He waves his hand and ends pointing with his index finger, his other fingers hanging down like God’s hand in the Sistine Chapel. It is a powerful and muscular hand, shaped by years of hard and heavy work. His fingernails are wide, broken, and dirty.


I stare at his hand thinking God must have a hand like this, maybe even with the dirt and clay of creation still under his fingernails.


He looks at me with small blue eyes, his deep, growling voice speaking of how he could die in an instant. He snaps his big fingers. “Like that!” Then with that Sistine index finger he traces his neck artery up to his ear. “Hundred percent on this side,” he says. He swings his big hand to the other side of his neck. “Seventy-five on this side.” He puts his hand on the table in a fist, not slamming it in anger, but slowly, gently.


His wife, white-haired, white-bloused, wearing white shorts, eyes me and nods. “I thought of getting a second opinion . . .” Her voice fades off.


“If they go in,” he says with a deep rattle, “they can kill you that fast, and you won’t even know it.” He seems glad I came. They both are.


I set up my small communion ware on the kitchen table and begin the service with a prayer.


Twenty years ago we used to drink coffee and smoke at this table. He would offer me a Camel, and I would take it. I was the eager new pastor. He was the long-time rebel toying with me. He would speak of everything and anything to distract me from my purpose in coming, telling me stories of his youth, and pranks he did, and how he was mean and bad, and all the late dance nights and carousing, and seeing Chicago gangsters heading up north in their black cars, and how he rode with his uncle running moonshine during Prohibition, and how he was still mean and bad. Then he’d look at me out of the corner of his eye, those small blue eyes, to see if I believed any of it. I believed it all.


He always sat at the table, leaning against the wall with his good side. He was a giant of a man, large head, powerful neck, big girth but not fat, a grizzly bear sitting in light-blue-striped bib overalls and grimy T-shirt. His voice was more growl than voice. Words rattled out with a deep vibrating timbre, like a slow lion roar, soft, close-up, and hair-raising.


His big arm was often raised in gestures, ending with his emphatic pointing at some invisible object. I once saw him thrust his hand in a violent backward motion, and he said, “I just cold-cocked him, you know what I mean.” I didn’t, but I had a good idea.