Welcome to the intro video
and an excerpt from the eleventh post of my weekly serial, “Sketches from the Café
Confictura.” If you’d like to share a comment, please use the comment option at the end of this excerpt. To follow the mystery of Applewood, and get recipes
from Mrs. Creaverton, writing advice from Roscoe Belesprit, and fashion tips
from the Fastionista, please visit www.ClarissaJeanne.com for new posts every
Tuesday at 2:30 p.m. EST.
Yesterday morning, Pastor
Sweeney held his hands aloft and posed on top of his church’s front steps,
trumpeting his pre-service homily. Even in winter he wears no coat, so the
sleeves of his vestments gather down at his elbows. The forty-something’s skin
is so white you can see his veins coursing through it, like blue blood
dripping. He used to do this thing on the steps all the time, back before he
was indicted on the money laundering charges. Yeah, he was cleared, but
everyone knows he was just as guilty as the guy he supposedly snitched on, who
ended up taking the fall for the whole ring. Even Father Jack across town, if
asked, gently admits that Sweeney must answer for his actions--not with God, or
Jesus, or the church, but with the people of Applewood. Yep, everyone knows the
truth about Sweeney.
Well, not everyone knows it.
Or maybe I should say not everyone wants to believe it.
Sunday after Sunday since the
charges against him were dropped, Sweeney preaches his services to either a few
loyal dozens or just one, depending on how you look at the numbers. His
followers usually act as one shared mind, and since he’s been back they act on
his behalf, spreading his word by cold-calling, recruiting for his church by handing
out glossy leaflets. But this was the first Sunday he’d come back out to do his
pre-service homily, a way of “grasping wayward souls in the community and
pulling them in.” His words.
Mrs. Creaverton, Doc Graham,
Violet, and I had come out of the Café Confictura to watch his show. The four
of us made up kind of a human gate across the street from the Our Lord of the
Ascension chapel: Graham and Violet held hands, Violet’s left hand was on Mrs.
C’s right shoulder, and Mrs. C’s left arm linked with my right. None other than
Nessie Fyne stood beside the preacher man; and none of us believed it was by
coincidence that his first public outing was happening the day before the vote
to remove Mrs. C from the Merchants Association, a vote Nessie was driving. As
rumors of the joint Fyne-Sweeney appearance began to float over the weekend, so
too did rumors that Violet was the one who unwittingly prompted it. On Friday, our
Fastionista helped Mitzy Binkowski, owner of the stationary and pen store
Watermarks, find a stellar outfit for an important dinner, and because of this
Mitzy all but promised her vote and four others to Mrs. C. Apparently, Nessie
now felt she needed to step up her game.
--To
read the rest of the post, please click here to go to www.ClarissaJeanne.com/lost_in_the_sauce.html,
and then share your comments below--
No comments:
Post a Comment