Arthur fed two dollar bills into the machine and wobbled into the bus as it pulled away from the curb.  So early on a Sunday morning there were only a couple other passengers, and Arthur sat across from a thick young woman wearing the  black pants and white shirt and boxy shoes of a waitress.  “Brianna” was spelled out on her name tag, and Arthur was making her nervous.  He mumbled in violent fits and punched the air before speaking directly to her.

“We held protests with signs and a bull horn and everything … we sent letters to the bishop and the Vatican, left I don’t know how many voice-mail messages, and what do they do?”

“I don’t know,” Brianna said.  “’What do they do?’”

“The bishop hires a stinking PR firm is what they do, and they edge us out with all these TV ads and color pamphlets that tell us in wholesome detail exactly why it’s such a good idea to close the old cathedral and just tear Our Lady down …”

Arthur jerked a folded and tattered pamphlet from his back pocket and thrust it toward Brianna.  With reluctance she reached out to take it but pulled her hand back when she noticed the deep scar running across his left temple and onto his forehead.  Brianna was afraid to imagine what had gouged a cigar-sized swath from his skull and could not look at his face, yet before turning away she captured an indelible image of his cloudy left eye and its constantly dime-sized pupil.

“It’s easy to fuck over poor people,” Arthur said.  “And so it is that the well paid enemies of truth have squeezed out the voices of poor Catholics who live downtown, the people who definitely do not have electric garage door openers.  The only thing they do have is faith, and apparently, that aint worth shit.”

In a spasm Arthur slapped the back of the seat next to him; Brianna jumped; the driver looked into his big mirror and focused on the crosses of Jesus tattooed on Arthur’s neck and the backs of his hands.  Brianna pecked out a message on her cell phone, and Arthur patted a bulge in the breast pocket of his blue blazer and spoke in a prophetic tone.

“God has sent me to deliver this message to those who would not hear him, so I’m going down to that thing they call a church and teach that homosexual bishop and his cabin boys the meaning of respect, live and in person …”

Almost in a position of prayer, Brianna’s thumbs pumped the buttons of her phone, eyes and thoughts clinging to the little screen, afraid to look at Arthur.  She could feel the negative pressure of his hazy eye rolling around on her face and body and hated Sundays.  No one was more demanding and cheap than Christians after church, and now this.

“I was baptized in that church,” Arthur half shouted.  “First communion … confirmation … my mom and dad and brother Petey all went up into heaven from that altar God damn it …”

Arthur imagined crushing Brianna’s throat with his thumbs when he realized she was not paying attention.  He turned and spoke to a young brown man wearing a hoody and big, dark, wraparound sun glasses, the only other passenger on the bus.

“They bugged my phone … my house,” he yelled.  “I’ll bet they’re following me right now, and why?  Because the mother fuckers know I won’t let them tear down my cathedral!”

As the young man pulled an earbud from his ear to ask Arthur what he wanted, Vincent the bus driver lifted the public address microphone from its cradle, pressed the button and spoke.

“Sir … Sir …in the blue coat … I need you to leave the other passengers alone and watch your language or I’ll have to ask you to leave the bus … OK?”

Arthur held the high hand rails as he dashed to the front of the bus and stopped beyond the yellow line where he held the ticket machine to keep from falling.

“I was just telling them that they closed my church,” Arthur said as he gripped the breast pocket mound in his jacket and shook it for emphasis.  “God himself has sent me to personally deliver this message of righteousness and truth to that beeeotch of bishop and his unholy altar-boys,” but before Arthur could say any more, Vincent interrupted.

“Would you please take a seat,” Vincent growled as if he was in charge and not afraid, but the details of Arthur’s scar and morbid eye and the bulge in his coat summoned the image of flashing emergency vehicle lights live on CNN with a helicopter view of ambulances and police cars surrounding his bus parked sideways in the street and blood.  Vincent was prepared to slam on the breaks, blow the hatches and run.

Arthur sat down directly behind the driver’s seat, and Vincent could feel Arthur’s words on the back of his neck.

“They told us there aren’t enough Catholics downtown to justify keeping it open … which is total bullshit!” Arthur snarled.  “So I’m going down to that new piece of shit church where the bishop has his office and bust up the mass.  When everyone is quiet and waiting, right after the gospel and before the sermon, that’s when I’m gonna rise up and deliver God’s own truth to that blubber daddy of a bishop and his PR scumbags too!”

With a casual move of his left hand, Vincent pressed the secret security alert button, and Arthur continued to gesticulate and fume unintelligible words to no one.  A Reno police car waited at the next stop, and when the bus came to a halt and the door opened, Vincent leapt to the platform and yelled, “The guy in the blue coat … he has a gun.”

A pair of officers stormed the bus with weapons trained on Arthur.

“Hands in the air!” one of them screamed.

“On the floor … now!” the other demanded.

Arthur raised his arms and yelled, “What the jumped-up fuck are you doing,” but abruptly quieted as the guns moved closer.  He lied face down in the isle, and they cuffed his hands behind his back and wrenched his shoulders dragging him to his feet, blazer dotted with debris from the floor.  Arthur spoke with genuine disgust.

“How much is the bishop paying you stooges?”

Wearing black rubber gloves, a uniformed officer reached into Arthur’s jacket expecting to find a gun but instead discovered a roll of lined notebook paper tied tight with a red ribbon, forty-two pages filled with signatures and addresses.  While one of  the officers read him his rights, the other stuffed the petition Arthur had been compiling for months into a big zip-lock evidence bag along with his switchblade comb, matted lucky rabbit’s foot, and grandmother’s black opal rosary beads.