Body and Bread by Nan Cuba Page A

shot he’d hit poorly. He stayed most Sundays until just before church, where he taught a Bible study class, its members the same eight men for fifteen years.
    Most of the hour they talked sports, each game a contest between good and evil, the key players God’s acolytes. The last twenty minutes, the men discussed Bible chapters my father had researched in books of historical and textual analysis. He’d become a scholar, the individual figures, especially reluctant, ill-fated Moses and devout Paul, his friends, their doubts and talks with God described as family anecdotes.
    “After guiding two generations through the desert,” he liked to say, “barely any food, his people squabbling, sinning, Moses wrote his five books, then took a break at the Water of Contradiction. And for just one second”—he’d snap his fingers—“he wondered whether God could actually get them out of this mess. And what do you think he got for that?” Here, my father would search the faces of his audience. “He got to stand on Mount Nebo and watch everybody take off, leaving him to die by himself. One mistake,” my father would add while raising an index finger. “One.”
    Hugh, who’d just turned eleven, had a different passion—music—and that Saturday morning I had a clear view of him tilting his head, pretending to hold a horn. “I was playing this big ole saxophone,” he said. “Big, big as a tuba.” He hopped then drummed his feet.
    “Can’t usually remember my dreams,” my father said, standing, sliding his wallet into his back pocket. “Try not to, in fact.”
    “Playing, you know, that one from July Fourth. But the notes were bubbles.” Hugh punched the air as his bare feet slid across the carpet. “Like clouds, except kinda shark-shaped.”
    My father clapped teasingly. “Shark clouds from a tuba, huh Hugh?”
    Hugh grinned, shrugged twice.
    “I hope you’ll be sure and tell that to the guys at school on Monday. They ought to get a real kick out of it.”
    “Aw, Dad, it’s only a dream.”
    Hugh walked, dragging his toes, toward the doorway. “Did I ever tell you,” my father said, “about my patient whose foot had been eaten by a shark?” They stepped into the hall, and my father lifted his hand to pat Hugh’s head then returned it instead to his pocket. His keys clinked; I smelled coffee, Vitalis.
    Hugh’s eyes widened. “You’re just kidding, right?” He grabbed the banister when they started down the stairs.
    I unplugged the iron, followed. The only way I’d learn details about my father’s work was by overhearing him with one of my brothers.
    “Said he’d been working for Texaco off the Houston coast,” my father said. “Can’t remember exactly how it happened, but with his prosthesis he got around pretty good.”
    My father’s patients often called, tongue-tied, or sent gifts, some expensive, but he discouraged visits. Mr. Gueldner, muscled as a weightlifter, his voice like a radio announcer, had come anyway, right before Christmas—he, his wife and three children, one an infant. They brought a Swedish ripple coffeecake baked by the patient himself. “Bless you,” he kept saying while my father mumbled something, shook hands with one of the older kids. They sat on the sofa, and when my father said he’d leave some cake for Santa, they all blinked, nudged one another. After they’d left—Mr. Gueldner thanked at the door, the baby needing to be changed—my father mentioned the leg.
    “What’s a prosthesis?” Hugh asked when we reached the downstairs landing. My father checked his watch. He pushed Hugh toward his study.
    “Can I come?” I asked.
    He nodded while we walked. “It’s an artificial limb.”
    “What’s it made of?” Hugh leaned close, tripping on his toes, grabbing my father’s sleeve.
    “Various man-made materials are—”
    “But how does it stay, you know, on the leg?”
    I sat on a stool in the corner while they walked over to the copper kettle filled