Living Water

Gale Acuff — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 17:28:53 +0000

After Sunday School I threw up breakfast

behind our portable classroom like it

was sin, my breakfast I mean, Sugar Smacks

and Tang, but at least I managed to keep

it all in until we said Amen to

the Lord’s Prayer. But Miss Hooker heard me

outside the building, the walls are pretty

thin, and watched me finish giving it up

and didn’t say a word until I stopped,

God bless her, because then it might’ve been

tough for me to get the demons out. She’s

my Sunday School teacher. If I’m ever

going to marry her one day I can’t

afford to be caught throwing up like that

unless it’s the flu or a virus and

in that case she can take care of me while

I drift in and out of life and death in

our bed, which we’ll share because we’ll be one,

married that is, and I think it’s the law

except in reruns of old TV shows

way back when the world was black and white.

I wonder when it turned to color? So

when I was finished with vomit and spit

I turned around to find her there looking

sorry for me like I do my dog when

he eats some grass and then wretches. I say

Poor thing and he wags his tail and I feel

his nose to see if it’s cold and that’s how

I know if he’s better and so does he.

I lead him to his water dish and he

drinks, I guess to get the bad taste out. Then

we lie in the shade together and he

sleeps and sometimes I do, too, and last time

I dreamed about Miss Hooker as my wife

and this time she was sick but I nursed her

back to health, or nearly—she died on me

right there in our bed. So I cried and cried

and then called the cops to say Miss Hooker’s

dead—what happens now? But they just bowed and

wowed, which woke me upright out of my dream

to see my dog chasing squirrels again

though not on the branches, no dog’s that good.

Then Miss Hooker patted me on the head

and brought me in for a cup of water,

which I drank like I’d been in the desert

forty days and nights. And it was righteous.

Excruciatingly

Gale Acuff — Sat, 28 Feb 2015 12:49:36 +0000

One day Miss Hooker will die and go to

Heaven to live with the angels and God

and Jesus and the Holy Ghost and all

the good folks who never sinned, or not much,

not enough to to go to Hell, and I wish

I could say that I’m in that number but

for ten years old I sin a damn-Hell of

a lot, I mean everyday, if I

didn’t know better I’d say I was cursed

but I’m not blaming Adam and Eve though

it’s probably their damn fault anyway

but just myself, I guess I know the rules

because Miss Hooker lays them down in class

and warns us besides to take care of our

eternal souls, which means the part of me

that’s really me will live forever and

I have to choose carefully where it will

go, that’s Heaven or Hell again, and it’s

tough because I don’t have what it takes to

stick to it. I’ve got a wandering mind

she said in Sunday School today, she’s my

teacher so there it is. But I do pray

every night before I fall asleep

that God and Jesus will forgive me for

stinking up another day and tonight

I’ll mention the Holy Ghost as well, could

He be the missing link in being good

enough to get past the Pearly Gates? Can’t

hurt to try. From what Miss Hooker says of

Hell I’ll suffer—ex-cru-ci-at-ing-ly

was the word she used. It’s a damn good one

whatever it means, probably badly,

fire and brimstone, I think that’s sulfur now,

and torture that’s never-ending. But I

want to see her again, Miss Hooker, when

we’re both dead because I’m in love with her

but she’s 25 and old and too old

for me to marry even when I’m her

age. What the Hell am I supposed to do

but get to see her whenever I want

when I’m dead and if I go to Heaven

and if I still have eyes, my soul I mean,

and she has a soul that my soul can see?

Or maybe even we’ll both go to Hell.

That will be good since we’ll be together.

Wild Violet online literary magazine » Gale Acuff

Living Water

Excruciatingly