Rockets Versus Gravity Read Free Page A

said. “Defacing the property of others is a sin.”
    Well, technically, it was a sin to covet the property of others, not to deface it. Clementine was about to correct her mother on this point but then decided against it. She wasn’t in the mood to offer the other cheek.
    â€œBesides,” her mother added, “they pay us a few dollars a month for the land that billboard’s on, and Lord knows, we need all the help we can get.”
    From his seat at the kitchen table, Clementine’s father rasped, “I’m doin’ the best I can, woman.”
    â€œLord knows,” her mother said, to nobody in particular. “Lord knows.”
    Her father wasn’t sure about what to do next. Should he call the police? The municipality? The billboard company? So he went to seek the counsel of Pastor Okonjo.
    After praying, consulting the scriptures, and meditating on the issue, the pastor decided that it would be best to have the commercial advertising removed from the billboard altogether and to have church-approved messages pasted up there instead.
    The pastor reasoned that, because the billboard was strategically located along the concession road that led to the church, many lost and wayward souls might be saved by the billboard’s divine placement; and, although Clementine’s father would lose his small cut of the advertising revenue, he would surely be compensated a hundredfold in Heaven for helping to communicate the Word of the Lord to His followers.
    So, in letters four feet tall, the next message on the billboard read simply:
JESUS is COMING!
    Pastor Okonjo was pleased. That would put a few extra bodies in the pews and a few extra dollars on the collection plate.
    Within two nights, though, the message had become:
JESUS is COMING!
    Look Busy!
    Clementine’s father went to see Pastor Okonjo right away. The pastor, after once again praying, consulting the scriptures, and meditating on the issue, decreed that Clementine’s father would climb the billboard with a can of white spray paint and obliterate the offending words. The vandal would see that his blasphemy was being actively resisted, and the coward would move on to other victims with less pure resolve.
    Clementine’s father did as he was instructed. He eradicated the offensive black words, the white paint jetting from the can with hissing, evangelical fury.
    Yet, within another two nights, the message became:
JESUS is COMING!
    Hide the booze!
    Clementine’s father did not go to the pastor this time. This was personal now.
    He climbed the frame again, and, with dignity and fervour, he once again sprayed good clean white over the offensive back letters.
    Then, for the next week, Clementine’s father sat on the front porch at night with his twelve-gauge shotgun laid across his lap. This was his God-given property, and he would protect it from evil. He rocked back and forth, levelling his steely gaze at the billboard across the field, waiting to see if the vandal would have the audacity to reappear. He would not forgive those who trespassed against him.
    By the evening of the seventh day, her father decided that the danger had passed, and he eventually came inside to watch reruns of 7th Heaven on TV.
    Clementine stayed up late that night, gazing through her small window, hoping to catch a glimpse of the elusive spray-paint hoodlum. He never appeared, though, and eventually she lay back on her bed and, surrounded by dancing purple phalluses and gyrating pink vulvas, stirred her whirlpool until her desires were sucked under and drowned once again.
    On the morning of the eighth day, the message on the billboard read:
JESUS is COMING!
    Oh god, oh god, oh god!
    * * *
    N ow it is Sunday, and today at church, the parishioners are particularly incensed that the vandal didn’t spell “God” with a capital G , and most are far too flustered to even mention the … the … connotation … in the