Length: 2200 words
Tense: past
POV: 3rd
Today's story is a redemption story. I think it's fitting after the first two. All I really had was the first image, and I kind of took it from there. If it rambles or jumps too much, let me know. It's not exactly linear. Also, let me know what you think of the ending, that was the hardest for me.
Simon Smith found God in the darkening orange stain that spread across on the driver’s-side armrest of his ’88 Mustang.
It wasn’t where Simon had expected to find Him. That was all Simon could think, at first. Not that Simon had ever gone looking for God. But certainly, if God was anywhere, Simon had expected Him to be someplace more grand and fitting. A cathedral would have felt right. The flash of green as the sun sets over a sparkling blue ocean, the cars whizzing behind on the 5, maybe. Lightning, he’d understand. A hurricane, sure. But the stain, the stupid, insignificant stain – who even knew how it got there? Who cared?
Simon was almost angry at God for springing on him like this. But he was sobbing, and as much for joy as for anger, for as much for relief as for his confusion. And out of the mysterious orange depths God smiled up at him.
Before he found God, Simon had never been inside the town’s only English-speaking church. He’d see it every day, as he drove from his house to the garage. Sometimes, he drove by without thinking twice about it. Sometimes, it disgusted him. The thought of all those people wasting away three hours to gather and sing to a figment of their imagination was odious to him. He thought of all the service the community lost. He thought of all the good those self-righteous Christians could have done, had they gone to help at the food bank or picked trash off the streets instead of going to mass. Sometimes it saddened him. He thought about all those deceptions, those brainwashed people so fervently believing in nothingness. He thought about them on their deathbeds. He couldn’t stand the wasted hope, the conviction even as life came crashing to an end that there was more beyond. He wanted to scream, live, live, don’t let yourself suffer in this life, for it is all you’ve got! He wanted to cry.
But in those rare moments, eight o’clock on a Monday, say, Simon half groggy from sleep, the church fascinated him. He’d drive by, and hear the music, see the congregation swaying, holding their arms aloft. He only got glimpses. He never heard the words they were singing. But it ensnared him, that notion, that music, that dancing. It pooled in a sunken chamber of his heart, and for the rest of that day it would not leak out.
Simon was a mechanic. When he found God, he’d been at the job for ten years. He knew every part of the car by heart. He could dissect it, explore it, understand it, and flawlessly reassemble it. He needed only his own two calloused hands and his own keen wit.
He was worshiped by the town. They couldn’t understand his magic touch. They couldn’t fathom how swiftly he could tinker this doodad, this thingamajig, and coerce the inert and broken machine to lift its engine and run again. “Miracle! I’d been twiddling with her all last week!”
It made Simon bitter, the way they treated him like a saint. He had become stingy with his abilities. He had become a last resort. He charged a hefty fee, “This is capitalist America,” he’d say. And his economics worked, for people still came. They knew, when they went to Simon, they’d get the result they expected.
The priest knew Simon as a good mechanic, cold man, and staunch atheist. He angered Simon by attributing Simon’s handicraft to God. Simon liked to believe his talent was his own.
The priest came in at eight one Monday morning with a broken heating system. Sometimes Simon didn’t mind the priest, but he inexplicably grew irritable if the Father came early. “Wouldn’t Jesus say, suffer the cold?”
“Though the Lord shall have us bear through the cold, the snow, and the rain to await His coming, I should think it no real harm if my car would be just a tad warmer in the mornings.” He said the second half quickly, lowering his head. “I have seen the hands of the Lord in your works, Mr. Smith. You have a great gift from God.”
Simon interrupted partway through, “Do you want my help, or do you wanna go and anoint yourself first?”
His heart noncommittally looked over its shoulder when the priest’s voice fell, but it didn’t turn. Simon was feeling angry at the church that day. He went through phases. As a child, the doctor diagnosed him with a lot of things, but it settled on bipolar. Dr. Jacobs liked to dole out the diagnoses. Simon didn’t give his own much weight. It was no chemical imbalance that moved him, that made him from the lenient community man to the hard economist too busy for small talk. He couldn’t say what it was, only he knew it was tied to certain happenstance – if he slept in past eleven on a weekday, and was late to the garage, or if the priest came too early, or if he had to take a detour for an errand.
Simon hadn’t always been a mechanic. In the eighties he’d been preparing for law school. He hadn’t gone to college, but he knew he could still be a lawyer if he tried hard enough. He had a sharp wit and an innate sense for getting to the bottom of things.
Some kids want to be president. Simon Smith had wanted to be a lawyer. He’d tell his mother each day, “Mama, I gonna be in court!” It was a fantasy firm enough that his mother believed. She brought him to the courthouse, once. She told Judge Anderson, “My son here’s going into law. He wants to see around.”
Judge Anderson laughed. She knew Ms. Smith, of course, and she knew Simon, and so she laughed. “Why, let me show our young lawyer around,” she said, and she took Simon’s tiny hand in her own. She took him into the courtroom, showed him here’s where the bailiff goes, here the jury. This box is for the defendant, this for the witness. When she had to go off to a trial, she took Simon with her, despite the law. Young Simon watched from the back, fascinated, as a sharp brunette man with the narrow face and smart goatee relentlessly attacked the woman in the box, and brought her to tears. He was enraptured.
He’d taken the LSAT, twice. The first time he got close, but not enough. The second time he got a 170. He sent his application off to UCLA, UCSD, and even up to Berkeley.
That summer, Simon met Isabella. When he first saw her, she was walking down the street, her glistening black hair splayed out behind her. She was so tiny in the waitress’s uniform she hadn’t bothered to remove. Later, every time Simon remembered her, he saw her as she was that day, in that pale uniform, her black hair listlessly out of its braid.
Simon was working as a clerk then, trying to get ready to pay at least some of the loans he’d have to take. Court was on recess for lunch, and Simon had gone out of the courthouse to get a burger. But he’d kept walking, down to the gray, worn streets. He’d needed to get some fresh air.
He saw Isabella. She hit him like a truck. He staggered, and watched her out of the corner of his eye. She had stopped moving, and just stood there, on that streetcorner, staring down Main. Simon walked toward her, starting to speak. But as he passed he saw tears in her eyes, and felt suddenly afraid. He kept his head down, and ambled on. If she heard him, she did not show it.
The goal of a lawyer is to dissect emotion, to understand motive and intent, and to punch holes in its fabric. A lawyer is the mightiest disassembler. A lawyer is a better psychologist – he necessarily has a fuller understanding of the human heart.
So each day when the courts let out for lunch Simon went to the corner of Las Colinas and Main, and waited, smoking a cigarette. Sometimes he wouldn’t see anyone. Sometimes he’d see gruff Mexican boys, tattooed and pierced, pushing their way past. He saw Isabella twice more that week.
He approached her, casually at first, subtly. He bumped her accidentally – “Sorry, ma’am, are you okay?” She doesn’t answer. Another day: “I’ve seen you before, Miss. You like this corner? I do. I need to get away from the courtroom, sometimes. I like the freedom.” He was probing, measuring his response by the small grunts. Sometimes he almost gave up, certain he was chasing the wind. He’d never heard her speak English. He doesn’t know whether she understands him at all.
But she does. Isabella listened, and she began to open up. Once she opened it was like the breaking of a dam. Troubles crashed over Simon Smith like the arguments of greater lawyers, hammering him down. It was the abuelita and the pink ribbon over her heart. It was Señor Antonio and his bottle. It was Carlos, her son.
Simon soaked it all in. He cried for her that night, and some more in the morning. He felt a lot – a great love for Isabella, and a coursing hatred of this Señor Antonio. He wanted to dissect Antonio in court – to tear him apart and expose the crimes, then throw him off to prison. He wanted to take young Isabella in his arms, protect her and hold her while the world flew by them. He imagined the soft touch of her lips.
But for all that wanting, feeling, and crying he could do nothing. The inactivity drew him near to madness. He quit his job. He withdrew his application. He took up the bottle himself. He was powerless.
That summer there was another scandal. Any small town has its share of scandals, and no resident is free from the insidious gossip. They had eloped, some said, but they didn’t come back. Others said he had kidnapped her. That was the story the police bought, but it didn’t mean they spent long looking. Mexicans were expendable, so near the border. Carlos went to the Lopez’s, and they took him in like he was their own son. By next summer, it would all die down. People were good at forgetting.
Simon didn’t know anything about cars when he first became a mechanic. He knew how to dissect an argument, and he figured an engine was not all too different. He learned by doing. He immersed himself in action. He soon discovered which parts served which function. He soon learned how to disassemble each part. And then he learned how to put it back together, and make it right.
It was the spring of ’92 when he bought the Mustang. It had a good fifty grand on the odometer, and a faulty engine, but it worked fine for Simon. He learned to love his car. He learned to fix it. He got it to work again.
There were some things he couldn’t fix. There was some stuffing falling out of the back cushions, and a passenger’s-side window crank that was broken. There was a big orange stain on the driver’s-side armrest. But those imperfections required the care of a seamstress, a cleaner, or a plastics modeler, not a mechanic. Simon became content with the extent of his abilities. He became proud of what he did.
Let’s not focus on those years in between. Let’s not see the anger that would rise unbidden from the shallow grave in which it lay. Let’s not see the slow turning of a heart like the hardening of bread left in the sun. The gears had been set in motion, and even the mechanic could not repair the brakes.
Instead, let’s hear the music. Let’s settle beside Simon, in his broken-down ’88 Mustang, as he stalls outside the church. The engine’s given out, at last. Simon’s tried to fix it – he haled his tools from the garage, but nothing will bring the car back to life. So he got behind the wheel, and stared into the distance.
See his ears, lifting to the chorus! Hallelujah, Jesus, Lord of all creation / Come to heal the broken and the lost… See his eyes, water at the silence. See his fingers, softly stroking orange.
Later that day, Simon will tow his car to the lot, give it up for scrap. Later that day he will walk to the garage, open up the door, and offer free maintenance, reduced price on fix-ups. Later that day, he’ll head to the food bank, ask them if they take donations. Later that day, he’ll head over to the house of Marcia Lopez. But now, watch him open the worn and aching door for the last time. Watch him take out the keys, set them gently in his pocket. Watch him straighten his jacket, don a hat from the trunk for good measure. Watch him walking up the stairs of the church, the music resounding around him, hallelujah, Lord Jesus, hallelujah!
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