Chance Encounters #1: One Flea Market, Two Gods

My husband loves rummage sales and I love oddities, so we’re here on a sunny summer day scratching our itch for both at the Wagon Wheel Flea Market. We peer down haphazard corridors made boggy by a kind of humidity typically reserved for rainforests. I can smell popcorn, old paper and dust. They form one new scent. Cheap.

I let my eyes feast. To the observer I am scarcely interested in anything at all, but internally I am taking stock of every vintage or retro bit and bob—bookmarking every stall I want to make my way back to. A sign catches my eye, “Automatic Bible”, it says. I am blissfully unaware that my feet have stopped moving and my husband has disappeared into the sluice of bodies.

The book looks perfectly normal, I study it from every angle taking care not to touch, as the book looks to be a demo version and I don’t want to upset the vendor. I can’t see any nearby devices or buttons to make it work. From deeper within the booth a very large man steps forward wearing a pale blue, short sleeved, button-down shirt tucked into jeans, held up by red suspenders. With each step closer my head has to tilt back to meet his eyes.

“Do you read the Bible,” he asks with quite a bit of force.

“Yes actually and I’ve been looking for a new—”

“What kind of Bible do you read? And what kind are you looking for?”

“Uh… Kind?”

“You know! What version?”

“Oh. I usually read the NIV but I don’t mind the ASV or the ESV. Anything that’s easy to read and comprehend. Do you have any—” My words stop coming out because his face is now red. I stand there studying him for a frozen microsecond that feels like hours.

“Only the King James Bible is God’s truth! Let me show you something here. These other bibles, they’re trying to take away the deity of Christ! Look right here, they took Jesus’ name out!” With each word his voice becomes louder and deeper.

My head falls to the side unbalanced by the puzzled look that makes my right eyebrow heavier than my left. Sometimes logical fallacies make me forget the danger of imminent conflict in order to correct a premise that is plainly irrational or irrelevant. I can’t help it.

I reply, “Yeah, that’s why you use a comparative study bible and a concordance to drill down to the meaning of the original Greek or Hebrew. You can't just read it. The bible literally tells us to study.”

I shouldn’t have said that or anything at all for that matter. I know that now because when we started talking this guy’s face was red. Now it’s burgundy. I should go. I’m going.

I can’t see him, but I can still hear him screaming. My husband reappears. The incredulous look on his face when I tell him what happened irritates me. “What did you think was going to happen, babe? I saw that guy coming a mile away. You could clearly see he was one of them.” That’s what we call the crazy screaming "Christians" that make you want to run away to a place where there are no people of any kind.

I’m still reeling from getting yelled at by a stranger when I see another sign on a different aisle of vendors. This one reads, “3 Things God Can’t Do”. The sign is next to a table display with three small wooden sliding doors on it. I feel my head tilting again but this time I catch myself.

“Come on over. You wanna know what the three things are?” says an old man of small stature, in a gentle tone.

I’m curious but I can’t fathom anything that could possibly be under the flaps, and I don’t want to get blasted by another one of them, so I answer from a safe distance, “It’s a trick. There’s nothing under there. Can’t be.”

Smiling, he puts his hand over his heart and says, “You got me.”

I circle through the flea market a couple more times before leaving, amassing a respectable haul of Louis L'amour books and estate sale jewelry. Each time he sees me, the old man at the three doors of What God Can’t Do smiles and waves to me.

I smile too and wave back.

Krystena Lee is the author of the children’s book series Memory Verse Kids™ as well Ears to Hear, a paranormal fiction novel, that follows 12 year old boy as he begins to hear a strange voice. Her fiction pulls back the curtain on the unseen and makes the unknowable known. She also writes articles on faith, family and finding work. Her freelance writing services can be procured for writing resumés, cover letters, bios and all things SEO & copy writing.