MESSAGE
///Gale Acuff I love Jesus but then there’s Miss Hooker, my Sunday School teacher, she gets me in -to the classroom and I stay for God and Jesus and the Holy Ghost and Heaven and the good stories from the Bible, it’s a pretty fair trade-off, she’s got red hair and green eyes and freckles and when she sings and pounds the piano it’s like I’m dead already and in Heaven with her. Will I make it? Maybe not. I sin a lot and even a little sin is too much, she says, and I’ve sinned so much already that when my body dies and my soul goes to Heaven I might not be able to talk my way out of Hell, which is where God will surely send me and He can’t do wrong since He’s perfect but at least I tried. If I want to see Miss Hooker forever I need like the devil to get saved or I’ll burn forever and meanwhile she’ll be an angel and forget all about me. If she’d marry me one day that would help, God having to decide if He’ll break us up, Miss Hooker with Him but me on fire. Miss Hooker’s 25 and I’m just 10 so when I’m 16, I’ll ask for her hand, she’ll be 31 then and say yes if she’s still single and if she’s not maybe I’ll jump off a bridge, Hell’s waiting for me anyway. That way I’ll set her free and maybe God will see that and save my soul for her and let me stay in Heaven and when Miss Hooker shows up dead won’t she be surprised? After Sunday School I walk home, I miss church service because Miss Hooker sits up front so far away I just can’t see her, only Preacher Pat. And the Cross, of course, and once when I was trying to spy the back of Miss Hooker’s red head I thought I saw Jesus Himself hanging there, on the Cross I mean, not Miss Hooker’s head. I blinked and looked again and He was gone, risen all over again, I guess. I got the message. You have to die a lot. LITERARY-ARTS 31
