The Man Without a Name

The Man Without a Name

(“The demons begged Jesus, ‘Send us into the pigs; let us go into them.’” Mark 5:12)

The lackeys waited outside for their turn to enter the tent.
The air was lazy and they turned round and round hoping to
stir the breeze. They MC winked at the doorman and the
doorman swung the stiles open as the lackeys found their way.
The seats were emptied and they scattered in groups of
ten to a dozen around the ring.

The MC was lackluster; he was missing his usual verve.
There had been whispers suggesting that he had finally gone
mad. The lackeys knew his troubles and tried to replace him
or confine him
or define him as an oddity.

As he opened his mouth he fell like demolition in the dirt.
He writhed and quivered, the lackeys shivered, and everyone
wondered
whether the show would go on.

It had been like this for days. Worse and worse as the
year wore on. His words were sloppy, his dress was askew,
his introductions garbled with his jaw locked in place. And
the audiences only came to laugh at his struggles and his
aggravation.

But there was one in the crowd, a visitor to the region who,
seeing it all, saw more than everyone else did. There were
legions
inhabiting the poor man’s life, there was a myriad throwing
him in the dirt.

With a word the stranger dismissed his antagonists. And
the legion left and filled the space and rings, the trapeze and
strings of cotton candy with clowns one after another, more
than could be counted. The MC slumped, exhausted.

The clowns feared the man without a name and begged to
inhabit some new offering. If only they could be thrown to
the bottom of the cliff where a legion of jokers waited like
pigs in a blanket. He dismissed them with a word and they
flew and fumbled down the ridge, taking the jokers and themselves
into the sea. The waves washed over them as they disappeared
from sight.

The lackeys were slack in their duties and left the same way
they came. They filed up and down the empty streets where they
hoped for some novel entertainment that wouldn’t cost them a dime.

And the MC sat alone in the middle of the ring, seen only by
the man with no name.