The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth by Ron Rash

Author:Ron Rash
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: University of South Carolina Press
Published: 1994-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

: Randy :

Between the States

Of course there’s a good chance it’s a bad idea, but that’s exactly why I’m here. Ever since high school everything has been a bad idea, or at least turned out to be. Marrying Darlene, selling the farm, buying the monkey. I’m needing an industrial-strength dose of nostalgia. I’m thinking if maybe I’m around the people I went to high school with I might at least be able to remember again what it felt like when the future was something you could think about without wanting to crawl under a bed and howl.

I’m out in the parking lot behind the gym, the same parking lot where me and Darlene used to steam up the windows of my daddy’s pick-up truck after basketball games, her in her cheerleading outfit and me in my basketball uniform, a hero, at least most games. That’s the beautiful thing about high school. You might be a complete screw-up except for one thing—shooting a basketball well, shooting a bird in the FFA annual photograph, twirling a baton—and just doing that one thing well can make you a hero. But high school only lasts for awhile. That truck me and Darlene used to make out in, like everything else in my life now, ain’t nothing but wreckage.

I take another swallow of the moonshine I bought from Junior Scruggs. It tastes like Prestone anti-freeze, but it’s cheaper than anything store-bought. I made Junior put a match to the shine before I gave him the three dollars. It burned blue so I reckon I won’t wake up blind.

Moonshine’s making a comeback in the New South, and not just because it’s cheap. So much is changing down here so fast people will buy anything that makes them feel like they’re living in the South instead of some southern suburb of New Jersey. Southerners aren’t worth a damn when it comes to change, and that’s why God gave us moonshine and people like Junior to make it. I pour what’s left into my hip flask and get out of the truck.

Inside the gym all of the lights have been turned off except for one on the stage. I’m standing near the doorway. There are a bunch of people in front of me, but it’s too dark to make out who they are. “Stairway to Heaven” is playing on the loudspeaker system, the long version.

Robert Plant belts out a final wail and the song ends. The lights don’t come on. Instead, Rodney Ruppe steps up to the microphone set up on the stage. I’ve known Rodney since the first grade, and he’s always given me the creeps. When we were kids he was always catching toads and lizards and “operating” on them with a pocketknife and a pair of pliers. He’s a doctor in Charlotte now, some kind of cancer specialist who owns two BMW’s and a swimming pool that looks like a pair of lungs.

“I will now read the roll call of the dead,” announces Rodney. He

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