Saved

I got to this interesting nexus of streets, passing all of these fresh faced young ones, so beautiful and affected, waiting in line for a show at The Showbox. To the south was downtown, to the north was Belltown. To the west a setting sun glanced off of the Puget Sound just behind the famous Pike Place Market, to the east sits a methadone clinic.

Now, I will say from the get go, I've never been inside a methadone clinic so I'm only assuming to know what a person in need of said clinic would look like. And while I'm assuming away like a mass assumer, let me say that most of the people I see shambling around those blocks at odd hours, the people without a spark in their eyes and hollow cheeks, the people who have been aged far harder than someone should be, the people that appear to be little more that the walking dead, well I assume that they're the type of person in need of a methadone clinic.

I stood on one corner, waiting for the light to change and release me, when I saw across the street a man with a bible and a bullhorn, a typically dangerous combination. He was kneeling with the shaking shambles of a man who looked as though he called this area home. They knelt on the sidewalk, across the street from a Johnny Rockets diner and any number of shops selling tacky doodads with "Seattle" printed on them, praying intently.

The older man cried and I was captivated. These were not tears of sudden release, not tears of anguish, they reminded me of the smell of a theater. These were well rehearsed tears, tears this man had learned to shed again and again, tears that shone on whiskered cheeks but stood with nothing behind them. He would shake off his performance and begin to stand when the street preacher would gently lower him back to the sidewalk again.

I was unsure who this play was for. The preacher, I'm sure, felt that he was helping a man in need, saving him from his sins. But what about the saved? Was it some sort of conditioned response for him, actions he had learned in missions and shelters before, something that becomes as automatic to the rest of us as drinking water when we're thirsty. Was he trying to make the street preacher feel like he was serving some good?

The preacher finally let the man up and away and I wanted to take him one block to the west, show him the water shining and the snow on the Olympics just beyond that. But I only listened to the hollow bullhorn sound of the words, "another one saved" cut through the PJ Harvey playing in my ears.