Brother Odd

search of the reference-book collection and stood for a while reading about Indianapolis.
        Elvis faced me over the open book, continuing his performance, but I ignored him.
        Indianapolis has eight universities and colleges, and a large public library system.
        When the King gently rapped me on the head, I sighed and looked up from the book.
        He had an index finger stuck in his right nostril, all the way to the third knuckle, as before, but this time the tip of the finger was impossibly protruding from his left ear. He wiggled it.
        I couldn't help smiling. He so badly wants to please.
        Gratified to have pried a smile from me, he took the finger from his nose and wiped both hands on my jacket, pretending that they were sticky with snot.
        "It's hard to believe," I told him, "that you're the same man who sang 'Love Me Tender.'"
        He pretended to use the remaining snot to smooth back his hair.
        "You're not droll," I told him. "You're grotesque."
        This judgment delighted him. Grinning, he performed a series of quarter bows, as though to an audience, silently mouthing the words Thank you, thank you, thank you very much.
        Sitting at a library table, I read about Indianapolis, which is intersected by more highways than any other city in the U.S. They once had a thriving tire industry, but no more.
        Elvis sat at a window, watching the snow fall. With his hands, he tapped out rhythms on the window sill, but he made no sound.
        Later, we went to the guesthouse receiving room at the front of the abbey, to see how the sheriffs-department search was proceeding.
        The receiving room, furnished like a small shabby-genteel hotel lobby, was currently unoccupied.
        As I approached the front door, it opened, and Brother Rafael entered in a carousel of glittering snow, wind chasing around him and howling like a pipe organ tuned in Hell. Meeting with resistance, he forced the door shut, and the whirling snow settled to the floor, but the wind still raised a muffled groan outside.
        "What a terrible thing," he said to me, his voice trembling with distress.
        A cold many-legged something crawled under the skin of my scalp, down the back of my neck. "Have the police found Brother Timothy?"
        "They haven't found him, but they've left anyway." His large brown eyes were so wide with disbelief that he might have been named Brother Owl. "They've left]"
        "What did they say?"
        "With the storm, they're shorthanded. Highway accidents, unusual demands on their manpower."
        Elvis listened to this, nodding judiciously, apparently in sympathy with the authorities.
        In life, he sought and received actual-as opposed to honorary-special-deputy badges from several police agencies, including from the Shelby County, Tennessee, Sheriff's Office. Among other things, the badges permitted him to carry a concealed weapon. He had always been proud of his association with law enforcement.
        One night in March 1976, coming upon a two-vehicle collision on Interstate 240, he displayed his badge and helped the victims until the police arrived. Fortunately, he never accidentally shot anyone.
        "They searched all the buildings?" I asked.
        "Yes," Brother Rafael confirmed. "And the yards. But what if he went for a walk in the woods and something happened to him, a fall or something, and he's lying out there?"
        "Some of the brothers like to walk in the woods," I said, "but not at night, and not Brother Timothy."
        The monk thought about that, and then nodded. "Brother Tim is awfully sedentary."
        In the current situation, applying the word sedentary to Brother Timothy might be stretching the definition to include the ultimate sedentary condition, death.
        "If he's not out there in the woods, where is he?" Brother Rafael wondered. A look of dismay overcame him. "The police don't understand us at all. They don't understand anything about us. They said maybe he went AWOL."
        "Absent without leave? That's ridiculous."
        "More than ridiculous, worse. It's an insult," Rafael declared, indignant. "One of them said maybe Tim went to Reno for 'some R and R-rum and roulette.'"
        If one of Wyatt Porter's men in Pico Mundo had said such a thing, the chief would have put him on probation without pay and, depending on the officer's response to a dressing