Daisy Chain - Chapter 1

On a summer evening in an American city, a family walked along a sidewalk, the father as enthused as he was four and a half hours earlier when their journey began and the streets teemed with people eager to get home from work, appearing like so many salmon struggling forward, as if against an unforgiving stream, the heat a startling contrast with the cool offices they had left. Earlier, many of the pedestrians who faced a daunting line of crosswalks and subway stops reflexively accepted the pamphlets the street preacher handed out. As the rush abated, so did the willingness of the people to accept the handouts thrust at them.

The wife, looking tired and strained from the long walk, plodded along listlessly. She glanced at her wristwatch, squinted, and let her arm drop by her side. It was seven-thirty-five and there was a sense of relief in her expression. The children trudged along behind her within arm's length, the brother twelve and the sister fourteen.

The father paused beneath the awning of a store. The coincidental occurrence of the interior lights being turned off as if by a preplanned agreement seemed miraculous. But for what purpose would such an unrewarding event happen? The store's decorative awning and the dark background gave the appearance of a rostrum set up specifically for the event. The man broke into an energetic sermon. The wife and children served the purpose of an amen corner, letting out approving words at the appropriate times.

Barely negligible glances from passersby evoked an overwrought exuberance from the man that gave the impression he believed they were there for no other purpose than for him to preach to. If anyone were asked five minutes after passing the man, even the ones who hesitated, would not be able to inform someone what the street preacher had specifically said. Those who considered the man's presence even for an instant wondered why he would think there was a single person passing by who was unaware of the Gospel, of heaven and hell, or whatever else it was that he declared as if it were hot news right off the press.

Besides the strangeness of the event, what caught the attention of the few people who did pay more than a moment's notice was the overall shabbiness and slovenly appearance of the family. If someone were asked to describe in one word the overall impression they made, it would be "poverty."

The first emotion evoked in the people early on when the offices were first abandoned by their occupants, men and women wearing uncomfortable suits and other business attire confronted by the scruffy sight was that of being offended. The apparent assumption that the street preacher had an inside scoop on something they didn't caused a stir of indignation. Despite his high opinion of himself, the overall dreary condition of the unkempt family bespoke more of failure of the man as a husband and father than anything else.

Any admiration bestowed by an onlooker at the sight was directed toward the girl, for she had a dogged resolve and a fighting spirit to assist her father in accomplishing his mission. Indeed, there was a cigarette butt trash container beside the girl, and with no other obvious place to make a donation, bills began piling up in its shallow recess.

Each donation vexed the self-esteem of the street preacher and was considered by him as a grave insult to his dignity, his voice ascending and descending an octave every time someone left a bill. The girl, uncertain of how to respond to this occurrence said, "Thank you," which caused a brief warble in her father's voice.

"And so I bring forth the good news to you that the kingdom of God is upon you this day. And now is the time to make yourself right with the Lord." If one can imagine Pavarotti and Don Knots alternately speaking various portions of the sermon containing that line, one has an idea of the sound heard by passersby. Some smiles by listeners were the first ones to cross their faces that day.

In stark contrast to the sister's, the boy's demeanor was one of shame and embarrassment. He shifted from one foot to the other, kept his eyes lowered, and repeated an occasional barely audible "amen." Clearly his heart, if not his circumstances, was with any passing pagans, his discomfort and suffering more obvious to them than most others. The father took their disdainful looks as signs of contempt for the word of God rather than what they really were, contempt for him over his indifference to his son's predicament.

The boy's father may or may not have taken a vow of poverty, he was unaware of any specifics of  his father's internal beliefs, but he had not taken a vow and strongly resented his impoverishment. If he could manage it, he would pocket the money in the container beside his sister. He had managed such stunts before without her showing any indication of annoyance or disapproval.

Funding for the family's subsistence came from an anonymous donor who funded many of the street preachers in the area. The boy never found out who the person was or what lay behind the funding. The motivation of the philanthropist did seem to have some sincere degree of moral/spiritual merit behind it because only those who seemed sincere were funded. Street preachers who were never funded in any way always wondered why. The boy noticed that the unfunded ones appeared to be much more interested in their own egos than in spreading the Gospel. With that in mind, the boy believed that his father had just barely made the grade " or perhaps him having a family was the deciding factor.

However living expenses came about, the family was always hard up and the children deprived of what seemed common comforts and pleasures for ordinary folks. Their life's circumstances seemed to conflict with the father's constant proclamations about God's love, mercy, and concern for everyone. The question that lingered in the boy's mind was "If this was so, what were they doing wrong?"

He admired his sister for her resolve and earnestness, and her stoic acceptance of whatever bad fortunes came upon them. In her he saw a negative image of himself. It was as if looking in the mirror and realizing that his left arm was where the person in the mirror's right arm would be if the person in the reflection was real. This troubled him without it ever diminishing his affection for her.

His mother impressed him as someone held hostage by her circumstances, and her husband's will. She was a passenger on a vehicle she could neither escape from nor the course of which could she alter in any way. She always seemed resigned and exhausted by her life, despite her desperate declarations that “God will provide” or “God will show the way,” in times of deep despair. There was never a favorable intervention in the family's affairs. Indeed, it seemed as if " if there was a God " he had it in for the family and that they lived under a divine curse.

All of that seemed to accurately sum up the little family of vagabonds. The father, a willing slave and beast of burden, a donkey following after a carrot it would never reach. The mother, pathetic in her hopeless condition and made even more pathetic by her ineffectual pleas for help. The sister, heroic in her stoic acceptance of every misfortune, yet happy and fulfilled with any wayward scrap of favorable fortune. She was the good soldier, eager to fight in the front lines, faithful in all weathers, while he marched along in the rear, a conscript in a war that he did not believe in nor wished to be engaged.

The homeless men and bums he encountered had a sincere sympathy for him. Of all people, they knew how life could beat someone down and make them passive drifters, destitute in a city that bespoke of the success and good fortune of people not them. They were bottom feeders, living at the edges of the ebb and flow, in the stream that a thousand people traversed each day. The boy wondered if his fate was the same as theirs. The idea vexed him so that even the sympathetic glances from them were not enough to keep him from averting his eyes and turning away.

The father ended his sermon while holding  a pamphlet with his arm reaching above his head. He took it for granted that people would realize it contained not only the basic principles of the Gospels but also the address of The Church of the True Believers. No one did. “All men are sinners in the eyes of the Lord. Unless you repent and accept Christ, you can never know the happiness of life. Christ lived and died for you. Come to him that he may walk with you every day, and help you resist the snares and pitfalls that beset us all! Hell awaits those who know not Christ. Heaven awaits those who are faithful. Come and know of the peace, the satisfaction, the comfort, and the glory!”

The boy, Henry, felt no peace, satisfaction, comfort, and certainly had no sense of glory. He clenched his fists with impotent rage as the family wandered back to their tiny apartment. The small troop approached a ramshackle building, the door of which was once a vibrant sky blue, before having faded to the color of rust. 

Author's Note

Gaps in logic or timeframe issues regarding the story's internal structure are worth mentioning, otherwise there's no need to spend much time on a review. If you genuinely find the story interesting or unique that is good for me to know. Thanks.