I had arrived on the Craig doorstep with notions of condescending to what I had assumed would be their squalor, of turning my eye from the cuts and bruises I’d see on the Pastor’s wife and children, of ignoring the cockroaches that infested their sub-standard housing. I was drunk from literary extravagances—of Faulkner’s Old Doc Hines, of Sherwood’s Jesse. I was excited by the spectacle of cardboard cutout stereotypes. I had come to internally scoff—and, yes, I had come to argue, but to argue without necessarily arguing, for I wouldn’t need to sully myself with argument—not when I’d truth on my side. Instead, I planned to use well-timed upraised eyebrows, incredulous grins, shrugs that suggested, now just what the fuck do I say to something that asinine.

I had joked with my roommate about this being an anthropological exercise, and, as I had left our apartment for the Craig’s, he had asked, And who’s going to study you studying them? Your anthropological peers of tomorrow or, like, the University mental health workers of today?

Just what the hell was I doing here?

"Aaron, pass Leon the garlic mashed potatoes. He seems to really like them." Aaron, their eldest child, a hearty but sullen eighteen year old, swallows a mouthful of salad; he chews for several minutes. Sans the decorative geese against blue-sky potholder, he sets the porcelain tub of potatoes before me. He pierces some more salad and then stares into space, his fork resting in salad bowl. Why his tension, I wonder? Has the evangelical scion erred? To amuse myself I pretend that he’s brooding because he had been caught wasting his precious seed, spewing his spunk into his reddened hand. My nasty idea does little for me.

Other than the potatoes, the green beans, and the sparse salad, a gargantuan honey-glazed ham dominates the Craig dinner table. I again question why I’m here. It isn’t amusing, isn’t drool, but increasingly gross. The handle of a plastic blue serving spoon hovers over my plate.

"Thanks. The potatoes really are, well, they’re quite good."

"I actually made them from scratch—something I rarely do, but since…I’ve got this extra time on my hands." I drop a large spoonful on my plate, not hungry but nauseous—disgusted with them, with myself. Their adopted six-year-old twin Vietnamese girls, Eve and Ann, scrutinize my every move, and this occasionally draws censure from either Helen or Pastor Craig. They certainly don’t seem to be aware that their childhood is a post imperial enterprise, a missionary’s dutiful burden to raise the poor children of heathen others in Christian proprietary. For some reason, I think of the Meso-American and African collectables on display in many of the homes of my friends.

In fact, the girls seem more at home than the others—everyone else seems reticent, whether it’s the son’s sullenness or my presence, that is the presence of a combative and a self-avowed recovering Christian, the dinner table is laden with tension, with the stale suffocation of commingling egos, mine, the wannabe neo-pagan, and that of them, the fundamentalists.

"Take more, Leon. Since you’re hardly excited about the meat, at least the potatoes will get something solid in you." Pastor Craig commands, his voice trapped between the bellicose and the kindly, not literally behind the pulpit but certainly never far away from it—and certainly lord of his own table. "We can’t send you off into the night with your stomach churning."

"Yes sir."

"Craig, call me Craig. Enough formality. Unless, of course," he breaks into a chortle, a chortle deep, robust, and phlegmy, "Unless, you’re ready to call me Pastor Craig."

"Well, Craig." I stress him name. "Uhm, how do I say this?"

"Just say it. No censorship at this table, just respectful decorum." He spits the word respectful.

"Is this how you all really act? I mean like this?"

"More or less. In light of your, uhm, sensibilities, the prayer was abridged—in the spirit of tolerance." He pronunciation of tolerance suggested that he believed the word heavily weighted with irony. "Otherwise, it’s a usual dinner for us. We eat and talk about our days. Pretty much like anyone else—that is pretty much like anyone else who still cares to dine as a family unit." Moments of silence, silent eating. Eve gathers the salad bowls and the Pastor carves ham, smiling and groaning with mock exertion. Aaron, Helen, and myself watch. Ann uses the moment to quickly stick out her tongue at Aaron. No one but I notices.

"Just a small slice for me, please."

"Not a vegetarian? Are you?" ask Pastor Craig.

"No, I don’t like to eat much meat—there’s just too much blood, killing, chemicals and such arbitrary and harsh, well, I guess rationalizations." I pause and then clarify, showing of what I’m convinced is the fruit of my superior intellect. "I mean rationalization not so much in the moral as in the philosophical or systematic sense—though it’s not without its sinister moral implications." The pastor narrows his eyebrows. He looks like he’s about to blast off, to fulminate fire-and-brimstone, harsh and arbitrary dogmas, like his salvos on the University of Iowa campus, or Iowa City’s pedestrian mall, where rural people affect worldly sophistication and he’s there to put an end to the charade.

"Well," Helen begins, heading off argument, "not eating much meat must save you a couple of bucks at the grocery story. Oh, the way they keep raising prices at the University, I shouldn’t be surprised that you’re forced to do without some things." More silence.

"Mom. Dad." says Aaron.

"What son?" asks Pastor Craig?

"Uhm, nothing."

"C’mon Aaron, don’t be shy just because we’ve a guest."

"Aaron. Aaron shy. Oh, please." says Eve.

"Right," adds Ann, "he’s just kinda quiet ‘cause he’s not allowed to raise his voice at the dinner table—you should see him when he comes to our schoolyard during our recess."

"We pretend that we don’t—"

"Girls. That’ll be enough," commands Pastor Craig. Aaron glares at them; the veins in his forehead throb. "Go on, son." says the Pastor.

"Well, I’ve been thinking about that school visitation next week and, well, I’ve been thinking and—"

"Aaron’s been accepted in Bob Jones University," beams Helen.

"With a full scholarship," adds Pastor Craig. "Doubtlessly the result of our demanding regimen of home-schooling."

"We go to public school," interrupts Ann, "’cause the world isn’t as temptatious for girls as for boys and it’s important for us to appreciate our good fortune, but once the big bully goes away I get his room."

"Nahah, I get his room!" yells Eve.

"Girls. Behave! You won’t be warned again." Helen admonishes. "Please excuse them, Leon, the twins are a handful." Though, I think to myself, they’re a damn sight more decorous than that red-faced balloon of a son you’ve groomed into God knows what foolishness.

The phone rings. Everyone is silent, "We usually don’t answer the phone during our dinner hour…but considering that, that situation." Pastor Craig pronounces situation as though the word revolts him. "Excuse me." Aaron begins to minutely rocking back and forth. The girls subtly mimic him. He stops, sighs; they stop, giggle, and eat their ham. Helen pretends to have not noticed.

"Now, Symanski," Pastor Craig’s voice drifts into the kitchen and over the sound of jaws grinding, of Aaron internally groaning, of Eve and Anna suppressing their laughter while staring at me or at their brother. "She’s a minor city official. Regardless of her wrongheaded politics and of her loyal left-wing following, she will not want the publicity. That is to say, like or not—thank the lord—she has no choice but to play ball in our court, according to our rules. She might win the actual trial, but I’ll win the PR contest—while this is Iowa City, is this isn’t LaLa land, it’s Iowa. Or put another way: what she’ll spend on legal fees will just decrease the amount of her philanthropy, if you’ll forgive the violence done to the term. While for my part, I’ll just recoup the legal bills in increased contributions. Who knows, I might be able to use this to break into the Colorado Springs scene. That’s where it’s at now, you know. Yeah. Yeah. O.K."

"Eve, clear the table. Ann, bring in the dessert." Helen says. "Would you like more coffee, Leon?"

"No. I’ll have some more water." I reach for the pitcher of ice water, pour some, and think, it’s their goddamned normalcy. It’s their successful veneer of bland normalcy that disgusts me. In fact, their semblance of normalcy nearly frightens me. They could dine at Applebee’s and they wouldn’t startle anyone. Pastor Craig wouldn’t scandalize the staff, wouldn’t harangue them with hellfire and brimstone. But isn’t this the same man who wielded a placard showing a terminated fetus at the University? And isn’t this the same man who told Jimmy, told Jimmy while wryly smirking, that if he didn’t repent and desist from his sinful lifestyle choice that he could expect nothing but reaping the wages of sin? Of death everlasting? And that, that for his (Jimmy’s) own good—because he loved the sinner while hating the sin—he assured him in no uncertain terms that he wouldn’t stop until the University’s curriculum was free of the poison that was ruining his life.

"O.k. I’ll settle out of court if it saves time and money. I won’t apologize—that clinic’s days are numbered. See you and Elaine and the kids at service tomorrow evening." Pastor Craig returns, sits down. "I’m in time for dessert. Why, Leon, what do you think? Be truthful, we’re not the monsters you took us for, are we?"

"No, your certainly not monsters? And this isn’t at all what I thought it be. It’s, it’s...well it’s just that you all seem so, so, despite your, forgive me for saying so, but despite your extremism, you see so normal, like a normal family."

"Well, notwithstanding the moral and cultural backsliding of our nation, which has been quite extreme, eternal truth still remains, one might say, quite normative." Pastor Craig chuckles. Ann sets a piece of pecan pie in front of him. "Oh, you’ll love this stuff. One of the ladies from church makes this stuff. It’s truly amazing."

"Oh, hon, Sarah sent a card with the pie. Let me read it before we eat it."

"I hope you’ll humor us, Leon," directs the Pastor, "Ann, give Leon a slice."

"No, no, go ahead. Thanks." I cut into the pie with the intent of eating before the reading, but I stop, disgusted by my naivety and awed with the sensation of a new kind of fear—the fear of somber tomorrows without knee-jerk flippancy. I’d need a new hobby.

"Pastor Craig, Mrs. Craig." Helen clears her throat. "Sorry about the sloppiness but I’m writing while eating soup during my lunch break and I wouldn’t dare sneak off and lounge about in the meat freezer, unlike some of these good-for-nothings out here, especially the Mexicans and the blacks, they’re so sneaky, working so hard when the foreman’s around and then doing God knows what the second they turn their head. I even caught some of them smoking weed. Anyway, you all taught me to not be bitter or angry but to pray for them that lead themselves astray. Besides that’s not why I write. Plus I wanna right this tonight ‘cause tonight is the one-year anniversary of when you two saved me, of when you all cast the demon meth outta my life. Thanks, God bless and, hopefully, if I don’t have to stay late for third shift on Sunday morning, cause I’m doing a double, cause I’m drug free and on the right track, going to Church and stuff, they trust me now for extra hours I even got my own locker, with its own lock and don’t have to turn in my knifes, mesh, and goggles at the end of shifts. Anyways, what I mean is that if I have time to wash the pig stuff offa me, this part of the kill floor is really messy, but the pay’s great, I’ll able to get to Sunday morning service. Love, Sarah." Helen folds the card, beams, and gushes, "Now, doesn’t that warm your heart?" Pastor Craig grins; the girls grimace and Aaron sulks, as though he were angry or jealous.

"But, uhm.... Now see here," Aaron addresses me, without looking at me; he glares just below his father’s eye level. "There’s more to the story than that. It was I who scared her straight with the facts about how if she didn’t repent that she could expect nothing other than the trials and sufferings of the tribulation, of the rule of the anti-Christ, of being left behind without any good people to help her. I, I mean..."Aaron blushes, deepening shades of crimson.

"It’s true. Aaron, the pride and joy of our entire family, made the first contact, with our, our, uhm, dearest Sarah." Aaron blushes more deeply; he suppresses a grin. The girls roll their eyes.

"Well, I must give credit, where it’s due. I don’t agree with most, perhaps all, of your, uhm, positions, but, if what she say is true, and I’ve no reason to doubt it, I must admit it sounds like you’ve done something quite good." Then, after defusing some tension, I add, "though, there is her racism."

"True. True. But the lord takes us as we are. Provided we’ve humbled ourselves enough to realize that we’re unworthy benefitaries of his grace." I’m about to reply, no, I’m about to attack, that is to wield my superior intellectual and cut to the bone and Pastor Craig, seeing this, changes the subject. He turns to Aaron, "Well, son, what was it that you were saying, about your Bob Jones visitation?"

"Well, like I said, I’ve really been thinking and I think I don’t want to go to Bob Jones..."

"What?" both Pastor Craig and Helen ask, the formerly angrily, the latter incredulously. My disgust and nausea abets; dissension at the dinner table—please, let them forget I’m here; I want to at least see them really go at it. I want to see the man fulminate, to abuse his family as he abuses passersby at the University. I want to see this revolting child prodigy offend filial expectations, to say that he, while surely loving god, thinks he wants cock, or that, well, he’d been reading between the Biblical lines, had figured it all out about the "aliens in one’s gates" and now must go to Four Corners area and wait for a UFO Jesus. I want to see him, the insufferable boy, slapped, beaten by his insufferable father. I hoped that the police would be summoned and that I would have to make a statement.

"Well, you know that, uhm, NYU and Columbia have, like offered me generous scholarships."

&#"Yes, son. But that was merely for leverage, for show. Son, this is ridiculous." The pastor narrows his eyes.

"Aaron, dear, those schools are in New York—" Helen cries.

"A fine city." I interrupt. I’m ignored.

"And we simply don’t want you in New York."

"It’s utterly unacceptable. For your own good, I forbid it." I’m beside myself with excitement, ready for open rebellion and the subsequent outrage.

"I mean, sure Bob Jones is the like, like the obvious, comfortable choice, but, if one day.... I mean shouldn’t I start out at, at, like a secular University?"

"Perhaps University of Iowa, but not Columbia or NYU. Besides, you can’t, you simply cannot throw away the opportunity at Bob Jones. Not just anybody gets in there, Mister." says Helen.

"Nor will you go the U. You will go to Bob Jones. Though, if you keep this nonsense up, you may get a taste of the secular world via the U.S. Marines."

"I want to be in New York," moans Aaron. The pastor’s jowls quaver.

"Why on earth would you want to subject yourself to New York, son?" asks Helen.

"Yes, why indeed?" I ask, my innate proclivity for sarcasm aroused. Again I’m ignored.

"Because," Aaron mutters, trapped between the tears of anger and of wounded pride, "like, if I’m, like, to go out into the world one day.... Damn it!" he pounds the table with his fist, and yells "I’m not just going to hang out in the sticks and hand out pamphlets in some silly pedestrian mall or some lame Big Ten Campus. I’m going places." He leaves the table and slams a door.

Silence reigns. I excuse myself and leave. My stomach churns, nauseous.