The Front Porch Prophet by Raymond L. Atkins Page A

in the middle of the highway.
    “You backed those pieces of shit down with an empty gun? Man. A.J. the badass. Man.” There was awe and respect in his voice.
    “Just shut up and drive,” was his hero’s reply.
    As A.J. thought back to that night long past, a sense of the unreal descended upon him. It was as if he were considering the foolish exploits of a young man in a faraway land rather than walking down memory lane.
What a dumb ass,
he thought. He shook his head and looked about him. The scene on the porch was much the same as it had been the previous week. He noticed the current incarnation of the eternal cigarette was burning in the hubcap. He picked it up and flipped it out into the yard.
    “You’re not going to start that shit again, are you?” Eugene asked.
    “Absolutely,” A.J. replied. “How do you feel today?” Eugene laid the shotgun across his lap and rocked slowly, reminding A.J. of Judge Roy Bean, Law west of the Pecos.
    “I feel like shooting Johnny Mack’s bulldozer with this shotgun,” Eugene said, the old rocker creaking. He looked over at A.J. “I guess you’d rather I didn’t.” A.J. doubted any damage would occur but saw no point to the exercise.
    “Johnny Mack’s jacket is behind the seat,” A.J. said. “I’ll hang it up on the Jeep, and you can shoot
it.”
It seemed a reasonable alternative.
    “No, that’s okay,” Eugene said sadly, holding up his hand. “It wouldn’t be the same.”
    “Maybe later,” A.J. suggested, but Eugene had already moved to another topic.
    “I bet you had hell getting the dozer from Johnny Mack,” he said with a little smile.
    “You know Johnny Mack better than I do,” A.J. said, shrugging. “You already know about how it went.”
    “Come on. You can’t deny a man in my condition. I want to hear about it. Did he throw some Scripture on you? Did he get huffy? Did you have to kick his ass?” Eugene was truly excited, so A.J. relented and told the tale.
    He had encountered Johnny Mack down at the Jesus Loves Tater Tots Drive-In, the current week’s name for Sequoyah’s only eating establishment. In actual fact it had no real name and was not a drive-in at all, except for the time that Estelle Chastain misjudged the impact of momentum upon a moving Ford and ended up in the middle of the dining room. Luckily it had been a slow Thursday morning, and no fatalities were reported.
    The restaurant appeared to change names weekly due to the haphazard placement of signs in the front window by the firm’s owner, cook, and advertising consultant, Wilson Crab. Wilson preferred to be called Hoghead for reasons unknown and was an extremely pious but nearly illiterate man who liked to letter slogans of a religious bent onto pieces of cardboard and tape them up in the front window of his diner. Unfortunately, he also advertised his weekly specials in the same small pane, and often the close proximity of the two distinctly different types of messages produced unintended results, particularly when overlap was involved.
    Thus, at various times the beanery had been the God Will Save Ham-N-Eggs Drive-In, the Jesus Is Corndogs Drive-In, and the infamous The Road to Hell Is Paved with Country Fried Steak Drive-In, to name but a few. A.J.’s personal favorite had been the well-meaning Christ Died for the Best Fried Chicken in the County Drive-In, of which he was fortunate enough to get a snapshot before the signs were personally rearranged by the Reverend O’Neal Tanner. The pastor had stopped by for a cup of coffee and had almost gone on to his reward upon reading of the Savior’s previously unknown weakness for the local delicacy.
    A.J. sat by Johnny Mack at the counter and ordered a cup of Hoghead’s foul brew, which he loaded down with as much cream and sugar as the mug would hold. He normally took it black, but Hoghead’s coffee was best when disguised. Hoghead had served twenty-three years in the Navy as a cook, and his wretched, scalding, painfully