A rollicking yarn that reminds me of O Brother, Where Art Thou?.
Quotes:
This novel is a retelling of the ancient Jewish tale of Tobias and Sarah (as found in the Book of Tobit), set in the world of my grandparents, who met and married in Texas during the Great Depression.
My father, the Reverend Malachi Henry, was a fierce opponent of liquor, dancing, gambling, whoring, and all other forms of worldly enjoyment.
Texas’s main exports are cotton, oil, and preachers.
Heaven, Father said, was one long church service where the saints sang through the Baptist Hymnal again and again, into infinity.
For the first time, I realized that Father had once been a lot like me.
That was the third or fourth time I got saved. Whenever I feared I was in imminent danger of death, I’d call on Jesus and beg for salvation. The rest of the time, I didn’t give him any thought. Jesus was like an insurance policy against eternal fire.
The idea that we evolved from monkeys was tough to swallow. But what was the alternative? Flaming swords, fornicating angels, faked dinosaurs, and Philistine foreskins?
If sex was just about power—the weak over the strong, the rich over the poor—I didn’t want it.
I didn’t have sex with the girl, but I sure got screwed.
He was tall and broad-shouldered, with a face creased and oily like worn leather. Between his white whiskers and lively eyes, he looked both ancient and ageless—a look I’ve only seen in black men.
“Well,” Craw said, “I was going to compose a ballad in memorium of your demise, but I couldn’t decide whether it should be called ‘The Remus Kid’s Last Ride’ or ‘The Remus Kid’s First Ride’—so I gave up and rescued you instead.”
“Aw, don’t you mind us,” Chester said. “I done got religion myself once. Just can’t remember where I put it. And Craw, here—why, he knows the Good Book better’n any minister. He can recite all Ten Commandments by heart. Course, that’s cause he’s done broke ’em so many times.” “You’ve got to sin before you can be redeemed,” Craw said. “A man might as well enjoy it.”
“Fill up,” Craw told me. “This might be our last grub for a while. Food on the road is as scarce as preachers in heaven—if you’ll pardon the expression.”
“Well, imagine a movie—a vast production with kings, fools, knights, ladies, peasants, preachers, prostitutes—every sort of person you find in the world. When the actors take off their costumes, they’re all equal. So it is with life. When death strips us of our roles, we’re all equals in the grave.”
“Remember this, my boy. The two greatest men who ever lived—Jesus and Socrates—were both hoboes.”
“This world is full of wonders,” he said, hoisting his treasure. “You just need the eyes to see them.”
Texas. Craw might as well have told me that we’d just entered the Land of Oz. It was a mythical place for me—the land of cactuses and cowboys, the land of my ancestors. I couldn’t believe I was really there.
We both read the Bible day and night; but you read black where I read white!
“Doesn’t believe in stories? The Bible isn’t a damn book of facts, it’s a collection of stories. And Jesus wasn’t a scientist or a mathematician—he was a storyteller.” Craw threw up his hands. “Why, all of life is a story!”
“I hate to tell you this,” he said, “but I doubt if it’s even possible for you white folks to understand the Jews.”
Good thing I was laying flat, or she would have seen me already.
“Well, Brother McGraw, you ought to be a preacher. Cause the way you talk about Jesus, he sounds like somebody I’d like to have a drink with.”
AFTER Sarah left, I licked the blood from my lip and thought about how attraction is like a rose. It springs up from fertile, manure-rich soil; it blooms for a day, giving off an intoxicating scent; and then it wilts, rots, and festers on the shit pile of life. As my father might have said, all things come from shit; all things return to shit—except he would have used the word “dust.”
“Wait a minute,” I said. “Would you stay for five hundred dollars?” Craw stopped, scratched his chin, then waved his hand. “I’m a hobo, son. If I had that kind of money, I’d lose my position in life.”
If all that exists is only what you can see, you live in a pretty small universe.”
Only a speck of reality comes to us through our eyes. Shit—things we can’t see are the only things that make life worth living.”
“Tobias my boy, they’re all haunted. There isn’t a woman alive who doesn’t have a demon of one sort or another.”
For love is stronger than death.
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