Vernell Paskins, Mobile Home Queen by Pamela King Cable

Author:Pamela King Cable
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: short stories, southern books, southern fictiton
Publisher: Satya House Publications Inc.

***

That evening I drive home with my car windows rolled down. I stop at a light next to the tent revival. I can hear the faint tune of Are You Washed In The Blood echoing out to my car.

I never could measure up to church or to my momma and daddy. Viola and Elmer walked that sawdust aisle many times while I remained on my metal chair and ate cherry Lifesavers, or pretended to be asleep. They hauled me to revivals every summer; I refused to go after I left home.

I look over to the cars in neat rows on the blacktop. A couple stray women and children run in as the music plays. I sit at the light, the music swells and another familiar praise song floats in on a breeze. I recall the words, Jesus on the main line, tell Him what you want. Quite vividly, I remember the week-long meetings where my momma would rededicate her life to holiness. Evangelists with red handkerchiefs in all-black suits or all-white suits would preach about fire and death, the book of Revelation, the judgments reserved for those who abuse their “temples of God” with cigarettes, drugs, and alcohol. They’d wage war against slow dancing, television, movies, card games, homosexuality, makeup, and rock and roll. Evangelists pounded their fists on pulpits and wailed that all liars, whoremongers, thieves, murderers, and backslidden Christians would be cast into a lake of fire. And if we didn’t walk the aisle that very night, we’d surely get in a car wreck on the way home, die, and open our eyes in hell. Or worse, miss the rapture and burn forever.

The most terrible fear we knew was missing the rapture. It hung over our heads like a lit match by a gas pump and God was liable to drop the match at any minute.

I tried not to allow evangelists to heap any more fear on me than the psycho in the Alfred Hitchcock movie. I watched Momma and Daddy get saved every summer. They’d praise the Lord for about two weeks after the revival was over. The house remained peaceful for those two glorious weeks. Then, one night without warning, they wouldn’t come home until early in the morning. All liquored up, they’d been out all night at the bars, road houses, and honky tonks where, in the hot, steamy Southern nights, yearning, excitement, and the desperate attempt to hold onto their secret desires for all they were worth had surfaced once again. It went thataway until the next summer when revival came back into town.

In the meantime, Momma prophesied over me plenty before she died. “Vernell, you’ll end up in a trailer like me, sure as my name is Viola Pauline Truvey, with six snotty noses screamin’ at yer feet, and red dust coverin’ the diapers and T-shirts you hang on the line.” She was wrong. Were only two baby girls in my future and Floyd bought me a Hotpoint the year before he died. I never believed in prophecy.

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