The Lord Knows How to Rescue

It was a Monday afternoon, and I was stuck behind the register because Garf was running late to work. Again. I told Mark, not to hire that lazy POS. It had been over an hour since the shift change was supposed to happen and I was beginning to feel antsy, unmoored, like I'd been left out to sea. We'd been biblically fucked today. Being short-staffed at the only deli in a tourist town during peak season already sucks. Now add to that the fact my shift relief, my rescue, was nowhere to be seen? There's a reason the ski patrollers fired him.

To be honest, it's wasn’t just the busy day that made me feel rushed to get the hell out of here. I had reasons. Monday evening were known to be pretty loud on this corner of Main Street. Our market sits at the only stoplight in town, so all the traffic leaving or going to the national park comes through here. At least the building’s corner meets as two glass windows, so you can watch it all pass while you hear it.

More obnoxious than the compression brakes of freight trucks, the roaring exhaust of Fords tugging RVs and boats, was the figure who'd taken up on the street corner opposite of ours. Apparently, he’d been coming every Monday night since the start of the summer almost two months ago.

He was a kid still, couldn’t be more than 18 even with all his height. He lugged to the corner three signs and a mission. One sign, he pitched into triangle so that it was freestanding. The other hung from his shoulders to cover his front and back. The last, he held in his hand like a weapon. I heard he could be kind of menacing with it.

The kid's real weapon, however, was the handsfree microphone he used to shout his good word.

Attached so that it sat right next to his mouth, he wielded its magnifying powers to shout about the glory, forgiveness, and doom of his God. And he'd shout at anybody. Didn't matter if you were helping an old lady cross the street or stuck captive at the red light. If he thought there was a chance you could catch a note of salvation, he was directing that thing at you.

He had a little speaker next to his feet, and it was was loud. Loud enough to hear it in the store. On the weekends, I heard they got a guy who stands out here and juggles for entertainment. He’s quiet. Now that would be a better shift.

On this Monday night, I could see the prophet pulling his stuff from a big white truck. I knew if Garf didn't save me soon, I was gonna have to hear it from this kid all the way to my car. He was inconveniently parked right next to my Honda. Who the hell wants to hear an earful of it right after a hard day at work, when they got some place to be? Hated to say it, but I got why Garf didn't want to show up tonight.

The lights through town were green and traffic was crossing smoothly when Ms. Nez, a regular, walked in the door. It what quiet enough that I could hear the crackle of the speaker the kid was turning on. Before Ms. Nez could ask for a pack of smokes, I turned to take a quick glance out of the window behind the register. I wanted to see what those signs said. In big black letters, the sandwich board read, "My GOD is the SUPREME."

"Pack of Camel blues," Ms. Nez said at the back of my head.

"Gotta’ promise to wait about a half mile from here before lighting one," I replied, setting the pack down. "Last thing I need to hear is somebody calling you of all people a sinner. Over a smoke."

Ms. Nez blue a raspberry. "I’m sure as shit not a saint just because I run the pantry,” she said. “You'd be surprised what they call my politics on the community page."

The bell jingled over her should as the door closed. Less than a minute later, I heard the reedy voice of God's most devout follower.

"Ask for release from SIN’S hold on you, WOMAN! Breath SMOKE and inhale the DEVIL! Stop now and repent, or spend FOREVER in FLAMES."

A car honked. It could have been a show of support, knowing this town. From my window I caught the driver of a car with out-of-state plates pulling their phone back into the vehicle. Holding up traffic for a quick video of this nutjob.

Ms. Nez winked at me through my window and took off walking the other direction.

"You go to see volcanic GEYSERS," the kid yelled at the laughing tourists. "Boiling mud and stench await you in the pits of HELL! Repent NOW!"

There was another honk, this time it came from the tourist's car as they sped out northward. They held onto it long enough to drown out the the kid as they passed. It blended with the sound of the bell on the shop's far door. It surprised me, then, when I turned back to see a figure coming through. Pissed me off to realize it wasn't Garf.

“Where the hell is this guy?” I grumbled.

I didn't recognize the new customer as they turned down the first aisle, and by the time they were at the back of the store I wasn't even trying. Four more people walked in. Then some folks behind them, with their kids. I saw Mark sprout up from behind the deli counter. We got popped. I cursed Garf’s again and got down to business.

Commuters moved in and out, picking up groceries on their way home. Snowbirds drove up to our shop from their McMansions in the woods, craving a bottle of bubbly and hor d'ourvers. Kids, free from afterschool programs at the library, bought snacks to spoil their dinner.

The deli counter was slammed and I had a steady line moving through all three of the registers that rimmed the semi-circle counter. I meant to check the clock before I got busy, so I could track how long I was gonna’ have to beat Garf’s ass for, but we got in the weeds.

When Mark slid out from behind the deli counter, face turned down, I knew the night was about to get worse. There was no rescue for me, except for one in the eventual, hazy future, when I had enough scratch saved up to just walk out of this no-good job.

"Look, I know you didn't plan on being here,” Mark pleaded, “but I need you." I looked at him. Just beyond us, the regular reminders of brimstone and a repetitive cycle of murder, revival, and muder again for all the abortionists of this earthly plane.

"Okay," he huffed. "Time-and-a-half, and I'll throw in a steak from whatever's leftover."

"Two," I replied, "And they better be fat."

Boy, it gave me a laugh when he stomped off. Whatever. I told him not to hire that jerkwad Garf.

The rush had been a nice way to tune out the kid across the street, but once he was in my ear again, he was hard to shake. It was like he had silenced all the traffic. Like he was backtracked on every song that played through the store's speakers. I was starting to wonder if maybe there was something, divine or spiritual giving him an extra powers. Then, a real interesting thing happened.

The juggler arrived.

Maybe he had come for extra practice. Who knows. I didn't know what to expect. Living outside of town, I didn't make it up this way much on weekends and wasn't all that familiar with his work. Sure, maybe I'd seen the juggler doing his thing in my periphery at the weekly Music in the Park events. But I was always busy, bobbing my head and smoking. Chasing tail. What I'm saying is, mostly I only knew the juggler by reputation.

Let me tell you, this guy kicked ass. He was athletic. He had talent. His pink bowling pins cut time and space and tossed my next forty-five minutes into thin air. This juggler looked like any other valley scrub in his ripped outdoor ware. A burntish forehead and spikey hair. '90s looking chromatic shades.

But he was special. He could spin and catch all of the pins, all at once. He had tricks, like getting them to bump off of each other while floating through the sky and still, somehow, ending back exactly where they should be. It was entertaining as hell to watch, and the sounds of God's most loyal servant seemed to fall into the void the juggler created around him. Or at least, the sounds just stayed over there.

A couple of the juggler’s friends had shown up to watch him. Shouting hellos as they arrived. They were other valley bums who worked as fishing guides and forest workers and restaurant servers all through the summer. After buying a few sodas, a few beers, they set down at the picnic tables outside my windows. Maybe seventy-five feet from where the juggler was twirling on his street corner; maybe two hundred feet from God’s most loyal servant. The group had some music playing, a little loudly, which drew Mark from behind the deli counter.

"Kids," he said.

We watched the juggler awhile more. The customers who came and left did, too. Both kids and adults seemed pretty amazed, and it felt festive, even inside. His group’s music was in good taste and bothered nobody. Almost nobody.

Across the street, God’s spokesman kept yelling about sin. He was clearly to yelling at the small crowd now. I thought I heard something about sexual immorality and unshaved legs. The kid had been looking lonely. Now, he was starting to look beet red.

I imagined the juggler doing these tricks on a high slack line like some YouTuber. “This is just dryland training,” I said to Mark. “Bet he makes bank getting hired for weddings.”

I mean, I was a believer. The sizeable crew hanging around outside seemed to be as well. The juggler just didn't stop, didn’t drop, and he didn’t even have a hat on the ground to collect change. Everyone knew the sheriff was hostile to buskers. Had nothing better to do than harass them. Said in his campaign speech that street sellers led down the steep slope to vagrancy. ‘Entertain for community, not for cash,’ I think the sheriff’s line was. Crock of bullshit.

Mark turned away from the juggler to look at the clock. I said it to him straight. "Look man, eight P.M. rolls around, I'm outta' here. You have Garf close and reopen the register if he shows tomorrow morning, or do it yourself."

"C'mon Hank, I need you to--"

"Look this juggler's entertaining as hell but I gotta' go Mark, I got a sweet thing waiting to entertain me at home." He just slunk off after that, chuckling. Raspy little sound of it mingled with the the preacher outside, who seemed to be getting closer.

He was. I turned to my windows to see the kid crossing the street in an impassioned walk. He carried the speaker by a small handle and championed the sign. With his headset mic, you could almost imagine him on the stage of one of those television megachurches.

"Repent from your HEDONISTIC lives! GOD will forgive the graffiti you've inked on your precious bodies. He can HEAL your DEVIANCY! Repent!"

Now the kid was on our street corner, and I was thinking about how bad Garf had screwed me. I was thinking, too, about deviancy. About my lady at home, and this kid reminding that only God could rescue me from myself. Rescue my lady from the demonic things I wanted to her.

The young group at the table, who showed up to hang out and watch their friend do his passion for the love of the game, they were not about to have their freedom and good time ruined.

"Will you shut the fu--"

"Leave us alone."

"Go back to your own corner dude, we were all just chilling."

Still, the crowd of customers and onlookers began to disperse. Our heavenly angel was only getting louder. The color of his face, the spittle projecting from his mouth, they reminded me of the hands on the clock and I turned to look at the little seconds ticking.

Quarter of. Another forty-five minutes until I could cook something up for me and my baby. I caught the looping arch of two pink pins from the corner of my eye. Then three. With any luck the group would run this kid and his apocalyptic signs out of here. Customers in the store were starting to linger towards the back, peeking out behind aisle corners to see if there was danger.

The kid dug in. Standing on the curb, he screeched like a genuine bat out of hell. He wasn't urging anyone to seek forgiveness anymore. He was chastizing existence.

"You will BURN for eternity for your PRIDEFUL sins. My laughter and JOY at the touch of the LORD will rain down on you like a deluge of SORROW for the eternity you've forsaken. The DEVIL will gather your TEARS and pour them back down your THROAT!"

From the deli counter, Mark was eyeing up the phone on the wall. He probably wanted me to call the cops. But the cops were taking everything too far these days. If he wanted them, he was going to have to come over and dial the number hisself. Something way more righteous happened anyways.

The juggler took a break. His friends turned up the music. "Highway to Hell,” belted out. It was classic, but Mark started laughing and then so did I. The group was cackling, too.

The juggler had been fishing in his backpack. I saw him pour something into the bottom of his pins. It wasn’t clear what he asked his friends for, but boy I wish I'd had a camera when they passed him the lighter and those pins went up in flames. The juggler’s crew went nuts. The zealot shrilled.

The juggler walked back out to the corner. I thought the evangelist might go and scream him down. But the hot air had been sucked right out of him and up into the juggler’s pins. The kid’s heavenly balloon was falling to earth.

First, he set the speaker down. The feedback was one of his last sounds. Then, he set his billboard sign against the farthest, empty table. He shook out of his sandwich sign vest, folded it neatly, and placed it on the table. His last, freestanding sign was on his original street corner. Have to say, I admire the way he held his head high as he walked back over to it.

On his way to reclaim his signs, the kid stopped for a moment at the stoplight pole and leaned. He was watching the juggler's back as the juggler tossed his burning pins into the air, like an offering to the honey-pinked mountains. I watched the kid pull something from his pocket, but then a customer distracted me.

“$17 for a sixer?”

“Tarrifs,” I said. Asshole, I thought.

When I last saw God’s chosen, he was walking fast past my window, past the group, who had turned their music down. He talking on the phone.

Three minutes before closing, the sheriff showed up. God's Little Lamb had been gone for almost twenty-five minutes; the juggler's group had dispersed into the wind shortly after he’d gone.

The juggler himself had quenched the burning pins awhile ago but was still tossing them when the red and blues started flashing. He kept doing so even as the cruiser pulled right up onto the sidewalk in front of him.

The sheriff radio'd something into a small black box. I heard the squawk of his voiced up close as the deputy swung open the deli door.

"Got it, boss," he radio’d back. My eyes ran over the deputy and back out my window. I noticed it right before the sheriff picked it up, a black hat at the base of the stoplight. I didn’t know how long it had been laying there, but I had a guess. Like magic, the sheriff pulled what looked to be a thin stack of money from the hat.

A walkie-talkie sounded in the bakery aisle. "Got a busker here," it rattled. "And this guy knows the rules. We'll take him–"

The deputy twisted the walkie’s volume knob to quiet with one hand, reached for some Hostesses with the other.

"Who the hell invited you all?" I asked him at the counter. “That kid was just entertaining people.”

"Excuse me?" He replied. "Who calls the tip line is none of your business. Anyways, that tramp knows the rules"

I looked out the window but it was too late to do anything. The juggler was booked. I wondered who from the group would be the one to rescue the juggler from the little holding cell twelve miles away. The cop gave me what he probably thought was a menacing look as he left.

Lights still flashing, the car whipped off into the middle of the street. Shot through the empty red light. It was getting dark beyond the window and I welcomed that inside with a flip of the switch.

Mark began to slide out from behind the deli counter but I was on him with the speed of Elijah.

"I'll take those two wagyu ribeyes down there," I told him. “And don't forget to close the register. It’ll save your ass when God-damn Garf bails again tomorrow.”