Billy Luck, Episode 8: Billy’s Dilemma

Heading for Billy Luck

Alison Heasley

Seven bongs. The church bells chimed the time up and down New York Avenue in Reverend Lucian Rand’s cramped study at the Fulfilling Temple of the Mind , Soul, and Body.

The “Rev,” as he was popularly known, cocked an ear toward his crackling Zenith radio, from which “Papa Soul”‘s shrill exhortation to “Rise an’ Exercise,” blared forth through the frayed gold soundcloth.
Rand tentatively bent over and then squatted. He clicked off his radio knob, then furtively
gulped brown liquid from a greasy paper bag, similar to those used by many members of his street ‘flock.’

Just at that moment, the immense and turbaned, but sweet-faced chapel matron, Miss Macedonia Greene, burst through the flap dividing the Rev’s study from his preaching rostrum in the actual “Ark” of the 1868 boatyard-style chapel that was his small domain. “You ready, for the sheep, Rev’ Rand,” she gently exhaled.

“Of…uh, of course, thank you, Macedonia, I’ll uh..meet you in the sanctuary, presently…” She gave him a somewhat concerned glance, then disappeared. Then Rev gulped some ‘smoke,’ then staggered into his tiny chancel.

In the nave, there was plenty of the normal agitation from Rand’s regulars. Meals, a flushed and bespectacled forty-ish derelict was struggling with Gerome “Red” Wheatley, a much larger and bearded worthy, whose love of extra sandwiches surmounted all other emotions at times. Al K. Hall, whose ragged overcoat dragged the floorboards by at least half a foot, was snapping at his dusty old mongrel dog, attached to his waist by a dirty hemp rope. Dio, a smooth faced young hustler, sniffed disdainfully, aloof from what he regarded as a “bunch of sniveling street bums!”

Al lunged pitifully across Meals and Big Red, tugging Moze, his dog along for show. “Thems is FIGHTIN’ words, Punk,” roared Al, as the entire board-paneled room shook with the hobos’ agitated stomps and hollers, until– “Children, my dear Children of the Lord!” Reverend Rand extended his leathery palms outward, in a fervent plea for calm. “May we be reminded of the vast property of our Lord’s MERCY?”
At that moment, Hilda the organist, wheezed out a keyboard homily, and the crowd fell amazingly silent. At this point Macedonia scooped up all uneaten sandwiches and hard-rubber trenchers of leftover oatmeal.

At the back of the “Ark,” Billy Luck pushed aside the cracked, curtained panes of a set of French doors and gaped in amazement at the motley tapestry of humans, including Macedonia and the Reverend, and wondered how he could get the oily-haired cleric’s attention.

If the poor suffering bastard with the spotty jacket and the grimy backward collar knew
how much genuine peril they all faced at the hands of a ruthless Senator from Tennessee, and his developer cronies, they’d likely blow the horns of Jericho to stop the wicked show in time — but not now. All Billy was capable of at this moment was to grab a worn leather hymnal and clucked along to “Just As I Am, O Lord, take me JUST AS I AM…”


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