hairy paw on the counter. “Benny!” sang a chorus of baritones who were perched along the counter like birds on a telephone wire. “Norm!” sang an off-key tenor. “Well, speak of the devil,” said Dolly from the far end of the counter. “Somebody has seen behind my façade of childlike innocence,” protested Benny. Dolly, not her real name, wiggled a seasoned hourglass shape over to her new customer. She handed him a menu and planted her palms on her hips, a gesture designed to exhibit ten long audaciously-red fingernails. He handed the menu right back to her and winked. “Make it a barrel of oats, three bushels of corn, a sack of potatoes, a small truckload of your best quality sorghum, and a bale of hay. And to wash it all down, a six-pack of Bud Light.” “Benny’s on a diet,” observed a chorus member. “For dessert,” Benny went on, “let’s have an apple pie to go and a world-class waitress to enjoy it with when she gets off work. And when does she get off work? I’m glad you asked that questi...
excommunication by the Amish, he had hiked to the nearest town, where he dumped the shoo-fly pie into the first trash can he could find, bought a new set of non-black clothes, and changed his name to Benny. He then wandered the streets, looking for food and companionship. He found them in a corner café, where he met a kindly minister of the Gospel, who introduced himself as Reverend Barnabas and invited him to sit down and share an apple pie. Within thirteen minutes, Benny had embraced the tenets of foursquare Christianity and had promised to give his life to the ministry of the Church in exchange for room and board and a small allowance. It happened that Reverend Barnabas, who was nearing sixty, had a young wife whom he had saved from the life of the street. Lucy spent several evenings a week in the church sanctuary communing with God, openly petitioning Him to relieve her of her childless state. Listening from behind a pew one evening, Benny learned of her plight and came forth to...