Vedero

The door was bright with scars as the moon shed its light down on the front of the old apartment building in Detroit, Michigan.  Vedero pushed it open and walked into the main room. The floor groaned under his weight. The same groan he’d heard for eleven years. Every time he trod the warped floorboards of this entryway he heard it. It had only gotten louder as the years passed and he grew to be a man.

All of life seemed to be that way. An endless cycle of being born and dying. The same things happened over and over again. He was fond of reading history, though he couldn’t read very well and it was hard to find useful history books for anything other than money he didn’t have, and in his reading, he found that there is a sort of pattern. Men make the same attempts, mistakes, etc. quite regularly. The worst of it was the evil. Men always seemed to want to take advantage of other men. Like the rulers of Rome or the kings of England. They would resort to the worst cruelties to obtain what they wanted and thought nothing of it. It was like they had no heart.

No heart? This reminded him of yet another thing he had read. “The heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked.” Then it went on to say,”Who can know it?” He wasn’t sure where he had read it, but it sure seemed to be true.

When he reached the door of his mother’s room, he knocked gently. No answer. He tapped a little louder. Still no answer. At length he turned and went to his own bedroom.

He pulled out the change in his pocket. Not enough to by a decent meal, yet nobody else would hire him. He couldn’t blame them really. He was dirty, very poor, and probably never in a good mood. Most of them couldn’t hardly bare too talk to him. Why was everybody so selfish? Were he in their place, he would be more accommodating, wouldn’t he?

He had so many unanswered questions, but most of them would probably never be answered. Suddenly he lit onto an idea. What if he just started walking. Eventually he must reach a place where things were different. But would the people be different? Would they be better people?

“Mom!”He barged into her room. As he had supposed, she was sprawled out on her bed with a bottle of alcohol in one hand and a bag of pills in the other. He tried to prop her up onto some pillows and talk to her, but she remained motionless. Finally he gave up and left.

Even if he had to leave his mom alone, he must start walking. He had to know if it was different somewhere else.

Several hours later he reached a subway station. “Sir, may I have a ride?”

The man next to the desk scowled. “Where’s your pass?” He demanded.

“What pass, Sir? I have no pass.”

The man tuned around, hoping to ignore Vedero. Finally he growled, “You must have a pass to ride the train.”

Vedero left the train station feeling not unlike he felt many times throughout a normal day. Several minutes later though he began to see fewer buildings and longer streets. At length he emerged to find that there were no giant skyscrapers, only short fancy buildings with green in front of them. 

He felt the first surge of joy he could remember during his seventeen years in this dirty, evil world. The air even smelled better and his lungs expanded wonderfully when he sucked in some of the sweet smelling atmosphere.

But when at length he met a person, he was soon lowered back to a state of utter dismay. The man treated him not as good as his dog, which jerked at its leash in its attempts to sniff Vedero’s legs.

On he walked, wishing, hoping, longing for a better world with kinder people until he found himself begging with someone. Who? The Romans had gods they would talk to. Was he talking to a god?

The next person he came across was a little nicer, or at least she told him where he could find a place to take a bath. But, as it was not a public bathhouse with smelly towels and more ornery people, he decided he would check it out. It was a cold river running through a park. As soon as he was somewhat clean, he hurried out and put on his warm clothes, only to find that they were themselves so dirty, he should have bathed with them.

Sinking down on a nearby bench, he recalled that moment of joy that he had felt when he emerged from the thickness of building after tall building and street after narrow street. He decided there must be someone that made it possible for a dirty drunkard’s son to breath air as he was now breathing. Even if the people were still the same, who could help that? After all the Romans had someone they believed was greater than all of man’s attempts at life. So did the English if he remembered right. Then and there, he decided that he believed there was a god out there who made even the breath of man; even the breath of dogs possible.

As he sat on the bench, he prayed to this being, asking him to help him find what he was looking for, whatever that was. If the god made breath, surely he would know what it was that Vedero was looking for.

Days turned into weeks and Venero found himself dressed in a suit and tie, going to church for the fifth time and actually a part of a family. In that family there were people who treated him…better, definitely better…like…like he belonged to them and it was their responsibility to take care of him. He liked the feeling he got from that, but overall, when he looked at it, life hadn’t changed, or, at least, something hadn’t changed.

People still did bad things to other people. He saw it every day. People still went to bed, ate, and depended upon their next breath, meal, drink…People depended upon so much, even himself. They used money to buy things and if they had no money, they couldn’t buy. Throughout the town there were people dying, babies being born, and this going to church was a regular thing for a lot of people here. Nothing he heard, even when he asked, served to answer his questions. Not even any of the books they gave him to read.

It was like an endless cycle, and he couldn’t seem to break out of it.

But when these people talked about a God, at least he could relate his ideas of a superior being as having merit. 

One day he prayed earnestly to God to help him find what he was looking for. Nothing happened at first, or nothing seemed to. But he never stopped looking, praying, trying to find it, and one evening he did. Yet it felt more like it found him, and the feeling of joy he felt was so great-greater than even the feeling of joy that he felt when he emerged from the big city and experienced his first recollection of joy-it was all around him, above him, and thoroughly within him. He had broken the cycle and found God!

For a long time he sat where he was and marveled at the freedom he felt. Like a great burden lifted, the endless cycle of life no longer held him within its path. The cycle was still around him. Man's wicked nature was still evident. But he was free of its grasp, for he had found the truth, and the truth had set him free.

Free of what? Man's influence, the world, himself-or all three? He had found something greater than this world. There was a whole new life in God that he had not known of, and had someone asked, he could not have explained what happened until with years of experience, he was able to talk.