And Jesus, and within him all the other prophets, their spirits and their history, came up out of the woods, wearily walking up the steep paved road and out onto the bricked sidewalk in front of the mansion with its gardens.  With all his concerns and having to go to work, distracted, bored by the continuous pressure, he saw a fancy woman up ahead, with her hat and her coat, clever style, and her brindle brown dog.  And Jesus sayeth unto himself as he saw the dog, and the sun on the grass between the brick sidewalk and the road, commanded the dog, please, oh yes, yes, that's it, take a nice shit, dog, yes....  And Jesus looked at the dog, and began to smile, and the dog walked up past one small planted tree, and then drew himself down, the dog, haunched down and the lady and the dog and Jesus knew what was coming, and indeed soon in a few steps there was that volcanic warm turd smell of bound weeds, dirt, warm mud decay, jungle and earth, and the lady was now reaching down, her hat with a fancy visor that was a sort of trademark for the fancy ladies of such a neighborhood, with a plastic bag to contain such a warm loaf little log of differing soft textures of hot poop dog shit.  And Jesus knew he had commanded it.


And Jesus smiled.  His first real miracle of will.  He'd never really tried it before.  But, it was a bit fun, actually.



And then, later at work, they had figured a way to staff the evening so that he didn't have to close.  He stayed at the bar, after clocking out, eating his salmon tartar.  There was a couple at the bar, he was friendly with, and an older couple.  He gave them each a copy of his book, the roman a clef.


As he was about to leave, changing out of his work shirt and shoes in the office at the end of the restroom hallway, he heard the old busboy Simon Peter talking shit about him...  "Why he don't go home right away."  And Jesus felt a need to explain, as he came out of hiding, why he'd lingered, having a friendly conversation with his old friend, the 87 year old gentleman of Nubian color skin, who had sat with a fun elderly woman with whom Jesus flirted with, "I've know that guy for 25 years....  Maybe thirty..."  And then he left, down the stairs, out the door, across the avenue, and into the  night.  And how many times had he closed the place so that the others could go home earlier than he, unselfishly.

He walked home, along the mansion walls, along the park where the light pollution was less, then by the cemetery gates and the iron fence along the brick sidewalk from which he could look down and see the still tombstones guarding the memory of the dead at night, perfectly quiet, and before he knew it, he was crossing the curved bridge with the Buffalo at both ends and up past the Turks and up past the circle with the general on horseback, holding his hat back, immortalized in a moment of calling forward, leading his troops.  And then the quiet street, and up the steps, quietly unlocking the door.


Walking the same path to work, coming through the woods from Massachusetts Avenue down to the stream and then up the long paved steep road with the garden wall above the stones of a drainage path where chipmunks lit about into holes in the stone's mortar, out onto the brick sidewalk, past the famous miracle of the shitting dog, he stopped for a moment, the afternoon sun over the big houses of Upper Georgetown, looked down and saw something that looked like a hair clip.  He reached down to it, and there it was, the silver tie clasp his mother had given him for Christmas a few years before, upside down against the brick wall, waiting for him, and how it got there, who knows, but that the man went past there going both to and fro, to work, back home.