John Callan wrote:

> My only exposure to folks who took the Bible literally until I went
> off to college was in the movie Inherit the Wind.

There was a disturbance down the cell row; rather, there was a
noticeable lack of disturbance. It was Preacher Jicklo come to
proselytize and save the inmates for Jesus. One by one in a row,
starting from the cell closest to the gate, the county inmates ducked
into their bunks and hid under their covers to feign sleep, but one,
"You shed visit the kid down there, Preacher. I ready been saved,
Preacher, but 'im there's got five Bibles. You should go talk to 'im."

"I'll do that son. And may Jesus be with you to the inebriated Day of
Atonement in that there is no greater to be blessed unto a man, or
woman, or beast or sheep or prairie dog but that they would come through
me to seek redemption of their thirst from terrible... terrible sinful
ways on the high and righteous road unto the kingdom of the Glorious
Father..."

It was as if he had got this all out of a book. Or he had got it all
from some other person who repeated it to him from some other person who
had got it out of a book that some other person had translated from what
some other person had said that some other person had said they had read
in a book, but they had not really read any book though they did not
want it known that they had not read the book but made it all up and
said it had come from a book that they had read when they had never
actually read it or any other book, being a primary-source illiterate,
but in a nice way, and Preacher Jicklo said it as if he meant it,
repeated himself as if he meant every last word of it because it was Gospel.

"You got a Gaulois, Preacher?"

"No."

"Hmmm... well then... I could use some socks. You see that my feet are
bare, no?"

"With your heart in Jesus there is no need for want..."

"I'm not sure what I want is so peculiar, Preacher, but me feet tell me
they are cold."

"I'm cold," said the anonymous inmate's foot as it wiggled bare and
exposed from out below the thin blanket.

------
(and this story of a mother ducker borrowed and adapted from a friend)

Then there was this Garph fellow. How can one feel that they are in
competition with a phantom? How can one feel in competition when one
does not even know that they are in a race with time, with surreal
and/or biological clocks or that it is all as it was, comfortable or
otherwise, his relationship with Molly Kunze over with?

This Garph... the story was... had been down at the local park in
Winnipee Center at the south end of the lake near the small inlet, a
sheltered space with overhang of willows where ducks and swans and geese
congregate because people are always there to feed them stale bread. An
unknown fellow, Associate Professor XYZ, in a sports car with bagpipes
he steered and bellowed and was stuck on his piobareachd, an MG midget,
Green Mallard in color, a bit over the edge of sobriety drove in swerves
through on the small road near to the inlet in the town park,
resplendent in the early light filtered through the gentle rustle of
beech tree leaves, a noisy contraption too quick that early in the day
and with a small bump and flump flump with his front tire struck a
mother duck. What luck?

The bird with a broken wing fluttered and squawked and put up a hell of
a noise that the driver bluntly did not hear as he godlessly progressed
to the southwest past the raccoon and white-tail zoo towards the lower
decline of a boat launch ramp.

She had to have been deaf. The Professor floated onward to further inlets.

Her chicks fluttered around on the road behind her in a chaotic turmoil
of panic; they looked like loose leaves blown about by wind. Mothers of
little children were witness there and with their own blessed children
hustled -- clusters of nuclear family units who had gone from the serene
pleasure to throw chunks of sticky donuts and day old bread to the
hungry birds to suddenly witness this squawk and trauma.

Garph came to the rescue. Bravely he grabbed up the bird as it screeched
and pecked at him. He withstood the pain to his wrist. He held the bird
tight and firm against his chest. The chicks peeped at the soles of his
sea-green Doc Martins. Garph proclaimed to all of the American mothers
who had come here straight out of the suburbs and were seen to hold
their young children, little girls with hands over their eyes that cried
uncontrollably, boys laughed and slapped their tiny thighs, Garph
proclaimed to all and everyone in an Errol Flynn gesture of bravado, "I
will save the life of this mother duck. It will not go to waste!"

It was an emergency, he told them. He smiled. He assured them on his
honor as a man of substance and long record, and with his soft voice of
stalwart command he assured all of the mothers and the children,
particularly the little girls, and the other ducks who were huddled
nearby in wonderment and the white swan and the black swan and the goose
and the gander and the trees with their crisp leaves and a candy wrapper
that blew past in lazy-ass arcs and the man who walked his Dalmatian on
cerise expanda-leash and the sun and the moon and the stars that he
would right then with haste and dispatch transport the wounded mother
duck to the emergency room of the nearest VA hospital.

Garph jumped in his truck with his dog Sparky who barked amiably and
they left the town park where they went directly to his friend Denny
Bonabben's cabin where he had crashed on the porch for the last month --
decapitated with rusty hatchet on the rear door stoop, plucked, prepared
and ate the mother duck as a sort of mushy soup boiled with white onions
and 'taters. Sparky was happy for a few breast scraps and raw
intestines, but no bones. Duck bones are not good for dogs.

XXX

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