Brother Odd

he was reluctant to leave here because this world had been so good to him.
        The truth is, he's desperate to see his mother, Gladys, in the next world, but he's reluctant to cross over because he's filled with anxiety about the reunion.
        Few men have loved their mothers more than Elvis loved Gladys. She died young, and he grieved for her until his death.
        He fears, however, that his use of drugs and his other personal failures in the years that followed her passage must have shamed her. He is embarrassed by his ignominious death-overdosed on prescription medications, facedown in vomit-though this seems to be the preferred exit scene for a significant percentage of rock-and-roll royalty.
        I have often assured him that there can be no shame, no anger, no disappointment where Gladys waits, only love and understanding. I tell him that she will open her arms to him on the Other Side.
        Thus far my assurances have not convinced him. Of course there is no reason why they should. Remember: In Chapter Six, I admitted that I don't know anything.
        So as we entered the passageway between the guest and the grand cloisters, I said to Brother Knuckles, "Elvis is here."
        "Yeah? What movie's he in?"
        This was Knuckles's way of asking how the King was dressed.
        Other lingering spirits manifest only in the clothes they were wearing when they died. Donny Mosquith, a former mayor of Pico Mundo, had a heart attack during vigorous and kinky intimacy with a young woman. Cross-dressing in spike heels and women's underwear stimulated him. Hairy in lace, wobbling along the streets of a town that named a park after him when he was alive but later renamed it after a game-show host, Mayor Mosquith does not make a pretty ghost.
        In death as in life, Elvis exudes cool. He appears in costumes from his movies and stage performances, as he chooses. Now he wore black boots, tight black tuxedo trousers, a tight and open black jacket that came only to the waistline, a red cummerbund, a ruffled white shirt, and an elaborate black foulard.
        "It's the flamenco-dancer outfit from Fun in Acapulco," I told Knuckles.
        "In a Sierra winter?"
        "He can't feel the cold."
        "Ain't exactly suitable to a monastery, neither."
        "He didn't make any monk movies."
        Walking at my side, as we neared the end of the passageway Elvis put an arm around my shoulders, as though to comfort me. It felt no less substantial than the arm of a living person.
        I do not know why ghosts feel solid to me, why their touch is warm instead of cold, yet they walk through walls or dematerialize at will. It's a mystery that I most likely will never solve- like the popularity of aerosol cheese in a can or Mr. William Shatner's brief post-Star Trek turn as a lounge singer.
        In the large courtyard of the grand cloister, wind rushed down the three-story walls, wielding lashes of brittle snow, whipping up clouds of the softer early snow from the cobblestone floor, thrashing between columns as we hurried along the colonnade toward the kitchen door in the south wing.
        Like a crumbling ceiling shedding plaster, the sky lowered on St. Bart's, and the day seemed to be collapsing upon us, great white walls more formidable than the stone abbey, alabaster ruins burying all, soft and yet imprisoning.

CHAPTER 12
        
        KNUCKLES AND I DID IN FACT SEARCH THE pantry and associated storerooms, though we found no trace of Brother Timothy.
        Elvis admired the jars of peanut butter that filled one shelf, perhaps recalling the fried-banana-and-peanut-butter sandwiches that had been a staple of his diet when he was alive.
        For a while, monks and deputies were busy in the hallways, the refectory, the kitchen, and other nearby rooms. Then quiet descended, except for the wind at windows, as the quest moved elsewhere.
        After the library had been searched, I retreated there to worry and to keep a low profile until the authorities departed.
        Elvis went with me, but Knuckles wanted to spend a few minutes at his desk in a storeroom, reviewing invoices, before going to Mass. As distressing as Brother Tim's disappearance was, work must go on.
        It is a fundamental of the brothers' faith that when the Day comes and time ends, being taken while at honest work is as good as being taken while in prayer.
        In the library, Elvis