Jesus in Springfield, MA: Before the Locks Changed at Five
Jesus was still in quiet prayer when the first hard sound of the day came, not from the street, but from inside a woman trying not to fall apart in her car. Dawn had only just started to thin the dark over the edge of Forest Park. Sumner Avenue was not fully awake yet. A bus hissed somewhere in the distance. A delivery truck rattled past too fast for the hour. The trees held that cold, early silence that can make a person feel exposed even when no one is looking at them. Jesus sat beneath those trees with His head bowed and His hands still, as if He was listening deeper than the city could hear. A few yards away, Talia Brooks gripped her steering wheel so hard her fingers had gone pale. She had gotten off her overnight shift at MGM Springfield less than forty minutes earlier. She had not slept. She had not eaten. In the passenger seat was a folded paper she had already read six times, though the words had not softened once. Vacate by five o’clock. Final extension exhausted. She ...