Gideon - 03 - Religious Conviction by Grif Stockley Page B

overpowers the molecules between us.
    “This is your life at stake!” she says, her voice trembling at the indignity of her daughter’s apparent indifference.
    “Of course he’ll call you. He’ll be back to preach this Sunday, and I’ll make sure he calls you Monday. I’d like to talk to you, too.”
    Grateful for any cooperation in this case, I smile at mrs. Norman. Drunk or not, she is the kind of mother who would stick pins in a voodoo doll if she were asked. To her, Christianity, as it surely is to many of its adherents, may be like medicine. If it doesn’t cure, I doubt if she would be averse to trying another prescription, preferably one with a little alcohol in it. A practical people, most Americans demand results from their dogma. I drive back downtown, wishing I were defending the mother instead of the daughter.
     
    “are you washed in the blood of the Lamb I wait in front of the mirror in the living room. I am standing alongside Sarah, knotting my tie as she applies her lip stick.
    “Don’t make fun,” she says crossly, her lips flat against her teeth.
    “It’s probably a lot more interesting than Mass.”
    Either my shirt is shrinking, or my neck is growing.
    I tighten the noose around my neck, dismayed by the turkey wattle I have created above my collar. The worry lines in my forehead, I tell myself, are a sign of character; my neck, increasingly a road map of cross-stitches to nowhere, is devoid of such nobility. I need to break down and buy some new shirts before I strangle myself.
    I probably deprive myself of ten I.Q. points every time I fasten the top button.
    “I’m just reciting from “General William Booth Enters into Heaven.” I can’t shake the feeling we’re going to an oldfashioned revival meeting.”
    Sarah frowns, uncertain whether I am serious. When I came home for the summer after my freshman year at Subiaco, a Catholic boarding school in northwestern Arkansas, my older sister, Marty, went around the house reciting Vachel Lindsay’s poetry untH I learned k my self. Sarah probably thinks Vachel Lindsay is a rock group. Odd bits of my memory surface from time to time like debris washed onto a largely barren reef.
    Sarah pats her hair.
    “Let’s go. I don’t want to be late.”
    I goose-step out the door, leaving Woogie to wonder what is going on. I’m not supposed to be leaving the house on a Sunday morning unless it is with a tennis racket in my hand.
    “With a cast in the thousands,” I say, gulping in the perfect spring day, “I doubt if they’ll stop the service and hoot at us.”
    Heading for the driver’s side, Sarah explains, “I don’t want to have to sit in the front row.”
    Inside the Blazer, I hand her the keys.
    “Me neither.
    They’ll probably be able to tell we’re Catholics and make us stand up and denounce the Pope.” Sarah must feel some guilt or maybe is nervous. Do they wave their arms and speak in tongues? Full immersion for baptisms? We have been remarkably sheltered from the peculiarities of other faiths. I feel a little nervous myself.
    Rainey is not reassuring when we pick her up.
    “Wait and see,” she says, grinning, when I ask her what to expect She looks great in a peach sweater over a blue skirt, pearls, and heels, dressed up in a way I don’t usually see.
    “They have these giant spotlights in the ceiling that crisscross the congregation looking for people who’ve been identified as sinners. I’ve told ‘em your dad’s coming,” she tells Sarah.
    Sarah doesn’t believe this, but asks, turning up Damell Road, “Do they really know we’re coming?”
    Rainey leans forward from the backseat and places her hand on my shoulder.
    “No,” she says and gives Sarah are assuring smile she does not see.
    “Not really.”
    By my willingness to attend, I have earned some points.
    She and Sarah know I am more curious about Shane Norman than his message, but women have been trying to reform men so long it is almost a genetically