When the world ends I guess I will, too, but
my
Sunday School teacher says nix, the Earth
will
end but not the world, the world's the Earth
plus
at least one human being and I
guess
I don't doubt her, she's 25 and
I'm
only 10 and she and her husband
just
opened their second carwash in town
so
they must be making money and that's
good
if you're not selfish with it like they\
swear
at church and wouldn't it be funny
if
I was Judas, or is that were, and
got
resurrected and showed up with my
thirty
pieces of silver and plunked it
down
when the collection plate rolled my way
like the Baptist's head? I'd pay to see that.
One
day when I'm dead you'll be sorry I
tell
my Sunday School teacher, who asks me
Sorry
for what, Gale? I'll be sorry if
you
didn't get saved but live in Hell in
-stead
of Heaven, which is what's going to
happen,
you know,
so I stomp out of our
trailer-classroom
and my boots echo through
the
floor like wrestlers at the school gym
on
Saturday nights, on the hollow mat
I
mean, but by the time I hit the ply
-wood
porch they're just the dull thuds of real
-ity
you might say and then I almost
fall
down the double two-by-four steps to
the
concrete slab below, Hell if I'm a
fallen angel. But somehow she saves me.
One
day you're dead so they tell me at church
and
Sunday School and the next you're alive
forever,
and even eternally,
which
is longer than forever maybe
or
wider and/or deeper but how they
know
all this I'm none too sure, is it all
in
the Good Book? And anyway who has
died
and come back to life who wasn't in
stories,
whether Superman or Jesus?
I
asked my Sunday School teacher today
if
she's ever kicked and been returned to
life
and she smiled and winked and answered Oh,
I'll
never tell, but one day when I'm gone
for
good I expect to carry on so
I just said Yes ma'am--I expect you will.
I
don't want to die, not that I'm happy
being
alive, it's the quality of
life
that counts, I guess, and anyway I'm
only
ten years old and after failing
my
last quiz in fourth grade I wanted to
kill
myself, I wanted to kill myself
by
jumping out at just the right moment
of
a Cessna and dropping down on our
church
steeple to spear myself but good for
keeps--I
wonder if it would be a sac
-rifice
or merely making myself ex
-pire,
which would surely fetch me Hell so I
asked
my Sunday School teacher this morning
after
class but then she fled down the hall
to the restroom and hit the door running.
Everybody
goes to Heaven they say
at
the church across the street, I mean that
at
the church across the street they say that
everybody
goes to Heaven--any
-way
nobody goes to Hell is what it
is
but at our church, across the street from
theirs,
of course, we can go to Hell, too, we
offer
folks a choice, I guess, I said so
to
my Sunday School teacher this morning
but
she said Shush, Gale, Hell's not a wise choice
at
all so
I said Yes ma'am, but it just
seems
fair that way and she started to smile
but
then caught herself about midway, like
Earth
is to Hell and Heaven maybe, and
turned pleasure into plain. On the face of it.
Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, Reed, Journal of Black Mountain College Studies, The Font, Chiron Review, Poem, Adirondack Review, Florida Review, Slant, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Roanoke Review, and many other journals in a dozen countries. He has authored three books of poetry: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives.
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