That night is good Friday, the date Pastor Schudde refers to in his weekly sermons as the Friday we call Good. The cross on the altar in front of the church wears a goth veil on Good Friday. It is the furthest we are to be from God. Mom's forty day spiritual adventure is beginning to reach the finish line. My limbs are exhausted from my run yesterday. During the service all I can think about is Renae Holiday. All I can think about is David Best making out with my ex-girlfriend even though she make accusations earlier that when they dated Freshman year she only kissed David once.
David is acting like there is no animosity whatsoever. He smiles. He says that he's looking forward to going over to Debbie's house on Easter because Renae swears that she makes one mean ham.
Christ is letting his son die because I am a horndog. Because I am a sinner. Because on my own I am fucked.
I still have Depeche Mode's songs of Faith and Devotions lodged in my head.
***
He finds himself walking by himself, having father son
sit downs with apiary cluster of molecules. Ma asks him what he is doing. Ma is
iterating over and over again that it is no ones fault. He is blaming himself.
He keeps repeating that the costume, the secret identity was his idea. That his
son could have had an successful career as an accountant, as a criminal defense
lawyer, as a police man, as an all-state tackle had it not been for his Calvin Coolidge
induced notion of justice. He is senile.
He is lost. He is losing his balance. He is tottering back and forth. He is
losing his balance. He is looking at the crater of earth where they found him, the
thatch of earth carved by a galactic Moses.
The voice of his partner for over forty years
reverberating in far off streams, his chest, a tin thud, an ache, a numbness, a
swallow, he lets go, thinking it was all his fault, splattering cold into arid
the Kansas soil, his fault all along.
The mother scream. The father now gone to be with the son.
***
The bullfrog baritone of Grandpa Slam halts me after the Good Friday service. There are pews all around us. Grandpa Salm is not my biological grandfather but is my aunt’s father and who lives in town so we always refer to him as grandpa. Grandpa who always talks using the words “that them there,” Grandpa who retired from Keystone after 40 years and sat down next to me when I was elven years old at his retirement party at Uncle Larry and Aunt Linn's and told me by way of slapping his roast-beef textured palm across my leg that, in life, you never get to old to learn something new each day.
When the old pastor was at our church it was requested that we leave the sanctuary in solemnity after the bible was slammed shut and a sermon on the seven last words of Christ was given from the pulpit. Now, the cross is still coated in a black doily but people are socializing, as if they know the demise of their savior is only an introit to the salvation of light that is to come.
“Hey,” Granpa Salm says, slapping my shoulder with his hand, “You gonna be going to that there Columbus trip next week.”
I nod. I tell him yes.
“I was in that there London 'bout five years ago. Took a trip with the wifey. What you do is, before you leave, go to the bank and get you a bunch of them there Kennedy halves.”
“Kennedy halves?” I ask with my eyes via an innocuous nod, not realizing at first that he is talking about half-dollars.
“Someone told me about that. I went to that them bank and got twenty dollars worth of Kennedy halves before I went over there last time. Those them there British cab drivers see go crazy over them Kennedy halves. I went ahead and tipped three of em' to the driver of the first cab we caught and he drove us all around London practically for free and told us the history and where to go eat for cheap and stuff.”
Midway through his soliloquy I realize that he is talking about half-dollars with JFK's visage implanted on them.
“Anyway,” Granpa Salm continues, grabbing me by the arm as if for a crutch.
“You gonna have a little bit of free time when you are over in that-there city to get a little shopping in?” Grandpa Salm inquires, the Bullfrog yawping. I verbally assent and watch as he reaches into his top shirt pocket behind his portals of prayer and takes out a pencil and what appears to be a ten dollar bill. Fully expecting additional souvenir largesse I begin to congregate my modesty inside my head, especially since I don’t know Granpa Salm all that well, especially since I am not blood related, especially since neither my aunt or her brother have given him any blood-line grandsons, just granddaughters.
“Granpa Salm I…”
I am thwarted by his deep monotone in mid-sentence. He writes something on the slip of paper and then squeezes the right angle near my elbow and forearm again.
“When you are over there and you have yourself just a little bit of free time I want you to stop for me at this department store they have over there called Boots.”
“Boots?” I reiterate, in question form.
“It’s a drug store chain. Like your Walgreens is over here now. They are all over the city. You can’t miss them.”
Grandpa Salm relinquishes his grip on my arm. He picks up a blue hymnal from the pew he is standing in and begins to write the name on the back of the piece of paper.
“Now,” He says, as if he is getting ready to introduce somebody important at the local VFW. “What I need you to do for me is this. I need to you to go to one of them-there Brooks drug stores and pick me up three of them Wilson razors. I bought them when I was over there and I have never had a shave like that since. Think you can do that for me. That’s Wilson’s razors, the name of which is written inside the paper there.”
He hands me the money coiled in the paper with an additional nod jutting from his head.
“Remember, that’s Wilson’s razors. Best damn-der shave I ever did had.”
I wonder if Granpa Slam realizes that he just technically cursed while in church on Good Friday.. Now it feels like I have an assignment. In addition to finding the girl of my dreams, I am to find a three pack set of razors for Grandpa Salm.
That night when I get home after chruch the telephone reverberates. My sister answers and then yelps out my name in a vindicating manner. I pick up down stairs only to be escorted with my sister clicking the phone on the other end and a voice asking for my name in the stunted fashion that I will come to associate with creditors and telemarketers someday.
I tell her yes. Yes she can.
No comments:
Post a Comment