Crude Maps Of Africa

I found a preacher on a corner, he was selling crude maps of Africa and cheap plastic rosaries and bootlegged whiskey, and I said to him, Father, do I have an immortal soul?, and he said, son, you'll never know till it's too late, and I said well what am I supposed to do with that?, and he said take this five dollar bill and bring me a sandwich, will you? So I walked down the street to a corner store where they used to sell falafel until September six years ago when it inexplicably disappeared, but I didn't know this, I hadn't been there for quite a while, and I was disappointed, I've always had a fondness for falafel, and besides, it's a nice word to be able to toss around in conversation, but they wouldn't sell it there anymore, so I bought the preacher a roast beef sandwich, and tried to find him an orange soda, I though it seemed heartening at the time, the bright sunny orange liquid, but I couldn't find one so I brought him back his sandwich and his change, saying, Father, here's your sandwich, and he said you done well, thanks, and I said let me see one of your maps, so he handed me one that looked like some six year old God-in-training had doodled in the coastlines of a fabled continent, making all the boundaries that human nature would have it have shed more blood for every pen-stroke than all those many fish in the sea they keep telling us are there every time one goes swimming off upstream look so petty, in waxy bright red like finger-paint and the messy sanguine childhood I am vaguely aware we were all supposed to have had, but I think I left mine in a box somewhere, for I remember my childhood's imaginary wildernesses, but none so violent and exuberant as the preacher's crude map of Africa, and I handed it back to him and walked on, whistling slightly, and he receded as I passed more buildings, tracing their outlines in my head like crude maps of Africa.