I Love You, Miss Huddleston
Page 7
The carnival no longer comes to Danville. The interests of business eventually overrode the interests of fun, and Poor Jack was sent packing. The blame was placed on the inability of firefighters to reach a potential blaze on the town square with the carnival rides in the way, but I suspect it became impractical to shut down the town square businesses for a week when there was money to be made. It was not unlike the loss of our Sabbath rest, our one week each year to spin circles in the sky, seated on the Ferris wheel, rising high above the earth, the stars shimmering overhead, just waiting to be grabbed.
Chapter 10
My Dalliance With Religion
We attended church at St. Mary’s Catholic Church, on the west edge of town, across from Johnston’s IGA, next to Pleas Lilly’s gas station. Father McLaughlin was our priest, a kind but tedious man who was easily scandalized. On Saturday afternoons, I would stand in line, waiting my turn in the confessional, the silence punctuated by occasional outbursts from Father’s booth—“You did what?…With whom?…Oh, for Pete’s sake!”
No matter what anyone did, the penance was always the same—three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers. As far as the Church was concerned, murdering your parents required no more contrition than violating any of the obscure tenets of the Roman Catholic Church.
“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It has been seven days since my last confession. Since then, I ate a hamburger on Friday, then killed my parents and buried them in the basement.”
“You ate meat on Friday? For Pete’s sake! That’ll be three Hail Marys and two Our Fathers.”
This verified what my Protestant friends said, that Catholics were weak on sin. In my mind, this was a selling point of Catholicism and one we Catholics should have used to our advantage. Sinning in the Protestant church got you sent to hell, while sinning in the Catholic church got you sent to purgatory, which wasn’t torture, but neither was it enjoyable, kind of like flying coach. But just as soon as your loved ones lit a candle for you, the priest would say a prayer and you were upgraded to first class. So far as I could tell, Catholicism was the better deal.
One of my earliest memories of being Catholic was my first communion. I suspected it was a big deal because my grandmother rode the Greyhound bus up from Vincennes and my mom bought me a new white shirt from Beecham’s Menswear on the square. Father McLaughlin prayed over a plate of thin, pale wafers, then said they’d been turned into the body of Christ, but I had my doubts. Mr. Bolton lived down the street from us and dabbled in magic. He could turn a handkerchief into a flower, and it looked like a flower. Father McLaughlin wasn’t nearly as adept at magic. His wafers looked nothing like Jesus.
First communion was followed by several years of intense instruction—Sister Mary John demonstrating, by the clever use of flannelgraphs, how Roman Catholicism was the One True Church. This culminated in my confirmation at the age of thirteen, when the bishop drove out from the city in a Cadillac and laid his hands on me. Among the Catholic clergy, car ownership hinged on one’s status. Or so my brother Glenn told me. The Pope, he said, drove a Mercedes, the bishops drove Cadillacs. Father McLaughlin drove a Ford Pinto.
According to Sister Mary John, I was supposed to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit, but I felt the same way I always felt in church—a cluelessness tinged with a vague fear. Sister Mary John had shown us a flannelgraph of the apostles receiving the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost. They looked quite happy, except that their hair was on fire. Confirmation, the sister explained, was the pinnacle of our spiritual lives, when the power of the Holy Spirit would come upon us. But I was suspicious of a religion whose high point was the igniting of one’s head, and my enthusiasm for church, which had never been great, began to fade.
Being burnt to a turn for the sake of Jesus seemed consistent with everything I knew about the Catholics, who seemed captivated by the idea of suffering for one’s faith. Lining the sanctuary were the Stations of the Cross, a travelogue of sorts, fourteen pictures of Jesus getting seriously whupped on by the Romans. I would study them during Mass, wondering what Jesus had done to make the Italians so mad.
Jesus, according to Sister Mary John, was the first Catholic, and thereby suffered for his faith, just as we, his servants, endure persecution. Our town had an abundance of Puritans, whose sole ambition was to rescue us from the clutches of the Pope and deliver us to the safe waters of Protestantism. We were a pathetic band of believers and seemed to invite harassment, as if God had taped a Kick Me sign to our backs.
Chick was the first in our family to leave the One True Church. When she turned seventeen, in a fit of teenage rebellion, she joined with the Baptists, who promptly dunked her, her Catholic baptism being not only insufficient, but heretical. My mother was appalled, but I was secretly delighted, privately urging my sister to expand the parameters of religious liberty so I could one day escape the clutches of organized religion myself.
The Sunday morning of my sister’s second baptism, my mother went to the Catholic church to pray for her, while my father and I accompanied Chick to the Baptist church to watch. The church was packed, deliverance from Catholicism being rare. Before plunging my sister beneath the waters, the pastor announced that Jeanne (for a moment, I wondered who he was talking about since we’d always called my sister Chick) had grown up in the Catholic Church, but had decided to become a Christian, to which the great throng responded with “Amen!” and “Praise the Lord!” I had been under the impression Catholics were Christian, but found myself swept along with the tide and thought of getting dunked myself, just in case the Baptists were right.
The pastor pushed my sister under until her legs began to kick, then raised her up to a new, albeit damp, life, handed her a pink bath towel, and had everyone come forward to shake her hand and congratulate her for being saved. We went downstairs and sealed her fate over meat loaf, green beans, and sweet iced tea—delicious food that helped my father and me feel more charitable toward the Baptists.
The Baptist church was strategically located across the street from the jail. The Baptists’ stained glass window showed Jesus extending his hand toward the inmates. The prisoners were welcome in the Baptist church, and any of the town’s other churches, so long as they cleaned up their act, got a haircut, found a job, served on a committee, and voted Republican.
While there were theological differences among the churches in our town, we were of one mind when it came to politics. God was a Republican, the Democrats being soft on communism. The Sunday Father McLaughlin read from the second chapter of Acts how the early church “sold their possessions and goods and distributed the proceeds to all, as any had need,” he skated perilously close to communism. Mr. Vaughn rose to his feet, walked out, and joined the Baptists.
This branded Father McLaughlin as a radical, which was confirmed when he booted Mrs. Gregg off the organ and replaced her with a guitarist. The next week he was seen at Johnston’s IGA wearing blue jeans, and his fate was sealed. He was gone the next month, transferred to the city to live with the Democrats. A Father Coffin, who was 110 years old and aptly named, took his place.
Since I had been visited by the Holy Spirit at my confirmation, I was eligible to serve as an altar boy, which involved my wearing a long black dress and holding a golden plate underneath the chin of whomever was receiving communion in the event Father Coffin accidentally dropped Jesus’ body. The plate had a wooden handle and a sharp edge, which could be used to chop unsuspecting communicants in the Adam’s apple just as Father was placing the wafer on their tongues. It paid to stay on the good side of altar boys.
The Adam’s apple, Sister Mary John told us, was God’s way of reminding us we’d been born into sin, glaring proof of Adam’s disobedience. We boys looked in the mirror and there it was—a chunk of forbidden fruit stuck in our throats, compliments of our ancestors, who’d had a good gig going, lounging around buck naked in a beautiful garden, then had blown it all to hell, and we were still paying for it, all these years later.
All the churches in our town, in addition to the Republican question, were in accord on the matter of original sin. We were born into sin, doomed to hell from the start, our very presence an affront to God, according to Sister Mary John. Larry Lawson had the largest Adam’s apple in town, a tell-tale sign of his sinful nature. He drank, cussed, and cheated on his wife. Mildred Havens volunteered at the hospital, fed stray animals, and gave most of her money to orphans. But both Larry and Mildred were headed to hell in a handbasket, and there was nothing they could do about it except throw themselves on the mercy of God. It made no sense to me, but Sister Mary John said the ways of the Lord were mysterious and not to be questioned.
Still, I had many questions. I wondered why women couldn’t be priests. So far as I could tell, the main difference between men and women was the plumbing. Why did being a priest require a winkie? And let’s say I died while saving someone’s life on my way to confession. Would God still send me to hell for having unconfessed sin, or would I get credit for saving a life? I asked Sister Mary John, but she wasn’t sure. That was another question I had. Why was a woman named John?
My biggest question about church was why I had to go. When I asked my mother, she said, “Because I said so, that’s why.”
Because I said so was her reason for why I should do everything I didn’t want to do, every time I didn’t want to do it.
What I mostly didn’t want to do was go to church, which I found excruciating. I wasn’t even sure I believed in God, my ardent prayers for a girlfriend having gone unanswered. If there was a God, he was indifferent about my love life. I spoke about it with Peanut, who told me each denomination had its own god and that I’d had the bad luck of belonging to a church whose god didn’t care for sex. The priests couldn’t have it, the nuns couldn’t have it, and the rest of us could only have it when we wanted children, otherwise we had to confine our affections to a brief handshake.*
For a religion opposed to sex, we Catholics seemed taken with it. We had a large cross behind the altar, from which Jesus hung in his skivvies. At first, I thought this was a peculiarity of St. Mary’s, but Jesus was dressed that way in every Catholic church I ever attended. It didn’t stop there. The little old Catholic ladies carried pictures in their purses of Jesus darn near naked, and even wore him on prayer beads around their necks. When I had my confirmation, the priest gave me a rosary from which an undressed Jesus dangled. I hid it under my mattress so my friends wouldn’t see it and think I played on the pink team.
Believing suffering drew us closer to God, the Catholics made worship as miserable as possible. Our church had no air-conditioning, and the windows didn’t open. Each Sunday in the summer, we’d lose several congregants to heat exhaustion. They would collapse, their heads thumping the floor like watermelons. The ushers would hurry forward, grab the wretched souls by their ankles, and drag them from the sanctuary. Father Coffin never missed a beat, forging ahead with Mass.
According to Sister Mary John, persistence in the face of difficulty was the chief difference between Protestants and Catholics. We were willing to endure hardship for the sake of Jesus, while Protestants basked in air-conditioning listening to their ministers prattle on about God’s love. “They’re cool now, but it’s going to be hot for them later,” she said, showing us Methodists roasting on flannelgraph flames.
Sister Mary John was well versed on the finer points of Catholic theology, addressing a range of topics ranging from dietary laws—no meat on Fridays, but you could drink all the beer you wanted—to the proper hand placement while praying. “Your hands,” she said, “should be placed together, palm to palm, your fingertips pointing toward God in heaven. Do not pray with your fingers pointing downward, lest you inadvertently pray to Satan.”
Praying to Beelzebub! This filled me with alarm. I worried I had accidentally prayed to Ol’ Scratch. From what Sister Mary John had told us about the devil, it was just like him to trick us into praying to him. He was sneaky that way. Religious life was a precarious one, not unlike a minefield, one misstep from obliteration. One minute we were saying Hail Marys and eating the body of Christ, the next moment we were praying to the Prince of Darkness, headed straight to hell on greased skids.
While we were opposed to Satan, we did admire his work ethic. He labored around the clock, leading us astray with card playing, dancing, movie going, miniskirts, rock and roll, sex education, birth control, and wealth. Of those temptations, we knew wealth to be the most pernicious. “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God,” Jesus told the rich young ruler. The rich young rulers attended the Episcopal church on Washington Street, where they were soft on sin.
Sitting in the Catholic church on Sunday mornings, scrunched between my brothers Glenn and David, their bony elbows digging into my sides, the pew hard against my backbone, Glenn surreptitiously wetting his finger and sticking it in my ear, I would study the Stations of the Cross, thanking Jesus for suffering so I could go to heaven and live with my family forever, except for my sister, who’d left the One True Church and was at that moment sitting on a padded pew, her ears being tickled by the soft gospel of Protestantism. Father Coffin would drone on in Latin, his gentle cadence interrupted by the sound of heads striking the floor with a hollow wallop, which was, in those Catholic years, the sound of faith to me.
Chapter 11
Halloween
Of all the holidays, Halloween was my favorite, topping even Christmas, where some sort of reciprocity was expected. Halloween was a one-way street, all of its riches headed my way. I wasn’t sure when Halloween had been invented, but knew it had to have been dreamed up by a kid. No adult in his or her right mind would ever have said, “Let’s have kids go door-to-door, and we’ll give them candy, and if we don’t, they can soap our windows and throw toilet paper in our trees. It’ll be fun.”
My early Halloweens were perilous affairs. I dressed as a ghost, a bedsheet draped over me. We were too poor to waste a sheet, so my mother never cut holes for my eyes. My brother Glenn was supposed to hold my hand and guide me from house to house, but as soon as we turned the corner and were out of my parents’ eyesight, he would launch out on his own and leave me to my own devices. I would stumble from house to house, tripping over curbs, running into cars, smacking headlong into trees, and spilling my candy. The other children would swarm over me, like hyenas on a downed gazelle, fighting over my Tootsie Rolls and Smarties.
Nevertheless, I enjoyed the idea of Halloween and sensed its potential. Within a few years I had ditched the sheet, dressed as a bum wearing my grandfather’s old clothes, and with all my faculties restored was making out like a bandit.
At the age of thirteen I believed I had reached my Halloween zenith, but hadn’t counted on Peanut and his near-genius capacity for candy collection.
“You’re small potatoes,” he told me a few weeks before Halloween. “You get dressed up as a bum, which is fine, but you only go one night. Me, I trick-or-treat five nights. Two nights before, the night of, and two nights after.”
I stared at him, stunned.
“I get enough candy at Halloween to last all the way to Easter,” he said. “I get enough candy at Easter to last me through to Halloween. I never spend money on candy.”
It was true. By then I had known Peanut three years and had never seen him buy even the smallest piece of candy.
As stunning as that achievement was, he would surpass even his wildest aspirations in 1974, when he and I, after weeks of careful planning, collected candy from every house in Danville, except the Bryants’ who were Jehovah’s Witnesses and didn’t celebrate Halloween.
I wish I coul
d claim credit for this thunderbolt inspiration, but it was Peanut’s idea, and his alone.
We’d ridden our bicycles to Baker’s Hardware to look at the Miss Hardware calendar, our usual Saturday morning pursuit, when Peanut spied a new map of Danville hanging on the wall above Rawleigh Baker’s desk.
“Got some more if you want one,” Rawleigh Baker said. “Just had some printed up. Here, give one to your folks.” He handed us each a town map.
We rode home and studied the maps on my front porch, marking the points of interest—Denise Turner’s house, the Dairy Queen, the house of the lady on Mulberry Street who walked around naked and didn’t close her blinds.
Peanut peered at the map. “You know,” he said. “I never noticed this before, but if a fella wanted to, he could divide this town into pieces.”
He pulled a stubby pencil from his shirt pocket and with several strokes quickly divided the town into five equal sections.
“So what,” I said.
“And if we rode our bikes instead of walked, I bet we could hit every house in a section in one night. Do that five nights in a row, and we could trick-or-treat at every house in Danville.”
It was an idea startling in its audacity.
My father served on the town board. We asked him how many houses there were in Danville.
“A dab under one thousand,” he said, without hesitation.
Whether it involved bug spray or civic affairs, my father was a numbers man without peer.
The trick-or-treating protocol permitted a three hour window of solicitation, from six to nine PM. Peanut did the math is his head. “One thousand homes divided by five equals two hundred homes, divided by one-hundred-and-eighty minutes equals a little over one minute per house.
“Can’t use paper bags,” he continued. “They’ll bust. Too much candy. We’ll have to use burlap bags.”