Gin-and-tonics

 Gin-and-tonics and the small matter of God 

Dateline, Paradise, late Friday afternoon: Uncle Albert and I head to church for gin-and-tonics. A long sermon described short. Words of comfort from Uncle A.

Uncle Albert was asleep in his chair, I was pretty sure. I slipped away to take a break from CNN; I’d just lain down on my bed, when I heard him pushing his walker down the hall. He rapped at my door.

     “Get dressed. We’re going to church.”

     “It’s Friday,” I said. “It’s five in the afternoon."

     “I need a drink. . . . And don’t say there’s wine on the counter and beer in the fridge.”

     “It’s not beer,” I said, “It’s . . . .”

     “I don’t care what it is, it isn’t drink. Get dressed. Look decent. We leave in fifteen minutes.” He went on into his room.

We went out.

I followed him through the loose collection of wooden tables and chairs in Paradise Pub to a table by the window that looked out onto the street. I’d gotten just gotten him seated, and I was just sitting, when our waitress arrived, carrying a tray with two gin-and-tonics and a saucer of pretzels. She was talking over her shoulder to someone I couldn’t see: “I hate that movie.

     “Anything else, sweetie?” she asked Uncle Albert. He shook his head. She went back to the bar. “It’s worse than Joe Dirt,” she said.

     Uncle Albert raised his glass, and I raised mine. We drank.

A big man in khaki shorts and a yellow golf shirt came toward us carrying a bottle of beer– Birkenstocks and an iron-gray pony tail.

     “Sit down, Alf,” Uncle Albert said. “You’ve heard me talk about Ted.”

     “Yeah.” Alf sat. He looked over my shoulder out the window. “You’re the guy that writes about religion.”

     “Sometimes,” I said.

     “You’re a believer?”

     “Sometimes.”

     “What the hell does that mean – ‘Sometimes’? In any case” – he didn’t wait for an explanation – “you’re full of shit.”

     Uncle Albert put up a hand. To me: “Alf is here to prove you’re . . . ‘full of shit’ I believe is the terminus technicus atheologicus.”

 “I’m a science guy,” Alf said. “Do you know what that means? I read science.”

“There’s no evidence,” he said. “None whatsoever.”

“Santa Claus,” he said.

“Has God ever talked to you?” he said. “Well not to me.”

“Look,” he said, “at the facts. This table is a fact. This chair is a fact. The Grand Canyon is a fact. Am I right?”

     “It would appear so.”

     “It is so,” he said. “Not a fact? God!”

It went on like that for I’m guessing twenty minutes, but it could have been ten – or fifty. Bit probably closer to the ten. The man was a storm but one that blew up then quickly blew away. He stood up suddenly, mid-sentence, and went back to the bar.

     “Thanks, Alf,” Uncle Albert called after him. He shook his head, chuckled. Uncle Albert chuckled, Alf walked to the bar.

“I didn’t acquit myself very well,” I said.

     “What do you mean?” Uncle Albert said. “You were perfect: you walked the second mile, you turned the second cheek. You let the man build his straw god and knock it down – an act of charity.

          “You’re not a man of faith anyway – so you keep saying - you’re a follower of Jesus. And the matter of Jesus was never broached.”

     “I could have broached it.”

     “When?”

     I shrugged.

Uncle Albert held up his empty glass. “Finish your drink,” he said.

     There was only a small swallow left. I swallowed it.

     “Now, bow your head,” he said.

     “What? Why?” But his head was bowed. I followed suit.

“Shall we go, then?” Uncle Albert said, looking up.

     I headed for the door, then stop top watch him crab-walk – he won’t use his walker outside the house; he leans on a thick wooden cane and walks sideways.  I watched him over to the bar I watched him say a word to Alf. I heard him say, “Bullshit” and Uncle Albert laugh.

“What did you say?” I asked outside, as I helped him into the car.

     “I told him he’d won, that we’d had a brief prayer and God had told you that you needed to become an atheist.”

In the car: “Poor Alf,” Uncle Albert said. “He may not believe in God, but he’s got to believe in demons. It was an act of charity, my young friend – it really was.”

          I started the engine. Uncle Albert pointed through the windshield. “Home, James,” Uncle Albert said. “Home.”

07.24.16