Chapter 27 The End of This Traffic, Part 1

It's freezing outside and there’s a ridiculous line of cars waiting, and so, with this mess, I’ll be late for work, again. My car hasn’t quite warmed up yet, and just for the record, I can almost guarantee that it’s in the single digits. I know this because there was a tightness in my chest when I had to take out the garbage, which, actually, I hope is related to the cold, come to think of it.

Right about now I have my radio up louder than I should, yet, as you can imagine with me, I still hear him riding and rumbling up from behind. This is no place and no season for a motorcycle, but he sidles right up to the side of my car and motions for me to put down my window. So I do.

“Pull it to the side of the road. Let’s go for a ride.”

He may be nuts, I think, this Deity.

“Isn’t it a bit cold?”

“You’ll be fine. Trust me.”

And so I trust him, because that’s just the natural thing to do. I pull my salt peppered Stratus to the side of the road and abandon it with its pseudo warmth and its safety and I get on the back of his Harley.

As a side note, I always hope that our time together is somehow like it is in Narnia and I’ll return to the exact point in time when I decided to desert my diligence, you know, so I won’t waste any of my precious time, and be late for work. But then, that seems sacrilegious.

“I’m not really dressed for this,” I tell him, because wouldn’t you know, I’m wearing my straight from the warm house, into the garage, to my soon to be warm car, to my assigned parking space and a quick jaunt into my warm office with the window looking out over God’s creation clothes.

“Get on. You’ll be surprised.”

And I am. I sit up behind him on a seat that is slightly higher than his, and we take off, and it’s really not too bad as we weave in and out of the late, albeit warmer, commuters. We cut right through it all, to the end of this traffic and into the freedom of the open road. As we pick up speed, I think there must be some miraculous heavenly portal-type heat surrounding this bike because we pass by some outside signs that display the temperature, and I was right; it is in the single digits, so add in the wind chill from the ride and we’re arctic.

We’re on our way downtown, again, meandering and leaning through curves on Jefferson Boulevard, eastward for a moment, until we’ll turn right by the glorious and fully renovated Embassy Theater and head south onto Calhoun. We usually ride downtown, not that he doesn’t have business elsewhere, just that he has more to show me by the Rialto, I usually assume.

Recently, the Reclamation Project has been awarded some funding from the City to provide housing, and ultimately home ownership to international refugees and the displaced. And he knows that I’ve been feeling a little useless lately and maybe that I think I’m not really doing much of anything, which may be natural for all of us, but all the same, he wants to show me what he’s been doing because I was willing to do something. He already knows the future, sees the homes in and around the Rialto's neighborhood, knows exactly who will live there, the laughter, and the warmth that will be provided on a day like this -- for his loved ones here, and from far and wide; most of whom aren't so accustomed to the cold. He likes the idea of a just distribution of resources, and he wants to talk some more about it with me.

We park right in front of the Rialto and there are piles of snow everywhere. It appears that our official maintenance/lawnmower/snow removal extraordinaire, Uzi Tommy, needs to do some shoveling, so I make a mental note. We call him Uzi Tommy because he was the first one in Fort Wayne to own an Uzi, which, by the way, he was pretty proud of, not that there’s anything wrong with that. If you do think there’s something wrong with that, he says, you should try living where he does. But, that’s beside the point.

Before we get off the Harley, I decide to not let go of him right away because there’s one thing I’ve always wanted to check when I’m putting my arms and my hands around his side. I'm usually so caught up in what he’s showing me that I forget that my hands are quite near his rib cage; and right there, is where, well, you know -- he was pierced.

And so, feigning some wardrobe malfunction with my gloves, and releasing from this masculine motorcycle riding hug of sorts, I slowly let my hands glide over there, with a distant hope that he won't notice. And right there it is. The scar. I can actually feel it, and my fingers sink a little into it and this causes me to lose my breath, and this time it's not from the cold. I always seem to forget the sacrifice, the pain, the brutality of it all, and how he knew it would happen before he ever left Heaven with all of its majesty to come and be with us. This certainly shouldn't be the place for him, though the season is just right, I guess.

And to think I wasn't dressed for this?

At this point, I'm having trouble pulling my hand away and he knows this, of course. I hate it when this happens, but without warning, my eyes tear up a bit.

And then freeze.