“After returning to the modern world, are you sure you want to go back?” David asked.
“A little late to try changing my mind again, isn’t it?” Tom replied.
“Just wondering what you’re going to do when all this is over? Jesus will die and rise again and you’ll be a Christian. You’re just going to come back to the future like nothing has changed?”
“A: There is no way in hell I’m staying back there a day longer than this takes. B: Jesus won’t rise from the grave, and I’m pretty sure he’s not going to die either,” Tom said.
“So the Bible is one hundred percent fiction?”
“That’s my guess. A fictional book based on the life of the original Houdini.”
As Tom sat back, happy with his comment, he noticed two rather sizable hicks pointing and laughing at him and David. Tom did his best to ignore the men and continued the conversation. “So is your savior everything you expected him to be?” Tom asked.
David shifted in his seat. “What?”
“Jesus…not everything you expected him to be, is he? Doesn’t exactly fit the perfect little cookie cutter mold the religious world has given him,” Tom said.
A sadness filled David’s eyes as he stared blankly at the table. Tom didn’t expect this response from his normally stubborn colleague. “You’re having doubts, aren’t you! Now that you’ve met the guy and he’s more human than you want him to be…you’re having doubts.”
Tom smiled ear to ear and continued, “I mean really, any guy who can be friends with me could never be the savior of the world, right?”
David looked up and said, “Tom…I-”
“Hey, aren’t you fellas late fer your Mary Kay party?” shouted one of the two hicks, now standing right next to them.
Tom and David did their best to ignore the man and continue their conversation, “Tom-”
“Didn’t you hear him, boy?” shouted the second hick, standing above David.
Tom’s patience wore away. All they wanted to do was have a conversation and enjoy a meal for the first time in two years, and these big, fat, annoying hicks couldn’t get over the fact that Tom and David were wearing robes. “Listen, sir, I haven’t had a single alcoholic beverage tonight, so I’m in no mood. If you could, please take your girthy friend and go get another beer on me. Okay?”
Tom’s long stream of lengthy words seemed to confuse the men. They looked at each other and then walked away. David looked at Tom, wide-eyed and attempting not to smile. “I can’t believe that worked!” David said.
But he spoke too soon. The two lumbering men returned with two more beefcakes in tow. Tom and David were outnumbered and outsized. One of the new men stepped toward Tom and asked, “Did you all call Billy fat?”
“No, I called him girthy,” Tom replied.
“That ain’t even a word,” the man said, as he cracked his knuckles.
Tom couldn’t help himself. “They teaching English lessons at the hog farm now?”
The response was instant and massive, “Git’im!”
Two of the thugs leaned forward, arms stretched out, hands grappling. David was pulled from his bench and tossed onto a table, which he slid across. He careened over the other side, taking two plates of food, a large Coke, four settings of silverware and a small vase of fake flowers with him.
Tom was a little quicker. He pivoted his bench and thrust his right leg forward, catching one of the assailants in the nose with his heel. The man screamed in pain and fell backwards into Billy. The two men toppled back like thick dominos and destroyed a chair beneath them. The man on top of Billy held his nose and whined, “He done broke my nothe!”
“Git off me so as I can kill ’im!” Billy shouted, trapped beneath his heavy-set friend.
“I gat ’im!” shouted the third hick, who had yet to get his hands on anybody.
The bulbous man, whose overalls barely fit, surged forward, threatening to crush Tom right there in his bench. Tom used the bench’s slippery surface to his advantage and slid beneath the table. The bench cracked as the weight of the overalls-wearing man mashed down on it. If Tom had been still in his seat, he would surely have been compressed beyond the point of breathing.
Tom rushed out from under the table. Two of the men were still squirming around on the floor, trying to get to their feet, but the man with the broken and bloody nose was writhing around so much that the other couldn’t roll over onto his belly and push himself up. As for the man on the bench, he wasn’t going anywhere fast either. He was wedged firmly between the wall, the bench and the table. Tom imagined it would take the Jaws of Life to cut him free.
The last of the four attackers was at the opposite end of a table, facing David. They were moving back and forth from side to side as the lumbering behemoth attempted to wrap his thick hands around David’s throat. The man took the table in his hands and tossed it to the side, as though it was no more then a chunk of Styrofoam. Tom knew he had to act quickly and picked up a plate from his table.
Moving quickly, Tom rounded the last of several tables blocking his path and slammed the solid plate down on the last hick’s head. The plate shattered from the blow and the man fell to his knees, though he wasn’t knocked unconscious. David stood still with wide eyes.
“David,” Tom said.
David didn’t budge.
“David!” Tom said with a smile, knowing David had probably seen his life flash before his eyes. “Let’s get out of here before they get moving.”
David snapped out of his trance and his eyes met Tom’s.
“C’mon,” Tom said, and David moved.
Tom turned and headed for the door with David right behind him. They didn’t make it two feet before being stopped by a wall of three more rotund, country warriors.
“Where you ladies off to?” one of them said with a smile, as he gnawed on a toothpick.
Tom sighed and without a word, slugged the first man in the stomach.
From the parking lot around Peggy’s Porker Palace, the sounds of breaking dishes, glasses and screaming men could be heard echoing from inside the establishment. The front door whooshed open as Tom and David ran out into the parking lot. Both had been trounced fairly well. Tom’s nose was bleeding and David’s eye was swollen. “Quick! Around back!” Tom shouted.
Tom and David sped around the building, out of sight from any locals and activated their watches. The two bright flashes of light and two loud bangs, heard and seen by everyone with a window seat at the Porker Palace would later be explained as swamp gas-even though there wasn’t a swamp for hundreds of miles around.
Seven angry hicks pounded out of the restaurant and scanned the area for their fleeing prey. It wasn’t every day they got to beat down a couple a fairies!
One of the men, struggling to catch his breath said, “Damn! They gone!”
Another followed, “Them drag queens…sure can…run!”
The twelve disciples, Jesus and David trudged up a steep hill, which led to a lone dwelling, just outside Bethany. They hadn’t been walking long, but the steep incline took the muscle out of even the fittest man. David, Tom and Jesus led the pack.
Jesus looked at Tom and David, attempting not to smile while doing so. They were both bruised and battered from their encounter with the Porker Palace thugs. Tom had been quick with a cover story; that he and David were mugged, beaten and left unconscious in an alley. “The men who robbed and beat you, were they blind?”
“You’re not going to get into the blind that can see stuff again, are you?” Tom asked.
Jesus smiled, “No. I mean, were they physically blind?”
“Why?” Tom asked.
“You claim that five large men beat and robbed you,” started Jesus.
“Yes…” Tom was unsure as to where this was leading.
“Yet your money purse remains at your hip,” Jesus pointed out.
Tom looked down to his hip, where indeed, his money purse still hung. “Huh, I guess I must have fallen on
