Chapter 4

“You know, your cousin is getting even more out of hand than usual,” Eric Goddard told his wife April, being very annoyed by Dan Logan.

“Oh, yes ... Dan the Man! Pardon my vulgar language, but everyone sucks up to him too much, too, including Pastor Denny, you know, and Ellie, that slut of a preacher’s wife that we’re stuck with right now. She’s a disgrace, even if she is a sweetheart,” April ranted now.

“She’s your sister!” Eric pointed out.

“That’s what makes this so much harder, honey. She’s just ... too much like Ma! I guess that I’m more like Pa ... jealous as can be,” April noted, “mate two gingers together, and you get those results. Ma and Pa ... like oil and water. Pa preached Hellfire and brimstone. Ma ... is probably roasting in that Hell fire right now, all the men that she took to bed, too. And waiting for Ellie to join them, assuming that she doesn’t repent of her wickedness. Ma spread her legs for man after man ... but they all had to be gingers. Weird that, but she wanted Pa to think that he did the job, you know.”

“So, she’d only cheat with redheaded men. Fascinating! What happened to their marriage? Last I knew, they died within months of each other, her first, not a hint of marital woes voiced to me from either of them,” Eric observed.

“Well, yeah, Pa would never dream of saying a thing. He was the long-suffering Christian hubby, asserting himself to drive the other men away, would never dream of a revenge affair, but would absolutely chase off the other men with a shotgun. Then he would forgive her, but not forget, time and again. He could have divorced her several times over, but he just kept coming back to her. What folly, even if sincere!” April grimaced as she recalled just wild and promiscuous her mother was.

“What happened after your mother passed on, then? I’ve heard whispers about that,” Eric probed.

“Pa was bitter, horny from all the times that he stopped sleeping with Ma because she’d been defiled by other men, and drunk after he turned to the sauce. A man of God, drinking the demon whiskey, imagine that! He took up with that stupid whore Tammy Davies for several months, but she wouldn’t stop humping half the town, so that brought more heartache.

“Pa was a one-woman man, but he could never catch a break and bed a one-man woman. He finally ... suffered blood alcohol poisoning after getting too much homemade wine and died in his sleep. I just hope that the Lord forgave him for that,” April choked back some tears at those memories.

“And now Tammy’s a cocktail waitress and not a peep out of her, huh?” Eric rolled his eyes at that part, “just remember that Calvary covered your Pa’s sins, just as it does ours.”

“That’s the part that irritates me about men like Dan Logan, though. They like to say things like, ‘if you don’t sin, Jesus died for nothing,’ piss-poor theology, but a fun excuse for the likes of them. They’ll be laughing a lot less when they’re cast into eternal Hellfire, I can tell you that much,” April gritted her teeth at her cousin’s very lukewarm attitude toward the Gospel.

“That’s sinners like them, as have always existed. Mockers, scorners, drunkards, sodomites, whoremongers, adulterers, blasphemers, etc. who shall all have their part in the Lake of Fire. You know that. He’ll wish that he’d castrated himself by that point, you know. Better to enter Heaven a eunuch than be cast intact into outer darkness with the worm that doesn’t die and the fire that isn’t quenched,” Eric reassured his wife that Dan would indeed burn in Hell someday, as would Tammy and her mother.

“Well, I hope that Ellie can still be saved before it’s too late. Once the Rapture takes place, it’s hopeless for her, Dan, and probably even Pastor Denny, sad to say. They’ll be left behind, you know,” April noted.

“Honey, I hate to be a downer, but I think that if the Rapture happened right now, only you and I from this trailer park would go up in it. We need to really step up our evangelism, you know. Too many so-called Christians at our church who would be shocked to be left behind in the Rapture, you know.

“Yeah, I think that Pastor Denny, Ellie, and even Dan have hearts of gold, but that won’t save them. As James tells us, faith without works is dead. Christ will only save you if you repent. Otherwise, you perish,” Eric continued their theological discussion while getting ready for school.

“Why God hasn’t blessed us with children, I didn’t know, but now I do. It’s the end, baby. The Rapture is almost upon us. There’s no time for families and such. Our own marriage is almost over, as you know. In Heaven, we’ll be celibate like the angels. Might as well enjoy it while we still can ... but not at the expense of winning souls for Christ, of course,” April agreed while Eric fondled her tush, but at least she didn’t swat his hand away these days.

A little groping by one’s own hubby was no sin, after all, right?

“Stop there, please ... I need it,” April asked her husband as they neared their high school where both of them taught.