sharon chapter 4

Jeremiah is cautious in a town full of self-serving individuals. He sits outside the House of Justice and the House of the Madonna, finding temporary peace. He then heads back to Pastor Benjamin's car, where his sidekicks Matthew and Luke are waiting. They were rescued by the pastor from a life of crime. Jeremiah enters the car and the windows are closed, blocking the sun's gaze. Chapter 4 Hope after Darkness There was a natural desire in Jeremiah to share his good news about the deal with Mr. Rafiki, but not yet. Of the friends he had acquired, there were also self-servers waiting to pounce, some particularly tricky individuals who had robustly surrounded themselves with like-minded scavengers in the all-seeing doors and windows of the town. Anywhere there was a dark alcove in path or a place with two stairs for coming and going. At the back of the market place, in between the bus shelters, in the cabin at the back of the hotel, in between the fabric rolls and fillings of potatoes was the real hub of this town, some to act, some to watch, some to count, some to investigate the contents of vans, some to take tax, some to take official tax, and then some more. Fees for entering this district and fees for leaving the district. People, buses carrying iron poles, trucks carrying people, forestry trucks carrying soldiers and all police-owned exorcisers. It was a mysterious busyness of cautious intrigue and in-your-face demand. The homeless and starving were naturally the most audacious. Jeremiah was careful where he stepped. The vestiges of rain from yesterday had not quite evaded away. They had made the piled-up organic waste of the street swell and become rice, the soil eagerly reabsorbing nutrients when it cooled through unsteady concrete paving blocks and the water fell into the deep drains, congesting and flowing alternatively, just like traffic. Jeremiah allowed himself an uncharacteristic moment of hesitation as he sat on the bench outside the House of Justice and the House of the Madonna on the high street by the police station. The Catholic Church had been one of the last to arrive in this town, securing a hasty creep nevertheless. He released himself to take a deep breath of stable ownership and right to thrive. The beggars in these streets had deteriorated a little bit further. They had extreme disabilities, severe amputations, and had made extraordinary personal adaptations. Perhaps it was because they were in such close proximity to the bank. They had increased flexibility of their other joints in compensation, wrists that were superordinately strong to carry an entire man grinning with effort across the four-lane highway along the solid partitioning bunker in the middle that would have deterred any average walking pedestrian on and over the other two lanes to the elevated position on the marble step outside the law court and official supermarket for the wealthy. There they could see all the salaried workers coming and going on the inside of the glossy buildings and glass doors. In that polished world, primarily concerned with huge capital transfers, bank to international bank, this was where the most courageous and the most desperate would sit and watch the town. Everyone was about the same game, how to improve their lot, and this is where Jeremiah allowed himself a temporary peace. Nevertheless, looking at the large clock on the forecourt, it would be time now. He would have to make his way back to the pastor who would be waiting anxiously for news. But can such a man be anxious? Pastor Benjamin had a large head with unruly curly gray hair. His favorite way of conducting business was either in his large car in the back between his two main men or in his church office. Some of his flock had noticed that he also liked to arrange himself in doorways, being rarely far from an exit or entrance in town. He preferred to be driven, holding God in the back of his car with the only untaken seat, a pertinent fold down opposite him. He did believe in law and punishment, though was actually ambivalent about God. It was best to be God oneself while God was not actually on the scene, then there would have been to be proof for the flock that such high powers did exist. It was important for them not to lose hope, because if the common man lost hope, there would be unnatural tensions and perhaps even violence, which he liked to avoid. Families, they created all the trouble. Women, they created the families. Like it or not, that was a fact. God a woman kept on the interior self of her in terms of her inner room. He scarcely understood, and sometimes it contained cushions both material and metaphorical, which he suspected for their enveloping and suffocating qualities, cushions of thought receiving warmth which threatened to shrivel into something different at a certain age. And the woman would be tan, fierce, shrill, and demanding, like a redeemable banshees. Even in his youth, he had preferred a woman already inured to the practical realities of life, that way there was less of a change later. Now that he was older, he preferred a strictly hands-off approach because of their unpredictable qualities. In the course of his pastoral duties, if a whole family with a fully grown woman landed in his lap, he was a man of the cross and liked to know exactly which of his threads was being pulled for duty and why, for it was a huge weight for him to carry. Gone were the days when he had even attempted to carry one of his own. He was driven around in his car because not enough sits in a useful thing when dealing with women. When receiving petitions for help, he would allow one representative of the family to sit in his car on that extra seat, and that would have to be a man. Women had so many works to complain with, and they rarely made sense. They had unpredictable, undefined, sloppy, and contaminating emotions, strange internal workings, and they couldn't let things go. Zremaya had made his way towards where he knew the pastor's car would be waiting, where it was parked just behind the security barriers and up the street a little way, so that it would not attract attention. He knew exactly who would be inside. Pastor's sidekicks were renamed men, a man called Matthew and another called Luke, only one could drive. He had passed his test with some effort with the massive driving school. These were no easy feat as he had needed to hang on at the back with the other learner drivers, which everyone was given a turn. The pastor said at times to those that would be there that he himself had rescued both these individuals from a sad life of crime. They both belonged to an estate on the Far East beyond where the rest of the town lived and isolated even by the bike transport, which was usually plentiful. They were both young men, but had the coloring of eye whites from sun and drink, scampering at night, creeping around houses, thinking about women but not quite hitting the nerve, then eyeing probably the lack of change in their hands in the morning. Determinantly selling trinkets on the streets where the gems were colored plastic and the packets of rings had been three times sold by the time that they acquired them. The pastor's own eyes could be blemished. They still had their dignity and solidarity. Let no one take that away. There they were, falling asleep on the side of the road, rolling into a handy shady tip, as ants folded the way clothes fall without ants in them, their skin bumping, their toes white with running of their feet. Their life of crime was just to get drunk and fall about on the street, shouting, asking for money too loudly from people that they never would have approached if they had not been. When the pastor made such a generous offer to them and accompanied these with the clean black and sober fruits of the church for free, they happily crissed themselves into the back of his car and showed pleasing marks at all his jokes, and with pleasure grabbed by the elbow or loosely pushed around anyone who seemed to be denying God's work. Without provocation, this did not extend to verbal insults because they were both often quiet. Call that a product of their childhood, if you will. They waited extremely patient wherever they were left sitting unobtrusively until they could return with the solid outcome that they were guarded with. They had already seen Jeremiah leave the coffee shop and take his time. He hadn't been aware of eyes upon him, but he didn't need to be. He knew this as a fact, just another fact, that whatever you did and wherever you did it, someone would report back. He was used to this on the farm. Favorably or unfavorably, this would have been a direct effect on your life's other conditions if he took any notice of them. It was best to be firm. Jeremiah had started practicing what he would say when he approached the car. Matthew opened the back door on the other side and mentioned Jeremiah to go in to sit on the penitent's seat. They were always polite. Jeremiah took his last deep breath as if he was plumbing into an octopus tank with just a pipe to breathe through. He had only seen once on the telly but knew enough to see a creature strangely out of its element while still loosely in charge of his only tank. The pastor, with his arms and legs securely positioned, Matthew got back in. Occupying the back seat next to the other windows, John came in the back sofa. The doors being closed again, the dark windows blocked the sun's insightful gaze.