|
| Across the street out of Raymond's the preacher swayed onto the sidewalk, hiding his eyes from the glare of the sun, blinking into the light that slushed all round, grimacing, showing his teeth. He held up his wrist to look at the time for a watch that didn't exist, then smoothened the hair behind his ears, and swayed again, nearly falling, and held himself against a wall. There he rested for a couple of minutes, with his mouth partially open and dry, staring across the street, as the traffic shuttered across the line of his sight. He saw two people standing in front of the hole in the wall, talking, as one of them, the girl, held out what seemed to be a handful of money to the man who happened to be white. The preacher thought it was unusual. Once or twice, he noticed that the man (somehow familiar, where had he seen him?) looked in his direction, but blankly, as though seeing nothing, and the girl was smiling at the money but the man was not. The preacher rubbed his eyes, his vision confused because of a sudden tearing caused by an eyelash. Then, it was clear and brilliant. He could see even motes of dust, bobbing in the shade that very thinly angled down from the cool wall. The girl across the street seemed to be crying. The man, the white man, held her face in his hands, slow and very gently kissed on her lips the sobs that seemed to rise through some amount of agony in her. One of her hands she clutched at his waist and the other she let drop at her side, the one with the money. One of the bills slipped out of her fist and twirled on the sidewalk, buffeted by air and exhaust from the passing traffic. The preacher suddenly raised his arms straight up over his head and he glared at the street, for he felt an urge to preach, to shout out the good news to the drifters and whores, the hypocrites and fornicators, the liars and glutonous, all around him, to tell them to change their ways, because the kingdom of heaven was near. The fire shot up from his spine and he felt like the candle of the lord. He bristled with sensation of the truth that opened the way to freedom - freedom! And he knew the name of that truth. It had leapt upon his tongue from that cloud in the sky and he saw with his eyes the transparency of the world in the morning energy of the light that he could not resist to tell of, that he must, and he coughed, and coughed, and coughed, until he bent over, pressing his hands on his thighs, and he could breath again. |
 |
|
Elvis crossed the street, and the thought
did not come to him this time that he hoped a jeepney would hit him and
so he would die and make it simple. He was hungry, had some money, and
Melanie was alright.
|
|
- The End -
|
 |
||
|
|
|
|
| top | ||
| Return to HOtPieHOt neXt dreAm |
