And then I read in the Bible that if a son — and you can imagine they wouldn’t go any easier on a daughter, harder if anything — if a son doesn’t obey his parents, even just to eat too much and drink too much, then the parents are supposed to take him to the elders and have the son stoned to death. This is what God wants, according to his Holy Word. I sure wasn’t going to ask my daddy about that one. I’m sure he’d checked that out already and was irritated at Big Government for making that kind of holy justice pretty hard to get away with these days. These days being the corrupt End Times, of course. A disobedient child would be even worse than those kids who went up in smoke, and Daddy didn’t shed any tears for them, knowing how True and Beautiful was the judgment of God.
We went out to Overlook Hill next to the intersection of State 340 and Farm 2491 so we could watch that Branch Davidian cult in their compound after they’d barricaded themselves up and were holding off the FBI and all. Not really watch. It took binoculars to see anything from there and we just brought our Bibles and our “Forwarding Address: Hell” tracts. There was probably some closer place to go, but this was close enough for Daddy, and for a bunch of others, too, because there was all types on the hill. The place was crammed full of those making their righteousness clear to the world as a testament and those acting in sin from their unrighteousness, supporting this cult and its Satan-controlled leader. And there was a bunch of others in between, press people and picnickers and people selling T-shirts and gimme caps and hot dogs and stuff. I wandered away in between prayers and used my own little bit of money when I got hungry and had a Koresh Burger, which was cooked over charcoal by a guy wearing a “WACO — We Ain’t Coming Out” T-shirt, and it maybe was the best-tasting hamburger I’ve ever had in my life and I was loving it till my father saw me and he came and grabbed this meal conceived in unrighteousness out of my hand and gave me a stoning-by-the-elders look and he threw the Koresh Burger down on the ground and crushed it under his heel. There’s nothing in the Bible about littering, as far as I know, so this wasn’t either here or there in terms of his witnessing to the world, from my daddy’s point of view. But he was ready to do me in, as a true witness to God’s word, right there and then, if only this was the sort of times when that was possible, but lucky for me it’s the wicked End Times instead. So he grabbed me hard by the arm and dragged me back and put me on my knees next to my always-faithful brother and my daddy started to pray for the Triumph of Jesus over the wickedness of the world as was clearly represented by those people hiding and sinning in that cult compound right here in Waco. My daddy may even have started talking in tongues or something because I stopped hearing any sense in his words at all. He was saying things like hunga marunga adenoid hallelujah. Everyone we know at church and at a lot of churches in Waco would say these were inspired words my daddy was saying, he was filled with the Holy Spirit. But as far as I was concerned he was just fading farther and farther away from me, at that time.
And then it was the next Monday about noon and I was eating maybe the worst-tasting hamburger I’ve ever had in my life, in our school cafeteria, and thinking about that hamburger on Overlook Hill, when there was a big stir and we all went out to the parking lot and off in the distance, out to the northeast of town in the direction of the Branch Davidians, there was a pillar of smoke as dark as the worst grime you’ve ever seen, like the color of those people’s souls, I thought, and as soon as I did, I knew that thought came from my daddy, how he saw the world.
And that night at the dinner table my daddy prayed to God in praise of how He’d shown us all in this family the true path and saved us from hell where every last one of those folks who’d burned up today was going to feel the fiery wrath of God for all eternity.
And I said, What about the children?
And he said, They have been brought to perdition by their parents. Don’t you think there was children in Sodom when the fires came down from heaven and no one was saved except Lot and his two daughters and even his wife was turned into a pillar of salt?
And will you pass me some? I said. Salt, that is.
And my daddy did and I put it on my hamburger which my mama had made and which tasted pretty bad, it needed more salt than I could give it, but I shook the salt out and I thought of the body of Lot’s wife making things taste good long after she was dead.
And I was wondering: If the fires ever were to come down in Waco, on everybody, not just the Branch Davidians, would God first send his angels to the house of this true and faithful servant of the Lord, my daddy, and say, Go, take your wife and your son and your daughter and go from this Waco, for it is full of iniquity and will be destroyed, even the women and the children? And I looked at my daddy then and if the answer was no, God wouldn’t do that for this man, then my daddy was full of shit all along about what was right and holy and what wasn’t. And if the answer was yes, if God was such that He’d pull the four of us out of here and burn up all the rest and send them to hell for eternity, then that wasn’t a God I should give a good fuck about. That’s what I realized right there and then.
So I went off. I made my plan and Daddy never knew about it till I was gone, but the night before I was hitting the road, he came to my room and knocked real soft and I said, Come in, and he sat on the side of my bed and he said, Honey, I know we have our differences. I know I seem real hard on you sometimes. But I just want you to know that it’s because I love you. I care about your happiness, not just today and tomorrow but forever.
My daddy says this real soft and he pats my hand and he goes out without trying to wring any promises or anything from me.
But these were just words, really. Just words. Since then, I’ve thought about the words that weren’t there in what he said and could never be there.
Like: I guess the children are okay, the ones that got burnt up.
Or: Certain things just don’t make sense to me either about who God is or what He really wants.