Free Butterfly Winter by W.P. Kinsella

sank like a small rock as the water carried it downstream. I tried again with the same result. The Wizard tossed a berry and it changed immediately to a sparkling fish that leapt gaily in the water, turning its turquoise belly to the sun for a second before swimming away. He handed me a large handful of berries.
    “It takes years of practice,” he said. “But if anyone has the patience, you do.”
    MY WORD FOR TODAY is ullage: the amount of empty space in a closed container. Father Cornelius instructs me that the word is usually used to refer to the empty space in an opened bottle of wine. “With each drink poured from the wine bottle the ullage grew larger.” That is the sentence I spoke for Father Cornelius to let him know I understood the meaning.
    Father Cornelius, Father Joachin, and Father Bartholomew, who has only one leg, live behind a chain-link fence that surrounds their residence. The house, of flaming white adobe, once sat next to a church, but the church was torn down by a previous administration, or perhaps by the present one, or simply by vandals, who knows?
    An El Presidente once stated that “There is no need for God in a warm climate,” and mandated that if the priests wished to remain in Courteguay they must forever remain behind the chain-link fences. They rely on the kindness of former parishioners for food and clothing. They are allowed to converse through the fence but are not allowed to perform religious rites, though I’m told they do, in fact I’ve seen them, in fact I have been a part of those forbidden rituals.
    Father Cornelius teaches me one new English word a day. I was three years old when I decided that English would be the language in which I would think. I was leaning on the fence watching the priests eat some fried pheasant that my mother had me deliver to them. They spoke in Latin to each other, Father Cornelius spoke English and a smattering of Spanish, “Enough to be dangerous,” he said. Father Joachin spoke Spanish Spanish, not the heavily accented, pidgin Spanish-French of Courteguay, and Father Bartholomew, who has only one leg, originated in Warsaw and spoke only Polish, Latin, and a few words of English. The one-legged Father Bartholomew used his few English words to say how good the fried pheasant was. Father Cornelius, who was tall and skeletal, his shiny bald head pointing like a beacon toward the sky, replied that the pheasant was indeed a gift from God, for which they would later give fervent thanks.
    “Why don’t you thank my mother?” I said in English, for I had understood every word they had said.
    “How does such a tiny child as you come to know English?” replied Father Cornelius.
    “I just know,” I said. “It is a gift from God, perhaps?”
    “You believe in God?”
    “I don’t know. Suppose you tell me what God is?”
    That was the beginning of my spending most of my waking hours outside the chain-link visiting with the priests, discussing theology, philosophy, metaphysics. The priests lend me books. I read them, we all four discuss them, very heatedly sometimes.
    I soon stopped discussing the situation with my parents and family. My father is a thinking nonbeliever, my mother is a nonthinking believer. Julio sometimes hurls a baseball into the chain-link at a high speed, the sound of the crash and the ensuing shudder of the fence causing all four of us to jump with fright. “I am my own God,” Julio says. “I make things happen.”
    The Wizard is a charlatan (one of the first words Father Cornelius assigned me) of unprecedented proportions, though sometimes he is not. He has magic about him and is not afraid to use it. The church,although it believes in miracles, denounces the Wizard, which is apparently the same as denouncing El Presidente. This is a point I and the priests are not clear on. El Presidente in one of his incarnations turned on the church with a vengeance.
    My fondest wish is to study for the priesthood, and perhaps serve in a