Spliced
On Saturday nights I dream about her,
Miss Hooker, my Sunday School teacher, how
we're married and in our living room and
watching TV, not that we really are,
after supper, until it's time to go
to bed, which we do, in the bedroom we
share, the bed as well, and the darkness, not
the scary kind of darkness where you die
or at least monsters try to jump you but
the darkness that bears a little light, God's
shadow, maybe. And next morning when I
wake I wake alone, in time for Sunday
School and the chance to see Miss Hooker
until another week. She's got red hair
and green eyes and freckles and I, I don't
—but I can get them if I marry her
or on our honeymoon admire them. When
she falls asleep and I'm sure she'll stay down
I'll turn the night-light on and start counting
freckles, I wonder if I'll count them all
and if the universe has one for each
one she has, a star for every freckle,
I mean, then I'll feel like God tallying
all His stars, if that's what He does, or has
some angels do it for Him--when I’m dead
I hope He'll send me on patrol that way
so that it will be like seeing the world,
which I wonder if I'll do before I
die, or better, seeing Miss Hooker in
the friendly darkness, just the right amount
of light to help me see that I'll never
hold forever to her, we have to die
and then up in Heaven, if I've been good
enough and of course she'll surely be, it's
eternity is what we'll have but as
for now, ten years old to her 25,
I go to Sunday School and gaze on her,
listen, too, but largely look, because death
is the thing to find at the end of it
all and I don't want to be too afraid
of dying, death is the beginning of
living, don't ask me why, it just feels right.
Before we fall asleep we shake on it.
1966
After Sunday School I see Miss Hooker
to her car and, on the way, imagine
that I'm walking her home from a movie
or pizza or ice cream or stroll around
the duck pond, or sometimes all of these if
I can dream fast enough. When I open
her front door it's her car door again. I
touch it where she touches it when she climbs
in. This is as close as I'll ever come
to taking her hand myself, I guess, since
I'm only 10 and she's 25 and
the difference is--let me think--fifteen
years so there's no future for us. But then
Christ died nineteen hundred and sixty-six
years ago and rose from the dead three days
later so nothing's impossible, if
it's really true. It's a matter of faith,
they say, and if I don't have enough then
I can't go to Heaven and may even
go to Hell. Miss Hooker isn't Jesus
but she's closer to Him than I am--she's
my Sunday School teacher. I guess that means
that Preacher's even closer than she is
and there may be someone closer than he
is, and on and on. I've still got time to
live a holy life and beat 'em all to
heck and if I get an early start then
maybe Miss Hooker will notice and fall
in love with me and maybe God will see
and Jesus, too, Who sits on God's right hand,
and then have mercy on me and work one
of His miracles, maybe stop time like
Joshua stopped the sun, maybe that's kind
of the same thing, until I can catch up
to Miss Hooker and ask her for a date
and of course she'll have to say yes because
it's God's will and not only His but mine,
too, and then there's Jesus, Who has to go
along because He's really God Himself,
or something like that, I'm fuzzy about
the details. And ditto the Holy Ghost.
So I'll take her out for cheeseburgers and
then to the park, where maybe we'll swing
and see saw and the slide's good, too--I'll bring
some wax paper to make the sliding fast,
and then I'll be waiting at the bottom
of the slide to catch her, she'll come down zoom,
and maybe she'll scream like a little girl
but I won't let her plop on her rear end
but save her and while she's there in my arms
we'll kiss and that will be the end of it,
I'll kneel beneath the moonlight or at least
a lamppost and ask her won't she make me
the happiest man in the world and show
her the ring I bought her and God will nudge
her to say Yes, yes, oh yes, Gale, I'm yours
for Eternity or at least the rest
of our lives, and I'll say, Golly, that's keen,
and the rest will be history, what with
jobs and a house and a couple of cars
and a boat and a color TV and
not one but two bathrooms, and then children,
as many as we can do, wherever
they come from, and a piano for her
because the one in class is out of tune
and some keys stick and the swivel-stool won't
swivel anymore. And dogs and cats and
tropical fish that don't eat one another
and a snake and some white mice to feed him
—or her—but they don't have to be white. When
Miss Hooker gets in I turn my head so
I don't see too much of her legs above
the knees because that would be a sin and
if I keep sinning, I don't want to but
somehow I can't help myself or God won't
help me, then I'll never have a snowball's
chance in Hell at her. Then she smiles and I
smile, too, but there's more love in mine than hers,
or if it isn't more then it's different,
the true-love kind, the let's-go-steady kind.
Still, you never know what girls are thinking,
not that she's a girl. Maybe God's told her
about our future together and sworn
her not to spill the beans. I can only
hope. And then Miss Hooker drives away and I
walk home from church, the same way I came
but in reverse, but not exactly so
because if it was exactly so then I'd
be walking backwards—I may be sinful
but I'm pretty smart to have flunked first grade
but I get what numbers are about now,
how they add, subtract, and multiply,
and how you can divide them, but I'm still
not too hot at that. Nobody's perfect.
Gale Acuff has had poetry published in Ascent, McNeese Review, Pennsylvania Literary Journal, Poem, Adirondack Review, Maryland Poetry Review, Florida Review, Slant, Poem, Carolina Quarterly, Arkansas Review, South Dakota Review, Orbis, and many other journals. He has authored three books of poetry, all from BrickHouse Press: Buffalo Nickel, The Weight of the World, and The Story of My Lives. He has taught university English courses in the US, China, and Palestine.