The Feet of God

 36 - THE TRUTH

They always say you gotta dance with them what brung ya.  So I was prepared to bide my time patiently waiting on my ride in the icy cold night air outside the diner.  I did a few jumping jacks to keep myself warm till the man in black showed up.  Sure as shootin’, The Preacher Man strode out and walked right past me.  I followed close behind.  He went over to a parked black Lincoln Continental and proceeded to unlock the driver’s side and slip in.  I was instantly gratified to hear the click of the passenger side lock open.  “I appreciate the ride,” I hopped in.

The dark man started the engine, flipped the heater to high, and switched on the windshield wipers to scrape off the accumulated crud.  He adjusted himself for comfort in the plush leather seat and pulled out a fat cigar from his coat’s inner pocket.  He lit a match and held the flame up near the tip of the cigar, puffing furiously as curls of smoke filled the air, and he leaned back in gratified fulfillment.

“Man was divinely gifted with an appreciation of pleasure.”  He turned his yellow orbs on me.  “Isn’t that true?”

“Like they say,” I blinked real quick, “one man’s treasure is another man’s trash.”

“Hummmmph.”  The Preacher Man replaced the stogie between his clenched lips and threw his hotrod Lincoln into overdrive.  We blasted out of that parking lot onto the highway like a proverbial bat outta hell.  Once we hit a steady 95 mph my benefactor seemed to tense up, white knuckles gripping the steering wheel, and by the lights of the dash I could see the seriousness in his face.

“Tell me, my friend, do you have a personal relationship with the Spirit?”

“Well, if you mean The Big Guy Upstairs, I’m pretty sure He’s seen me naked,” I joshed.

The dark stranger was not amused.  “You are right about one thing.  The Spirit sees you naked every day.  More naked than you’ll ever be, my friend.”

I wasn’t too comfortable with this conversational drift.  But I’ve been around long enough to know that when you play poker with crazy people, all cards are wild.

“You know evil when you see it, don’t you?”

“Well, I’ve heard a number of versions of what evil is, mostly related to my personal habits and certain legal technicalities, but I’m open to a broader interpretation.”

“Don’t mock me,” he snarled.  “Evil is insidious.”  The Preacher Man’s voice lowered like he was gonna confide a deep inner secret.  “I tried to tell them, really I tried, and for a while they were eager to listen, but when the truth became too tough, no one had the courage to follow.”

“Who didn’t?”

“My followers.”  Yellow eyes bored into me.  “Did you ever own a television?”

“Sure, but don’t watch it much.  I’m more into live performance and entertainment.”

“I had a televised ministry once.  Hell yes.  From the late 80’s until March 28, 1999, I was seen on 31 different cable channels from Yakima to Missoula to Canada and beyond.  At one point my flock numbered over ten thousand contributors.  Ten thousand.  Can you believe it?  But once I began sharing the hard truth with them, they deserted me.  Then I couldn’t cover my production costs and my entire set was repossessed on live television.”

“How embarrassing.”  I tried to sound sympathetic.

The Preacher Man made a sudden grab under his car seat.  My nuts about jumped in my throat not knowing what to expect.  But all he pulled out was a single cassette tape.  I hadn’t seen one of them in years (do they still make ‘em, I wondered?).  He slipped the cassette into a player under the AM/FM radio.  What followed was the Little Rock of Ages Street Band pounding out “Won’t You Guess My Name?” backed by an electrified honky-tonk piano.

“What’s this hard truth you shared?” I asked over the loud music.

He growled something and flicked the cigar butt out the side vent window onto the passing road.

“Sorry?” I cupped my ear.

“Revelation truth.  Truth revealed.”

The Preacher Man sang along in a mindless monotone as he lit another cigar, blowing curlicues of smoke and tapping the steering wheel in time to the relentless racket on the cassette player.

“The message has been revealed, and the story has been told.  The message is as old as time, known to all who watch and listen.  It is only the messenger who is new.  It is the triumph of good over evil, the divinely ordained culmination of all things, the delivery of retribution.  These are the things my followers failed to recognize.  They could not see, would not hear, and refused to understand.  One by one I saw the flickering camera lights fade, until the day they repossessed and stripped my empire bare.  Yet the message remains, and the message goes on, and what has been revealed cannot be hidden.  Good shall triumph over all.”

“I’m not so sure,” I said.

“What?”

“I’m not so sure human history is a game where you know how it will turn out and God is watching some endless replay on the sidelines.”

“You don’t believe?”

“If the creator of the universe knew from the beginning how everything was gonna turn out, the dice was loaded and the deck was stacked.  And, well, it sorta cheapens pain and suffering.”

“We know the truth of the Spirit through our suffering.”

“I never got that part.  Why do we pay the price for Adam and Eve eating a damn apple?”

“They ate of the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil.”

“If fucking around with this tree was so dangerous, why let these kids be exposed to it in the first place?  If you leave a child home alone with matches, drugs and guns, the cops will haul your ass off to jail.  Don’t seem to me like Adam and Eve had much of a chance, or even good parenting.  Anyhow, what’s any of this got to do with me?”

“Original sin.  Corruption of blood.”

“Whatever.  I think it violates my constitutional rights as an American citizen.”

“The Spirit surpasses human wisdom and works its own mysterious way.”

“Talk about mysterious, I never understood the thing about saints showing up on a grilled cheese sandwich or a water tank.  I mean, you’d think the Almighty would communicate using something more inspiring or straightforward.  Even alien crop circles beats that shit.”

“Aliens?  Bah!  I’m talking about the Spirit.  It is the foundation of lasting faith.”

“Well, I can have all the faith I want, but as far as I can tell, it won’t change anything one iota, one way or the other, just for saying I believe it’s so.”

“You can’t change God’s design, whether you believe it or not.”

“Not sure if it was such a good plan if everything turned out like this.  Besides, if God made a universe with millions of galaxies, and billions of stars with trillions of planets, what could I be doing in my little life that would throw the whole thing off kilter and earn me a VIP seat in eternal damnation?  As I see it, I just ain’t that important.”

The Preacher Man turned up the volume of the music, wrapped his hands tight on the steering wheel and suddenly shifted over to the far right lane.

“And another thing I don’t get is the story about Lucifer and all them Fallen Angels.  I mean, they had a pretty good gig in heaven, right?  They’d made it.  Why screw it up?  In any case, you’d think they was smart enough to know even their varsity squad had no chance.  Losers.”

It felt like there was a sudden chill in the heated car.  The Continental came to a skidding stop in the icy dirt patch along the shoulder of the road.  “This is where I turn off.  Time for you to get out.”

Realizing this part of my trip was at an abrupt end, I opened the door and got out.  Stooping down a little, I glanced back and asked the dark stranger who’d just dumped me here, “Where am I?”

“In the dark!”  The Preacher Man and the black Lincoln sped into the freezing night.

I straightened up and stretched a little trying to get my blood pumping.  I peed on a patch of slush by some bushes leaving a steaming yellow hole that reminded me of my ride’s eyes.  As I buttoned up I thought of the words of warning from that waitress back at the truck stop diner, and damn if she didn’t have the gift of prophesy, ‘cause I wouldn’t ever be seen there again.

It was cold, dark, foggy all around, and I couldn’t see much of the road ahead.  I reached down into my boot and retrieved the pint of O Promise Me for a stiff one.  Generating my own heat by jogging in place, hands shoved deep in my damp pockets, I decided to follow the road hoping I’d stay alive as long as I kept on moving.  A few hundred feet down the way I came upon a traffic sign where the road split in two opposite directions.  An arrow pointed left (Marbleton - 122 mi.) and an arrow pointed right (La Barge - 128 mi.) and I’ll never know why I chose La Barge, but it proved the start of a promising leg of my journey.