Alex had no idea that woods could be so extensive in the city and followed behind Joe like a white safari man from one of those awful black and white ‘black and right’ Tarzan movies that mother had so decried whenever she had caught Father and Alex watching them. Father liked movies from his father’s day and also loved the dollar store where he could get ‘bargain basement’ movies for a dollar, and enjoyed them, ‘unjust’ or not. As much as Mother might complain she had only destroyed one such DVD as unfittingly evil, Arena starring ‘that no good hussy and temptress Pam Grier,’ the loss of which pained Father for some time and sent him of his prayers for nearly a week until he found the Lord Jesus again in his heart.
Aside from his slacks and casual shirt and sneakers—and undergarments of course—Alex was alone in an unexpected wilderness except for his cell phone, his plain old link to the world, the cheapest most basic thing parents could get for a child who they wished not to be caught up in ‘the deviltry of social media’.
Or am I really alone in the world? Lord Jesus is of course with me, but with 2 billion souls to console he is busy. Is Joe with me? Does he really think of me as a brother? After what he did back there it is hard to believe he is with anybody.
Joe did seem happy padding along like a caveman out of some wearisome past before The Fall. Soon, after about ten minutes of padding slowly downhill in a winding fashion they could smell the stream, and it did not smell too good. Joe stopped and gave one sure sniff, and declared in his endearing mumble, “Rainage—runoff, no good to drink.”
They continued a ways farther and then heard trickling and water singing softly like when the bathtub lets out but without a disappointing gurgle at the end. Alex had never heard this in person, just on TV. Joe stopped and smiled slightly back at Alex with his broad-face, and mumbled, “Ocks to walk cross. On’t need no bridge.”
You are going to have to do so much work with him if he’s going to recite scripture at Youth Gathering Night.
They padded on a while further and came to the stream, which was impressively wide, wider than an alley, as wide as a side street. The stream was really a giant overgrown wooded ditch with trees growing slant ways across and even linking branches at certain points, making it kind of a surreal tunnel of nature and trash. The water was knee high in places and trash could be seen hanging from trees higher than a man could reach. There were many rocks that one could try and use to cross, for putting a shoe into the clouded water and onto the slime coated rocks beneath seemed dangerous to the walker and deadly to the self-respecting sneaker.
To the left the path looped up and over to a hump of bricked earth that used to be one end of a foot bridge that would have permitted a walker to gain the concrete steps on the other side and walk up to the golf course. At the base of this bridge the water pulled deeply, looking like someone with a protective suit on could actually swim in it. In the midst of this pond was a long heap of rubble, a submerged mess of concrete and piping and rusted iron bars that had once been the bride above. Among this mess, which seemed like a kind of post apocalyptic urban white-water rapid of the very slow kind, towered a massive white man, and was he frightening!
The man was struggling with a shopping cart that had apparently been stuck in the muck of the streambed before the bridge above had been demolished. The man wore no shirt and hat great tufts of white hair growing from his belly chest and back. His head was bald and wrinkled with big folds of flesh on the back. His attire consisted of cutoff sweat pants about his massive hips, over which his belly hung like a comatose panda bear. The man’s camp could be seen on the other side to the right in the form of a watermelon bin propped up by milk crate pillars beneath a canopy of vines and tree branches. This man seemed to live well, with stacked canned goods and such under his makeshift shelter and a bed made of trash bags. He struggled mightily with the shopping card, which was tangled with some iron bars that poked from the submerged ruined of concrete.
Joe looked at Alex and nodded, ‘Yes.’
Alex bugged out his eyes and shook his head, ‘No!’
Joe then grinned and leaped out unto a rock, which clacked and splashed beneath him. Alex followed to the edge of the rocky streambed and looked on as the giant man turned and bellowed, “Who, from Sodom comes to this water Jordon?”
Joe, with a childish lightness to his deep voice, chirped, “Joe.”
The man then placed his hands on his hips and looked across the pool of water and became even more preachy of voice, “Why do you beseech God’s Prophet? Do you seek salvation? Or do you merely come up from the bowels of wretched Sodom to appeal to the greed and avarice of wicked Gomorrah above.”
As he said this he pointed to the golf course unseen above and behind the wall of weeds, brush, trees and vines.
Joe looked over his shoulder at Alex, shrugged his shoulder, and nodded as if he expected Alex to calm the crazy man who was aggressively puffing out his chest. Noticing this the crazy giant addressed Alex, “So the warrior brings a priest on his quest?”
Alex then noticed that the man had big rubber boots up over his knees as he began to wade toward him, past where Joe stood on the big rock on the other side of a rivulet of water a few feet wide. The man covered the distance in three seconds and stood towering over Alex even though Alex was up on the bank. He amazingly did not smell, or at least smelled no worse than the water.
He crossed his arms like a hairy monster and rumbled, “What is the manner of your warrior’s quest and what seek you man of God?”
I’m a kid, and how does he know I’m a Christian? Could he really be a prophet?
I have to answer. He’s crazy and will get mad.
He looked to his right and saw Joe smiling from ear-to-ear and encouraging him with his hand made like a puppet head to speak.
Oh here goes nothing.
“I am Alexander of the Agape Congregation, a lay witness, and this is my brother Joe. He is looking for a caddy job and I’m helping. I just witnessed to John back up in the woods and left him a copy of the Gospels. We are really just looking for work—we could help you with your shopping cart.”
The giant hands reached out and grabbed Alex by the hips and picked him up.
Oh My God!
Alex was then being carried above the water to the far side of the stream. The man set him down on a flat rack that had a ‘Welcome’ door mat on it. He then straightened up to his full height and spread out his arms to the leaf obscured heavens above, “Father, your humble servant recognizes the strength of his hands as the reflection of your might and hereby blesses the passage of your pilgrims on your behalf.”
The man then waded over to the shopping cart and yanked on one of the rusted iron bars, drawing it from the water with a chunk of concrete still attached to it. He smashed the concrete with his hand and knocked it loose from the bar and then twisted the bar up into a pretzel. He looked to Joe and said, “My strength comes from God, for I am his prophet in this valley. Your strength too shall come down from On High as we free the Ark of the Covenant from its earthly mire!”
The crazy man waded back over to Alex and gave him the twisted bar. “A sign from God Above good Witness.”
This is scary. I wonder if this is what the Jacksons and the Murphys, and the people across the street think about us going to church every night and every weekend day.
While he had been musing Joe had joined the giant at the cart. Rather than work on prying the cart loose together Joe did the work as the man directed him, and encouraged him with Old Testament passages about the building of Solomon’s Temple, and patted him on the back.
I am really weak on the Old Testament. I need to read up on the scriptures. Then I could come down here with Joe and speak to this man about joining the Congregation. It must be terrible to live like this in the winter.
The removal of ‘The Ark of the Covenant’ was proving to be quite a chore, and Joe was getting right wet as he toiled under the direction of ‘God’s Prophet’ seemingly as obsessed with getting that shopping cart up out of the muck as he was with facing down John. According to Alex’s cell it had been 11:43 a.m. when they hit the bank and it was now 12:55 p.m. he was now seated comfortably on the welcome mat and was becoming invested in the work, silently cheering on Joe in his furious bid to free the cart. Eventually, with a moaning of rusty iron against stainless steel and the cracking of concrete and the clacking of stream stones, the cart began to screech free as Joe growled with effort and hauled it above the water, now standing among the crumbled concrete, with the crazy man chanting with his hands to heaven, “The strength of God is with you my Son—a warrior of The Lord is born!”
Alex was on his feet clapping as Joe carried the cart over to the watermelon bin hut and set it down. There was something soggy and ruined in a plastic bag within the cart. The man came to the cart as if to the mouth of a casket, afraid to look within.
Alex soon found himself standing above Joe as he lay exhausted on the bank, soaked and dirty now beyond all repair. The giant man was no longer speaking like a prophet but speaking matter-of-factly to them as he opened the zip lock bag and drained the water and began sorting through an old small photo album, within which most of the pictures were ruined but still recognizable as the members of a family, “Thank you boys. I’ve been digging this out for a while—a week now. I keep getting cramps in my belly and have to stop. I was off last week foraging out by the reservoir for the moss that I use for medicinal since I’ve been prone to cut with this age I got on me now. I kept the family keep sakes in this cart tied under the footbridge, none but me tall enough to haul it down. Then, I come back and the golf course people have had their Mexicans knock it down.”
The man then turned to Joe and patted him on the chest, “Bless you son, bless you for this.”
The giant head then swiveled to regard Alex with big watery blue eyes crusted on the corners with something whitish and milky. The big eyes blinked and a forced smile faded beneath the heavy jaws, “You really did pray with John and leave him a copy of the Gospels?”
“Yes Sir. He seemed in need.”
The man seemed to consider something deeply as Joe finally sat up, seeming to pay attention to this man like Alex did to Pastor Manfred. He paged to the middle of the album and opened it to a page that was only half soaked, the pictures from the middle to the back seeming to have survived mostly intact while those in the front, old black and whites from way back in the day, were utterly ruined. He then tapped his huge finger on the picture of a teenager who could have been John without the dirt or the long hair or the pain-filled face streaked with tears.
The big man paused, seeming not even a little bit insane at this moment and looked up the hillside to the direction of John’s camp. His voice was soft, not even a bit preachy. “The Lord works in mysterious ways. It’s about time I made amends for my sins. Thank you boys.”
With those cryptic words the man whose name they had never learned stood and walked off with the small album—smaller than his great hand—held to his hairy chest. Even as he walked across the treacherous slimy-stone bottom stream in his rubber leg boots he kept his big face facing an unseen point on the wooded hill above, where John had played his knife game on his milk crate bench.
By the time the man disappeared into the overgrown brush of the lower bank Joe and Alex were both sitting chin-to-tucked-knee thinking their own thoughts, although Alex suspected those thoughts were more alike than different. For once since meeting him Alex considered that the Mickey Mouse marauders tattooed so crudely on Joe’s arms seemed to be smiling rather than frowning at the world.
