A Life is Lost, a Soul is Saved
© By TOM POPPER
Of course I had this guy pegged for a moron, but I was annoyed that he could tell. I hate it when people figure out what I really think of them.
"I guess you probably consider me kinda simple and unsophisticated," Matt said. "I mean you been to college, and you live in New York City and all, and I just drive a truck."
Kind of unsophisticated? Hell, you're a big dumb hillbilly, I thought. But that's not what I said. I just kind of mumbled: "No, uh ... not at all ... I think you're uh ... no."
As annoyed as I was, I didn't want to insult some big, rangy trucker. Even though he was in his 50s and had a beer gut, I could tell he was still in good shape. Under his red t-shirt he had wide shoulders and long, almost flabby arms, but you knew that flab concealed a lot of muscle. Besides, I felt obliged to be nice because he was giving me a lift.
It made me sick to think I had to hitchhike back to my place in Manhattan. I hate bumming rides. But I went to visit my friend Eddie, who's still in school up in Buffalo, and I partied away all my money. Here I am a college graduate in a management training program, with several credit card applications pending, and I run out of money. It pisses me off. At least I knew better than to hang around with my thumb out, like some target for perverts. Not that I'm prejudiced against gays or anything, I'm just not into that stuff. So I went to a truck stop near Interstate 90 and waited for a safe-looking driver who's going to the city. Matt looked safe — a little stupid — but safe.
Turns out he was a lot stupid. We get into this whole argument about capital punishment. Now, I know the best way to handle criminals is to kill every son-of-a-bitch who seriously breaks the law. I also know some people are too thick to understand this. But this guy was like — a radical. You don't expect a hard-working trucker to say there should be no prisons — that criminals should just have to prove they're sincerely sorry for their crimes. Well, I guess if he was giving me a ride I didn't mind him being an idiot, I just wished he wouldn't ask me what I thought of his mental prowess.
While I awkwardly denied the truth about his stupidity, Matt stared blankly at the dashed white line moving through the light of his high beams. He practically ignored me, and continued: "Well I don't mind bein' a unsophisticated truck driver. I jes' try to do my job with great meekness, 'cause I know that the meek shall inherit the earth."
What the hell is "great meekness?" I thought, and how do you drive a truck with it? Even if I couldn't figure that one out, I did know what was about to happen. This guy was going to go on some big religious spiel and ask me if I've been "saved." I knew it would be boring, but it could have been worse — he could have been some kind of pervert. So I guess I didn't mind too much when Matt began to rattle on:
"I believe meekness is important, you see, because God shall be strong for all of us. Remember: 'Vengeance is mine says the Lord.' I know that's true, not just because I read it in the Bible, but because my Mama showed me. She gave me a real-life lesson about Christian justice and mercy that I will never forgot."
Matt glanced at me in the weak light of the dashboard to make sure he had an audience. I tried to show an interested face, and even nodded a little. He turned his eyes back toward the road, sighed loudly through his nostrils and started speaking into the windshield with a voice that had lost its previous lightness.
"My father died just before Peter was born, but my Mama worked hard to raise us five boys right, and we all pitched in. I was the oldest, so I especially felt responsible to help run the grocery and bait store that Papa had started in our little town near Tallahassee, in the Florida panhandle. When our work was done for the week, us Cashen boys liked to relax in the local cafe, where they had dancing on weekend nights. One Saturday I was there, as usual, with all my brothers Mark, Luke, John and little Peter. We were in a celebrating mood because earlier that afternoon Luke had caught a touchdown pass that helped his high-school team win their game. We were talkin' kinda' loud and laughin' kinda' hard. It was probably sinful to gloat so much, but we figured we deserved to be proud.
"Anyway, some of the players for the losing team were in the bar too, and one of them, Jeffrey Polan, had a real angry drunk going. He must've heard us celebrating, 'cause he came over to our table and said to Luke: 'Well if it isn't old Lucky Luke. I know you have to be lucky, 'cause how else could you catch the ball while you have both eyes closed and you're praying you don't get knocked down?' Luke looked up from where he sat, smiled nice at Jeffrey and said, 'I guess I was lucky to make that catch and all. But hey, that's football. Maybe you guys'll win the next one.' Luke was pleasant and sincere when he said this. He even held his hand out to shake with Jeffrey. But what does Jeffrey do? He slaps my brother's hand away and spits in his face.
"That's when me and Mark stepped in and grabbed Jeffrey under the armpits. That boy was so drunk — the Bible says 'wine is a mocker and intoxicating drink arouses brawling' — that he didn't know what was happening until we had carried him to the door and tossed him outside. Little Peter was watching the whole thing, kinda awed by what his big brothers could do. He didn't know how much we couldn't do, God rest his soul."
Matt blinked and squinted at the road. It seemed possible that he was blinking away a tear. His heavy lower jaw trembled a little, but his voice showed no emotional when he took up his story:
"We stayed pretty late, just drinking and joking — not even noticing the girls that wanted to dance with us. When it was time to go, I drove the family pickup and Mark and Luke joined me in the front cab, while John and Peter, the two youngest, took their usual spots back in the bed of the pickup. Driving along a dark stretch of the state highway that passed through a tall pine forest, I saw a pair of headlights coming straight at us, on our side of the road. I honked and swerved toward the shoulder, but the lights swerved with me. I cursed the drunk, and pulled so far off to the side of the road that I finally had to stop. This Chevy coming from the other direction stopped right across from us. The driver sticks his head out the window, yells 'Fuck all you Cashen boys!' and that's when I see he's got a shotgun. I slammed on the gas and got goin' about 40 in two seconds' time. The gun pops once and then again. I remember thinking that I could only hear an echo after the second shot. Mark told me he was sure it was Jeffrey Polan and I said we were gonna git 'em. I heard my little brothers bouncing around in the back and then John started thumping his fist against the rear window of the cab, screaming: 'He's shot! Peter is shot!'
"I pulled over slow and we piled out of the front. I took the flashlight from the glove compartment and shined it on John, who was leaning over our little brother and shaking his shoulder. Peter lay on his back with blood all over his face. I could see the blood was still streaming out of his mouth and nose. The infirmary was 30 miles away, so I ordered everyone back in the truck and drove the two miles to our house, fast as I could.
"We lived in the back part of the store, along a sparsely populated part of the state highway. Nobody but Mama could hear us screaming for help when we pulled in. She ran downstairs and I shined the light on Peter again. The blood had stopped moving, and we could see a piece was missing from the top of his head. Mama took a quick look, said that our baby brother was dead and that we should bring his body inside. We were all weeping and crying but Mama told us to be quiet and do as she said. We wrapped him head-to-toe in a lot of sheets, until there was no more blood soaking through, and laid him on the downstairs sofa. We told Mama that Jeffrey Polan did this, and said we were gonna git 'em. But she said that 'an eye for an eye' was wrong, ever since the New Testament. She told us to hushup and then she prayed until the Lord helped her see what had to be done. She told us she wanted to speak to Jeffrey. She said we should bring him to the house, but we should not hurt him nor let anyone know he was with us, nor tell anyone what had happened.
"Mark had the idea that Jeffrey would probably miss that morning's Sunday Service because he would have a bad conscience and a bad hangover. We parked our pickup a couple blocks away from the Polan's house and hid in the bushes near the end of their driveway. We got there around dawn and sat dead-silent, waiting in the brush for about three hours. Vengeance was in our hearts. Finally we saw the family leave in their big Dodge station wagon, and Mark was right. Jeffrey's mother, father and little brother and sister were in the car, but no Jeffrey. He should have remembered to keep holy the Lord's day. We snuck down the drive, past the Chevy sedan that we'd seen the night before, taking care to hide from the neighbors.
"The rest was easy: The back door was open — folks trusted each other in that town — so we slipped upstairs and found Jeffrey trying to sleep off his sins. I stuck a burlap sack on his head to keep him from yelling while my brothers tied his hands and feets. Then I told Jeffery our Mama wanted to talk to him about how he killed her baby boy. John said we'd attract attention if we walked along the road to get the pickup, so we decided to borrow old Jeffrey's Chevy. We found his keys, carried him downstairs and stuffed him in the trunk of his own car. Then we drove to where the pickup was and John got out to drive the truck home while we stayed in the Chevy.
"'I didn't mean it! I jes wanted to scare y'all, not to shoot nobody! I aimed over your heads, but you drove away!' That's what Jeffrey said over and over again when we put him in a chair next to Peter's body and took the sack off his head. Jeffrey kept hollering until Mama slapped his face hard and told him to shutup and listen. 'You killed my boy,' she said. 'But I'm not gonna make you pay the way you should — with your own life. I can't completely blame you 'cause I can see that you have not had a good Christian upbringing. So I'm gonna give you the raising you need and your gonna give me what I need — a baby boy. You're gonna take Peter's place as my littlest. I will never let you far from my sight, so that nothing bad can happen to you.'
"Me and my brothers was almost as confused as Jeffrey was, and Mark kept asking Mama if she knew what she was saying. She just told us to hushup and take 'our new brother's' car out to the big turn on the shore road where there was a steep drop, above the ocean. Mama said God had a plan when he made us take the Chevy and she understood what that plan was. She wanted us to put the keys in the car, leave the doors open and roll it off the edge into the water. Later that evening, we buried my brother Peter in a secret spot, deep in the woods behind our house. Jeffrey sat with us through the whole burial. He was tied to a chair and had a sock in his mouth to keep him from screaming. He cried harder than any of us. Mama read some from the Bible before we covered the body. She told us that 'The Lord taketh away, but the Lord also giveth.' She looked straight at Jeffrey when she said this.
"The next day my Mama had me drive down to the sheriff's office and report that my brother was missing. I was to say that the last anybody saw him, he was going for a ride in Jeffrey Polan's Chevy. The Polan's reported Jeffrey missing and soon the deputies found the car. The boats were out for four days searching for the bodies and the sheriff had some questions for me and my brothers when he heard about the incident at the dance place on Saturday night. At Mama's suggestion, we said that Jeffrey had come to apologize and clean up his conscience before offering to take Peter to the late Sunday service at the church in the next town. Nobody had heard about the shooting, so eventually everyone decided that it was like we said: Peter and Jeffrey had gone to meet their maker on the way to His house of worship. Their bodies must have washed out to sea. While we sat in a pew next to the Polans, during a big memorial service for the two boys who died so tragically, Jeffrey waited for us in the storage cellar. Afterwards, Luke drove to Tallahassee and bought two sets of handcuffs, which Jeffrey ended up wearing on his hands and feets for a long time.
"I have to admit it took a while to get used to having a new baby brother, but we adapted. In the day, while Mama and I looked after the shop, Jeffrey would sit gagged and chained to a chair in the parlor. Every few hours I would go in and sit him on the toilet for 10 minutes to see if he had anything to do. Mama would always take a long break for lunch, to spoon-feed him soup and a sandwich and read him his daily Bible lesson. In the evening we would all sit around the dinner table as a family. Mama asked Mark, Luke and John how their day at school was and asked me to tell everyone what was new at the store. Then she would ask Jeffrey to tell the rest of us what he had learned from the Bible that day. After dinner, Jeffrey's mouth was gagged again and we chained him to his bed.
"My brothers all had their complaints about the arrangement. Mark even suggested that Mama was acting crazy because the death of her boy drove her insane. I wasn't sure. There did seem to be some justice in Mama's plan, so I asked her about it. 'Matthew,' she said, 'I lost a husband and a son, but I take comfort from knowing that they were good Christians who are waiting for me in Heaven. I'm more worried my new boy Jeffrey, because he isn't saved yet, so if I lose him now, I've lost his soul.'
"Of course, Jeffrey had the hardest time of anyone in adjusting to the situation. At first, every time we took his gag out he would holler for help. We cured his yelling spells by leaving him down in the cold, dark storage cellar until he promised to behave. After that, Jeffrey started trying to out-reason my mother. 'Ma'am, I'm really sorry about Peter and all,' he would say. 'But I am not your son. I am Jeffrey Polan and my Mama and Daddy and little brother and sister must be real worried about me. Don't you think it's unfair to hurt my family this way?' Mama would just tell him that his family was comforted with the thought that he had gone to Heaven on the way to church, and then tell him to hushup.
"At dinner time, Jeffrey would plead with us boys: 'Y'all know this aint right. Don't you see you and your Mama can get in a lot of trouble for this? Wouldn't it be better to let me face a judge for what happened to Peter, so y'all can go back to leading normal lives?' This kind of talk made us very unhappy, and Mama could see that. When Jeffrey spoke to us this way, she would take his dinner away and put a bar of soap in his mouth.
"After about a year Jeffrey seemed to be accepting his new life. He would greet me as 'Brother Matt' and would repeat his Bible lessons so well that Mama used to let him do the after-dinner Bible readings too. On weekends, Jeffrey was allowed to go outside and do a little gardening behind the house. We used to leave one of his feet uncuffed and lock the other foot onto a long chain. I admit it seemed kinda' cruel, tying him down like a dog, but Mama said he still had more to learn before we could give him free rein. It was a happy time for Mama. Us boys were relieved to see her smiling, and to see that Jeffrey was so well adjusted. We started to leave his mouth ungagged. I admit we sometimes tired of listening to him discuss the Bible and be holier than thou, but it would have been a sin to gag him just because of that.
"Then one Saturday Mama said I should weld an extra-long chain together because it was time for Jeffrey to face up to his biggest sin. She read him the story of Cain and Abel and sent him out 'to clear the brush off his brother's grave' deep in the woods. Mama said this penance would set Jeffery free, but he seemed very disturbed at the idea. He began to cry and said, 'Mother, I have read my Bible and tried to be a good son to you. Why do you still keep me chained like a criminal and force me to stare in the face of my past sin?' Mama put a hand on his shoulder and said, 'Son, this life is short. It is better to suffer now, so that you may find happiness in eternity.'
"We were all surprised to see Jeffrey acting contrary for the first time in months. So it was a relief that he went out and worked for a long time. When supper was near ready, Mama said it was time to call Jeffrey in and give him the welcome of a prodigal son. I called, but he didn't answer, so I gave a tug on the chain. It was slack. I ran, following the chain all the way out to Peter's grave. In the late afternoon sun, I could see the hoe that Jeffrey had carried with him, stuck into the stump of a cut-down tree. Next to the stump, still attached to the handcuff, was Jeffrey's foot. It was badly hacked — probably with the dull hoe — cut off just above the ankle, and it was still inside his shoe. I saw a bloody trail and began following it at a fast trot. The trail ended by the roadside, where there was a pool of blood but no other sign of Jeffrey. Then I heard my Mama crying out. I ran to the back yard and found that she had reeled the chain all the way in. She was holding up the end of the chain with Jeffrey's foot dangling from it, crying and mumbling. At first I thought she was talking about his foot, until I understood her clearly: 'His soul. I've lost his soul.'
"The county had its own laws, which were different from the Lord's. Our whole family was hauled in, but Mama insisted that everything was her doing and she wasn't ashamed of it neither. The judge decided us boys were just obeying our mother, and we all got off with a few month's detention. I didn't complain, but Mark, Luke and John took their time hard, and when they got out they left town for good. Instead of putting Mama in jail, the judge and some psychiatrists decided she was crazy and put her in the county home. Jeffrey faired the same. Even though the prosecutor said he had suffered enough for his crime, it seemed that the guilt of his sin and the loss of his foot had curdled the poor boy's mind. Spending a year in chains probably hadn't helped. He wound up in the same compound where they kept Mama, in a separate wing of course. Old Jeffrey would spend his time telling the other crazies that they were suffering for their sins, and the only road to freedom was through the Lord. I found this inspiring, but I was even more inspired by my mother. To me, her actions showed an almost divine ability to forgive, though at the same time, she made sure a no-good deed didn't go unpunished.
"They let Jeffrey out of the home for Mama's funeral, which meant that me and him were the only 'sons' who attended. During the burial ceremony, Jeffery gave a short talk in praise of Mama. 'She taught me that, with a shotgun I sowed another's blood, and with a hoe I reaped my own blood,' he said. 'She explained that I was saved from the sin of murder 'cause the New Testament says no more eye for an eye — I guess the rule now is a foot for a head. ...' He went on to say many other inspirational things, but perhaps what I remember most is his parting words: 'Thanks to Mama, my soul is saved.'"
Matt squinted and put his fingers up to his eyes. A tear ran alongside his nose until he sniffed and wiped it away.
Your mother was a damned lunatic, just like you, I thought. But I didn't say that. I didn't want to say anything to upset this guy. Instead I told him: "Your Mama was really a good woman."
"Oh yes. Don't you think she did right?" Matt brightened a bit.
"Of course. That's justice all right."
"Justice and mercy. Amen," said Matt, shaking his head and pausing for a moment before adding: "I believe that, if everyone had to accept that kind of justice — why — all the sinners in the world would be saved in no time. Say, how 'bout yourself? Have you been saved?"
"Well I, uh ..."
"Would you like to be saved?"
"Saved?" I said. "Sure! I'd love to be saved. But hey, could you pull over for a minute? My bladder's about ready to bust."
We were on a desolate, unlit stretch of interstate, and in the darkness all I could see along the roadside were some kind of pastures. I was out of the truck and slipping on cow dung before Matt could bring his rig to a full stop.