The Government of Nature

The Touched

45 The Touched He was the neighbor who washed his car in the rain, in sunshine, on Sundays to spite the pious, in playtime when our balls hid under his precious whitewalls, and when it rained he wore his coat, the old rubber kind, a balloon with big buckles to match the buckles on his galoshes, and the gold of his Cadillac was God’s way of lighting everything around him so he could be safe from neighbors who called him strange. The soldier’s metal in his head matched the metal of his car, certified him as our own crazy black man, our own cbm, one of those people who was touched, who would do anything, who could snap the way a branch caves in under snow, we watching the way children do, not knowing men who are touched were made to know hard fingers and probing hands can shape life, lead them to war’s killing fields where souls who live through the dying come home to a freedom in dry spaces between rain drops, unlit eyes of the ignorant counting every move, blind to what makes saints. ...