There is no breaking the immutable laws of the universe; sculpted into reality by the mind of God like the faces carved into Mount Rushmore,” he said to me, pounding the wooden table so that the coffee in his cup spilt on it. The picture above the kitchen door was cryin and it looked like it was weepin fer me at this moment, like the whole thing was just fer me. I had intimations of it when he looked me straight in my eyes and the Jesus swell swept through the meeting and women put their hands up; “Thank you, Jesus.” Dirty red sweat would run down their temples in the New Mexico heat and they would dab them with their handkerchiefs, maybe their servile initials embroidered on them. The tent breathed with them and seemed to flap by their prayers and he had them all jumping and hollerin so that your heart would race and they’d all just be one motion, or like the waves of the ocean.
“It is written in Hebrews ‘Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. For by it the elders obtained a good report.’ Do you trust in Him with all your heart? Do you know who was there when ye came from your mother’s loins? He was. And He’s here now, yes He is.”
He bunched his hands together in a ball and shook them before his face.
“The rock, the foundation that all this was built on, was my faith alone. He took from Job everything, but he repaid it double.”
I couldn’t bear to look at him at those times. The sick little green halo around his pinprick pupils seemed to swallow up the blue that was left in them. When he drank whiskey the green would be pushed away by his twinkling pupils and mellow blue was his mood. Those times were more frequent during these time. Itinerancy doesn’t work as well these days as it did before and it didn’t work as well in those days as the days before them. But these people wanted God, and God was a lot on daddy’s mind. If an alcoholic can get wet brain, my daddy had its pious brother. Didn’t matter who he was talking to, it was always God. He’d pound down on his dogeared King James: “It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” I never could tell if he loved God or was scared of Him. Regardless, God was like a stink in the core of his person.

Pt2 fin thus far

Katie!” he’d holler. “Katie! The damn thing jist shit again all over the damn carpet and I got a meetin’ in half an hour. Katie! Come’n clean your damn dog’s shit from the carpet! Katie!”
He kicked Fresco once. Right in front of me. Well I was never madder, but I wasn’t mad enough to do nothing other than crying and hugging Fresco. The mean man shouldn’t a done that to you, Fresco. The mean man damn well shouldn’t a done that to you. And I’d hug him and kiss his ears and he’s know that he was loved.
Once the law came and visit daddy, somethin’ bout some escaped prisoners seen roaming on horses near the tent. Daddy hated the law and said to them: “Even if I seen your damn niggers I ain’t gonna tell you bout it. Godless flatfoots. You take your badges and shove ‘em right up the place you can’t get your wives to eat and shit ‘em out the next day after mornin’ coffee.” Then he spit on the ground and the lawmen let him be ‘cause they wasn’t partial on getting on God’s bad side. I did see one of them prisoners the next day, up past the hill eastward, and he just looked at me and smiled like he knew daddy had saved his hide and when he tipped his hat I curtsied as a joke like and he threw his head back laughin’ and when he trotted away past the hill I never seen or heard from him again, but sometimes I wish I had just known his name so I could write poems about him.
Daddy was interested in purchasing some land then and saw an advertisement offering eighty acres near Deming for three-hundred and twenty dollars. That old Native land was going cheap and the interstate made so it looked like it could be a real place to “set down some roots and save some souls” as daddy said. He never told me as to why he got sick of the tent, just that it was time to “set down roots”.
“Lumber. Blue. None of that adobe crap. Cen ye see it now, Katie? God’s puttin’ it into my mind. The sun’ll shine coloured through the stainglass while the wrens sing from the rafters.”
Daddy’s church was just as beautiful as he made out. Outside was a sign readin’: “JESUS DIED FOR YOUR SINS. THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH. REPENT NOW.” Soon enough he built himself a flock with all the trappings of civilisation. Out of the desert the men wore dark suits and polished shoes and the women dressed themselves in blouses and gloves and had feminine hats like I wasn’t used to seein’. They still held their hands up: “Praise Jesus!”. The only difference was they weren’t dirty, at least not the kind of dirty a bath can resolve. These were votin’ people. Government jobs people. Oil people get mad. Probably the sun gets to their brains.
I first seen Billy Milligan not too long after daddy got his church built.

>>24506511 (OP)
When I speak, I try not to use semicolons. I find them difficult to pronounce.
(The author doesn't know how to use them either.)

>>24506511 (OP)