Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness

by Edward Abbey

Leslie McKee’s wife, a sweet and kindly woman and a pillar of the Church, tells me that she has unilaterally bound my soul to hers, in accordance with the teaching of her faith, which has provided this unusual technique for the salvation of souls which otherwise would obviously be lost and shoveled into Hell. This binding means, if I understand her rightly, that when she goes to Heaven my soul likewise will be dragged along like the tail of a kite, with or without my consent. And suppose she goes to Hell? She assures me that this cannot happen, that she has already been saved and the place reserved—for both of us. But I am not entirely set at ease; something might go wrong. Furthermore she is a generation older than I—what about the time factor? Is my soul to be prematurely and summarily unhouseled in its prime, if as seems likely her demise precedes mine by some twenty or thirty years? On this point she is uncomfortably vague. Perhaps it is all a sinister scheme to rid the world of the pagan Gentile without incurring suspicion.