t was February, and with nothing to do but wait for the thaw, they were gathered in the back of the New Zion Gen'l Mdse where it was warm and there were plenty of places to sit. I was there, too, although I didn't have an excuse. I was playing hooky for an hour or so from my law practice. Conversation, what little there had been of it, had finally sputtered out. I was thinking about facing up to some paperwork at the office when Joe Shoaty -- his real name was Shulte, but we had long since naturalized it -- who had been sitting for some time rared back staring at the ceiling, rocked forward, bringing his front chair legs down with a thump and said, "Daddy was a Dunkard."
Everybody laughed because old man Shoaty when he was alive had been known to tie one on now and then.
"Not drunkard, dammit, Dunkard ," Joe said. "It was a denomination, like Baptists or Methodists, so called because of the way they baptized. Made you face downstream, then dunked you face downards three times, wunst for the Father, wunst for the Son and wunst for the Holy Ghost."
"Baptists do the same thing," Amos Blackburn said, unwilling to let anybody get ahead, "except they do it different. They just dunk you wunst, backards, and they don't care which way you're facing. Mounts to the same thing."
"It's got to be running water, though, or else it won't warsh your sins away. "Ledbetter said. His first name was Cecil, but nobody ever used it.
"Naw it don't," Amos said. "It's a Baptist church in Paducah got a concrete tank back of the pulpit where they do it."
"How do they get water in it?"
"It's got a spigot."
"Like I said," Ledbetter said, "running water."
"Methodists just sprankle," Billy Blackburn said. Billy was nephew to Amos.
"I'll bet after a while that tank gets mighty full of sin," Ledbetter said.
"Naw, it's got a stopper they can take out and dreen it."
"Daddy was satisfied it was the onliest way to do it if you wanted it to count," Joe said.
"What about the Methodists? They just sprankle," Billy said.
"It's all kinds of Baptists," Amos said. "I'll bet them Dunkards was just a branch of the Baptists. Must a-been if they was a-baptizing."
"Methodists don't baptize. They sprankle," Billy said.
"Up yonder in Eastern Kentucky it's people call theirselves Primitive Baptists," Amos said. "They hold onto rattlesnakes and holler for Jesus. It takes all kinds."
"Old man Renfro, Rudy's daddy, you remember," Ledbetter said,"told how he was raised a Baptist but got to looking around and noticed how all the rich people was 'Piscopalians, so he decided he'd be a 'Piscopalian and be somebody, but when he went down to join they didn't have no vacancies. Told him they'd let him know when one opened up. Never heard back. Died piss pore, still a Baptist."
"It's a woman not far from where we are right now, I could call her name if I was a mind to, who prays for everything," Amos said. "She wants a new dress or something for the house, she prays for it. Right now she's praying for a color TV."
"I bet she's a Methodist," Billy said.
"Naw she ain't, she's a Camelite."
"What some people call Holy Rollers," Ledbetter said.
"Naw, you thinking about the Pentacosters."
"My sister's last husband claimed he could stop a nose bleed by coating a passage of Scripture," Ledbetter said.
"Wonder what it was," Joe said.
"He never said."
"Folks don't read the Bible no more," Joe said, "and if they do they don't read it right."
"Old John Bumpus use to be able to coat the whole Book of Job by heart," Amos said.
"Whatever happened to BW, old John's nephew, wasn't it? He was going to make a preacher, but after old John died, he just up and left," Ledbetter said.
"They found him dead somewheres one time, if I remember right," Joe said.
"Naw," Amos said, "you must be thinking about somebody else. BW went out West and got in trouble selling Bibles to the Indians or something."
"And didn't a brick fall off a building and hit him in the head and give him the neuralgia, which later went into something like fallen arches and landed him in the hospital? Ain't he the one?"
"I swear, Billy, sometimes you can say the dumbest things. Neuralgia ain't got nothing to do with fallen arches," Amos said.
"Now don't be too hard on the boy," Ledbetter said, poking Billy in the ribs with his elbow. "You got to remember, he ain't near as smart as he looks."
"It wasn't selling Bibles to Indians that got BW in trouble," I said. "It was selling university degrees to rocket scientists."
"Now, what would a rocket scientist want a university degree for?" Ledbetter asked. "You'd think they had enough already."
"Not if you're German and one of Von Braun's boys, and that's the only kind of rocket scientist we had back then. BW had him a little Bible college going in a storefront out in Modesto, California, and he just changed the name to Bumpus Astrotechnical University and began issuing doctorates to any and everybody for a price. The Germans snapped them up."
"Wasn't that agin the law?" Amos asked.
"Everybody thought so. They came in to shut him down and lock him up and then come to find out there wasn't any law against it, at least not in California. To stop him they finally had to pass one. Immortalized BW by calling it the Bumpus Law. But that took awhile. In the meantime, BW cleaned up."
"BW went about it right," Joe said. "To make money or anything else, it pays to get yourself on the Lord's side."
"What selling doctorates got to do with the Lord?" Ledbetter asked.
"Well, it was a Bible school first, wasn't it?"
"Why'd them rocket scientists want doctorates for, anyway? It didn't make them any smarter, did it?" Billy asked.
"Well, when they had to go to Washington to get more money for their space project, they'd have to face a panel of bureaucrats who all had doctorates and weren't too inclined to hand out money to anybody who didn't. And those smart bureaucrats never bothered to find out just where in Modesto the Bumpus Astrotechnical University was located and shelled out. You might say BW was instrumental in getting us to the moon."
"Wasn't that something!" Ledbetter said. "Walking on the moon! Who'd ever have believed it?"
"Yeah," Amos said, "they use to think the moon was made out of cheese and the world was flat and dogs shit gold, stuff like that. And all them things have been disproved. But for two thousand odd years, God ain't never been disproved. Ever stop and think why?"
"Dogs don't shit gold," Ledbetter said.
"I never said they did."
"Well, if they don't, didn't nobody have to disprove it, did they?"
"Want to hear something funny?" Billy said. "Uncle Amos, here, won't set down to the table if it's got onions on it. Says they tear up his bowels."
"I'll tell you why," Amos said, thrusting forward and glaring around. "Because you can't disprove God, that's why. He won't let hisself be disproved."
"But ain't they good," Billy said, "cut up with cucumbers to eat with beans?"
Nobody answered.
After a bit, Joe Shoaty rared back in his chair again and fixed his gaze on the ceiling. "Don't mount to the same thing, neither. Any fool ought to know three dunkings is better'n one," he said.
