Before Winter

Outside is missionary-white stucco and a Virgin Mary statue.  But, inside are vaulted ceilings and widow's peak archways.  It's stone and stunning as mosaic light streams through stained glass windows.  The pastor stands at his podium, and speaks in his West Virginian drawl.  And when he speaks, his voice sounds raspy, like a scratched record.  He's talking about Jesus Christ and the apostles, about missed opportunities and the river's ebb.  And he says that Paul, speaking to a jailer, asks "Where is Timothy?"  And the jailer responds, "You did not hear?"  And Paul did not.  "Timothy has been dead for three months."

And the white-haired pastor, keeps chanting the phrase, "Come before winter," and it's harsh the way he says it.  "Come before winter," he says.

I call him, when I'm in London.  "I'm coming," I tell him on his answering machine.  The next day she calls back.  Faye, in her hoarse whisper, asks, "You did not hear?"  "No," I tell her, "I did not."  For three months, my uncle has been dead.  And my bowling-ball gut drops down two stories, rupturing the polished wood floor.

"Come before winter," and the pastor's words spring back and forth, from one stone-cold wall to the other.  And I'm out of place and I don't belong here.

There's the Christian twins with their white turtlenecks and curly bouffants, gold-chain necklaces and cross pendants, who carry clipboards and smile, and you can't tell one from the other.  Four church members stand, two men and two women.  They carry gold-plated trays, Jesus' flesh and blood.  The holy communion.  And wafer sticks to the roof of my mouth and sweet grape juice slips down the back of my throat.

The Majorcan and the Garden Shed

A portrait painted by the Majorcan

London's cool to the bone.  It's the trendy and the hip with posh accents and Top-Shop nonsense.

It's fun and cultured and somewhat pretentious with pub-crawl ambiance and bad British teeth and tea time (which probably contributes to bad British teeth) and distinction and colonization and Manifest Destiny and just a whole bunch of scrawl.

I take the Metro from Picadilly to Wimbledon, get off, Oyster card in hand.  There's a lot of young white people and there's the flower guy outside the station.  There's the expensive grocery store that I'm boycotting and the line of narrow houses, a kid on a scooter and a public bus.

It's the narrow house with the metal planters that Robert calls the "silver caskets."  Inside the house are a bunch of rocks in drawers and cats on prowl.  The Majorcan artist is in the garden (*side note: the Majorcan artist is always in the garden).  Albert has a twitch, smiles too wide, and smells like primer.  His work is strictly portrait and he's in the garden, painting.  I walk to the back of the yard, past the chicken coop to Albert's studio, a converted garden-shed.  I knock on the door just to say, "I'm here."  He shows me his masterwork in progress, naked clawing bodies desperately stretching across three large canvases.  The bodies have dark under eyes and ugly mouths and they look at you.

"Fantastic," I tell him and go inside the main house, open a cider and sit at the kitchen table, thinking about the ghosts in the house and what's for dinner.
Later that night, Albert and I make crepes, drunk on cider and white wine.