All-Souls Hangout  by Tom Sheehan

Curtis Glide, a student of people, satisfied with his findings of them as “passable'” Even as a millionaire, the gained acceptance came as encouraging to where the heroes show themselves in a hurry, lest they lose the gain.

The “No Heavy Equipment Law” placed earlier, at his discretion, and held admirably in place. And a simple sign on a specially picked lot of land simply said “Good, clean fill wanted here”

It piled up in a hurry from all corners of Corner Stone, Montana, until it was an eyesore, and children began planting flowers at the lower edges; the distraction becoming attractive with sudden flowering.

Glide smiled at the use of the pile; children often the first to move onto or past obstacles such as an ugly pile of dirt in the center of Corner Stone. It didn’t take long for them, and made it look all too easy.

Yet, Curtis Glide did not hold his breath, knowing the moves building their way to acceptance, the ordinary grabbing hold.

Then a tall, thin cleric, Arnold Adlington by name, in a simple black frock stood at the corner of the lot, and announced, “One day soon, I will stand here at the door to All Souls Hangout inviting you inside, every one of you in question”

When he disfrocked, he became lost in his own crowd. Suddenness shouldered the lot of listeners, hopefully thin, the jeers and jaws and jokers aplenty tossing their sobriquets from each and every angle, never missing their aim in flight, offerings loaded to the hilt, as if drawn for service.   

Without hesitation, the deluge began, by pails, buckets, carts, wheelbarrows, you name the implement and the pile started to move.

And so did the aspiration of the hill, as if it disappeared by layers, layer by layer, edge by edge, until it ceased to be no more a hill than an ant pile. And brick and board and glass moved in hands of amateurs as well as journeymen workers bent by an invisible whip snapped loose from the heavens. Some kind of boss tending the flowing time cards for the big pay-off.

And it grew by each board and brick and sheet of glass in the hands of energy itself, doorway to podium, doorway to lexicon, doorway to the  altar of The Hangout for All Souls, the name in place for all Time to come: Montana marked as never before and never again: you can imagine.

And eventually, by smart degrees, by gallons of sweat and arts of techniques, through degrees of acceptance, it became an empty church waiting its first sermon to echo across Montana, the story going town to town, gossip to gossip, discussion by groups of non-believers become enamored of selves. And Arnold Adlington, cleric by official name and acceptance of multi-bishoprics throughout all Montana, came in his garb and mark of the Lord nearly shining in his very shoes to shoulders, three stripes of the cleric, bade the crowd to come and pray here with him at the All-Souls Hangout.

Curtis Glide, meanwhile, moved completely out of state, finding a likely center of conversion in South Dakota, hardly looking for a new conversion action.

Tom Sheehan

Image by Friderike Reinecke from Pixabay – Wheelbarrow of soil on a construction site with a pile of bricks in the background.