Believe

By Andrea Miccaver

I wrote this in Montreal last spring. A very wise looking man left a perfectly good sandwich behind and I spent the trip home imagining why.

An old man sat on on the cold cement of street corner, not an unusual sight in big cities these days. A little oddity about this particular old man was that he had a home--a nice one actually. His beard was short, his eyes clear, and though he had a backpack next to him, he was well groomed. Still, the people on the crowded sidewalk generally ignored him, treating him like the many homeless who begged nearby.

It was a shame really, because this man saw things that would have greatly interested each and every person who walked by. He saw their beliefs. And sitting on that corner week after week, his own beliefs strengthened. Not that he believed there was only one belief. Quite the contrary. There wasn't a person alive who believed in variety more than this man.

A woman walked by, an angel at her back. The angel glowed fiercely, the shinning sword at its hip the only thing brighter. The old man saw so few angels these days. People didn't believe in them like they used to, and it was fact that in order to be protected by something, you had to believe in it. At least the old man thought so. He had yet to really decide on the matter, however, and so he couldn't be certain. However, certainty was over rated. It rarely got you far.

A youth in black stared straight ahead, unaware of the vampire behind him. The vampire, no doubt, fed on the man's blood in return for protection. It was a disturbing trend the old man was noticing. People seemed to believe that nothing in the universe would help them unless they payed a price. They believed it was how things were and so that how things became.

Not everyone had beings following them. Some wore their protections in the form of jewelry. A necklace or bracelet with special properties to the owners. Not all religious symbols glowed with the light of belief. Not all that glowed had an obvious meaning to the old man. Still, no matter what the shape, the spirit of the thing was the same.

Then there were those who found protection in the form of cash. Silly really. The universe was not the Mafia. You couldn't buy its good will. Maybe it did extract a price, but that didn't mean it left you in debt. There was a such thing as paying it forward. The old man had seen the movie and had added that belief to his own. Payment did not have to be harsh nor cruel.

The old man opened his backpack and pulled out a sandwich. Inside the pumpernickel bread was cheese, mayonnaise, and a single green olive. He placed the sandwich next to him, zipped up the backpack and left. One of the beliefs he had purposely started was that an elf lived in this city whose sole purpose was to protect each and every creature in its territory. The old man had not defined the nature of that protection, however. It was common knowledge that a little hurt now could save you a bigger one later. If life was completely painless, it wouldn't be worth living, now would it? Before leaving the street completely the old man wondered if anything had formed from his experiment.

A pigeon boldly landed on the street corner, eying the sandwich with first one eye, then the other. Just as it decided the sandwich might be edible, a tiny figure ran under the bench and snatched the sandwich away. Insulted, the pigeon took to the air . . . and so escaped the claws of a spoiled house cat.