Ineffable Grace

Sometimes Nate Spencer feltlike a heretic. He had ben brought up a Catholic of the old school, but during his lifetime the church had gone through drastic changes trying to remaln relevant. Now instead of confession and absolution you got a councilling seesion on behaviour modification, with the "client' deciding which behavior to modify. Sometimes it seemed the church fit in so well to modern society that it no longer served any purpose. Worst of all was what they did to Saint Christopher.

After a thousand years, a million medals, and a billion prayers the Pope suddenly denounced Christopher as a fraud and booted him out of heaven. When Toyota was caught in an error of that magnitude it was fined millions of dollars, paid millions more for recalls,and are still stuck in numerous lawsuits worth millions more. Was the Catholic church going to make restitution for misdirected prayers and faulty grace? After all, that's what saints amounted to these days; district managers in a grace distribution network.

Why should grace from St. Christopher be inferior to grace from any other saint. All grace comes from God. there is no other Scource. So what if St. Christopher was not Technically real? Could not the God who caused light to exist without scource just by saying Fiat Lux just as easily cause St. Christopher to exist by saying Fiat Sanctus? (By the way the miracle of creation is made all the greater by thye fact that God spoke Latin long before the Roman Empire existed.)

That was why Nate defiantly maintained the Saint Christopher bobble head doll on the dashboard of his car. He wasn'tsure where it came from; it seemed like it had always been there. Perhaps it had come into existence by divine command (Fiat Bobble head?). All that didn't really matter. What mattered was that the thing worked. Whenever he became lost Nate would say Saint Christopher guide me in the way that I should go, and tap the doll on the head. Then he would drive in the direction St. Christopher seemed to be nodding. Granted it did not always get him to where he was trying to go, but it geneally got him somewhere it was worthwhile to be. And if it didn't the fault obviously lay in his fallible human interpertation. Nate was not totally inept at navigation. He could usually find his way back to a place he had been before, but finding someplace new was always a challenge. He had once tried to use the onboard navigation system in his mother's car. It apparently began speaking Swahili, and he found himself in a dead end alley between rwo abandoned warehouses with the machine urgently telling him to turn left into a blank wall.

It happened one day that Nate was going to check on the possibility of getting an oboe repaired. How the oboe got broken and why it was Nate's responsibility to repair it is a long and complicated story that we won't go into now. Nate had gotten detailed directions to the music store, but when he tried to turn left to cut over a few blocks he found that the road was one way to the right. From there it was all downhill. A half hour later he found himself at a four way intersection in a residential area with no idea where he was or which way he was facing.

"This looks like a job for St.Christopher.", Nate muttered. "Saint Christopher guide me in the way that I should go." He tapped the doll on the head. St. Christopher distinctly nodded backward, indicating that Nate should go straight ahead. Imbued with faith, Nate drove off down the road. After awhile he came to a fork in the road. A prayer, a tap, and he took the right fork as instructed. Fifteen later he found himself turning into the parking lot of a rundown building whose sign proclaimed it to be The Lube Shack. It's semi-functional neon more ominously read he be hack. "Christopher, what are you doing to me?", Nate whined. Perhaps he rapped the doll a little harder than usual. The head promptly fell off.

With his scource of semi-divine inspiration gone Nate was at a loss as to what to do. He got out and approached the building clutching his oboe. As he did he noticed that his was the only car in the lot. It was otherwise filled with over a dozen motorcycles. They were all large. They all gleamed with chrome and custom paint jobs. Many of them featured gadgets whose use Nate could not even guess at. It depressed Nate that his car was the cheapest vehicle in the lot.

Nate was not what anyone would call a manly man. His idea of outdoor adventure was a picnic in the park. As a child he was not the last one picked for baseball; He was the one assigned to be the third base coach. In high school he was not picked on because the football defensive line adopted him as a pet. He didn't mind because sometimes there would be an extra cheerleader. Now there were no tackles to protect him. Despite the cold evening breeze he could feel the sweat trickling down his back.

As he stepped into the building from the unlit parking lot Nate's senses were assaulted by a blast of light and noise. As he stood there holding his oboe the noise abruptly stopped, except for what was coming from the jukebox. This was either a guitar in a state of terminal feedback or the voice of a man who routinely gargled sulphuric acid. Maybe both. As his vision returned he found he was being stared at by a large group men . A group of large men. When he looked at them the word that sprang into his mind was neanderthal. They all seemed to be over six feet tall and nearly that wide. They all seemed to be wearing ragged jeans, sturdy boots, and various sorts of sleeveless shirts.

There were at least two women. One had blonde hair and a tremendous bosom. She looked like she should be carrying a spear and riding a winged horse. The other had a unibrow and eyes that looked in different directions and generally looked as if she had scared off the other's horse. Then there was the bartender. The bartender had chest bumps, but otherwise resembled the other bikers. The bartender had long braids, but two of the bikers had longer. The bartender was clean shaven, but seemed to suffer from five o-clock shadow. Nate looked at this pirates crew and thought, "The Pope was right. Saint Christopher is a fraud."

One of the bikers got up and stomped toward Nate. It seemed the entire building shook, but that might have only been Nate's knees. This apparition wore a Nazi helmet with what looked like a chrome horn welded on the front. Blonde braids hung down from it. Braided mustaches hung down nearly as far. There was an eye tatooed between the two real ones and a rather splendid Imperial German eagle could be seen on his chest under the open denim vest. The biker tore the oboe from Nate's grasp and glared at it.

"My god, man, what did you do, use this as a baseball bat?"

"Um, well, actually..."

"The biker held up a paw. "I don't want to know." He turned and called to the bartender. "Dog, I need a throttle return spring from a Harley 1500 V Twin."

"Dog responded with a contralto "Yo", and disappeared through a door behind the bar.

The biker held out a hand. "I'm Rhino." The hand was greasy and the nails were ragged, but it had obviously been recently washed.

Nate warily took Rhino's hand. "I'm Nate Spencer."

"Well come on over here, Nate, and we'll see what we can do with this. " Rhino led Nate to the bar where he was met by Dog, who was carrying some sort of spring steel gizmo. He deposited the oboe on the bar and leaned over to drag a toolbox from underneath. He rummaged around in it and pulled out two needle nosed pliers. "This will take a few minutes, Nate. May as well get yourself a beer."

Nate turned to Dog. "Yeah, I'll...", his voice cracked. He swallowed and tried again. "I'll have a beer."

Dean eyed him wearily. "You got I.D.?" Nate supplied a driver's license. "Harold Athanacious Spencer. I thought Rhino called you Nate?"

"It's a nickname. Short for Athanacious."

"Athanacious. God save the Queen." Dog slapped the card on the bar. "All right, what'll you have?"

"Um, Budweiser?"

Dog grabbed a glass and filled it. Nate had finished about half of it (his weekly limit) when Rhino picked up the oboe, pulled a reed out of his vest pocket and played a few scales. Nate was amazed that none of the patrons paid the slightest attention to this. Rhino handed him the oboe.

"There, as good as new." Rhino pointed to a spot on the instrument that looked to Nate like any other. This is a little ugly, but it works just fine.

"Uh, thanks. How much do I owe you?"

"No charge. Just don't do anything like that to a musical instrrument again.

Nate nodded, then shook his head, then smiled weakly. He turned toward the door. Halfway there he turned and called, "Hey Rhino, do you think you could fix a bobble head doll?"