The Stranger’s Shadow
Luke Beebe
A man on the bus told me Jesus had sinned. “Think about it. You’re a hard-working Jew, let’s say you work with wood. You’re whittling away with two kids and a wife. You make a collection of utensils, a set of doves and warblers, you name each one, and a gift, a cucumber shaped toy you name the Son of God, for your wife, who says, ‘This is your best work.’ Alright, maybe you don’t make the dildo, but you get the point. You’re proud of your work after bouncing around multiple jobs. You’ve tried fishing but have lighter skin than most and were burnt alive on the water; you were a mason for some time but broke your foot in an accident. Now, you’re stuck making toys for kids. Which was your calling the whole time. You figured this out. The look your customer gives you when they ask, ‘You made this?’ is intoxicating, infectious, makes you work extra hours with your knife and wood. So, you’ve now built a name up for yourself and are somewhat established. You get the opportunity to sell at the local market, at the temple. You are filled with joy, you’ve hit the big time, got your break. Now, a whittler doesn’t make much money. He creates excess items, like art, in a time when excess isn’t abundant. So, what you’re hoping to sell, you’re hoping to sell to some people with money. You adjust your prices based on how deep you think their pockets are. This fella named Jesus comes along. There’s tons of Jesuses, but this one is talking all high and mighty unlike the others. You think he’s mad, saying he’s gonna flip tables for selling in his father’s house and stuff like that. You wonder what else was going on in his life to make him this angry. He keeps mentioning his father, so you inquire more about his father. You find out he’s a bastard, has daddy issues, says he doesn’t need a father, for God is his father and everyone’s upsetting God, his father, who makes him more special than everyone. This guy is really something, this Jesus, for he thinks not having a father has made him special! You tighten your fist around your knife, for life isn’t all that easy, buddy. He goes on and on, and you nod your head. You think, maybe he has some money, maybe if I listen to him, he’ll buy something. He’s driving away all the other customers, maybe my day isn’t in vain if I sell one dove to him. So, you ask him, you ask him if he’d like to buy anything. He says something like ‘What’s really worth buying isn’t sold,’ and you’ve had it up to here with him, you’re sick of this talk, you say ‘I’ve worked my ass off my whole life, I’ve grown scales on my skin from the sun, I’ve broken my foot from the brick, I now whittle away with my little knife for my wife and family and you, YOU come over here and tell me how pissed off YOU are, how unjust it all is. Buddy, I know how unjust this all is. Are you going to buy a toy or what?’ He responds, ‘How much?’ And you rethink the whole situation. Maybe, he is the son of God, maybe I am pissing him off, maybe he has money. If not the money I’m after, the money he’s after, maybe it’ll help my family, maybe it’ll help me. So, you say, ‘How much do you think it’s worth?’ And this, get this, he says, ‘Nothing. Nothing in the eyes of God.’ Some materialism bullshit, as if you didn’t pour your heart and soul into making this dove, this warbler, for your wife and children. You say, ‘Well, you couldn’t afford it anyway,’ and he starts screaming ‘Thief, you thieves! You have made my house a den of robbers!’ His house he said, his house? C’mon buddy. He starts flipping the tables of all the friends you’ve made, the other merchants, just trying to make a buck for their wives and children. You say this under your breath, ‘Jesus, I have a feeling something bad is coming to ya.’”
I run into people like him all the time on the bus. I ride in the middle of the night, just to ride when I can’t sleep. I haven’t been able to sleep much this past week, so I’ve found myself riding the bus pretty often, looking at people who sit across from me and ask, “What’re you doing up so late?” They all have some story, some reason why they can’t sleep.
As for me, I was playing around with thumbtacks. I had found a few extra that the previous tenant left behind and with the light behind me, I put them on the wall where my shadow laid. After pinning my hands and head and feet, I took a step back. It sounded like a tear, or zip or something.
I was only fooling around, but I managed to lose my shadow. It’s still there, on the wall pinned by those thumbtacks. I went to the doctor’s, and he asked me what was going on and I told him what was going on. “I see,” he said, “Hmm. Well, you’re eating healthy and exercising?” I said “Yes.” He looked at me, then around the room as if he were looking for a gift to give me. He sat down. “I think you should add more spinach and fiber to your diet.” He also gave me Ambien, which didn’t work.
I’ve been eating spinach and eggs each morning, side of spinach with my peanut butter and jelly for lunch, and spinach with chicken for dinner. Sometimes I think I see a light shadow emerging, but usually not, it’s a work in progress.
When it first disappeared, I often found myself riding the elevator to my building, watching the people enter and exit. Most wore headphones, each left a different smell. I’d just stand in the corner. It was okay. I figured I should find something else to do; So, I thought of driving, but since I wasn’t sleeping, voted against that—we wouldn’t want an accident; I picked the next best thing, riding in someone else’s car, a bus.
I hadn’t seen the guy for a night or two, but he popped back up again at different times. He was bigger, had scruff on his face, wore boots, and smelled like a mixture of sweat and deodorant. I asked him one night what he was doing on the bus this late. He said he was coming back from work and asked me why I was on the bus this late. I told him about my shadow. “It always seemed like there was an aura around you,” he said. So, we got to talking and I found myself curious, curious as to where he got off on saying those things about Jesus so loudly in the bus. So, when we came to his stop and he asked me if I wanted to get off with him, I had nothing else to do and got off.
He took me around the block a few times before reaching his house and he let me in. It was dark, but then he turned on the lights. I kept my shoes on, sat on the stool by the counter, and he sat next to me, taking a big sigh, his shoes already off. I could smell his feet. So, it was my opportunity to ask, so I did, face to face, man to man. “Where do you get off with all that Jesus stuff, what makes you think you know? Don’t you realize that Jesus’s sin in the story was not of flipping tables, but of vanity, the same sin you commit now by yelling what you did?”
He smiled and gently rested his hand on the counter. “I could tell you were a smart one. I guess it could be said only the certain ones are the devil, that certainty is our greatest sin. I wouldn’t say I’m too certain about what I think, I just like to make an impression.”
But, at that late hour, this comment didn’t sit well with me. So, I raised my voice a little and said, “You slander someone you don’t even know to make an impression?”
He looked at the empty space in front of him, leaned forward on the stool, and solemnly said, “I must repent, shouldn’t I?” Then he he leaned toward me, put his head on my shoulder and started to cry. I wondered what the difference was between a woman’s and a man’s hand, I always had. Sure, a man’s hand was bigger and beefier, but what if you were a small fella with a small palm and skinny fingers. I got up from the stool and looked out the window towards the street.
“You know, I don’t know what I expected coming back here with you.”
The man stood up from his stool, turned to me, and said, “You didn’t expect a grown man to show himself as a little boy? Give me someone who doesn’t do that, and I’ll show you a liar!” “No,” I said bluntly.“I’ve just been wandering around since I lost my shadow, trying new things out, hoping it’d return.”
Now he came over to the window and took my hand, kissing it. “Please stay. I’ll do anything, please. I’m begging.”
The power was intoxicating; if I’d stay, it’d be to slap him. So, I looked around the regular looking house, at a TV, video game system, curtains, couch, kitchen, globed fruit, plants, fan, painting, blanket, towels, and I figured, why couldn’t I just slap him, why’d I have to stay? Raising my hand high, I struck his cheek and looked into his eyes.
“I deserved that,” he said, kneeling on his knees, no longer kissing my hands, no longer looking up.
“Keep your hands off me,” I said and spat on him.
When I got home, my shadow was there waiting for me. It was kind of sad seeing it trying to mimic my movements as if it were still attached. I thought about unpinning it, taking the thumbtacks off, but I had heard you can’t trust shadows, even your own. So, I asked it, “Does it hurt, does it hurt to be pinned down?” It nodded. “Good,” I said, still on my power trip, and this time I took nails saved from a picture frame I hadn’t hung and put them through where the thumbtacks had been. It didn’t make a sound, it couldn’t make a sound, it had no diaphragm, but it shook, it pulled. What was I to do with this shadow after the new one emerges? Being late at night, it was time for thoughts like this. So I asked it, “What am I to do with you?” And because it had no diaphragm, it said nothing, like I thought it’d say, so I called out, “Why don’t you say something, you sap?” and it stayed silent, because like I said, it had no diaphragm.
I returned to the bus stop and rode around the city. Ideas hit me in all directions. I could let it go, fly around, but it couldn’t really fly, it had to be on some surface somewhere, someone would scoop it up and it’d be embarrassing to find somewhere else; so I sat there and thought about these things, its consequences, AND that’s when he came onto the bus. I hadn’t realized we were near his stop, and it was morning now, and he looked at me and nodded his head, sitting across from me.
“I’m sorry for that show I put on earlier,” he said.
“It really was something,” I said.
He continued, “I’m going to church. Would you like to come?”
It was a redeemable action, a redeemable question, a great idea for me to pursue.
“What are you going for?”
“The priests make quite an impression on me.”
“Is that so?”
“Yes.”
We got off after two stops and entered an old Roman Catholic church, one that was a mixture of English and Spanish—Spanglish I called it. We sat next to each other in one of the pews.
“I have a feeling I’m in the right place. I’ve been wondering what to do with my shadow. The old one,” I whispered.
He looked at me and then around the church and stayed silent, pointing towards the priest. When the homily was said and the Eucharist was held up, we got up from our seats and went to receive the body of Christ.
“The Body of Christ.”
“Please.”
“You’re supposed to say Amen.”
“Amen, please.”
And I ate the wafer, no blood in sight, no taste of iron, just something worse than bread, like paper. I sat back down in the pew and waited for what felt like forever and ever and ever, and finally the priests were walking down the center aisle, the congregants in the pews following behind them, exiting the church. That’s when I got up and walked out as well, leaving my companion to fend for himself. As soon as I exited the church doorway, the priest grabbed my arm, pulling me aside.
“Where have I seen you before?” He asked.
“En la biblioteca?” I said, as a joke, because that was the only Spanglish I knew.
“No, that’s not right.”
“En la zapateria?” I lied to you. I know some other Spanglish.
“No, no, no. Somewhere else. Not here,” he said, his palms open gesturing to our surroundings.
“I’m not sure if we’ve ever met,” I said, “but I’ve come to discuss the details of my shadow.”
“Hmm. What’s happened?”
“I was playing around with thumbtacks and it separated from me.”
“Nothing else was going on at the time? You look mad.”
“I haven’t slept since, it’s been about three nights.”
“Have you done anything you wouldn’t normally do?”
“No, but the longer I’m without it, the more desperate I get.”
“I see, I see. Follow me.”
The priest led me to a secluded room in the back of the church. On the table, rested a a box of wafers. There were cabinets full of wine. He took a bottle and opened it, pouring me a glass. “This will settle you down.”
I sipped the wine and took a seat on an old oak chair that wasn’t too comfortable. He took a seat across from me.
“So, you’re in quite a predicament.”
“I’m beginning to realize that.”
“You don’t want to grow a new shadow, you know.”
“Why’s that?”
“That old shadow will try and take its revenge. Shadows are funny things. They seem like nothing but mean everything.”
This statement pissed me off, but I wasn’t sure why. I took a gulp of the house red and another gulp.
“Drinking won’t do anything either,” he said and started playing with his fingernails, using one nail to clean the other.
“What about spinach?”
He laughed, right at me, at my face.
“A doctor told me to eat spinach and a new one would grow.”
“Let’s get this into your head, you want the old one. But to get it back you’ll have to be its shadow. You must make it feel like it’s running the show and it’ll relax and start following you again.”
“But what is of my free will if I’m to follow it?”
“Think of it as having a dog. You have to walk it and feed it. If you are a good owner, there is no decision there. Really, life is easier when decisions are already made. Just be careful.” So, I followed the priest’s advice. I was in my room when I looked at it and took the nails out and put thumbtacks in my hands and feet and head. My eyes were bloodshot, but I didn’t feel tired. I felt as if I were onto something no one had been onto before. I felt scared. I wonder how my shadow felt. It took the thumbtack off its hand and the thumbtack came out of mine, then feet, then head. There was blood, but not much. It didn’t care, I felt. It took the elevator downstairs and when someone entered, it did nothing, but after a few people entered, it left the elevator, I followed.
I laughed when it went straight to the bus and sat down against the seat. Then it was against the wall, and I stood up, started saying things I did not know.
“It is true,” I mimicked, “It is true that man is always in the trenches. So, why don’t we make a home there? Imagine a house like a mole has, a hole in the ground, complete darkness, where our shadow is encompassed by the world’s shadow. Imagine a network of holes, all connected, so that the light of the day outlines the dark of the night. That both sides are equal. So that our lives, our secret lives, are the reality of reality, and our outward lives in the public remain in the light of the day, the new shadow. This is the new wheel, this is the stone that came down upon man as flint for fire, this is my word for all who hear.”
Like a fish discovering water by feeling the air, I discovered the light of the day by following my shadow. Everything has been made clear.
Since, time has stopped and started, and the skies have opened. I have forgotten things I’ve done, remembered why I’m here. Still, I…One moment I’m at someone’s door, knocking, the other I am looking down upon them, my shadow the other side of earth. It’s night in the sky, but I still cannot sleep. There is much work to be done. People are startled to see where I’m at. They’d rather turn their head than hear what I say. I’m vermin, but so was God’s first Son. God must be vermin too. I’ll continue to tell them no matter how much they want to shut me up. No matter how much they want me dead. I can tell what they think of the word based on the look I’m given. The look is that of a stone above you, blank but solid with the weight of gravity, ready to strike nails through your hands and feet to a board on the wall. I forgive them, for they know not what they do.
Luke Beebe is a statistics/mathematics major, class of 2024. His hometown is Berlin, NJ.