Diamonds and Cole by Micheal Maxwell

chirped a woman in her 80s. Her hair was curled tightly and held in place by a thin black hairnet. It almost glowed from the bluing that once made the white brighter but now had dyed her thinning hair a pale azure tint.
    “Good evening to you!” Sage said brightly.
    “Your first time with us?” Her pale gray eyes sparkled behind frameless gold wire glasses. Memories of his grandmother swept over Cole as he took in the old lady smell of flowered soaps and inexpensive dime store perfume, probably purchased before he was born. Her dress was a shiny rayon floral print, just like his grandmother used to wear, and was accented with a yellow-and-orange-colored glass broach. True to his memory, her feet were squeezed into a pair of black lace-up shoes that her ankles overran. Sage smiled at her warmly.
    “Have you been around here long, ma’am?” Ma’am? Where had that come from? He hadn’t called anyone “ma’am” in 30 years.
    “Oh mercy,” she reflected, “about 35 years, I expect. I came to one of Brother Bates’ meetings the first week he was here. Mercy me, that’s more like 40! My husband, Jack, was still working at the cannery when I first got the baptism. Mercy, mercy, he’s been gone 12 years now. Emphysema. Lord love him. He wasn’t saved ‘til the last, but we’ll walk the streets of glory together now.”
    “Maybe you knew my grandma, Zelma Park?”
    “Mercy sakes, I loved Sister Park! You’re her grandson! How long has she been gone now? Oh, how I loved to hear her daughter Minnie sing and play the guitar! Mercy, mercy, ‘Mansion Over the Hill Top.’ Oh, what a blessing they were!”
    The thought of his Aunt Minnie playing guitar and singing brought an uncontrollable chuckle from Cole. The longstanding family joke was the way his dad would say, “Minnie, I’d rather hear you sing than eat. I’ve heard you eat!” At that, she would always slap her brother on the shoulder and squeal “Yoooou.”
    The last time he saw her was at a hamburger stand when he was in college. She bought a Coke and, when the girl handed it to her through the window, the foam had receded to leave the cup’s top inch-and-a-half without soda. Minnie smiled and said as only a 77-year-old Pentecostal spinster could, “You must be a Baptist.”
    “Why, yes I am, how did you know?”
    “Because your cup’s not full!” Minnie said as she turned and winked at me.
    The poor girl never knew what hit her. She knew her theology had just been insulted, but she wasn’t quite sure how. As Cole watched his aunt cross the parking lot and take a seat on the bus bench, he knew the performance had been for him. Minnie had a stroke not long after that and lived out her days in a convalescent hospital full of other old men and women unable to move or speak. Cole had gone to see her with his parents once. She had just lain, eyes wide, lifeless, staring at the ceiling. He never went back. When she died, he got her guitar, a 1950 Harmony Monterey.
    “Gomes is my name.” The words brought Cole back to the smiling face in front of him. “Kate Gomes.”
    Cole took the hand offered him and said softly, “ Cole Sage is mine.” He was suddenly struck with emotion. Perhaps it was the mortality of everything around him. Maybe he just remembered too much. He slipped past the old woman and through the swinging doors with their big circular windows and into the sanctuary.
    Everything was just the same. The gold glitter cross hanging from picture frame wire still hung in an unplanned tilt toward the pulpit, kind of like a model airplane on a kid’s ceiling. The pulpit with its stained plywood still proudly bore the three crosses cut from pine and stained walnut. Two pots of silk flowers wrapped in bright green and red foil and tied with satin bows stood in front of the pulpit. The stage was covered in the same thick red carpet of the foyer and proudly displayed a metallic blue set of Slingerland drums, a Fender bass amp, a Hammond B3 organ,