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Chapter
Seventeen
When
Adam Leeds’ face emerged from the lobby of the condemned hotel, it seemed as if
a tremor passed over the street.
Though there were mostly homeless people on skid row, the majority of
those witnessing his debut took notice of him immediately. As a warm undercurrent passing through
stagnant water, he seemed to touch their jaded minds, each observer exhibiting
a slow witted response. As actors
in a slow motion film, their expressions changed imperceptibly, and their
bodily movements displayed the delayed reaction time of drunks and idlers on
the street.
Edging as slowly from
beneath the hotel marquee out of embarrassment for how he must look, he decided
to test their reaction before leaving the safety of the hotel. Given the powers of his benefactor, he
could not help but imagine that each added inch of daylight striking his robe
elicited more and more excitement from his future congregation. He noticed that the few automobiles
moving through this no-man's land were slowing down. He heard what sounded like shouts in the distance. By the time his exalted presence was in
plain view, a full scale shock wave seemed to be set in motion throughout skid
row. Breaks were jamming, tires
were squealing, and an occasional horn blast seemed to herald his debut. He could almost hear an eruption of
gasps, cries and hallelujahs as various onlookers recognized the man in white.
His
hour had come--the moment of truth. . . or so he thought.
For
awhile it seemed as if he had won them all. He was carried away by his own self-esteem and growing
confidence, floating down the sidewalk on a celestial cloud. Then suddenly, at the height of his
ecstasy, a spate of catcalls, jeers, and ugly murmurs filtered into his cloud. Before long, a group vagrants were on
his trail, their stinking bodies and wine sodden breath bringing him crashing
down to earth.
“Hey,”
one of them tapped his shoulder, “are you one of them transvestite fruits?”
“No,”
Adam reeled around angrily, “I've been sent as your redeemer!”
“Redeemer?”
The heavyset man blinked his bloodshot eyes. “Sent by whom?”
“What's
a redeemer?” a second, scrawny, derelict asked, his smelly visage appearing at
the corner of his eye.
“Someone
who wants to bring light into your dark lives,” Adam explained, his voice
creaking up a notch as a third, forth, and fifth man began dogging his
trail.
Without realizing it, Adam
had stumbled onto the path of a playful band of vagabonds. Of this particular group, only their
apparent leader was important to Satan now. The other disciples, who would make up the twelve, stood by
the sidelines looking on.
As an ill-wind, Adam’s
moment of truth passed as the men mumbled amongst themselves. He was frightened by their presence and
also shaken by the answer he gave the fat man, the first tormentor on the
scene. ‘Most High’, an Islamic
name for God, seemed appropriate, yet he had almost said God. Just who exactly was he suppose to
represent, he asked himself: God, Satan or some new age cosmic force? She would have to clarify this for him
in the near future. For the time
being, it would be enough for him just to keep his head.
After
trying to regain his composure, Adam elaborated, as he walked, on his
explanation by misquoting John 8:12: “I am the light to brighten your darkness
and the warmth to pierce its cold.”
Adam cringed at his
corruption of his words. John’s
original passage would have been much better. The fat man, whom he would later learn was Buff Peyton,
thought this very strange.
“Darkness?
. . . Warmth? . . . Warmth to pierce what?”
He asked quizzically, fingering Adam’s white robe.
“Right
here,” the third man offered, unzipping his fly, “I got something to pierce the
dark!”
“You
fools! Don't you know who I am?”
Adam felt foolish uttering, especially when he didn’t know, himself. “. . . I can help you,” he struggled
with Satan’s words. “I have the power to change your lives. Open your minds, and open your hearts!”
“We
got us a holy man,” a sixth man crowed in the distance, “down here to save our
souls!”
The
most ominous voice he would hear this hour, Rhoda Simms—the same crone who
heckled Moses Rawlins at the mission—appeared directly on his path.
“He's
a drag queen, that's what he is,” she cackled, spitting on the ground, “like
those fruits up on the Strip.”
“Madame,”
Adam tried to show proper rage, “this is a cassock, like a monk wears, not a
dress, and you’ll notice I have a beard.”
“Makes
no difference sweat meat,” the repulsive woman said, giving him pinch.
“What
did he call it? A cass-what?” a
small, misshapen dwarf materialized by her side. “Sounds nasty to me. I think he's hiding something. Let’s see what he’s hiding under that
robe.”
“He’s
probably wearin' frilly underwear underneath,” an eighth man joined in. “I bet
he don't even have a dick!”
Overwhelming
disgust now joined the overwhelming fear he felt for his tormentors. Pivoting on the heel of his sandal, he managed
to cross the street but was distressed to find that not one other pedestrian or
passing driver would say a word in his defense.
“Hey,
where ya' going sweat meat?” the hag called as he quickened his pace. “I
thought you came to redeem us.”
“I’m
going to find men and women with open hearts and open minds,” he cried
bitterly. “This is unhallowed, infertile ground!”
Once
again, he realized, slapping his forehead, he had selected the wrong words.
“Why,
mister holy man? We’re open and
we're fertile,” declared Buff, roaring with laughter. “Bend over and find out!”
“Filth!”
Adam shouted. “Abominations!
Pariahs of God!”
There
was that word again, he shuddered.
There were now over a dozen hecklers, most of whom had followed him to
the other side of the street. His
worst antagonist was Rhoda Simms, who appeared to be mentally deranged. The other vagrants, following merrily
behind, had found one more way to while away their time. He was totally shaken by the barrage of
obscenities blaring into his ears.
Although he tried to straighten his shoulders and hold up his head as
befitting a savior, he found himself hunching further and further down with
each new insult. The hag
continued, with a practiced ugliness, to fill their unwashed ears with fabrications. She told everyone within earshot that
his beard was just a disguise and probably fake, and underneath that fancy robe
he was all woman,
unlike the drag queens on Sunset
Strip. He probably had, she
went on to explain, a sex change and was sporting female organs beneath. Maybe, suggested Buff, the first
heckler, he was really a hermaphrodite and had both. He was, according to the second
heckler, just playing hard to get.
Buff, who was giggling foolishly to himself, appeared to be fascinated
with this theme. Unlike the hag,
who bore him inexplicable malice, the fat man and his friends were like school
children taunting the neighborhood geek.
When other idlers heard what Rhoda was saying, they were brought
progressively into the merriment, until it seemed as if almost everyone on this
street had joined their ranks.
“You
mean he's got a vagina?” One of the recent arrivals feigned disbelief.
“He
sure does,” the woman responded. “I bet he's got boobs too!”
“Hot
damn,” a deep voiced black man boomed, “we got us a convertible.”
“That's
right;” she cackled, “this one's got handlebars on his chin, like those
artistic types on the peer.”
She
elaborated awhile on this theme for her audience, and Adam was deeply sickened
by what he heard.
“I
got first dibs on his vagina,” Buff Peyton chimed.
“I'll
take his ass,” a more distant voice, he had not heard before, cried.
“Give
me the whiskers,” the deep voiced black piped. “The rest of you sons-of-bitches
get what's left!”
In
his panic, Adam had been retreating from, not to, the hotel. There were several dozen homeless men
and a few crones following him up the sidewalk, as he did an about face,
hastily crossed the boulevard, and doubled back. So far, with his long and lanky legs, he had managed to stay
ahead of them, but they were thick on each side of the street and were
obviously not worried about him out distancing them, especially with so many
more vagrants popping up from their alley nests.
“Excuse
me. . . Excuse me please. . . Let me pass. . . God damn it, get out of my way!”
He shouted at the slow-moving vagrants in his path.
The
hotel, he estimated light-headedly, was now a city block away. He was slowed down greatly by homeless
people blocking his way but also by his attire. As he forge ahead through the crowd, he stumbled in
his leather sandals—perfect copies of the footgear worn during New Testament
times. His mentor had also arrayed
him in purest white Biblical clothing, which caused him to sweat profusely
now. He wore an inner tunic of
linen stretching almost to his ankles that was wringing wet, a leather girdle
that had been fastened too tightly around his waist, and a long, flowing woolen
cloak that kept flying up into his face.
He would much rather be wearing a pare of Reeboks and a jogging outfit
instead of his sandals and this silly getup. The woman, who had made herself the ringleader of his
tormentors, roared with laughter at his clumsiness, and he could hear her shout
in the background “Let's get'em boys, and give'em the treatment!”
He could not be certain
what the others had in mind, but with those threatening words, Adam knew that
at least Rhoda Simms, the ring leader, meant business.
“Where are you? Where are you? Where are you?” He chanted deliriously
under his breath.
An uncompromising
dread filled him as he listened to the sounds of feet shuffling on the
sidewalk. The gauntlet of curious
homeless men and women on each side of him made him feel trapped. The hotel, which he had inadvertently
been walking away from before, now seemed a million miles away. As he forged his way back to his
protector, the dirty hands and street worn faces of his future congregation
sickened and frightened him. Their
annoying and obscene chatter, driven by Rhoda, the Skid Row Witch, now carried
a deadly ring. He found himself
gathering up his tunic and cloak, kicking off his sandals, and dashing madly
down the block. As would a
football halfback, he elbowed anyone standing in his way, his only goal to
reach the hotel lobby before he got Rhoda’s treatment—whatever that was.
As he ran, his thoughts
raced ahead of him. He saw himself
battered, bleeding and naked in a darkened alley. Surrounding him in his vision where his tormentors, their
pants down and fists hammering at his will. In the background, moving impotently against the full force
of evil, came the belated shadow of Satan. After what he had seen so far, he had little confidence in
her eccentric behavior. She had
toyed with him erratically and unmercifully, offering him, in the disguise of a
bum, the lowest dominion on earth: skid row. What if it was part of her plan to allow him to be raped by
these filthy beasts? What if this
was all some sort of monstrous and hellish joke? Perhaps, every once in awhile, Satan came up topside to slum
it awhile and play tricks on mortal beings. After not believing in the devil for so long, he would never
get use to the idea that Satan was not even a man.
******
He
had almost convinced himself, as he ran across the street again, that he was
doomed. In spite of his doubts,
however, as he fled back toward the condemned hotel, he began searching for his
new master. Somewhere in that
dilapidated building she must be standing and looking down at him from a dirty
window. Maybe she had transformed
herself back into an invisible spirit and was this very moment hovering around
them, waiting for just the right moment to strike. Where was she, and what was she waiting for? Why had she forsaken him in his hour of
need? The last questions
reverberated over and over in his mind.
Long ago it had been pondered by another redeemer, but it had been
directed by God, the Son, toward God, the Father, whom he had never really
believed in until now. This time
the question “Why have you forsaken me?”
was directed toward someone called by theologians the father of deceit
and mother of lies. So utterly
perverse were these moments, he would have laughed hysterically had he not been
running for his life.
After
scanning left and right and straight ahead, as if she might just fly out of the
sky, he realized that Satan was nowhere in sight. He could see the old hotel straight ahead but it was still
several hundred yards away. He
wasn't even sure where the window for their room had been. If he could only make it into the lobby
of the building he was sure that she would come down and save him now. But he could see in the distance that
several more derelicts were idling in front of the hotel. None of them looked friendly to him at
this point. They all looked bored
and yet they stood there as if waiting for him to come their way.
Adam
came to an abrupt stop when he looked ahead through these idler and saw Rhoda
standing beneath the hotel marquee.
She looked out of breath, herself, having ran ahead to “head him off at
the pass,” he thought grimly. Why
did that woman—a perfect strange—hate him so much? Was she insane or simply evil? Turning his hopes now to the motorists passing through, he
waved excitedly and called frantically to them, but made another bleak
discovery: the motorists were not stopping. They were not even slowing down. Perhaps it had only been his imagination, but he had
detected a current of excitement in this neighborhood. Had it all been in his mind? Where was the congregation Satan had
promised him? Motorist passed
through without a care, and his sidewalk audience, the derelicts who were the
mainstay of skid row, either didn't care or had degenerated into wide-eyed,
open-mouthed ghouls. Not one voice
was raised on his behalf. With the
exception of a distant voice of a street evangelist hollering apocalyptic
warnings, a great silence had fallen over the street as he looked around wildly
for an avenue of escape.
Outside of his own breathing
and the murmuring of his pursuers, the only sound coming into his ears at this
point was the street evangelist's foreboding call for repentance, the last
sound on earth he wanted to hear.
Doubling back once more to
avoid running into Rhoda Simms, Adam held his garments fiercely as his energy
ebbed. It seemed hopeless. Not knowing where else to go, he ran in
the opposite direction again. Too
out of shape to follow close behind, the fat man was shouting: “he’s had enough
Rhoda. Leave him alone!” Not trusting the fat man’s motives,
Adam, kept running away from the hotel and the sound of the street evangelist’s
voice.
Though
distracted by his predicament, Adam could see a familiar visage not too far
ahead. Why, he wondered, was that
tall, lanky red haired man with a flowing beard dogging his trail? He could see Moses Rawlins, the
evangelist, standing in a vacant lot next to a large brick building, shocked
into silence by what he saw.
Though he didn’t know the man’s name, he recognized him as the kindly
vagrant concerned about his safety yesterday on the street. How very intuitive he was, Adam thought
bitterly to himself.
Awakened from his shock,
Moses pointed his Bible at Adam, as if his message was aimed directly at him,
and said in a loud, baritone voice “Behold, the False Prophet is among his
children--a sheep among wolves.
Beware of this man. He may
come like a lamb, but he will tame the wolves, for he is really the Beast
foretold by Saint John.”
“Help
me!” Adam cried hoarsely to the preacher, as he approached. “Call the police,
not God. Don't just stand there; I
need a hiding place, not that goddamn book!”
But
the evangelist pointed an accusing finger at him and shouted to the people
around him “Don’t be fooled by this man. Drive him out of your neighborhood
before its too late, and you become the devil’s slaves!”
******
Still not used to
the revelations flashing in his head, Moses flinched at these high-sounding
words.
“Devil’s slaves?” He
mumbled to himself. “Whoa, that’s a bit strong!”
The sermon he gave
now, which sounded nothing like verses from the Bible, carried a hollow ring
for Adam now that he had changed sides.
The evangelist, for his part, found it hard to believe that this
storefront Jesus could be a threat, and yet the Lord had singled him out for
Moses last night. Now, in
disguise, he looked very much like Christ but was not doing very well as a
false prophet. If he was anyone of
such substance and importance, reasoned Moses, why would he be running for his
life? Why would he be marooned in
this hell-hole without a friend or even so much as a friendly face to give him
encouragement now.
The
preacher was probably the only homeless man on skid row who knew who he was,
and yet Moses felt sorry for this buffoon.
“You’re
not very good at this,” he called out, as Adam ran passed. “The Lord must be
talking about another false prophet.
In the first place, why would he pick one on skid row?”
This
quizzical response from the evangelist did not stop Moses from sending another
exhortation after the advancing pack: “You wolves will soon have a new leader:
a wicked messiah, pretending to be your friend. But don’t be fooled by this mockery of the Lord. Twelve of you shall he gather and mark
them as the devil’s own. God help
anyone else who gets in his way!”
A human road block of
curious vagabonds emerging from the alley onto the sidewalk blocked Adam’s
way. The slight curvature of the
ground allowed him to see beyond the dreadnaught heads of derelicts to other denizens
moving on the street. Among
a second wave of spectators, a tall, scrawny, yellow-haired, buck-toothed
youth’s loomed out even at a distance. This delay caused by the crowd, plus unexpected
traffic on the boulevard as he tried moving around them, prevented his escape
long enough for Rhoda Simms to catch up to him once and for all on the
street. Turning, in a staggering
motion, in the opposite direction, Adam decided to attempt one more run for the
hotel. At this point, the
yellow-haired youth was swallowed up by the initial press of bodies. Plowing right through a group of
drifters passed the cackling witch, he could hear renewed scorn from members of
the crowd, but absent now were the voices of Buff Peyton and his friends. Though the fat man had been the chief
instigator, himself, Adam sensed a more sinister motive for the witch. Had Adam understood who the
yellow-haired youth and his gang were, he would have been even more frightened
this moment.
“Hey
Louie,” Buff called to his ferret-faced friend, “this is getting out of
hand. I thought we were just
having some fun!”
“Yeah,”
Louie rolled his bloodshot eyes, “tell that to her!”
Rhoda allowed Adam to
stagger passed her, panting and sweating profusely as she reached out and
slapped his rear.
“What’s your hurry sweat
meat?” She cried out mockingly. “No one’s going to save you in that hotel. There’s no one in there but muggers,
drug addicts, and two-bit hookers, looking for a fix.”
Only a few hundred
feet from the entrance of the hotel, Adam was out of breath and almost out of
his mind. “Where are you? . . .
Come down and help me?” He muttered, gasping for air.
His teetering faith
in Satan had taken a turn for the worst.
No longer pursued but surrounded by hundreds of unwashed bodies, a dreadful
form of claustrophobia overtook him. Already, the presence of the yellow-haired youth and
his gang was sinking into the collective mentality of the crowd. As Adam caught the voices of the new
group approaching, the few concerned bystanders who had voiced concern shrank
from commitment. His confidence in
his mentor disappeared entirely as he trudged through the crowd. She wanted him to trust her, and yet
she was pushing him to the limits of endurance. She expected him to wait patiently, when it was obvious that
he was threatened by the mob.
“What’re you
waiting for?” He continued to mumble. “Come down here and save me! I deserve nothing less than a
miracle: a stroke of lightning or
small earthquake. Are you waiting
for God to intervene? Are you
trying to find out how I functioned under stress? Or is this some kind of monstrous joke?” “. . . Is that it
Satan?” he looked inappropriately up at the sky. “First you ruin my life and
take my soul, then you let them kill me, so I’ll burn in hell?”
Though he appeared
to be rambling incoherently, his words finally reached an audible range. With
the key words Satan, soul, and hell, several unwashed ears
perked up
“Whose he talking
to?” They murmured amongst themselves. “Is he taking to God?”
Buff
Peyton smiled and rotated a dirty finger beside his head. “I think he’s addled
in the brain.”
“Yeah,”
replied his friend Louie, “maybe we’d better leave him alone.”
In place of the
malevolence Adam had seen on many of their faces, he detected curiosity and even
concern. Though he did not yet
trust the fat man and his gang, he sensed inexplicably that he had friends in
this crowd.
“Who was this strange
man?” He heard them ask each other. “. . . . Where had he come from? Was he really sent by God?” These questions and many more were
asked by the denizens of skid row.
Adam was aware of their misgivings, but wasn’t sure what they had in
mind. Some of the street people he
spotted when he left the safety of
the hotel, who had the deadpan expressions of drunks and down-and-out
people, had managed to heckle him.
The big fat man and his friends had been the first. Many of the same people appeared to be
afraid of him now, while others continued to grin mischievously or frown with
contempt as he pressed on.
“Please give them a sign,”
he whispered more discretely, hoping that the crowd loitering beneath the
marquee would let him pass. All he
wanted this moment was the safety of the hotel. “Use some of your black magic to help me,” he prayed to his
benefactor. “Oh, Satan, blast these bastards! Stop them in their tracks! If you don't get off your infernal ass and help me, they're
going to do something terrible to me.
I'm probably going to be
raped!”
“He
sounds delirious,” Buff said to one his friends. “I think we pushed him over
the edge.”
“Hah,”
cackled Rhoda, “he’s as crazy as a loon.”
“Hey,”
Louie reached out to tap his back, “I heard you say ‘Satan.’ Are you really talking to God?”
At
that point, Charlie Blintz, the yellow-haired youth stepped forward as if to
block his path. Sensing evil, Adam
dodged the new threat, catching sight of the man’s splotchy face as he
passed. On each side of Charlie,
stood a bald-headed Asian with a savage scar running down his cheek and a
bearded, one-eyed man. In back of
this trio, were three other unsavory fellows, who appeared to belong to his
gang. The men laughed derisively
as had the fat man’s gang. Not
certain what the fat man and his friends had in mind, Adam felt as if there was
now two groups of antagonists threatening him.
He wanted to return to his
safe haven or at least find a place to hide. He was, at this point, only a hundred feet from the entrance
to the hotel, still hoping he would be saved by pedestrians or motorists on the
street. When the skid row gangs,
with Rhoda’s coaxing, finally encircled him on the sidewalk, he yelped
voicelessly, his body almost paralyzed with fear. In spite of this dark moment, however, something remarkable
was about to happen to Adam and this neighborhood, timed in such a way that
only Satan knew how it would end.
******
While
the vagrants circled as jackals around Adam Leeds, voices suddenly erupted
among the group that lined the sidewalk and spilled onto the street. The vast majority of the men, he
sensed, had merely been bystanders whiling away the time. With the exception of the hag egging
them on, none of the homeless women had joined the merriment either, and had
simply followed out of curiosity for the strange man. Several men who had originally began heckling, however, were
having second thoughts about what they were doing and joined the others in
protest of what was going on.
Among those who had stood by helplessly to watch Adam being chased were
ten of the potential twelve disciples.
Miraculously, Adam would later discover, they had been standing together
as a group, many of them never having associated together before. The only ones missing from Moses’
prophesized twelve were Buff Peyton, one of Adam’s chief tormentors, who was
now having second thoughts, himself, and Kaz Yorba, the dwarf, who had been one
of the original hecklers on the street.
Finally, as Charlie Blintz’s gang and a remnant of the original horde
pressed in on Adam, several members of the ten spoke up.
“In
God’s name, leave him alone,” Wyatt Brewster, a young seminary student cried,
elbowing his way through the crowd.
“Yeah,
leave the poor crazy bastard be!” Effie Powers, a small splotchy skinned
vagrant, croaked, stretching out her gnarled hand.
Royal “Stork” Channing, a
tall, blond haired, fair skinned apparition led a trio of like-minded homeless
men and women through the gawkers block, shouting at the top of his lungs “Stop
it! He's had enough!
Troy
Holland, an ex-marine Gulf veteran, who had served ten years in the Marine
Corps, added his protest, along with Alden Taylor, a distinguished looking
Afro-American man in an old worn suit, who looked out of place in this motley
group. Though verbally active, not
one of the five protesters, Wyatt, Effie, Stork, Troy, nor Alden, stepped
forward to prevent the persecution.
The remainder of the twelve, in fact, displayed a combination of
interest, indifference, and outright fear.
After
several more futile voices from the crowd were raised on his behalf, the mood
spread, until a chorus of voices, both men and woman, demanded in short and
some cases slurred commands, that his tormenters set him free. As it caught on, as if a alarm had
spread, he heard for the first time, since his debut on the street, motorists,
who were not vagrants but commuters and “normal folk,” shouting their protests
too.
“Leave
that poor lunatic alone!” Blared a women from her car.
“I
just called the cops on my cell phone,” he could hear a more distant man's
voice. “They're on their way.
Leave the weirdo alone!
So
far, during the protest, he had, among other names, been referred to by his
defenders as a lunatic, a poor crazy bastard, and a weirdo. Although this was not a promising
beginning for his ministry on the street, it was far better than no reaction at
all. While pedestrians, who were
too scared to get involved, voiced their outrage and a few brave drivers
shouted from the curb, motorists’ horns, which had been silent, blasted
sporadically in alarm. No one
stepped forward, however. Even the
ex-gang-banger Heck Reyes and his Native American associate Johnny Trueblood
remained on the sidelines with the others. Though fearful themselves, Ursula Painter, Effie Powers, and
Liz Moydin chastised the male members of their group.
“Shame
on you!” Ursula motioned to the men.
“It ain’t the habit of
street people to get involved with other folk’s business,” Heck explained with
a shrug.
“Yeah,” Ursula replied
bitterly, “just like you did when Crazy Charlie’s gang beat up Ignacio!”
“Cowards—all of you!” Spat
Effie.
Watching Adam’s
tormentors close ranks around him, Liz turned in desperation to the men.
“What’s the matter with you?
You’re an ex-marine, Troy.
You were a big shot gang member, Heck. What happened to you and that big dumb Indian? You lose your balls?”
“Bad medicine,” grunted
Johnny.
“It’s none of our
business,” reaffirmed Heck.
With the exception of
Cassie Moa, who seemed to be in her own little world, the women continued
berating the men. Troy, Stork, and
Alden bristled under their scrutiny. Buff now stood on the opposite side of Charlie’s circle,
aware that it was his mischief that had sparked the current dilemma.
Kaz, the dwarf, who had
drifted away momentarily from the hecklers reappeared suddenly by Wyatt
Brewster’s side. “Why don’t you pray for him, padre, huh-huh? He looks like Jesus with that beard and
robe. He might perform a miracle
and strike us all dead!”
As Wyatt broke into a prayer, Kaz, a borderline
schizophrenic, laughed foolishly to himself. His eyes wide with spiritual insight, Wyatt declared in an
awed voice that only Kaz could hear “Yes, children, Moses, the preacher, is
right. Prophecy will be fulfilled,
but the Lord will protect this man!”
******
Adam’s heart was beating so loudly he could barely
hear voices in the mob. After
making a few frantic motions to break through, he realized he was trapped. Silence now settled over the scene, as
Rhoda, Charlie Blintz’s gang, and several members of the original mob decided
what to do.
“Just what are you
suppose to be?” Asked the buck-toothed, yellow haired man.
It was the same
question everyone present wanted to know.
Buff and his friend Louie, who had started it going, stood by,
helplessly scratching their heads, wondering what they should do. Those defenders, pedestrians and
motorists alike, who had protested during the past few moments, grew
restive. Many onlookers and a few
vehicles slipped away during the lull.
Strangely enough, the loud-mouthed preacher he had heard earlier
remained silent, and yet a truck driver, pulling up in a large rig, stuck his
head out his vehicle's window and promised to report them on his cell phone—an
action which spurred new motorists, driving down the boulevard, to pull over
momentarily and survey the scene.
A strange irony was taking place in which the street, itself, which
merely passed through this hell-hole, was moved to action, while its tenants
stood by helplessly watching it take place.
A perfect set of circumstances had developed,
regardless of everyone's motives, to put his master to the test. So why are you silent? He tried sending his thoughts, looking
up at the building in which he had made love to the Princess of Hell. Don’t you know what these people
might do? This was a perfect
opportunity for her to demonstrate her powers and rescue him from assault and
murder. Where was his benefactor
and protector now that he needed her?
Why was she playing coy?
Was all this—his ordeals with Henny Lumpkin and Big Molly, the apparent
murder he committed, and debut on the street—merely sick games to occupy
Satan's time?
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