Old Friends
The first predated me. A living heirloom of sorts owned by my dad and I was born an intruder brought into a home he already lived in. His name was Rudy, a vivid pinpoint few among vague quarries of memory. I remember his name, his spotted grey torso, pink underbelly. Not much else. I was small, afraid. He was big and surly and I've been told since I didn't cared for him. But after his death I sit around the Sunday school huddle and I ask to pray, more than once, that he'd come back to life. The pause in the teacher's voice, her stuttered look. How to explain, how not to deny. I believed with a child's ignorance, the assumption that carried passed disappointment to realization. God can do anything but this won't happen. He is gone and he's not coming back. A few blurred years pass before another literally walks into our lives, a homeless wanderer gone outside in. Fourth of July in a dark and crowded parking lot. The sky's green and red fire luminous in ...