The Man on the Park Bench

Wayne Jackson was just sitting there, half listening to Reverend Paul Mason talk about how people's lives were like trees, when he realized he did not believe in God.

  He glanced sideways at Judy, then at the parishioners sitting beside her. Their eyes were glazed over. They’d all been brainwashed and would go to their graves believing. They'd call other religions cults, hate atheists, and demand their children be allowed to pray in school. And they would all go to their graves expecting to live forever after in the sky with Jesus and his disciples and everybody else that had died since the beginning of time. Except for those who went to hell, wherever and whatever that was.

  Until that moment of revelation, this Sunday had been like any other day. No, his revelation actually started when they'd arrived at the church just minutes before, and he was backing their twelve-year-old Chevrolet into the narrow space between two parked cars. It somehow seemed to start there.

  "Watch out, Wayne," Judy had yelled. She grunted and twisted her fat body to look out the back window. "You'll hit that car! Why didn't you just pull in straight like everybody else?"

  He finished backing and turned off the ignition.

  "Look at that. I can't even get out," she said, opening the door. But she had plenty of room. She was just in one of her moods.

  "My, it is a nice church." She eyed the white brick edifice with the tall gleaming aluminum steeple at the other end of the parking lot, sitting among blossoming azaleas and large live oaks. She stood there, feet spaced apart and purse dangling, absorbing the scene.

  "You have money for the collection?"

  He felt the crumpled five dollar bill in his ill fitting jacket’s side pocket and nodded. The bells rang, and the other stragglers walked faster.

  "Look at that. We're late. I wanted to at least say hello to Paul and Susan before we sat."

  "But we'll see them for lunch," Wayne said. "We can say hello all we want to, then."

  She did one of her nose in the air things, and Wayne smiled secretly inside. Zing. Another small victory. Outwardly, he remained sober and serious looking, standing there in all of his five feet, nine inch height, looking innocently up at her. He smoothed his gray hair back and adjusted his rimless glasses on his narrow nose. He liked to get her going sometimes, when she didn't even realize he'd done it, almost as much as he disliked her constantly harping at him. Twenty five years before, he’d thought her way of acting was cute. But it got worse when he got her pregnant and had to quit high school to marry and support her. She found God for both of them just a month after they moved into their first apartment over her uncle’s garage, but that didn't keep her from harping at him every chance she got.

  He never did like attending church with her. Today was a little different, of course, since they also came to visit a cousin she saw only rarely who’d recently become pastor of this church. The four hour drive was almost pleasant. They'd eaten at a Shoney's breakfast bar not far back, something he could afford to do only occasionally on his pay from the body shop. And he did enjoy the different scenery along the way. But at home, he only grudgingly went to church with her.