And so I strummed and I sang and I strummed and I sang. An hour went by. People came and people went but almost nobody paid me any mind and showed me no appreciation. I began to wonder if this being thy brother’s keeper thing was going to pan out. My stomach growled. I looked in my case. I had a couple dollars. I would need that for gas for the car to run tonight for heat while I slept. Business was slow. So I switched it up and dove into a rendition of The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald by Gordon Lightfoot, which had proven to be a crowd pleaser in the past. Sure enough a preacher, a leader and representative of the community, walked up wearing a collar, a solemn smile on his pious face, and towing a small child by the hand, the good book and some pamphlets in his other hand pressed against his hip. He stood impassively for a moment or two looking on and listening while the child peered up with a look of curiosity from beside him. Mid song he let go the child, extended his hand, and introduced himself saying rather stiffly, “I am Father Tom.”
A man in my position couldn’t afford to offend paying customers so, remembering my manners, I stopped my strumming and my singing and I grasped his hand, gave it a friendly shake, and replied, “BJ. Pleased to meet you. And who is this darling young girl?” I asked with a well meaning grin.
“This is my daughter Cecilia. Say hello too the man Cecilia,” he said looking down with a look of austere propriety.
I looked down at her with a welcoming smile. She said nothing and promptly hid behind her father’s legs looking around at me through wide, innocent eyes.
“Please forgive her.” Father Tom said, “She is young yet and thus does not always apply herself to her manners.”
“Nothing to forgive, is there Cecilia? When I’m not doing this I’m pretty shy myself.” I replied smiling down at the child who was peeking out from behind her father. The girl responded by putting a finger in her mouth and silently disappeared behind her father’s legs again.
I looked to Father Tom and I asked, “Any requests?” knowing in retrospect that what would have been much more productive and honest was if I had thought first before I spoke and instead said, ”I know 25 songs. I’ll list them off and you stop me when I say one you want to hear,” instead of inferring by the question that I might actually know a song he requested. He didn’t have any requests.
“Actually, BJ, I didn’t come about the music,” he said.
A warning light went off in my head. It was always about the music. The music and the coins people threw in my case. That was the only thing it was about. That’s why I was there, that’s why he was there. People with personal agendas were a reason for caution for you never knew just who you were talking too and what they were capable of. Whether he was “enlightened” clergy or not, I wasn’t in a hurry to find out what was this fellow’s agenda.
But apparently Father Tom was in a hurry and so he started right in, “Do you know the Lord BJ?” he asked.
“I’ve heard the name,” I replied indifferently.
“Do you know the Lord loves even you?” he inquired further.
“Even me,” I thought to myself. My pride stiffened against the condescension, “How quaint.” I looked him straight in the eye and waited for it, saying nothing, not knowing what it was he was coming too, but knowing it was coming nonetheless. I was holding out for a sandwich.
Seemingly compelled by my silence and unable to stop himself, he continued, “I have something more important than money for you, something you need even more than money or the things money can buy.” He reached across his torso with his empty hand to pull a pamphlet from the other, bent over slightly and placed it in my case. “That,” he said straightening up with a righteous air, “Is the word of God. Read it. It will nourish and sustain you.”
And there it was. My stomach rumbled in its emptiness. I looked down at the pamphlet in my case. I looked up at Father Tom. I looked down at the pamphlet in my case. I looked up at Father Tom. “Can I eat it?” I asked myself. “Will it buy me a loaf of bread?” I stared straight ahead at the father and said in an even tone that hid any sarcasm, “Thank you. You are too kind.”
“Have faith BJ. The Lord will provide,” he said with a confident and knowing air.
“The Lord will provide,” I repeated to myself. I made a quick pragmatic assessment. I scanned the parking lot over Father Tom’s shoulder to see if the Lord was pulling up in a delivery van to bring me a roasted chicken. Nothing. I looked down at the pamphlet in my case. It was neither edible nor negotiable. I looked at the two dollars in my case. Not even pocket change. It seems I had caught the good Lord on his day off.
My need being somewhat more immediate and material than the dubious promise of future provision from a man who had no greater appreciation of it than to proffer me a piece of paper and fine words, and with the grocery store closing in an hour, I stuck out my hand to Father Tom and said, “Words to live by. It was a pleasure to meet you Father Tom. And you too Cecilia.” I shook the Father’s hand with a smile, chucked the kid on the head, swung the guitar on its strap from behind my back, and went back too work.
With a look of pride in a job well done on his face, Father Tom took his daughter by the hand, turned, and quite self-satisfied in his quest to provide lasting sustenance too another presumably lost soul and provide for his needs, walked away to the opening chords of Heartache Tonight by the Eagles.
A man of meager means, I was constantly forced to find utility in all things: I used the pamphlet later that night to start a camp fire for warmth.
EPILOGUE
What often took me a day or less in other centers, it took me three slow days outside that grocery store in Yorkton to eke out just enough money for two or three loaves of bread, a few grapefruit, and gas for the car to run it at night for warmth and to move on too the next town with the uncertain hope of better pickings. I went to sleep hungry every night of every day I was in that God fearing town. Sometimes, it would seem, the Lord is not forthcoming in his provisions. So on the morning of the fourth day, a rather bright, crisp spring morning, I shook the dust from my feet and drove off into the distance with an empty stomach putting the proselytizing town of Yorkton, and the self-appeasing and impractical Father Tom with his high-sounding religious sentiment that substituted for or ignored material need, in my rear view mirror.
As I passed the outskirts of town and a broad expanse of flat, empty fields opened up before me for miles beyond sight, there was one last sign from the community to bid me adieu that read, ”In all things trust to the Lord.” I put a Rolling Stones tape in the stereo. As the opening chords for Sympathy for the Devil sounded I wondered if the Lord loved the tens and hundreds of thousands of people of this world that died of starvation and malnutrition each and every day, and if they in turn had trusted in Him for all things. Clearly He hadn’t provided for them and didn’t seem much concerned for their survival. Regardless, they died as they had lived: hungry.
As my stomach rumbled in its emptiness I set the cruise control knowing that there would be no roasted chicken on delivery for me.
“Do you know the Lord, BJ?” the question echoed in my mind bespeaking a world of fanciful, if not purely escapist, immaterialism that seemed of little practical and beneficial consequence.
“Yeah, I’ve heard the name,” I thought unaffected. I drove on undaunted in my pursuit of the next square meal.