CORNHOLE, BAGS — JOHN JODZIO
/Some of the old people called it cornhole but we called it bags. We called it bags because we went to church sometimes and everyone there called it bags, too. The church’s bags board was painted with a glowing face of Jesus and you tossed your beanbag into his grinning mouth. We also called it bags because we asked the youth pastor, Pastor James, what Jesus would have called it—bags or cornhole—and Pastor James said “bags” with no hesitation whatsoever, responded so quickly that we felt this meant he had a direct line to heaven.
Some of us were only decent at bags, but some of us were great at it. Sometimes we bet on our bags games when we were drunk at the park. Sometimes Pastor James would walk by with his golden retriever and say "see you at church on Sunday" and we would say sure, sure, yep, of course, no doubt, and then go puke into a bush.
One night, a man named Nelson came to the park to drink and play bags with us. Nelson was a square shaped man in his 40s, and he wouldn't stop calling it cornhole. Cornhole this, cornhole that. Ugh. We beat Nelson in bags and then we punched him in the gut and stole the rest of his beer. Unfortunately, Pastor James was walking his dog when this happened and he called the police on us. Some of us went to juvie, but some of us only got community service.
Most of the church members forgave us when we came back to worship, but some didn’t, wouldn’t ever. One woman hissed whenever she saw us and one of the deacons threw an empty Diet Coke can at us while we biked home.
A few months later Nelson died after his car skidded into a gravel pit. We couldn’t help but wonder—was this a random accident or was God delivering some sort of divine justice? Maybe some of both? We asked Pastor James at youth group.
“Are you asking me if Nelson died because he called it cornhole?” he said.
“Yep,” we said. “Uh-huh.”
Pastor James had just been explaining a parable about some weeds and some wheat in his confident church voice, but now his voice turned sad and shaky, a voice we recognized from the park, from that night he’d called the cops on us.
“God wouldn’t do that,” he told us. "God wouldn't do that," he repeated, but we knew otherwise and so we gathered up our things and made our way past him and out the door.
John Jodzio's work has been featured in a variety of places including This American Life, McSweeney's, and One Story. He's the author of the short story collections, Knockout, Get In If You Want To Live and If You Lived Here You’d Already Be Home. He lives in Minneapolis.
