BLUEGRASS preview 3 - Nazarene Dreams

DeeDee disgusted Earnest, as well she should have. Her kind only caused men grief.

DeeDee had so focused on his Bible, that she had missed the towels and the walk.

He always walked careful, so as not to step on a crack, nor to step where two floor tiles joined. He did not want to break his sainted mother’s back. Nevertheless, he tried to walk subtly so as not to be obvious. The sinners would not understand.

When he sat some place, if he thought nobody was watching, he would place a paper towel beneath each foot position and another two or three on the console of desk where he was working. It was a hygienic thing, really. He did not want the evil filth of others to contaminate his soul.

He sat bone erect, upright at the operator console. He placed the Holy Bible on two overlapping paper towels, open to Revelations. He loved Revelations. He liked to read about the beasts, and the horns, and 666, and the eagle and the bear.

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Ever since he was a young’un in the Kentucky hills, Earnest’s mammy had taught him how the world was living in the Final Days. His family had become charter members of the Eula City Assembly of God and had helped build the church. When the Nazarene church had come to town, they promptly had become charter members of that church. His family had a history of reaching for the most unusual church in town, and dropping their current affiliations to become charter members of each more exotic church that came to town.

The saddest days in the Frost family’s history had occurred as pioneers. They often had broken new ground in the hills. Sometimes, when an area had lacked adequate gospel teaching, God forbid, they had had to make do. Under those pitiful conditions, they had joined a Methodist, Presbyterian, or Lutheran congregation in order to keep the Sabbath. However, at such times they had spoken to no one, and had promptly returned home after service to pray and write letters. They had written letters to the churches they had left behind, telling how they had settled in a new community that only had pagan Methodists, and how it would serve the Lord’s will if they could send an anointed man of the cloth to liberate the new land.

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Earnest’s heart pounded each day when he opened the book, anticipating the blowing of the horn and the arrival of Jesus on a cloud--right there over the Control Data Corporation 3800 memory bank. As a loyal Nazarene, he had dutifully left records, on genealogical websites and in family Bibles as to exactly which cemetery entrance to use, which road to follow, and which gravesite to approach, so that Jesus could find, and cause to be risen again, every member of his family who had done the Lord’s will.

Earnest was saving his money so that he could be entombed in a mausoleum when he died. That was the dream of any good Nazarene, to protect the body for the day it would arise anew.

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Nevertheless, Earnest was only human. Eventually, he fell asleep and his head lay back on the paper towel that he had dutifully placed on the console chair headrest.

In his dreams, he traveled to faraway places and sometimes to faraway times. Sometimes, he traveled back to visit Bath-Sheba or Nebuchadnezzar and experience the horror of their paganism. Sometimes, he would visit with Jesus, who would praise him for living a clean and upright life. Sometimes, he would visit a whorehouse and wake up all sticky and shameful.

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Tonight Earnest drifted back to his second tour in Nam.

Earnest’s platoon had come under heavy fire from the Cong in Cambodia. He had tried to call in an air strike, but no planes had been available. He had raged, “Why God hath thou forsaken your people?” He had cried so loudly that he had drawn Cong fire. Bullets had whizzed by his head only inches away, ricocheting off tropical limbs. He had seen five of his unit blown to bits by a rocket-propelled grenade. He had witnessed the bayoneting of three more. In the excitement, he had lost count. He could only bring back frightening, disjointed image bursts, but it seemed as though the Cong had hit them all. A grenade had gone off only five feet away. If there had not been a large boulder in between the grenade and Earnest, it might have blown him away too.

Earnest had screamed and hollered as he had run through the undergrowth. Fortunately, for him, he had run in the right direction. He had yelled for about ten minutes. He had run so hard the Cong could not catch him.

Then he had fallen under some heavy tropical leaves and had lain still. He had gone catatonic. He had lain there for three days with bugs crawling all over him. Poisonous snakes had slithered over his belly. However, only his body had lain there. In his mind, he had gone to God’s heaven.

A Top Secret unit of Spanish Especialistas, which nobody even today knows existed, had accidentally found him when their dog had sniffed him out. They had carried him back to a United States Special Forces unit; who were roaming amongst the primitive montagnards, tribal hill people who lived along the border. From there, he had made his way to a hospital ship in the Gulf of Tonkin.

Earnest had remained catatonic for 18 months. Even after he had arrived stateside, he had remained in a trance, maintaining silence. The doctors had tried everything--Playboy centerfolds, loud noises, and sudden immersion in ice-cold water. One day, a Nazarene chaplain had called upon him. The chaplain had told him that God still loved him. He had let him feel the knobby, leather surface and thin fragile pages of the Bible. The chaplain had told him God had forgiven him for running, because there had been nothing else he could have done.

Earnest had slowly turned his eyes to look at the chaplain. The chaplain had stayed with him a long time. Eventually a smile had come over Earnest’s face.

Still, a prolonged twelve months of treatment at the veteran’s mental unit had elapsed before he had been able to venture off the grounds. Another six months had passed, before the doctors had evaluated him as ready for release. He had received lots of medals and honors, most of which he no longer could remember.

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Earnest’s dream, tonight, ended with him franticly screaming and running from the Cong. That is where it usually ended up. Fortunately, for him, he had not dreamt of the whorehouse.

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Nevertheless, he always remembered God smiling at him when the Nazarene chaplain had visited him. He was a war hero, and as such had had no trouble getting a compartmentalized Top Secret clearance.