The White Trash Devil
“Ellen’s invited us to her church to see Lovella get baptized,” the wife said, having busted into the bedroom like a snack cake chomping dervish.
I sat there at my desk frozen for a moment. An untrained eye would have mistaken my industry for literary endeavor. The reality of it was that up until four seconds ago, I was intensely studying Ginger Lynn’s Only Fans site.
The wife stood there for a moment, surveying me. “What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing. I was just thinking of a poem to write.”
“Ellen’s invited us –.”
“I heard you. I thought Lovella’s already been baptized.”
“That was before. In a primitive Baptist church. Then, again, another time in just a regular Baptist church.”
“Those just never took or what?”
“Well, this one’s Ellen’s church. I think it’s nondenominational.”
Nondenominational churches carried such a pleasant ring to it. One could almost imagine Catholics and Protestants, Muslims and Jews, Buddhists and my boys, the Satanists, all sitting alongside each other, praying for world peace, nondenominationally.
“Nah,” the wife corrected my delusion. “It means they drink strychnine and handle snakes.”
Ellen, I could see buying into that insanity. She once sent her bank account number to Umbatu Mustafari of Burundi who was looking for help sharing a three-million-dollar windfall. I thought her husband, Jerry, had more sense than mixing reptiles with religion. He served a tour of duty in Iraq for fuck’s sake. Surely combat would have opened his eyes to the folly of taking up serpents. But what do I know? I still couldn’t figure out how Jerry spent eight months fighting in the desert and came back weighing a hundred pounds heavier.
“That’s just batshit crazy to me.”
“You ain’t up north, anymore, Polish Hammer,” the wife reminded me. “Folks down here take their church and their NASCAR far more seriously than you seem to understand.”
The NASCAR thing, I think she was alluding to last Halloween when I dressed up as Dale Ernhardt, complete with a black eye and neck brace. The amount of evil glares, spit curses, and near fistfights as a result of my clever costume surprised even me, and I always expect the unexpected.
“Eh, whatever the case may be, I just hope those crazy bastards are a little more accepting of homosexuality. I got a feeling BJ will feel right at home there handling snakes.”
The wife rolled her eyes but resisted correcting me. BJ came out of Ellen’s birth canal vowing never to deal in vagina again. And that’s fine, obviously. I’m not a monster. The comedy came, for me, from Ellen and Jerry’s steadfast denial their son was destined for anything other than the Christian ideal of a family with a doting, female wife and a passel of children in his future. They somehow ignored his lisp, overlooked his inability to throw a baseball, and saw nothing wrong with BJ requesting only cooking implements for his fourteenth birthday. And that’s fine. But I mention it won’t be long before he’s living up to his namesake, and I’m the asshole.
“Quit being so ugly,” the wife said. She tended to equate ugliness with truthfulness dipped in sarcasm. “Maybe a little church will do you some good.”
It hadn’t done me any good thus far. Of course, I came up Catholic. Only thing I ever learned from that mess was how to avoid finding yourself alone in a room with an adult.
Anyway, it wasn’t long after that, about one o’clock in the morning, the cops came pounding on my trailer door. After flushing two ounces of Mexican ditch weed down the toilet and untying the kids from the radiator, I was able to open the door, momentarily confident in my good citizenship. My confidence level wavered when they asked me to step outside. A lack of an accompanying film crew offered slight consolation.
“Are you Lovella Sampson’s son-in-law?”
“Well… she married my wife’s dad a few years back before he was dead.”
“Okay, I’ll take that as a ‘yes.’ We’re here to inform you she considered ending her life tonight.”
“So?”
I considered it all the time. Living ain’t for everybody. Especially when you gotta work all the goddam time.
“We’ve managed to secure her old timey .16 gauge. Will you hold it for safe-keeping?”
“Why? She ain’t going to be able to shoot herself without it.”
“That’s… uh, well, that’s the point.”
“Oh, hell, gimme that gun. I’ll just add it to the arsenal I’ve been building up for the upcoming revolution.”
“We’ve made arrangements for her to see a specialist tomorrow. We could hold her on the fifth floor of Marshall Medical until then, unless you’d agree to let her stay here.”
“Ah, goddammit, I already got a gallon of crazy, here. I don’t need a cup of her’s.”
“She says she’s got no one else.”
“She’s got a daughter! And a bunch of brothers and sisters. One of them being a pedophile you all let run the streets.”
“She’s adamant we not involve her daughter.”
“Adamant, huh?”
Any time I’d ever been adamant with the cops always resulted in me catching the wrong end of a flashlight upside my head. Cop flashlights are like porn star dildos. Never smaller than my arm.
In the end it was the wife’s decision to allow her to stay the night. Her reason being, since Lovella brought the wife’s father so much joy in his later years, Lovella ought to be able to inflict an equal measure of misery upon us.
And it wasn’t that Lovella wanted to die. She just didn’t want to live all that much, either. Especially without much money in her pocket. She wanted someone she could talk to, preferably of no relation, a Herculean task when you’re living rural Alabama. Since she was far too lazy and inherently ignorant to call a suicide prevention hotline, she simply dialed 911.
So, I spent the next half hour plumbing the toilet to no herbal avail.
By the next afternoon life had returned to normal, as fucked up as it was. I forgot about Lovella’s desire to escape the south via St Peter’s railroad. Until I ran down to her trailer to borrow some milk so that the kids could have their bowls of cereal for dinner.
I noticed Ellen’s Acura parked on the gravel driveway. I got as far as the front porch before I heard Ellen’s plaintive cries.
“Demons, you have no purchase upon this good Christian woman’s soul. Demons, this is a godly home where you are not welcome. Demons, be gone.”
Well, I had to peer through the front room window to see what the fuck was going on.
Lovella, pale and shaking, sat on the futon. Ellen kneeled between her legs. Her hand rested on her mother’s forehead. They were both clothed. This time.
“Demons be gone.”
“Don’t you preach at me! Don’t you dare preach at me!” Lovella growled. People who’d never heard Lovella bitch about Texas Walker getting canceled might have been unable to equate the guttural tone with Lovella’s natural speaking voice. I suppose those less enlightened might have grasped at demon possession as a reasonable cause for her mental defectiveness…
“Demons, release–.”
“Satan! Satan! There!”
Lovella’s crazed eyes goggled. She pointed a gaunt, witchy finger right at the front room window. Where I happened to be standing.
Fuck this, I thought. The kids can have dry cereal like they did for breakfast.
Ellen and Lovella bolted for the door before I could make good on my escape.
“Polish Hammer,” Ellen sneered. “I should have known.”
“That’s the devil,” Lovella hollered. “That’s Satan made flesh.”
“Wait a goddam minute. I…uh…just… uh, needed some milk for the kid’s supper. Since y’all got the food stamps and what not.”
“Funny how you’re always around when evil’s afoot.”
“Nope. Nope. Not funny at all.” I edged toward the porch stairs.
“You know he voted for Barack Hussein Obama,” Lovella fired off. “The antichrist, hisself.”
“No. No. Just because I adore abortion don’t make me a democrat.” Honestly, I’d never voted in my entire life. If it were put to a vote whether or not I’d get cast in a pot of boiling oil, I’d probably abstain from putting in a vote. I just could not be bothered.
“Well, how can I be Satan if Obama’s the antichrist?” I said.
“See… See…” Lovella hissed. “That’s exactly what a silver-tongued devil would say. He doesn’t even try to deny it.”
Ellen narrowed her eyes at me. “You sure did find an excuse not to show up for Mama’s baptism.”
“Which one?”
“All of ‘em.”
“Well… you got me there.”
“And you’re always selling Mama the marijuana cigarettes even though I asked you not to.”
The devil’s cabbage. She had me there, too.
“Next thing you know,” I said. “You’re going to blame me for all those pictures of black cocks you found on BJ’s computer.”
Ellen looked stricken. “Only Satan would know that.”
Yeah, Satan, and the entire congregation of Hope’s Bluff Pentacostal who were called upon to help exorcise the gay demons out of poor, limp-wristed BJ. The only thing those snake-handling sonsabitches enjoyed more than praising Jesus in public was talking shit about fellow zealots.
They stepped away from me and like any white trash devil who’s number’s finally up, I ran down the stairs and fucked off back to my trailer.
Back home, the wife asked why wasn’t I toting any milk.
“There weren’t none to be had. Kids gonna hafta settle for water on their cereal.”
“On Lucky Charms?”
“Hey, woman, it’s how I had to eat my Cornflakes back in the day.”
She glared at me a moment, taking my measure.
“What the hell happened down there?”
I wish I knew…
Karl Koweski is a displaced Region Rat now living in rural Alabama. He writes when his pen allows it. He’s a husband to a lovely wife and father to some fantastic kids. He collects pop culture ephemera. On most days he prefers Flash Gordon to Luke Skywalker and Neil Diamond to Elvis Presley.
THE POLISH HAMMER POETRY CORNER is a weekly column, posted each Tuesday morning.
