Witnessing the Witness Witness

‘God will strike you down…smote’ yelled the Witness in a loud liturgical voice. The hungered queuing like naked children in front of the soup-house hissed and booed, a feeble-footed man with a snake charmer’s smile gave the Witness the bird, another spread the halves of his ass and farted, a woman with a hornets’ nest hairdo smiled and said ‘fuck you’, a boy with a slicked back cowlick read aloud a poem he’d found in a crumpled ball on the street,

a crow
caw cawing
a man hawk
-ing, a boy boun-
-cing a colour
-ed ball

‘Wait for me’ hollered a small girl with a bow in her hair. ‘…and me’ bawled an even smaller girl with knock-knees and a metal hasp attached to a box on her chest. The hunger-line squabbled round the block and up the street opposite the Waymart, a man with a walking-cane and a sackbut taking up the slack.

The legless man, having found himself in a jelly-jam, guttered all hope of living a two-legged life. He dreamt a life of bounding and leaping, jumping and vaulting, skipping and jigging, hopping on one leg than the other, hurdling and springing, a bipedal life. After witnessing the Witness turn a toad into a toady, which he accomplished with a stick and a deck of playing-cards, he felt his chances at two-leggedness were middling to nil. Even Dejesus’ claim that he could change a toady into a toad wasn’t enough to convince him that a two-legged life was within reach.