Old Shit 1

	I was on the road before dawn, murmured softly alone, and watched ashen clouds form great tippets in the sky above. Sometimes I try to remember if clouds like that came around before Nelson took up his post in Bedland. They always seem to arch toward his hutch, even when the wind is strong enough to tangle and uproot them. Some people I know — I wouldn’t call them friends — insist that those clouds are remnants of the specters he brought peace. Such statements would always make him sour, but he never dismissed nor endorsed them.
 	Tall and lean and the cheapest brand of wise, Nelson seemed fit for the days of Nazareth, yet he frequently professed that he was — and would remain — torn from the cloth. Everyone in town knew the phrase, just as they knew that he did not profess things lightly. They sought his guidance regardless. Inhaling the arid dust of Bedland was the sole cost for those who wished to see him, a paltry fine for most. Everyone came for the same reason: confessional. Only the strangest evenings kept his doorstep empty, but the days following would always be met with an influx of desperate visitors. He reminded those yearning to confess that his time in the ministry was far past and that he was no longer a clergyman of any form, but they would still demand his forgiveness. I never did. In fact, before that last visit, I had never demanded anything from him. I didn’t think much of it at the time. I assumed that he would dance around my concern with the grace and subtlety of a contract. He had a knack for dressing every detour in its Sunday best; his “Torn from the Cloth” speech was a prime example. Long-winded, eloquent, yet void of concrete statements. If anything, it certified that he was a spiritual man. “But not a religious one,” he would interject, and people would nod like they understood. I don’t think any of them did, which might explain why nobody asked, “What tore you from the cloth?” Or perhaps common etiquette held everyone back.
	For a long while, the speech seemed to have worn out its use. Nearly every person in town had confessed at some time and therefore already heard it, and visitors from out of town were reliably few. It didn’t help that Nelson secluded himself to a barren desert strip, rarely leaving his shoddy hutch of cracking wood planks and scraps of thick upholstery that had long been bleached by the sun. But then his goodwill fell prey to Aunt Argus, and he found himself repeating the speech like a ritual.
	Aunt Argus does not consider herself a resident of Bedland and is not actually my relative, but the latter distinction has become irrelevant over the years. A cavalier woman with placid hair and thick rimmed glasses that make her eyeballs look like whitewall tires, my parents have called her “Aunt” for as long as I could remember, and for just as long, I’ve followed suit. She’s the only family friend who earned that designation, though I’m not sure how.
	“Are you my godmother or something?” I asked her back in elementary school.
	“Ha. Maybe. I don’t know. Ask your parents,” she said, a flagrant radiance brining her words.
I used to think that such radiance would die with her youth, but nearly two decades later, it has still refused to wither. Well into my adulthood, I still refer to her as “Aunt” Argus, mainly in the hope that it discomforts her. And she calls me Kurt, either for the same reason or because she forgot my name many years ago and replaced it with whatever came to mind. She forgets a lot of things all the time.
	Nelson did not enjoy her presence. He told her so, bluntly and on multiple occasions, but to no avail. Aunt Argus would always reply: “You’re quite a rude priest,” prompting him to clarify (once again) that he had been torn from the cloth. She would show up without warning and invade his privacy, inspecting his hutch and watching him drink quietly in the evenings. Then she’d compile all of her findings in notebooks and store the notebooks in her closet. Her eventual goal was to write a biography maverick enough to start a new era of literature. “We’ll soon be living in a post-Nelson world,” she once told me. Such endeavors are always fiery, ready to make nothing but brief light and embers.