you had to do was curl up and be loved. At heart everyone was a good little boy or girl, and however they might have strayed, the good Lord, like some soft-touch daddy, was happy to forgive them.
“Oh, I hear you, Boots, and I know what you want. You want me to put a little more fire and brimstone into it. Use scare tactics. Send folks home with their knees knocking and their teeth chattering in their heads. But you know, nowadays, the last thing I want to do is foment fear. I think we’ve already seen enough of the damage that can do. You know as well as I do, when folks get scared, that’s when ‘What would Jesus do?’ tends to go right out the window.”
“Well, I’m the kind of man, if there’s something that doesn’t sit right with me, then you know I got to speak out—”
“And I am listening, my friend. Aren’t I listening?”
“—and I don’t like coming out of worship service and seeing every kind of expression on people’s faces but the appropriate one. Seems to me, leaving church, you ought to have some mighty sober thoughts inside your head. It shouldn’t be the same as if you were leaving a ball game or a party. People shouldn’t be yakking away about what’s for dinner, and why hello there, Mrs. Ludwig, you do look fine today, is that a new dress, and so on.”
Speaking of Mrs. Ludwig, Tracy often did just that after listening to one of Boots’s tirades, and usually it was the same two words: Poor Heidi.
Heidi Ludwig was amazingly fat—globular—a circus fat lady. Even her scalp was fat. She hadn’t taken a plane anywhere in years, but the last time she’d flown, Cole was awestruck to hear, the airline had made her pay for two seats. Cole would have loved to sketch Mrs. Ludwig, but he didn’t think it was possible to draw her as she was without seeming mean. He’d had the same problem with Mason, but then Mason himself had insisted he wanted Cole to draw him. Cole had done his best, but he simply could not get the scarred part right, and Mason had come out looking like a pirate.
Boots said, “I can’t help feeling sometimes when you talk about sin it goes in one ear and out the other. Maybe it’s because you’re always smiling.”
“That’s what happens when I get filled with the Spirit.”
Another thing Boots couldn’t stomach was the praise songs of the church’s worship band. “What’s wrong with the old hymns? ‘Victory in Jesus,’ ‘His Eye Is on the Sparrow.’ Those are songs you could sing with your head high! And don’t give me the same old argument about changing times. Nothing sadder than a bunch of Christians trying to prove they’re every bit as hip as the lost—unless it’s a bunch of Christians coming up with an idea like Testamints. I tell you, when Christ Almighty comes, he’s gonna go after those who dare to sell things like breath mints in his name like he went after the sheep traders and the money changers—with a scourge! My father’s house is not a place of business.”
“Boots, you know I don’t like Jesus junk any more than you do, but maybe you need to lighten up.”
“Now Heidi tells me the gals are starting a Knitting for Jesus group. I got nothing against knitting, but you know well as I do it’s just another coffee klatsch. They’re not knitting for the Lord any more than those Testamints are ‘Christian’ candy. And you know it gets to me, hearing the way some people jabber on about the end times. I mean, we are talking about Armageddon, the mother of all battles, like every WMD on the planet going off at the same time, and these gals—just listen to them. It’s like they’re planning a big shopping expedition or some kind of holiday.”
Had the flu been a plague sent by God as a pre-Apocalyptic punishment? Boots thought so. “We know from the Bible that when a society violates God’s laws he will punish that society long before Judgment Day.” And when listeners to Heaven’s A-Poppin’! are invited to call in, most of them say they think Boots is right.
But PW said nobody could know for sure, just as no one could know for sure what would happen to children in the rapture. PW believed all children who were too young to have accepted Jesus would be saved, but Boots insisted