Dejesus

Dejesus left France--a small town outside of Paris, not far from some other French town--when he was twenty-five, moving to some other town in another place that wasn’t France. He took a boat. Dejesus’ parents abandoned him when he was a farthing child, leaving him with a great aunt who had citrated eyes and a faintly moustache. Her left eye, the less citrated of the two, crossing into the bridge of her nose, a nose like potter’s clay; the edges frilled and corrugated. The man in the hat met Dejesus at a rally, a rally for those who’d never been to one, and disliked him from that moment onwards, avoiding him at all cost and with no little fleet of footing. He disliked the fact that he was from another country, spoke in tongues he didn’t understand, and wore a beret instead of a standard hat. The day of the rally, a rally for those who’d never been to a rally, the sky was gunmetal gray, a cuvee of seagulls hovering above the rallying spot, pecking at cigarette butts and candy wrappers, seething and yawping and making a general nuisance of themselves. Dejesus was the first to speak, hoisting himself onto the soapbox like a man determined to make a presence of himself, his beret tilted to one side, a knot of hair swaying from under the lip of his hatband, a gull circling his head like a deathbed halo.