Chicken Dreaming Corn

Chicken Dreaming Corn

Chicken Dreaming Corn mouth, drew on the dead leaves. "Because I ask what they owe. This"—he lifted the cigar to the air—"is good business.What does it cost? Cheap. What does it give?"He sucked at the stub again. "Time to think. Furniture? It takes fourteen months to pay and is only a place for a man to put his fat behind." Alone he stood, rocking on his feet, watching the silent stone. The angelsof the Catholic Cemetery hovered rigid on tombs, hands folded in piety. Only three Pastor Golds wereleft of his cache, the last ones fashioned by his friend before his legs gave way and he'd crumpled to the ground among roses. The wine-making business had been a bust—Pablo barely managed to fill enough bottles to inebriate his friends again—and Davidhad refused to move to the country to live among"rednecks," even after Hannah told him she was heading off to teacher's college in Atlanta.Young Pastor was content to pick up where Pablo had left off and roll cigars on Dauphin. Even so,his hands were clumsy and he resorted to using molds to shape the smokes. "Nobody does it like my father anymore,"he lamented. "So," Morris acknowledged, "say all the sons." A manager his own ungratefulAbe was now at Carnival Arts 203 bastard they call me," Morris said to Pastor, holding the nub of a stogie, cold, between his fingers. "First, I am their friend, nowabastard.Why?" Heput the cigar to his 'A ao4 CHICKEN DREAMING CORN across the street, and he came nightly for dinner and talked about the thriving sales of the doo-dad shop. When Morris, in bed, asked Miriam whythere should be honor in selling what people did not need—Christmas lights and carnival masks and costume jewelry— she said, "He is stealing from no one and will one daymake a good woman proud." "One day? Wewilllivelike Moses to be one hundred and twenty to seethis miracle?" "Too long you made him a boy but now he's becoming a man." "Mazel tov," he answered drily. He drew again on Pastor's cigar, sensing his friend's fingertips at the leaves. Howlong might pass before he smoked it down?The cigars would eventually lose their flavor, even in Pablo's humidor presented to him byMarta. When he'd smoked the last, would there be nothing left, at all, of his friend? He cocked his ear at the noise of feet shuffling through leaves. "Not to disturb another mourner" he thought, keeping his gaze on the etched whorls of his amigo's stone: "Amorypaz" Might it be BettyGreen,who sought him out amongfinalresting places? Was she coming to apologize for her lousy, Dog River preacher who'd calledMorris"amodern daymoney-lender"because of interest on balances due? Didn't that Jeremiah-hollering son-ofa -bitch understand the meaning terms? "Mr. Kleinman?" He looked around to seeFather O'Connor galumphing toward him, face wizened as a dried apple. "Shalom, Father. Youare thinking I am lost." "Many are lost." "Myfriend, Pablo Pastor..." "Was a good Catholic. Manyyears agohe came first to me, then God sent him to you." "How we met, it was an accident, his cigars." "You gave him shoes." Chicken Dreaming Corn 205 "My children"—Morris hesitated—"they gave him the shoes." "It wasGod's holyhand, resting on his shoulder,that guided him to you." Morris fell silent. Had God's hand pulled Lillian to the darkness, Benny into the waters, his own Papa, alone and frightened, into an anonymous grave? Had it been the same hand that had grabbed at Abe's lapels and yanked him out the door to a gonifs store? "One more cigar," Morris sighed, "I would like to share with him." "Where this journey ends another one begins." "Ajourney,it is better to make with friends." "God sends us on different roads to the same home." "We have all come to Mobile." "The home where we're headed is greater than a hundred Mobiles." Morris glancedat O'Connor's fake right legpoking out from the bottom of his robe. "Another place where God laid His guiding hand," O'Connor said, noting Morris's fascination. He inched up his robe to reveala crude shaft of wood merging into a block-sized shoe. "When I was a boy,"the priest began,"in County Cork, welived on a farm. At the...