#176 Satan: Hijacker of a Planet- Louise Erdrich
“The Antichrist is among us.”
Indeed he is, if you believe in that sort of thing. A luring, attractive evangelist comes calling
to recruit worshipers for a tent revival. The mother, who would have been fine
buying anything from a door-to-door man--except salvation--had no interest. Her
daughter however, juts learning about her womanly maturation, learning how to
flirt and understanding the power of attractive men, but not fully understanding
what that means.
The daughter goes to the revival and has her first contact
with the power of evangelical speech and is invited to attend a healing session
after the service by the young preacher. She believes that she has the power of
envisioning pictures, and places with precise accuracy, so when others are
having (or feigning) religious fervor she silently envisions her pictures.
The preacher takes advantage of her naivety, her sincere
wonderment of the moment and in the ways of the Antichrist himself, stains the
purity of the young woman.
Note: I love buying and reading used books. I still remember
my first trip to a used book store where I picked up Leaves of Grass and The
Iliad, not because I thought I would like those books (LOG did become my
favorite book), but because the aesthetics of the old dog-eared, dusty,
powerful things they were. However, I should have learned by now that you
should NEVER buy a used book that has underlining. My copy of the 1998 O.Henry
prize stories that this short story came from was clean right up to this story.
Whoever read this story before me was a deranged, serial under-liner who went
apeshit crazy on these pages…4 colors and no apparent method. Made reading this
a bit schizophrenic.
Notable Passage: “The stars are the eyes of God, and they’ve
been watching us from the beginning of the world.”
