Ten-Year-Old Boy Ponders Heaven and Hell
When we were kids, understanding the afterlife was confusing and frightening. A Southern writer gets inside the head of a boy who’s scared plumb to death.
Funnily
The sooner I die the sooner I'll go
to Heaven, that is if I've been good and
I sure as Hell have tried though I've sinned heaps
to be just ten years old but I can't kill
myself, Miss Hooker warns, to get there, she's
my Sunday School teacher, a damned good one,
too, she's sure to go to Heaven when she
dies, if she ever does, I guess she must,
it's there in the Bible somewhere, no one
lives forever except God Himself and
Jesus and I guess the Holy Ghost and
funnily enough those folks who are dead
already, their souls I mean, their bodies
died back on earth and somebody buried
them and if you dig them up again like
they do at the movie matinees they're
pretty much all gone except for grinning
skulls. So I've got to go naturally
or accidentally, whatever is
the will of God but it can't be God's will
that I take my life myself, suicide's
illegal in God's eyes but then again
there's Jesus, God come down to earth as man
and always preparing to sacrifice
Himself and if that's not suicide then
it's being born again. I tried that once.
Sometimes When We Want Something We Don’t Know Why
I guess when I die I'll go to Heaven
and meet Jesus, at least if I'm good, or
maybe I get to meet Him anyhow,
long enough for God to judge my soul and
decide if I can stay up there, Heaven
that is, or have to go to Hell, if Hell
it is then I guess I'll remember for
a while, anyway, what Jesus was like
and maybe that will take the edge off all
my suffering there for Eternity.
Miss Hooker's my Sunday School teacher and
she says that it pays to be good because
you never know when it's God's will to take
you away, you could die at any time
so you'd better be ready, she says, and
get saved and that's the only way to get
right and not have to be afraid of where
your immortal soul will spend Forever.
I'm only ten years old to Miss Hooker's
25 but sometimes during class I
want to sin with her as the reason but
I don't know what I mean, exactly, just
that my body's seconding my mind so
I guess this is what it means to be grown
up and I'm not sure I like it, it hurts,
I'm not certain where if not everywhere,
maybe like starving but I don't want food.
After class today I asked Miss Hooker
why sometimes when we want something we don't
know why. She held me by the shoulders and
looked me in the eyes and told me to
ask my parents, even if they don't know
too. So I guess that I'm in death for life.
I'll go to Hell when I die and I'm good
with that, whatever I've earned I deserve
or is that the other way around and
could it be true coming and going but
anyway that's the story at Sunday
School, at our church at least, if you've been bad
and Jesus wasn't your Lord and Savior
and so on then when you die you're dead for
good, eternal life in Hell only and
you'll wish that you were dead again down there
but the best life-to-come comes with Heaven
is what they swear but even then you go
to Hell instead no matter if you've been
as good as good can be — if you don't be
-lieve that Jesus is the Son of God you're
doomed. Being dead's not for everybody.
At Sunday School they say that if I'm good
I get to go to Heaven when I die
and live forever, forget that I'll be
dead, that's not the point, not the usual
one, religion's different from what's real is
why it's religion, not reality,
which sort of makes sense though it goes around
in a circle but anyway circles
are perfect and so are God and Jesus
and the Holy Ghost, whoever He is,
I go to Sunday School religiously,
there's a lot of the same old thing being
said but even if it doesn't make much
sense it's good to hear, even the Hell-stuff.
That's where I get to go if I've been bad.
Gale Acuff has had hundreds of poems published in many countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught tertiary English courses in the United States, the People's Republic of China, and Palestine.