Amy Willoughby-Burle

Amy Willoughby-Burle lives in the mountains near Asheville, NC with her husband and five children. She is the author of three novels, The Other Side of Certain, The Lemonade Year, and The Year of Thorns and Honey, as well as one short story collection titled Out Across the Nowhere. Her fiction has also appeared in numerous literary magazines. She teaches literature and creative writing to middle and highschool students through Blackberry Homeschool and Canongate Catholic High School in the Asheville area. God is ever present in her fiction and she hopes people will see Him there and perhaps want to take the time to get to know Him better.

an excerpt from “jesus drives a ’65 mustang”

Jesus sits at a table by the door. He gets a lot of double takes from people on their way out, but most of the time folks just chuckle to themselves and keep going. No one even stops to ask if it’s really him like they would if they thought he was Henry Cavill. But then you’d be talking about Superman and Jesus doesn’t want to ponder whether or not people think that he or Superman would come out ahead in a battle for supreme power. He knows the answer to that, but he’s sure most people don’t agree with him these days.

Jesus knows Arthur is on the fence about that too, and Jesus really needs to speak with him, but Arthur’s daughter Sharon has him engaged for the moment.

“Jesus drives an old mustang?” Sharon asks, repeating in question the ridiculous statement her father just made. She’s somewhat exasperated, but mostly just exhausted. Not with her father— with the situation they’re both in.

“Why wouldn’t he?” Arthur says to his grown daughter as they sit in the hospital cafeteria, while his other child, Andy, is upstairs waiting to die just before his thirty-seventh birthday. “Jesus is retro. He’s old school.”

“You don’t think Jesus would want power locks and windows,” Arthur’s daughter asks, pushing an escaped pea across the table with her fork.

Arthur holds his hands up and out in front of him. “‘Behold I say, unlock.’ And it is unlocked.”

Jesus chuckles. People think he’s so serious, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t like a good laugh. His father invented laughter after all. And Arthur’s funny, he really is, but Sharon doesn’t laugh. Andy would laugh. He has a great sense of humor. When you’re doomed from the start, you have to find a way to make life bearable. Laughter helps.

Read more of “Jesus Drives a ’65 Mustang” in Solum Journal Volume IV.