stay and stay and stay, that’s called immortality, but if you’re a creep you go to Hell and burn and burn and sometimes I wonder where you go when you’re 50-50, my Catholic friends at regular school believe in Limbo, the place, not the dance, and certainly not the stick you’ve got to dance under to get to the other side but I’m not sure if that’s not what I’m talking about, now I’m confused but anyway no matter how I come back to life the first thing I’ll do is track down my old dog, if there’s a dog- Heaven it’s got to be near, I taught him more tricks than a New Orleans prostitute, whatever that means, but New Orleans is a city and a prostitute will go to Hell faster than you can say Not so fast, boy, I could get paid for doing this, sometimes I’ve got my ear to my parents’ bedroom door and of course it’s locked, the door I mean, not my ear, and I hear things and that’s spying and a violation of privacy, I watch TV, but I can’t help myself, I’m only 10 and lonely and in love with Miss Hooker, my Sunday School teacher, one day we’ll be Mr. and Mrs. and have our own bedroom, too, and a few babies when we learn how to manufacture ’em and if they listen at the keyhole of our locked bedroom door I might get my squirt gun and shoot their skulls full of water like at the swimming pool my ears fill up, it’s like living water but a lot less holy and then open the door on them and watch them bob their heads up and down and from side to side to shake the water out, let that be a lesson to them whatever it is but come to think of it it’ll have to be a big- ass keyhole for more than one ear to park itself in front of, don’t think I don’t think about these things but if I die right then and wake up dead in Heaven I’ll have lots to explain, I wasn’t suffering those little children to come unto me in the right way and I’ll bet there’s nothing gets you Hell faster than scaring children, like Miss Hooker scared me today, swearing that God sees every little thing I do good or bad and especially bad and an angel makes a note of ’em and when you die and God can’t hunt you down in the Book of Life you’re damned forever and she really did say damned and I was so affected I shouted Hallelujah so she put me in the closet, I was disruptive, she said, and when she opened it again at the end of class I came forth something like Lazarus though not so dead but for a moment I couldn’t see a damn thing and when I finally did focus on Miss Hooker I told her right then and there how much I love her and that one day we’ll be married. Good God she cried. |
|
Photo by K. Mitch Hodge
|