Heaven Is A Deal by Michael Gerber

“If you’re doing this to make me stop listening to Rush, it ain’t working!” I told her defiantly. “Volume going UP!”

I was pretty mad at Hayden then, but that was nothing compared to the next morning. As the ladies put their faces on, I was told I had to go out and clean the car!

“I want to look at our marriage contract,” I half-joked to Griselda. “Show me the part where cleaning spit-up is the man’s job!”

Even though the sign at the Days Inn tried to put me in the right frame of mind (“Jesus made this day perfect, the rest is your fault”) I was not a happy camper as I scrubbed the streaks of dried vomit off the side of our new Ford Explorer. “Remember how good you have it,” I said to myself. “Think about the Crucifixion.” But even with that bit of needed perspective, I pushed so hard on that ice-brush it still smells funny.

As I squirted bottled water onto the SUV and tried to buff some of the scratches out with a newspaper, a guy walked out of the hotel.

“Wild night?” he asked, Lexus chirping.

“Oh, no!” Lord, that was all I needed, it getting back to the good people of Buffalo Nut that their pastor was a roaring drunk. As devout Christians, there are certain things they simply won’t forgive. So I plastered on a sweet smile and said, “Do you know anyplace a dad could sell one slightly used eleven-year-old daughter?”

“Try the internet,” he said, pulling away.

“That’s the problem!” I yelled after him.

So that’s what today was going to be like, I thought, one trial after another. I threw the brush into the way back, and was about to pitch the last section of my complimentary newspaper into the bushes when something caught my eye.

Like I said, as a Christian man, I don’t believe in superstitions—but I do believe in Jesus, and I know it was Him who put the Life & Living section of the Nine Forks Republican-Republican in my hand. As I read the headline, I felt a bit of electricity running up and down my spine, like I already knew it would change my life: “Nebraska Boy Claims to Have Seen Heaven.”

“Surprised they let Cornhuskers in there,” I joked to nobody in particular, and then forgot about it. But in my mind—without any deliberation or malice aforethought as defined by the Iowa Penal Code, I want to be clear about that—a plan was forming.