John Toole - The Neon Bible

The preacher was the head of the people that decided who was going to the state institutions like the crazy house and the poor folks' asylum. Every year he sent about one old man or woman away to the old asylum, but they didn't want to go. Everybody said you died there pretty soon, and even if the people were real old, they didn't want to die, and they cried when the preacher took them down to the train. If they didn't mind too much, he drove them to the place in his car, but those were the ones who believed him and thought it was really as nice as he said, or else they were deaf and couldn't know what was going on anyway. I saw an old woman once who couldn't move herself at all, and she couldn't even speak. One day when I was going home from the drugstore I saw the preacher take her into his car from the old place where she lived. She couldn't move or speak or anything, but her eyes were the most awful thing I ever saw anytime in my life. When I passed the car, she looked at me with a real scared look like a little mountain rabbit has when it sees it can't get away from the thing that's hunting it. I don't know why I did, but I stood there after the preacher's car left and watched it go down the street with that old woman. I guess she's still there now in the state poor home.

Mr. Williams' wife went to the preacher's church, and that's how I found out about Mother. Mr. Williams told me the preacher and Flora were trying to see if they could get the crazy house to take Mother in. I didn't believe it when I heard it, because Mother never even saw any people in town, and nobody even saw her except for some men who still came up into the clearing to get rabbits. I tried to think of why they wanted to do a thing like that, but I couldn't think up a reason. Mr. Williams told me to tell Aunt Mae about it, because they couldn't do anything if the family wouldn't let them. I wanted to tell Aunt Mae, but lately I didn't speak with her much, so I never did. I thought about it a lot when I sat upstairs, though. I thought about how some people could do what they wanted to another person and not get put in jail by the sheriff, and I thought about Mother getting in the preacher's car and going off. That got my mind all filled up. I couldn't think about anything else when I thought about those two driving away and the preacher telling everybody after how he helped the town and helped a poor woman. But, he would say, it was only the Christian thing to do, and any good Christian would leap at doing such a thing.

I was getting tired about what the preacher called Christian. Anything he did was Christian, and the people in his church believed it, too. If he stole some book he didn't like from the library, or made the radio station play only part of the day on Sunday, or took somebody off to the state poor home, he called it Christian. I never had much religious training, and I never went to Sunday school because we didn't belong to the church when I was old enough to go, but I thought I knew what believing in Christ meant, and it wasn't half the things the preacher did. I called Aunt Mae a good Christian, but nobody else in the valley would have because she never went to church. One day I told somebody I thought Aunt Mae was just as much a Christian as Mrs. Watkins claimed to be. It was a woman who came into the store a lot. She got to talking about some people in town, and when she came to Mrs. Watkins she said that that was a real, dedicated Christian. When I said Aunt Mae was too, she said I was a babe who didn't know the true word, or something like that in the kind of words church people use.

When Mr. Williams didn't say any more about Flora and the preacher and Mother, it passed from my mind in a little while. But things like Jo Lynne and the way Aunt Mae was acting didn't. I still thought about Jo Lynne when I sat upstairs. Not from the windows in the room where the train was, but from the windows in my bedroom, you could see the little houses on the hill where I kissed her. They were all finished now, and they had a lot of people in them. They were lighted at night now. That made them even easier to find, and at night I would sit on the windowsill sometimes and look off at them. But I didn't like to see that part of the hill lighted up. I liked to think about it like it was the night we were there, with the houses all empty and the hill with nobody but us on it and the moonlight the only thing besides the dark. I even wondered who was living in the house where we sat on the step.

Then I stopped worrying about Aunt Mae. One day when I came in from the store she was sitting in the kitchen running her hands along the oilcloth on the table.

"Come in here, hon," she said when she heard me coming in the house. I felt like going right up to the train room, because I didn't feel like being around her with the sorry eyes. When she heard me start up the stairs, she called again. "Come here, hon. In the kitchen."

I went in there, and she had a faraway look. She was looking out the back door into the clearing where I guess Mother was somewhere in the pines, which were large enough now to compare with any in the hills.

"Sit down. Here by the table. Mother's back there." She pushed a chair out for me with her foot. "Well, how was work today?"

"Okay, Aunt Mae."

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing. Things were just slow. Nobody came in hardly, excepting some old lady who always does and asks for things half-price."

She looked at me for a while, and that was why I didn't feel like going and talking with her. I looked the other way so I wouldn't see her eyes.

"I got something to tell you, Dave."

I saw her hand go across the table to some paper I never noticed before. It was a letter, or it must have been, because it was in an envelope.

"I got a letter from Clyde today that I'm going to read to you."

I didn't say anything, and she handed it to me.

"Here, you read it for yourself, hon."

I opened the envelope and took out the letter. It was printed in red pencil on old tan line paper like I used to use in grade school with Mrs. Watkins.

Dear Mae,

I have got good news for us. Bill here says he will use us on his radio show. If he likes us. I think he will Mae. You don't have to hurry here. You got a week to make it. I have a nice room here. Bill says maybe we can make records to. Theres a lot of money in them. I know. You will like Nashville. You said you have never been here. They got all kinds of radio shows. Write me a letter love and say when you will get here. This is a big chance.

With Love,

Clyde

After I finished it, I read it again. It still said the same thing, and it sounded crazy to me. I looked at Aunt Mae, but she wasn't sitting at the table. She was washing some dishes over at the sink. After a while she turned around.

"Well, hon, what do you think about it?"

"I don't know, Aunt Mae. What does it mean?"

"Clyde thinks he can get us a good job, a permanent one, in Nashville on the radio or records."

Nashville. That sounded strange to me. Aunt Mae in Nashville.

"What about me and Mother?"

"That's it, hon. That's what I'm afraid about, but if we get a job, I can send for you two. This man Bill told Clyde it wouldn't be long before he could get us something. Don't you see? I can make a lot of money."

The whole thing sounded funny to me. Aunt Mae in Nashville with Clyde. She didn't know how long she was going to be. And Mother. What would I do with her? I was scared of her even with Aunt Mae around. And what would we eat? I still didn't say anything to Aunt Mae, though.

"Look, hon, I'm taking the bus out of here the day after tomorrow. And don't worry. It won't be long before you and Mother get a train ticket from me, you hear?"

All at once the whole thing hit me the way it should have at first. She was really planning to leave me with Mother. My mind got all filled again, and I looked up at Aunt Mae.