Wednesday's Three Word Wednesday

The words over at Three Word Wednesday are absolve, hiss and ridicule. Another departure, I think you'll agree.

The Trials of St. Jerome
The hardened, gum-stained concrete sends shivers of pain up Jerome’s stumps, into his ass and explodes into a swirling ache up his spine. There’s no time – no use - complaining. He senses the impatience of two of New York’s Finest above him.
From his full height, that to mid-thigh on a whole man, he can hear the cops leaning heavy on their handguns and nightsticks, making the black leather stretch, scream.
He’s working as fast as he can on his wheelchair with a generic multi-tool. A spoke’s come loose – well, to be fair, it was kicked loose – and he’s trying his best to tighten the wobbly wheel.
“So Jerome, where’s that bag thingy you guys hafta shit and piss in?” the big cop asks through a wad of gum. “Where do you hide something like that?”
Jerome hangs his head, speaks softly to the subway platform.
“I’m an amputee, not a paraplegic.”
“What’s that, asshole? Fucking gimp, speak up. I’ve got better things to do today than baby-sit your ass.”
“I’m an amputee,” Jerome says, face turned upward to the officer. “Not a paraplegic. My bowels work as fine as yours and officer DeSalva’s here.”
The cop shrugs off the statement, laughs.
“Yeah, but I can pee standing up - can you?”
Jerome ignores this, ends up cutting the spoke with the wire cutters. Binding everything together with a piece of duct tape, he locks the chair in place, secures the multi-tool and tape in his fanny pack that’s hooked to the back of the chair, he launches himself into the soft black seat.
“Ready when you are, officers.”
Red-faced, the gum-chewing cop pushes Jerome roughly across the platform and hauls him up the steps backward – each metal-lipped riser another jar to his already aching back, even though there’s an elevator at this station - and into the sun-lit morning.
“You so don’t want to see my face again today, Jerome,” the cop spits, close and menacing enough to ruin the minty-freshness of his breath. “I’m fucking serious here.”
DeSalva clucks his tongue, shakes his head.
St. Jerome is well-known to New York’s Finest, a complete nuisance to the transit authority, having been arrested 67 times, carted roughly off buses and subway cars in all five boroughs.
Once, while riding the Staten Island Ferry, a couple of longshoremen dangled Jerome from the back of the platform, until a cop intervened, slapping him hard in the head for causing a problem.
Modern-day prophets get no respect.
Jerome wheels himself daily to the 3rd Avenue station in the Bronx, takes the elevator to the platform, hops the 2 express downtown. Less stops mean less chance for interruption – by the cops or the pesky representatives of the transit authority.
He wheels into a car, locks the wheelchair into a stationary position tucked into the handicapped area at the front of the car and waits for the train to roll.
Waits for the transformation.
It starts as a vibration deep within the muscles, near to the bone. There’s a slight smell of ozone, like a brewing summer’s storm, and it gathers into his chest. His breathing relaxes, his heart rate levels out.
It’s nearly time.
Even without legs, Jerome is an immense ocean of a man. Bald, black, skin the color of brownie batter, balloonish biceps from pushing himself around the city. He’s barrel-chested, with a voice deep and rich, like black-strap molasses.
The ringing in his ears commences and his sad, yellow-tinged eyes roll up into his skull and the voice comes straight from his diaphragm, reverberating straight into the crowded car.
The riders are non-plused. Several continue reading, doing Sudoku puzzles, never look up. Teenagers ridicule him in small clusters, pull out mobile phones, take pictures of the man in the wheelchair, bursting forth with a gibberish they can’t comprehend.
Most pull out their iPods, adjust the volume up and effectively make St. Jerome’s dialogue, the twitches and hand gestures that come with his sermon, disappear.
He makes it to Penn Station before an elderly woman launches herself from the robin’s-eye-blue plastic seat, and commences to kick his chair repeatedly, viciously, bending spokes with her comfortable, gum-soled shoes. She’s wiry, elegant in her attack, which is the one thing that will draw an audience.
There’s a hint of Jewish beauty left in her cheeks, the sleek roundness of her shoulders, her straight spine as the kicks grow more complete with Jerome’s rants. Ropes of saliva fling from her unpainted lips, her eyes a pulsating rage.
“Heretic!” she screams. “Blasphemer!”
Officers DeSalva and Seavers grab her by the biceps and shoulders, pull her out of the car, still kicking and screaming.
Jerome sits there blinking, mouth dry, a headache starting to form between his eyebrows.
“Jesus H. Christ, Jerome,” Seavers says, unlocking the battered chair and wheeling the prophet onto the platform. “She really did a number on this thing, eh? Serves your right, for chrissakes.”
Jerome unbuckles his seatbelt, launches his ass onto the concrete, begins working on the chair, stumps pressed into the grit and grime of the platform.
“You’re a lucky fuck, I’ll give you that,” Seavers says, stuffing another stick of gum in his cheek. “That lady there, she don’t want to press no charges.”
“It was I who was attacked. I am simply trying to help absolve them of their sins.”
“Fuck you, Jerome,” Seavers says, grabbing the worn black rubber handles of the chair.
“Look, you hafta stop pissing people off, man,” DeSalva whispers into Jerome’s ear as they escort him to street-level. Seavers lets him go with one lurching push, wags a finger, turns into the crush of people.
Jerome locks his chair, and the crowd flows past him like water flows around a rock in a stream as he lets the sun warm his face.
The officers gone, Jerome is free to wheel himself back to the elevator, back down into the tubes.
The rest of the afternoon goes off without incident. Jerome rides the 2 to its terminus in Flatbush, back up to catch the 7 to Flushing, Queens and back home to the Bronx.
It’s a long roll back to his one-room, street-level flat.
Mostly, people ignore him, take no notice of the wheeled chair they must push themselves around, quickening their pace as they do so.
Yet young children steal a quick touch they pass, cross themselves, smile. He smiles back, heart swelling as to the innocence of the little ones.
Night pushes shadows across the apartment as Jerome sits transfixed in an overstuffed chair he’s help rescue from a street-side trash heap. He’s staring at a sorry excuse for a ficus tree, it’s leaves yellow, the potting soil crowded with the curled detritus of fallen leaves.
St. Jerome waits for a sign, prays for it, eyes shut tight, the ancient language a whispered chant upon his chapped, purple lips.
There’s a change in air pressure, temperature in the flat. Jerome opens his eyes as petite licks of flame begin on one leaf, then another. Soon, the tree is a burning bush of fire.
“Patience, Jerome,” the voice explodes in his head, ringing in his ears.
“Father, maybe I should try the message in English, or perhaps in Spanish.”
“Everything and everyone has its purpose.”
And the flames die out.
Tears roll out his eyes, down his temples – salty and hot – and soak into the bare mattress on the floor.
There’s a steady rain falling, the hiss helps drown out the sirens, keeps the sidewalk chatter to a minimum. Jerome’s chest heaves as sobs of tension, longing, hurt leave his body.
He never asked for this, yet has never once complained since it happened. The frustrations leave him cool and he grabs a wool army surplus blanket and tucks it under his chin.
Tomorrow is a new day.
The message remains the same.
Judgment Day is upon the sinners of this world.
And he’s been chosen to alert them, in Galilean Aramaic of all things, that Jesus is coming to collect all the wicked souls.