... except it quickly developed that they weren't Witnesses at all.
Weekends I sometimes work at a television station in downtown Hartford, CT. Depressed urban area, Starbucks and Subways and McDonalds scattered like dirty coins beneath towering insurance buildings. Anyway, on my breakfast break I left the station, walked down to the convention center, and across the street from Wendy's I saw two young men who, at a glance, strongly resembled Witnesses or Mormons -- they were wearing the cookie-cutter JC Penney poly-synthetic-discount-clearance suits, and held large leather bibles in their hands. One had a dark, cropped, curly beard. The other was clean-shaven and bashful-looking, until it was his turn to yell, and then he morphed into a scarlet-faced zealot. They were white and frail, but they were yelling, shaping the bibles into miniature megaphones, filling the space with their sound.
"Do you know how to attain the kingdom of heaven? Will you save yourself from the blood of the holy slaughtered almighty vindicated lamb of the flock of the one who holds the glorious gory sword of the something something? Will you be redeemed and caught forth from the blood doom death fire annihilation destruction obliteration and be taken into the hot blinding radiant light of the almighty et cetera!" (Why is it that being saved is always as violent an act as being exterminated?)
Of course, with the heavy soughing exhaust of buses and the mad shuffles of passersby, I can only approximate the vociferous speech bellowed by these two emaciated men, these tiny eunuchs with booming voices.
"Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up!" someone yelled. He crossed the street, one pointing finger indignantly extended, pointing and wagging. There was going to be a scene.
As I was leaving -- somehow too self-conscious to stand around and watch with a gathering mob hoping for the violence of the moment to gather momentum, escalate, burst -- it occurred to me that I hadn't seen Witnesses on the streets of Hartford in about seven years, and that, the last time I did see Witnesses, they were an old, depressed couple bundled up in tattered scarves and overcoats, holding forth dog-eared Watchtowers against the wind as they randomly scuttled a maze of cramped city avenues.
A study in contrasts. Witnesses are quiet, unassuming, and subtle in their ministry, but they proliferate through cities and suburbs like small termites through soft wood. These two Jesus freaks -- what religion/sect/cult might they be representing, anyway? -- were loud, rabid, invested with a force so obviously deranged and detached from society, it was difficult to imagine their purpose was the conversion of the masses for salvation. It was a vigorous assault.
Or maybe it only appears to be a study in contrasts. Why, after all, did these vitriolic street preachers instantly remind me of Witnesses? Why did I feel, vaguely but earnestly, that I could identify with these people?
Dedalus