The Center of Everything - By Laura Moriarty Page 0,58
the Soviet Union.” He shrugs, sticking his thin bottom lip out, like there is a possibility this might be true. “They say just because the Soviets are officially godless, officially anti-Christian, doesn’t mean they’re necessarily bad.”
He pauses, looking around the room. “Are they right? Or, as the president says, is this Cold War really a struggle between good and evil, clear as daylight?”
We are all quiet for a moment, like when a teacher asks the class a question and nobody knows the answer.
“He’s right!” the man sitting next to me says. “Reagan’s right.”
I think of Russia, cold and gray, people wearing dark coats and hats and never smiling, standing in long lines. I understand that they want to kill all of us, or at least make us wear dark coats and hats and stand in lines too. Eileen says they don’t care about anyone, the Russians, even their own children. They don’t care if they get blown up or not, because they don’t believe in God. Still, it’s sad to think that if there’s a nuclear war they’ll all go to hell. I would like to go over there, and tell them the way things really are so they won’t want to bomb us and take over anymore.
“Well,” Pastor Dave says, “I won’t get too into politics here, but I imagine most of you are with me when I say I know there’s a struggle between good and evil going on here in the world, and when one country tries to follow God, and the other one says there isn’t one, it’s not too hard to see which side is which, is it?”
The man next to me claps again, says, “That’s right.”
“Amen,” someone says. “Amen.” I like this, how people can just yell out when they agree with something. I wish we could do it at school. I want to try saying it now, but I have never done it before, and I worry that I will look stupid. None of the other kids are doing it. I’m not sure if you have to be an adult to yell out “Amen” or not.
Pastor Dave says he agrees with Ronald Reagan. You can’t do business with godless people, because they lie and they cheat, just like godless people in our own country. He says right here in America we’ve got people giving out birth control to teenage girls and telling teenage boys it’s A-OK to be homosexual, it’s A-OK to ignore the Ten Commandments and act as if there are only four or five. When he says this last part, he pounds his fist on the table, trying to look mad now, even mean. But he can’t. Even with the mustache, he looks like John Boy Walton. His voice isn’t loud enough to be scary.
“It’s not A-OK, is it?” he asks.
“No sir!” a woman yells. “No!”
The disco ball turns slowly, reflecting circles of sunlight around the room. Pastor Dave looks up at it, then out the window. “What are we going to do about America today? Read the paper, and you might be able to confuse this once great, God-fearing nation with Sodom and Gomorrah.”
Eileen makes a clicking sound with her tongue and nods.
“Well, let me tell you something. If you-all think fire and brimstone was bad, that’s nothing, nothing, compared to what’s coming, when God comes down from the Heavens to separate the faithful from the sinners once and for all.”
“Hallelujah,” someone says. “Praise be.”
Pastor Dave closes his eyes and raises his baby blue arms above his head. “But the righteous should have no fear,” he says, the words rolling out of his mouth. “For the Good Lord knows what names are written in the book of followers, and they shall be flown on the wings of angels into everlasting peace, while all the rest will be damned by his terrible swift sword to everlasting contempt.”
When Pastor Dave gets to this last part, he clasps his hands together and swings his arms quickly, the way you would swing a bat, or maybe a swift sword as well. I try to think about what it would really look like, all those angels coming down, God swinging a sword from over his shoulder, cutting off the heads of all the homosexuals and Russians, Jesus standing behind him with his hands over his eyes. My name’s in the book! I would yell, and God, still cutting off other people’s heads, would smile and say, I know, Evelyn, I know.