He Is Not There for the Homily

after mass. back left. the cushion was still damp at noon.

The parish paper in Le Marais Perdu reports this week that the church there has blessed a pew for an alligator, and that the alligator, a twelve-foot male the town calls Monsieur Boudreaux II, now attends the 9 o'clock Mass on the left side, stays through the second collection, and leaves during the closing hymn.

I have read the Chronicle for years and I want to say first that I believe every word of it. I want to say second that nobody over there has asked the obvious question, which is: why the 9 o'clock?

There are two Masses on a Sunday in that parish. The early one is at 7, before the heat. A reptile that wanted religion would take the early one, when he is cool and alert and the lot is empty. This one waits. He waits until the sun is up, until the stone steps are hot, until the building has been open and the air conditioning has been running for two full hours.

So I drove over Sunday. I sat in the back right. I did not take a picture during Mass, I am not a savage. Afterward I set a thermometer on the floor by the back left pew. Seventy-one degrees. The front steps, same hour: ninety-four. That pew sits directly under the one vent in the building the Altar Society has not taped over.

Here is my read. He is not attending. He is cooling. The church has the best air conditioning in the parish, the town has given a large predator a reserved seat directly under it, and they have blessed the arrangement so nobody can undo it.

I will admit one detail bothers me. When the priest said the dismissal, the gator turned his head toward the door before the people did. A reptile does not know the words. A reptile knows the routine. That is not faith. That is attendance, and I honestly do not know which one is more unsettling.

I relay. You decide.

In Truth and Terror.
— Beau