“Oh, Roy, I just love this song. I’ll turn it up.”
“What is it?”
“‘Java Jive’ by the Ink Spots. Listen: ‘I love java sweet and hot, whoops Mr. Moto, I’m a coffee pot.’”
“That’s crazy, Mom. What’s it mean?”
“‘I love the java and the java loves me.’ It’s just a silly little song that was popular when I was a girl. Coffee’s called java because coffee beans come from there.”
“Where?”
“The island of Java, near Borneo.”
“Borneo’s where the wild men are.”
“It’s part of Indonesia. Coffee wakes you up, makes you feel jivey, you know, jumpy.”
“Who’s Mr. Moto?”
“Peter Lorre played him in the movies. He was a Japanese detective.”
“Why is he in the song?”
“I don’t have the faintest, baby. I guess just because he was a popular character at the time, before the war.”
“Look, Mom, there’s tree branches all over the road.”
“Sit back, honey, I don’t want you to bump your head.”
“There must have been a big windstorm.”
“This part of the country is called Tornado Alley. I don’t know why people would live here, especially in trailers. It’s always the trailers that get destroyed by tornadoes.”
“Where were we when a tornado made all those rocks fall on our car?”
“Kansas. Wasn’t that terrible? There were hundreds of dents on the roof and the hood, and we had to get a new windshield.”
“Where does weather come from?”
“From everywhere, baby. The wind starts blowing in the middle of the Arabian Sea or the South China Sea or somewhere, and stirs up the waves. Pretty soon there’s a storm and clouds form and the planet rotates and spins so the rain or snow works its way around and melts or hardens depending on the temperature.”
“Does the temperature depend on how close you are to heaven or hell?”
“No, Roy, heaven and hell have nothing to do with the weather. What matters most is where a place is in relation to the equator.”
“I know where that is. It’s a line around the globe.”
“The nearer to the equator, the hotter it is.”
“I think hell must be on the equator, Mom. The ground opens up like a big grave and when the planet turns all the bad people fall in.”
“How do good people get to heaven?”
“A whirly wind called God’s Tornado comes and picks them up and takes them there. People disappear all the time after a tornado.”
“And what about purgatory, the place where people are that God hasn’t decided about yet?”
“I think they wait on the planet until God or the Devil chooses them.”
“Are they kept in any particular place?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe they just stay where they are, and they don’t even know they’re waiting.”
“I don’t know if you know it, baby, but what you say makes perfect sense. I wish I could write down some of these things, or we had a tape recorder to keep them.”
“Don’t worry, Mom, I’ve got a good memory. I won’t forget anything.”