Jesus Boy Read online

  Critical Praise for All or Nothing by Preston L. Allen

  “As with Frederick and Steven Barthelme’s disarming gambling memoir, Double Down, the chief virtue of All or Nothing is its facility in enlightening nonbelievers, showing how this addiction follows recognizable patterns of rush and crash, but with a twist—the buzz is in the process, not the result … As a cartographer of autodegradation, Allen takes his place on a continuum that begins, perhaps, with Dostoyevsky’s Gambler, courses through Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, William S. Burroughs’s Junky, the collected works of Charles Bukowski and Hubert Selby Jr., and persists in countless novels and (occasionally fabricated) memoirs of our puritanical, therapized present. Like Dostoyevsky, Allen colorfully evokes the gambling milieu—the chained (mis)fortunes of the players, their vanities and grotesqueries, their quasi-philosophical ruminations on chance. Like Burroughs, he is a dispassionate chronicler of the addict’s daily ritual, neither glorifying nor vilifying the matter at hand.”

  —New York Times Book Review

  “Dark and insightful … The well-written novel takes the reader on a chaotic ride as … Allen reveals how addiction annihilates its victims and shows that winning isn’t always so different from losing.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A gambler’s hands and heart perpetually tremble in this raw story of addiction. ‘We gamble to gamble. We play to play. We don’t play to win.’ Right there, P, desperado narrator of this crash-’n’-burn novella, sums up the madness … Allen’s brilliant at conveying the hothouse atmosphere of hell-bent gaming. Fun time in the Inferno.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Allen’s new novel poignantly depicts the life of P, a likable guy who drives a school bus and lives with his wife and four sons in a pleasant house; a guy with brains but no discipline … Told without preaching or moralizing, the facts of P’s life express volumes on the destructive power of gambling. This is strongly recommended and deserves a wide audience; an excellent choice for book discussion groups.”

  —Library Journal

  “All or Nothing is funny, relentless, haunting, and highly readable. P’s inner dialogues illuminate the grubby tragedy of addiction, and his actions speak for the train wreck that is gambling.”

  —ForeWord Magazine

  “By turns harrowing, illuminating, and endearing, Preston L. Allen’s All or Nothing is more than a gut punch, it’s a damn good book.”

  —Maggie Estep, author of Alice Fantastic

  “All or Nothing is a breathless tour through the mind of P, a gambling junkie who divines lucky numbers everywhere, even in the mumblings of his severely asthmatic son as he comes out of anaphylactic shock. Winning the bet is the only thing. And money has little value except as a means to place the next one. Preston L. Allen’s writing is as tight as a high wire. Out of the hyper-kitsch world of gamblers and the casinos they inhabit, Allen creates a novel that is frightening and sad and thrilling.”

  —Gonzalo Barr, author of The Last Flight of Jose Luis Balboa

  “Allen has done for gambling what William S. Burroughs did for narcotic addiction. He’s gotten into the heart of the darkness and shown us what it feels like to be trapped, to be haunted, to live without choice. Allen is relentless and unsparing in his depiction of the life of a gambling addict, from the magical thinking to the visceral thrill of risking it all. And now the world will know what we in Miami have known for a long time: he is such a good a writer it’s scary.”

  —John Dufresne, author of Johnny Too Bad

  “All or Nothing is a smart, riveting novel of obsession; an in-depth character study rendered in tight, sparkling prose. This is a moving story of love and addiction that will hook the reader from the first word.”

  —Ivonne Lamazares, author of The Sugar Island

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to real events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published by Akashic Books

  ©2010 Preston L. Allen

  ePUB ISBN-13: 978-1-936-07058-9

  ISBN-13: 978-1-936070-04-6

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2009938473

  All rights reserved

  Akashic Books

  PO Box 1456

  New York, NY 10009

  [email protected]

  www.akashicbooks.com

  To Dawn, thanks for choosing love

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgments

  I. TESTAMENT OF INNOCENCE

  Thirty Fingers

  My Father’s Business

  His All-Seeing Eye

  I Need Thee Every Hour

  II. TESTAMENT OF INNOCENCE LOST

  Epistles I

  The Little Preacher

  The Boy from Opa-Locka

  Epistles II

  Our Father

  The Brothers

  III. TESTAMENT OF APOSTASY

  Apostate

  IV. TESTAMENT OF THE APOCRYPHA

  For the Glory of the Lord

  My Father

  Mamie Girl

  Covenant of the Lord

  Don’t Go Spilling My Fruit

  My Sister

  V. TESTAMENT OF EXILE

  The Freshman

  The Murky Jordan

  A Packet of Old Letters Bound by Red Ribbon

  In Their Tryst Room

  VI. TESTAMENT OF SONG

  Jackleg

  Mother of the Church

  The Holy Ghost Power in Me

  Blood in the Pews

  VII. TESTAMENT OF A JOYFUL NOISE

  Senior Year

  I Must Tell Jesus

  Sister Morrisohn and Sister Elwyn Parker

  Like Unto Ishmael, Like Unto Moses

  I Am One of the Faithful

  VIII. TESTAMENT OF FIRE AND LAMENTATIONS

  The Leap

  This Do in Remembrance of Me

  I’ll Meet You in the Morning

  The Years of Borning and Begats: The Faithful

  The Years of Borning and Begats: Founders of the Faith

  Favorite Hymns & Performances

  The Years of Elwyn Parker and Sister Morrisohn

  The Lord of Travel

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to my brothers: Cameron Allen, Edgar Allen, Sherwin Allen; and to my brothers-from-a-different-mother: Jason Murray, Kevin Eady, Gene Durnell, Geoffrey Philp, Leejay Kline; and to the greatest teachers a young writer could ever hope to have: Les Standiford, Lynne Barrett, John Dufresne, Meri-Jane Rochelson, and James Hall—thanks for being there at the birth of this baby.

  I give my thanks as well to those who gave generously of their time to read the parts or the whole, or who listened attentively while I read it to them: Lou Skellings, Ken Boos, Andrea Selch, Janell Walden Agyeman, Joseph McNair, Josett Peat, Elena Perez, Ivonne Lamazares, Robin Steinmetz, Joseph Steinmetz, Lisa Shaw, Tiina Lombard, Ellen Milmed, Edward Glenn (your comments on the “Pinkeye” section were great—sorry that passage didn’t make the final cut, LOL), Ariel Gonzalez, Sally Naylor, Jesse Milner, Ellen Wehle, Elizabeth Cox, Gonzalo Barr, David Beatty, Marlene Naylor, Anthony Thomas. Your patience and your wise words are much appreciated. I listened … most of the time.

  To Johnny Temple, words cannot express my gratitude, but all I have are words. Thanks, Johnny. You make writing books fun again.

  I. TESTAMENT OF INNOCENCE

  Thirty Fingers

  I never really wanted to play the piano, but it seemed that even before I touched my first key I could.

  When the old kindergarten teacher left to go have her baby, the new teacher made us sing: “Row, row, r
ow your boat, gently down the stream …”

  “Elwyn,” said the new teacher whose long name I could never remember, “why aren’t you singing with us? Don’t you know the words?”

  Yes, I knew the words—just like I knew the words to “Mary Had a Little Lamb” and “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”—I had memorized them as soon as the old teacher, Mrs. Jones, had sung them to us the first time. But I could not sing the words. Mrs. Jones knew why I could not sing the words but not this new teacher.

  “Elwyn, why won’t you sing with us?”

  I could not lie, but neither was I strong enough in the Lord to tell the teacher with the long name that singing secular music was a sin. So I evaded. I pointed to the piano and said, “Mrs. Jones plays the piano when we sing.”

  “But I can’t play the piano,” said the new teacher. “Won’t you sing without the piano?”

  I had assumed all adults could do a simple thing like play the piano, so this amazed me. “I’ll show you how to play it,” I said, crossing the room with jubilant feet.

  “Can you play the piano, Elwyn?”

  “Yes,” I said. Though I had never touched a piano key before in my life, I had observed Mrs. Jones at school and the ministers of music at church and had developed a theory about playing I was anxious to test: high notes go up and low notes go down.

  After a few tries, I was playing the melody with one finger. “See? Like this,” I said. My theory was correct.

  The other kids squealed with excitement. “Let me play, let me play,” each cried.

  What’s the big deal? I wondered. High notes go up, low notes down. It only made sense.

  But the new teacher had to give each one a turn and I directed them: “Up, up, now down, down. No. Up, up more.”

  When it came to be my turn again, I played “Mary Had a Little Lamb.” The new teacher got the others to sing the tune as I played.

  I had but a child’s understanding of God’s Grace. I reasoned that if I sang secular words, I’d go to hell, but I had no qualms about playing the music while others sang.

  I was young.

  That day should have been the last time I played the piano because in truth my fascination with the instrument did not extend further than my theory of high and low tones, which I had sufficiently proven. No, I did not seek to be a piano player. I assumed, most innocently, that I already was one. Should I ever be called upon to play a tune, I would simply “pick it out” one note at a time. This was not to say, however, that I was not interested in music.

  On the contrary, music was extremely important.

  Demons, I was certain, frolicked in my room after the lights were turned off. At night, I watched, stricken with fear, as the headlights of passing automobiles cast animated shadows on the walls of my room. Only God, who I believed loved my singing voice, could protect me from the wickedness lurking in the dark. Thus, I sang all of God’s favorite tunes—hummed when I didn’t know the words—in order to earn His protection. When I ran out of hymns to sing, I made up my own.

  I am Your child, God. I am Your child—

  It is real, real dark, but I am Your child.

  God, I believed, was partial to high-pitched, mournful tunes with simple, direct messages. God was a brooder.

  What did I know about His Grace?

  What did I know about anything?

  Ambition. Envy. Lust. Which was my sin?

  I did not want my neighbor’s wife. I did not want his servant. I did not want his ass. There was, however, a girl. Peachie. Brother and Sister Gregory’s eldest daughter.

  I had known her all of my life, but when she walked to the front of the church that Easter Sunday, sat down at the piano, and played “Were You There When They Crucified My Lord?”—my third-grade heart began to know envy and desire.

  Peachie Gregory did not pick out tunes on the piano. No, she played with all of her fingers—those on her left hand too. Such virtuosity for a girl no older than I. And the applause!

  That was what I wanted. I wanted to go before the congregation and lead them in song, but all I could do was play with one finger. I had to learn to play like Peachie.

  An earnest desire to serve the church as a minister of music, then, did not compel me to press my parents—a maid and a school bus driver—for piano lessons, though that is what I claimed. When they said they could not afford piano lessons, much less a piano, I told them a necessary fiction.

  “Angels flew down from heaven playing harps. They pointed to this great big giant piano. They wanted me to join them. I trembled because I knew I couldn’t play the piano.” I opened my eyes as wide as possible so as to seem more scared and innocent. “I have never taken any lessons.”

  “Were you asleep?” my father asked, one large hand clutching my shoulder, the other pushing his blue cap further up on his head, exposing the bald spot. “Was it a dream?”

  Before I could answer, my mother jumped in: “He already told you he was wide awake. It was a vision. God is speaking to the child.”

  “You know how kids are,” said my father, from out of whose pocket the money would come. He chuckled. “Elwyn’s been wanting to play piano so bad, he begins to hear God and see visions. It could be a trick of the devil.”

  My mother shook a finger at him. “Elwyn should have been taking piano lessons a long time ago. He is special. God speaks to animals and children. Elwyn doesn’t lie.”

  My father peered down at me with a look that said, Tell the truth boy, but I kept my eyes wide and innocent, still struck by the wondrous and glorious vision I had seen. My father said to my mother, “But we can’t be so literal with everything. If it’s a dream, maybe we need to interpret it.”

  “Interpret nothing!” shot back Isadore the maid, who pursued Roscoe the school bus driver to the far side of the room; he fell into his overstuffed recliner where it was customary for him to accept defeat. “You call yourself a Christian,” she shouted, raising holy hands, “but you’d rather spend money at the track than on your own boy! Some Christian you are.”

  My father hung his head in shame. He was beaten.

  He did, however, achieve a small measure of revenge. Instead of giving up his day at the track, he told my grandmother, that great old-time saint, about my “visions,” and my grandmother, weeping and raising holy hands, told Pastor, and Pastor wrote my name on the prayer sheet.

  How I cringed each week as Pastor read to the congregation, “And pray that God send Brother Elwyn a piano to practice on.”

  I believed that God would send one indeed—plummeting from heaven like a meteor to crash through the roof of the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters and land right on my head.

  I had lied and liars shall have their part in the lake of fire.

  I prayed, “Heavenly Father, I lied to them, but I am just a child. Cast me not into the pit where the worm dieth not.”

  Thank God for Brother Morrisohn and his ultrawhite false teeth. If he hadn’t stood up and bought that piano for me, I would have surely died just like Ananias and Sapphira—struck down before the doors of the church for telling lies.

  Brother Morrisohn was a great saint, a retired attorney who gave copiously of his time and energy—as well as his money—to the Church of Our Blessed Redeemer Who Walked Upon the Waters. It was his money that erected the five great walls of the church, his money through the Grace of God that brought us warmth in the winter and coolness in the hot Miami summer. It was his money that paid Pastor’s salary in the ’60s when the Holy Rollers built a church practically on our back lot and lured the weaker members of the flock away. After a fire destroyed the Rollers’ chapel, it was Brother Morrisohn’s money that purchased the property back from the bank, putting the Rollers out of business for good.

  “I can’t sit by and watch God’s work go undone,” he always said.

  On the day they delivered the secondhand upright piano, he told me, “You’re going to be a great man of God, Elwyn,” and he extended his for
efingers like pistols and rattled a few keys.

  He was already in his seventies by then, but lean and healthy and proud of his looks. His full head of gray hair, which he parted stylishly down the middle, was a contrast to his dark, handsome complexion. He always wore a jacket and tie and carried a gold-tipped cane. Grinning, he showed his much-too-white false teeth. “I love music, but I never learned to play. Maybe someday you’ll teach me.”

  “I will,” I said. I had just turned eight.

  “I wish you would teach him, Elwyn,” said Sister Morrisohn, the wife who was about half Brother Morrisohn’s age. From a distance she could be mistaken for a white woman with her fair skin and her long black hair cascading down her back. She was the prettiest woman at church, everyone always said, though she had her ways, whatever that meant. She removed her shawl and draped it lovingly over his shoulders. “We have that big piano at home no one ever plays.”

  “I’m not cold,” Brother Morrisohn protested, frowning, but he did not remove the lacy shawl. He rattled the keys again.

  “I’ll teach you piano, Brother Morrisohn,” I said.

  He reached down and patted my head. “Thank you, Elwyn.”

  I was so happy. I hadn’t had my first lesson yet, but I sat down on the wobbly stool and made some kind of music on that piano.

  A little after midnight, my father emerged from the bedroom and drove me to bed.

  “Goodnight, goodnight, goodnight,” he sang, accentuating each beat with a playful open-palm slap to my rump. It was a victory for him too. Just that weekend he had won $300 at the track. It didn’t seem to bother him that my mother had demanded half the money and set it aside for my piano lessons.

  Every night I offered a prayer of thanksgiving, certain God had forgiven me.

  Peachie Gregory was another thing entirely.

  Peachie Gregory—with those spidery limbs and those bushy brows that met in the center of her forehead and that pouting mouth full of silver braces—I didn’t completely understand it when I first saw her play the piano, but I wanted her almost as much as I envied her talent.