Runaway Saint

by Lisa Samson

  “Do you want to apologize?”

  He thinks about it. “Are we going to do this or not?”

  As we cross the street, I know I’ve lost already. Why did it make me angry? I know he was only joking. I hope he was, anyway. From his older brother, Jed, that line wouldn’t have surprised me, but Eli takes life as he finds it. He doesn’t judge. And besides, you can’t teach life lessons to a kid who’s two steps ahead of you. You can’t teach a boy who’s always willing to call your bluff.

  “What am I doing here?”

  “What are you doing here?”

  Up close, I can see I was wrong about twenty-five. He’s older, probably in his thirties. When we approached, he greeted Eli with some complicated fist-bumping handshake, and the two of them seemed to have an understanding right from the start. But not me. This is the story of my good intentions. I sometimes act on them but always regret it. Standing on the grass among all these strangers, all I want to do is get back in the van and speed away.

  “I guess … well, we saw you guys out here, and … we just wanted to say hello.”

  “That’s great,” he says. “I’m surprised you noticed us.”

  “It’s kind of hard not to.”

  “I don’t know about that.” He smiles sheepishly under his beard. “We’re shouting at the top of our lungs, but nobody in this country is listening.”

  The line sounds practiced, something he’s said a hundred times. It elicits a practiced nod from several of the demonstrators.

  Eli grins at my discomfort.

  “I know this probably seems a little bit out there to people in this neighborhood,” the man is saying, “but you know what I think? Most people go through life disagreeing with the politicians, yelling back at the television set, but they never say anything, not out in the open. The way we’re enculturated, we look down on people who care too much and aren’t afraid to say so.”

  “We know this isn’t going to change anything,” one of the others says. “That’s not the point. We’re here so that they know—the people in charge—that we see what they’re doing and we’re against it. Even if we can’t stop it or change it, we’re not going to ignore it either.” As he speaks, his voice grows louder, but not loud enough to drown out the roar of traffic. Behind him, several demonstrators start to fold up their chairs and put away their signs.

  The scraggly-bearded man checks his watch and gives the others a nodded signal.

  “My name’s Chas, by the way. Like I said, this may not be your scene, but—”

  “Oh no,” I say. “I used to be a Quaker.”

  He pauses, cocks his head. “Okay.”

  That was a stupid thing to say, a stupid way of putting it. What I mean is, I know what it’s like to be unwilling to ignore things just because you can’t stop or change them, and while I might not forward mass e-mails or shout at intersections, I’m not … I don’t know what I’m not, but I’m not.

  “You know,” Chas says, glancing at Eli, then back at me. “Here’s what you ought to do. Come hang out with the Rent-a-Mob this weekend.”

  “The what?”

  He smiles. “It’s my little name for us. Not just these folks, but a whole bunch of us. We’re not going to a demo this weekend, just working on signs, but it would be a great chance to meet everybody and see if—” He breaks off, gazing over my shoulder. “It would be a great chance—” Again, over the shoulder.

  I turn around and see what he’s looking at. On my bumper, the Jesus fish glows like molten silver, sparkling in the sun. A car rushes past, obscuring the fish for an instant, but then it reappears with an insistent flash. Refusing to be hidden under a bushel, or behind a passing vehicle. As I glance back at Chas, I feel my cheeks begin to flush.

  “Anyway,” he says, digging under the flap of his chest pocket to produce a card. “Take this.”

  I hold the thick card in my hand. CHAS WORTHING, it says. And underneath in red letters: ACTIVIST + POET.

  Is that a thing? You can get business cards for it?

  “Seriously, you should come this weekend,” he says. “Every Sunday afternoon we get together. It’s at my place this time.”

  “I wish we could. We’re leaving town, going on vacation.” I see Eli’s smile widening. “In Florida.”

  “Well,” Chas says, “if you change your mind, you know where to reach me.”

  “You lied to Chas,” Eli says.

  “Don’t start in on me.”

  “You told him we’d be gone, but we’re not supposed to leave until next week, right? Did you not want to hang out with the Rent-a-Mob?”

  “Honey, sometimes—”

  “You just have to lie to people, I know.”

  “That’s not what I mean.”

  “You were right,” he says. “That was a life lesson.”

  He starts to laugh. I start laughing too. I can’t help it. The whole thing is ridiculous.

  “I’m worried about you, Mom,” he says. “I think you might have some hippie loser in you.”

  “You bet I do.”

  We turn down our street and pull into our driveway. When I pop the hatch, Eli doesn’t go for his fractured bike. Instead, he grabs some groceries and helps me bring them inside. Maybe he learned something back there after all.

  The story continues in The Sky Beneath My Feet by Lisa Samson

  About the Author

  The Christy-award winning author of Christianity Today’s Novel of the Year Quaker Summer, Lisa Samson has been hailed by Publishers Weekly as one of the “most powerful voices in Christian fiction.”