Ben shoves the survived of His mother’s robe down into pajamapants, which are suborned with stripes, inherited from a recent enslaver, rolls bunches of fabric into fisted cuffs, then holding them high wades out and over. Assembled, they stand and stare, their mouths hang mailbox open, flags up the flabbered nose; but while some chance to pick at or cover their gapes, others hold tighter still in fellowship and psalm: it’s Him…the gospel’s that He’s recognized, silence; not a chirrup or a shatter of ice, not a plash nor a bird’s flying song And then, without signal, as if tranced, made vehicle themselves, takenover as prophet, what do they do — they congree and give Him the bumrush, they grab Him, lay hands upon hands…the adolescent mensch in the markered goatee, it is, holding Him by both arms crossed as if a sarcophagied Pharaoh: to sink Him down with them together, some seated on His chest buoyed with breath, others up and stomping on His shoulders, neck, and head dunked through the give of the frozen, violently deep into the slow, ropy water below…the water displaced, now rising up, now gurgling over, through His hole then the other unfished holes, too, as if they were throats flopping over the rims of their mouths this freezing vomit — the flooding of every hold that might hide His heart icebunched, bonehardened…
