He took his eyes off the steeple and he walked up the steps of the church. Wondered if the old preacher was still alive. If he was still helping those kinds of men find their way home.
On that night he had drunk more than usual for no particular reason other than it was one of those hot Mississippi Friday nights when you have a paycheck in your pocket and a good woman who loves you and clear reception on the radio station out of New Orleans that plays the old blues, aching voices that sing of mojo and insatiable women and red roosters and sneaking in and out the back door. One of those nights when the light stays until well into the evening and pushes the night out further and further and as long as there is gasoline being pumped at the gas stations then it seems a shame not to burn it up. Many times he had thought that it might have helped him if there had been some reason. Something that triggered him, shoved him, irritated him, violated him, motivated him to drink so much. Many times he had wished that there would have been something to point his finger at other than his own stupidity. But there wasn’t.
Got off work early on Friday afternoon. Payday. Put some of his check in the bank and kept some of it in his pocket and he drove to a house on the east side of town where his father had asked him to see about something. Got there and knocked on the door and a woman with a baby on her hip and another little one holding on to her leg opened the front door and let him in and took him to the kitchen and showed him the leak. Went back out and got a toolbox from the truck and came back in and crawled underneath the sink and fixed it. Then she took him to the bathroom and flipped the light switch and no light came on and he asked if she had changed the bulb and she shifted the baby to her other hip and swatted at the kid on her leg and said do I look like a fool. Don’t guess so he said and then he took a screwdriver and removed the switch plate and then pulled out the light switch and as in many of the dejected old houses his father had brought back to life there was a loose wire and it was the hot one and he tightened it and flipped the switch and the light came on.