Lousiana Hotshot

she waited. It was short on furniture and long on mementoes. In fact, there was really nothing large in it but a couple of bookshelves, a television, a table against a wall, and two chairs with a small table between them. Bookshelves, tables, and walls were loaded, however— with pictures, diplomas, newspaper clippings, scrapbooks, awards, certificates of appreciation, everything he could scare up to remind him of the life he used to have. Talba wondered which was better— the remembered or the current one. This one looked meager and hard, but the man seemed more at ease with it.
    He returned wearing a fresh white shirt and a clean pair of trousers. Talba could see that he’d also splashed water on his face and guessed he’d brushed his teeth as well. He extended his hand. “Well, now. Well, now. Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”
    “Talba Wallis, sir. I used to be called Sandra. My mother’s Clara Wallis. Perhaps you remember us from First Bethlehem Baptist.”
    “Wallis? I remember your mama. Yes.”
    The voice called to him again. “Clarence? Who is that with you, Clarence?”
    “Excuse me a moment, will you?” he said, and this time she heard him speaking softly to someone. When he came back, he closed a door somewhere behind him. “My wife,” he said. “She is an invalid, I’m afraid. She had a stroke several years ago, and has never fully recovered. Her memory is very poor.”
    Talba was intrigued. The notion of being what amounted to this man’s prisoner would have horrified her at one time, but he had spoken to his wife as gently as any nurse. She asked if he was her principal caregiver.
    “I am, yes. It pretty well keeps me occupied.”
    “It must be hard on you.”
    “On the contrary. Had it not been for my wife, I might have lost my way entirely. She is my dearest love, and I find it a privilege to care for her.” The words would have been difficult for most people to say— far too intimate to fit into the twenty-first century— and yet he had spoken them simply and sincerely, without the pastoral bombast of previous years.
    “You seem different from the way I remember you.”
    He nodded. “Yes, ma’am, I am different. And I am proud of it too.”
    “What did your wife say to you? I mean, how did she…” Talba felt she’d gone too far, but didn’t know how to extricate herself. “I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s none of my business.”
    “No, it is not, and yet I am quite happy to tell you. It was not what she said, but who she was. We had a child who was stricken with a rare and painful disease. I felt as though the Lord had turned against me. I was devastated and I was angry— after all, I was the fiercest soldier in His army. And then I gradually came to see that the God I had been looking for, the holy spirit itself, dwelt in this woman who took such loving, uncomplaining care of our stricken child, and I vowed to remake myself in her image.”
    Talba wasn’t quite sure what she was hearing. “Are you saying that… uh…”
    “Not that I worshiped my wife. Certainly not. I worshiped her only in the sense that any man worships the woman he loves. I mean only that the holy spirit dwells in all of us and that in her I was able to see it shining through and to understand its shape and its texture, its beauty and its glory, to see for the first time that which had eluded me for so many years. And I felt that I was home.”
    “Well.” Talba hardly knew what to say— the simplicity of his belief, his lack of bombast, was really quite moving. “You still preach a beautiful sermon.”
    “I meant that as no sermon, young woman. Simply as a statement of fact.”
    She smiled at him, beginning to get over her embarrassment “And I thank you for it, sir.” She was starting to talk like him.
    “What can I do for you, Miss Wallis?”
    “Ah. Me.” She had actually forgotten about herself for a while. This felt a lot more like being in church than sitting in First Bethlehem ever had— maybe the Lord really did move in mysterious ways. “I don’t know where to start.”
    “Why don’t you start at the beginning?” Kindly old uncle eyes looked out at her from behind the specs. She might as well have been talking to Santa Claus. It occurred to her she could unload on this man— he was a perfect stranger, and he used to be a preacher.
    “Have you got a while?” She asked, “I might need a little pastoral counseling.”
    “Certainly I have. Let me just go