Wrapped in Rain(75)

"Yeah, buddy?"

Jase held out his left hand. "I've got a splinter. Mom said you could get it out." I looked at Katie, who looked at me over the tops of her glasses and then returned to her reading.



"Let me see." We sat down in the grass, and I held his hand up to the sun. A splinter had dug in deep into the fleshy meat at the base of his left thumb. I pressed lightly on his skin to see how much of the splinter I could get to without hurting him. Not much. "Are you tough?"

He reached up with his right hand, grabbed his left wrist tightly, looked me square in the eyes, and nodded. I placed his hand in my lap, pulled out my Swiss Army knife, and extracted the tweezers from the end. His eyes watched my hands but never flinched. I picked up his hand again and said, "You sure?" He nodded without hesitation and watched the tip of the tweezers. The splinter was dug in deep, so I pressed in, grabbed the covering layer of skin, and peeled it back. He winced but forced his right hand to hold his left steady. "You want your mom to do this?" He shook his head and kept looking at his hand. Katie looked at me again over her glasses and smiled.

"Thanks, make me the bad guy."

I dabbed the spot with my shirtsleeve and cleared away the blood. I grabbed the tip of the splinter with the tweezers and tugged, but it was a good-size splinter and didn't budge. I got a better grip on the tweezers, pressed in, and pulled again. It budged but needed one more pull. Jase bit his tongue and strengthened his grip. I loosened the tweezers, got a better hold, and checked his eyes. I pulled. A thorn, about a centimeter in length, slipped out. I held it up to the light. "Oh, that's a good one."

Jase leaned forward. "Let me see." I placed it in his palm and dabbed the spot where the blood had bubbled up.

"We're not finished. You'd better come with me." I led him by the hand and we walked into Miss Ella's house. I turned on the kitchen faucet, warmed the water, and said, "Hold your hand right here." I pulled out the box of Band-Aids from the cabinet above the sink, peeled open a medium-size Band-Aid, dried his hand, and placed it over the small hole. "There. All better."



He held up his badge of courage and turned it over. "Thanks, Unca Tuck."

"Here," I said, sliding two spare Band-Aids in his pocket. "For later." It was something Miss Ella had done for me a hundred times.

He patted his pocket, tore out the door, and headed for his bicycle.

Child, you did that pretty well.

I had a good teacher.





Chapter 31


MUTT WANTED TO GET A GOOD SEAT, SO WE PULLED INTO the parking lot of St. Peter's Catholic Church at about a quarter to six. Located on the outskirts of Dothan, the church property covered four city blocks that were dissected by two perpendicular streets and one stoplight. The locals called it "Catholic Corner," which was fitting because if you stood beneath the stoplight, every corner was covered by the church. The grounds were sprawling, and everywhere you looked, the parish had spread farther from the stoplight-this was a working church. The parking lot was more than half-full every day of the week, and many of the homeless shelters and veterans' hospitals in surrounding counties were funded by donations from St. Peter's. On the grounds, they sheltered abused mothers, ran an orphanage, funded a youth baseball association, and a few blocks away, turned a run-down house into a drug rehab center.

At the center of the property sat a large sanctuary that certainly made a statement, but it was not ostentatious. Every time Miss Ella drove by here, she'd tap the steering wheel, lick her lips, and say, "That is a house fit for God!" She'd tap her Bible sitting next to her on the seat and say, "We may not agree on all the theology, but they're reading the words in red and doing them."

It seated a couple thousand, and come Saturday nights, seating was not easy to find. This place drew people from everywhere. The center of the ceiling might have been eighty feet tall, and most of the inside construction, except the pews and altar, was marble, red velvet, or gold flake. The huge silver pipes from the organ covered the entire back wall, and the fans needed to generate the air filled two entire rooms in the basement. Most every Christmas Eve I can remember, Miss Ella drove us around town to see the many houses decorated in lights, and inevitably our route ended with a twenty-minute stop in the parking lot of St. Peter's during the organ concert. She'd sit, hands clasped, eyes closed, head slightly rocking, and smile. "When I get to heaven, I hope it sounds like this."



I parked, slid off my seat, and walked to the back of the truck where Mutt was wondering which side to exit. Judging by the contorted look across his face, the wrinkled look of his suit, the rubber gloves on his hands, the spray bottle hooked in his back pocket, and the roll of paper towels stuffed under his arm, he planned on keeping himself and everybody else clean. According to my count, he had been taking his medication, but doing so seemed to have little effect on the muscles covering his face. Jase had loaded into the truck wearing his boots, hat, and twoholster belt. When he opened the door and began walking toward the church, I whispered, "Hey partner, no guns in church."

He pulled both six-shooters out of the holster and walked back to the truck where I stood holding the door open. He placed them on the seat, patted both handles, and walked back to Katie. Except for the visually odd appearance of Mutt, we walked through the front door like regulars. Jase even took his hat off and handed it to Katie.