⚓The Visitation / September 2023
Yours Truly in a Swamp
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This month's column
dedicated to the memory of
Françoise Gilot,
Artist in the Shadow of Picasso, Dead at 101
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The Visitation
Roman à clef, cher
by Leonard Earl Johnson
by Leonard Earl Johnson
of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana
© 2023, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved
Hildegard Bottlebrush welcomed the visitors and led them upstairs to The Rector's study where each took the priest's hand and reminded him where they had first met.
Balthazar said, it had been in Grand Coteau, at Louisiana's prestigious residential Academy of the Sacred Heart.
"At a symposium," The Rector recalled, smiling. "The Bishop and I both bought your chapbook."
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The chapbook was titled:
The Boy Behind the Altar,
from Big Mamou to the East Village
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Hildegard slipped away and returned with a rolling tray filled with pots, cups, cream pitchers, sugar bowls, warm pecan cookies, polished silver spoons, and white linen napkins. She poured and passed round the offerings.
"We have taken rooms next door to the blue and white Mission House of Mother Teresa," Dillard, the taller of the two Red Women Warriors, tells the smiling Rector.
"We plan on joining the Cathedral," Sylvia adds, selecting a pecan cookie from a passing white porcelain dish painted with a gleaming gold rim.
The Rector flinched slightly. His smile dimmed and the spoon slipped from his fingers. It bounced twice on the thick hand-knotted burgundy rug.
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Dillard and Sylvia are the kind of congregate activists who make shepherds dream of parishes where the flock is more settled.
The rug on which his spoon just bounced had once traveled the Silk Road from Uzbekistan to France before any one in The Rector's study this day were more than dreams in their respective molecular ether. Centuries later it sailed to Louisiana aboard a ship made of wood and propelled by the winds. Now it softens the footfalls of these holy, somewhat revolutionary, mostly mercenary, and fully beguiling folks. Hildegard gave The Rector a fresh spoon.
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Sylvia lifted her red KRVS ~ NPR tote bag and removed the little package Balthazar had given her for safe keeping. She handed it to him.
He opened the tissue paper, folded back the bubble wrap and placed the JFK forget-me-not rocker on a silken reddish-bronze handkerchief that he spread atop the coffee table. Which, on second look, appeared to be a rather well made shipping crate. Some high-end retro fashion art object, Balthazar figured.
Hildegard removed the cups and cutlery.
"I am asking five-hundred American," Balthazar said.
The Rector's eyes widened as he read the gilded monogram, JFK. He said, "I am offering you three."
In that little space of time the deal was struck. Three one-hundred dollar Federal Reserve banknotes left The Rector's alligator wallet for a new home in the
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As the visitors left out the gate, Hildegard handed Dillard the Republican National Committee's alligator skin briefcase containing the perfectly preserved Snowball Project.
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More Next Month on
Hildegard Bottelbrush,
a. k. a. Flaschenbürste,
Housekeeper to The Rector
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Lagniappe du Jour
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New York Times, June 2023
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| © Leonard Earl Johnson |
~ ~ ~ LEJ's Louisiana, Yours Truly in a Swamp is a monthly e-column @ www.LEJ.world, Hosted by GOOGLE BLOGGER, and historically at Les Amis de Marigny, New Orleans publication of the It is written by Leonard Earl Johnson of Lafayette and New Orleans, Louisiana © 2023, Leonard Earl Johnson, All Rights Reserved |
posted by LEJ's Louisiana | 6:56 AM
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