The Graceland Tales

by Donna D. Prescott

  SEAN THE DEACON: What a different take on ‘One Night of Sin.’ The earth certainly didn’t stand still that night. (ERNEST grins. KIRK THE EVANGELIST turns off his video game and scowls.)

  ERNEST: Felicia’s long hours and dedication finally paid off. The shop owner set a retirement date. Frank got the paperwork in order so that Felicia and Peter could buy into the business. After the deal closed, Felicia was off to the Dallas Market, her first time solo. Since she was near Frank’s house, she dropped in afterward. She was on cloud nine, as she’d had a very successful trip, and her transition to business owner seemed to be going smoothly. She asked Frank to see the tacky dotted ceramic cat he bought. He said, ‘Oh, when I went back and looked at it more closely, I changed my mind. I visited Peter while you were in Dallas—didn’t he tell you—and paid the money back to him.’ She said, no, he didn’t mention it.

  (JOHN THE PASTOR and his wife come back into the coach carrying drink cups and take their seats.)

  Felicia returned home, jubilant. She had achieved her dream, right? Now they could afford for Peter to start on his. That night over a nice dinner, Felicia told Peter all about her adventures and successes at market. Afterwards, they headed straight to the bedroom for dessert. Felicia had quite the surprise when she unbuttoned Peter’s shirt to find him wearing a silky bra. He lowered his pants to reveal the matching thong. That night, they had a rollicking good time, several times. During one break in the action, Felicia mentioned to Peter that she’d visited Frank recently and he told her that he’d repaid to Peter a loan from her. Peter looked like a repentant child and said, yes, he forgot to tell her in all the excitement.

  (JOHN heaves a sigh and pulls out his Bible.)

  ‘I’ll have to take it out of your allowance,’ she said, giggling. He said, ‘Starting tonight? I’ll pay you back—a tally on my tail.’ And they engaged in another session of lovemaking.’

  “Ernest’s tale sounds like Chaucer’s Shipman’s Tale, except the wife borrows money from a monk who borrows from the husband. It’s almost like a modern-day Ponzi scheme,” I report.

  Ernest sends me a glower filled with daggers. “This ain’t a classroom, darlin’. Nobody asked for your teaching.”

  “I am simply offering a little background that I thought would be interesting. The Techie dressed in chain mail, King Arthur, wrote his thesis on The Canterbury Tales. He can back me up.”

  King Arthur responds, the metallic sound of chain mail creaking as he turns towards me. “Sorry, Donna, you’re on your own here.”

  Kirk stands up and slaps the back of his seat. “This is too much. Infidelity! Homosexuality! Lack of morals! I’ve had enough!” John looks up from his Bible. “Hector told of fornication. Bella told of an unholy marriage. Ernest told of unspeakable actions in holy matrimony. Adultery! It’s these kinds of sins that are causing climate change and gun violence and racial unrest in this country. The Lord is sending his judgment down. I’m going to speak next about truth and righteousness and repentance!” His voice rises and falls with his words as if he were singing an opera instead of pontificating.

  “Amen, brother!” shouts Dwight the Lay Minister. Joyce removes her sleep mask.

  After the drama of Bella, no one seems to feel like arguing. I know I don’t, especially after Ernest impugned my good intentions just now. This might be a good time for a nap. Instead of returning to his seat at the back of the coach, Ernest takes the empty aisle seat beside Bella.

  Theresa says, “OK, preacher, fair enough. We’ll let you have your say.” John unbuttons his cuffs and rolls them up a few times. He and his wife look distinctly uncomfortable. Blanche and Franklin turn their attentions to each other again. Kirk pulls a folded newspaper from his satchel and moves to the center of the coach. As he begins to speak, Hector and Sandra come back in, ease around him, and take their seats across from Senator Pam and Adam, with Hector taking the window seat. “Kirk’s sermonizing,” Adam whispers to them. Sandra pulls out the Cosmo from her bag and starts flipping through. Adam puts in his ear buds. Hector, his set lists in the seatback pocket near Bella, pulls up his foot rest and closes his eyes. The train stops briefly at a small town and slowly gains speed as it slices through the darkness.

  Kirk

  THE EVANGELIST’S TALE

  KIRK: (brandishing the paper) For a text, all’s I need is this newspaper here. It’s a record of the sins and misdeeds—the corruptions—in our society today. We continue to move away from living godly lives. Instead, we wallow in the depravity of daily lives guided by Satan and the Seven Deadly Sins: pride, envy, anger, sloth, gluttony, lust, and greed. (He slaps the newspaper against the back of the empty seat in front of him as he names each sin.) It’s all right here.

  KING ARTHUR: Whoa, dude, you’re really harshing our mellow. Don’t go all Parson’s Tale on us. (Many pilgrims seem confused.)

  DONNA THE NARRATOR: For those who are interested, Chaucer’s Parson delivers a sermon on the Seven Deadly Sins. Many readers of Chaucer skip it entirely.

  ERNEST: Good for them, darlin’. But you know we’re on vacation here, not in school, like I just said. Put a lid on the teaching.

  KIRK: It just goes to show that that mankind has not been able to free himself from sin. Mankind today is in especially dire need of salvation. I’ll start with the sin of pride. Pride—in the form of vanity, conceitedness, self-importance, arrogance—leads us down a primrose path to damnation. Proverbs 16:18 tells us ‘Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.’

  Look at the case of Samson in the Old Testament. His pride in his long hair led to his downfall. His selfishness, obsession with his own well-being, allowed a woman—a woman, mind you—to take advantage of him and bring him down low. (KIRK shakes his newspaper.) Samson’s situation is not much different from the hubris of athletes and politicians today. (He opens his newspaper.) Just look. A state politician resigns his office because he didn’t think he’d get caught at his transgressions. A professional athlete suspended from his team for iniquitous behavior off the field. And these are the very men who should be role models, shining examples of godliness, for our young folks. I can open this paper to any section—any section—and find examples of politicians and athletes and even people in your neighborhood—your very own neighbors—brought low by the sin of pride—ego, narcissism.

  RENE/E THE TRANSGENDER WOMAN: But pride can also be good. I’m very proud of myself for making the life changes that I’ve made. (KIRK’S face, already pink from his rhetorical exertions, moves closer to red.) I’m proud to say that I’ve participated in any number of gay pride parades and other such LGBT activities and will continue to do so. (RENE/E stands and exits in the direction of the bar car. It looks like it takes all of KIRK’S self-control not to follow RENE/E and emphasize the error of her ways. DWIGHT issues a roaring brook into his handkerchief. ERNEST leans into the aisle to glare back at DWIGHT.)

  JOYCE: (stands, approaches KIRK, swaying with the rocking of the train, and pats his arm) The Lord will deal with those people in his own way and in his own time, honey. (He takes a breath and shakes his newspaper again. JOYCE returns to her seat.)

  KIRK: Pride can lead to the next deadly sin, envy. I read stories in the paper about teens robbing other teens because they want shoes or other items of clothing or electronics or bicycles. Think how much money Americans spend just trying to keeping up with Joneses, just trying to keep up. How many of you here have looked out your front window and coveted—lusted after—your neighbor’s new car? The tenth commandment instructs us to not covet our neighbor’s possessions. This is a rule from above set in stone, not just a suggestion that we can choose to follow or not. And we don’t just envy possessions. We envy accomplishments, achievements. Sometimes, we envy what others have so that we become angry if we can’t get a new boat like our neighbors have or if our co-worker gets a promotion and we don’t. Romans 6:23 instructs us ‘For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Je
sus Christ our Lord.’ (He shakes the newspaper again.) The sin of anger leads people astray. Here’s an article about an adult daughter who was angry at her parents because she’d been living with them but they kicked her out of their house so she killed her father. Murdered her own father.

  ELAINE A TECHIE: I heard about that case. The daughter had mental problems.

  KIRK: But she let her anger overcome her duty to her father. God could have healed her. Trust in God could have helped her overcome her anger and her laziness, which is the next sin.

  KING ARTHUR: Dude, you clearly don’t understand mental illness.

  KIRK: But those who trust in God get His healing power. Too many people in today’s world don’t want to work. They want to sit back and indulge in the vanities of the flesh while others do the work, live off the labors of others. I go to the store and see poor people using welfare dollars to buy lottery tickets and liquor while honest, hard-working folks like you and me pay for this laziness out of our hard-earned tax dollars.

  JOHN: (quietly) I’m not like you, pastor. It is not my job to condemn, but to nurture and help. (Either KIRK doesn’t hear JOHN’S comment or chooses to ignore it.)

  KIRK: And then comes gluttony. Obesity has become a world-wide epidemic. People have lost their self-control, become gluttons.

  JOYCE: When I go to the grocery, I see more and more—um, overweight—people riding in those motorized carts because they’re too fat to walk around. And then they load their carts with chips and macaroni and other fattening stuff.

  KIRK: I read in the paper recently where the world’s fattest woman died. She weighed over one thousand pounds. That’s half a ton. I’ve read cases of people so heavy that in order to be taken from their bedrooms for medical emergencies, the responders had to widen the doorways, break them wide open.

  LANCE-BOT A TECHIE: You know what my grandfather said? Big women need love, too. (The male techies guffaw.)

  SENATOR PAM: Many of these overweight people have medical issues, such as thyroid problems, so their weight issues don’t directly relate to gluttony. Many also live in food deserts, so even if they want to eat healthy food, they don’t have easy access.

  JOHN: Perhaps some eat as a way of dealing with lives that seem hopeless. It’s a difficult situation that you can’t simply blame on gluttony. I’ve seen some pretty downtrodden people in my ministry who’ve lost hope. It’s our job to raise them up through God, not to condemn them. (JOHN’S WIFE pats his arm.)

  JOHN’S WIFE: We need to feed their stomachs so we can better minister to their souls. (KIRK looks at JOHN.)

  KIRK: Yes, pastor, and here’s some food for their souls. Galatians chapter 6, verse 8: ‘For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.’ Sinners and believers reap what they sow, punishment or reward. Lust, the next Deadly Sin, lust of the loins as well as lust of other’s possessions—lust drags you down to hell. The ninth commandment instructs us not to covet, lust after, our neighbor’s wife. So we’re not just dealing with envy in this instance, but sexual lust, too.

  SEAN THE DEACON: When he was president, Jimmy Carter admitted to lusting in his heart and he’s one of the most stand-up guys in public life. He and Roslyn have been married forever and have done all kinds of good for society.

  KIRK: Jimmy Carter is a man of God and has his own personal relationship with God. I am speaking to you here of the multitude of sinners in America and the world. I will end with the last sin, greed. People in today’s world can’t get enough. (Once more, KIRK shakes his newspaper.) Just today, I read of a greedy lawyer who bilked some clients out of millions of dollars. He said they had more money than they needed so why shouldn’t he take some. Look back in history to the Enron scandal. Look at the e-mail schemes involving Nigerian princes or pyramid schemes going around on social media. People in positions of trust rob blind those who trust them. These victims are frequently old people or other vulnerable groups. Greed! As time passes, our world becomes more corrupt. What has happened to today’s generation? Kids today are not like they were in my time. It’s the Seven Deadly Sins that is bringing our world to wrack and ruin.

  Sandra the Senator’s Daughter looks up and puts away her magazine. Kirk pauses as the train whistle sounds. He lurches to his seat, fumbles around, and finds a disposable cup. He quickly tips it up to his mouth to empty it. Joyce finds a tissue and hands it to him. He swabs the inside of the cup.

  Kirk continues as he lists up the aisle, “Friends, our ministry, the Spirit of Love Church, which Joyce told you about earlier, reaches out to sinners and tries to help them realize the error of their ways and how to mend them. Joyce spoke of the good work that our church does. I’m going to pass this cup around in the hopes that you can dig deep into your pockets and give a little something—pocket change or maybe a few dollar bills—to support our ministry.”

  He offers the cup first to Ernest the Businessman. Ernest stands and slaps it away. “You got to be kidding me. I don’t believe in God but I don’t not believe in God, either. Pastor, your little speech here certainly hasn’t inspired to me think of following your God.” Kirk stands, stunned, a half-grin frozen on his face.

  Sir Kay a Techie stands. “Dude, I was raised Buddhist. Buddhists believe in living peacefully and doing no harm. I’m sure that Kirk didn’t mean to offend you. You need to chill.”

  ASCII-me a Techie, seated next to Sir Kay, stands, too. “I follow Taoism and just go with the flow. Both of you need to find your flow. After all, isn’t that what America is about?”

  Gita the Cook stands, too. “Joyce, as you know, I am Hindu. We believe that each human has her own duty to do good over her lifetime. Please, Kirk sit in your seat and think of the good you do with your wife at your church. We on this trip have our own ways of thinking and believing. But thank you for sharing yours.” Kirk and Ernest both look down. Ernest whispers to Bella and they exit towards the bar car while Kirk returns to his seat near the back of the coach, switching places with Joyce so he is by the window. Joyce puts her arm around Kirk and gives him a few gentle pats.

  Sandra

  THE SENATOR’S DAUGHTER SPEAKS

  Sandra stands up just as Linda the Humanitarian Worker and Alice the Widow slip back into the coach after their mother/daughter reunion. Alice stops briefly to gather her possessions and follows Linda back to her seat across from John and his wife. “What Kirk said about today’s generation, like, not being as good as kids in his generation is just not true. In the Fifth Century BCE, Socrates accused the younger generation of having bad manners, of disrespecting authority and their elders, and of being argumentative, among other criticisms. Kirk would probably have leveled those same charges if he had been more specific in his condemnation of today’s youth—certainly a case of as much as things change, they remain the same. The world I grew up in is very different from, like, the world today’s adults grew up in. Like, I grew up with highly orchestrated play dates instead of riding my bike around the neighborhood and playing outside until supper time. Part of the problem is with two-career families, where both parents work all day so kids are sent to daycare.” Senator Pam looks up from her laptop.

  Blanche the Lawyer says, “As you said, Sandra, the world has changed. People today have different priorities in life. In some households, both parents work because they have fulfilling careers. In some households, both parents work out of economic necessity. Not every parent has a choice of whether to work or stay home with the kids. I’ve seen all kinds of custody arrangements that spring from unpleasant necessities in my practice.”

  “True enough,” says Sandra. “But parents of today’s generation have made their children feel entitled. Many parents, like, give their kids anything they ask for, phones, clothes, cars, whatever. Bad actions have no consequences. Look at that kid in Texas whose mom helped him escape to Mexico after he drove drunk and killed all those people.”

  “Yes, the aff
luenza guy. Imagine it being a disease to grow up privileged with no sense of moral responsibility,” says Linda the Humanitarian Worker.

  “Like, many of us have not been taught personal responsibility. Mom or Dad will cover up any bad behavior, pay for the damages, so how are we supposed to learn to cope with the world? This generation is facing its own challenges, chasing its own dreams.” Sandra tugs on her cover-up. Rose the Waitress emits a snore and mumbles something. Rene/e reenters and takes the seat next to Jack the Immigrant Merchant.

  “Think of the positive changes for today’s generation, though,” says Sean the Deacon, giving Hubert the Bishop a sideways glance. “Even if they can’t ride their bikes until supper time, kids today are safer regarding sexual predation.”

  “Yes, but also think of the challenges kids face with drugs. The opioid crisis is, like, out of control. When LSD proved problematic in the 1960s, the problem was addressed fairly quickly. Not much effectively has been done to address the opioid crisis. My friends are dropping like flies from overdoses.” Senator Pam closes her laptop, puts up her tray table, and stows her laptop in the seatback pocket.

  “Maybe the problem with LSD was addressed, but other drugs filled in the void—heroin, cocaine. Look at the talented people who have ODed—Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin, John Belushi, and countless others,” says Franklin the Real Estate Magnate.