Hell Fire

Daddy Freeman wasn’t a religious man. At least from what I could tell. It seemed we spent more Sunday mornings hunting or fishing than in the church house. I do remember him invoking God’s name a time or two though. There is the story of when the pastor came to visit. He and Mama Bea were still living in the old farm house that eventually burned to the ground. There was only one thing saved from that burning tender box. As they dragged Mama Bea out of the house she reached up and grabbed a photograph. The rest was lost. I guess that really means two things were saved. But I digress. The preacher was there on a hot summer day, probably making the rounds in Shake Rag to the backsliders of which I suspect Daddy Freeman to have been one. The old house had plank floors that covered a crawl space underneath. It was a good place to keep things cool on hot days. It this case, it was Daddy Freeman’s home brew. As the temperature rose, so did the contents of bottle upon bottle of his hidden elixir. The caps on those old bottles did what they could but eventually they had to let go under the pressure that was mounting in each bottle. First one went off and “POW” it hit those wood floors and made the sound of a rifle going off. Then there was the second. “Blam”. Then the third, and fourth and suddenly it was as if the Second Battalion had cut loose on the enemy, all from those popping bottles and rocketing caps banging up against the old wooden planks. That’s as far as this story ever got in its telling at family reunions. My guess is that Daddy Freeman was more grieved that he had lost his brew than that the preacher had been the beneficiary of the surprise. There was one other time that Daddy Freeman’s religion surfaced. It too was associated with grief. I must have been about ten or twelve years old. A piece of land had been cleared to make more pasture. I didn’t like it, the clearing that is. The small patch of woods was always occupied by a squirrel or two and at least one rabbit. That, despite my best efforts to invite them to dinner and Mama Bea’s frying pan. When the land had been cleared, the larger trees were pushed up into a giant pile to be burned. Inside the pile were old tires, fuel for the ensuing inferno. Daddy Freeman climbed over into the pile and lit a starter fire. Soon the tires were burning and the fire was spreading. The fire was so hot that the flames were blue. As we stood there, my grandfather fixed his gaze upon the blue flames and said with seemingly a bit of grief, “The fires of Hell are ten times hotter.” We stood there a while longer just watching in silence. His words have haunted me. I have never known if Daddy Freeman was contemplating his own future or pondering the destination of so many who had gone before him. Maybe it was even a word of warning to this preteen. I’ll have to admit that it stuck. Hell was very real to him. It’s not so much anymore, at least among the “educated”. We don’t think as much about a place or fire as much as about the shear agony of not being with God. I think we should be as focused on the present as much as on the future. “Hell on earth” as the expression goes is far more real to me. The abused and neglected children who pass through my home renders any speculation about Hell that one might have to nothingness. We are far from “Thy Kingdom come.” Maybe we would all do well to pause and ponder the future of those we love and don’t love. Maybe God would be just as pleased if we would spend some time pondering the fate of so many innocent sufferers of greed, war, and a host of other evils that live happily in that blue flame of unjust existence.