The preacher looks over at the bank manager, Mr. Lanell. “You, sir: are you a Jew? Are you a denier of the divinity of Christ Jesus?”
Mr. Lanell shakes his head. “I’m not a Jew.”
“But do you deny Christ, nonetheless?” asks Proctor.
“Of course not. I accepted Christ as my personal savior when I was eleven.”
“And what a joy it is to hear it,” says Proctor as the telephone begins to ring. The younger robber Codges answers it.
Codges says, “Yeah, yeah,” into the phone and then turns to Cutler and says, “The police chief wants to know if we can send out a couple of the hostages in a show of good faith.”
“It’s them who oughta be showing us good faith!” the older bank robber rails. “What kind of back-asswards cowboy town is this?”
“A Christian town,” offers Miss Philpot, the bank manager’s secretary. “We’re all Christians. I know all these folks except for that uranium man over there. We’re every one of us good Bible-believing Christians. Except for that uranium man, whom I don’t know.”
“So what are you?” inquires the preacher of the man in coveralls who works for an out-of-town uranium prospecting outfit.
“I’m a — a Christian Scientist,” the man admits in a slightly stuttery voice, his head barely raised from the floor.
The preacher puckers his lips in thought. “Those Christian Scientists are a good bunch. They got faith all right. But I don’t much trust ’em.”
The uranium man emits a pained sigh.
“Come to think of it, I don’t much trust any of these folks to be dyed-in-the-wool followers of our blessed Lord,” Proctor continues, “until they show me their religious bona fides. I’m gonna need a little time to talk to these folks and find out what kind of Christians they are. I haven’t seen a single one of them at my tent revival.”
The younger of the two female tellers raises her hand. “I was at your tent show — last Friday night, in fact.”
“You were?” Proctor smiles, pleased.
“Reverend Proctor, we really don’t have time for—” Cutler taps his foot impatiently. “I need to give up two hostages, and as soon as possible, if you please.”
“Well, naturally, my lifelong journey down the highway of righteousness,” replies Proctor, “should dictate my inclusion, although I would leave it to you to make the final decision in that regard. But allow me to cogitate for a moment over which of these lovely young women deserves that second spot.” Proctor turns to the young female teller. “Were you really there, missy? Why didn’t I see you? I hardly ever forget a face as pretty as yours.”
The frightened, yet undeniably beautiful, blond-haired teller whose tasseled leather vest, a uniform of sorts for this cowboy bank, does little to restrain her large Tetonical breasts, answers in a high, tortured register: “I was there. I was sitting in the third row. I can tell you all the hymns we sang: ‘Softly and Tenderly Jesus is Calling,’ ‘Old Time Religion.’ I can hear them now in my head. The memory of them fills me with the wonder-working spirit!”
“But why didn’t you come down during the invitational? Why did you not rededicate your life to Christ at that most blessedly opportune moment, my darling girl?”
“I was shy, I suppose,” peeps the teller.
“Honesty, child. Your mind wasn’t on the Lord, now was it?”
“It was on the Lord, Reverend.” And then with a glance over at the two bank robbers and their guns, “Oh for the love of all that’s holy was my mind on the Lord!”
Proctor clucks and shakes his head. The security guard is shaking his head at the same moment, trying to bring himself back to full consciousness. Cutler kicks him again hard with his boot, right in the left temple, and returns him to dreamland.
Codges shakes the phone receiver in the air and cries, “We simply do not have all day!” His older partner Cutler nods in agreement.
“Reverend,” says Cutler, “my colleague-in-crime reminds me that we need to deliver a couple of hostages to the police A-S-A-P. Now if you can’t make up your mind whose faith is worth a get-out-of-bank-free card, we’ll just have to go back to the old standby: women and children and old men with heart ailments first.”
“My heart! My heart!” cries Mr. Lanell, dramatically clutching his chest.
“Oh please, I beg you!” weeps Mrs. Sherman, both her son Billy and the Hollis twin pulled protectively to her sides. “Let it be women and children first!”
“Spoken like a true Latter Day Saint,” hurls the other teller, Mrs. Witemeyer, a woman in her fifties with Mamie Eisenhower bangs. “Let it be known here and now, gentlemen, that Mrs. Sherman is, in point of fact, a Mormon. She calls herself a Christian, but she’s a Mormon, all right. And Mr. Reese over there is, in fact, a worshipper of the Pope, and Cornelius McIntire and his daughter—” She’s looking straight at Cornelius and me now. “They aren’t any kind of believers at all. I think they’re either atheist or Buddhist or something else Asian and heathen. I’ll tell you who the true Christians are. I’ll put them in any order you like, and I can be fast about it. Just let me get some paper and a pencil. Don’t leave it to this tent preacher to decide. He doesn’t know us. I know every hostage here except for that uranium man over there, and good Heavens, you already know he’s a doctor-denying Eddyite. Give me some paper.”
As the younger bank robber goes looking about for some paper, the uranium man, who is on the floor not far away, suddenly grabs the young man by the ankle and jerks him off his feet. The young criminal named Codges fires upon the uranium man and wings him before his gun goes flying out of his hand. At the same time Pops, the security guard, having come once again to his senses, draws his own gun and puts a fatal bullet into the back of the older robber Cutler. Codges’ gun, by luck or miracle, lands within a couple of feet of me and I roll right over to it.
Then, I don’t know — maybe it’s mischief or maybe it’s rancor over the fact that Mrs. Witemeyer had called my father and me atheists, I aim the gun at Mrs. Witemeyer and shoot her in the knee. Then I draw a bead on the revival preacher who had clearly manipulated our dire straits for his own benefit, and I plug him in the arm. I’ve been shooting tin cans and barn rats since I was six; a runny-mouthed Pharisee’s a pretty easy target.
There are several of us either dead or severely wounded when the police, having heard the various shots, come storming in from the back offices of the bank and take Mr. Codges into custody, and various ones of us away to the hospital (or in the case of Mr. Cutler, to the morgue) — even the uranium man, who protests the medical attention.
I spend six months at a camp for juvenile delinquents and learn to rope calves and how to release my bean farts for optimum dramatic effect. I don’t regret what I did for a second.
Amen.
1954 FAMISHED IN TEXAS
Tessie was in her slip. Her ten-year-old daughter Regina stood next to her. “I won’t wear the jumper if I can’t find the belt,” Tessie said to her daughter. “What do you think about these Bermuda shorts? Are they too casual?”
“It’s a barbecue, Mom. It’s supposed to be casual.”
Regina handed her mother the purple cinch belt that went with the purple jumper.
“Where have you been hiding that? Go check on the au gratin.” Tessie laid the matching cinch belt and jumper on the bed. She crossed to her dresser and looked at her image in the mirror. She gave gentle pats to her Maggie McNamara pixie cut, which was probably too young for her by about ten years. “Go on, Regina. I don’t want the cheese to burn. Where’s your father?”