1. On page four of their client’s file Sister Ignatia records:

The Ordination Council deemed Contadino’s
calling from the Lord true, if strange, recommended
his ordination to the congregation.
Rumor ran Pastor Robertson’s daughter Leah
was with child—which as generally assumed hastened
Contadino’s route to respectability.
Leah, Contadino’s short-term wife,
The Jackson 5 and John Cougar Mellencamp
on her radio, learns how the Contadino
road goes nowhere else, just down and down.

2. Leah’s Contadino merry-go-round.

I was happy with my Billy Jack, him no
Pigeon Hill meth cook, if in danger of whiskey,
but for having got him a savior, Jesus.
They voted Contadino yes for ordination.
At Beanblossom Creek Baptist Church my daddy
riled that churchhouse up in the Holy Spirit.
Congregation laid on their hands, invoked
the Lord’s blessings on Contadino and his ministry.
He was in truth desirous of a good work,
but Contadino burned the house of promise
Elder Wyatt helped him build to the ground.
Being an official holy man made him proud.
He stepped out onto the waters of his whiskey
problem thinking he’d not sink. One drink,
harmless he thought, and Contadino was off,
hitting the streets, out late, ran wild, and higher
than I ever knew a human could do.
Contadino cut no preacherly figure,
not blameless nor sober nor of good behavior,
given to a stinginess, though apt to preach.
Not given to wine, just whiskey, a brawler, covetous,
though ever apt to preach, Contadino.
He vagabonded. He wagged in wind. He burned.
When he laid him down to bed, he squirmed.

He stepped out onto the waters of his whiskey
problem thinking he’d not sink.

3. Contadino’s deliberate manufacture of misery.

Barn swallows, figures against an ether ground,
refuse to answer plainly. God distributes
kerosene lanterns from dark to dark, but people
fear striking their matches. Soon they will invent
a match-striking machine. Who can afford to buy it?
Whiskey-stung gullet, I was starting to say.
My words keep changing as I work them out.
Labels smear off the bottle, a grove of Roman
pine, cypress, laurel. Water of life scorches my throat
just right. I might as well be a lemon tree
orchard never visited by Americans.

4. Leah exits the Contadino carnival.

You cannot say he’s just misunderstood.
His drunkard slur is not understood at all.
Contadino brags he never snorted
Ritalin. This is what sets him above the rest.
Does this moral compass make any sense?
I cannot piece that puzzle back together.

5. On page four of their client’s file Sister Ignatia further records:

Leah wanted to be her daughter’s mother,
not her husband’s. Leah left Billy Jack.
Being high there’s at first an easier fall down
than trigger happy, but billboards, bottle labels,
later on, conversation inside turns toward
feeling so discarded, severed, forsaken.
Hurts worse than her falling out of love. Jesus
was not magnified in Contadino’s
body strung from a honey locust tree
when he resolved to quit him of whiskey for good.

6. Contadino, caught in his undertow and unable to think for himself, recalls lyrics of Uncle Tupelo songs.

They stand around them pooltables after work.
These guys and me go back, so I went inside.
I can always find a cold shoulder to lean on.
Newspaper headlines, pockets too empty to believe
that trickle-down theory. There’s no frontpage hope.
An elderly couple drowned together in their car
caught in a flashflood on a county road.
I must really like how holding myself down feels.
Cigarette smoke wraps itself around our heads.
Barclock reads midnight, fallout shelter sign
above the door. It’s good advice to write
your lovedones postcards from jail. We are dead news
to the world and liquor. Drink yourself asleep.
Like handcuffs hurt worse for doing nothing wrong,
it’s halfpast midnight. Leaning on a cuestick,
where does our dying go? They made the Showers
Brothers Furniture Factory City Hall.
They moved the GE plant to Juarez. My friends
still say your best shot at putting food on the table
is to stand beside a factory belt
until you go to the grave without a sound.
I always wanted to make me a little noise,
my soul to keep for life worth living, a song
for the broken spirited, for everyone
still standing after midnight hour done parted.
But thank you, just waiting around to die, I can’t live
like this, so thank you, that’s enough. I won’t
just drink myself asleep little baby boy.

7. On page five of their client’s file Sister Ignatia records:

Contadino made a sort of ceremony
to end it where it began, the honey locust
in front of the Pigeon Hill house where they lived
together, Contadino, his sisters and brothers,
when they were kids, before Penny divorced Junior,
where he first stole from Junior’s whiskey stash.
Resolved he’d finally be a man, Contadino,
a filthy naked stranger in someone’s yard,
a body found hung like that, far from saving souls,
Contadino became the image you drink out
of your mind. Leah spared her daughter that sight.

8. Leah explains the undertow’s origins.

Junior aimed to teach his boy why women
have to dress like ladies. This story wasn’t
him laying down a burden. Junior told
Billy Jack an uncle took Junior’s neck
in one grip and shoved his other grip into Junior’s
pants. Just turned five years old, nearly strangled,
Junior on his uncle’s lap, liquefied August,
other side of the curtain between two rooms,
a sundress drove the man beyond his senses.
Junior’s mother wore no underclothes at all.
Well, summer needs to make its sense to victims
too, so Junior claimed his father was
at fault for such a young mother not dressed proper.
His daddy is the one to blame that Junior
has never felt like a real man. Shame’s most
lamentable casualty is generations of family
knowledge needful for living alongside the land lost.
Contadino earned his baccalaureate
of blame. Stag beetles, water moccasins, black widows
haunted Contadino’s delirium tremens.
In his fingerprints Dr. Pepper, newspaper,
Walter Payton Immaculatus, unbooked
benzine of the undertow’s clanging ultimatums.

Shame’s most
lamentable casualty is generations of family
knowledge needful for living alongside the land lost.

9. On page five of their client’s file Sister Ignatia records the path of Contadino’s demise:

Divorced man not to preach for church congregation,
after Leah left him Contadino
spread wherever the gospel like first apostles.
Great the mystery of his godliness,
Contadino proclaimed, the God made manifest
in flesh, him justified in the whiskey spirits,
seen of angels in delerium tremens.
Congregation plopped in church pews don’t need
the message like the unrepentant loosed
upon college town streets. As he says scripture says,
he is able by sound doctrine to exhort,
to convince gainsayers, him less drunk, or more.

10. At the courthouse square, Contadino sidewalk preaches the parable “Man Swallowed By Fish.”

Guy named Butch strolls down the path running the length of Paynetown Point.
Jonah is already fishing Lake Monroe from the shore.
Butch unloads himself of his fishing poles and tackle box,
an unenjoyed gluttony of gear, like he don’t ever know what kind
of fish he’s trying to catch: hooks and sinkers, assorted spools
of fishing line, minnow lures, jigs and spinners, pair of pliers,
jackknife, fillet knife. The half-pint of Five Star brandy in the bottom
of his tackle box is Butch’s secret weapon. Butch threads
a nightcrawler onto his fishhook, casts his line, and rests his rod
in the crotch of a treebranch shoved into soft earth. Old Man Jonah
is down the way fishing for carp to smoke, milking pail
and one tin can of sweetcorn at his feet. Going to jail
and nails are just a part of growing up, the moral of the tale
about Jonah’s regret that he plunged his canine teeth into God’s organs
when first the Almighty called him aside. Jonah casts his line,
an angel’s spine. Butch is studying the tip of his pole when Jonah
sets his hook. Yea though he walk through gloom in the Valley of Death,
he shall not be afraid to reel this whopper in. Jonah scratches
a little churchaisle jig holding his pole up high as line
clickers off the reel. Lawd this-un’s like to be the biggest
carp he were ever told of. After his fish has spent its fight
Jonah reels in and takes the squirming carp into his hands.
Jonah shouts down the shore to Butch this-un’s so big they could crawl
right into its belly and take a trip to Las Vegas, how about that?
Jonah slides the fish into his dented milking pail,
fixes his fishhook to an eye of his rod. He’d stay a spell
but shore is gettin warm now the sun’s up above them trees.
Not that he’s complainin any. What right he got t’ grumble
‘bout lack a shade if the Lord’s got the whole a Las Vegas and even this here
milking pail of carp? Butch claims he’s fishing channel cat,
though it’s plain to anyone that Butch ain’t bothered to hike further west
where Moore Creek feeds Lake Monroe, that Butch casts his fishing line so as
to avoid any snags. Butch says hit don’t look like catfish bitin.
He’ll keep at his secret weapon meantime. It would shore be sumpin
if we could read they minds Jonah tells Butch, but he has heard it said
carp by corn at morn, and channel cat by cut bait at night.

11. On page six of their client’s file Sister Ignatia records:

Touched by God and Pigeon Hill, Contadino,
if verily upright, if staggering unasleep,
Contadino sidewalk preaches Gospel
in People’s Park, but the shakes from alcohol
withdrawal make his personal first commandment
thou shalt keep a steady flow of whiskey.
Justified in the spirit, seen of angels,
begging in his preaching place is beneath
his reverend station. Four blocks from People’s Park,
busy Courthouse Square, a streetcorner there,
he rattles coins in a Styrofoam cup and hymns.

Contadino sidewalk preaches Gospel
in People’s Park, but the shakes from alcohol
withdrawal make his personal first commandment
thou shalt keep a steady flow of whiskey.

12. Contadino pleas to passersby.

Spare change, please ma’am. Anything helps.
God bless you anyway, ma’am.
Spare change, please sir. Anything helps.
God bless you anyway, sir.

13. On page six of their client’s file Sister Ignatia further records:

July heat chokeholds Bloomington. Sidewalks emptied
more than the worst of winter days. A poor
panhandling forecast, Contadino collects
no money. In Seminary Square Park he cannot
con anyone for a drink. If they had seen it
when Contadino stiffened up like he
got Tasered, trickle of blood at the corner of
his mouth after he set his molars into his tongue,
someone in the homeless camp would have called
for help, but alls they see he lies on his side,
so he won’t choke on vomit. Likely soon
he’ll be calling down God’s fury on them.
Better off him quiet anyway. But next day
Contadino lies in the same spot reeking
of his own incontinence. The police
visit Seminary Square Park each day.
In fellowship, not because they are narks, some folks
tell police to check out Contadino.
One cop snaps on a rubber glove and thumbs back
Contadino’s eyelids. His eyeballs twitch,
he mumbles about a Leah he is sorry
to have done a wrong. The police radio
an ambulance, which delivers Contadino
to detox. Contadino, sacerdote
and grave, he wants to be better than given to be,
but Contadino in court again for drunk
and disorderly, they add indecent exposure.
In detox Contadino offended nurses
with naked stunts which were not right for a preacher,
so-called. Judge Wylie, tired of Contadino
in his court, judges Contadino extended
stay in county jail, a sentence he would
suspend if Contadino enters treatment
and does not drop dirty urine, even once.
Contadino deep down wants to be better
than given to be, agrees to Wylie’s terms.
At New Harmony I was Contadino’s
counselor, me, Sister Ignatia, nickname of Wanda,
who is not even Catholic. Raped as a teenager
when dressed up girl, I never trusted men
no more. Bad memories made me hate old pictures
of me dressed in boy clothes. An enlisted Marine
assigned to ground combat in Afghanistan,
after my medical discharge, I entered treatment.
My suicide attempts stopped when the courts
made my name and gender change official.
I went from Walt to Wanda and became myself.
I stayed sober twelve years, earned a college
degree, became an addictions counselor.
Now nicknamed Sister Ignatia, my business is
keeping down the casualties of drugs and booze.

One cop snaps on a rubber glove and thumbs back
Contadino’s eyelids.

14. At New Harmony Treatment Center, Contadino’s intake interview: family history.

Like every unrepairable family, you cannot
unsqueeze it right again when a tornado crushes
a corrugated steel corn silo like a beercan
in its fist. You disassemble the silo,
scrap steel, pocket the money. Safety standards
say not to build a scaffold higher than four times
its base dimensions. We broke that rule by triple,
setting scaffolding up inside the silo
drained of its grain. There’s no rush like powertools
in summer thunderstorms and rainslicked metal
scaffolding that teeters more the higher you climb.
You get so broke down and scared for the future. There’s Mama
has no more corners to cut. Somebody waves
a ten-dollar-an-hour job in your face, you think
I might as well quit high school and make a living
in demolition and metal scrapping. That scaffolding
was useless, too perpendicular, out of kilter
with the silo’s deformed cylindrical shape.
You could not reach an impact wrench to the bolts
that joined them steel sheets. Family is
a disassemble-and-salvage job, some points
along the way you make some progress it seems,
like erecting scaffolding five stories high
inside a silo, but the toil and risk of injury
serves no purpose for the job at hand.
I been trying to climb out, but maybe it needs
a torch to cut the old into scrap then start new.
When he whipped us, my dad shouted he is
kind to whip his kids only with his belt,
never with his fists, like his father done him.
My mother gave me to understand no one man
could ever please her, me included. If these be
the bragged-on highs, you can imagine the lows.

James Bradley Wells has published one poetry collection, Bicycle (Sheep Meadow Press, 2013), and one poetry chapbook, The Kazantzakis Guide to Greece (Finishing Line Press, 2015). He has written two poetry translations, Vergil’s Eclogues and Georgics (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022) and HoneyVoiced: Pindar’s Victory Songs (Bloomsbury Academic, 2024).