Neal Pollack

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 imminent 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.