The Preacher

The other day a new preacher came through town. He stretched out tall over us, his face white as paper, his hands fluttering like paper. He said, “You folks know about death: the way it slinks around rooms nibbling on paint, peeling wallpaper. Gets in between the walls and gnaws on the plumbing like it was old bones. Or it messes with the weather holding back the rain until everybody’s gasping then lets it go all at once and piles up people and house into broken towns half a mile downstream, and all the time just chuckling to itself. So some folks get scared and they build themselves big strong houses that no flood can shove around. And they pay other people to keep them painted all the time so they won’t see any peeling going on. And they hire to kill the chickens and pigs - they roast for Sunday dinner - so they won’t have to listen to them squawk. And maybe for awhile they forget about death. Sooner or later the skin begins to wrinkle on their bones, or the newspapers and T.V. remind them of wars and people getting killed in car crashes and of bombs big enough to kill a million people all at once and they get scared all over again. Now then some folks get fierce. They want to go out and grab death by the neck and squeeze like hell.”

When the preacher swore like that he slipped it in so smooth —- like an amen or a praise the Lord — that no one noticed for awhile and by the time they did, he’d go their minds on to other things. So there was only a little foot scraping and bench creaking.

“Only trouble is,” he was saying, “folks can’t find any one thing that is death. And, like or not, they want to squeeze a neck so bad they squeeze the first one that comes along. Well, it doesn’t do any good. You are all going to die no matter how many necks you squeeze, no matter how big and strong you build your houses. So might as well get used to the idea right now.”

When the preacher said that, people got to squirming even more than when he’d cussed.

“Now you’re probably thinking, of course everybody’s going to die, there’s nothing new in that. Well there is. You know it in your head, but most of you don’t know it in your gut. You know that old folks got to die, that sick folks got to die, but you don’t know that you got to die.

Your body is going to come apart, skin mold off your bones, bones down to dirt mixed with broken leaves and sticks and rocks. And you may believe in some sort of better life after you die, but you don’t know for sure. When you begin to know you are going to died, last fighting breath and letting go of all you ever knew or ever had or ever wanted, then you get scared for real. Not just uneasy and mean scared, but deep for real. Not just uneasy and mean scared, but deep down shaking and trembling scared, and madder than hell and sad so that you can’t hardly stand it, and loving everything so you can’t hardly stand it. And when all the scared and mad and grieving and loving passes, you’ll feel all cleaned out and empty. Then when you look up, there’s a fence post shadow, and it’s a thing of wonder. There’s children fighting and cars honking, and muddy boots and rain, and people eating mashed potatoes and it’s all fresh and amazing.” Then he didn’t say anything for awhile and folks sat quiet looking at their hands, all except for Grandpa Jeffers who was snoring loud.

“Course it doesn’t last. Next day things get to being ordinary again, and kind of boring. Now I came round to something, I haven’t got figured out. There seems to be two kinds of people that squeezes necks, those that are scared mean and those that are bored and haven’t got nothing better to do Now it may surprise some of you but there are some things even a preacher doesn’t know. I don’t know what to do about folks that do mean things because they’re bored. I guess I’ll have to leave that one for you to work out.”

Then he started up a human and told everybody to shake hands with their neighbors, and after all the singing and handshaking, the preacher didn’t seem to be anywhere around. Then the folks got to talking and some said he was a fake and some said he was a pure angel, and some folks didn’t say a thing. Grandpa Jeffers said it was the best damn sermon he ever heard.