Jesus In Cowboy Boots

JESUS IN COWBOY BOOTS

A Novel

WILLIAM ROBERT CAREY

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Copyright 2013 William Robert Carey

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

TO MY LOVELY WIFE, LESLIE

For her inspiration and support, without which, this book would never have been written.

Chapter 1

Mrs. Stubblefield told a terrible tale about Old Ray.

Years ago, ‘fore you was born, she informed Vallie Sue, talking in a hushed tone as if Old Ray might be listening at the door, the sheriff and his deputies were called over to Milton’s Pond. It was dismal-dark an’ havin’ poured down, off and on, for two days, was wet as a whale’s belly, makin’ the ground messy and muddy, squishin’ under the troopers’ boots. I heard tell that the rain tapped out a sorrowful beat on the troopers’ hats as they marched down the slimy slope to that pitiful pond. And the closer they got, the clearer they could see, face down, floatin’ among the lily pads, was a sweet young girl wearin’ nothin’ but a plaid skirt and the birthday suit God gave her.

Jeez Louise, Vallie murmured, swallowing hard and holding her hand over her heart.

It was Regina Mae Coker – not much older than you, Mrs. Stubblefield whispered meaningfully to her young friend. Lived in Acacia, above Gortner’s Tire and Bible. Nobody ever found her killer. But my cousin Mindy’s brother-in-law, Jake, told her he saw Old Ray at the DQ, where she worked after school, buyin’ a swirly-topped ice-cream cone from her – just two days afore she went missin’.

Jeez Louise, Vallie couldn’t help but say again, her mouth agape.

Mrs. Stubblefield’s story had the ring of truth. Old Ray was pretty much the most despicable person living in Tardust, and that was no small feat.

Everybody knows he’s got a thing for young’uns, Mrs. Stubblefield proclaimed.

Vallie Sue could attest to that. She saw teenagers going in and out of his trailer all the time. She was never one of them, though. Her mind was set on getting away from the trouble in Tardust, not diving deeper into it. Besides, Old Ray made her nervous. Scared even. So she gave him a wide berth.

But it wasn’t easy. He lived just up the road.

Screak.

A rusty metal joint, screeching like a one-note Cassandra, warned a beetle of danger lurking above.

Paying no mind, it disregarded the teeter-totter married to the joint, seesawing overhead. A Hercules beetle is a fearsome brute, six to eight inches long with sword-shaped horns, so it shouldn’t surprise anyone to see him boldly scratching and clawing his way through the thistle and weeds in the dusty and decaying playground. Though heading in the direction of the dilapidated drive-in movie screen farther off, he was probably lusting after a half-eaten apple rotting in the late day sun closer by.

Screak.

Sitting atop the cracked and weathered teeter-totter, descending dangerously close to the brave bug, was the rump of Vallie Sue Yager, a lanky, spare fifteen-year-old. She was pushing up and down all by her lonesome because there was no one on the other end of the teeter to totter. Vallie was as unmindful of the beetle as the beetle was of the board. She was ruminating on life’s vagaries with The Cowboy, a famous western star she pictured on the battered movie screen hovering over the forsaken playground. He was everything a rugged American cowboy should be – handsome, brave, loyal, and resolute – with a voice as hickory-smoked and weathered as barn wood.

You know, he mused, leaning against a fence post, the best glazed donut I ever ate was down the road in Muskogee, Oklahoma. That's the truth. I was passin' through town and there it was, in a little hole-in-the-wall joint: the sweetest, melt-in-your mouth glazed donut in all of creation.

Love glazed donuts, Vallie professed as her knees fell to the ground, weary of seesawing alone.

Scrunch.

The teeter-totter slammed into the dry thistle and dirt and God knows what. Vallie and The Cowboy, fixated on their fondness for donuts, ignored the earthy complaint.

Love glazed donuts too, The Cowboy declared. We got similar tastes.

Funny comin' on a prize donut in Muskogee.

Yeah. Don’t expect that in Indian territory.

Not like beads.

Or drums.

Or war bonnets.

That’s for sure.

They ruminated on this powerful insight before Vallie commented, ’Course, Okie ain't so Injun anymore.

No, not pure, he acknowledged. There’s lots like that nowadays. Everything's kinda mixed up.

‘Specially ‘round Tardust, Vallie observed, referring to her neighborhood, a ragtag community of trailers and pre-fab homes assembled on the grounds of an abandoned drive-in movie theater.

In addition to the run-down screen and playground, there was a crumbling concrete food concession residing incongruously among the homes. Its windows, long broken, and its walls, cracked, pitted, and covered with graffiti, were a testament to its sordid repurposing as a den of teenage wickedness. Rusted speaker posts, sprinkled among the homes and along the dirt roads, stood like sentinels throughout the neighborhood, recalling the glory days of cinema under the stars. All of these tired relics of imagination and romance seemed to mock the dirty, dingy backwater community, haunting it with the glamour and promise of the films and the illusory joy of watching them.

Up the road from the playground, Vallie’s blimpy, middle-aged neighbor, Mrs. Stubblefield, drank a soda in front of her trailer, sitting on a Blue Hawaii aluminum beach chair with a red- and white-striped, clamp-on umbrella. Without rising from her chair, she strained to pick up a pebble from the 10x12 patch of artificial grass beneath her. Once it was retrieved, she took aim at a mangy, 3-legged stray dog, known informally as Chester, sniffing at her trash can.

Git, Chester! Git outta there! she yelled, chucking the stone awkwardly from her chubby hand. The tiny missile landed wide of the mark, but Chester got the message and hobbled off. Mrs. Stubblefield smiled, satisfied with the success of her sortie, until she felt wetness and looked down to discover cherry cola splattered all over her shorts by the force of her throw.

Vallie’s home, a weather-beaten trailer thirsting for paint, sat yonder still, within sight of the movie screen. The 12x52-foot Trotwood mobile home was once considered a deluxe model. But time and neglect had aged its Early American interior into something much earlier than intended. The wood accents were chipped and lusterless. The dishwasher hadn’t worked for years. And the toilet flushed with a timidity liable to gag on a shred of dental floss.

Lurking across the road, kitty-corner to her home, was Old Ray’s den of iniquity. If Vallie’s place looked rundown, his looked run over. From the right side, the trailer resembled a foundering ship, listing starboard on crumbling supports. The roof displayed a noticeable crease from a ferocious blow delivered during a tornado. The exterior was chipped, puckered, and worn as if suffering from an advanced case of syphilis. It was the obscure activities taking place inside it, though, that frequently intrigued and unsettled Vallie. What tales it could tell, she sometimes thought, gazing at the trailer, wishing it could talk. Old Ray occasionally gazed back from the other side, but he was leering – at her – and wishing something entirely different. So far, those wishes hadn’t turned to action, but every day she grew older was a caution because Ray didn’t have a large reservoir of restraint when it came to nubile young women.

Near the western edge of the community, a beat-up corral of mysterious origin barely survived the battering of bugs and weather. It was put there long before the drive-in, and far beyond anyone’s memory. Within its perimeter, a carrot-topped, freckle-faced nine-year-old boy named Pitney amused himself stomping on bees landing on daisies. Once stunned or half-dead, he grabbed the insects by the wings and put them into a paper bag for use in a sundown cremation ceremony that he was fond of performing. Pitney had a fascination for insects that generally wasn’t favorable to their health.

Close to the old movie entrance, the worn-out STARDUST Drive-in sign rose above the house tops. It was peppered with holes from bullets and stones hurled by mischievous boys on their way to manhood and, quite possibly, the penitentiary. The initial S had long since gone missing from the sign’s legend, leaving its crippled descendent, TARDUST, to inspire the local nickname for the neighborhood.

Don't know what's the matter with folks 'round here, observed The Cowboy, picking up the thread of their conversation. Land's fat with highways...got three rivers bleedin' together that could take a soul most anywhere...

And everybody just stays here, Vallie said, finishing his sentence.

Seems tough to live in, but tougher to get out of.

Don’t I know.

Vallie heard the rumble of a car approaching. She turned and discovered a faded green ’91 Catalina, sporting a Coonhunters For Christ sticker on its rear bumper, bouncing down the road in reverse at a frightful clip. Her best friend, Loretta LeBeau, drove the vehicle.

Loretta was nearly six feet tall, making her the longest, leggiest girl in the neighborhood. This would be an advantage if she were Elle McPherson tall. But she was Olive Oyl tall, a gangly, slightly goofy-looking girl, with a stretched-out neck usually only seen on primitive women in National Geographic. She didn’t see herself that way, though. As far as Loretta was concerned, she was hotter than a two-dollar pistol.

The car skidded to a stop alongside the withered wood fence surrounding the playground. Loretta leaned across the tattered seat, shouting out the passenger window.

Hey, Vallie Sue!

Hey yourself.

Let’s go, girl. Preacher ain’t gonna wait for you to grow tits.

Ha ha, Vallie retorted sarcastically, leaping to her feet and running for the car. As she climbed in, Loretta gunned the engine, hurtling the car backward.

Hey! Vallie screamed, grappling to shut the door. Lemme get my seat belt on!

Don’t be a woos.

Still in reverse, Loretta spun the car around and thundered down the road the way she came.

Dang it, Loretta! Mrs. Stubblefield bellowed, flapping her flabby arm at the dust devil flying by. Slow down!

Vallie smiled sheepishly, waving. Turning quickly around, she peered nervously through the rear window, watching the car careen down the road backward, like a movie running in reverse.

Seen you talkin’ to yerself…again, Loretta jabbed.

So?

So, too old for that. People think you’re loopy.

Over the years, a lot of people had seen Vallie talking to herself in the playground and wondered if she was a little touched. Like Mr. and Mrs. Deaver, the elderly couple who lived up the road.

She’s chatterin’ to herself again, Hank, observed Mrs. Deaver one evening from her porch while shaking the dust from a throw rug.

Crusty old Mr. Deaver stepped into the doorway behind the screen door and spied Vallie among the playground relics.

Humph, he grunted.

Mighty lively, hm?

Well, maybe she’s feverish, he speculated brusquely, turning back into the house to resume searching for the tobacco pipe his fussy wife had misplaced while cleaning.

Nobody except Vallie used the playground. All of the equipment was corroded or broken, and the earth was blotted with tall weeds, anthills, and gopher holes. Even tumbleweed occasionally rolled around inside the low, crumbly white fence surrounding the apparatus, accentuating its forlorn appearance. With newer equipment at the elementary school and a park near the high school, kids usually headed for those places if they wanted a swing or a slide. So, by default and design, it was her private sanctuary.

Vallie first wandered into the neglected enclosure at the age of five, after straying from the trailer. With only one parent, she was often left alone while her mother was out working or gallivanting around, trusting that her daughter was stashed safely in their trailer. But that wasn’t the case; she frequently sauntered down to the scruffy playground.

In the beginning, she was simply attracted to the playthings, and awestruck by the glorious white screen looming above her. Almost simultaneously, she was beguiled by an actor she saw in a cowboy movie. He was strong, compassionate, and so charismatic that the little girl was irresistibly drawn to him. Vallie’s fertile young mind conflated her reverence for The Cowboy with her wonder for the screen, and soon she imagined him talking to her from the creaky monolith like they were old friends.

As she grew older, her loneliness was leavened by the addition of a young brother, but she still found solace in the solitary refuge. The playground was her personal asylum, and The Cowboy became her shrink, confidant, counselor, and maybe a bit more.

Like most people who saw Vallie talking in the playground, Loretta couldn’t make much sense of it. But Loretta wasn’t blessed, or cursed, with Vallie’s imagination and aspirations. Though she wanted things, like an iPod or a Bebe leather jacket, she didn’t spend a lot of time daydreaming about a better tomorrow. Nor did she have her friend’s keen sensitivity to Tardust’s queer combination of fantasy and reality. And she certainly didn’t share Vallie’s burning desire to get out of there.

Vallie felt that her very survival was dependent on getting away from the world she was born into. She never told any adult or friend, though, figuring they would laugh at her, or dismiss her feelings as overemotional, the fanciful notions of a melodramatic teenager. But, eventually, something happened that showed she was closer to the truth than not.

Why’re we drivin’ backwards? Vallie demanded. Didn’t your dad let you have the car?

Not entirely. Gave me 20 miles max. Gotta keep the miles down, so’s we can go to the Two-Kiss after church.

Loretta spun the wheel and the car yawed to the right, pitching like a sun boat in a 3-foot chop. It sailed down a dirt road running between an ocean of white-capped cotton.

Wouldn't it be better to drive backwards from the church? Vallie asked fretfully.

Cops on that road. I can take side roads now. 'Sides, you want the guys to see me drivin' like this down the drag – like I'm queer bait or somethin'?

More likely they’ll think you’re hungry for love in that outfit. I can’t believe you’re wearin’ that to church.

Loretta smiled at the thought of her sexy get-up – a leopard-print camisole, black embroidered skirt, and black boots.

What’s wrong with this? I ain’t wearin’ no mini-skirt. Preacher can’t see nothin’ of me sittin’ in the pew anyhow.

God can.

You act like God’s a persnickety old lady. He’s seen a lot more o’ me than this if he sees all and knows all.

So now God’s a Peepin’ Tom?

All’s I’m sayin’ is you should pay a little more mind to your gear. God and the preacher ain’t gonna take you to no dances.

I don’t look so bad, Vallie protested, examining her blue-flowered white sundress and pink leggings. To her dismay, she discovered remnants of playground dirt on her knees. She tried brushing them off, but the soil smeared, leaving faint brown splotches on the fabric. She sighed, frowning.

Loretta yanked the wheel, sending the car swerving sharply into the parking lot of the church, barely missing another vehicle. The car rolled past the First Baptist Church sign, whose message board encouraged passers-by to Git-R-Done With Jesus. It skidded to a stop, coughing up a cloud of dirt from its back end.

Jeez Louise, Loretta.

Well, these brakes ain’t what they used to be.

Loretta and Vallie Sue jumped out of the junker and ran toward the sound of the congregation singing in high spiritual ecstasy.

The First Baptist Church stood pretty much the way it did in 1936, when erected by the late Reverend Ancil C. Rose, who brought his missionary zeal westward to the heathen hearts of the Cherokee Indians living thereabouts. The Reverend Rose had only middling success healing those hearts, though, because many Indians simply wouldn’t forsake their ancient rituals for all the godly grace that the Reverend Rose promised them.

The church thrived, however, in its original birch cladding, thanks to an influx of pious white Christians who refurbished its façade every few years with a fresh coat of white enamel paint all the way up to its soaring belfry. The church’s 3-step stoop lead to standard double doors that opened to a modest interior lined with two rows of long, varnished wood benches running the length of the nave. Three arched windows, on either wall, looked out over an uninspiring landscape of flat, uncultivated fields. Better to keep one’s eyes on the Lord, the Preacher Rose used to say, not minding the bleakness.

Rose’s immediate heir, Pastor Marvin T. Mickens, a stocky, red-faced man of 58, stood at the front edge of the pulpit, leading his flock in a call to Jesus. A righteous choir of five female singers, devoted to supporting him, planted themselves in a row alongside the choir director, Annabel Howser, who sat at an old upright piano near the wall. Annabel was a buxom, middle-aged widow with a fondness for heavy eyeliner, red lipstick, and colorful dresses that were much too tight for a God-fearing woman, especially one with a weakness for lemon meringue pie and chocolate fudge brownies.

Vallie and Loretta slipped into a pew, grabbing hymnals from a back pocket as Pastor Mickens proclaimed, Brethren…only one man can save you from the flames of eternal damnation.

Scattered members of the congregation called back, Amen.

What’s his name? Pastor Mickens beseeched them, knowing the answer full well.

Jesus, a few bold voices hurried to respond.

What’s his name? the Pastor demanded even louder.

Channeling the spirit of the Lord, the whole congregation shouted, Jesus!

I ask you, what’s his name? the preacher thundered.

JESUS! the congregation roared.

I love that part, Loretta bubbled. Like a Texas-Okie game.

Shhh, Vallie scolded.

Shhh yourself, Loretta snapped back.

Pastor Mickens opened his arms wide and inquired, And how will he take you?

Just as I am, the congregation replied, repeating their part like countless times before.

That’s right, brethren, Jesus wants you just as you are.

Recognizing their cue, the congregation rose while the choir broke into the song Just As I Am.

Just as I am. Without one plea…

Come to him now, brethren, Pastor Mickens implored the congregation between song verses.

Vallie and Loretta, their eyes fastened to the hymnals neither one of them needed, blended their voices into the chorale.

But that thy blood was sent to me.

Lacking confidence in her musical gifts, Vallie sang in a soft voice. But Loretta didn’t believe in half-ways. She wailed like a contestant on American Idol. Irritated, Vallie looked crossways at her, while people in front of them glanced backward with knitted brows, looking for the culprit responsible for the noise pollution. But none of them could temper Loretta’s holy zeal.

Pastor Mickens strode to the edge of the pulpit, pointing toward a parishioner, and bellowed, He’s waiting for you, Elijah Hicks.

Elijah nodded and left his pew, heading for the pastor. Quickly, other parishioners followed his lead and flowed toward the front of the church singing.

When Jesus calls me, I will come....

He’s waiting for you too, Mizz Hinkle, the pastor boomed, fixing upon a large, round spinster of about 40.

Praise Jesus, Mizz Hinkle declared, her ample hips rocking the bench in front of her as she squeezed out of her pew.

Holy moly, that’s the fourth time this month that ol’ hog’s gottin’ saved, Loretta protested, shaking her head.

Loretta! Vallie rasped, appalled at her wicked observation during church services.

Why’s she need so much savin’?

Maybe you’ve lied, you’ve cheated… Pastor Mickens speculated, as if answering Loretta’s question.

There ya go, Vallie said, nodding toward the Pastor. Maybe she’s done a lot of sinnin’.

Done ate a lot of Mallomars is my guess, Loretta countered.

Jesus loves you, brethren! Pastor Mickens promised.

Even porkers? Loretta grumbled.

Shush, Loretta!

But Loretta was on a roll. She scrunched up her face in a ghastly manner and snorted, Oink! Oink! Oink!

Vallie elbowed her, but Loretta persisted, barely concealed by the communal caterwauling all around her.

Oh Lamb of God, I come, I come…

Holding up his arms and bowing his head, Pastor Mickens exclaimed, Come, let us pray!

Then, as if their electrical plugs had been pulled from the wall, the piano, choir, and congregation fell silent all at once, leaving Loretta, lonesome as a lost piglet, braying, Oink! Oink! Oink!

All the parishioners spun around, shocked and dismayed, to look at her. Mortified, Vallie buried her chin into her chest.

Loretta didn’t wilt easily under pressure, though. She smiled sweetly and whispered confidentially, Sorry. Mucus.

At the end of the service, Pastor Mickens positioned himself on the stoop outside the front doors, greeting his parishioners as they exited.

Mr. Hickenlooper, nice to see you.

You too, Reverend, the old man nodded, as he shuffled carefully down the steps leaning on his cane.

Evening, Mrs. Wofford. How’s your boy doing?