The Ludovico Brothers

Riyadh Ar Riyad stokes the coal ovens underneath the doctor’s tent, the doctor sleeping like a swaddling child. The Ludovico brothers work as leathernecks for the Herstal Liege pantomime troop, Alex Degrande and Simon Drogue tending to the animals, feeding the dogs, horses and oxen from nosebags. The Antinomianist’s congregate behind the Waymart where they read from pamphlets left behind by the Witness: 10”Warn a divisive person once, and then warn him a second time. After that, have nothing to do with him. 11You may be sure that such a man is warped and sinful; he is self-condemned”. Titus 3 The Herstal Liege pantomime troop and the Antinomianist’s had a sharp dislike for one another; the Antinomianist’s seeing no logic in tightrope walking, the Herstal Liege pantomime troop having little patience for Witnesses and pamphleteering. Among the pantomimic, great and small, Alex Degrande was the one who had a love of poetry, carrying a coil-bound book of poems with him wherever he went. Among his favorite poems was the one written by a half-blind cutter with failing hearing, the poem striking a cord in his chest:

aunt
Alma’s
raspberry tarts
roiled in butter
uncle Jim’s good eye
threaded with sweat
father’s shirttails
soaked with
hornets’
mud