He may accost you in the drugstore or in the barbershop, his shy hesitant smiling face, his stuttering lisping voice asking, “Hello? How are you today?”—for everything he says is said like a question. He blinks and before you know it a pamphlet is being passed into your hand.
ETERNITY IS FOREVER—a picture of the sky: fluffy, white clouds and behind one of them a little piece of the sun peeking around—long lines stretching out from it, reaching to the edge of the paper. HAVE YOU MADE YOUR CHOICE? Inside, WHERE WILL YOU SPEND ETERNITY? IN HEAVEN OR IN HELL?
“Some reading material—for free,” says Happy Henry, smiling and bowing slightly, nodding his head towards the pamphlet as you stand there, and as you stuff it into your pocket and thank him, planning to discreetly dispose of it later.
As you turn and depart from him, he stands still behind you, nodding his head and regarding you with glowing eyes—joyful, envying the happiness you will know when you later privately read the pamphlet and its true meaning washes over you, when the glory of the Lord’s love rains down over your heart and the truth of your redemption paid for with the price of God’s only begotten son detonates across your consciousness and you are truly cleansed in the blood of the lamb.
Yes, Henry knows and anticipates the bounteous future awakening, which will take place, and most of all your incredible surprise at discovering that you are the personal receiver of the greatest gift that has ever been given—Henry’s benevolent head nodding, ushering you into that most beautiful and incomprehensible sanctuary, the universe a compassionate womb in love with you forever—If only you don’t drink or smoke or use curse words, Henry thinks with a stern frown, his brow furrowing.
He strides down the highway up to Barker’s Corner, to the gas station with the all-night coffee shop attached, loping up across the parking lot with an energetic spring quickening in his long bony legs. In the front window of the coffee shop three men sit huddled around a table, their coffee cups half-filled before them, their elbows resting on the table and their large boots on the floor resting in gloppy puddles of mud. They wear thick, grey, mud-spattered jackets and hats emblazoned with the logos of various tractor and farm implement manufacturers.
One of the men sits sucking on a pipe that periodically goes out, necessitating that he continually relight it—the ashtray before him filled with blackened matches. The man sitting across from him looks out the window and sees Henry limping his way across the lot.
“Well here comes ol’ Henry,” he chuckles, his eyes darting across to the other two men.
“That’s right. There he is, Roy,” drawls the pipe-smoker, “on his way to make another new convert, I suspect.”
“Heh, heh,” chuckles Roy. “Don’t suspect there’s any likelihood on ’im makin’ a fresh one outta you, eh Gus?”
“Oh, Henry knows me all right,” says the other fellow laconically. “I ’magine by this time he knows he’d be barkin’ up the wrong tree tryin’ to get somewhere with me.”
Roy laughs, and the other fellow, an older man with weary, watery eyes chuckles as well as Henry throws open the door of the coffee shop and stumbles in, having a bit of trouble with his sizable suitcases. The middle-aged woman behind the cash register looks up with a bemused smile and the men sitting at the table all turn to him, nod, “How y’doin’, Henry?” winking at each other, then return to their conversation.
A newspaper lies on the table in the midst of them, The Wigford Gazette, with its tale on the front page of how a discarded refrigerator had been found in a ditch by a sideroad twenty miles out of town the night before, and in the refrigerator was discovered a partially decomposed human body.
“Jesus Christ!” cries Roy. “How d’ya like that? Jesus, somethin’ like that ain’t happened round here since… well Christ, since ol’ Ferguson on the first line did ’is wife in. I ’member that from when I was a kid—musta been forty years ago.”
“Yeah, yep, that’s right, Roy, I ’member that, sure. Ol’ Ferguson he’d been married, what, twenty years to the same woman, came home one night and put an axe right through her head,” nods the fellow with wet, weary eyes, his voice soft and untroubled. “Didn’t seem to be no rhyme nor reason to it, never a hint there was anything wrong. Just got off work at the gravel pit, came home and put an ax right through ’er head.”
“Jesus, yeah!” says Roy, “and I remember my old man sayin’ he never could understand it, ol’ Ferguson. Christ the guy was one of the funniest devils around, always had a kind word and a prank, never even hardly saw him when he wasn’t smilin’ or laughin’, and one of the main guys at the Presbyterian Church there in town, always at the picnics and such, playin’ with the kids, arrangin’ the games, y’ know, the egg and spoon races.”
“Yep,” says the other fellow. “Just got off work one night, got in the car, drove home, and put an axe right through his wife’s head.”
“Christ!” cries Roy, shaking his head.
“Well, they put HIM away for life,” says the man dispassionately. “Likely he’s still in there if he ain’t dead by now. When they came he was still standin’ there, holdin’ the axe—he jes’ went away with them quietly. Yep, they didn’t waste no time puttin’ him away.”
“Good goddamn thing, too,” says Roy. “Jesus, imagine somethin’ like that…”
“Well, seems to me you guys are fergettin’ the case of the Dobbins out Starkway way,” says Frank suddenly, leaning into the conversation.
“The Dobbins? Hey, that rings a bell somewhere—the Dobbins…” Roy muses.
“Yeah, well that was likely before yous guys’s time,” says Frank. “Mighta been forty-five years ago now, they had the farm the Trombleys are at now.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Yeah, well young Lou Dobbins out there, he’s the guy that blew the heads off his grandparents.”
“Jesus Christ, yeah! I do recall hearin’ tell of somethin’ like that, Frank, yeah!” Roy exclaims, snapping his fingers.
“That’s right, that’s right,” agrees Frank. “Yeah, well, it was like this: this Lou Dobbins guy, both his parents were gone. Didn’t know what happened to ’em—mighta been dead, killed in a car accident or just took off, I don’t know, I couldn’t tell ya. So he’d been mostly raised by his grandparents on his father’s side. In fact, you ’member that old scrap-metal yard out on Highway Six?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Yep,” says Gus.
“Well they useta own that. Anyways, this young Lou Dobbins fella, he grew up and the old folks looked after ’im and he was a queer bird, worked in the garage in town from the time he was fifteen, you never seen him or heard a peep out of ’im otherwise, and he lived out on the farm with the old folks up till he was about thirty years old. Never broke away, if ya know what I mean, kinda strange—seemed timid, wouldn’t say boo to a ghost, and you never saw ’im in town at the dances or what have you at all, or with anybody. So no one never thought nothin’ of it, people just generally felt that was his way, I guess.
“So he was still livin’ with the old folks when he was thirty years old and then of course naturally by that time he couldn’t move out ’cause the old folks by this time were OLD, I mean they couldn’t’ve looked after themselves at all—so young Lou was kinda tied to them if ya know what I mean. They’d looked after him so now I guess he was kinda duty-bound and obligated to look after them.
“’Parently for the last couple a years the old folks were so goddamned old and sick they couldn’t even get outta bed—they’d just lay there day and night in their pyjamas, and I guess he had to feed ’em and change ’em