Hack, hack.

 Hack, hack. 

Sunday.

Our rector, Susan the former Miss Virginia, is absent. She’s been gone a lot lately. Uncle Albert doesn’t like that, he says, scuffling to his feet as the substitute priest walks in.

     “I don’t like this guy either,” he adds barely sotto voce: “We should go.” This guy: “Father Grace” (spelled G-R-A-Y-S, short for Grayson) Tate, a round little man, barely five-feet high, shaped like a doll-baby, round and almost perfectly symmetrical: doughy - round head; round body; round, abnormally short arms and legs. And a man of doll-like faith - never inconvenient because never curious, circular, uninterested in thought, miserably cheerful and utterly sincere. It’s the sincerity that bothers Uncle Albert the most, I think. Nobody could be so sincere that wasn’t either constantly drunk or obtuse. But:

     “We can’t go,” I say.

     “Why not?” he says.

     “We’re here,” I say. “We’re sitting here.”

     “We’re standing here,” Uncle Albert says.

And he begins coughing. “Stop it!” I said. He keeps coughing, a rasping, wooden hack; and though it sounds nothing but fake to me, we leave to sympathetic looks. To his credit, Uncle Albert keeps at it, though with less and less vigor, until we get to the car. Then, he stops. He swallows. He helps as I help him into the car, shaking my head.

     Shaking my head.

     “Look at it this way,” he says. “We’ll get home for the Cardiff – Burnley kickoff. Think of that. And we won’t have to listen to that blubber bubble blabber.”

     I had to admit it. “Well, there is that,” I said, meaning the match, not the bubble blabber.

10.03.18