The Savior

Part 38

If I say so? thought Adam. I’m not going to respond to that remark. It sounds too much like the other cryptic mysteries that have been surrounding me like wild beasts for the pest few days. I’m up against the present and the past as if in front of a blast furnace and all these guys can do is talk in riddles.

He stood with the glass of wine in his hand staring at nothing. Images were tumbling over in his mind: a crazy archbishop, a wounded dog which was now running around sniffing everything, a fortune hiding in his closet, standing in a river he strangely remember standing in before, bloody boots but no wound, holding a lamb in his arms as if he’d done that before, fish nets…. Wait. Fish nets. Where did that come from. Adam never had anything to do with fish nets and yet he remembered them.

His thoughts were interrupted by Semyon saying “I’ll get some soap and water.” He walked off. Adam heard the voice of children somewhere. Adam liked kids but he seldom saw any. He thought about the fact that he never married and had any of his own. Maybe he would one day.

Richard Tepler came up to him with a bowl of soapy water and a towel. He sat on the ground in from of Adam and said “Put your foot in here” motioning to the bowl. “Why no shoes?”

“I was standing in the river.”

:Oh“ he started to wash Adam’s foot. “Did the dove come by?”

“There was a bird that flew by. I don’t know if it was a dove.”

“Probably. If so there will be another one. They travel in pairs.” He dried off Adam’s foot with the towel and said “Other foot.”

While Dick was washing Adam’s other foot he said “It was very difficult, you know. I mean when we first went out. No one would listen to us or believe us. We wanted to talk to them, but they just wanted tricks.”

“Tricks?”

“Tricks. So Jack made the rains come. Just like you did.”

“I did?”

“Remember? On the mountain with that Gerry person, when the rain poured down and splattered the dusty ground, when the long fingers of water flowed into the furrows and revived the dying crops and when the troughs overflowed as the wretched suffering livestock drank at last.

Those words rang in Adam’s mind. Where did he hear them before?


(To be continued.)