Flannery Accounts for Counting
“He held him under while he said the words of Baptism and then he jerked him up again and looked sternly at the gasping child. . . . ‘You count now,’ the preacher said. ‘You didn’t even count before.’”
—Flannery O’Connor, “The River”
What is it about words and water that makes folks crave them so? I don’t know unless it’s the chill, the rush and thrill of time riding past in its mortal flow, taking you along with it to a new place you haven’t seen or been called holy, called tell me your dreams ’cause they’re heaven, too. The hope for happily-ever-after haunts this world. You feel less lonely when you’re part of a posse and still your named and singular self. You belong. The watchers whoop. The choir sings its song. The air swells thick with the smell of spring. And you walk in your body like a king.
-Angela Alaimo O'Donnell, Andalusian Hours: Poems from the Porch of Flannery O'Connor
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