doors of perception sometimes are less than we wish

Bibles and Bastards

by Cody Barstow

Mojo City, July 28, 2003 - Hillary Jaekel reports that a "Bible-thumpin' bastard" has been keeping her up at night at her home at Main and Lynx. Knowing Hillary to be one of the most quiet, and controlled ladies in Mojo City, we found ourselves intrigued that she would call someone by this term.

"I'm not saying that he's a bad man," she says, "It's just that he told me one night over a beer and bible-reading that he was the bastard son of George Bush. Anyway, he just stands out there in the back yard at night next to my glassed-in saguaro cactus and pounds on this Bible he holds in his left hand. Boom. Boom. You know? Like some strange drum or something. And he reads from the Bible. In a big voice that comes out just as plain as that wart on your nose, Richard. Got himself up from Genesis to Deuteronomy already."

Why's he out there Hillary?

"Oh," she sighs, "in the mid-1980s, I was a nun … yes, I was a nun … thought I'd check it out … in Tucson. Our residence was way out on the eastern outskirts of the city. The place was a giant courtyard, surrounded on all four sides by our sleeping and residence quarters.

"One night, Mother Superior wakes up to this howling and screaming. We all run to the walkways that line and overlook the courtyard, and there's this naked man, screaming, and backing up, then running into the largest saguaro cactus we had in that courtyard. And he does it again, and again. Screaming all the time. Impaling himself on the spines of the cactus. You could see he was out of his head so I took a .22 and shot him in the leg to keep him from running into that cactus again."

You shot him, Hillary?

"To save him. Kind of reminds me of that army captain or major who burned a Vietnamese village to the ground and said that in order to save the village, he had to destroy it. Oh, yeah, I know … all those left wingers out there think that kind of logic is some sort of twisted irony that somehow indicts the War in its ownself … but I'll tell you, it makes perfectly good sense if you ever had to shoot a naked man to keep him from hugging a cactus."

So this Bible-thumpin' bastard in your back yard is … ?

"Not the same man. Never seen this new guy in my life before."

So, how come you don't call the cops on him?

"Well," she says, "for the short time I spent as a nun, I never got to finish that book he's reading from. I'm kind of wondering how it turns out."