Alan Sincic

We figure the Mississippi in him makes him odd as he is. Billy Dean Baker. The Dean the tail the Mama tied to that kite of a name to give it a flourish. Sign of the South. Only we’re Florida and Florida ain’t the South. Suburban people’s what we are. Nobody got a southern accent. Nobody got a coon dog, coop of chickens, Stars and Bars up over the rail of the porch. A slab of cement no bigger than a beach towel, that’s what we got for a porch -- a Ranch House they call it so you can pretend you bought yourself, not a plot of sand, but a spread with a bunkhouse and a corral and fifty head of Angus.

But you go with what you got, no? Houses all Leggo-ed up outta cinder block, box after box abubble with the flesh and the blood of the big and the small, the screens breathing out a bounty of Pinesol and chicken pot pie, diapers and hairspray, bacon in the bite of the flame, Tabu on the breast of the lover, semen in the damp of the sheet. A fertile people is what we are, who flavor the air with the Jiffy Pop and the Vick’s Vapo-rub, the Marlboro Light with the menthol tip, the stir of the coffee and the steam of the iron and the lemony fresh of the Fab in the cuff and the sleeve and the collar. By increments we conquer the land. With every breath the bloom of the backhoe and the dredge, the diesel and the road tar, the dog poo and the cedar mulch and the bug spray and -- from out the far grove, where the wind winnows, and rakes, and rakes again -- the blossom of the orange. We string the wash across a line we draw at random in the air. It vibrates in the breeze! In the sun it sings! And so go the days of the harvest, and every breath a bonus, and we gather is what we do, gather at the ready, make ready for the Lord to bless the whatever we happen to happen upon. Behave, right? Behave and prosper.

But not Billy. Not much of a behaver, Billy. Black the shoes, the socks, the suit he wears on the Sabbath and all the days between. Every damn day from the day he first appears. Even in the worst of the heat he works his way from shop to shop, steps out of the blaze, shuffles up a tract, gives it a shiver and then lays it, like you lay a flower, into the hand of whoever. A silent proffer. A holy aloha. On stationary size of a gum wrapper, and a single fold and -- aside from the cross he scrivens on the cover -- blank. You think what the hell is this? Flip it open. On the inside a message of a single word or two, or three, and lettered by hand, and off a pen with a nib delicate as the quill of a dove. Behold. Or Hearken. Or He cometh.

Wicked clever. Who’s gonna spurn a hand-written whisper from a emissary of God? Not that we take it serious in the sense of lo and behold, but hey. Fella got a killer pitch. Go where the people go. Shadow the sinners.

And charming. Refreshingly direct’s the way Lingelbach, chair of the Parish Committee, Lingelbach of Lingelbach’s Auto Body, puts it. “A go-fer for the Lord.”

“A digger,” says Shepard, butcher emeritus at the Kash n’ Karry.

“Not a day goes by you don’t see him in the stir of it all,” says Davis, who sells the Eureka Roto-Matic Clutter-Buster out the back of his station wagon. “It’s out the corner of the eye you catch it, that extra little something. Brand. Brand Awareness.”

Me? I’m a salesman, or so I say. World Book Encyclopedia. Door to door. The whole of the world in a box no bigger than a bassinet, and all for a nickel a day. You talk it up is what you do, is what I tell ‘em I’m doing, the people at Field Enterprises who ship the books, but so rapt am I with the pitch, waxing on about the moons of Jupiter and the siege of Vicksburg and the dance of the corpuscle at the door of the alveoli, I lose sight of the sale. So keen to sell the World I forget to sell the Book. That, and (can I help it if I’m thirsty?) the drinking.

Anyway. Anywho. Brand. Nobody a better judge of brand than a man like Davis, who spreads the wonders of the Roto-Matic out beyond the bounds of the county and over the curve of the earth, the Zip-Clip Swivel Top of the Roto-Matic Super babbled out by radio, by word of mouth, by little rectangular adverts at the back of the classifieds, by basket upon basket of Bakelite swag – shoehorns and pocket combs and penny whistles ablazon with the logo of Eureka and the slogan, in fluorescent green, six degrees of suction. Every Sunday at dawn he sets out with a satchel-full of circulars to sing the praise of the vibra-shaker rug-sucker. From house to house he lumbers, up the drive or cross the wet grass to peel off another glossy he drops – shhh -- into the gap between the door that breaths (the screen ashiver) and the door that don’t.

It’s Davis who makes the case for Billy Dean. Picture it now, he says, or seems to be saying: the very person of Billy from top to bottom a study in black. Black the shadow, the double of the man, swinging out the solid pillar of Billy to swipe the bumpers of the Fords and the Chevys at the take-out window of the Burger Chef, to pluck at the pickets of the library fence, to slither round the parking meters south of Main and the drunks in the alley back of Booties. Onto the brain the burn, the brand.

What the hell is he selling? Who’s to say? Something heavenish, right? And what could be better than that? He’s got a way, a way with a difference, and we got a way, a Methodist way, but that don’t mean the way of the we is the only way. He calls the Holy Ghost a vapor, reads from out the Book of Billy, ends a prayer with a shout of Do it! -- but hey. It’s a method. And people of the method’s what we are, right? From out the chaos carve a space, a silence into which the voice of God whispers. So be it! Maybe God got a method in the person of Billy, and what with the crease in the cuff, the tuck in the shirt, the T-square at the shoulders, of a certain he’s Bible enough, and what with the regular preacher run off with the wife of the groundskeeper, and the sub (a part-timer with a stable of rent-a-scooters at the beach) waylaid with a tibia broke in a moment of hubris (Vespa not the Italian word for hand-stand) we take a chance.

That first Sunday we put him in the pulpit, we can already see the simmer. We got us, on top of the usual – the old-timers and the Bible-toters and the families with the kids in the costume of the day -- a sprinkle of souls from off the highways and the byways around town. Billy Dean been out and about now for a month. Mute as a moon the whole of a season, but now? Hear ye hear ye. The stragglers gather. From out round the perimeter they come -- the outdoorsy types, the affable, the hungry for a change of venue -- and each with a tract of their own, hand-lettered by the man in black, served up in the flesh, in the platter of the palm, person-to-person as they say on the news. The flagman on the roadcrew and the teller at the drive-through, the meter maid and the milkman and the driver of the backhoe, the Popsicle Man and the Avon lady, the spinster who tends to the bed of the flowers and the wife who pins the wash to the raggedy sky, here now with the sacred paper in hand, or crumpled in the pocket of the jeans, or tucked in the Lycra band of the Slimfit hose, or stuffed in the cuff of the boot.

I get it. I get it. The rootless. The restless. The nameless ache in the heart of the vagrant. I mean, even me, who –

Anyway. They finger the program. Shuffle the butt to freshen the view. Larson the Choir Director and his wife Gerta handle the invocation, the please rise for the hymn, the announcements. She reads a list of volunteers and, from off a blue card with a picture of a cartoon kid on a red and white-striped rocket, the slogan Let’s Blast Off! and Join the March of Dimes! You got slots in the cards, a slot for every planet, six little holsters for the sixty cents, the shine of a dime a sign of progress.

“Make your dime a satellite,” she reads. Gerta a beauty in her youth but nowadays a bit too – like the skin of a pudding – crispy at the fringe. As she tilts her head to look up at the card, the light strikes. Shaves off a decade or so. She feels it, the sun. Holds the card out, away from herself, like the Beauty holds the Ace of Hearts so, just so, steady now, as the drums roll and the trick-shooter takes aim.

The choir serves up a pocky version of Praise God from whom all blessings flow, then it’s Grantham. “Please remain standing,” he says. A stubby fella, Grantham, curt as a cork in his two-button center vent Dixie Weave Bengaline Tropical Suit with the 2,600 ventilating pores and the reversed plait trousers. The Lord’s Prayer. Amen.

Billy Dean steps out from behind the curtain that frames the choir. Crosses to the pulpit. Tall. Taller still with the black derby affixed to the black-as-a-blot-of-shoe-polish pompadour he ferries from place to place. He doffs the hat. Holds it over his heart. Makes as if to pave, with the palm of the other hand, the cowlick spiking out that silhouette of his, but no. Stops. Straightens. Leave it be.

Deep the voice. Dark.

“There’s a one among you got a secret, a secret you carry in the hollow of the trunk of the tree of that body of yours, and God got his ear, pressed his ear right up onto that trunk so’s he can hear inside there that secret whispering away. So I made a promise to God, a promise I fulfill today. I got me a secret of my own. I slept with a woman, another man’s wife, and let me tell ya, thrill is not the word for it. Did I love her? No. Did I hunger for the touch of them hands of hers? Sure enough I did. Picture it. Picture it now.”

We never heard a crowd so silent before, of a sudden, like fish in the dark of the sea at the sight of the bathysphere.

“Next week I got me another confession, a secret smoking like a coal in the tinder of that soul of mine. I’m trusting you not to breath a word of it.”

Down onto the Bible he claps the one hand. Up springs the other with the palm out.

“Swear.”

Everybody shifts, like folks at the depot hear the far whistle and straighten. Assemble themselves.

“Everybody swear.”

Up go the hands.

“Let that be the sacred bond between us. Amen.”

And then off he goes. Out the side door.

There’s some say I lost heart when I lost my girl, that the consolation drink affords killed in me the spirit to carry on, but I say liquor’s a gift of God. Facsimile of fire for them with a heart of ice. That’s what I say.

Come Sunday we gotta clack open the folding chairs to handle the overflow. We lose a batch of regulars, sure, the folks who redden at the sight of a sin, but the rabble – no, call ‘em the rubble, the remainders, the factory thirds – more than make up for the loss.

The Larsons emcee the invocation and the hymn and the Be Seated. Silence. The moment of stone. Billy Dean rises. Steps up to the pulpit.

“Wonder, if you will,” he says as he pulls the set of pliers from his coat pocket and holds them high, “how I come to be among you.”

All eyes on the pliers. Again a silence. A room to wonder. He gives the pliers a click. Click-click.

“I stole a car to get me here.”

Careful, like you pocket a gun, he pockets the pliers.

“In the back of the car a baby seat, but no. I ain’t the kind of man to steal a baby.”

He looks down as he slowly, side to side, gives his head a shake. The memory stirs him. Then back again. Big the voice.

“Flame enough to father a baby, sure, but Lord knows, I don’t got the guts to raise a baby. None of them babies they tell me I gotta… enough. Only so much sin to fit inside a single sermon. In seven days again I speak.”

Out the door he goes.

Sunday after Sunday the random assemble. Is it any wonder we pitch a tent to cover the spillage of people out the doors, down the steps, in a gather round the windows? Sermon after sermon. Shock after shock.

“Some of the very children you see before you -- here in this room, or out back on the swing, or perched in the oak, or down the block there shooting baskets – I fathered. I ain’t the kind of man to sully the name of the mother, the mothers. Not the kind of man to kiss and tell. But, as the Good Book says, let there be light. So I confess. I alone confess. And to all the women who took advantage of my weakness, I say Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. A man of God is what I am. I forgive.”

And out the door he goes.

Week after week, right? By the end of the summer the whole of the world at a wobble. Billy this. Billy that. It’s Billy Dean says we gotta get us a baptistry. Out the door before we can even wrestle up a word of – what? Of warning?

They call us the barefoot Episcopalians on account of our frugal demeanor. Sprinkle. That’s what we do. The Bible-beaters, the Baptists, they’re the ones – down in the hollow at the bend in the river, Reverend Chubby in his rubber waders with the faithful all flowered out around him in the stir of the current, in the smocks and the tees and the shirts of white cotton – they’re the ones with the arms up and the head thrown back and the hands all open to heaven at the flash and the bang of the sermon, and weeping, and wailing with the buckle and the sway. Commuters on a roller coaster’s what they are. Surely the Lord’s got better things to do than --

But then again, maybe we got it wrong. Maybe Billy Dean the one who knows. Who sees. Pays a rancher to weld him – from out a culvert of corrugated steel – a cistern. Big round as a hot-tub, and shoulder-height, so’s the only way to come and go is up the ladder he fashions from a length of rope. The Sunday we get the cistern in place he speaks a word or two by way of a sermon and then, without so much as a play ball or ignition or gentlemen start your engines, over the lip and into the drink. We wait. Bubbles. A bit of fizz. Wait. A good minute or so – boom. Up out the water the head. Ragged as a terrier the shock of hair. Gives it a shake.

Glory be he says to himself, over and over, as he hauls himself up, and out, and over the sloshy rim of the barrel. Stands at the foot of the altar with the elixir of God dripping off the collar and the cuff and the sleeve. Glory be says he, and bam – out the door.

The next Sunday like an altar call the call, not from out a season of grief or a surge of the Holy Spirit, but like a carnival barker beckons the one and the all to partake of the marvel.

“Every damn dip or fold or crevasse of that body of yours gonna burn someday. That’s what the water’s for. The water to quench the fire.”

The idea is you do the dunking of your own accord, with nobody there to usher you into and out the water. And in your workaday clothes, and with the purse in the crook of the elbow, and with the wallet with the chits and the money and the pics of the kiddies, and the pockets full of nickels, and the doggy biscuit and the jackknife and the half-pack of Tums in the foil wrapper. Only a handful of takers, but it’s enough to set the tone, to give the spectacle a shot of random drama.

“This here body of water’s the answer to them who feel the flesh, the fire in the flesh.”

Not the words of the Bible but close. Close enough. An improv, see? Fresh. And on the fly. It’s like the kind of believing that buoys us along is bigger now, and of a different shape, a vessel more beholden to the tide than to any spin of the wheel to the starboard or port. You’d think a ship without a rudder would be a hazard but, truth be told, exhilarating’s what it was. We who skirt the coast now carried out to sea.

If only the sea weren’t such a changeable thing. In a churn beneath the surface, that’s what the sailors say. By the end of the summer we see the signs. Billy Dean the seer, but of a sudden now, something uncertain about the vision. Steps out into the fire of the day hatless, and stares up at the sun as if to say, to those of us behind the hat brim and the umbrella and the shade of the sycamore, Blind! Behold the blind! The holes he tears in the pockets of the pants and the blazer so as to, as he calls it, liberate the silver. The meals he leaves uneaten, the breakfast combo immaculate, not but a nibble at the crescent of the melon, at the crust of the bread. Sharpened is what he is. In the bones of the cheek we see it, and the hollow eye, and the arms and the legs in a whittle away to the needful thing, the needful and no more, like the poles of tent.

Billy Dean got a dog – this the story he told – and set out to tame him. But this dog he don’t want to be tamed. He likes the wild. Give him something to bite? He bites. Give him something to harry? He harries. Dog got a taste for the flesh, that’s what Billy Dean says. Born with a taste.

“What would you do,” he says to us, “to tame such a dog as this?”

He holds up a bone. Sturdy. White. Thick as a billy club.

“Dog wants a bone.”

Gives the bone a shake.

“But no. No.”

Like you tap the rim of the drum with the stick, he tap-tap-taps at the pulpit with the bone.

“No. Dog don’t want the bone. Dog wants the meat.”

Taps harder.

“No. Not the meat. Not the bone, not the meat, no – ”

Upside the pulpit he slams the bone.

“— the flesh!”

Maybe it’s the bone a baton in the hand, or behind him there, the high window at the rear of the choir. Slice of a sky. Maybe it’s the clouds, black with a bounty of rain, or the shift of the light from a gold to a gray, or the crackle of the rafters that wrestle with the pull of the whole damn planet, but in the silence of the crowd I hear, not wonder or astonishment, but – what would be the Billy word? – dread?

“What do you do with a dog like that? You don’t. Dog is a dog. Dog don’t know any better. But we do. We got a hunger for – who the hell knows? In the hold of the heart a hurt.”

Up onto his heart he claps a hand. Clenches. Grapples, like it was a fruit you pluck or a bolt you loosen or a gig you wrestle from out the flesh.

“Here. Here in the hold of the heart. So make ready when you meet the Maker. Be ready with a word when the moment comes.”

Out he goes.

Not but a day later the sky darkens, the air thickens, the rain falls. Height of the hurricane season. We get word of a fire at the wax museum outside of Sarasota. Billy Dean borrows a bread truck offa the Corbins, drives a half a day to survey the rubble, dickers with the owner and, from out the figures who evaded the worst of it, requisitions up a squad of the saved and the semi-saved. Shirley Temple a pillar of pudding. Teddy Roosevelt a melt of Swiss and Brick and Gorgonzola. Jesse James with the barrel and the trigger and the fidgety finger all fizzled away into a stub of sulfur. Got a look on his face like You gotta be kidding me -- the eyes flaring up at the Law, twist of the lip a liquidy smear, the Stetson a puddle of paraffin oozing off the shell of the skull to gather, like a tumor, up onto the collar of that muddy duster of his.

It’s me Billy taps to play the mule. He sees in me a ready hand, right? A mate in the making. Not that he knows the wreck I’ve made of it, this life of mine, but he hears in the prayers I whisper a weight. A burden of breath he calls it. Got a junker’s eye for the broke button and the blazer frayed, the scuff of the shoe, twitch of the hand, scent of stale beer in a vapor at the sleeve.

Be patient’s what the Bible says, right? God got a plan for that lily of the field he lightens with a shiver of sun, that trucker he blinds in the blaze of the rain, that girl he nudges offa the curb and into the face of the semi – a plan. He quickens and He kills. He picks and He chooses. Out of all the children made a choice. Coulda been anybody, the bastard. Bastard. Didn’t have to be that girl of mine.

Billy backs the van over the curb and up the walk to the door of the church. We hurry on account of the weather. The bodies in the back of the van wobble in tune to the pitch and the yaw of the wind. Gum together in the heat to where – like Jujubes in a box – you gotta lever ‘em loose, pry ‘em out the van one by one. A one-eyed Edison. A one-legged Pocahontas. A Custer minus the cap and the curls and the curry comb of the beard, decapitate Custer with a torso in a warp, as if looking back, back, to see what become of the head.

It’s up there somewhere, the sun, in the wicked billow and the silent boom of the white and the black and the gray. Four, five o’clock of a Saturday. On the front page of the Sentinel’s a map of the state with a ribbon of red up over the belly. Astride the ribbon’s a big black button of a hurricane that rides the ribbon from the Keys to the Cape. The wind kicking up. You turn to face away – to block, with the broad of the back, the sting of the rain, and bam -- blast of wind to the starboard. You turn. Another blast – off the pavement a ricochet. A face-full of chill.

We double-team the bodies – me at the bow, churning backward up the steps to the sanctuary, Billy Dean the rudder nudging left and right to clear the handrail and the doorjamb and that fat slab of the door. Upright in the rain is he, lank as a Lincoln. Powder black the hat, the suit, the shoes. A model of dignity, see, that’s Billy Dean, no matter how silly the ceremony -- serving up snippets of God-talk from out a ham radio, stepping out the pulpit into a tank of water, crawling up under the bleachers at the big game to scriven, into the knotty pine with a jackknife, the names of the Cherubim and the Seraphim.

Some they say, Billy says, the Good Book says, have entertained angels unawares. DiMaggio bent as a bolt of taffy. The face of Cleopatra a schmear of butter. Jefferson all crusty up the shank and the hip and the shoulder to the fringe of the singey wig, the port side a clabber of wax, the Declaration of Independence a cinder in the putty of the hand.

We ferry the poor bastards up the aisle to the altar. Them with the pedestal intact we wriggle into position – back to the cross, face front to the crowd, a V formation, a flying wedge. The cripples we haul up onto what remains of their feet – the glossy blob of paraffin, the tin bone of the ankle all blisty with a tallow the color of bisque. Upside a sturdy partner we prop them, or scissor them over the back of a pew, or, in the case of Marie Antoinette, commission a mop – shaggy up under the shoulder -- to serve as a crutch.

Above us the bones of the chapel – the steep of the shingle roof on a buttress of beams, the ribs on the inside rising up to claim a wedge of heaven. Bones you can hear when the wind booms and the trees bend and the bell clangs.

“See that shiver of light?” He stands at the open door of the sanctuary. He shouts. The air – that’s all it is, really, when you think about it – tears at the loose fabric of the suit, streaks out over the silhouette, shudders the hat that harbors the head. “That’s God pondering what to do next.”

The clouds ripen with a lightening, not the slash, the split and the boom you get with your workaday weather, but a reverberation, a riot on the rebound from cloud to cloud.

“That’s God pondering how to make it right.”

“God?” I say. “But God – ”

“Shhh. Listen. He got a thought. God got himself a thought.”

“A thought?”

“But you gotta shake it loose.”

“But – ”

“We gotta – that’s what prophesy is – gotta make it more than just a thought.”

I step back, out of the blast, bump the lobby table, reach back to anchor myself to something earthy. The table skids, upends the offertory envelopes, the stack of hymnals, the red pleather autograph book and the placard Visitors and the wicker fingerbowl fat with souvenir pencils no bigger than a pinkie, and embossed with the motto Come Unto Me, and leaping over the lip of the bowl to chatter off into the dark.

I know to wait for the word. I can tell by the pause, the hand in a half-raise, he’s got more to say.

“Go fetch me the ladder,” he says. “The big one.”

When I return with the ladder he’s out round the side of the chapel where we park the dumpster. It’s the dumpster give you a boost up onto the eaves, but the wind’s caught the lid and snapped it, clean off the hinges. Flung it halfway across the Piggly Wiggly lot.

It’s not like I gotta get the ladder, but who am I to judge? Me the go-fer. It’s him the one with the vision.

It takes the two of us to prop it – drive the feet down into the sod, torque the top upside the roof.

“Listen now!” he says. Breathy like a whisper but loud like a shout. Over my shoulder slings an arm. My neck he hugs in the hinge of the elbow. “Listen!”

The ladder rattles. The sky rolls round to slam us sidewards.

In my ear now, fierce: “It’s the word of God!”

“But the Bible – ”

“That was then. This is now. The here and the now. The Bible don’t got a say about the here and the now.” He mounts the ladder and motions for me to follow. “Come fetch me up. Over the rain gutter here. Jesus made a mark. We gotta make a mark.”

“But Jesus – ”

“I hear the voice of Jesus calling.”

I’m thinking, Florida Jesus ain’t the same as Mississippi Jesus. Florida Jesus got – it’s hard to say. Better manners? But that ain’t the word. You know them old photographic plates – daguerreotypes? How they pose the people all pressed up into place – the shirt collar crisp, the silent eye, the hands and the face and the hair at a hover, at a halt? That’s the kinda Jesus we favor, we Florida people, who tie the shoes and mow the lawn and sing in the shower the jingle for Tang and Chevy and Jell-O. Not this kinda Jesus, all herkie jerky in a hurry to hustle the faithful into heaven, whisper hell in the ear of the heathen, pocket the moon and snuff the sun in the palm of the hand.

It’s Billy got the ears to hear. It’s Billy got the brass to answer back. I don’t hear the voice, I don’t got the brass, but who am I to say? I don’t got the fervor, but what about them poor bastards back at the altar, the beauty of the body all broken or burnt or slurried away, them aching to elevate that body of theirs, to ascend, not to heaven, no, but to a height of a fit for a face, and above the bitter earth, and the head high, and upright the self. Right. Righteous. Ripe. That’s what I mean. That’s what I’m talking about. If he’s wrong he’s wrong, but even if he’s wrong, it’s the right kind of wrong. Grab that God by the collar. Give him a shake.

It was later I tell everybody I don’t know what the hell happened. Inside the whole time I say, that’s where I was. Be a behaver, right? Obey the rain. Defer to the wind. A behaver’s what I am.

And a liar. I’m a liar. I clamored up behind him is what I did. I’m the one who steadied the ladder as he hauled up onto the shingles, clawed his way up the slope to the steeple, me the one called to -- the one thing he couldn’t do for himself – bear witness. I can still see him rise, upright now, his back to the steeple in the shock of the rain and the thump of the wind, the pines booming away, the sky a solid mass of cloud. The mouth moving. The hands in a harmony with the words – adamant, emphatic, like a sculptor shaping a face, like from out the feral air you fashion a thought. And then --

If I was a Baptist I’d be – right about now – cranking up into a crescendo of bully and bluster and – rant is what I’d do, rant about the fury of a God who signs his name with the tip of the tornado.

Struck by lightening’s what the paper said. And me the one to hear the blast (is what I told the paper), and me the one to run outside to find him, face-up over the broken back of the hedge, the hat blown halfway across the lot, the suit smoking black as a charcoal briquette. An accident. That’s the way to say it, right? That’s the way they wrote it. Working on the roof is what he was doing. Not a everyday thing exactly, but close enough to count as – what would you call it? The usual. For Florida, right? A Florida thing.

They say the truth is in the telling, but I say the truth is in the seeing. What I saw was this. He said his say. To the Maker he said – I couldn’t (what with the gleeful scree of the wind) tell what it was, the words, but by the tilt of the face and the pitch of the shoulders and the open hand you brandish with the palm in the upward position, I could tell it was a bid for an answer.

I know. Right. The flash and the bang. Like from out a cartoon or a cheesy movie. Out with a bang. And helluva funeral. Headstone with the motto A Gentleman and a Scholar even though (we knew by then) a fraud. A faker. Not a hint of kin, no next of kin, no record of the name in the records. A bell without a clapper, right? That’s what he was.

The baptistry we sold to a fella in the market for what he called a outdoor spa, the mannequins we sold to a Miami House of Horrors, the flyers we ditched, we – but no. Not me. The we being the boys, the men that run the worship, and not a we that would include (not now, not anymore) the person of me.

Billy and me. That’s the we, the secret we, and me the honorary next of kin. A fool is what he was, but who knows what drives a man up a roof and into a gale? Maybe you gotta bully God into being, press for an answer and lo, and behold, you get your answer in the blow of the ax, the strike of bright in the black of the sky, the cry of a kind that’ll split the timber and shiv the body off the bones. The shriven heart. The vesture rent. I get it. I get it. To them who got brass enough to harry heaven, the rage of the Maker’s a boon.

A boon, but me? For me? When I troll the neighborhood for mothers eager to give their babies a boost above the rusty bike and the yippy dog and the dirt that halos the door knob, when I cinch the tie and knock at the door and don the smile, when I draw from my breast pocket a tiny facsimile, Volume A of the World Book Encyclopedia (piggy bank no bigger than a pack of smokes) and lay it on the coffee table so’s to woo the housefrau into a forward-into-the-future tilt of the body at the point of sale, do I wonder, and in the night do I wonder, and when the bottom of the shot glass shivers, and the stars army up over the horizon, do I wonder — out of all the impromptu catechi and idiot ritual and angelical flim-flam — what Billy was asking?

No. No. To hell with the question. What I wonder is am I worthy? Will I ever be worthy? Oh Billy Dean, oh patron saint of beggars and frauds, who empties the hand to hail the heavens, who hears in a heat from out the heart of a sun a voice, who the Maker with a ripsaw ravishes the moment the question ascends, what must I do to show myself worthy of such a fearsome answer?