Seven Stars

These pieces tell a story. Like most stories, it has history, and like most history, it contains truth, dubious memories, and lies.

There will be no more night. They will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give them light. –Revelation 22:5

Revelation

We read about the End Times
in the Bible.

The Whore of Babylon.
(You can say “whore”
when you are talking about the Bible
but that’s the only time.)

Blood running bridle high on a horse.
Four horses. With ghosts for riders.

Everybody always talks about 666
but it’s not in there all that much.

But there’s a bunch of sevens.

Seven churches, seven lamps,
seven candlesticks.
Seven mountains, seven bowls,
seven seals that seal something up.
I’m not sure what.

Seven trumpets, seven angels.
Some kind of monster with seven heads.

But that’s not the thing that scared me.
Not even all that blood on those horses.

It was Jesus coming back.

His head and His hair all white.
White as white wool, white as snow.

His eyes like fire and His feet
burning like a furnace.

His voice sounding like the ocean,
and out of His mouth comes a sword.

And in His right hand
seven stars.

The Anti Christ

Aunt Florine is always talking about
The Beast and she told me
that means Anti Christ.

When the End Times come
after Jesus comes back,
the Anti Christ will have
all the lost on his side and
Jesus will be in charge of Christians.

My Uncle Jacob went to college
up in Athens and came back
saying there’s not going to be
an Anti Christ.

He said people have been waiting
for hundreds of years for one—
thinking it might be a king or a pope
but it never is.

Aunt Florine believes it is Bill Clinton.
After he wasn’t President any more
I asked her if she still thought Bill Clinton
will be the Anti Christ and she said

Yes because Bill Clinton
is coming back like Jesus
and his wife is the Whore of Babylon.

Revival

We had a revival at Mt. Olive. There was a lot of good singing and a special preacher from Memphis. He told our pastor that he liked to do a special preaching just for the children, except he kept calling us the “Young People.”

On Tuesday night, he called us up to sit on the floor around him. He smelled like Ballard’s Funeral Home and his hair was puffed up on top.

He asked us where we wanted to go after we die and we all said Heaven which I thought he should know without asking.

And when Cheryl McAllister spoke up for us all by saying we sure didn’t want to go to “Hades,” he said he wanted us to know what Hell was like.

So he asked us if we had ever burned our fingers on our mama’s cookstove and did we remember how that hurt.

Hell feels like that, he said, except it’s all over your body and it lasts forever and ever.

I got saved that night.

Getting Saved

If you accept Jesus as
your personal savior,
you are saved.

If you never do, you are lost.
If you die when you are still lost
you go to Hell.

When you get saved
the preacher talks about
Jesus and Heaven and Hell.

He stands up there
at the end of the preaching
and people are singing

“Just As I Am” and you cry
while he is waiting, waiting,
for someone to come up. Maybe you.

You get this feeling like scared
and sick and hungry
all at the same time.

You go up and you have
a private talk with the preacher
which is private except

Everybody is watching and
your mother and aunt cry and
just like that you are saved.

A few days later
maybe you start to worry
you really aren’t saved

Because
how can you be sure?

Being Lost

Aunt Florine is always asking
how can anybody be lost?
The Bible, she says, is right there.

It tells the whole truth.
It tells exactly what you have to do.
You let Jesus in your heart

And then you know
you’ll go to heaven.
So, how does someone stay lost?

A lost person hears about Jesus,
goes to church with his parents.
People tell him what he needs to know.

But he won’t get saved on purpose.
Aunt Florine says it is stubborn.
I think some people who are lost
know they need to get saved
but they just can’t do it.

My uncle Jacob went to college in Athens.
He’s lost.

Throwing Away the Bible

At church one day, our pastor,
Brother Wilkins, had a trash can
up close to him while he preached.

He started talking about
how you have to believe
every word of the Bible.

He said some people
don’t believe every word—
even some so-called Christians.

Brother Wilkins held the Bible
in his right hand way up
over his head and yelled at us.

If you don’t believe every word
of this book, you might as well throw
the whole thing away!

And he made like he was
going to throw the Bible
in the trash can but he didn’t.

But when he almost did I got
a strange feeling in my stomach
and a tingling in my legs.

That night I had a sinful dream that
I was in a bed with Cheryl McAllister
and we were acting like we were married.

Baptized

Mt. Olive didn’t have a place for baptizing so we went into Macon to Forest Park Missionary Baptist. It had a real nice inside baptizing tank. It was right up on the wall behind where the preacher preaches and the choir sings.

There were curtains and when they were pulled back there was this big glass tank with water in it and the preacher standing in it in his suit.

Billy Covert got baptized the same day as me and we were waiting in the pew. When they pulled back the curtain, Billy whispered to me where’s the fish and the little statue of the deep sea diver with the bubbles coming out? and it’s a good thing I wasn’t drinking milk or it would sure come out of my nose.

Phillip McDaid’s Bicycle Saint

The McDaids were Catholics.
Aunt Florine said they drink blood
and worship the Pope of Italy.

Phillip McDaid was tall and skinny
and wore big glasses so
we made fun of him and
also because he had a dumb bike
with a basket on the handlebars.

On the basket was a little statue
of somebody that looked like Jesus
but it was a Saint.
This is one of the things
wrong with Catholics
is they worship Saints.

One time Billy Colvert
was getting ready
to make fun of Phillip
but all he said was

hey, what’s that weird statue
on your bicyc—

but before he could even finish,
Phillip came flying off his bike
and screamed

are you making fun of Saint Joseph?

and beat the living tar
out of Billy Colvert.

And that’s how we learned not
to mess with Catholics because
there is something flat crazy about them.

Something Bad Happened

Something bad happened.
Mr. Hollinger shot off his head
with a shotgun and I saw it.

I didn’t know him that much
but I liked him. Just the day
before he helped me get
a glider out of a tree.

He saw me pitching rocks
at it and he came over
with a cane pole. He walked
graceful, like an animal walks.

He had on a white t-shirt and
work pants and he smelled
a little like beer.

But he had a fight with his wife
and shot himself and she came
running and screaming across our yard.

Daddy went over to help and
he didn’t know I was behind him
or I know he would have stopped me.

Daddy went in and passed by
Mr. Hollinger because
it was dark up in there.

I came in and the screen door
slammed and I heard
a gurgle sound coming from a chair

in front of the TV
with the Alabama-Auburn
game on.

The chair was empty
but I couldn’t take my eyes off it
and I felt like somebody was
hitting me in the chest with a hammer.

But the chair was empty.
And I was smiling and
crying at the same time.

I could hear strange music in my head.
Like a man singing in church but
just one note. One long note.

Daddy came up behind me and
put his hand on my shoulder
and said “Son.”

Then I could see an outline
of Mr Hollinger and then
I could see his body

and the mess on the wall.
His head was mostly gone.
The chair wasn’t empty, really.

Daddy said “Son” again.
Then the shotgun slid of Mr. Hollinger’s lap.
Daddy said “Son” again

but this time Daddy’s voice
came out of the mouth
of the dead man.

In the blood on his right hand
I could see seven stars shining,
shining like in a red sky.

Seven Stars

In the blood on his right hand
I could see seven stars shining,
shining like in a red sky.

1

I could hear a man singing one note in my head.

2

There were brains.

3

I think he was looking at me when he died.

4

I slept with my parents (He was looking at me, is why I did.)

5

Sometimes everything was blurry and
sometimes I could hear people talking to me
but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

6

One day I asked for “shotgun” at the supper table
when I meant “salt shaker.”

7

I had dreams about him walking toward me with
the cane pole except in the dream it was a shotgun.

Crippled

When school started,
I got crippled. First, I woke up
with everything looking fuzzy
and that lasted a few days.
Then my legs wouldn’t work
and I couldn’t walk.

Instead of going to school,
I laid down on a pallet
Mama made for me on the floor
and there was an electric fan and TV.

Mama got worried and
carried me to the doctor
but he couldn’t figure out
what was wrong with me.

Mama got more worried and
carried me to Macon to see
more doctors. Daddy got mad
because it cost so much.

Then one night Daddy caught me
walking in my sleep. He said to Mama

how come the boy can’t walk in the day
but he can walk in the night?

It made me embarrassed
because I didn’t know myself.

Walk in the Night

Mama let Aunt Florine take me to
a healing preacher except
the preacher was a woman.
She didn’t have a church
and people came to her house.
She had a million lines in her face
but it was a nice face.
She knelt down in front of me
in the chair they put me in and
she put her hands on my legs.
She looked at me like she knew me.
Like she was my grandma.
And she said “Son” and it was sad,
like when Daddy kept saying “Son” that time.

I want to know what that man looked like,
Son, and you tell me the truth.

I told her that his head was
mostly gone and
he was dead but a little alive.
I started crying and even though
she didn’t ask me about it,
I told her about how I had
sinful dreams about me and Cheryl.

She just smiled a little and told me that
Mr. Hollinger was in Heaven and
that I was a good boy and
I would go there, too.
And then she told me to get up
and I stood up and walked.
She had to help me a little
but I could walk pretty good.

We walked outside in the night
and the sky was as black
as Mama’s Bible
and full of beautiful stars.

What It Is Like

It would make Mama
mad to hear me say it but
there really is a lot of weird stuff
in Revelations.

But toward the end there’s something
nice and it seems even prettier
after all those monsters
and plagues and whores and
swords coming out of mouths.

There’s an angel showing
a river that is clear as crystal
and it is flowing out
of God’s throne and
right down the middle
of the street.

And there’s a beautiful tree
which has fruit every month.
The leaves make
the best medicine of all
and I think the tree is the end
of sickness and dying.

It’s never dark and always day.
People live with God and
they never fight.

Forever and ever.