Page 14 - Billy Graham in Heaven

The Four Lane into the Brain
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side-by-side convenience stores with Japanese curls on the roof edges.
One store was called Ye Olde Theology Shoppe. Its changeable sign was the kind that you could roll next to the highway. It said “Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself!” The parking lot was almost full.
The other store had a small wooden sign that announced The Atheology Shop. Underneath was an even smaller sign with changeable letters. “One Life to Live!” it declared. Its parking lot was empty until Jake pulled in.
“So this is what Newt’s bragging about,” thought Jake. His anger rose. Newt’s project was absurd and so Jake felt absurd too. He winced from a void prick. Still he entered and saw a dusty-headed Newt drinking a tall- boy Budweiser while straightening a row of books by the cash register. They included Why I Am Not a Christian by Bertrand Russell, The Age of Reason by Thomas Paine, Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung, and The Fall by Albert Camus. Two crushed beer cans teetered beside them. Other books were stacked willy nilly on the floor, and posters, bumper stickers and other humanistic propaganda were strewn about as if they’d just been unpacked.
Jake and Newt exchanged surly howdy-dos. “Have some bubbly,” offered Newt while pulling a beer out of the cooler at his side. His face was swarthy and crimson, an almost healthy combination of deep sun tan and liver-rot red. His slightly bloodshot, navy-blue eyes burned out of the swarthiness, split by a good two inches of ramrod straight nose. A thick red, blond and grey mustache heightened the macho impression.
“No way José,” said Jake while self-righteously looking