| By Sam Singleton Atheist Evangelist |
| The Man With No Eye |
Singleton and my sisters and I, took up with Brother Vernon Redstart’s
little band of pilgrims meeting in one end of the Quonset hut, out on
the River Pike, where he had his auto repair and salvage business. The
Glorified Temple of the Blessed Redeemer. That’s where I saw Ronald
Coyne, the Man With No Eye. And of all the people that ever
frightened the feces out of me, he produced the greatest amount in pure
poundage.
If my family’s spiritual journey had been an actual trip, we’d still have
been driving some beat up old heap like our 1953 Chevrolet with a
black paint job that had been applied with a brush. Both back doors
were tied shut with clothesline. Our spiritual journey was just like that
car, all crappy. And no matter how many times we had to get out and
push, always in the rain or snow, my folks wouldn’t quit and admit that
they had no fucking idea how to get where they were going or if their
destination even existed. My father would be the only one driving and
he’d all the time be getting mad about something he heard or saw along
the way and just take off in a different direction. The tires would be
bald and the engine would be burning oil and knocking and the brakes
would be bad and he’d be barreling along narrow winding roads with all
of us in there with him and we weren’t supposed to say anything.
Ronald Coyne, the Man with No Eye, flung himself headlong into our
path and what followed would trouble my sleep for years to come.
When Ronald Coyne was a little boy in Oklahoma he lost his right eye
on a barbed wire fence. But god had fixed it so that he could still see
from the empty socket, or that’s what he said. Now you might think
that having the sight in his poked-out eye restored would be enough.
But where everybody else could see only a hideous oddity, Ronald
Coyne saw a killer gimmick and a god-given competitive advantage
when it came to beating other crooks and charlatans out of the nickels
and dimes of the trusting poor. He figured out the great truth of
evangelism, which is, you can get total strangers to cover your cost of
living even if they can’t pay their rent or buy food for their children.
That’s how Ronald Coyne wound up at the Glorified Temple of the
Blessed Redeemer. It was a Sunday morning in August. Brother Redstart
dispensed with the usual order of worship and turned the service right
over to the evangelist.
Ronald Coyne went through his story about getting his eye poked out
and how god fixed it so that he could see without it. And in case
anybody had any doubts, he asked for a couple of volunteers to assist
him in proving that the same god that healed the blind man at the gate
could heal a little one-eyed boy in Oklahoma. My father and Brother
Hobart stepped right up. He had them bind up the right side of his face
with a bunch of gauze and adhesive tape. Then he popped his glass eye
out and held the eyelid open so that everybody got a good look at the
empty socket. There wasn’t but a couple dozen people there, but he
definitely had everybody’s attention. Everybody else looked away when
he came down the aisle, but I stared straight into that hideous hole. He
got back up to the front and told Brother Hobart to give him anything
at all to read. And Brother Hobart fished around in his billfold and
came up with a card.
“Redstart’s Auto Reclamation. Mason Star Route. Nunley, Arkansas.”
Half the congregation come up short, gave a kind of a gasp, and the rest
went to praising god like he’d just got back from a long trip. Ronald
Coyne said to my father, If you would hand me the bible where you
opened it there.
The man with no eye was not a good reader but everybody was too
busy crapping themselves to notice. “Matthew 15:14. Let them alone:
they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both
shall fall into the ditch.” I know for a fact that my folks put a fiver in
the offering basket. Quintuple their the usual offering.
A new series premiered on the Bad Dream Network that night,
featuring a one-eyed Okie monster in a Robert Hall suit. Part of what
bothered me was that god’s approach to miracles was exactly as half-
assed as my father’s approach to working on cars. When my father lost
the key to the trunk, which he always did early in his relationship with
any automobile, rather than having a new key made, he would just
gouge out the lock, so he could thereafter open it by poking a
screwdriver into the big ugly hole. And god, rather than keeping Ronald
Coyne from getting his eye poked out in the first place, or healing his
original eye, or giving him a new one altogether, leaves this ugly-assed
empty socket. It still works, but nobody’s ever gonna compliment you
on its looks.
little band of pilgrims meeting in one end of the Quonset hut, out on
the River Pike, where he had his auto repair and salvage business. The
Glorified Temple of the Blessed Redeemer. That’s where I saw Ronald
Coyne, the Man With No Eye. And of all the people that ever
frightened the feces out of me, he produced the greatest amount in pure
poundage.
If my family’s spiritual journey had been an actual trip, we’d still have
been driving some beat up old heap like our 1953 Chevrolet with a
black paint job that had been applied with a brush. Both back doors
were tied shut with clothesline. Our spiritual journey was just like that
car, all crappy. And no matter how many times we had to get out and
push, always in the rain or snow, my folks wouldn’t quit and admit that
they had no fucking idea how to get where they were going or if their
destination even existed. My father would be the only one driving and
he’d all the time be getting mad about something he heard or saw along
the way and just take off in a different direction. The tires would be
bald and the engine would be burning oil and knocking and the brakes
would be bad and he’d be barreling along narrow winding roads with all
of us in there with him and we weren’t supposed to say anything.
Ronald Coyne, the Man with No Eye, flung himself headlong into our
path and what followed would trouble my sleep for years to come.
When Ronald Coyne was a little boy in Oklahoma he lost his right eye
on a barbed wire fence. But god had fixed it so that he could still see
from the empty socket, or that’s what he said. Now you might think
that having the sight in his poked-out eye restored would be enough.
But where everybody else could see only a hideous oddity, Ronald
Coyne saw a killer gimmick and a god-given competitive advantage
when it came to beating other crooks and charlatans out of the nickels
and dimes of the trusting poor. He figured out the great truth of
evangelism, which is, you can get total strangers to cover your cost of
living even if they can’t pay their rent or buy food for their children.
That’s how Ronald Coyne wound up at the Glorified Temple of the
Blessed Redeemer. It was a Sunday morning in August. Brother Redstart
dispensed with the usual order of worship and turned the service right
over to the evangelist.
Ronald Coyne went through his story about getting his eye poked out
and how god fixed it so that he could see without it. And in case
anybody had any doubts, he asked for a couple of volunteers to assist
him in proving that the same god that healed the blind man at the gate
could heal a little one-eyed boy in Oklahoma. My father and Brother
Hobart stepped right up. He had them bind up the right side of his face
with a bunch of gauze and adhesive tape. Then he popped his glass eye
out and held the eyelid open so that everybody got a good look at the
empty socket. There wasn’t but a couple dozen people there, but he
definitely had everybody’s attention. Everybody else looked away when
he came down the aisle, but I stared straight into that hideous hole. He
got back up to the front and told Brother Hobart to give him anything
at all to read. And Brother Hobart fished around in his billfold and
came up with a card.
“Redstart’s Auto Reclamation. Mason Star Route. Nunley, Arkansas.”
Half the congregation come up short, gave a kind of a gasp, and the rest
went to praising god like he’d just got back from a long trip. Ronald
Coyne said to my father, If you would hand me the bible where you
opened it there.
The man with no eye was not a good reader but everybody was too
busy crapping themselves to notice. “Matthew 15:14. Let them alone:
they be blind leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both
shall fall into the ditch.” I know for a fact that my folks put a fiver in
the offering basket. Quintuple their the usual offering.
A new series premiered on the Bad Dream Network that night,
featuring a one-eyed Okie monster in a Robert Hall suit. Part of what
bothered me was that god’s approach to miracles was exactly as half-
assed as my father’s approach to working on cars. When my father lost
the key to the trunk, which he always did early in his relationship with
any automobile, rather than having a new key made, he would just
gouge out the lock, so he could thereafter open it by poking a
screwdriver into the big ugly hole. And god, rather than keeping Ronald
Coyne from getting his eye poked out in the first place, or healing his
original eye, or giving him a new one altogether, leaves this ugly-assed
empty socket. It still works, but nobody’s ever gonna compliment you
on its looks.