The Brooklyn Dodgers, 1884 - 1957

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 The Brooklyn Dodgers, 1884 - 1957 

I was staring at my toast and coffee, trying to bring them into focus. Uncle Albert looked up from the newspaper. “NASCAR,” he said, “it says here, ‘will not permit damaged race cars to return to the track this season unless repairs can be made on pit row within a tight window.’ Picture that,” he said. The toast and coffee were beginning to shimmer into focus, but I risked looking up. He was smiling, if grimly.

     “The Lord be praised!” he shouted, letting the paper slide through his broken fingers and raising his hands above his ears, waving them back and forth.

     I looked back down, reaching for my coffee. My broken fingers brushed the handle of the mug and I managed to grasp it. It said, I saw, when I got it to throat level – it said, 

It must have belonged at one time to Roz’s dad. Sam was a Dodgers fan until they left Brooklyn.

“Dr. Feight,” I said, “asked the other day if I went to church. I did, I said. He did, too, he said. He called himself an ‘unbelieving Episcopalian.’ Is that what we are?”

     I realized as soon as I’d raised it, this was not a question I should be asking, because I should know the answer, at least for myself; and Uncle Albert couldn’t truly know it for me. Plus, we weren’t either of us Episcopalians, though that’s the church, St. Jude’s Episcopal, that we’ve been going to, since he came down from Paradise to watch over me – more than a month ago now. That’s where we’d heard Clara Bow preach, or watched her preach, and where we’d heard another sermon about when Andrew and another disciple of John the Baptist ask Jesus where he is staying and he says, “Come and see”; but we’re not told what they see.

     My question didn’t seem to bother Uncle Albert as much as it did me. Just as I was saying – at least in my muddled head, trying to move it into my mouth and onto my tongue and lips, “Sorry. Never mind,” he said, “Sounds about right.” He had the paper back in his hands.

     “There’s a picture here,” he said, “of a guy in an orange jump suit and white motorcycle-type helmet, holding a fire extinguisher.”

02.09.17