The Vocation

Parish

Chapter 3: The Vocation

The decision was not a decision. This is what Clem would tell you if you asked, which no one asks, because the people of Concordia Parish do not ask how a man came to be the thing he is — they accept the thing and the man together, the way you accept the river and the channel together, the way you accept the levee and the soil it sits on, the presence being the fact and the fact being sufficient. But if you asked, Clem would tell you that the decision to become a veterinarian was not a decision but a recognition, the recognition of a thing that was already true, the way a river does not decide to flow south but recognizes that south is where the land drops and the dropping is the direction and the direction is the river's nature, and the nature was always there, before the water, before the channel, before the name.

He was twelve when the recognition began. His father's cousin, a man named Trosclair who lived outside Bunkie in Avoyelles Parish, kept cattle — forty head of mixed-breed cows on eighty acres of land that was better suited to rice but that Trosclair used for cattle because Trosclair was a cattleman the way some men are left-handed, the orientation being innate, the cattle being the thing toward which his body turned the way a plant turns toward the sun, the turning being the tropism, the tropism being the nature. Trosclair's vet was a man named Dr. Landry, who practiced out of a clinic in Marksville and who drove a truck that was the predecessor of Clem's truck, a Ford, white, with a veterinary box in the bed that was the predecessor of Clem's box, the lineage of the truck and the box being the lineage of the practice, the practice passing from one man to the next not through inheritance but through the imitation that is the deepest form of inheritance, the watching of a man do a thing and the watching becoming the wanting and the wanting becoming the doing.

Clem watched Dr. Landry work Trosclair's cattle on a Saturday in April. The watching was the beginning. Dr. Landry's hands on the cattle, the hands that moved with the particular confidence that Clem would later learn is not confidence but competence, the competence being the body's knowledge of itself and of the work, the knowledge that lives in the hands the way music lives in the fingers of a pianist, not in the mind but in the tissue, in the muscle, in the memory that the muscle carries. Dr. Landry's hands found the vein on the first attempt. Dr. Landry's hands palpated the cow and announced: Sixty days. Dr. Landry's hands moved from the cow to the syringe to the vial to the cow again with the economy of motion that is the mark of a man who has done the thing ten thousand times and the ten thousand times have removed every unnecessary movement, the removal being the refinement, the refinement being the art.

Clem watched. He was twelve. He did not say: I want to be a veterinarian. He said nothing. He carried the bucket that Dr. Landry asked him to carry. He held the rope that Dr. Landry asked him to hold. He stood where Dr. Landry told him to stand, which was beside the chute, close enough to see but not close enough to be in the way, the position of the apprentice, the position of the watcher, the position from which all vocations begin, which is: beside the work, watching the worker.

He went home that night and did not tell his parents. He did not tell them because the telling would have required the naming of the thing, and the thing did not yet have a name, the thing being only the watching, only the wanting, only the recognition that the hands on the cattle were the hands he wanted to have, that the knowledge in Dr. Landry's fingers was the knowledge he wanted to carry, that the truck and the box and the roads and the farms and the cattle and the work were the thing he wanted his life to be, the wanting being the vocation's seed, the seed planted on a Saturday in April in Avoyelles Parish, in the dust of Trosclair's working pens, in the watching of a man's hands on a cow's body.

The seed grew. Seeds grow. This is their nature and this is the nature of vocations, which grow the way seeds grow — slowly, in the dark, unseen, fed by the things the soil provides, which in Clem's case were the summers on Trosclair's farm and the cattle he helped work and the animals he helped tend and the watching that continued, summer after summer, the watching deepening into the understanding, the understanding deepening into the commitment, the commitment being the root system that the seed produced, the root system holding the vocation in the ground of his body, in the soil of his hands, in the place where the wanting became the knowing and the knowing became the direction.

He graduated from Bunkie High School in 1987. He was seventeen. He was an adequate student, not brilliant, not struggling, adequate in the way that a boy is adequate whose intelligence is not the kind that schools measure, whose intelligence is in his hands, in the spatial understanding that allows him to look at a cow and see the skeleton inside the hide, to look at a joint and understand the articulation, to look at a wound and understand the geometry of the damage and the geometry of the repair. The schools measured the other intelligence — the verbal, the mathematical, the abstract — and Clem had enough of that intelligence to pass and not enough to distinguish himself, and the not-distinguishing was fine, the not-distinguishing was the anonymity that allowed him to carry the vocation's seed without anyone noticing, without anyone saying: You should be a vet, because the should-be from outside is not the same as the will-be from inside, and the will-be was already growing, already rooting, already reaching toward the light that was LSU, that was the School of Veterinary Medicine, that was the place where the hands would learn what the hands wanted to know.

He worked. Four years between high school and college, four years that his classmates who went directly to university did not work, four years that were the delay that felt like a detour but that was the route, the actual route, the route that the vocation required because the vocation required the money and the money required the work and the work required the time and the time was four years, four years on a cattle ranch in Rapides Parish where the owner, a man named Gaspard, ran six hundred head of commercial Angus on three thousand acres of land that was flat and green and endless, the flatness being the geography that Clem's body learned to read the way his eyes would later learn to read the anatomy texts, by repetition, by daily exposure, by the accumulation of the small observations that become the large understanding.

He worked as a ranch hand. He built fence. He fed cattle. He hauled hay. He worked the cattle through the chute on processing days, the days when the vet came, and the vet who came to Gaspard's ranch was a woman named Dr. Thibodeaux, no relation to the Thibodaux who would later build Clem's veterinary box, and Dr. Thibodeaux was the second veterinarian Clem watched, the second pair of hands, the second set of movements, and the watching of the second pair confirmed what the watching of the first pair had planted, which was: These hands are what I want. This work is what I am.

Dr. Thibodeaux let him assist. She let him hold the syringes. She let him draw up the vaccines. She let him feel the uterus through the rectal wall while she guided his hand, his arm inside the cow for the first time, the warmth and the pressure and the strange intimacy of being inside another body, the hand finding the uterus the way a hand finds a doorknob in the dark, by feel, by the shape of the thing, the shape telling the hand what the hand has found and the finding being the knowledge, the first knowledge, the knowledge that the hand acquires and that the hand keeps and that the hand carries forward into the years of practice that the hand does not yet know are coming.

"You've got good hands," Dr. Thibodeaux said.

She said it the way veterinarians say things, which is plainly, without emphasis, the way you would say: The gate is open, or: The water is hot. A fact stated. A thing observed. But the fact was the confirmation, the confirmation of the thing Clem had known since he was twelve, which was: The hands are the thing. The hands are the vocation. The hands are what the watching was watching for.

He saved the money. Four years of ranch work at wages that were the wages of a ranch hand in central Louisiana in the late 1980s, which is to say: Not enough. Not enough for veterinary school. Not enough for the eight years of education that stood between the ranch hand and the DVM, the four years of undergraduate and the four years of professional school, the eight years being the distance between the wanting and the having, the distance that the money was supposed to close and that the money was not closing fast enough, the not-fast-enough being the arithmetic of aspiration in a state where the wages are low and the tuition is rising and the gap between the two is the gap that swallows the vocations of the people who cannot afford to cross it.

He crossed it. He crossed it the way people in Louisiana cross things, which is by will and by the stubbornness that passes for will in a place where the river has taught the people that the thing you must cross is always wider and deeper than you think and the crossing requires not courage but endurance, the endurance to keep moving when the current is against you, the current being the money and the time and the doubt, the doubt that the hands are enough, the doubt that the watching was real, the doubt that the seed will grow into the tree, and the doubt is the current, and Clem kept moving against it.

LSU. Baton Rouge. The campus on the bluff above the Mississippi, the river again, always the river, the river that he had grown up beside in Bunkie and that he would practice beside in Vidalia and that was here, at the university, the river running past the campus the way it runs past everything in Louisiana, the river being the state's spine, the state's circulatory system, the water carrying the sediment and the commerce and the history from the interior to the Gulf, and Clem on the bluff, looking down at the river, the looking being the moment when the geography confirmed the vocation, the river saying: You are in the right place, the place where the hands will learn.

Undergraduate. Four years. He studied animal science. He studied biology. He studied chemistry, which he did not love but which the hands required, the chemistry being the language that the medications speak, the language of the molecules that the hands would administer, the molecules that would enter the animals' bodies and do the work that the molecules do, which is the work of healing, the work of killing the bacteria and reducing the inflammation and synchronizing the estrus and managing the pain, the molecules being the hands' tools, the tools requiring the understanding, the understanding being the chemistry that Clem sat through in the lecture halls on the LSU campus while the river moved past the bluff and the wanting grew.

He applied to the School of Veterinary Medicine. He was accepted. The acceptance letter arrived at the apartment on Highland Road where Clem lived with two roommates and a secondhand couch and the textbooks stacked on the kitchen table because there was no desk and the table served all purposes, the table being the desk and the dining surface and the study area and the place where the acceptance letter lay open, the letter being the door, the door that the four years of ranch work and the four years of undergraduate had built, the door that the money and the time and the endurance had constructed, and the door was open, and Clem walked through.

Veterinary school. The anatomy lab. The first semester. The room in the basement of the veterinary school building, the room with the fluorescent lights and the stainless steel tables and the smell, the smell that is the anatomy lab's signature, the smell of the preservation fluid and the tissue and the particular chemical quality of a body that has been prepared for study, the smell that Clem inhaled on the first day and that he would smell for the rest of his career in the faint echoes that the memory carries, the smell being the smell of the beginning, the beginning of the hands' education, the beginning of the knowing that the hands would carry.

The cadaver was a horse. A quarter horse gelding, bay, the body lying on the table in the position of a horse that is lying down and resting, except the horse was not resting, the horse was dead, and the death was the gift, the gift that the horse's body gave to the students who would study it, the gift of the tissue and the bone and the muscle and the organ, the gift of the interior made visible, the dark made light, the hidden made available to the hands that needed to know what the inside of a body looks like before the hands could know what the inside of a living body feels like.

Clem's hands entered the horse. The scalpel first, the scalpel being the key, the instrument that opens the body the way a key opens a door, the blade parting the skin and the fascia and the muscle in the layers that the anatomy dictates, the layers being the body's architecture, the architecture that the hands must learn the way a carpenter learns the architecture of a house, by taking it apart, by seeing how the pieces fit, by understanding the structure that the surface conceals.

He found the muscles. He found the tendons. He found the bones and the joints and the ligaments and the nerves and the vessels, the vessels being the pipes, the pipes that carry the blood the way the Mississippi carries the water, from the heart to the extremities and back, the circulation being the body's river system, the system that Clem traced with his fingers in the horse's body, the fingers following the vessels the way a man follows a road, from the origin to the destination, from the heart to the hoof, from the center to the edge.

Dr. Broussard. The anatomy professor. A woman of sixty who had taught anatomy at LSU for twenty-seven years and whose hands were the third pair of hands that Clem watched, the third pair that confirmed the vocation. Dr. Broussard's hands in the cadaver were the hands of a conductor, the hands that directed the students' attention the way a conductor directs an orchestra, the pointing and the lifting and the separating of the tissues being the music, the music of the anatomy, the anatomy being the composition that the body plays, the composition written in muscle and bone and nerve.

Dr. Broussard stood beside Clem at the table. She watched his hands. She watched the way he held the scalpel, the way he separated the tissue, the way his fingers moved through the horse's body with the care that is not taught but that is present in the hands of certain students, the care that says: This body is a gift, this body is teaching me, I will handle it the way I will handle the living bodies that I will touch for the rest of my life, with the respect that the body deserves, the respect that is the veterinarian's first ethic.

"A vet's hands are his eyes," Dr. Broussard said. "You see with your fingers. The anatomy you learn here — you will forget the names. You will forget the Latin. But your fingers will remember the shapes. Your fingers will remember the textures. Your fingers will reach inside a living animal and your fingers will know what they are touching because your fingers learned it here, on this table, in this room, with this horse. The seeing is in the fingers. Train the fingers."

Clem trained the fingers. He spent hours in the anatomy lab that the curriculum did not require, the extra hours being the hands' extracurricular, the hands wanting more time with the tissue, more time with the shapes, more time with the topography of the body that the hands were mapping, the mapping being the education, the education being the hands' preparation for the years of practice that the hands did not yet know were coming but that the hands were building toward, the way the levee is built toward the flood, layer by layer, the layers being the preparation for the thing that will test the preparation.

He learned the dog. He learned the cat. He learned the cow, the cow's anatomy being the one that made his hands speak, the cow's body being the body that his hands recognized the way a hand recognizes a glove, the fit being natural, the fit being the vocation's confirmation, the cow's body and Clem's hands being the two halves of the thing, the thing being the practice.

The reproductive anatomy of the cow. The uterus. The ovaries. The cervix. The structures that Clem's hand would find ten thousand times in the dark of the cow's body, the hand reaching through the rectum and palpating through the rectal wall, the hand finding the uterus by feel, the uterus being the object that the hand learned to find in the anatomy lab and that the hand would find in the field, the field being the place where the anatomy became the practice and the practice became the life.

He palpated his first live cow in the third year. The teaching hospital. The cow in the chute. Dr. Fontenot — no relation to Earl — standing beside him, guiding him, the guidance being the voice that said: Reach further, move your hand to the left, feel the cervix, now follow the uterine horn, the horn curving away from the midline, feel the ovary, the ovary is the size of a walnut, you will feel the follicle if she is cycling, the follicle is the softness on the surface, the softness being the fluid, the fluid being the egg, the egg being the next generation, the next generation being the thing your hand is touching, the thing your hand is feeling for, the thing that will become the calf that will become the cow that will become the herd that will become the ranch that will become the parish's economy and the farmer's life and the veterinarian's practice.

Clem's hand found the ovary. Clem's hand felt the follicle. The follicle was there, the softness on the surface, the fluid beneath the membrane, the egg inside the fluid, the generations inside the moment, the moment being the first time Clem's hand found what it was looking for inside a living animal, the finding being the beginning of the ten thousand findings that would follow, the ten thousand findings that would be the practice.

He knew then. He knew with the certainty that is not intellectual but physical, the certainty of the hand that has found the thing it was made to find, the hand knowing before the mind knows, the hand telling the mind: This is it, this is the thing, this is the work, the work is the hand inside the cow finding the ovary, the work is the hand inside the horse finding the colic, the work is the hand inside the dog finding the tumor, the work is the reaching-in and the finding and the knowing, the knowing being the hand's knowledge, the hand's education, the hand's vocation.

The choice to go large-animal. The choice that was not a choice. The economics of veterinary medicine in 1998 were the economics of a profession divided: small-animal on one side, the dogs and the cats, the practices in the suburbs and the cities, the practices with the air conditioning and the tile floors and the regular hours and the salaries that could service the $200,000 in student debt; and large-animal on the other side, the cattle and the horses and the goats and the sheep, the practices in the parishes and the counties, the practices with the trucks and the dust and the irregular hours and the salaries that could not service the debt, the debt being the weight that pushed the graduates toward the cities and away from the parishes, the push being the force, the force that was emptying rural Louisiana of its veterinarians the way the river empties the continent of its water, the emptying being constant, the emptying being the problem.

Clem went large-animal. He went large-animal because the large animals were where the hands belonged, because the hands had been trained on the cow's body and the horse's body and the hands wanted the cow's body and the horse's body, the wanting being the vocation, the vocation overriding the economics, the economics being the math that said: Go to Baton Rouge, go to New Orleans, go to Houston, go to the cities where the dogs and the cats are and the salaries are and the debt can be paid. The math said: Do not go to a parish. The math said: A parish cannot pay you what you owe. The math said: The numbers do not work.

Clem went to a parish.

The choice to go to Concordia Parish. The choice that was Renee. The choice that was the river. The choice that was Dr. Arceneaux retiring and the practice available and the parish needing a vet and the needing being enough.

Renee was from Natchez. Clem met her in Baton Rouge, at a crawfish boil hosted by a mutual friend, the mutual friend being the connection that brought Natchez to Bunkie, brought the librarian to the veterinary student, brought the woman who organized the world with the Dewey Decimal System to the man who organized the world with his hands. Renee had just finished her English degree. Clem was in his third year of vet school. The crawfish boil was in a backyard on Hyacinth Avenue, the crawfish on the table and the corn and the potatoes and the beer in the cooler, the boil being the event that Louisiana uses for all occasions — celebration, mourning, introduction, reunion — the boil being the parish's communion, the gathering around the table, the breaking of the shell, the eating of the tail, the sharing of the food being the sharing of the life.

He noticed her hands. This is what Clem noticed first about everyone, the hands being the first text he read, the hands telling the story that the face had not yet told, and Renee's hands were small and quick and precise, the hands of a woman who handled books and papers and cards with the efficiency that comes from the handling of many things, the hands that sorted and shelved and stamped and filed, the hands that were the library's instruments the way Clem's hands were the practice's instruments, the two sets of hands being the two vocations, the two vocations being the two forms of care, the care of the animals and the care of the books and the people who needed the books, the care being the thing, the care being the shared language.

He asked her where she was from. She said Natchez. He said Natchez was across the river from Vidalia. She said yes. He said Concordia Parish needed a vet. She said how do you know. He said he had called the Louisiana Board of Veterinary Medicine and asked where the shortages were, and the board had said: Everywhere, but especially Concordia Parish, where Dr. Arceneaux is retiring and there is no one to take the practice, and the no-one is the problem, the problem being the absence, the absence of the hands that the parish needs.

Renee looked at him. She looked at him the way she would look at him for the next thirty years, which was with the combination of assessment and affection that is the librarian's gaze, the gaze that says: I am cataloging you, I am sorting you, I am placing you in the correct section, and the correct section is: Mine.

"You want to go to Concordia Parish," she said.

"They need a vet," he said.

"That's not a reason," she said.

"It's enough of a reason," he said.

And the enough was the thing. The enough was the vocation's logic, the logic that does not compute in the way that economics computes but that computes in the way that the body computes, the body's math being: There is a need. The need is an animal in a parish without a vet. The need is a cow calving in the dark with no one to call. The need is a horse colicking in a field with no one to come. The need is the absence of the hands, and the hands are here, and the here can become the there, and the becoming is the vocation, and the vocation is the reason, and the reason is enough.

He graduated in 1998. He was twenty-seven. He had $147,000 in student debt. He loaded the truck — the first truck, a 1996 Ford F-150, not the F-250 that would come later, not the truck with the custom box, just the truck with the tools he had accumulated during his clinical rotations, the tools packed in Rubbermaid bins in the truck bed, the bins being the box before the box, the amateur version of the thing that would become the professional version, the tools shifting in the bins as the truck crossed the bridge at Natchez, the bridge that connects Mississippi to Louisiana, the high side to the low side, the world to the parish.

He crossed the bridge. The river was below. The river was wide and brown and moving south. The bridge trembled with the traffic. Renee was in the passenger seat. She had her English degree. She had applied to the Vidalia Community Library. She had been hired. The hiring was the confirmation that the parish needed not just the vet but the librarian, the two vocations arriving together, the two forms of care crossing the bridge at the same time, the crossing being the beginning.

He drove into Vidalia. He drove down Carter Street. He saw the town that would be his town, the town that was small and flat and quiet, the town that sat between the river and the fields, the town that was not Baton Rouge, was not New Orleans, was not Houston, was not the city where the debt could be paid and the practice could be profitable and the economics could work. The town was Vidalia, and Vidalia was the parish, and the parish was the need, and the need was enough.

Dr. Arceneaux's clinic was on Pine Street. A concrete block building, two exam rooms, a small surgery, a kennel area, a storage room, and an office with a desk and a filing cabinet and a phone that rang. The clinic was adequate. The clinic was the practice's physical form, the form that Dr. Arceneaux had built over thirty-four years of practice and that Clem was inheriting, the inheritance being not the building but the relationships, the network of farmers and ranchers and horse people and dog owners and cat owners and goat keepers and chicken raisers who had called Dr. Arceneaux for thirty-four years and who would now call Clem, the calling being the practice, the practice being the phone ringing and the voice saying: I have a problem, and the problem being the animal, and the animal being the reason Clem crossed the bridge.

Dr. Arceneaux walked him through the practice. Dr. Arceneaux was sixty-two, thin, white-haired, his hands showing the arthritis that thirty-four years of large-animal work produces, the arthritis being the practice's souvenir, the souvenir that the hands carry after the years of reaching and pulling and holding, the years of the hands doing what the hands were made to do until the hands could no longer do it, the no-longer being the retirement, the retirement being the reason Clem was here.

"The parish will test you," Dr. Arceneaux said. "They'll test you because you're new and they tested me because I was new and they test everyone because the testing is how the parish decides if you belong. The testing is not mean. The testing is not intentional. The testing is the parish being the parish, which is: suspicious of the new, slow to trust, loyal once the trust is earned. You earn the trust by showing up. By being the man who answers the phone at 2 AM. By being the man who drives through the dark. The showing-up is the trust. The showing-up is the practice."

Clem listened. He listened the way he would listen for the next twenty-eight years, which was with the attention of a man who understands that the listening is the practice's other instrument, the instrument that is not the scalpel or the syringe or the hand but the ear, the ear that receives what the parish gives, the confessions and the complaints and the stories and the gratitude and the grief, the ear being the instrument that holds what the hand cannot hold, the ear being the space where the parish stores the things it cannot carry alone.

He took over the practice on July 1, 1998. The phone rang at 6 AM. A man named Thibodaux — not the welder, not Marie-Claire, another Thibodaux, the parish having more Thibodauxs than it has Tuesdays — called about a cow with a prolapsed uterus. Clem drove to the farm. He found the cow. He found the uterus hanging behind the cow like a thing that should not be outside the body but that was outside the body, the uterus exposed and swollen and needing to be replaced, and Clem replaced it, his hands lifting the uterus and cleaning the uterus and pushing the uterus back through the vulva and into the body, the pushing being the work, the work being the first work, the first act of the practice that would become twenty-eight years of acts, the first reaching-into that would become ten thousand reachings-into, the first morning in the parish that would become ten thousand mornings.

He drove home. He washed his arms at the kitchen sink. Renee was unpacking boxes. The house on Carter Street — rented, then, not bought, the buying coming later, the buying coming when the practice's income crossed the threshold that the debt and the rent and the living required, the threshold being the economics that the vocation had overridden, the economics that the showing-up was slowly, daily, answering.

He sat at the kitchen table. He was twenty-seven. His hands smelled like cattle and iodine. His arms ached. His back ached. The aching was the first day's aching, the aching that would become the daily aching, the aching that would become the arthritis that Dr. Arceneaux's hands showed and that Clem's hands would show in time, the aching being the vocation's cost, the cost that the body pays for the work that the body does.

Renee brought him coffee. She set it on the table. She looked at his hands. She looked at his hands the way she would look at his hands for the next twenty-eight years, with the recognition that the hands were the practice and the practice was the man and the man was hers and the being-hers was the marriage, the marriage being the other vocation, the vocation that ran parallel to the practice the way the levee runs parallel to the river, the two lines running together, the two lines holding.

"How was it," she said.

"A prolapsed uterus," he said. "It went back in."

"Good," she said.

The good was enough. The good was the word that held the morning's work and the morning's aching and the morning's driving and the morning's reaching-in. The good was the word that Renee would use for twenty-eight years of mornings, the word that was the marriage's response to the practice's demand, the word that said: You went, you did the thing, you came back, and the coming-back is the good, and the good is enough.

The parish tested him. Dr. Arceneaux was right. The parish tested him the way a cow tests a fence, not with malice but with the pressure of the body against the boundary, the pressure being: Can you hold? Can you hold when the phone rings at 2 AM and the voice is afraid and the road is dark and the calf is stuck? Can you hold when the horse is colicking and the owner is crying and the crying is not about the horse but about the wife who died and the horse was the wife's horse and the horse's pain is the man's pain? Can you hold when the budget will not balance and the debt is $147,000 and the practice earns what the practice earns and what the practice earns is not enough and the not-enough is the number and the number is the weight and the weight presses on you the way the heat presses on the parish?

Clem held. He held because the holding was the vocation. He held because the hands that Dr. Broussard trained and that Dr. Thibodeaux guided and that Dr. Landry inspired were the hands that hold, that were made for holding, that found their purpose in the holding of the animal while the medicine enters, in the holding of the farmer's confession while the confession finds its shape, in the holding of the parish while the parish does what the parish does, which is: survive, endure, continue, the continuing being the nature of the place and the practice and the man who chose the place because the place needed the choosing and the choosing was enough.

The vocation. The word comes from the Latin vocare, which means to call. The calling is the thing. The calling is the phone at 2 AM. The calling is the farmer's voice saying: I don't know who else to call. The calling is the need. The calling is the parish saying: We need a vet, and the vet saying: I am here, and the being-here is the answer, and the answer is the vocation, and the vocation is the life.

Clem did not decide to become a veterinarian. The hands decided. The watching decided. The twelve-year-old boy standing beside the chute in Avoyelles Parish decided, the deciding being the recognition, the recognition being the seeing of the thing you are in the thing another man does, the seeing being the beginning, and the beginning was the vocation, and the vocation was the hands, and the hands were the practice, and the practice was the parish, and the parish was the truck on the road in the morning with the box loaded and the coffee warm and the day ahead and the calling being answered, the calling that is always the same, the calling that says: Come, there is an animal, there is a need, come.

Clem came. Clem has been coming for twenty-eight years. The coming is the vocation. The vocation is the life. The life is the parish. The parish is the practice. The practice is the hands.

The hands that see.