Triadic Tales - The Failed Cleric - Short Story (Part Two)

Five years passed before Adam met up with Jim again.  Jim was barefoot in threadbare jeans and a black t-shirt. He sat in a lotus position at the end of a long dirt track. Behind Jim was what seemed to be a mud hut with a door like an arch.
The Beckett-like tourist and Des Moines social worker was now somewhere past Enid, Oklahoma with no neighbors visible in any direction.   "I have everything now," Jim smiled.
"Are you alone?" Adam said.
"Hardly," Jim replied. "Tamara," he called. "Come out. Meet my friend."
She had to stoop to exit the hut. To say she was a sight would right if you thought eccentric finery strange. Adam wasn't up on the subject. There were several layers and multiple colors. 
She was of indeterminate age and beautiful.
It took till six to unravel the story. Tamara was Native American. Like Jim and Adam, had studied theology. She was ten years older than they. She and Jim met at a Quaker retreat which devolved into near mayhem after she preferred Jim to one of the retreat leaders who turned out to be a pugilist. Jim survived and love ensued.  
The land belonged to her. They were very poor. Food stamps and disability income was all they had.
"We have everything right here," Jim said once more.
Tamara was presently concocting an auspicious stew from growing things as the two talked softly at sunset.
"Do you still believe?" Adam wondered.
"Absolutely," Jim said. "We're evolving. Religion is ending. Peace is possible. We celebrate such things daily."
Suddenly, by the outdoor fire, Tamara, now in a drab sheath of burlap fastened by pins, fell to the ground, facing the sky and began to emit cries of inconsolable grief.
"Relax," Jim said quickly.            Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store 

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Triadic Tales - The Failed Cleric - Short Story (Part One)

EDGES BEYOND Adam met the failed cleric because he got up the nerve to nod. It was not his habit to do so. He lived in the middle of the city next to a narrow park and streets cleared of cars. It afforded him a daily walk. He was not in a social phase. These walks were intensely personal. But when he saw Jim on the park bench, looking like Samuel Beckett, he nodded. 
Jim said hello as if he knew him.
Adam hesitated, then sat down. 
Within ten minutes, he discovered Jim to be a tourist, a resident of Des Moines and the operator of a shelter for battered women on a hill in the middle of that city. What brought Adam up short was Jim's final statement.
"I am," Jim said, "a failed cleric."
"We might be doubles," Adam said. "If there were such a thing. I too am a failed cleric." He laughed softly. Jim was expressionless.
There followed an hour of biographical talk. In both cases,the men had stumbled on the Creed. Jim said: "I could no longer embrace a faith so exclusive with such a record of inflicted harm." 
Adam said: "I am not Ivan, but I am a universalist." 
It was agreed that they would meet again and so it was that Adam found himself on a plane to Iowa the following Sunday morning.   In the center of Des Moines, there is indeed a hill and in the stone building at the top there was then a shelter for battered women.
"How did you get the money to fly out here?" Jim asked. 
"Thievery," Adam said. "Dylan calls it luck. But money from a family is nothing I earned. I know where it came from. My dad was skilled in assisting people with much more money than he had avoid taxes. I believe in taxes. Unless they create harm."
"You have collapsed six conundrums into a few sentences," Jim said. "I had nothing. I still have nothing."
Adam looked at the listless women and thought of a Sargent painting and then about sexual abuse and cringed inwardly, remembering his own brush with same.
"So we are failed clerics. And at least one of us is also a sinner."
"Huh. Huh." Stephen's Remarkable Kindle Store



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