But somethin' happened that is such big news I had to let you know. I'd just been to the local waterin' hole to wet my whistle, you see. I's a havin' a lunch of tap water and a bowl of chex mix which they just give ya at the pub. It's just layin' around, now. Layin' around! My mamma didn't raise no fool, now. Lordy Lordy! Why I gonna pay for food when I can get all I wants for free?

So I finish up my lunch and I'm on my way out the pub and when I step outside I spot somethin' out the corner of my eye, see. I spot somethin' famillar. So I turn to see it more clearly, and it's a man disappearin' into the alley, but there's something familiar 'bout him. Somethin' mighty familiar.

So I say me a prayer right there. I say, "Father God Jehovah on Your Heavenly Throne above! Protect your child from unseen evils!" And I head off cautious like toward the alley where I sees the man disappear.

Now, before I go into the alley, I call out. "Listen up! I's just a poor black woman with a broken down body and I'm as stupid as I am old, so don't you go scarin' or threatnin' me. I gots Father God Jehovah on my side and ain't nothin' you can do that's gonna get past him, now. And his anger is eternal, so don't say I ain't warned ya!" I figure that my Christian duty.

And Lordy weren't I scared! Lord have mercy! My heart was beatin' faster than it ever beat. Even faster than that time I seen the boyscout leader teachin' my son how to burn his mamma in her bed by rubbin' two sticks together! But I was vigilant then and I's vigilant now, so I stepped into the alley. And that's when I sees a head pop up over the dumpster. And it's a man, a white man, with a hat and I can just see his eyes and he says to me, "Mrs. Johnston, you've got to get out of here. They're coming. They're coming for you because you know too much!"

Well, ain't no secret that I know too much, even though I deny it. "When they comin'? When they comin' for old Mrs. Johnston?" but he's already gone, disappeared into the shadows. So I creep on down to the dumpster and I go around behind it and that's when I sees it! That's when I see it plain as day!

Scratched into the paint on the dumpster I see "M.J. #1 Go Bulls!" spelled out in rust. And that's when I know who it was, see. That's when I know! See, I got my eyes open. I may be just a stupid old black woman, but I got common sense that I pretend I don't have. And when you see the common denominator, your vision clears and the clouds blow away and, Lordy, ain't it a pretty sight!

That must have been my husband, see? And he scratched a message for me into the dumpster sos I'd know it was him and sos I'd take his advice! Let me spell it out for ya. See my name is Mrs. Johnston now. M.J. Mrs. Johnston. See it? It's my initials! And it was my #1 husband who done left me that message. Then go is what he tole me to do. And the last word in his message was bulls. Now that took me a while to figure out, but then it came to me, Thank you Father! Where do they have bulls? In Mexico where they got the bull fights. Where do you go when you need to escape? Mexico.

So the message from my first husband was that I should go to Mexico. It must be

I ran home and I pried up the floorboards where I been hidin' my escape money and my passport, 'cause you can't know as much as me about what's goin' on and not figure they's a comin' one day. And I run up the street to the travel agency to get me a ticket.

It was a nice place, you know? They's playin' island music and all the chairs they got made out of grass. And they got posters all around of girls in grass skirts and such. But ain't nobody there so I stand and wait a minute. Soon, I start to thinkin' that standin' still like this is pretty dangerous, you know? They can find me. I mean, after my accident I don't move so fast anyway, so givin' them an advantage like that seemed mighty foolish.

As I turned to leave, someone came out the back room and said, "Welcome to McMurtry's Travel where your destination is our pleasure and your pleasure is the only destination. My name is Eunice; how can I serve your travel needs?"

So I turned back around and what I seen ain't fit for Christian description. There was a woman holdin' a coffee pot in one hand and a marble in the other. Only, and Father God Jehovah strike me dead if this ain't the Gospel, it weren't like any hand I ever seen. It had a thumb that was natural enough, but only one giant finger with one giant fingernail, and Lordy it looked sharp! It was more like the hoof of a cloven animal than a hand. She was half bald, and burned somethin' bad. She wore a eyepatch and her tongue was a hangin' out her mouth. She limped a bit as she hobbled over to take a seat behind a desk.

"I need to go to Mexico as soon as possible. Today if you can arrange it," I said. "They's onto me and I's a marked woman. Lord have mercy, a marked woman!"

The travel agent sat the marble down on her desk and it done rolled off the desk and across the room, to where I was a standin'. I looked down at it, and damned if it weren't done staring back up at me. Lordy, Lordy, that weren't no marble. IT WERE HER EYE!

She hurried over to it and picked it up. When she got close to me, I caught whiff of her and damn near knock me on my ass! She smell like everything foul ever there was mixed into one and I felt the spirit move me and the Lord whispered in my spirit that Hell smell just like that. She run over to a sink and rinsed the eye off in tap water, and then, Lord have mercy, she took off the eye patch and popped the eye back in the socket, easy as you please!

And don't you know it, that's when the scales fell off my eyes and I saw what was going on! The Father God Jehovah revealed unto me the truth. See I'm just an old black woman that don't know a damn thing, but when it's common sense, I ain't never wrong! Ain't never wrong even if I'm slow to come to it.

See, I used to think it was the bottled water, but now I know there's something in the tap water. That's the common denominator, see! The common denominator. Let me break it down for ya. Who drinks tap water? Poor people. Who are expendable? Poor people. And here I was standin' in the presence of one of their experiments and weren't she a sight! And they got her puttin' tap water DIRECTLY INTO HER BRAIN RIGHT THROUGH HER EYE SOCKET! Lord have mercy!

I could feel the devil in that room. And what the devil creates, he keep good watch on. They'd probably already seen me.

I backed slowly out the door. She called to me, "Don't you want to go to Mexico?"

"No, no. That's ok," I said. "I changed my mind."

Her face turned real red and she got real, real mad and she called me things no Christian should ever have to hear and then she threw that coffee pot at me, but I was already outside. It crashed and broke on the window and I done felt the hand of the Lord pushin' me along and onto the bus at the corner.

What do I know from all this? 1) My husband is still alive and, praise Jehovah, he still be lookin' out for me! 2) They're watching me still. I'm dangerous to them because I know too much. 3) Ain't never can tell where they got their agents.

I have to leave the country for a while. I don't know for how long nor how I'm to get there, but just like he always does, Father God Jehovah will provide. They got long memories so who knows how long I got to be on the run. Praise Jesus my daughter with the Jews down south. I know they takin' good care of her. I'll try to check in from time to time.

past - present - future