The Visitation

Here it was; here it set out like a search party as Painted Desert played in the theater and snakes inched through hot August. Folding napkins, children recalled the thick volume in which they had read their dead grandfathers’ names. They slunk through biographical tomes, sometimes stopping for the night. For some time, he had given up. Those who remembered recalled him wincing. He washed one hand with the other, walked the floor. The final page was a fly-leaf with his name written on it, theirs. That night they wrote his name inside his shoes.