The Good Cincinnatian

A man was traveling from Crestview Hills to West Chester.  On the way he ran low on gas and pulled off the I-75 looking for a gas station.  The one he thought was open from the highway had already closed, so he drove a little further down the road and within a few turns realized he was lost in a what looked like a rough part of town.  He saw a group of teenagers on the corner and rolled down his window and stopped to ask for directions.  Before he could even say hello to the young men he was yanked from his car, beaten, carjacked, and left for dead on the curb.  With the one eye that was not beaten closed he watched the taillights of his car vanish deeper into the city wondering if they would get far enough away that they would not come back and finish the job once they realized his car was just about out of gas.

Jack, a pastor of a large influential suburban church drove past on his way home from a meeting of the Cincinnati Ecumenical Symposium on Social Justice.  He remembered thinking at the meeting his church needed to do more to increase the awareness of his parishioners of the effects of poverty and disenfranchisement on the whole city, not just their neighborhood.  Those thoughts were confirmed.  This once glorious neighborhood, rich in tradition and heritage was in a shambles.  Many of the businesses were boarded up.  Most of the homes were in disrepair. The people on the street corners seemed to be ambling through life like zombies.  This all broke his heart.  Jack made a mental note to add this imagery he was taking in for next weekend’s sermon on the call of their church to social justice in the city.  This had gone on long enough.  

He stopped for a red light and grimaced at the loud sounds coming from a bar on the corner. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a man laying in the street, obviously drunk.  He had no shirt on and it looked like he had been on the losing end of a bar fight.  This disgusted him.  He picked up his cell phone to call one of the elders at the church and suggest that they needed another committee to look into putting public pressure on the bars and other businesses that preyed on the weaker citizenry of Cincinnati.  As he drove by, his wheels splashed a puddle over the man laying in the curb.  Jack smiled at the provision of God to help sober the guy up.  He made another mental note for his sermon: 

“God rains upon the just and the unjust alike.  Hmmmm. . .the just get to use the water for their landscaping and gardens, the unjust get the bath they deserve?  Nah, that is too sarcastic. . .”

The phone chirped interrupting his thoughts as he flipped the lever to signal his turn to get onto the I-75 North on-ramp.  The elder had picked up his end of the line.  He reached over and clicked the hands-free set.

“Listen, Mike, this is Jack.  I am headed back from the symposium.  It went very well.  I am glad I attended it.  Do you remember how you once said you wanted us to get serious about empowering the less fortunate people of Cincinnati?  I think the time has come for us to put a team together back at the church to look into this and. . .”  He drove on discussing with the elder their strategy for energizing their church's social justice endeavors.

The man in the gutter woke from his slumber as the water splashed over him from a passing car.  He looked around and tried to remember what happened to him as he pulled himself up onto the sidewalk.  He leaned on the lamppost and for the first time realized he was shirtless.  In a daze he looked around for the shirt that must have been ripped from his back when the four teenagers had pulled him through the window as they carjacked him.  He fumbled in his jeans pocket, but realized his cell phone was still in the car that had been stolen.  So was his wallet. Dejected, he slid down along the lamppost, not caring that we was sitting in a puddle on the sidewalk.

Stewart, the executive director of the National Sojourners of Social Justice was leaving the same meeting Jack had been at.  He barely noticed the neighborhood he was driving through, instead focusing on navigating his way back to I-75 south to the airport to catch his flight to Baltimore where he would be speaking before a large collaborative of traditional denominational churches on the need for a call from the pulpit to make social justice a renewed mission of the American church.  He barely saw the closed business and the run down houses on the street as he listened intently to the NPR story about a new book coming out about Desmond Tutu on the radio of the rental car.  He still fumed that they had given him an ordinary sedan rather than hybrid car he had requested. He looked down at the green rubber bracelet on his wrist and smiled at his oath to his daughter to be more green this week as part of their sixth grade environmental awareness project. 

Suddenly he had a brilliant idea.  The NPR story that followed the Desmond Tutu book review was about congress and the president being at yet another standstill over the federal budget.  His organization had been trying to think of a way to get involved in this fight and the green rubber bracelet gave him a wonderful idea.  They could make a multicolored wristband that looked like a rainbow and they could do a parody of the “What Would Jesus Do” bracelets that once were all the rage.  Instead, this social justice bracelet would say:  “What Would Jesus Cut?”  They could sell them on their website for ten dollars each and use the proceeds to pay for an extra lobbyist over the next month to make sure the voice of the poor and disenfranchised had a voice in these very grave deliberations.  He picked up the phone to dial Marcy, his marketing director, when his head turned at the loud music coming from the bar on the corner.  He looked over and saw a man wearing an Army jacket huddled under an old rusty awning on the side of the bar smoking a cigarette. He shook his head realizing the city smoking ban he had fought for last year had not gone far enough.  Now smokers congregated in large huddles puffing mustard gas out from the cancer sticks they pinched in their dirty fingers on the sidewalks in front of bars.  Distracted, he put the phone down not sure which cause he should take up first.

At the next light a shirtless man seemed to be approaching him from the corner.  He couldn’t tell, but it looked like he was motioning towards him.  Probably another homeless person left with no choice but to ask for charity via offering to wash his windshield while he waited at the traffic light, most likely with spit and dirty rags.  Stewart decided to forgo the sales pitch or the window cleaning service, believing it demeaning to participate in such a despicable capitalistic transaction and reached out and offered the man a five dollar bill and card to the local food pantry his church sponsored in that part of town.  He did not listen to the man as he asked to use his phone, instead he smiled, toggled the electric window motor and drove through the light and got on the highway on-ramp that led to the airport.

The shirtless man looked down at his hand and realized he had not been given a phone to use to call 911.  It was a slick looking black vinyl card with a map that showed directions and the hour of operations for a local emergency pantry and community center.  Wrapped around the card with a rubber band was a five-dollar bill.  He waved after the man, but the window went up, the light turned green, and the black sedan flew onto the highway.

He didn’t need five bucks. He needed a phone.  “A phone a phone, a kingdom for a phone,” he whispered to himself wryly, trying to lift his spirits.  Just then he felt a hand on his shoulder. 

“Hey man, are you okay?”

“Not really.”

“I didn’t think so.  Say what’s with the Shakespeare?  Your not from around here are you?”

“No.”

“Well, my name is Sam. Uhhm welcome to the neighborhood?” Sam shook the hand of the injured man and gave him a sheepish smile and pulled off his field jacket and put it around the man’s naked shoulders.

“That’s my bar.  It’s right over on the corner.  In fact, lets get you back there and get you cleaned up.  I bet you could use a warm meal and,” he hooked his thumb first at the bar behind them and then at his beaten and shirtless body, “you probably could use a new shirt.  I don’t think you are my size, but I have a box full of softball crew shirts and I am sure we will have a size that fits you if you don’t mind wearing a shirt that says Sam’s Bar and Grill?”

The shirtless man laughed.  “If it is warm and clean, I’ll take it.”

“Do you need to go to the hospital?  Should I call the cops for you?”  Sam reached into his pocket for his phone and handed it to the man as he helped him across the street into the bar.  It was quiet now as the band took a break from playing.  Sam shook his head and looked at the poor man he was helping.  “I love owning this bar and following in my Dad’s footsteps, but boy this new band I hired is loud.  Heck, I wouldn’t have even noticed you if I hadn’t stepped out to grab a smoke and get a break form the noise.  I really need to quit smoking.  You would think with the new smoking ban I would quit after standing out in the rain just to get my fix, but nope I still puff away.  Of course, I am glad I stepped out for some nicotine tonight, or I wouldn’t have seen you when I did.”

"There is special providence in the fall of a sparrow,” the shirtless man fixed him with a weary smile.”

“Hamlet, right?”

The man nodded and smiled as Sam helped him to a chair inside his bar.  He called out to the woman behind the bar, “Lilly, run and grab my kit, please babe.”

“Oh my gawd!  Is he all right?”  

"I think so, but lets get his wounds dressed just the same and yell to Mike to get me that box of softball jerseys in the back.  Once we get his injuries cleaned up we can give him a shirt to wear."  

Sam looked down at the shirtless man, his eyes doing mental triage.  “Listen, uhh, we should probably call 911 and everything, but I used to be a medic in the Army.  Do you mind if I go ahead and administer some first aid?”

The man nodded, relief in his eyes.

Sam went to work with amazing speed and skill.  The shirtless man commented on that and Sam winked at him and told him about some of his experiences in the streets of Falluja as he dressed his wounds.  He let the man use his phone and go through the box of softball clothes as he excused himself to the kitchen. 

Sam cam back a few minutes later with an incredible black bean and chicken burrito.  For the first time the once shirtless man realized how hungry he was and gulped down the scrumptious white log and all of the salsa and chips as he waited for the police to arrive and take his statement.

Once the police were through, Sam called the man a cab and waited with him for the ride.  They chatted over a beer.  He gave the man a few more bandages and ointments from his kit.  “Listen, I still think you should check in at a hospital, especially for that ugly contusion on your forehead.  Your eye is open now, but you may have a concussion and need to let a doctor look at it—all I did is patch you up.”

“The quality of mercy is not strain'd, It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.”

“That one was from Merchant of Venice, right?”

“Sam, you are truly a gentleman and a scholar. Thank you for your kindness.  I have to say though, you are the strangest bartender I have ever met.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment.”

“It was my new friend.”

“Well, if you think I am strange now, come back and join us this Sunday morning.  We transform this whole place into a church.  Bible study and worship at eleven, fish and loaves at noon.  Well, my kickin’ Grouper Reuben sandwich anyway.”

“Now that is a church I might be interested in.”

Sam reached for a napkin from the bar and jotted some info down.  We don’t really have an outreach card or anything fancy like that, but here are the facts.”

“Thank you for all your help.”

“Don’t mention it.  Come to think of it, thank you.”

The no longer shirtless man looked puzzled.

Sam smiled at him.  “That Shakespeare quote about mercy.  Doesn’t Portia go on to say something about the exchange of mercy being twice blessed?  The one who receives it, but also the one that gives it?”

The man smiled back up at Sam.

The cab arrived and Sam paid the fair forward including a healthy tip.  He gave the cabbie an extra twenty bucks above that and told him to stop and get anything the man might need on the way back home.

“See you at church this Sunday?” Sam winked as he made a play gesture at his grand surroundings.

“You just might, Sam.  Of course in my mind, we just did church.”

Sam slapped him ever so gently on the back and helped him into the cab and watched, praying softly as the cab drove off.  Then he smiled, lit up a cigarette and listened to the band start the second set—from outside the bar.  Maybe next week he would talk to Mike and the boys and find out if they knew that amp had a volume dial on it.