Summary: This piece was supposed to be different. But this piece is what we get on account of a ghost wandered in and hijacked my story. By the time he finished with me, I forgot all about that thing I started out with. That's exactly how it went. Almost. Bro Druitt—also affectionately called Deacon Eddie—had a gimp leg, a club foot, and an incomparable way with words. Every Sunday he graced the front pew of our tiny southern church in his nut brown pants and broad-shouldered green jacket the color of olives, though it wasn't what you'd call olive green. I couldn't have been more than 9 when I knew him, if you could call my young impressions 'knowing' him, but I remember the Deacon, a narrow-faced, mild kind of man, a gentle stalwart in the Christian army, always seeing to it that no one went wanting for a warm smile or a solid handshake if there was anything he had to say about it. Bro Druitt was a shy, consistent man, I think. He didn't much talk to me, and I often wondered what might have been playing behind the squared black frames of his old bifocals when he glanced up toward the far corner each time the choir sang. I wondered what his foot looked like. Was it clenched like a fist in his black leather boot? Had his boot been wadded up with cotton to pad the space left by his disfigured appendage? I wondered what it must have been like for him as a kid in his neighborhood where, if his experience looked remotely like mine, his friends ran and jumped and hollered to the heavens as they tore through the neighborhood, seldom looking back and rarely looking out for the slow and weak ones among us. I wondered whether the Deacon had ever married or dated with that intention in mind. I imagined what his teachers and parents might have told him about his chances in a Jim Crow world that proved to be far less kind than they'd been at home. What kind of dreams had he been given and which ones did he pick for himself? Was it his own flood of memory wafting in on the songs each week that caused him to cry softly to himself when he led the church in prayer? Lord, he'd begin, with a weary resignation, his eyes intent on something just above our heads. Leaning against a table that itself had a short leg too, Bro Druitt finally closed his eyes as he addressed the church–and the Heavenly Father–in his singular style of modest supplication. I come before you as 'umbly as I know how, without no form nor fashion and we thank you for bringing us heart to heart and breast to breast one more time. I mulled over the image of the congregation all ringed together in a band of touching breasts and hearts like a giant Siamese-twin fellowship. I giggled, playing out the scene in my head, wondering who I'd get to stand next to, and how we'd change clothes, not to mention how we'd sleep and eat. Maybe, I reasoned, heavenly bodies fused so impossibly close together like that didn't worry about earthly details. We thank you, O Lord, for waking us up from our sleeping couches, clothed in our right minds this morning, the Deacon prayed on, knowing had it not been for You, our Father, we could have woke up on the cooling board. For as colorful has his language was, Bro Druitt's gratitude for his portion of health and strength was unmistakable: this man was glad to be alive, and he seemed pleased to remind us of it. Thomas Campbell was an 18th century traveling clergyman and writer who once said that to live in hearts we leave behind is not to die. Bro Druitt showed me this in the loving imprint I'd barely realized he left on my life. I thought about what impressions I might leave when I'm gone, and more important, how am I doing now? We may never understand how we're seen, if we're seen at all, in the eyes of others—a child, a stranger, our families. Even so, it might do us good to think about how we'd like to be remembered in time. I used to cringe thinking of Chandra and Syreeta,
