by Neal Pollack
For as I passed by and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription: TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you. God that made the world all things therein, seeing that He is Lord of Heaven and Earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands.
This is what their Bible book says proper. I snatch the soft cover from the Row A pew before this crusty-lipped child hops about and screams with the Good News at the end of our days. Heist this scripture from the cross-eyed and the stupid to read the words of Acts as written by old dark fellow Hebrews. I've freed the bound holy book and tucked it into the chest pocket of my driving shirt. Because I need the word kept close to life, as I ain't one of these just-up-from-the-Down-Deep flock, bouncing mad about the Mount's pews and aisles as the reverend preaches his sermon.
"Am I my brother's keeper, Church? Y'all come on, come on and tell me now—"
"Yes, siree, Reverend," Deacon Nate replies, "that's what it say."
"Well. Somebody been coming to Bible study like they suppose to." Reverend Jack's gray-blacks cut to the choir bandstand. "Yes, Church, Good Book tell us we're our brother's keeper, indeed. Repeat it with me: indeed. It's on us to certify he ain't strayed from Paradise or off the Mount. Book don't tell us something though, Church—cause back there in Paradise, the answer was obvious. But today we've got to ask the question. Need to get some kind of resolution before we go out and proselytize in His holy name. Uh-oh, Reverend … y'all like the sound of that fancy word now, don't you? I'll break it down for you next week—y'all remind me, Church. What I got to know now before I send y'all out to do the good works, is who is 'my brother,' Church? Hah. Who is my brother?"
The drum sergeant lets cymbals quake as his foot pounds the bass drum pedal to cover the church's silence—yes, finally, silence from the flock—raining down from both balconies. Reverend Jack's eyes switch about holes in the movie screen pictures as he wipes the ballpoint end of his nose.
"We gotta know who our brother is if He expects us to be keeping him, don't we, Church? You gotta answer soon if You expect me to look out for him on our way to Your bosom. I'm gon listen to what You tell me, whatever it might be, Lord, but You gotta tell me something soon. We had a talk, me and the Lord. Know how I tell y'all bout getting down on humble knees and praying to the Most High for guidance, and mercy, and deliverance for the wicked? This time I got down to pray and asked Him for an answer, Church. Understanding's what I was after. Do y'all hear me?"
"Amen, Reverend, " the first balcony shouts, honey mamma Eva louder than all the rest, purple shame gone from her now. "We hear ya. Go head on. "
"But Church, in His benevolent wisdom, I'm still waiting out an explanation from on High, Church. It's one of them mysteries; Lord puts um down here for us sometimes, in this maze of concrete and glass. Lays rhyming riddles in the cracks of our lives. Like when He sent His son into the shadow of darkness to withstand the temptation of Beelzebub, Church—y'all remember that? Why'd He put His One Son through such tribulation? He don't never give us no questions we can't handle though, Church. Never an answer that'll break us."
"Glory, ah-ley-lu-ya," the woman says down below before hobbling into her pew.
"He left me to think on it, amidst all this wicked darkness in the city Gomorrah. I sought for understanding, and I waited patient, Church. Is my brother the hustlers and the pimps and whores and crooks and killers scampering about like dark rats—is my brother Teddy Mann? Jesus the Son Himself kept even the most vile sinner close to Him as He spread the word of His coming. But that was back before Satan took over the living earth and the minds of the lost. Lord didn't have to think on pandemic pestilence and TechNines and poison powders in the mail and flaming terror wielded by the lost. Them Romans overran Judah long before Satan swallowed the minds of the wicked, you see. Not like now—we gotta be cautious on the Mount today. It's a good day for fellowshipping, yes it is, long as we stay cautious, Church. Y'all still with me?"
"Amen! "
Reverend Jack snatches the microphone from its stand and slides his wiggling Stacey Adams from the podium to spin inside the microphone chord's electric circle, and my camera follows him just below us, broadcasting Reverend's jig to the four corners and up above, too. The crusty-faced boy jumps wood pew to not-so-plush balcony carpet, and sweet Eva's face turns sun-kissed as she applauds, and the balcony folk praise him on high. I try to listen still. I'm patient as the flock, as the reverend beseeches us to be. No matter I may be one of those gypsy cab Jews with loss and confusion beating against my stolen holy book. Patient, because if Jesus came now I know he'd be a gold-medallion cabbie; taking folk where they asked to go because that's the job script, just waiting for his chance to save them from their requested destination. Church, don't you know that gypsy-cabbie Jesus would catch the lost way switching about those passengers' eye holes long before the ride's end?
"It's time for a cleansing, Church—a rapture—time for us to start preparing the path. As He prepped the way for us into His Father's Kingdom by shedding His own blood. We, brothers and sisters, must shed wickedness, so the city is purified for His coming. He's riding in on that pearl white horse of His, come again to destroy the most Wicked One and deliver His peace unto the chosen. Well. Y'all know I got mercy in me, Church, y'all know it—we gon go out there and give the wicked and the lost their fair chance with the two-step test. Those that pass, we gon keep them and wait for Him to ride on to the Mount and deliver us together. The rest of them, Church? Old preachers used to talk about forsaking immoral means on the way to righteousness. But when the ends we preparing for is His return, Church, I can't think of no means that qualify as immoral. Slick-tongued serpent lives a long, lavish life, if y'all let him do it. But it's time for us to go bout changing this city, getting it ready, Church. Time for lies and false righteousness and double-dealing and back-sliding and all such wickedness to be cast down from the Mount and out of the city, so we can start to make a way for salvation. Y'all hear me?"
"I hear you," I say, as Reverend's come to his main point in these tiny ears of mine. The answer rains with the heel stomping and the skin-pounding drum sergeant's celebration. Honey mamma Eva sings alleluia and jumps on the red carpet like the child in Row A, and she claps those pretty hands together, more than going through motions now.
The Reverend steps further left of the podium in the big movie screens, spinning and sliding and whirling without ever touching the chord that connects him to sound. He chants into the mic as clean sweat pours free along his brow, and the black angels sing with him. "Celebrate the Good News. Celebrate the Good News." Mount Calvary shakes with the power of His glory, and I know the path, Church.
Celebrate the Good News.
I walk toward the balcony ledge once, twice, until my waist bounces against drywall and the Good News' steel does feel so very mighty. Reverend Jack tells the truth about this, so very mighty, this message gripped in the left hand. Put it between his gray-black eyes, and the Mount is silent once again. Miracles do abound. Flock's quiet enough even for the reading of the Word hidden against my chest. Save for this bouncing boy screaming out because he ain't ready for the News like he thought he was gonna be when it was delivered all funked up in charcoal and war fatigue drummer skins and rhythm guitar strum, and those sweet black angel hymns. When it comes in silence, the Good News tears righteousness from the child until his eyes fill with yellow rot like mine. He is as lost as I was lost.
Underneath this obnoxious fear, the sound of pearl hooves sound near. Klump. Ku-lump. Since the drum sergeant must've lost his sticks, let the Good Lord's pony keep the rhythm for you. These boys is just scared is all, Church—don't pay them mind. Just ain't used to Good News without screaming in exaltation, alleluia; so feel their trepidation, amen.
I want to look over my shoulder at Eva, feast upon her glory one last time. Finest thing to ever set foot on Mount Calvary since they strung Him to that tree and drove in the spikes. Since the Lord called imminen
t domain over our salvation for the price of His Own Son's blood. Can't look back there though, for Teddy Mann's black steel has got me—and it's throbbing in its hot might, shining and reflecting the gray in Reverend Jack's movie screen eyes. I've never seen a yellow testifier with pupils this color; bet they never seen a Black Jew with eyes rotted yellow neither. Wicked City.
I let go the Good News' truth blasts, one, two, three times. For Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, though my real religion tells me to only believe in the First. Church, you hear this boy screaming wild still?
All the black angels run down from the bandstand. One of them, the curly headed Alabama queer who bit into thick lips as Reverend damned the sodomites last month, he dashes to the podium in time to catch Reverend before his head's fallen from the circle, and this black angel cries as sacred life spills to turn the choir robe a darker red than Mount Calvary's carpet. Purple-crimson sea to swallow the main point in whole.
Celebrate the Good News, and hold on to it tight, Church, cause the wicked will make one last stand on this good day for fellowshipping, stand against the Mount until He comes to vanquish them. Yes, they must. Says so at the end of their holy book.
Before Eva turns away from the two-step test, I swear she shines that sugar-stained smile down my way. Still no shame in her glorious face. Honey mamma smiles and runs off to the darkness before the steps, going through glorious motions again with most of the rest. She runs quivering hips from me, Church, and my Down Deep gabardines soak wet at the crotch. The church has fallen from the Mount, and the mighty temple rises once more.
"Quit your screaming now, boy," I say. "Wanna hear the hooves coming near. That's the Holy Ghost almost in me."
Deacon Nate's baritone sounds down in Row Two. "It's him, that black Satan, Moral," he yells. "Good Lord of Mercy, Church, put him down now!"
The wicked do come for me, just like in their Book. But they ain't swift as the Holy Ghost or this blazing white horse riding in from Galilee.
I leap into their path. "Praise you in me, all up in me. You in me real good." I sing and dance my chicken dance, arms and legs and Good News flapping all about in the first balcony aisle. "Stay up in me. You my salvation, Glory. Praise you in me."
DEAR MR. KLEZCKA
BY PETER ORNER
54th & Blackstone
Castaner, Puerto Rico (Associated Press, April 7, 1958):
Nathan Leopold is learning the technique of his ten-dollar-a-month laboratory job in the hospital here and using most of his spare time to answer his voluminous mail. One hospital official said the paroled Chicago slayer has received 2,800 letters in the three weeks he has been here … He has expressed his intention to answer every letter.
The room is not as bare as you might imagine. In fact, it is crowded. A distant relative in the furniture business shipped a load of overstock from the Merchandise Mart. Sofas, love seats, end tables, floor lamps, a pool table. It took three trucks to deliver it all from San Juan.
Nathan, home from work, sits squeezed behind a large oak desk, big as a banker's, and takes off his shoes. He rubs his sore feet awhile. He watches his birds. The canaries are, for a change, silent. He leaves their cage door open. He likes to watch them sleep, their heads up, their eyes vaguely open as if on a whim they could fly in their dreams.
He takes the next letter from the stack and sets it in front of him. He puts on his glasses. He reads.
When he's finished, he brings his hand to his face and gently rests his index finger on the tip of his nose. He thinks. The room has a single window that looks out upon the village and beyond it, a small mountain. When he first arrived here this view was heaven. The spell, though, was short-lived. He no longer feels the urge to walk cross the village to the mountain and climb it.
Dear Mr. Kleczka,
I received your correspondence two weeks ago. Please accept my sincere apologies. I receive a great many letters and am doing my best to reply to them with a reasonable degree of promptness. Also, please understand that the mail delivery service here in the hills outside San Juan leaves a bit to be desired, although of course I am the last to complain.
Among other things, Mr. Kleczka, you call me God's revulsion and express the wish that I choke on my own poisonous froth. You write that my employment in a hospital is the ghastliest joke Satan ever played and, as veteran of Hitler's war, you know from whence you speak.
I do not doubt you, Mr. Kleczka. You write from what you describe as "the old neighborhood." You say your father even knew me when. Let's not indulge ourselves. I will not attempt here to defend the role I played in the death of Bobby Franks.
Nor am I going to tell you of the thirty-three years I spent as convict 9306 in Joliet. I want you to know that I believe—this is something even we can agree on—that I am the luckiest man in the world. I am free and nothing you could conjure is more delirious. Yet delirium, I might add, always gives way to a fog that never lifts. This said, allow me to describe a bit of my work at the hospital. I met a woman today. She is dying of a rare disease. It is not pancreatic cancer but something far more uncommon. The disease is untreatable and the most that can be done for this woman is to prescribe painkillers and ensure a constant supply of nutrients because, apparently, this is the way I understand it, her body rejects those fluids necessary for the survival of her vital organs. In other words, her life leaks—from every available orifice. Her name is Maya de Hostas and she has two children, Javier and Theresa. There is no husband to speak of.
Maya de Hostas is dying, but it is a slow process. The doctor says it could take six months or perhaps a year. Do you scoff? Do you tear at this paper? Do your hands flutter with rage? Nathan Leopold is telling a story! Nathan Leopold, a story of suffering! Because as you hold this paper that my hands have touched, I am your symbol. You need a symbol, don't you? You think of my youthful arrogance like it was yesterday. All the brains they said I had. All the languages they said I spoke. Russian, Greek, Sanskrit! My famous attorney glibly talking away the rope … The easy thing and the popular thing to do is to hang my clients. I know it. Men and women who do not think will applaud. The cruel and thoughtless will approve. It will be easy today; but in Chicago, and reaching out over the length and breadth of the land …
This very yesterday. It's men like you, Mr. Kleczka, men with long memories, that make your city great. You sweep the streets of scum. Rich sons-of-bitches like me. This is no defense, Mr. Kleczka of 5383 South Blackstone, but allow me to tell you I love you. To tell you I love you for keeping the torch lit, for sitting down to write me. I am deadly serious, Mr. Kleczka, oh deadly deadly serious, and as I sit here—the waning moments of day purple the mountains—I imagine you. I imagine you reading of my parole with such beautiful fury. You wanted to come here yourself and mete out justice. Didn't you want to get on a plane and come and murder me with your own bare hands? No gloves for such a fiend. You wanted to feel my death in your own glorious pulsing veins. And then take a vacation. Why not? Bring the wife and kids. It's Puerto Rico.
But your wife said an eye for an eye wouldn't help anybody or make a dime's bit of difference to Bobby Franks. It wouldn't bring that angel back and they'd only throw away the key on you. (Though of course your defense would have much to say by way of mitigation.) But the monster, you cried. Beast! Your wife is a wise woman, Mr. Kleczka, but you, sir, are wiser. And should you come here, know that my door is always open. I have done away with the notion of locks. I live in a two-room flat. If I'm absent at my employ, please await me. Make yourself at home. Don't mind the canaries. I feed them in the morning. I keep whiskey, though the conditions of my parole forbid spirits, in my third desk drawer. Why not pour yourself a glass? I'll be home soon. And know that as you strangle me or slit my throat or simply blow my head off, I'll love you. As I bleed on this upswept floor (the maid comes only on Tuesdays), I'll love you, Mr. Felix Kleczka of the old neighborhood. What else can I say to you? Do not for a moment think I say any of this slyly. I have been waiting with ope
n eyes and open arms for the last thirty-three years, prepared to die the same death as Dickie Loeb, whose rank flesh is only less tainted than mine for being murdered sooner. Well, I am here. I will never hide from you.
I get a great deal of mail, Mr. Kleczka, as I said. Much of it is supportive of my new life. This week alone I received three marriage proposals. Your letter reminded me very starkly of who and what I am. Even so, I must ask you: Are there still old neighborhoods? Are there still fathers who knew us when? And should you decide not to come and take up the knife against me for reasons other than your wife's wise Christian counsel, know that I think no less of you. Your cowardice, Mr. Kleczka, more than anything this I understand. Once a young man bludgeoned a child with a chisel. To make certain, I stuffed my fist in his mouth. My hands are rather plump now. Still, even now I recognize them some days.
Yours Truly, N. Leopold
The dark outside the window now. He's lived so long craving it. It was the light, all that light. He thinks now that he—
Now that he what?
He flicks on the lamp for comfort. He watches his face in the window. His laugh begins slowly, like a murmur. Eventually it's loud enough to wake the birds.
THE NEAR REMOTE
BY JEFFERY RENARD ALLEN
35th & Michigan
The Police Superintendent sat bent forward at his sturdy mahogany desk, a big man in a big leather armchair, framed by a floor-toceiling window looking out onto the vast and vicious wonders of the city. He was reading a file, which lay flat upon the leathertopped surface of the desk.
