Interference & Other Stories by Richard Hoffman Page B

advantage. The word went forward across the land that plenty of lettuce, radishes, seeds, apples, nuts, fruits, and hay were to be distributed after the services at the chapel each week, right after the sermon, and that all—pigs, cows, horses, sheep, all manner of birds, squirrels, and rabbits—were welcome. Everyone but the goat.
    Little by little, those who meant never to set foot in the chapel ever again came back, bringing their hungry offspring. Soon, as the master had predicted, there was a whole new generation of devout creatures who listened, intent on not repeating the lecherous mistakes of their parents which, as they were told repeatedly, had brought about great misfortune.
    Even the goat returned, but not in the flesh. No, he was represented everywhere, in story and painting, in song, in stained glass windows and pictures in prayer books: he became the tempter, the angel of darkness, the evil one. Even today you can see these representations of the archfiend with his goat’s beard, cloven hooves, and horns.
    As for the jackass, he is braying from the pulpit still. If you don’t believe me, go and hear for yourself!

THE WRONG SUNDAY
    M arty woke, sat up, and untangled the white rosary from the fingers of his left hand. His mother had given him the rosary for his nightmares. Now when he woke up frightened, he prayed to Our Lady to help him get back to sleep instead of waking his parents because his father needed his sleep to go to work at the truck plant in the morning. Mostly his nightmares were about things falling and crushing him. His mother said Our Lady would protect him, and his father told him that you can never dream you died because you always wake up right before.
    He put the rosary on his night table, swiveled off his bed, and knelt to say his morning prayers. He looked up sideways at the plastic crucifix above his bed with the two brittle palm leaves thumbtacked below it and said an Our Father, a Hail Mary, and a Glory Be.
    His fathers shoes were outside his bedroom door as they were every Sunday, and Marty, still in his baseball pajamas, came downstairs to work on them. He could never get them to shine “bright enough to see your face in them,” which was how his father said he wanted them, but it wasn’t because he didn’t try.
    First, he spread newspaper on the floor as his father had shown him. “You don’t want to get shoe polish on your mother’s carpet,” he’d said. Then he took an old sock, slipped two fingers into the toe, and used it to get out a good-sized wad of black polish from the flat can. He placed his other hand deep in his fathers shoe and applied the greasy black polish thickly all over, taking special care to cover around the heel and along the sides of the sole. Then he put the shoe aside and did the other one. “YouVe got to let the goop dry on them a few minutes. That’s the secret.” After the other shoe was smeared with polish, Marty waited an extra couple of minutes before working on the first one, just to be sure. When he could wait no longer, he got down to the hard work. He balled up the sock and wiped off all the extra polish. Then he got up on one knee and put his foot in his father’s shoe to keep it steady so he could work with both hands. The shoe was almost big enough for both his feet. He took another sock, a clean white one with a hole in the heel, and rubbed hard at first to work the polish in, then gradually more softly until he was lightly and swiftly drawing the sock back and forth over the shoe and around the back of the heel. Finally, he spit on it—all over, not just on the toe—and rubbed that in. Then the other shoe.
    The shoes were old and had been resoled. On the left one there was a bump from his father’s little toe and the leather was cracked there.
    He had to give up again. Was it really possible to get them so shiny you could see your face in them? His father had told