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Joshua Malbin307 12
th
St. Apt. 8Brooklyn NY 11215
1The AbbeyI was U-Hauling everything we’d agreed was mine back to Los Angeles. My lasttwo weeks in Denver had been swallowed by the couch in my living room—now mysoon-to-be-ex-wife’s living room alone, and her couch alone too—and it was good to beforced into the sunshine again, if only behind a poorly tinted windshield. I had beensleeping too long beneath the billboard that was the closed bedroom door, in a mix of myown sadness and body funk. I’d showered before I set off, and in doing so had felt I waswashing off six months of myself.That wasn’t entirely good. I was leaving behind the only person who’d known meday by day for two years, my memory outside myself. Without her I was afraid a part of me would be lost, the part that existed in daily conversation with her. But there wasnothing I could do about it. I couldn’t put the dirt back on my skin. It was dissolved insoap and down the drain forever.I was following a scenic route southwest for Four Corners and had made a decentstart. I was just coming into Cañon City, a small town in the scrubby desert foothills of the eastern Rockies, when I saw the abbey.It was an elegant building, I guessed about three quarters of a century old, modeledlike many Catholic churches in America on some combination of French Gothiccathedrals and Westminster. Red brick walls with tall narrow windows, red tile roof, a
 
Joshua Malbin307 12
th
St. Apt. 8Brooklyn NY 11215
2spired bell tower. Every window and door given an unnecessary Gothic arch. When itwas built it must have looked into town across two miles of rangeland, but retail hadspread outward along the highway until today it was surrounded by fast food restaurants,motels, and gas stations. Beneath the times for daily services the announcement boardout front advertised a wine tasting today. I felt I could use a free drink.I parked in a small lot behind the main building. The parcel next door hadn’t beendeveloped yet, and two squat horses just growing their winter fur grazed by the fence. Asign by a rear door showed the way to the tasting, adding that the abbey itself was thewinery responsible for the vintage on offer.I didn’t see any tasting once I got inside, though, only a long, quiet hallway with atiny gift shop on my immediate left. A fiftyish woman sat behind the register in a high-collared pink and white sweater and watched me come in; I felt conspicuously Jewishamong the Bible verse plaques, ceramic lambs, and Jesus mugs. I told her what I wasafter.“You’re about two hours early,” she said. “Have you seen our museum? FatherWilliam is downstairs, you could pass the time with a tour.”I didn’t have any interest but I nodded and smiled, and then felt like that obligatedme to go see it. In the hall I saw a stairway leading down; I took it to the basement andentered the only open, lit room down there. In its center was a visitor’s book and adonation box, and in the corner waited an old man smoking a pipe. He wore a tool beltover his left shoulder like a purse. His white hair was combed back with Vitalis and hestood slumped into his spine and hips, the weight of his body apparently too much for hismuscles. If I hadn’t been told he was “Father William” I’d never have known he was a
 
Joshua Malbin307 12
th
St. Apt. 8Brooklyn NY 11215
3monk: he wore a plaid flannel shirt and blue Dickies, no cassock, vestment, or collar. Iwondered if he spent all day down here smoking, waiting for visitors.I signed the guest book and put a five-dollar bill in the box. The walls were hungwith Native American artifacts, and I wondered whether I hadn’t seriouslyunderestimated the abbey’s age. Maybe it had been an old Spanish outpost—it was afterall only a hundred miles from the New Mexico border.I hadn’t yet acknowledged Father William and he hadn’t said anything to me, but hispresence pressed on me. I lifted my best businesslike smile to him and saw he’d beenwatching me.“Do you mind if I just look around?” I said.He shook his head and tamped down the embers in his pipe with his forefinger.I couldn’t get away from Father William; there was only the one room. But I startedas far from him as I could and worked along the deepest wall, keeping space and theguestbook table between the two of us. At first I was so preoccupied with him I didn’tsee the objects before me, but eventually the potsherds and woven blankets penetrated myattention, and I realized that nothing in here was labeled.I turned back to Father William. He was still watching me. The walls behind him inhis corner were the only bare ones in the room, as if he himself were the display forwhich that space was reserved.“So tell me about this stuff, “ I said. “Where is it from?”He pushed his forefinger into the bowl of the pipe again. “In the Thirties there was aboys’ camp here,” he said. “It started off with the boys playing cowboys, but they allsaid they’d rather play Indians. So we picked up a few objects to set the right mood, and
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