They’re holding a Poker Night over at the Mason’s place tonight. Buy-in is a sack full of non-perishable food or baby supplies, with each additional bag getting you a free drink on the house. It’s all in the name of a charity drive for Jack’s motorcycle club. Back in the 80’s they realized being bad dudes on big bikes made them role models of our sort. You can do a lot of good when everyone expects you to be a badguy. They didn’t mean to become a charity, but first was warm clothes for homeless vets. Then there were the toys for sick kids, and it sort of snowballed from there. Nothing says “Don’t mess with me, I’ll hurt ya bad,” like a giant viking on a 1500 CC roadhog. And to be real tough, be walking into St. Jude’s Children’s hospital with a giant pink teddy bear named Vera strapped to your back. Clearly, this hard-ridin’ hellion is trouble.
Even Santa Claus could take a cue from these guys.
There was a time when Jack couldn’t do this sort of event, even for charity. Up until 1996, the town had the vestigial bits of some old blue laws that went on and off the books for over a century. The ban on poker was a ban on “Card houses” meant to keep organized prostitution out during the mining days. The ban on businesses running Sunday night went on the books right after The Great War, because the local preacher didn’t want to have to hold a Sunday evening service. Over time, as other laws set new precedents, it morphed into keeping ONLY churches closed on Sunday nights.
Brother Louis has never taken exception to the law, though it doesn’t really apply. He maintains the various religious shrines and monuments around town as “Any wayward traveler should find peace even in the wilderness.” At the chapel, service are held more-or-less when anybody shows up, but special arrangements are made for holiday services for a number of different religions. As Brother Louis puts it, “We are here to serve, man, and I don’t care what fan club you belong to.”
Like a lot of folks that heard the call, Louis Song believed in a greater power, but whether the call was the call to serve or the call of the open road is anyone’s guess. Brother Louis could never stay in one place too long. He started in a First Christian seminary, then studied with at a Catholic theological school before becoming a lay Buddhist brother in Malaysia, a druid in a pagan coven in Germany, then a “Harald Holz Transcendentalist” philosopher in Argentina. He’s probably been a few things in the interim too.
Jack Mason and Louis Song aren’t friends. Pretty far from it. But when you see the things they do for others, never trying to draw attention for themselves, it becomes pretty clear they both walk the same road.
And as long as they don’t walk it barefoot on a Thursday, or stand in the middle of it on holidays, they should be able to keep from running afoul some of the funnier old laws we still have on the books around here.
