Heaven Is A Deal by Michael Gerber

“Maybe we should write them and ask for some money.”

“No,” I said firmly. Like any husband, I have my pride.

“Have it your way,” my wife said. Lord knows we needed it. The twelve months before that trip to Nine Forks had been an endless series of misfortunes. First came the sciatica, then the psoriasis, and finally I got a plantar wart the size of a half-dollar. (I limped so bad people were calling me “Pastor Gimpy.”) Finally, when Griselda came home the night before and announced that she, as usual, was not pregnant, I couldn’t take any more.

I put down my candling rig and went down into our partially finished basement. Fixing my moist eyes firmly on the acoustical tile my neighbor Bill and I hung last summer I said, “God, what did I do wrong? You know I’m a good person. You know I’m a pastor, egg candler, and volunteer dentist. On weekends, I do puppet shows for the stray animals at the pound. Griselda’s going to her anger-management classes, and Hayden, well You gave her to us, so I can’t see how she should be our fault. Why is my life so hard? Why do bad things happen to good people? Why hast Thou forsaken me?”

In the brief silence between cycles of the washing machine, I thought I heard a small, clear voice near my heart: “Because you’re a pin-headed, self-absorbed douchebag.” But then I belched and realized it had been reflux.

God was silent.

And things were about to get worse. A lot worse.

 •     •     • Egg candling wouldn’t be such a terrible business, if people knew what it was. It got so bad that after a couple of years, I began forgetting myself. In good times, that worked all right; people would usually give me a couple of bucks just to get off their porch. But times aren’t good in 2011, especially not for people like us. And so every morning, along with the newspaper, there was a stack of bills reaching up like the Tower of Babel. Every morning, it would get a little bigger, and every morning, I’d pray to God to knock it down.

Meanwhile, everywhere I looked, there were stories about that boy who went to Heaven. On the radio in the barbershop. On the TV at the bank. Hayden even read about him on the internet. She called him “my boyfriend.” Sometimes my daughter is so sacrilegious it scares me.