'Jack Bender', Interstate Short

“What I’d like to know is,” the man named Brooks asked, leaning forward in his chair to adjust the wood of the fire around which they had gathered for the evening, “Where does the man shit?”

There was never a shortage of opinions around the evening fire. Especially when the days take had been good, which it had, and the alcohol was strong, which it was, so it was clear to Brooks from the silence that came from the other eight, that none of them had considered this. 

Brooks’ eyes narrowed. He let four cars pass overhead, chunk ka chunk, chunk ka chunk, as they crossed the seam that bound Trinity Lane and the Bypass, before he spoke again. 

“I’m not sure that he even does shit,” Brooks said, and leaned back, looking upward to find a star, any star, in the washed out night sky. He missed the dark. Good, deep dark. Disorienting dark. 

“Oh come on Brooks,” one of the eight finally said, “everybody’s gotta shit.”

It was Packy. 

Packy was the oldest of the bunch, allegedly, a tiny man, who always broke first when the conversation grew tense. 

“I’m not so sure about that, Pack,” Brooks replied, and again, the eight grew silent, each studying deeply the image they cherished most of the man they believed to be named, Jack Bender 

   Christ was homeless. 

There’s a quiet belief among those who live without an address attached to their name, in tents and cardboard boxes, or beneath an overpass, as with the eight, that the Savior, should he return as promised, will do so, not in a blaze of triumphal glory, but as one of them. 

One eye was always open. Searching for signs. Legends were quick to rise. 

Jack Bender was the latest of these Legends, and the nearest to proving what so many of those who lived life on the streets had for so very long believed.

He arrived the winter before last, near to its end. 

A bedroll was all that he was seen to be carrying at the time, and water in a slim jug at his side, which wasn’t entirely odd, and so ignored for the more part. But when Jack Bender settled in beneath the Seventh Street overpass, his camp, somehow, in the course of that first night, became furnished with a stove, night stand, clock, chair and a table, in which a plate and cutlery for two could be stored. 

As the weeks passed, Jack Bender came and went, ate and slept, just like anyone. But Jack Bender generated none of the refuse one associates with the activities of being alive. Nothing accumulated. No paper, no plastic, no shit. His camp was immaculate. All of the eight had visited, purposely leaving their empties to see what would become of the brown-bagged bottles, pissing in the brush of the embankment as near as they dared to Jack's camp. But not even on the hottest, most humid days of summer could even a hint of urine be smelled, and the trash they had left, they swore, vanished the minute they turned their backs on Jack Bender. 

Even Packy found it hard to argue further with Brooks on the matter. Perhaps Brooks was right. The man didn’t shit.

“I’m not saying he’s Christ,” Brooks said eventually, the fire crackling. “I just don’t think Jack Bender is entirely human,” and pitched into the pile growing alongside the camp, the bottle for which he had begged the day and now emptied.