C is for the car—the big white DeSoto—we rode in to the temple.
C is for the colors black and white: white shirt, black tie, black trousers.
C is for the cacti we passed—long, tall saguaro with arms beseeching heaven—and for the cranky man driving the DeSoto.
C is for the clear skies, the dry sky, as we journeyed through the reservation, past the old Jap Camp and the Gila River, dry as Death Valley, and the Last Chance Bar with drunks splayed in the parking lot.
C is for the cotton fields that seemed to stretch for eternity.
C is for the temple’s cleanliness. We stood close to godliness. The pictures of the saints on the wall whose names I did not know and didn’t care about. (Care—that’s a C-word, too.)
C is for the chilly floor beneath bare feet as we marched to be baptized, for the dead. Clad (yes, C again) in the special white clothing—the baptismal suit like a karate fighter’s karategi—required for our sacred duty.
C is for the clammy shimmy on my skin as the cranky man dunked me, and dunked me and rapid-fire dunked me in the baptismal fount for first, one man (or was it a woman) then another, another, and another. Each attempt at long-range redemption for said dead person confirmed by the speaking of a name and the laying on of hands by a second man. Dry hands on my chilled, wet head. Confirmed (that’s a C word, too,) to make eternity better, for the dead.
C is for the cussing I did beneath my breath—the Lord’s name in vain and the other words which no one ever said back then except men in their close company and kids out on the playground—as I went under again and again and again, water in my snot locker and in my eyes, my ears full of the garbled names and all for the sake of bringing the truth of Jesus and Joseph Smith and Brigham Young to the dead.
C is for child—that was me.
Creepy (a C-word), how I felt as faces of old men and women blared in my mind, wrinkles, eyes of blue and green and brown, bald heads and big wide hats like the ones in the pictures of my grandmother in 1900 and I imagined babies in the crib who’d smothered, choked, and turned a pale blue and hilljacks from West Virginia and settlers from the banks of the muddy Brazos speared in brazen battle, and from Canada and Greece and Scandinavia. Savage Tatars on their small ponies riding to destroy the cities of the middle ages.
And more, they crept into my head like cadavers risen from the grave: Ashkenazi pogromed in Crimea, Sikhs in the army of the Raj, Congolese, scalped Comanche. (All these C words.)
C is for clarity of the cacophony clamoring from those dead people that began banging and blasting, caroming complaints through my brain that swelled into the high corners, the ceiling of the room, above the painted saints and the gods who walked among them.
C is for the chilis we ate in the Mexican restaurant after being dunked for the dead. The cranky man expecting us kids to rejoice in our sacred sacrament for the dead. Jars of chilitos encurtidos (there’s another C word) which we dug at with the tines of a fork, sometimes only dunking instead of stabbing.
We gobbled them to see whose mouths were toughest. A moment of synecdoche—or is it metonymy?—where the smaller is part of the larger: the finger for the hand, the castle for the country, the baptism for the salvation.
C is for the close of day as we rode home across the Sonoran Desert, setting sun the color of blood, me in the back seat, my white shirt now crumpled (C word) my black tie unknotted, my eyes closed (C, C, C) dreaming of the faces of dead people peering at me, the ones I had helped save so they could own eternal existence in the Celestial Kingdom.
And the ones who screamed they didn’t need it.
Ken Rodgers is a poet, writer, and filmmaker who lives in Idaho. Both a Pushcart Prize nominee and a Best American Short Stories nominee, Ken’s stories, poems, and essays have appeared in a number of fine journals. Ken coproduced and codirected the award-winning documentary film about his company of Marines in the Vietnam War titled Bravo! Common Men, Uncommon Valor and the soon-to-be-released documentary about the wives of combat veterans titled I Married the War.
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