A dim-lit bar with greasy burgers and three choices of beer—two are Budweiser variations. A jukebox is playing George Jones.
Heaven, I am convinced, is a place with a jukebox.
It’s quiet tonight. The folks here are mostly out-of-towners. Take me, for instance, I’m an out-of-towner.
The woman sitting beside me is from Atlanta. She lost her husband a few years ago to a work accident. She starts talking about Heaven.
This is not typical barroom conversation. She’s had a little too much to drink. The server has to call her a cab.
She asks if I believe in an afterlife. Before I can answer, the bartender answers:
“Honey, nobody wants to hear about Heaven,” the bartender says. “Why don’t you go wait outside for your cab.”
But it’s too late. We are talking about the afterlife in a saloon. The conversational train cannot be stopped.
The man beside me is a mechanic for factory equipment. He repairs the things that make things.
“Yeah, I believe in it,” he says. “I think going on to Glory
is different for everyone.”
Glory.
A waitress speaks. She’s late-forties. I understand she has a bachelor’s in literature. The money in food service is better.
“Heaven’s real,” she says. “I just know it. I’ve seen it. When I was a little girl, I had an experience, I almost died. I saw things.
“Heaven’s all around us, all the time. Our dead loved ones are in the room with us right now. We just can’t see’em.”
Hi, Daddy.
She lost her mother to lung cancer. Her mother was sixty-one.
Everyone has lost somebody.
The busboy-slash-dishwasher enters the room. He’s early twenties. His brother joined the Marines a few years ago. His father abandoned him when he was a teenager. He and his brother practically raised each other.
“I WANT Heaven to be real,” he says.…