Heavenly Hoboes

To: God c/o Scribe

  cc Book of Records last entry

  Supreme Being: Hurray! Forgive my gusto but knowing that we are so close to fulfilling your mission is fanning the flames of my internal fire. Unless you (I do not mean Gabriel) have knowledge of an area that begs further attention I believe we are ready to start the countdown. Re: the weather, Michael and I are on the same page. More than I can say for certain other parties. I am looking into #5037 on my list. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Host

  To: Host In all fairness, Gabriel means well and is just as excited about this as are the rest of us. You two really should get together. God, cc etc. etc

  The ragtag group of down-and-outers who came to participate in Abe’s meeting filled the breadth of the Lord’s alley. Numbering better than twenty, they had begun to drift in around seven to make sure they didn’t miss out on the party that the little Irishman had promised would take place at eight. Congregated in such cramped quarters the anxious group of men presented an intimidating sight.

  McDougal showed up at seven-thirty. Upon seeing the size of the crowd he immediately sought refuge behind the big trash bin. He had no idea that his little ploy would have such a far-reaching response. He had only told five or six guys about the free drinks, and that was at five-thirty or so, but it was evident that the word got out in a hurry. Even Charlie Belew, the last person he wanted to see, was there towering above the rest of the group. The little man shuddered at the thought of what such a mob could do to him when they found that he hadn’t been completely honest with them. He squeezed himself as tightly as he could between the wall and the trash bin and prayed for the Lord to hurry up and send Abe to his rescue.

  By the time Abe reached the alley the crowd had stopped its idle chatter and had begun to mill around like restless cattle before a thunderstorm. Standing shoulder to shoulder for an hour or so in such close proximity was stretching the limits of their patience almost to the breaking point.

  “Get the show on the road,” Charlie Belew shouted before Abe managed to get himself up to the big bin. The menagerie of winos, vagrants, hoboes and bums making up the audience joined in Belew’s raucous call to action, and very quickly the alley became a bedlam of nervous energy.

  Abe was carrying a regular size garbage can to stand on and was having difficulty getting it through all the people. “Can you guys let me get in here?’” he asked, but he had to shout. “Just move out of the way a little bit. Come on, fellows, let me through.”

  Shorty edged his wide-eyed face around the corner of the bin and searched for a sign of Abe. He didn’t see him but he heard him asking everyone to make room. “Out of me way, lads,” he called out as he jumped from behind the bin to give Abe a hand. “One side. Make a path.” He pushed and pawed until the men moved and Abe came into sight. He reached out a got a grip on the garbage can Abe was now using as a bulldozer. “Where do ya want me to put this?” he shouted over the din.

  “Right here’s okay,” Abe said, and helped Shorty turn it upside down. Before climbing onto the can to present his message he bent over and whispered to Shorty. “How’d you get so many to come?”

  Shorty twisted his face into a guilty looking grimace. “Well, I sort of promised ‘em a bit more than ya’ve got the authority or the wherewithal to be deliverin’,” he said in such a low voice that Abe had trouble hearing him.

  “What did you tell them, Mr. McDougal?” Abe shot back.

  “Well,” Shorty said with a tiny shrug, “I told ‘em they’d be getting’ some spirits when the meetin’ was over. But there was only four or five of ‘em then,” he quickly added.

  “Oh, Lord!” Abe gasped, looking out over the throng of thirsty men who were getting louder and more restless with each passing second. “How could you tell them that?”

  “How else did ya think I’d be getting’ their attention? That’s all they understand.”

  Abe raised his eyes upwards. “Lord, I’m really going to need some help here,” he prayed aloud, then put a hand on the Irishman’s shoulder and climbed up on the can.

  Just as Abe was raising his hands to quiet the mob, Horace edged up to McDougal and nudged at his pocket. “I ain’t got time fer ya, now,” Shorty hissed, and brushed him away. The old dog moved back until he bumped into someone’s leg then he sat down and looked up at Abe.

  “Can you guys hold it down for a minute?” Abe shouted to be heard. The men fell somewhat silent and turned their attention to the tall man in the front. “Now I know you boys want to get this over real quick, so if you’ll just be quiet and listen for a couple of minutes we’ll get on with it.”

  “Go ahead,” Charlie Belew shouted. “And the rest of you shut up.”

  While the crowd was settling down McDougal gave Abe’s pant-leg a tug. Abe bent down to see what he wanted. “That’s the mean one,” Shorty whispered, holding his hand in front of his mouth and rolling his eyes in Charlie Belew’s direction. “Ya’d do well to keep a sharp eye peeled on him.”

  Abe nodded then straightened up to start the meeting. “First off I’d like to thank you all for coming down here,” he began. Charlie Belew turned around and held a fist in the air. The last of the chatter ended and Abe went on with his speech. “Now, I ain’t no preacher and I don’t want you to think I am. I’m just a guy like you guys. Been on the road all my life and drank whiskey everywhere you have. And I loved it, too. But sometimes things happen in a man’s life that changes everything for him. Well, I’m here to tell you that one of those things happened about a week ago, right here in this alley. Right where you’re standing.”

  “What happened to ya?” someone called out.

  “I told you to shut up.” Charlie Belew yelled then looked straight up at Abe. “What happened?” he asked.

  Abe took a deep breath. “I know you guys are going to find this hard to believe. But I’m just asking you all to try real hard.” He paused and sucked in another deep breath. “A few days ago we were just sitting here, Mr. McDougal, Horace and myself, sharing a drink and talking about things. You know, just normal like, when all of a sudden the whole alley lit up like a Christmas tree. Well, it scared us to death. We didn’t know where the light was coming from and there wasn’t another soul around except us three.” He stopped and pointed out the Irishman and the old dog.

  Everyone in the crowd was fixedly staring at him, intent on hearing the rest of the story.

  Abe swallowed hard then continued, “Now here’s where you’re going to have a hard time believing me, but I swear it’s the God’s honest truth. You see, this wasn’t an ordinary light that was shining on us; it was the light of the Lord. He came out of nowhere and talked to us. He knew who we were and called us by our names. Like I said, it liked to have given us a heart attack. I’ve never been so scared in all my life. But then, last night He came back to see us again and He told us that He was here to help us not hurt us. And that’s why we wanted you guys to come here tonight. We just wanted to tell you that there really is a Lord. He knows each and everyone of you and He wants to help you. So, that’s why we asked you here. And I sure hope you believe me.” Abe finished his talk and started to get off the garbage can, but Charlie Belew’s voice stopped him.

  “That’s it?” the big man said more than asked.

  Abe nodded. “That’s all I wanted to tell you. I just thought you ought to know.”

  Charlie Belew gave him a quizzical look and shook his head. “Okay, then, that’s it,” he said. “Which one of you’s got the bottles?”

  “Yeah, where’s the drinks?” someone else yelled. Then general pandemonium broke out.

  “Hey?” a voice from the back called. The noise stopped. “Where’s that little short feller?”

  “Right here,” Charlie Belew said, and pointed to McDougal.

  “He said there’d be spirits flowin’ like wine. That’s why I come all the way down here.”

  “Just a
minute,” Abe said and raised back up. “I know this ain’t what you had in mind, but right now the spirit of the Lord is filling each and everyone of you.”

  “You mean there ain’t no hooch?” the voice said.

  “What I’m saying is that if you’ll believe me you won’t ever need another drink again.” Abe’s words caused a rumble of emotions. Every face in the group took on a funny look of total disbelief.

  McDougal pressed up close to Abe’s legs. “I’m thinkin’ they’re not buyin’ yer story. Could ya be comin’ out with somethin’ a bit more threatenin’ to hold ‘em off?”

  Before Abe could think of anything one of the dumfounded men found his voice. “If the Lord’s here, He can see all we want is what Shorty, there, promised us.” With that the group led by Charlie Belew took a step forward en masse.

  Abe held up his arms again. “Let me ask you,” he shouted at them. “What would you do if the Lord showed up right now?”

  “If He had a bottle, I wouldn’t mind,” one of the hopeless bums answered with a laugh.

  “A real big bottle,” Stub Wilson added, and the whole crowd laughed as it restarted its forward move.

  Trembling so bad his chin was quivering, and still clinging to Abe’s pant-leg, McDougal took a step to the rear. The garbage can wobbled and Abe lost his balance. Like a spinning quarter taking its last turn, Abe leaned first to the right then to the left then slowly toppled forward directly into Charlie Belew’s arms. Charlie Belew dropped his arms to his side as if he were playing ‘Hot potato’, and let Abe and Shorty finish their journey to the pavement.

  Horace leaped over the garbage can and bounced back and forth between his fallen pals licking their invisible wounds, and in general making a big to-do over nothing.

  “What a sight for the Lord to see,” one of the men said amongst the guffawing at Abe and Shorty’s attempts to get Horace out of their faces.

  “Yeah, too bad He ain’t here,” another fellow said laughingly.

  Stub Wilson, seeing that nothing more was to come of the would-be party, patted Charlie Belew’s arm. “Come on, Charlie. They’re not worth messin’ with,” he said, trying to coax the big man to leave before he got too angry.

  Charlie Belew stood his ground and glared down looking mean and fierce.

  The rest of the crowd, calling it a lost cause, backed off and started to turn towards the alley entrance. But before any of them could make their turn, the dark alley suddenly took on a soft greenish glow. The group stopped dead and instinctively looked up. Above them, spread out umbrella fashion, they saw a dome of what seemed to be translucent panels of jade. Hypnotic swirls of darker green swam in the panels, and curtains of sparkling light fell from its edges to surround them.

  An absolute hush replaced the once raucous behavior as all the men stood in awe of the inexplicable beauty they were witnessing. In this silent reverie the panels and the curtains of the dome faded and the great silvery light Abe and Shorty had seen before flared its brilliance. But, rather than be an individual light, this brilliance had no apparent source. It emanated from every object in the alley. To each man his fellow appeared as a projector of the blinding whiteness that instead of canceling their vision, enhanced it so that each of them saw the other as a glorious apparition of unending light.

  After half a minute Abe stood. “This is the Lord, fellows,” he announced simply. As if in confirmation, the light pulsated twice before it vanished, leaving a bewildered group of new believers standing again in the dark, dry alley behind Guthrie’s old building.

  Stone cold sober and wrapped in tumultuous thought, none of them took notice or paid any attention to the red and blue flashes coming from the alley’s entrance.

  “All right, all right, let’s break it up,” Officer Clements’ gritty voice preceded him down the alley. “What’s going on here?” he demanded when he got nearer.

  At the familiar sound of Clements’ voice, Horace crawled into Abe’s overturned garbage can and curled up.

  “We just seen the Lord!” one of the men exclaimed and grabbed onto Clements’ jacket sleeve.

  “Oh, you did, did you?” Clements chided. “Well, if you don’t want to be seeing him through a set of steel bars, you’d better get your hands off me!” The man started to plead for an audience, but Clements shoved him aside. “Break it up!” he yelled as he started bullying his way through the crowded alley. When the resistance continued, he bellowed, “Disperse!”

  Clements worked his way to the front repeating the ‘Disperse’ order until he spotted Abe and the Irishman standing near the big trash bin. “Well, if it’s not the wonderful team of Douglas and McDougal,” he called out, and strong-armed a path to them. “Would I be lucky enough to guess that you two are the leaders of this little parade?”

  McDougal refused to be intimidated this time. “If that’d be yer guess, ya'd be wrong,” he replied defiantly.

  Abe didn’t like the sound of Shorty’s brashness. Seeing that his buddy was about to overstep his bounds with the short fused Clements, he jumped in. “What he means, Officer,” Abe snapped, “is that the Lord is our leader.”

  Clements pushed up the bill of his new cap with the ever-present nightstick so they could see the meanness in his eyes. “Be that as it may, I don’t ever, I mean never ever, I don’t ever want to catch either one of you in, or even near this alley ever again. Is that understood?” Both Abe and McDougal nodded. “I don’t imagine you’ve seen that dog lately, have you?” Clements added.

  “The last time I saw him,” Abe said in a quivering voice, “he was in a garbage can waiting to be hauled away to the dump or somewhere.”

  “I hope he made it,” Clements snarled. He turned and pointed his stick at the alley entrance. “Off limits!” he screamed, making a hand motion for them to scat. Horace popped his head out of the can and watched as his two buddies and the officer hurried down the alley and out onto the sidewalk. “Go on, get out of here,” Clements said as a farewell remark. Then he and Officer Robins zipped away in their cruiser towards the Sunrise Doughnut Shop.

  When Horace caught up with them, Abe and Shorty were sitting on the bench in front of the Mercantile building discussing the major turn of events brought on by Clements’ order to permanently evacuate the alley.

  “What’re we goin’ to do now?” McDougal asked, his voice choked with anxiety.

  Abe rubbed his hands over his face. “I don’t know, Mr. McDougal. Maybe we’d better go back in there and ask the Lord.”

  Shorty motioned a thumb towards the departed police car. “Ya know they’re probably out there waitin’ fer us to do just that. As soon as we go in they’ll drive up and grab us.”

  “But this is where the Lord comes to see us,” Abe said.

  “We know that but they don’t, and they’re the law, and they told us to stay out. I’m thinkin’ ya’d better be comin’ up with another plan.”

  Abe lowered his eyes and stared at the sidewalk for a few minutes. “You know, Mr. McDougal,” he said finally. “I was just thinking that maybe it was the Lord’s doings that got us kicked out of the alley. When you think about it, it’s really not much of a place to be meeting in, is it?”

  “I couldn’t be arguin’ with that, Mr. Douglas,” Shorty agreed. “So do ya think He might follow us if we were to find a more suitable place?”

  Abe sighed. “I guess the best we can do is try,” he answered. “Let’s get back to the Center and think on it some more.”

  Shorty nodded. “I’m with ya on that, Mr. Douglas. Me old body’s had about all it’ll take fer one day.”

  As Abe and Shorty were trying to sort things out with the relocation problem, the word of the Lord’s visit was being spread all over town by His new apostles. The score of newly initiated messengers armed with an exhilarating excitement hit the streets right after Officer Clements boosted them out of the alley. Frantically they searched the near deserted town for anyone who w
ould listen to their version of what had transpired behind Guthrie’s old building. Much to their dismay, there weren’t many people to be cornered, and those they did run into wouldn’t let them get the story out. In desperation, Ezra Taft and many of the other witnesses began to hit the bars in order to find an audience at this time of night.

  Bill Carson stood behind the counter with his arms folded across his chest and a full smile on his face while the fumbling Ezra Taft tried to find the right words to explain what he thought had happened. Bill let him go on for a few sentences before blowing the whole thing off as another hallucination. He knew Ezra pretty well. “Oh, come on, Ezra,” he said, stopping Taft’s ranting in mid-sentence. “Why would the Lord be bothering with the likes of you, anyhow?”

  Ezra blinked his wide-open eyes then stared at the lights above the bar mirror for a second before shaking his head and returning his gaze to Bill. “I tell you, Mr. Carson, it’s the God’s honest truth. Like a big ball of fire, it was,” he persisted, holding his arms over his head to form an arch. He peered at Bill through the hole he had made then shook his head again. “No,” he thought deeper. “It was more like a giant sun. Well, no, it wasn’t like that either,” he stammered.

  Bill leaned over the counter and put his face in the picture frame of Ezra’s arched arms. “You’ll have to do better than that Ezra if you want a free drink,” he joked.

  Ezra dropped his arms. “I don’t want your whisky,” he stated, backing away from the counter.

  “You don’t?” Bill puzzled.

  Ezra shook his head vigorously. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you, Bill. The Lord’s done put a stop to it!”

  “I wish He’d have asked me first,” Bill said, then smiled.

  Ezra raised his hands then threw them down in frustration. “Oh, forget it,” he said, spinning around to face the exit door. “Better watch yourself,” he warned as he fairly ran out of the door.

  Bill kept his smile and turned to the freckle-faced young man he was training. “You’ll see everything in here after a while,” he said.

  The trainee nodded. “You’ve got to admit it, though. That was a pretty good tale.”

  “Yeah, well, before you know it some other drunk’ll be in here talking about the devil or some other fool thing.”

  The kid laughed. “At least that wouldn’t hurt the business.”

  “Hey, Bill?” one of the several customers called out. “The Lord hasn’t been to our table yet. How’s about another round?”

  “Coming right up,” Bill said, and everyone had a good laugh.

  They were still having fun rehashing Ezra’s tale when Charlie Belew slammed the door wide open and came barging in. “Hey Bill!” he blurted out. “And all you other soppin’ misfits, lend me your ears!”

  A quick hush fell over the bar, and Bill nearly dropped his tray of glasses as he spun around to face the biggest drunk in town. “What the hell do you think you’re doing, Belew?” Bill fired at the big man.

  Charlie Belew, all six feet four inches and three hundred pounds of him, stood in the middle of the floor with his hands propped firmly on his hips. “Each and everyone of you hear me out,” he blared, letting his eyes survey the crowd. “The Lord sent me in here to tell you He’s watching you. You’d better listen to me. He’s watching you and you’d better show Him you’re worth saving.”

  As the big man was spewing, Bill picked up a bottle of whisky, hid it behind his back and walked over to the giant. “I don’t know what’s going on out there, Belew, but you’re the second nut that’s come in here babbling about the wrath of God, and I don’t like it. Now, I want you to get out. Now!”

  “You’d be wise to listen to me, Bill,” the big man said gruffly. “The Lord ain’t got no mercy for them that don’t.”

  Bill repositioned his grip on the bottle, readying it for a quick blow. “This is a bar, Belew. You want a drink, or not?”

  “No,” Charlie Belew shot back.

  “Well, clear out. You’re upsetting my customers.”

  “You’ll think upset when the Lord asks you why you didn’t pay heed,” the big man cautioned, shaking a finger in front of Bill.

  “Out!” Bill yelled, and brandished the bottle in Charlie Belew’s face.

  Charlie Belew shook his head, turned and stormed out through the still open doorway.

  “I wonder what in the world’s going on with these guys?” the trainee asked Bill after he peeked outside and closed the door.

  “It’s beyond me, kid,” the confused barman answered. “But whatever happened, it had to be pretty powerful to get Charlie Belew worked up like that. He’s always been crazy, though. Maybe he just blew a fuse, or something.”

  “Could be,” the kid said. He held a glass that he had been cleaning up to the light to check it for spots. The glare was extraordinarily bright. He quickly lowered it and rubbed his drying towel across his eyes. “That’s funny,” he said.

  “What's that?” Bill asked absently as he rang up a sale.

  “I think I just saw the Lord!”

  Bill swung around from the cash register to look at him.

  “Gottcha!” the kid said, followed by a light laugh. But when Bill returned to the register, the kid held the glass up to the light again. This time, in the dim light from over the mirror he could now see several splotches of watermarks he had missed before.

 

  CHAPTER 13