“Mom, when birds die, what happens to their souls?”
“What made you think of that, Roy?”
“I was watching a couple of crows fly by.”
“You think birds have souls?”
“That’s what Nanny says.”
“What do you think the soul is, baby?”
“Something inside a person.”
“Where inside?”
“Around the middle.”
“You mean by the heart?”
“I don’t know. Someplace deep. Can a doctor see it on an X-ray?”
“No, baby, nobody can see it. Sometimes you can feel your soul yourself. It’s just a feeling. Not everybody has one.”
“Some people don’t have a soul?”
“I don’t know, Roy, but there are more than a few I’ll bet have never been in touch with theirs. Or who’d recognize it if it glowed in the dark.”
“Can you see your soul in the dark if you take off all your clothes and look in the mirror?”
“Only if your eyes are closed.”
“Mom, that doesn’t make sense.”
“I hate to tell you this, baby, but the older you get and the more you figure things should make sense, they more than sometimes don’t.”
“Your soul flies away like a crow when you die and hides in a cloud. When it rains that means the clouds are full of souls and some of ’em are squeezed out. Rain is the dead souls there’s no more room for in heaven.”
“Did Nanny tell you this, Roy?”
“No, it’s just something I thought.”
“Baby, there’s no way I’ll ever think about rain the same way again.”