Jacob Have I Loved
Page 2
“You ain’t never seen one.”
“One what?”
“One radio announcer.”
“No.”
“Then how do you know how big their hands are?”
“I don’t. It’s a joke, Call.”
“I don’t see how it can be a joke if you don’t even know if they have big hands or little hands. Suppose they really have big hands. Then you ain’t even telling the truth. Then what happens to your joke?”
“It’s just a joke, Call. It doesn’t matter whether it’s true or not.”
“It matters to me. Why should a person think a lie’s funny?”
“Never mind, Call. It doesn’t matter.”
But he went on, mumbling like a little old preacher about the importance of truth and how you couldn’t trust radio announcers anymore.
You’d think I’d give up, but I didn’t.
“Call, did you hear about the lawyer, the dentist, and the p-sychiatrist who died and went to heaven?”
“Was it a airplane crash?”
“No, Call. It’s a joke.”
“Oh, a joke.”
“Yeah. You see, this lawyer and this dentist and this p-sychiatrist all die. And first the lawyer gets there. And Peter says—”
“Peter who?”
“Peter in the Bible. The Apostle Peter.”
“He’s dead.”
“I know he’s dead—”
“But you just said—”
“Just shut up and listen to the joke, Call. This lawyer comes to Peter, and he wants to get into heaven.”
“A minute ago you said he was already in heaven.”
“Well, he wasn’t. He was just at the pearly gates, okay? Anyhow, he says he wants to get into heaven, and Peter says he’s sorry but he’s looked at the book and the lawyer was wicked and evil and cheated people. So he’s got to go to hell.”
“Does your mother know you use words like that?”
“Call, even the preacher talks about hell. Anyhow, this lawyer has to give up and go to hell. Then this dentist comes up and he wants to get into heaven, and Peter looks at his book and sees that this guy pulled people’s teeth out just to get their money even when their teeth were perfectly good and he knew it.”
“He did what?”
“Call, it doesn’t matter.”
“It don’t matter that a dentist pulls out perfectly good teeth just to make money? That’s awful. He ought to go to jail.”