Short Stories
He didn’t care. He didn’t think that anyone in his or her right mind would care. After all, who cares about a vagabond roaming the street? He sipped the coffee he had found on his desk and turned away from the window.
“Good morning sir.”
Good morning Sarah, I see you remembered the way I like my coffee.”
“Remembering is half my job sir.”
“Yes, but I didn’t expect you to pick everything up so quickly.”
“You didn’t expect to hire me then.” She stated in a polite manner and with a slight smile. She was a bit of a mystery to him. She dressed well, but was otherwise not very attractive. Today, she wore a light purple suit that brought out her eyes, but it was her memory that stood out most. Everything she was taught, she picked up and ran with. Everything she was told, she applied. Really, she seemed too good to be true. Perhaps, he had finally found his equal in skill.
At age eighteen, he had reinvented his fathers company and since it’s implementation, the company had taken off.
Now, it was his business, his national headquarters, and his massive company.
He turned back toward the window, being drawn again to the spot where the vagrant sat. Internally, he struggled with the fact that he was struggling at all over the plight of a beggar. Such trite things had never bothered him before. Surly, if the man wasn’t just looking for a handout, he would be out there looking for a job…right?
There was a thought worth considering. What if he could give the man a job? Wouldn’t that solve the problem?
Ha, that didn’t make any sense! Where would he put a vagrant in his company? His was a communications company!
The intercom crackled slightly “Sir, you have a call from Cognizant on line one.”
He pressed the intercom button. “Thank you Sarah.”
Outside the office, Sarah was going about her daily secretarial business, but she couldn’t help overhearing bits and pieces coming from the office. Mr. Garund had a soft cadence to his voice that sort of pulled you in. Over all, she did like him, but there was something that bothered her about him.
He placed the phone in the cradle and reached for the intercom button, stopping himself short. After a pause, he picked the phone back up and dialed security.
“Tower security.”
“Yes, I would like you to go to the vagabond across the road and ask him if he would come up to my office.”
“Yes sir Mr. Garund.”
A second time, he reached for the intercom button and this time he actually depressed it.
“Sarah, please put an appointment with Cognizant on my schedule for tomorrow at 8AM… and also, there will be a rough looking man escorted by security here to see me.”
“Yes sir, but I just got a call back from security and was about to inform you that…”
“Well, what did they say?”
”It’s not so much what they said as what he said. Apparently, he told them that if you want to see him, you could come down and do it.”
“Audacious little bugger isn’t he?”
“Not your average vagrant sir.”
“So it would seem.” And with that, he let go of the button and sat back in his chair to think.
After all, he had gotten where he was today by thinking.
After a few seconds, he spoke to Sarah again.
“Take messages for me, I will be out of the office for a few minutes.”
“Yes sir.”
After two minutes of elevator ride, he exited the front door and peered across the street and from side to side, yet didn’t see the man.
“Looking for me?” Came a deep voice that sounded slightly familiar, but foreign as well.
“As a matter of fact, yes. I came to offer you a job.”
“Unless you want to start a garden like your fathers, no thank you.”
Mr. Garund found his expression changing to one of puzzlement. “What garden? Who are you?”
“I was your fathers gardener.”
“My father never had a garden. We lived in the inner city.”
“Oh, but that’s where you are wrong, you lived in the upper city.”
“The upper city?”
“Yes, the city that believes itself to be above everyone else.”
“I don’t take kindly to insults about my city, and I want to know who you think you are to pronounce judgment. All I see is a wandering beggar.”
“Does that mean I’m wrong? Does what I look like mean so much to you?”
“This is a stupid trap, I don’t have to listen to this.”
As he turned to ascend his tower, a flash of light caught his attention. He whorled around, but there was no one there…which was odd because “there” was where the beggar should have been.
It took him a few seconds before he decided that the beggar must have taken a picture or something and then high-tailed it out of sight. How exactly he had gotten out of sight so quickly was a mystery, but it was one he didn’t desire to consider at the moment. He went back up to his office and walked in.
The same beggar stood there, looking out the window as if it was perfectly normal for him to be there.
With a glance to the side he said, “It’s amazing how little you see when you could see so much.”
“This isn’t possible.”
Turning to face him now, the “gardener” put on a mock hurt face. “Then how, may I ask, did it occur?”
Mr. Garund could think of no intelligent reply so he just glared at the man.
The stranger leaned against the window with a slight smile on his face. “Let’s begin with a little history. I am the angel of the Church at Queens. Before you were born, your father was called to be a preacher. He started a new garden and we tended it together for three years, but then the church was torn apart by their own apathy. I tried my best to keep it from happening, but there is only so much any of us angels can do once you humans set your wills toward evil. Your father had harbored disobedience to God in his heart and it spread to the garden. Eventually, he left and started a business of his own and the garden was overrun by thorns.”
“You have been on the streets too long. You’re kookier than a coconut.”
Light began to well up in the vagabonds’ hands and around his head.
“I know…well, I’ve been trying to make him understand…”
Frank Garund began to feel like a spectator, eves dropping on one side of a private conversation.
“…Ok, but he’s not going to like it…ya, I guess you’re right… Yes Master.”
The now glowing stranger addressed Frank “The Master Gardener wants you to leave this city, go to Cincinnati and start another garden…I mean church.” As a side thought he commented, “It’s so difficult to communicate to you humans some times.” With that, the angel smiled and said, “There is no reason to be afraid. There is already an angel assigned to this church. He’s been preparing for the new garden since you were called last year.” And with that, he vanished.
Frankly, Mr. Garund was unable to move for ten minutes and unable to form more than basic sentences for fifteen. Meeting an undisguised angel nearly always has that effect on people.
I would tell you more of the story, but most of it hasn’t happened yet and even if it had, it simply wouldn’t be mine to tell…I suppose the privilage would go to one of the members of his church…Oh drat! Did I say that out loud?
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