The Miracle of the Images. Welby Thomas Cox, Jr.

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СКАЧАТЬ to hear what sins you had committed in the intervening week. Yes it was true every child had to go to confession every week and receive the absolution of the priest.

      First Holy Communion was also a major event. No more sitting in the pew while everyone else marched up the isle to receive the wafer. In 1945, the congregation did not receive wine as they do today...Aldo concluded that the priest and alter boys drank it all. Aldo could not wait to become a server at the Mass and to have his share of some of that delicious nectar of the gods.

      Of course he was no stranger to wine...the homemade variety his father made from the bountiful harbor. Not only grape but there was apple, peach and pear as well.

      Aldo's adoptive Father was a professional farmer. Everyone in the county knew that if Buck did not have the answer to a particular problem...there was no problem. He knew when and how to kill and cure the hogs or beef, where to harvest the honey and to tap the maple trees. The farm was a bastion of plenty and aside from a few staples from the grocery...all that went on the table was grown and 'put up' for the winter. Corn, green beans, tomatoes, squash, turnips, collard greens, cabbage, potatoes, peppers of all kinds, filled the jars in anticipation of winter. The kitchen was a beehive of activity throughout the summer as each crop brought its own bounty.

      And the place had its own symmetry...its own music, which Aldo enjoyed from gathering eggs to weeding the garden, picking the fruit and helping in the kitchen. He learned at the heels of his parents and he learned his lessons well for in his own time Aldo became known as his Father's son and the best farmer in Montgomery County, Ohio.

      Of course this left little time for Aldo's passion for painting. Even though it is assumed that farmers have nothing but time on their hands, in the winter, most remain quite busy with winter chores such as fence mending, clearing of brush and seeing to its safe burning. The planting of greenhouse plants for transplanting in the spring and the year round caring of the animals. Most essentially the Dairy cows, who were always with them, seven days per week, twice per day the cows came to the barn for relief and the delivery of rich milk to the families in the city.

      They were long days and Aldo did not have the joy of spending any part of them with a partner. Although he had kept company with an occasional female visitor from the church or one of the women from town... Aldo was careful to draw the line on getting to close to any thing that resembled a commitment to marriage. And, in those days women were less apt to take up residence with a man without the exchange of wedding vows.

      Certainly something that Aldo would have been most willing to make a commitment to were it not for the delicate matter of his illegal status.

      So Aldo was a lonely man, filling his days with busy work to near dark and always turning in as soon after the evening meal as possible. Lest you get the wrong idea of Aldo, you should know that he could kick up his heels on the week-ends. One of his favorite haunts was Newport, Kentucky where gambling, drinking and wild women were all a part of the syndicate control of this northern Kentucky community.

      Long before Jennifer Flowers and Bill Clinton there was another hooker/dancer/singer by the name of Flowers...seems she slipped something in the drink of the Kentucky Sheriff by the name of George Ratterman. You know the guy who was the all-American quarterback and pro bowl football player. Ms. Flowers and others took several illegitimate photographs in an attempt to frame the good Sheriff in what was deemed an inappropriate circumstance. Fortunate for George it didn't work...he won reelection and set about to clean up the levee along the Ohio River across from downtown Cincinnati. It only took about forty years to do so and George Ratterman long since passed into oblivion or wherever else old football heroes go.

      It wasn't that Aldo was the hell raiser from Texas...he just liked to let his hair down and have a good time. These folks sure knew how to do that and there was no interest in seeing an identification card of any type. Show your face and get the pass. Have a good time, make no trouble and you were always welcomed back with open arms. Want to shoot dice...they had it...want to play poker...always a game under way...there was pool, there was live music and there was lots of cold beer. Yeh northern Kentucky was a happening place and it was a place into which Aldo could fit right in.

      In those days he had a young man's appetite for cold beer and sexy women. He remembered the first time he had been with a woman...she was a pro but it mattered little to Aldo...he paid the price up front and there were no questions or lingering on the back end. Her name was Ella...like himself just a farm girl looking for a way to support her exodus from the farm. Aldo wondered how long it would take before Ella became as hardened looking as most of the women selling their wares in the bars along the river. For now it was enough that she was there next to him, warm and a reasonable facsimile of a woman with emotions enough to pretend that the moment was special.

      Her fragrance was strong as was her breathing. Aldo closed his eyes and listened...it was strong and healthy, even vital. The longer he listened the more sensual her breathing seemed to become. In time he began to feel the press of her body against his. Felt himself breathing with her, as if the rise and fall of their chest was the same. Her breathing became deeper, overriding his. He felt her own hand touching him and then her own breast. And then Aldo reached out, wanting to touch her and to keep touching her, exploring her in a way far more provocative and passionate than any way he had gathered from the men's magazines.

      In the morning Ella would be gone, perhaps she had left in the night to complete the many task at hand...working the men who came for comfort and a few moments of tenderness which she faked as well as the orgasm making them feel that they had shared some compelling moment. Leaving the fluid of life and contemptuous thoughts of other farm boys who had mouthed the words of affection but were not there for her when her time came to deliver the child that neither wanted.

      If she was really lucky, someone would come along and be the real thing for her, someone who would demonstrate emotional connections and unconditional love. Marry her and carry her back to the farm were she would welcome the seasons and the family which she had heretofore disdained. She had the looks, she had the breeding and Aldo hoped for her that she would recognize the moment and accept it for what it was...the opportunity to move on to some semblance of normalcy... of a life on the farm.

      Aldo was no longer a virgin, and he had not been dishonest during the act...he did not tell her he cared for her nor did he expect to hear it from her. The moment was... what it was for the two of them...raw sex, played out in a cheap motel to the sound of the Tommie Dorsey Band and the plastic curtains blowing its own sound.

      IV. THE ROMANS ARE COMING

      The wait for the response from the Vatican was not long in coming. On October 26, six weeks after the September 12th meeting with Father Francis, the Vatican entourage showed up in the small village of Germantown, Ohio. Headed by Monsignor John Voght, a graduate of Notre Dame and therefore readily acceptable to Father Francis. Monsignor Voght also had Father Tim Dalton a native Ohioan to carry his bags and make any advance registrations which might become necessary.

      The call to Aldo came from Father Francis. He explained to Aldo that the Vatican entourage had just arrived and would like to come to the farm for a visit the next day if at all convenient. Aldo explained that he had chores that would keep him busy until dinnertime and that would be the most convenient time since they had to eat as well. Father Francis agreed and in the process was given the most direct route to the farm. They agreed that dinner for the four to include Father Francis would be promptly at six o'clock...just after the evening angelus. The beautiful sound of the bells in the bell tower, which Aldo had purchased, completely automated three times daily, to call the farm hands to meals.

      Aldo also invited one or more of the priest to stay at the farm. He advised Father Francis that there were no hotels that he could recommend nearby but there were plenty of clean free rooms at the farm and they might enjoy waking to the farm СКАЧАТЬ