Charlie Waters

You don’t make many new sins these days. At least not the really spectacular ones. The tried and true ones are always around, waiting for you to hit them once more on your path from here to there. But new ones, unique ones, truly spectacular ones are hard to come by anymore. Unless your name is Charlie Waters, that is.

Charlie Waters had a knack for coming up with new ways to really piss off God. His grandmother always reminded him of it while she raised him. Her having to raise him was probably the most amazing sin he had ever accomplished according to her ­ in the fire that destroyed the trailer he and his parents lived in, his mother, father, and baby sister all died. Charlie had sinned by living. He’d sinned, according to Grandma, by getting out alive when he was meant to die with the rest of them.

And things got worse as he grew up. He sinned by crying when he missed his parents ­ God didn’t much like cry baby, sissy boys. He sinned by laughing at cartoons when he was still young enough to watch them ­ God didn’t think much of little boys who laughed when they had lived while their parents and baby sister died. Grandma knew these things pretty well. She read the Bible every day and told Charlie about all the sinful things he was doing.

Charlie tried to be good in school, follow the rules and learn the things they taught him. But Grandma said those things were sinful too since the schools had disassociated themselves from the church and God. Grandma tried to keep Charlie home and teach him the Bible things instead of the school things, but the Sheriff came around after about three months and made Charlie go back to school. Grandma told him it was sinful that he went there, even though the Sheriff made him. Then, when Charlie came home with bad marks because he’d missed those months of school, Grandma said it was a sin for him to waste the education that the state provided him. It seemed that Charlie Waters couldn’t do much of anything without sinning in the doing of it.

In junior high school, Charlie sinned by listening to the other boys talk dirty about the girls they liked. Some of the boys talked about holding hands, some talked about kissing. Grandma told Charlie, when he asked her about those things, that his having those ideas in his head was sinful, and then she would whip him with a switch from the willow tree in the back yard. She said it had to be that way because she was getting too old to just spank him and he was getting to big to keep in line. Charlie just hung his head and took it, hoping it would help him to not sin anymore.

But like Grandma always told him, sinning was his destiny. He accepted that when he got into high school.

The girls in high school were so much more grown up than those in junior high. They wore shorter skirts and tee shirts that showed their bellies. Some had earrings in their tummy, something Charlie couldn’t stop looking at when they were around.

One girl, a brunette named Andrea, was assigned one day to be Charlie’s Science partner for a lab. She didn’t seem afraid of him like the other girls at their school. She was afraid of the frog they had to dissect; so Charlie felt like a hero when he did the entire dissection and she only had to take notes. They even spoke in the hall afterwards, and her hand touched his twice while they wrote up their final report.

Charlie never told Grandma about the Science experiment or Andrea, but he did start to exchange email with Andrea sometimes. They both liked the same music and books. Andrea suggested he read some Vonnegut, Charlie recommended Asimov; both authors were hits with the other. Charlie suggested Mest, Andrea suggested The Hush Sound; both bands were a hit as well.

Grandma noticed that Charlie was spending more time on the computer than before, but his grades were improving so she tried to just chalk it up to more studying. She didn’t want to think that Charlie was sinning all of the time, but he did have his history of making bad decisions. She would look the other way for a bit.

On a sunny Thursday, one of Charlie’s friends, Hank Willfield, came over to drop off a book Charlie needed for English class and Grandma found out the full truth. The book was one by Salinger, a writer Grandma did not approve of, and so she dragged Hank into the kitchen to have a talk about appropriate reading materials for her grandson.

Charlie didn’t bring friends home so Hank had never met Grandma before. He got to know her very well that afternoon. He was told by Grandma that God and the Holy Bible did not like writers like Salinger because they took the Lord’s name in vain which was a sin. He was told by Grandma that God and the Holy Bible did not like young men who took the Lord’s name in vain. He was told by Grandma that young men should be working for the betterment of society instead of looking at girls and reading shoddy ­ even pornographic ­ stories written by shoddy, godless writers.

Hank was afraid of Grandma. Charlie would understand because he had always been afraid of Grandma too. Grandma got a lot scarier for both of the boys though, once Hank told her that Charlie was a fine young man and even had a girl who was smart and nice and church-going like Grandma was.

Once the words were said they couldn’t be unsaid. Once she knew, there was no way that Hank could make her unknow. Hank sat straight up in his chair as Grandma wrenched every detail of Charlie’s friendship with Andrea out of him. In his favor, Hank did tell Grandma that Andrea helped Charlie get better grades and read better books and spend more time on his homework. Grandma wasn’t listening though. But Hank couldn’t know that, so he went home and sent Charlie email about breaking the secret. Unfortunately, Charlie didn’t read his email before he got home to Grandma.

Grandma was waiting for Charlie when he got home from the library and she was spittin’ mad. He knew she was mad, if not why, when he came through the front door and she had him by the ear before the door could swing close. Grandma was quoting scripture to him and dragging him across the living room and into the kitchen so he could sit in the very same chair where Hank had earlier exposed Charlie’s secret life to Grandma. Charlie’s ear was redder than ever before by the time he was sitting, and his hearing was getting a good workout too.

Grandma was talking so fast and furious that Charlie couldn’t understand much of what she was saying ­ until she said “Andrea”. And although the name was in the middle of a barrage of sentences and words being yelled at him, Charlie knew that somehow Grandma had found out.

“Have you been kissing on that girl?”

“No,” Charlie answered, shaking his head furiously.

“Oh, you’ve been kissing on her and touching on her and she’s probably already growing my great grandbaby by now!” Grandma yelled, “I know how those whorish girls work their wiles, just like your mother on my poor son! But you’ll not be doing the same and sinning all over this town! I lost your Daddy that way, before you went and burned him and your Mama up. I lost your Daddy, but I’ll not lose you!”

Then Grandma got quiet. She got real, real quiet. And if the yelling Grandma was bad, the quiet Grandma was horrible.

Charlie tried to talk to her, to defend Andrea and explain things to Grandma, but she just shushed him with a “psst! psst! psst!” sound that Charlie hadn’t heard before. Then Grandma started mumbling to herself. Mumbling words like “sinner” and “whores” and “godless” and, for some reason, “Salinger”. Then she grabbed his ear again. And she grabbed a knife from the knife drawer.

Grandma pulled Charlie by the ear up the staircase to his bedroom. He fell to the floor by his bed, holding his throbbing ear, his eyes wild as they looked for where Grandma was and what she would do next. All she did for a bit was continue to mumble and pace across his room. The knife in her hand flinging around her skirts as she paced.

After about five minutes, Grandma looked at Charlie and told him to pray.

“Pray on your knees for your misbegotten, sorry soul, boy!” she yelled at Charlie, “Pray for the soul of that girl you’ve most likely ruined, too!”

Charlie thought to defend Andrea, but knew better than to argue with Grandma. So he got on his knees and began to pray silently for his life.

“Out loud, boy!” she screamed.

“Dear God, please forgive me for lying to my Grandma,” he started, “and please let this all end up okay…”

“Don’t be a fool, you sinner!” she screamed, “God doesn’t like fools anymore than I do!”

“Please, God, let me be a better person and…and…,” Charlie’s mind had gone blank as he kneeled there, sweat dripping off of his face and down his back.

“Enough.” Grandma said calmly, severely. She was in that scary, quiet mood again it seemed. Charlie stopped praying out loud, but not in his head.

Grandma quietly lifted the knife she had brought upstairs with her, and came towards Charlie. Ten swift and quiet stabs downward were all that followed; Charlie knew better than to cry or yell when Grandma punished him; he held the cries in, held the screams in. Then Grandma went to the bedroom door, her red right hand resting on the door frame leaving a bloody hand print on the white frame, and looked back to Charlie.

“You’ve made your grandmother kill you now, boy,” she said, “I can’t hardly believe you’d do such a thing. To kill your family, then give me so much grief over the years. Now you’ve gone and made me kill you. It’s a sorry place your soul’s going to, Charlie Waters. A sorry place indeed.”

Then Grandma sighed and went off to call the police. Charlie lay there in his room, messing up the shag carpets that Grandma had always kept so nice over the years. And he slipped away with a sigh of his own, sorry that he’d gone and sinned again.

Sally K Lehman was born and raised in Oregon – a squarish piece of land located somewhere between Hollywood and Canada. Ms. Lehman studied Math at UC Berkeley until she was made to take Abstract Algebra, at which time she decided to become a writer. Ms. Lehman has had poetry published in several Literary Magazines including Ascent Aspirations, and has had a short story published in The Scruffy Dog Review. She is currently working on her second novel. You can find more from Sally Lehman at her web site TheIncidentalPoet.com

Email: Sally K Lehman

Return to Table of Contents