Christian Clarity Review

He’s bending over the tractor as I drive up. “Come on over here and pick this up”, he says as I get out of the truck.

That’s Mr. Charlie–all business. No ‘good morning’, just straight to it.

I go over and pick up the back of the planter so he can fit the cotter pins that hold it in place.

“Now we got to go get some gas and go home and get my sixes.”

“What’s that?”

“My sixes! The plates that go in the planter. It lets a seed kernel of corn drop every six inches. We’re gonna plant them pretty close together today. Usually I use eights or nines. But not for this time of year.”

“Yes, sir.”

We drive out past an old tobacco barn growing up in weeds. He grimaces looking at it and says nothing. The wood is strong, but brown, grey with drought, stress. It’s my ideal of the color of patience. We go get gas, the plates; we’re back.

He walks over and checks the planter again; points to one of the hoppers.

“Can you get this one here open? I can’t get it to move, it’s a hard one.”

I reach over and pry the pin open. I’m back from the Army two years now and here to help him plant a few rows of corn today. He doesn’t need anything from me but muscle.

Mr. Charlie’s been planting corn for over seventy years with no irrigation and has lost only two crops. Today he wants to roll the dice one more time. It’s late August. One of the crops he lost was this year–it didn’t rain for three months straight.

“My fingers won’t do what I tell em’ to do anymore, after that doctor had my arm all constricted the way he did.” He works his fingers for the pleasure of it. “I tell you, I’m glad to get that cast off!” He looks the whole apparatus over and nods and rotates his hand and wrist. “That’s fine. I’ll drive over to the patch and we’ll fill’er up over there.” He climbs into the seat of the old tractor. A few tries and it’s purring. It sounds very …reliable.

I go for the truck, get in and see a way around the trees. I’m in a ‘73 Chevy beater truck with no reverse gear. I busted the reverse clutch in the transmission pulling out azalea stumps last year. His dust trail leads over the dirt road and we’re there before I have time to get hot.

“Yeah, ” he nods and says as if in reply to climbing off the tractor and leaning on the planter, “I’m glad we’re startin’ early. It’s supposed to get up to ninety something again today after some showers. I can’t stand that like I used to could.”

“You want the thirteen-thirteen-thirteen or the five-ten-ten first?” I ask.

“It don’t matter none. Just pour it on in the hopper there.” He pulls a small wrench out of his back pocket and tightens a fitting. “I’ll have to adjust this thing back here so it don’t let too much out. Otherwise the corn won’t come up. That thirteen-thirteen-thirteen will eat it up– burn it before it even breaks the …you know, surface.”

“So you want the five-ten-ten?”

“It don’t matter none.”

“Yes, sir.”

I bring a bag of fertilizer and dump it into the hopper. “That enough?” I ask.

He looks at it and says “We’ll start with that and see how we do. You got the seed?”

“Yes, sir.” I pull out a bag of seed corn and hand it to him.

“How much did you get?”

“Six pounds.”

“What is it?”

“Golden Queen.”

“Well, that’ll be alright. That’s really just a yellow ‘Silver Queen’. Couldn’t get any of that sixty day variety?”

“No sir. All they had at the co-op was ‘Silver Queen’ or ‘Golden Queen’. They said it would take more than two weeks to order anything else and that was if they could get it this time of year. I wanted to wait and see what I could get in Tallahassee. But Dad went ahead and bought it. I said if he was going to do it anyway we should get yellow corn. That’s my preference anyway.”

“How much was it?” he said, measuring out the corn into the two seed hoppers equally.

“We got a deal on it because he said it was so late in the year. It’s regularly seven dollars a pound. But we got it for five.”

“Well, that’s not bad.”

“No, sir.”

He gets on the tractor and squints toward the end of the row. Finally he pulls his hat down to shade his face and puts the tractor in gear, lowers the planter and he’s off. He goes slow, making sure he’s got his landmark still in sight but checking the rate of flow of the fertilizer and the corn occasionally.

He’s back. “Well, that’s four rows! Look at that. Can’t nobody say Charlie Walker can’t plow a straight row. But I think this thing back here needs adjustin’. I didn’t do anything but go down and back and look at all the fertilizer that’s gone.”

He steps down, pulls a larger wrench out from under the seat and adjusts the hopper. “Alright, let’s try it again!” He goes down and back again. “That’s just about perfect!” he says as he swings the tractor around for another run.

I nod and smile and he’s off again. After several more rounds he needs more fertilizer. “Don’t fill it up all the way. I don’t think we’ll need it and it’s hard to get out of the hopper once you put it in.” He climbs down and works his arm again.

“How many rows do you think we’ll end up with?” I ask.

“Twenty-four.” he says as if it were already done.

I start to put the empty bags in the back of the truck and he taps my shoulder and points at the end of the row. “You don’t never want to plant all the way to the end or out to the road. If you do the rainwater ‘ll just run right off. I been working this field for twenty-five years now; took it over when your granddaddy got tired of havin’ his calves shot ‘cause he wouldn’t let nobody hunt back in here.”

He takes off his hat and swipes his forehead with his arm. Squinting across the field, he says, “Now you look at this field. It’s as level as can be. When it rains all that water stays right here. I plow it one way one year and the other way another year and it don’t all get dragged to one side.” He turns me around by the shoulders. “Now look. Can you see ‘ol Summer’s field over there?”

I look past the line of trees and see the field next to ours. It hasn’t been plowed this year and is high in weeds.

“He plows the same direction every year. Ten years ago I told him he needed to go at it from another direction. He wouldn’t listen. Now one side of his field is a full eighteen inches higher than the other. Every time it rains he has to dig out his driveway again– keeps wonderin’ why.” He laughs to himself and gets back up on the tractor. He makes several more rounds.

“That’s twenty-four.” he says.

“Mr. Charlie, that’s more corn than all of us put together are gonna eat. Between the corn and the peas and squash, cucumbers and okra we’ve already got planted, we’ll have more than we can give away.”

“Nobody ever has more than they can give away. And this is gonna be the best corn we ever planted! The signs is in the heart today. Yesterday they wanted to plant but I said if you’d help me I’d rather plant today–yesterday’s signs was in the arms.” He stretches out his arms. His hands tremble slightly like a preacher, like Moses hands stretched out over the Red Sea. Then he smiles and drops his arms. “That’s O.K. for vining things like pumpkins and winter squash and such. But the heart sign is the best of all for corn and things that grow up and bushy. The weatherman said it wasn’t gonna rain so I waited.” The wind blows with the scent of rain over the field. “Well, I got some seed left over and some fertilizer. I’ll drive back under the shed yonder and we’ll unload.”

I follow him around and we unload and save what we didn’t use. I thought we were supposed to plant it until we ran out of seed. I don’t say anything as I store the remnants of the bag behind the seat in the truck.

“Well, ” he says, leaning on the truck before we go, “We did our part. Now it’s up to the Lord.”

They’re First Baptist. Free will all the way. Democrats. They have a role in life specially cut out for God after they have supposedly done what they wanted. I shrug. He frowns. In his system my shrug means I lack faith. He is an older man. “Yes, sir.”

I drive him home. He doesn’t see well enough to drive on the road any more. We pass our house on the way and he says after a small silence at the stop light, “How those bananas doin’ your daddy planted?”

“They’re doin O.K., I guess. He said I cut them back too low and they wouldn’t make any bananas this year. But I think they look fine.”

“Yeah, they’ll be alright. Those bananas, They’re used to hard livin’ –like those palm trees growin’ on the coast.”

“Yes, sir.”

The light changes just as I realize how cool it is now. The trees are beginning to whip back and forth. I gently press the pedal and we move on. The truck sputters. He grips the door harder as I push on the gas. In the side mirrors we see the rain coming up in a wall from behind us.

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Deutoronomy 32:9-18 For Jehovah’s portion is his people; Jacob the lot of his inheritance. He found him in a desert land, And in the waste, howling wilderness; He compassed him about, he watched over him, He preserved him as the apple of his eye. As the eagle stirreth up its nest, Hovereth over its young, Spreadeth out its wings, Taketh them, beareth them on its feathers, So Jehovah alone did lead him, And no strange *god was with him. He made him ride on the high places of the earth, And he ate the produce of the field; And he made him suck honey out of the crag, And oil out of the flinty rock; Cream of kine, and milk of sheep, With the fat of lambs, And rams of the breed of Bashan, and he-goats, With the fat of kidneys of wheat; And thou didst drink pure wine, the blood of the grape. Then Jeshurun grew fat, and kicked–Thou art waxen fat, Thou art grown thick, And thou art covered with fatness; –He gave up God who made him, And lightly esteemed the Rock of his salvation. They moved him to jealousy with strange gods, With abominations did they provoke him to anger. They sacrificed unto demons who are not God; To gods whom they knew not, To new ones, who came newly up, Whom your fathers revered not. Of the Rock that begot thee wast thou unmindful, And thou hast forgotten God who brought thee forth.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

Too big to get lost, the stone hangs so heavily around her neck that no matter how she moves it stays centered between her breasts. Her hair moves over her shoulders: one piece of silk. Her lips move when she talks. Her cheeks move when she smiles. Her eyes light up when she grins shyly and looks away. Her body moves a little to the music. But the jewel is always.. right there.

Faintly shining, it is dark blue on a rope of silver; a gold clasp through a small hole in the sides, the stone has become its own presence in the room.

Jimmy sees her and snaps his fingers with a smile. “Julie’s here.”

John stares at her, lowers his arms and wiggles his fingers at the scene before them like a boxer warming up for a fight. “Really? Where?”

Jimmy just laughs out loud and steps into the crowd. She hears his laugh and looks to the man standing next to her, suddenly admiring his tie.

When you see Julie, you don’t hear finger picked acoustic guitar with maybe a harmonica for innocence. Don’t get me wrong. She is her own kind of clean. But you hear old jazz, a kind of decadent, sophisticated music full of horns and drums. Hello. I knew a girl named Paula like that once. No matter where she is in the world I still do. Never even kissed her. Long story (only if you are young). She loved it—and hated it. I just hated it. I always hang out with the wrong kind of girl.

A guy like me—I’m more acoustic. A little too simple maybe. Even I think I’m stupid sometimes. Paula. I see what’s happening and just head to the bar.

Julie appears beside me. The music has picked up and everyone is dancing.

“Don’t look so shocked. I can’t help how I look.”

I smile and laugh a little at that. Yeah. Very heavy stone. Expensive.

“So what is it?”

“Oh. The stone?” She fingers it and holds it up so she can look at it.

“Aren’t you ever real?”

“It’s lapis L.”

“L?”

“I hate to say it because I’ve always seen it in print but I’ve never heard it pronounced. I hate being wrong. Lazoolee?”

I catch myself staring. And nodding. “Close enough. It’s a combination of the latin word ‘lapis’ which means stone and the Arabic word ‘azul’ which means blue. Mined mainly in Afghanistan. It looks good on you, whatever you call it. ” If I was a real authority on it and it was main attraction I would have pulled out a monocle, cradled it in my hand and twirled it in the light. But it’s just some info I picked up reading a magazine in the doctors office waiting for my mother. I’m a regular encyclopedia of trivia that spills out on the odd cues I never see coming.

“You ask questions you already know the answer to. I’d love to hear your prayers.”

I shrug and take a sip of my drink.

She doesn’t stop. “You want to get out of here?”

I look her in the eyes. She has that “I’m pleading but not really” look. Sometimes I think she is me in reverse. If I really thought she could be real for a minute, if I would get a real kiss and we could build something, (or at least get some good conversation) instead of a ‘hot’ kiss I would go. Hell, I’d run with her. But she just wants me to play against Jimmy and John and start some trouble.

We catch ourselves staring at each other and realize we don’t know how long we’ve been doing it. This is the third time we’ve come within a hair’s breadth of kissing and everything else. Before Paula I would have swallowed hard out of reflex. I pick up my drink and nod to the bartender. He comes over and asks her what she wants. She frowns and takes a deep breath as she sighs. The stone is a witness between us. She’s not mad, just frustrated. The only reason she comes back is because I haven’t fallen for it yet.

That’s how they get you on hold: Hoping for reality in the middle of all the background noise. She won’t speak to me at church. She just looks at me sometimes as she sits there; doesn’t answer when I speak to her. She says I’m more approachable in here.

She smoothes a stray hair back and pulls out the barstool next to mine. “I’m not leaving this time.” Her eyes play over my face. “Wine cooler.”

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Proverbs 7:10-12 And behold, there met him a woman in the attire of a harlot, and subtle of heart. She is clamorous and unmanageable; her feet abide not in her house: now without, now in the broadways, –and she lieth in wait at every corner.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

The peppers are hot. Very hot.

The conversation is going back and forth over Scoville units and their connection to names.

They all know that names are funny things. In all of recognizable experience names are call signs more specific than you. Names are marks of individuality and general widgets that signal the emotional utility contained within the bearer to those who search for utility. Because of some invisible law of names and experience, they make you feel good or bad just to say or hear them beyond any physical realities of the bearers.

It is this last characteristic that all of them are seeking, as the name will serve as the initial selling point of the sauce. But it is also the last characteristic which is the limitation. There is hot. But then there is stepping over the line (no curse words are allowed in the name). Consumers have as many lines as there are mouths.

There are other hot sauces too. The bottles are lined up across the desk like ignorant cities waiting for the siege by a better Name. The other sauces have declared the rules of what sauce names have to be—at least to the educated consumer: the connoisseurs of hot; the demographic. The other names have been said first and have already staked their claim on the terra firma of hot sauce market share. There is “Hot as Hell”; “Acid Storm”; “Mike’s Mind Numbing Madness”; “Sergeant. Fury”; “Satan’s Scream”; “Cross Eyed Betty”, along with simple “S & P” and “Jermaine’s!” It isn’t as if the others have used up all the words of hot. Cool is strong and true and new. But most of the others have hot muscle names of broad appeal; beefy names of power: front rack names. Useful names.

They will have to compete with the names first and the flavors second. Competition among themselves has been the practice. Those other guys must have families too. And that’s how they got their names. They need a new name that breaks the rules, brings a better education and yet doesn’t step over the line.

Frank pours himself a cup of coffee. “How about “Hitler’s Breath” or “Saddam’s Sanity”? We could put a picture on the front of the old Iraqi information minister saying “It’s not hot at all!” Or we could go old school and name it something like “Honest Bill’s Hot Sauce” or just “Hot Sauce” –in black and white small print.

“How about Woosy? The sauce anybody can take? A drooped-eared cat on the front? Then why did we grow to the expense of growing Habaneros? It’s got to scream ‘Habanero’. Hot flavor.” Ben smirks.

“That has nothing to do with what I said. You know what I mean.”

Ben hears the names drift over him into the background as they speak. He looks out of the window at the field of peppers. Hitler’s Breath. Saddam’s Sanity. The Information Minister. Frank always has the gift: the big sack of words. It isn’t fair. Frank always says the necessary things at the speed of light while he is standing still.

Ben remembers years ago when Bobby Lee got married. They had trekked up north ( Maryland, Maine .. something like that ) and Frank had had the Ford Fastback. He had stayed out front because he also had the radar detector. Nine hours into the trip Frank had finally slowed down. Ben had gunned the old truck as fast as it would go and had passed Frank doing eighty, smiling to himself until the cop had pulled him over.

Two hundred and thirty bucks.

Frank hadn’t even gloated. “You never learn. I told you I was out front to look out for us and that when the Super Snooper went off I’d slow down. Why does it always have to be you against me? Why do you always have to be that way?”

It is hard to look back and understand he has grown only because it is witnessed by Frank as well. Ben wants to grow in private, to walk through seas of fire, come out on the other side as whatever he would come out as and surprise his older brother just once. He wants to out-bless his older brother into submission; not be clumsy in the say; make it all even and not offensive. Every body will win. Maybe even their souls.

They will acknowledge him.

But to Ben, names of product are exercises done on an emotional dart board at best.

Ben turns back to the conversation. “The Natural Way to Male Enhancement.”

Frank nods and smiles. “Satan’s Growth Hormone?” “The Devil’s DNA?” “The Cure for Baldness?”

They laugh spontaneously and see it as good luck. It is the most genuine humor they know. The laughter is a proof of movement because it is an accident. They don’t know why or what is moved. Nor do they care. They have heard it at other times through themselves and others. They hope it is a tool, like the tractor or the fence. They hope it works right now; a worm hole that lands them in a galaxy of sure-fire Name.

It has done its job, however it did it and moved them on from where they were.

In a different place, a different set of thoughts, but still the friend and confidant of the consumer, the new words come quickly for Frank. “Laughing Jim’s Hallucinogenic Throat Balm.”

“The original. Accept no substitutes.” Dad smiles from behind his paper and props his feet on the desk.

Frank throws his coffee into the rubber plant. “Well, we got time. Those peppers won’t be ripe for another two weeks and the paste has to age for at least six months.” He turns at the door. “Male enhancement. Good one, bro.”

He’s got so many he throws them away like cold coffee. The way he threw yours away.

After Frank has left Ben thinks of “Pure” and “Easy”. He writes “Easy” down carefully to see what it looks like in print and thinks of “Hot Sauce” in small, cursive letters underneath, then to the upper right side like a mathematical exponent. He sees “Five Acre Farms, A Family Business Since 2005, Gretna, Florida.” in tiny, plain text towards the bottom of a minimalist blue and orange label. A green glass, pepper shaped bottle. A cork instead of a screw top with a red wax, hand dipped coating like champagne or whiskey.

Theirs will be the best.

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Ecc 4:4 And I saw all labour, and all success of work, that it is man’s jealousy of his neighbour. This also is vanity and pursuit of the wind.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen

We’re doing seventy down I-10 twenty miles from Texas. The car glides over the road in front of us and the trees get thinner as we go. We’ve got the windows down and the wind is blowing her hair around. She’s got her shades on and the country goes by her eyes in rounded silver with her cute nose just beneath. Her ears are beautiful. Elegant.

“You got anything from your folks?” She speaks without turning, staring out at the road, the horizon ahead.

“What you see is what you got. Just my face and name. Some things in my mind. Maybe some spiritual stuff too.”

“No keepsake?”

“No. Nothing like that.”

She pulls up her purse from underneath her feet and sets it in her lap, rummages for a while and brings out a hard eyeglass case. She opens it and shows me a glass chili pepper with a hole in the big end. “One year when we had money momma bought this set of Christmas lights. It was real expensive.” The silver shines my way. “This is all I got, except maybe what you said too.”

She hands it to me. It’s heavy, good quality. The green and the red aren’t painted on and it looks hand blown. It’s really nice, but lonely in a way. I hold it up to the light with one hand and a kaleidoscope of color dances on her leg. She smiles.

We pass a sign for a Mom and Pop hotel. Her sunglasses flash as she turns back toward the sign. “You ever sat on one of those shaking beds?”

“The ones where you put the quarters in and the whole. . .?” She’s nodding and smiling. “Yeah.”

“Momma said it was a waste of money. But daddy did it anyway. We’d all sit there and daddy would put in quarters and we’d just shake together.” She shakes her head in a slight vibration and smiles to herself. I smile too. I can’t help it. I know what she means.

“I always wanted to do it again to be sure.”

A van pulls out from behind and passes us pulling a trailer. One side of the tarp has come untied and flaps in the wind in front of us. A handle bar of a child’s bike is at the end, its streamer flowing toward us in the wind.

“I wanted to feel it the same way somebody in Mongolia would—the same way anybody would. You know, so if I ever met them I wouldn’t be behind or nothin’. You know? They’d say somethin’ like ‘that’s like being on a shaking bed.’ in Mongolian and I ‘d say ‘Yeah, I know what you mean.’ And we’d be friends.”

I nod and give her back the chili pepper. She opens the hard case and puts it back in.
“It’s important to not get behind. You get behind you get scre. . ., you get …” I don’t how to finish. I’m trying to say better things around her than what I said when it was just me.

She nods. Green trees and silver flash in the sun as she looks toward the horizon. “I’m pregnant.”

I nod. It’s not that I’m not surprised. It’s just that after a while, nothing is a surprise. I don’t say anything. That damn bike. I hate it when people pass and then slow down in front of you.

“I can… I mean we can find a way out in Dallas maybe.”

“No.”

She doesn’t say anything for a couple of miles. Then she slides over and rests her head on my shoulder. I put my arm around her. That girl. She’s always pushing it. She’s sorry she tested me. But she’s glad I passed.

A couple hours later we pull into Dallas. We’re together and that’s it. I was going to ask her to marry me anyway. I just didn’t assume in advance she would. So I kept putting it off. Now I look bad –she looks bad to herself–because I didn’t ask first. It’s not that I mind looking bad, but I think that stuff will mean something to her later. I check in at the desk of a Holiday Inn and wonder if the people in Mongolia have a way of understanding that. I wonder if I said it in Mongolian—would our folks understand?

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Proverbs 22:22,23 Rob not the poor, because he is poor, neither oppress the afflicted in the gate; for Jehovah will plead their cause, and despoil the soul of those that despoil them.

Exodus 30:15 The rich shall not give more, and the poor shall not give less …

Exodus 13:2 Hallow unto me every firstborn, whatever breaketh open the womb among the children of Israel, of man and of cattle: it is mine.

Exodus 23:2,3 Thou shalt not follow the multitude for evil; neither shalt thou answer in a cause, to go after the multitude to pervert judgment . Neither shalt thou favour a poor man in his cause.

In the Name of Jesus Christ, Amen