Jerry Wilins Gets Laid

(1)

He never missed a Sunday morning church service, no, not once in twenty years, so why today did he have to have a flat tire.

The flat tire wouldn't stop him from getting his perfect attendance pin, though. He'd still make it to church; he'd get that reward. Jerry Wilkins felt the pride swell up like a dead corpse pushing against the coffin lid, felt those nails start to give, and immediately beat the hammer down hard to prevent it's escape.

"Sinner! Pride'll be your downfall." The old preacher, Brother Gene Rose, had said it often. He'd retired a few years back at the age of seventy-one. He remembered that lesson, he wanted to be good, but he wanted that pin, too. He needed something to salve the empty inside.

"You're a good boy, you've always been my good little boy." His Momma told him one last time just before she closed her eyes.

He'd been forty years old, but Jerry just couldn't help it. He cried in that hospice room when cancer made its final squeeze and she gasped her last. Of all times, it was the day before Mother's Day in '97.

"I'm alone, Lord," he prayed. Scared, he some prayed more, "What I should do?"

The Lord did not reply that day. Jerry had the church. That had to be enough. The stalwart few got fewer each week at Salt River Baptist Church. The new pastor, Brother Bob, was a part-time, stop by once a week, Sunday morning only preacher. He never had tome to pray with Jerry, not like Brother Rose had.

So, Jerry hesitated each Sunday as the rest of the members filed out to the parking lot and he prayed, "Send me a sign, Jesus. Tell me what I should do."

Each time there was no answer.

Now, only a few days before Thanksgiving, his ultimate reward sat ready to pluck. Only once before had anyone ever received the twenty year attendance pin in the history of the church – his Momma before she took sick.

Jerry wanted forgiveness for his sinful pride, but he wanted that pin more than grace.

As soon as Jerry pulled the Buick into the parking lot, he knew something was terribly wrong. Only one car sat there, the battered Ford pick-up of Don Walters. Deacon Don stood in his thread-bare polyester Johnny Carson suit, the same one he wore thirty years ago when he placed a hand on little Jerry's shoulder and said, "Gerald, why don't you let the Lord take your hand and lead you. Let him save you, son."

Don's arthritis caused his thin frame to stoop low these days. His once raven hair was thin and gray now. The thin green tubes stretched from the tiny oxygen tank on the two-wheel dolly. Tears ran down Donald's cheeks.

"Deacon Don! What is it?"

"Pastor Crittenden has done left us, Jerry. It's bad, son, it's real bad. We trusted him to take the offerings to the bank these last several weeks, but he cleaned us out. No money in the bank account; spent it all. He couldn't face us, so he left a note. He's left town, left the state and now we're finished. It's over.

"I don't understand." Jerry asked.

Deacon Don said. "Go home, Jerry. The others are already gone. Claire already left in the mini-van; she's waiting on me at home. I think we'll move on down to Sarasota to be with Judy. It's a durn shame it had to end like this." He hugged Jerry hard – as hard as his bad lungs allowed. Then, he wheeled his little life-tank back to the truck and got in. Jerry stood there.

"Lord?" Jerry looked up. "No attendance pin?"

Silence.

"No sign?"

Silence.

Jesus, I ask you one more time, send me a sign. If you're real, if you care, this is your last chance. Send me a sign."

Painful silence swallowed Jerry up.

(2)

Jerry drove the Buick down the same street that he drove every Sunday, but today something new sat at the vacant field of Magnolia and Clementine. A ragged tent sat back from the road. The sign announced, "Revival! Clean Up Your Damned Soul Here."

The blunt audacity of the sign shocked Jerry enough to turn onto the fresh gravel driveway and he parked right in front of that tent tabernacle. He eased out of the car, walked up to the tent opening and shouted inside.

"Hello."

Silence.

"Hello." He shouted again.

Silence.

He pushed the flaps back and walked inside.

Light bulbs strung on thin wires hung haphazard between support poles. Rows of rented metal folding chairs sat cockeyed on the uneven earth. Down the middle a sawdust trail led to a worn pulpit leaned on a plywood sheet propped up on concrete blocks.

On the first row, a man in a black cotton shirt and black jeans bowed his head. Jerry scooted through the wood shavings until he stood next to the man. He cleared his throat and said in a timid voice, "Hello."

With a leap to his feet and a sharp clap of his hands, the preacher whooped, "Hallelujah, Glory to God, Praise His Holy Name. Come here, Sinner."

Jerry tried to run, but the man was too fast. The man in black reached out, clasped Jerry's hand with a generous grip. The weather worn faced was a good face despite dark eyes and flying wild gray hair.

"Uh, Reverend, how do you do?" Jerry said.

"I ain't no reverend, Sinner, I'm a lay preacher with God's burden to share with you."

On a whim, Jerry asked, "Has anyone ever told you that you resemble Johnny Cash?"

"Sinner, I am Johnny Cash."

Jerry swallowed hard.

"Son, you listen good. God chose me. He resurrected me out of that Tennessee clay graveyard like Jesus raised up Lazarus, raised me just to preach to you. You need your soul saved, Son. Sit down while I preach at you."

"There's some mistake, sir. I was born again along time ago."

The septuagenarian singer leapt as if he was a Sun Records teenager again. "No! You're not saved, you're not born again, but you're gettin' ready to be."

Up on the plywood, Cash swayed behind the rotted pulpit. He opened his black bound Bible and thumped it. "In the Old Book, the Holy Ghost dwelled among men encouraging them to live their lives instead of hiding like ostriches; instead of a' shoving their head in the sand. The sweet Lamb of God, he says to me out of Psalm 58, "Before your kettle can feel the thorns, I shall take you away as with a whirlwind.

"You, Sinner! Your feelings are plated over with scales. When's the last time you felt love's thorns? Have you ever been swept in the whirlwind of passion? Or do you still hide in your Momma's apron?

"Pin? What do you need a piece of tin for? Flesh and blood love: that's what you need. It's like ol' Jonathan Edwards said, you're a Sinner in the hands of an angry god, angry because you play it safe, careful, oh so careful that you don't see the gap below you."

Jerry looked down. His feet floated on air above a vast chasm, black as the darkest coal mine.

"Down there, see, the smell of Hell ain't always the whiff of brimstone." Cash preached.

"Oh, I remember well that hog curing smoke house long ago. I was just ten when my Pappy threw open the door. He says, 'John Ray, you come here now, boy! I got something to show you.'

"Into the foggy pork stench I stepped, my eyes stinging. There on the dirt floor was my brother Jack's empty clothes all bloodied like someone done gutted him.

"Pappy, he says to me, 'Boy, your brother done got twisted up into the blades at the sawmill and he ain't gonna make it. I'll not take you to see him lying up there at the hospital, and won't make you see what them doctors had to do to him so far, but here be his clothes all laid out.'

"My brother Jacks' plaid shirt lay there all tattered to shreds and his pants split wide open where the spinning teeth done ripped them. The smoke gave me a good excuse to cry." Cash pointed a gnarled finger at Jerry.

"But you, Sinner; you got no excuse to whimper like some castrated hound dog. Heed me. You're all wrapped up like an old Buddha, not wanting to live your life. Forty long years, it's time you shed those inhibitions like I did back at that smokehouse. Live!

"Listen to me! I was a drunk and a skunk-smelling pill addict. Yes sir, I'll admit it before the Almighty – why not he done known it anyhow.

"I recollect that night in 1965 down in Nashville, thinking I owned the town, but the Lord taught me a lesson through two cops and a burly lumber jack.

"I had got out of my souped-up Mustang and pounded on the door of a bar after the 2 AM curfew. I'm not proud of what I done then, but I shouted, 'Open this damned door up, I'm Johnny Cash and when John R. Cash wants a drink, you better come out here a boot licking.'

"I kicked that door in. The noise caught the attention of some passing patrol car. The cops tried to get me calmed down, but I got belligerent, so they set me up at the jail to sober up.

'In there, was another old drunk. That old boy was as big as old Paul Bunyon hisself. He'd get up every so often, pounded his chest like old Tarzan: Johnny Weissmuller. Then he grabbed me around the head and starts twisting.

"Hey, I say, I'm Johnny Cash, don't be squeezing me like that."

"He says, 'You ain't no Johnny Cash. I ought to kill you for pretending to be him.'

"So, realizing he could twist my neck off with those ham hock muscled arms, I sang for all my worth. I sang, 'Folsom Prison Blues'. He stopped and he looked at me weird. Seeing that worked, I sang out 'I Walk the Line'. Finally, I sang 'Amazing Grace' and he wept like a little baby.

"Sinner, you're in the throes of God's judgment, and you need to sing, too. You want to sing, 'Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound,' but all you'll croak is '...a wretch like me.'"

Cash continued the story, "Anyway, That old fellow started to blubber and crying out to God to take his sins away right there in that jail cell. That's when I knew the power of God was greater than the celebrity of man."

The black shirt of the preacher dripped sweat as he closed the black Bible. "I'm singing the invitation song, Sinner. Four verses and your eternal soul will be either given to God to live and to love, come what may, or it'll be sold to Satan and put on ice. Choose."

The famous voice echoed the first verse into the tent canvass. The second vibrated against the flat metal chairs. The third brought tears to Jerry's eyes, but still stood frozen still, hovering over the black gouge in the ground.

Cash preached, "Live, Jerry, live your life. This is your sign you been praying for. Turn loose."

Cash's eyes burned like coals of fire. The fourth verse started. He sang it in that trademark gravel baritone.

With only three words left, Jerry's foot moved, ever so slightly, then he ran to save his soul, into the arms of the Man in Black.

"Hallelujah, Jerry! As the Lord spake unto Cephas in Acts 11:6, "Rise and eat. Rise and eat."

(3)

Jerry opened the door to his house, Mamma's home that he inherited. The Johnny Cash vision had turned his legs to rubber. His heart, though, pumped strong. Once, only able to see in shadows of gray, black and white, now the whole world opened into Technicolor.

Inside the house he grew up in, furniture lay pushed around. His first thought - burglars. Glass shards lay on the carpet from a shattered window. A bloody handprint smeared a trail on the wall to the bedroom. A picture of Mamma lay smashed on the carpet.

Nauseated, Jerry ran to the bathroom. He choked on the purged bile and for a moment thought he might die. He didn't though, and the near death experience excited him. He gasped in rich air. Cash had said to live, at all costs, live to the fullest.

He staggered into the bedroom to see a filthy, naked woman sprawled on once clean sheets. Her blonde head lolled back, legs splayed. Jerry snatched a glance at a butcher knife gripped in her still bloody hand.

Just then, a man – no doubt her companion in crime and drugs - staggered out of the second bedroom holding the butcher knife's mate. His wide, dope-fiend eyes stared sightlessly ahead as he stumbled, dropped the knife and tumbled to the floor.

The noise woke the girl. She looked up to see Jerry.

"Hi, Love. I'm high on angel dust. Climb over here in bed and take me higher."

Jerry watched as she began to nick the inside of her thighs with the long blade. She took her palm and smeared the blood across her legs - an invitation he could not refuse.

Paunchy, middle-aged Jerry shed his clothes like a teenager on a first make out session. He plunged recklessly into the bed with the drugged girl. Her skin was hot as Hades, her passion nothing short of lust despite her condition. Her arms were pitted by needle marks, but he didn't care. So what? He thought. If he got AIDS he didn't care, he'd never felt so much lust, so much life. Jerry buried himself into her, to the hilt, while she played with the butcher knife blade taking nicks out of her arm.

He screamed, "Oh, Jesus, I'm coming."

"You son of a bitch!" She exclaimed.

With an unnatural drug-induced strength, she shoved Jerry off like a toy. The girl slashed the blade through the air. Jerry tried to escape, but she held tight. He heard the blade hit flesh hard and bone cracked. Blood baptized both Jerry and the nameless girl.

Jerry felt the hot blood, the rusty stuff got in his mouth, but he didn't feel any pain, and wondered why. Then dead weight hit him in the back.

Disoriented, Jerry pushed free.

The girl had not stabbed Jerry, but her doped up companion. Apparently, he took offense at Jerry's free fuck and lunged. The girl, Jerry's saving angel, stabbed the fiend before the fiend could stab Jerry.

He pushed the body off the bed, heard its head pop against the floor. The bloody thing lay, sprawled on the carpet.

Angel said, "I couldn't let the bastard kill you, Love, I don't even know who he is."

She rubbed her clotted fingers through Jerry's hair.

"I'm coming down now, Babe, gotta go. It was a nice fuck. If the cops come asking for me, tell them to look for the bloody, butt-naked chick tripping through the night. I got to go back to heaven now."

She leaned over, planted an open mouth kiss on Jerry's lips and exited through the backdoor.

He stood for a moment. His former life gone, he thought of Momma, Brother Gene Rose, and Deacon Don. He remembered an old verse: When I was a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

He ran after her.