James B. Nicola
I don’t recall precisely what they did
to make me feel unwelcome suddenly
but do recall the moment when they changed
and the few things I said they didn’t know
before. The tiny mom-and-pop restaurant
had only two or three tables. The guy
who owned the motel where I was staying
told me their fried chicken was to die for,
just tell them he sent me. Late afternoon.
I was the only customer. Beneath
the picture window, a wide shelf with things
to read. Old magazines, pamphlets, and two
Bibles. No, three. The restaurant was like
a porch-extension or greenhouse converted.
You saw into their television room.
In other words, designed so mom and dad
could go back and forth, home to work to home.
So, very homey eaterie. We got
to chatting about religion. Their three
Bibles suggested they’d be quite aware
of rankling contradictions in the texts.
John-Paul II had long since attended shul
to honor Jews, “the elders of our Church,”
he said. I made no bones about the Church
arising out of Judaism since,
after all, Jesus was a Jew. They had
not heard this fact before, while at the age
of five and six I started learning stuff
like this in Catechism: the Messiah
being of course a Jewish prophecy
(which I found out at my first Alleluia
Chorus sing-along, the finale
of Handel’s oratorio Messiah).
Passover week’s the same in both faiths, so
[more]
[“To Die,” 2/2, stanza continues]
The Last Supper, a Thursday, was a Seder.
Interesting stuff, if interested.
I shared these tidbits I had learned about
the circumstances of a couple thousand
years back with a sense of joy, the joy
I feel whenever I learn something new,
especially about the Old and New
Testaments, the Apocrypha, the Dead
Sea Scrolls, at last translated and on-line
for all to read. Then like a lion’s jaw
opening suddenly, for the first time
in my life I feared for my life, said thanks,
and beat a hasty retreat outathere,
losing the whole meal in the parking lot
before I reached my car. Though this detail
might be a piece of fiction for effect.
Poetic license. But it might not be.