The details, such as I understand them. I’ve numbered them. I haven’t called them “facts” as that sounds presumptuous.
1: Lem, my brother, came over. I was washing dishes and he materialized behind the screen door which made me whiplash a glassful of scalding water into the air.
2: He asked me if I would spend the night at his house because he thought he was being harassed by the former neo-realist painter to whom he’d been apprenticed. Formerly neo-realist, formerly painter, formerly burdened by this mortal coil. The painter’s name was Nomo.
3: Lem had been in love with Nomo’s daughter. Nomo hadn’t approved. She was sixteen. Lem was nineteen. Nomo said it was creepy.
4: I’m perhaps overly open to the possibility of displaced spirits roaming the earth.
5: Nomo was painting an altar-piece for a Roman Catholic church when he died. It featured Babe Ruth done up as St. Francis. He pointed out toward the stands as a bird landed on the extended index finger. Babe/Francis pointing out past the wall, past the stands, into the sky, out, beyond. He’d finished the painting, except for the bird.
A Fruit Salad of Harm 