McRevelations
I fly a Texas flag on my shoulder somedays but not for the why’s people think I may when they see it. When I am sometimes too early to a place I have to be, I come here. At first because I am lazy, indifferent, it’s easy and all that is nearby this other place I must be.
Inside this place, each early morning, there are many many men. These many many men talk openly and randomly to no one in particular, sometimes they engage each other without direction or purpose because, well, there are no women there to talk to and they have what appears no where else to be.
They are there each time I go, no matter which early morning arches I find myself under.
I pretend I cannot hear it all, see it all, because I do not want to. I do not want to hear it, see it or be one of them. Yet, there I often sit.
Not this day you see, I was leaving and one man looked me in the eye, from his perch next to his many many man brother.
They stopped their talk of His Revelations just for Me:
Saved Man – “Hey Texas! You from Texas?”
Me – “Sort of, but from there, no sir.”
Saved Man – “Where about’s son? I am from Houston.”
Me – “I could have guessed that, tis the way life presents itself to me.”
Saved Man – “[Loud, Rancorous, Laughter]”
Me – “Curry Creek, well, San Antonio.”
Saved Man – “I haven’t been back to Houston in……. Um, I don’t know now, 25 years.”
Me – “I have been there more recently than that.”
Saved Man next to Saved Man, clutching a very worn, large black bible:
“I am from Houston too.”
“I am from Houston too.”
“I am from Houston too.”
This very old man never looked me in the eye and never stopped softly repeating this. His hair was white, his skin almost translucent, his blue eyes nervously surveying all of me but my blue eyes. The other man was with a worn red face of hard outdoor living, a black jacket and perched on top of his head, with him on his perch, was one old, straw, equally as beaten as his face, cowboy hat.
I pretended to tip the cowboy hat I was not wearing and stepped out into the sunlight because I could not fly.
