Cowboy Redux
By Mike Marino
The preacher was the best damn shot in the whole congregation!
Among other talents, as a hunter of game and fowl, large and small, fresh and foul, he could stir-fry a brown squirrel with the rapid fire finesse of a steak chef in Okinawa slicing through a Mongolian steak, cutting it into quarters, then, smaller still. He was handsome, not wholesome, but handy with a hunting knife. Swift cutting carbon steel Buck knives mainly, the blade of choice, for the outdoorsman, as it was a Medusa head with many uses, Medusa uses. The handles were tough and made handy bang-bang Maxwell hammers on the ranch or farm. He was adept with them and claimed he could saw sequined short skirted magicians assistant in two at a sideshow without breaking a sweat, and then, without missing a beat, or breaking protocol, take both halves out to dinner on a double date, torso to go, and then at the end of the night end up in bed with both of them. He always claimed he loved the top half for her mind and oral expository, but the bottom half, it could execute a classic pincer move that could rock the universe.
He may have been a holy man, but not a holier then thou man and he liked his drink. Priest punch he called it, red wine, and he could drink it from the barrel of a six-shooter after firing off six rounds at a war party of hostiles.. He had a hobo circuit as he viewed it, and managed to carve out countless miles of religion throughout the wild westies as if he were defacing Rushmore. This was the Waylon West, Jennings and the west of Gene and Roy, where I spent some years, and at the time thought I had landed right in the middle of a real yahoo cattle drive of cowboys in the center of the mandala of Indian Country. Not the silver screen singing "why shucks ma'am, I surely do love my horse and fair play, posse of pards, but real hard-ass bonifide cow punchers and pokers who played poker and other games of chance by choice. The non-denominal preacher was one of those characters, and not nominal in sense of the words meaning, The preacher was one-part Okie and plentiful parts of other things, a real Tommy Chong cacophony of heritage, and he rode in rodeo's at county fairs and small towns and big towns and cow towns like the Abilene sisters, Kansas and Texas as well as his reputed spiritual center ,Tulsa. He roped mainly, no bull and no bulls, too dangerous he claimed and was proved right, but he enjoyed shooting sharply for the thrill of it, and he was good. He was a peerless preacher when it came to packing a pistol or tossing another log of fire and brimstone on the fire.
Now, this giddy-up Gideon preacher could toss the bible across a motel room in Nachadoces, pull a heater from a holster and could (ba-bang!) put a bullet through Lincolns head on a penny at 100 yards assassinating a u.s.a. coin of the realm, recreating the conspiratorial confederlunacy of J. W. Booth, but, this time, it was for the fun of sport and not southern deep fat fried river carp crawdaddy mornin' ma'am sho is hot and sweaty today rip torn tee-shirt Stanley Kowalski politics or the cause of a caucus and consensus in conspiring Canada of dealing out death to tyrants north of Mason Dixon. Hot lead slicing through copper of our least used currency currently and god knows why they even make them in this age of debit cards and identity theft at the checkout counter, except to leave behind as an offering at stop and rob gas station joints in a little tributary tray on the counter for when you pay cash and instead of getting ten bucks of gas it overshoots to ten oh one or oh two oh-oh and the clerk has to say something like "That's ok, it's just a penny" motioning your offering way and back to safe keeping in your penny pants pockets, but then there is the clerk that will let you put a penny in, those are the ones to watch. They are pure evil and eventually it will catch up to them and they will be a penny short, then what? Fuck 'em.
The preacher Johnson lived in a small town in southern Oklahoma, the territory that neither Texas nor Oklahoma wanted, except for its water and not the drunk and addicted Ira (passed out dead on the road) Hayes locals of legend who find pleasure in sniffing a can of silver Sherwin Williams paint or taking meth or riding in pickup trucks with their dogs in the front seat ready to hump the next hitch hiker, but in the end, the backend, their wives and girlfriends rid in the back of the truck, in the open like Springer Spaniels with their mouths agape in huge toothless gaps on their way to 24/7 7-11 for more cheap wine and beer and cigs and a stack of lottery tickets they can ill afford but by anyway and then can't afford the babies formula.
His congregation was as randy and grandly gregarious as he was, and Sundays were a celebration of life with a boisterous gospel that he read with flames of conflagration shooting straight out of his tailpipe with the haunting passion of Jack Bruce performing "Tales of Brave Ulysses" live at Croydon and a Shecky Greene attitude towards platitude. It was more of a Green Bay tailgate Packers party than piety, ok, ok, it was a Tailgate Piety Paroday Party. He used to joke about his ministry, mostly white trash, "but they are my white-trash" he would say referring to the flock as the Church of Bud Lights and Bug Lights by the light of the double-wide moon, and the only thing they understood was the Gospel according to Lynard Skynard and full vinyl volume, amps as altars, and virgins to sacrifice a'plenty, second cousins mostly laid out in hide-a-beds, while Tripod the three-legged dog stood guard on the porch, as far away from the screen door as his chain would allow to snap rabidly at anyone who walked past the fence on the property line as it did to the Howard girl just last month leaving a scar on her lip that would be with her as a reminder for life. She hated dogs after that, and reminds one, or two, or just me for that matter of factly matter, of what Mark Twain said in Connecticut when he had a neighbor next door with a barking dog, Twain said, "I wish I owned half that dog, I'd kill my half."
When I lived there, I never went to church, even his, but we became friends (met at demolition derby I was MC'ing for a radio station), and after that Friday nights were for poker and wine. The cheaper the better, along with a couple of bottles of Mexican beer brewed in some small back alley backwater miracle cancer cure pharmacia/cantina on the border that had a harsh taste. "Damn, you know, if I were only part Injun, you know that Quannah Parker? Hell, he started that whole Native American church thing, with peyote and secret war dances. Well, sir, I would have rode that circuit for sure," preacher Johnson would tell me on more than one occasion. He loved Parker. A man who overcame everything to attain everything, and on his terms and could get legally loaded, natural and native, at the same time well within his rights and all wrapped up in that waxy kind of meat market paper you don't see anymore, because the butchers are all dead, and ol' Parker's peyote rights were protected 100% usda fat free and fed free by the u.s.gummint including Indian Agents and J. Edgar Hoover's "Gee!! Men." Honest, that's what Hoover said, I swear on a stack of pantyhose.
One year near Christmas, I commented to the preacher, that his massive belt buckle he wore everyday 'cause he won it in an Indian rodeo in Broken Arrow, was larger than the planet Jupiter, or at least as big as Grandma's turkey platter and just as shiny and silver, and the buckle could probably be decorated for the holidays, decking the halls. Not one to be insulted easily, he just laughed, and then invited me to come to church the week before Christmas, knowing he wouldn't get me in there any other time and maybe not even this sunday go to meetin' time, but I did. I arrived, sat in a pew, him not thinking I would show up. The coughing and squirming in the congealing congregated stopped and preacher Johnson came from behind the "stage curtain" and walked confidently towards his podium. Saw me and smiled, then the gates of hell and accusation opened it's jaws wide, as he proceeded to tell the assembled what I had said about his buckle. Embarrassed as a whore of the bible waiting to be killed by stoning, I didn't know what was next until he walked from behind the podium above the crowd and lit his buckle up. He had attached a battery operated string of Christmas lights to the buckle and the belt so he looked like a pious wreath and when the switch was thrown his mid-section came ablaze and that damned buckle was as big and as bright as an exploding nova. It was the actual moment of creation. God said, "Let there be light," and goddamn if there wasn't.
I shook my head to bury a smile accompanied by a laugh, and received a standing ovation. Let's face it, this guy was Ole Blue Eyes, the Chairman of the Board, the scintillating Sinatra for sinners and saints, and he took command of the stage and those around him, not to bully, but to infuse with life and the joy it brings at the same time. Still, I never did go back to church, but every weekend we ended up riding horses on his small spread near the Texas border and finishing off the day with some not so awful wine and Mex beer and laughed into the night. Eventually, as is the life of a radio hobo, it was time to shut down the station and move on down the road and up the dial, which I did, and saying goodbye to an audience you get to know is never easy, let alone certain of them one on one, who has left a lasting impression on you stronger than super glue. The preacher was one of those. He showed up in the studio that day, resplendent under the cover of a cowboy hat brimming with machismo, and that damn buckle that had lit up his church on a Christmas morning not too long ago like Dresden during a fire bombing.
After the final show on the radio station, I shut the mic off and started to say my final "adios" to the station staff and some of the listeners who had turned out for their "adios", and the preacher grabbed me by the shoulders as I started to walk out of the building. "Not done with you yet, son. Here, for you," he said and handed me a small box maybe 4 inches by 4 inches and I opened it. It was an Oklahoma State Rodeo Association Belt Buckle and my name engraved on the back that bore the words..."To Mike, No Bull!" I still have that damned buckle and never rode in a rodeo, but because the preacher gave it to me out of friendship, he taught me what being a champion is all about. It's not about winning all the time, but just making a good friend.