The Bible Salesman Read online

  “Henry Dampier, ma’am. I tell you what, ma’am. Have you buried Bunny yet?”

  “No, I ain’t been able to bring myself to do it. Burt — Burt’s my husband — he’ll do it when he gets home.”

  “I was going to offer to say a little prayer at Bunny’s grave.”

  Sometimes, gentlemen, you’ll need to improvise. Jazz musicians do that when they put new notes where a melody used to be. They get off the beaten path, but brilliantwise.

  “I’d be happy,” said Henry, “just to step around back and bury her, if you got a shovel. I’m very partial to cats.”

  “Oh, that would be real nice, Mr. Dampier.” She stepped out onto the porch. “I been here by myself, and I just couldn’t bring myself to do it, so I was going to wait until Burt got home. Bunny’s under the back steps.” They were slowly moving toward the porch steps.

  “If you want to,” said Henry, “you can stay in the house and I’ll do it, if you’ll tell me a good place for a grave. I don’t believe I got your name — not that I really need to, but it’s always —”

  “I’m Martha Kelly.” She reached out her hand, and Henry took it. “Well, that would be real nice,” she said. “You can see her rear end out from under the steps. I just couldn’t bring myself to . . . She’s over fifteen years old. Anywhere out in the edge of the woods would be good — straight back beyond the middle apple tree back there. The shovel is leaning against the back of the house. Lord, it’s been a blue, blue day. She was like a, well, like a child. Just . . . just knock on the back door when you’re finished. Oh my goodness. Poor Bunny. Poor Bunny.”

  “I’ll just leave my valise right here on the porch,” said Henry, “and my little box.”

  I’m here to tell you that there is one thing more important than sickness and health, life and death, love and war, food and water, and that is the sale. The sale. Understand that, if you want to sell a lot of Bibles. And you’re hanging on to that possibility that you are leading her in the direction of her own behavior that’s going to lead to her buying a Bible, and you won’t turn loose without a sale, see, until you see clearly that you risk either getting killed or embarrassing yourself into stupidity.

  “What are you selling?”

  “I’m selling Bibles, ma’am. God’s holy word.”

  Bunny’s rear end was like she said: out from under the steps. Yellow. Henry couldn’t see her head. He grabbed both back feet and pulled so she’d slide out. First he noticed the head was swollen way, way up. It was gigantic. Then he saw a . . . a snake — “Oh my gosh.” He turned the cat loose and stepped back. The snake was hanging from her mouth, not moving — clearly dead too. “Oh my gosh.” It was a copperhead, a small one. He squatted to examine. Somehow the snake’s head . . . He looked around, picked up a rock and a short stick, wedged them into Bunny’s mouth. Her front right big tooth was through the middle of the snake’s head, and the snake’s fangs were in Bunny’s — what? — lip, which was twisted somehow. Oh my goodness, get them buried before the lady sees, he thought. She would die. That head was big as . . . big as a cantaloupe.

  He looked into the neighbors’ backyards. Nobody out there to see. He got the shovel underneath Bunny’s midsection, lifted her — she was stiffening — and with the snake dangling, he started to the woods, his body between Bunny and the back door of the house. The snake, a little less than two feet long, held.

  Just inside the tree line, beyond the middle apple tree, he lowered Bunny and the snake to the ground, dug a hole about two feet deep and plenty long — it was nice soft topsoil, no clay — and buried them. He patted the pile of dirt with the shovel. He thought about a cross, looked around for a big rock, found one, placed it at the head of the grave. That was one awful-looking cat head. Poor Bunny.

  He stepped out of the woods and saw Mrs. Kelly coming, from just beyond the apple tree. As they met, he saw that her eyes were red.

  “I can’t tell you how much I appreciate this, Mr. Dampier.” She held a tissue in her hand. “She hadn’t been hit by a car, had she?”

  “Oh no. No ma’am.”

  “When I went out to put water in her pan I saw her poor rear end and called and she didn’t move, and I knew in my heart that that was the end. I think she died in her sleep, peacefully.”

  “Yes ma’am. That’s what it was. That’s what it looked like.”

  “I was worried she might, you know, have been hurt somehow.” She looked over his shoulder toward the grave. “I lost my brother, Walter, in the war, and I haven’t been able to deal with things very well since then. I have these nightmares. He was my only brother and . . . Were her eyes closed? That’s one thing I always worry about.”

  “Oh yes ma’am. They were real closed.”

  “Would you show me the grave — walk with me out there?”

  “Be glad to.”

  They stood at the foot of the grave. Henry tried to think of something to say. “I’ll say a little prayer if you like,” he said.

  “Oh, that would be nice,” said Mrs. Kelly.

  They bowed their heads. Henry prayed, “Dear Lord, for the long life of Bunny we are grateful, and surely goodness and mercy has followed her all the days of her long life, and now she shall dwell in the house . . . or close to the house of the Lord forever. Amen.”

  “Amen,” said Mrs. Kelly. “I always heard animals don’t go to heaven,” she said. “I was a Catholic when I was growing up, and that’s what I always heard.”

  “That’s what I always heard too, and I’m a Baptist, so I said ‘close to’ instead of ‘in’ for some reason. I don’t know. It’s . . . you never know.” Henry started moving away from the grave, back toward the house — he took a step or two.

  But Mrs. Kelly stayed put. “I been thinking I ought to of had her buried in something,” she said.

  “You mean . . . you mean like a dress?” asked Henry. He saw a little dress with that giant head sticking up out of it. Bunny would need a man’s hat.

  “Oh no, like a shoe box or something. I just don’t . . . I could get the box Burt’s work boots come in. That hard cardboard would be fine to keep the dirt off her.”

  “You want to rebury her?”

  “Yes.” She looked up at Henry. “If you would. I want to see her again, one last time. I should have at least looked at her. I never got to see Walter. He had some kind of head injury, and none of us got to see him.” She brought her tissue up to her eye. Then she started crying for sure and dropped to one knee. “Oh, Bunny. My beautiful Bunny.”

  Henry, holding the shovel, eyed the back of her house, where’d he’d planned to set the shovel back. He stood still, feeling some heat around his neck. Maybe he could sing something. My Bunny lies over the ocean? My Bunny lies over the sea? “I remember Trixie,” he said, “this dog my uncle had. We just dropped her in a big hole and then threw the dirt in right on top of her. Never thought about a box. I think just plain dirt is the more or less normal way for an animal.”

  Mrs. Kelly, sniffing, said, “It’s not too deep, is it? It wouldn’t be a great bother to dig her back up, would it?”

  “Oh, well, no, no ma’am. It’s not too deep.”

  “If you don’t mind,” said Mrs. Kelly. “I’ll go get the shoe box.” She stood and started for the house.

  Henry looked at the grave. No choice now. He started digging. Something would come to him. Improvise. He lifted Bunny on the shovel out of the grave. If I get rid of the snake maybe I can make up something, he thought. He thought about her brother, Walter. He looked toward the house. Mrs. Kelly was coming down the back steps with the box. He didn’t want to get venom on his hand. He pulled out his handkerchief and, using it as a glove, pried Bunny’s mouth open, pulled the snake’s head off the tooth, looked up at Mrs. Kelly, her head down. She was almost to the apple tree. He flung the snake. The cat’s head was enormous, the lips misshapen and bloody at the snake bite. The eyes — where in hell were the eyes? He tied his handkerchief around Bunny’s head. He arranged the c
loth, tucked.

  Mrs. Kelly was standing there with the box.

  “I’m just arranging a burial shroud,” he said. “It’s the way they bury all cats in England nowadays. I was just reading about it. It’s a custom over there. Catching on here. I’ve done a few before.”

  “Her head looks swolled up.”

  “Oh no ma’am. That’s from the way I arranged the handkerchief. Let me see that box. Poor thing.” He almost snatched the box and, moving fast, put himself between Mrs. Kelly and Bunny, slipped Bunny in the box headfirst, shut the lid, and said, “Let’s close our eyes in prayer. Our Heavenly Father, as we gather here, let us realize that Bunny has paid the final price, has reached her final destination, her final resting place” — he had one eye open and was moving the box into the hole with his foot — “and is now prepared for the kind of privacy that comes to all of us who have breathed our last breath after a faithful time of service of loving our masters, amen, and now I’m just going to pick up the shovel and cover her up with some mother earth and —”

  “Her head looked swolled up to me.”

  “Oh no ma’am, it was the way you tuck a burial shroud that made it look that way. It’s a kind of protection. It’s called a burial tuck.” Henry shoveled dirt onto the box. It made a sound like hard rain, and then the box was out of sight. If she said to uncover it, he would have to just walk off, he figured. Tell her he had to be somewhere.

  “I can’t thank you enough, Mr. Dampier,” she said. “Burt will be home about suppertime. If you’ll come back by, I’m sure he’ll want to buy a Bible.”

  “I need to get on now, Mrs. Kelly, and what I’m going to do is give you a, a couple of Bibles. You’ve been through a lot today. I like to give away a complimentary Bible now and then, and I think you deserve a couple. Let’s go pick them out.” He patted the top of Bunny’s grave a few times with the shovel, leaving imprints.

  Back at the motel Henry noticed that Mr. Clearwater’s car was gone. He ate supper across the street at Mae’s — a patty of ground beef with mashed potatoes, biscuits, and string beans. Back in his motel room, he undressed and put on his pajamas. He knelt by his bed and prayed. “Dear God, help me to make the right decision in all I decide to do. Guide and direct me in the right path, oh God. In Jesus’ name. Amen.” He thought about Bunny, that head.

  He sat on his bed and opened his Bible to Genesis. He read again, kind of fast, the first two chapters, then went back to the places he’d underlined. Aunt Dorie used to underline a lot in her Bible.

  In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.

  And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

  Then God made light, Henry read, and heaven, and earth, and plants by the third day. Then he made the seasons and sun and moon and stars on the fourth day. Then he made all the animals and creatures on the fifth day. He’d underlined “all the animals” and “fifth.” He kept reading:

  And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

  So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them. . . . And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

  Thus the heavens and the earth were finished.

  So it was the sun, then animals, then people. But then later, in Genesis 2:

  And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

  And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. . . .

  And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them.

  First way: animals, then people. Second way: people, then animals.

  Nobody had ever talked to him about two completely different orders. Why? It almost hurt him to think about it — how could anybody read that and not talk their head off about it? One version, but not both, could be right. One was wrong. And the Bible was supposed to be right all the way through.

  And then there was that other thing, where he had stopped reading a few nights earlier. As plain as the nose on your face, in Genesis 6:

  And it came to pass, when men began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born unto them,

  That the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which they chose.

  He saw these sons of God walking around on earth marrying the daughters of earth men. But Jesus was supposed to have been the only begotten son of God. “Dear God,” he prayed again. “Help me to understand thy word. Guide and direct me.” These verses were clear. Plain English. Second Timothy 3:16 said, “All scripture is given by inspiration of God.”

  The next morning Henry and Clearwater sat across from each other, eating breakfast at a table in Mae’s Café. Henry told him about the cat. But he kept it short. “My Bible-selling teacher talked to us a lot about selling Bibles, and I had to keep thinking what he said about ‘improvise.’ ” He wanted Mr. Clearwater to bring up the job thing, so he’d keep quiet about all that in Genesis — for the time being, anyway. He dipped the corner of his toast into his mixed-together eggs and grits.

  “Okay,” said Mr. Clearwater. He wiped his mouth with his napkin. “This job. It’s not the kind of business I can tell just anybody about. I work for the FBI.” He pulled out his billfold and opened it. A badge. He was a G-man! “We infiltrated a gang of car thieves about six months ago,” he said. “They work from here to California, mostly in the southern part of the United States, and then all up and down California. They steal a car — hot-wire it, normally — get it painted unless it’s black, an ignition system installed, and then they might sell it, or drive it to California, or turn it over to somebody else, whatever. I get the ones that they’re selling, usually. Hadn’t had to drive anything to California yet. And what I need is a driver, because that’s my Chrysler out there, and sometimes I’m dealing with two cars at a time, and even when I’ve got just one car, I like to have somebody driving for me.”

  “So you know J. Edgar Hoover — you’re a actual G-man?” This was far better than Henry could have imagined.

  “Oh yes. J. Edgar and me are pretty good buddies. I’ve shot pool with him, eat supper with him, but he don’t let nobody know that he shoots pool, see. He’s a Christian, like you . . . and me.”

  “I’ll take it. It sounds like a good job.” He wished he could tell Uncle Jack. Aunt Dorie would be afraid, though.

  Clearwater extended his hand. “Good. We’ll start tomorrow. I think we’ll have a pickup tomorrow afternoon. Be ready at three o’clock to leave here in the Chrysler and meet me at a place I’ll draw out for you on a map. And in a few months from now, when everything is lined up, we’ll be making a big number of arrests, all on the same day. All you’ll have to do in the meantime is drive for me. You’ll make more money than you do selling Bibles, I can tell you that. Twenty-five dollars for every car we move, and that’ll be, oh, up to three or four a week.”

  Henry’s mind went: A hundred dollars in a week.

  “Then some days we just sit,” said Clearwater. “It’s kind of off and on.”

  Henry looked around at other people eating breakfast. They were so normal. Nothing like this going on in their lives. They were farmers and regular people. “Can I keep selling Bibles?”

  “As long as we’re clear about when you go out and when you get back. I need you on call, more or less.”

  “Am I supposed to dress up like you?”

  “Not necessarily. You might get a hat or
some hair oil and put the end of your belt where it belongs.”

  “What’s a pickup?”

  “I said you might get a hat or some hair oil and use your belt loops.”

  “Sure. Yes sir.”

  “A pickup is a car delivery. Somebody will deliver me a car. And another thing: You don’t ever, under any circumstances, tell anybody what you’re doing. In fact, you have to take an oath. We’ll do it on one of your Bibles before our first gig. If you do tell somebody, it could cause the whole FBI undercover department to fall apart.”

  “Okay.”

  “I’ll be getting coded messages — general delivery — here and there, and messages at certain motels. This one, for example. I don’t actually do the stealing, normally, though I have been asked to do that once or twice. They deliver me a car to drive somewhere, or to get painted, and then we’ll do it all over again. You’ll be waiting for me somewhere, I get the pickup and drive it to you. All you do is drive. And if you ever by chance get arrested and I’m not around, then all you have to say is ‘Code Mercury,’ and then your name and my name, Preston Clearwater. No matter what they do or ask you, or how many times, that’s all you have to say.”

  “Do these car thieves ever kill anybody?” asked Henry.

  “You don’t ever know with these types.” Clearwater motioned for the waitress.

  “It don’t sound too dangerous, though. Just driving.”

  “It’s not at all dangerous. I’ll get this breakfast. You can pay your part when we eat from here on out.”

  Henry was astonished that he could make so much money doing anything, especially while gaining a kind of glory. It sounded like a comic book adventure, or something from the movies. He’d be serving God in a different way. Good against evil. He remembered the pictures in Aunt Dorie’s Children’s Book of Bible Stories: David facing the giant, Goliath, and then the picture of him about to cut Goliath’s head off; he saw the picture of Jesus and the money changers — of Jesus chasing them away from the temple. He’d be dealing with bad people. He’d be righting wrong in a way he’d never dreamed of. Parts of the Bible had to do with all this, parts about the Pharisees, and Babylonians, and Roman soldiers, with sin and evil, and good — and all that was true, for sure — and all of that is what he would be a part of, in modern times. He’d probably figure out these Genesis things. He was going to go ahead and read past Genesis 6, anyway, just to see if there were more confusions. This was way back when maybe things got a little mixed up, before people could read and write, when all they could do was tell things.