Joe Lansdale - The Complete Drive-In

“Painting is why I got preaching on my mind,” Sam said. “They used to say, ‘Be a Baptist preacher and you don’t have to do no work,’ and that sounded good to me. So, I started trying to teach myself about it, just so I could quit painting, you see, and you know what, son?”

I said I didn’t.

“The call come over me. I’d been reading the Bible, trying to get a handle on it, trying to get all them names separate in my head, you know, and one night I’d just finished all that-I’d been painting earlier in the day-and I was dozing, listening to the radio, one of them country and western stations, and God, the Big Man himself come to me over that radio and told me some things he hadn’t told none of them other preachers. Gave me some insights into His ways.”

“Hallelujah, honey,” the woman said.

“His name be praised. So God come to me over that radio, and I remember it was right in the middle of a pretty good ole song too, and he said, ‘Sam, I’m giving you the call, and I want you to spread my word.’ That was it. He didn’t layout no details or nothing, just matter-of-fact about it, and I packed up our things, built us a traveling home out of this bus-”

“They come and took our house ‘cause we couldn’t pay for it,” Mable added.

“Yes, they did, didn’t they, dumpling. And I got this bus fixed up, and we started traveling around the country, doing a little fixing here and there, plumbing mostly, little painting when I couldn’t get out of it and we needed the money, and I did a lot of preaching.”

“It paid better than the plumbing or painting,” the woman said. “It was just a sight to see how full that offering plate would be after a night of Sam’s preaching. People just loved him.”

“But the money wasn’t the important thing. The thing was, I was reaching people with the Lord, taking the offering to keep this bus running, to feed our faces and keep us at the Lord’s work.”

“Sam made so many conversions,” Mable said.

“Yes, I did. And one night while we was traveling, we come by this place, seen all those cars in line, and I thought, now wouldn’t this be a golden opportunity?”

“Them’s the exact words you used, sugar,” Mable said. “You turned to me and said, ‘Wouldn’t this be a golden opportunity?’”

“I thought during intermission I might turn on my loudspeaker and start preaching. Try to bring some souls to God. But then this thing happened, this thing of the Devil. He’ll do that every time, son. You got some good designs, well, ole Devil will come right in there on you, trying to mess things up. Even Oral Roberts, and you know how close he is to God, has problems with the Devil. Ole booger come right in Oral’s bedroom once and tried to choke him, tried to choke the life out of him.”

“But his wife run the Devil off and saved him,” Mable said. “She come right in there and ran him right off.” She patted Sam on the head. “I’d do that for you, wouldn’t I, sugarbunch?”

“Yes, you would, dumpling, you surely would. But now, what we got here is a boy that wants to join our flock. Am I right, boy?”

‘That’s right,” I said.

“Good, good… You ain’t got no food on you, do you?”

“No,” I said. I thought about the jerky back in the camper, but it was really Bob’s and I couldn’t offer it without his permission. Besides, I was afraid he’d shoot me.

“Well, let’s get the baptizing part over with.” With that Sam spit on his fingers and rubbed them across the top of my head. “I baptize you in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost. Amen. Okay.”

“That’s it?” I asked.

“You were expecting a tub?”

“No… I mean, I guess it’s okay.”

“Sure it is. You feel any different?”

I thought about it. “No, not a thing.”

“Just a little tingle or something?”

“Nope.”

Sam looked distressed. “Well, sometimes it takes some time, so you give it some. Thing I’m gonna want you to do is go to the services a little later on. You come to that, son, and I’ll hand you the Lord on a silver platter. Mable, bring the sand, will you, darling?”

Mable went behind the blanket curtain and came back with a big hourglass. The sand in the top half had almost run out.

“This here has come in handy. It was just one of them things we picked up once and hadn’t never used, but since we been here in this outdoor picture show, we’ve used it quite a bit. It’s an eight-hour hourglass. When it runs through twice, we have services. Unless we forget to turn it or we sleep through, but that ain’t often.”

We sat there a minute and he told me a couple of plumbing adventures, then he said he had to go get ready and he went behind the blanket curtain and left me with Mable, who took his seat in front of the steering wheel. She looked at the rainbow GOD IS LOVE on the dash for a while, then put her eye on the Jesus hanging from the mirror, and finally looked out at the wing mirror as if she might find a revelation there. Things being as they were, I was kind of short on small talk, and as the weather was constant, that was out. I was beginning to feel like an enormous jackass.

“You know,” Mable said out of the clear blue, “wish I had me some ham bone and some dried beans, pintos. I think I miss that the most, ham bone and beans. I can make the best pot of beans. I just take me some pintos, the dried kind, and soak them in a pan of water overnight, then the next morning I start cooking them, making sure I don’t let all the water boil down. I chop me up a bunch of onions, put some salt and pepper in there, and that ham bone, and just cook and cook and cook till that water gets real soupy. You fix you some cornbread with that, even hot-water cornbread, and I tell you, you’ve got major eating, mister. I just dream about food all the time. How about you?”

“I think about it a lot,” I said. “Mostly hamburgers. Sometimes pizza.”

“You do like pinto beans and cornbread, though?”

“I’ve got no complaints against it. Right now most anything sounds good.”

She seemed to consider that for a moment, then she said, “You know, this is all the work of the Devil. And we can beat the Devil if we try. My next-door neighbor back when Sam was plumbing all the time was named Lillie, and she had these Hell’s Angel types move in across from her. Drove them motorsickles, you know. And she said they were worshiping the Devil, ‘cause she could hear that loud rock music, you know. The stuff where you play the records backwards and it’s got some sort of ooga-booga about the Devil on it. And she started praying, and darn if they didn’t move. Just up and moved six months later, and she said it was on account of her praying all the time. The Lord heard her prayers, and those Hell’s Angels just up and moved.”

Right. Up and moved six months later. I wondered if Bob would do me the favor of kicking my butt around the camper a few times.

In the middle of an apple-pie recipe, Sam returned. He had on his coat; it sagged badly. He had on a different shirt, and though it was in pretty tough shape, it did look better than the other one. Even the tie was painted on better. It must have been the shirt he used for Christmas because the tie was bright red.

Mable went behind the curtain then to do “a little touchin’ up,” and Sam sat down behind the steering wheel and looked at me like a loving, but stern father.

“Son, I want you to know that now, no matter what happens, you are in the hands of the Lord. If something really ugly should happen to you… if a ton of bricks fell out of the sky and crushed you flatter than a pie pan, you’d be one with the Lord. He’s waiting on you, son. Waiting for you to join His kingdom. What do you think of that?”