Read Online We Are Still Married by Garrison Keillor - Free Book Online Page B

fifty years ago—that’s a tragedy. The stories about genocide are so old and worn out and threadbare and the people who repeat them are—I’m very sorry to have to say this—they’re to be pitied. I feel sorry for them. Life is a garden, a summer day, a fragile butterfly, the smile on the face of a child. Why would I kill millions of people when I myself love life so much?” Some dogfood is then sold, followed by instant coffee, and then we’re back for the weather. Coming up in the next half hour, a report on St. Luke: did he steal some parts of his gospel from other sources without attribution?
    People can forgive anybody for just about anything but they don’t respect nobody, and so a miserable sinner with one redeeming virtue is equal to a righteous person with a secret fault. Maybe better. The prodigal son’s brother learned that lesson one day about 6:00 P.M. in St. Luke’s gospel when he stumbled through the back door bone-tired from another ten-hour day hoeing corn and heard happy voices and found a crowd of family friends on the patio, the fatted calf on the spit, the band warming up, the beer on ice, and the honored guest, Donnie, dressed in rags and smelling of pig shit, and his dad hugging him . His dad had never hugged him, hardly even squeezed his hand, his dad wasn’t a hugger, but he was all wrapped around the prodigal. The brother said, “What’s happening? Oh, hi, Don. Nice to see ya, fella. What’s going on, Dad?” Then he caught the gleam on Donnie’s finger. “The emerald? You’re giving him the emerald ring that you told me—Dad, you promised me that ring. Two years ago. This isn’t right, Dad.” Hot angry tears filled his eyes, but, nice person that he was, he also felt darn guilty about making a stink when everybody else in the parable was jumping up and down.
    His dad said, “Look! it’s Donnie! he left and now he’s back! be happy! we’re having veal tonight!”
    So he smiled and had a beer, but with a certain contrary inner resonance. Great. Wonderful, Dad. Terrific. I’ll be hitting the sack now. Back’s killing me, but never mind. Night-night. Maybe I’ll sleep in the pigpen, seeing as how you go for that. See ya later, Don. Help yourself to my stuff. Clothes, jewels, shekels, just take what you need, Don. Take my room. Want me to introduce you to my fiancée, Sheila?
    Soon afterward, the brother joined a humane society opposed to cruel practices in the meat industry, e.g., calf fattening. Poor dumb animals kept chained up in cramped dark pens and force-fed, to produce pale tender beef for a feast to honor a jerk. The brother was a liberal, or Samaritan, as liberals were known in those days, and while there were a few bad Samaritans, about ninety-five percent of them were nice people who would have stopped to lend assistance to anyone who needed it—a man set upon by thieves, for example. But most Samaritans would draw the line at the sort of boondoggle enjoyed by the prodigal son. You run off and waste your substance on riotous living with a fast crowd in Galilee, you shouldn’t expect to come home and get a feast and a ring and a big hug.
    The Old Story: jerks rewarded, nice people abused.
    Take the liberals that George Bush, the Willie Horton of American politics, spent the 1988 campaign kicking down the stairs, the one or two that Ronald Reagan hadn’t kicked already. These aren’t Iranian liberals, they’re a bunch of extremely nice American people. Call them reformers, progressives, New Dealers, or call them the Great Satan of Massachusetts and his hounds of hell: liberals are fundamentally democrats with a quick social conscience who carry water for a million good causes from here to 123 Maple Street, Anywhere, U.S.A. They are teachers, boosters, and inveterate instillers of social obligation. Call them schoolmarms, goody two-shoes, busybodies, or