On a hot, sweaty summer night, when most people's minds turned eagerly to
thoughts of one the window-mounted air conditioners that were on special at
the town hardware store, they had somehow collectively worked up the inertia
to pack the pews of the Country Baptist Church to hear Billy Bob Barclay,
evangelist extraordinaire.

"Expunge the sinnah! Bring them forth unto Jeeehovah!"

The silence inside the old church was as palpable and real as the sound of
the spring rain falling outside, heard through the open windows of the
church."

The sinnah," the old evangelist roared once more, pointing an accusatory
index finger toward the entire congregation, "is everywherah. He rejoices in
iniquity, takes great joy in doing the work of the Devil."

It had been a long night of preaching for the Right Reverend Billy Bob
Barclay, late of Little Rock, Arkansas. Why, folks were practically sleeping
right in the aisles, and with the humidity where it was, there was little
reason to wonder. It was so sticky, so humid, that each time he moved one
way or the other across the podium, the sweat droplets that, throughout the
evening, had been secretly gathering in the vicinity of his scanty hairline
would suddenly break ranks, dash madly down his face toward his nose, and
madly commit mass suicide off the end of his rather prominent nose, falling
nearly six feet to the worn carpet at his feet.

It didn't help matters at all that the baptismal font, which was cleverly
hidden behind the wooden panelling extending the full length of the dias,
was eagerly pumping out more humidity into the already-saturated air.

Almost asleep, myself, I was somewhat startled to hear him say, "Folks, it's
so humid right now, that those of you wishing to receive Jesus probably
won't have to move your feet hardly at all to come forward and be saved. You
can just swim up here to receive the precious Lord Jeeeesus into your
lives."

Of course, this was the type of fare that I had traveled nearly 100 miles,
clear to the other end of the county, on a hot, sticky summer night to hear.
I was hungry for a story, and had a deadline staring me in the face. I had
committed the unpardonable sin. I had run out of things to write about for
the "Secular Bee", the small-town newspaper for which I regularly was
expected to contribute a column inch or two of text each week.

I could write about Billy Bob's week-long revival, which just now was in its
last throes of ecstacy. I could write soggy insights about the number of
people who, gasping with tears of submission cascading down their wrinkled
cheeks, came stumbling down the creaky wooden aisles of the old church, just
as they had done the previous year, when they were last brought into the
fold of the church.

I could write about Billy Bob's secret proclivity for using an unorthodox
variation of the "laying on of hands ceremony", which drove some of the
paritioners, particularly well-endowed brunettes with hungry faces, across
the street to the T-Bar Motel, for special dispensations and prayers after
services were done for the night.No editor in his right mind would print
such a story, but it would be an interesting conversation-piece for some
time to come.

Or I could emulate some of my city-bred bretheren, and write a sickly-sweet
article about how Billy Bob was part of a vanishing species. Modern day men
of the cloth do not imbue their listeners with any particular sense of fear
when it comes to the matter of a few good sins. They blend a mix of
religion, psychology and maybe even a horoscope to explain sin away, as if
it never existed to begin with.

Billy Bob was not of this ilk, for he could give Hell its due. Spitting out
words like a sub-machine gun, he would quickly take the parishioners on a
walking tour of Hell on anyday. This traditionally would be no walking tour,
either. Waving his arms as if possessed by the demons he purported to
dismiss during healing hour, he would describe, in livid detail, all the
carnal sins that could earn a person a front row seat in eternal Perdition.
During the "last call" Billy Bob raced back and forth across the front of
the dias, screeching, imploring, pleading with the sinners to come forward
to be saved, the entire time, letting the entire congregation get a real
good whiff of the brimstone they would be smelling if they didn't get their
houses in order.

Oh,he is a master at this! His version of Hell has more demons, each of
impecable repute, who keep the fires roaring through all eternity, just on
the off-chance that someone from this small congregation happens to
backslide or resume their lives of sin and iniquity.

I prefer a good kick in my moral slats, properly administered by a man of
Billy Bob's stature, just to remind me of just how sinful, how potent the
grip of the Devil is on my immortal soul. If I need a psychologist to help
put my mind to ease, I would attend his mercies with all the relish I
reserve for seeing a dentist. However, when it comes to matters of my soul,
give a good old-fashioned fire-and-brimstone, Bible banging, hyperactive
evangelist who sweats a lot any day, and I'll sit there, my mouth agape,
just drinking in all the glory that Hades has in store for me if I don't
mend my ways.

I walk out of a revival with my head held high, my soul acutely aware of
just how sinful I have become, and with all my sins expunged by rubbing
shoulders with all those saved souls in the church. So reassured am I of
learning that there is still a Hell for the iniquitous in our midst, I
usually am unusually contrite for a period of no less than a month.

I could write pages about the Billy Bob Barclays of this life. My newspaper
editor would assume that I had taken leave of my senses, would probably
refer me to a shrink somewhere who would patiently 3 sit, listening to my
tale, and promptly convince me to blame the entire episode on my
relationship with my mother, my father or my secret fetish to keeping goats.

When the service was over, as everyone was filing out past the evangelist,
whose shirt was now soaked with the exertions of saving twelve souls, I even
took his damp hand in mine and thanked him graciously for a job well done. I
virtually reeked with sanctity and, as I stepped outside, to my relief, it
had started to rain. It was a cool rain, and the humidity was finally
slinking away for yet another day.

Still, in the morning I had to face my editor empty-handed. By the time he
was through raking my sorrowful soul over the coals, Hell probably would
seem tame by comparison. I started saying a few prayers, right then and
there.

As fate would have it, just as I rounded the curve to Springdale, I see
Stevens County's finest, dressed in yellow slickers, flashlights at the
ready, directing traffic around a bad wreck on the highway. Using all the
unsanctimonious language I had earlier forsworn never to use again, I
managed to get them to allow me close enough to get a few good close-ups of
the wreck and a few terse words from the Lieutenant about those involved in
the accident.

This is Homer Pheeder.