The Cowboy Jesus
Steve Bassett
On the Cowboy Jesus.
He had spent the last week rereading Levi Peterson's The Backslider. Really, he was listening to the audio version on Audible. He spent most of his days at work reviewing his favorite audiobooks. Changing Led's and scraping corrosion takes very little mental energy and his boss has suggested it to make the work go faster when he first hired him. It also made him feel he was learning something new daily.
The Backslider is the story of Frank Windham. Frank lives in the mid-1950s in south-central
Utah. Franks works as a ranch hand for a
local hay rancher. He works during the
week and visits his mom on weekends. Frank is a backslider, a jack Mormon. Franks's father, a polygamist, had died when
he was 10 and his older sister had died when she was 3, this left Frank, his
brother, and mom. In town lived his dad's
other wife who his moms spend her time nursing grudges against. She had always felt like the red-headed stepchild. His mom had been banished to the farm in the
late 1930s when the Fed's and the church begins to crack down on polygamy. She
also spends her time striving to be the best Mormon and live the requirements
of the gospel including strict adherence to the Word of Wisdom. She banished all thoughts of sugar, sweets,
and meat. All vegetables, all cooked, to
remove flavor texture, and pleasure.
It was her belief that that men and women should only enjoy each other when they wanted to create a child. These beliefs are partly what lead Frank to be a backslider. He enjoyed good food and dancing on the weekends. He just could not help himself and the worst crime of all he pleasured himself nightly in his bed at the bunkhouse, on the ranch. He was surely going to hell for his wicked ways.
One day in a temper of bitterness and rage, he decides to get his boss's daughter pregnant and then to abandon his job and move back to his mother's home and repent of his sinful ways. To be a better Mormon. He soon regrets his decision and determines not to do this act. The problem is God had other plans for Frank. His boss's wife asks their daughter to take Frank on a horse ride to see some dinosaur fossils. In a rage of hormones Marianne leads him to make love that first night in his pickup truck. After that she and Frank make love every time, they get a chance. Luckily, Frank had a good supply of rubbers, until the night when she is on the rag and he cannot help himself. He knows that you cannot get a girl pregnant who is on the rag. He does it and feels bad afterward. Only a low life scum back would make love to a woman on the rag. In the morning he determines to leave the farm, go home and repent of his sinful ways. He meets with the bishop and repents of his sins and begins to pay his tithing. The bishop plans for his ordination to the priesthood. All is well for the backslider accept he learns Marianne is pregnant and she no longer wants him. She hates him with a deep passion. Still, Marianne's mother urges him to marry her and give the child a name. Marianne's father hates him too but may begin to forgive him if he marries his daughter. If he will come back to the farm and run the farm as a good son-in-law should so he can retire and become a gentleman farmer. In the rest of the book, we see how Frank learns to love his wife and see beyond his Mormonism and respect his wife’s Lutheranism. In the final chapter, after his wife’s baptism, he is given the vision of the Cowboy Jesus in the men’s room before a urinal.
The Cowboy Jesus is dressed like the Marlborough Man. He comes riding a horse and chewing some tobacco. Frank asks him if tobacco is against the Word of Wisdom. The Cowboy Jesus confirms that it is against the Word of Wisdom. He confirms that it is before taking another piece of chew. Frank tells him that he is a backslider. Franks tells him about his dead sister and his brother who in a fit of rage cut of his male organs and now thinks he is a girl. He tells Jesus how his mother was unfairly treated by his father’s other wife. The Cowboy Jesus agrees that Franks's life was tough, and he had been treated rather badly by life. Frank also tells the Cowboy Jesus that he hates God. The Cowboy Jesus tells him he needs to get over hating God. That he needs to stop this nonsense about only enjoying his wife when they want to have a baby. He especially needs to treat his mother-law much nicer. His mother-in-law feels bad that Frank has turned her into a Mormon. Frank decides to abandon his backsliding ways and to enjoy sugar, and meat, and sex. He will buy back his favorite horse and take his wife fishing on weekends when they can get away from the farm.
He loves the image of the Cowboy Jesus. It reminds him of the vision of Peter when the blanket descends from the heavens and Peter is commanded to eat all of the forbidden foods. That Peter is to take the gospel to all the world, that the gospel is no longer restricted just to Jews. and the descendants of Israel.
His father-in-law reminds him of The Cowboy Jesus. He is a man who works 7 days a week 15 hours a day to feed and clothe his family. His faith and worship are performed from an old pickup truck or moving pipe on hayfields for his employer. You never see a man work so hard. His father-in-law had been a little like Frank, he drank too much and smoked too much, until he meets his wife’s mother and then that began to change. His mother-in-law had almost been a single mother when they married. Her first child had died as an infant. His Father-in-law looked forward to the day when he would meet his first daughter in Heaven, until then he would work to support their family. Their last child had been born when he was an older man. Cody had been his grandson, he loved him too much to remain only a grandson, so Cody became their last son. Soon a daughter followed too, the child of a second daughter.
Therefore, he loves the image of the Cowboy Jesus. He sees in the Cowboy Jesus all the things he
wants for himself. Following the true
gospel and not just some religious norms.
He has adopted two children. They
are a gift from the same daughter that offered his father-in-law Cody. The wife and mother now raise their 4 children
together as one family. They have always
been much more like sisters than mother and daughter. Two women raising four children, under the
guidance of the Cowboy Jesus.
