If you’re ever lost on the AA Highway in northeastern Kentucky, you might, just might stumble into my hometown. If you’re really unlucky, you’ll end up on one of the three bare streets that comprise downtown. On one of those deserted corners, you’ll see the Jesus Man.

He’s usually on one of the empty streets, shaggy brown hair hanging around his shoulders like dirty ropes, staring intently at his dirty shoes. One grubby hand tucked under the hem of his tattered blue t-shirt, fingers moving restlessly under the worn material. The fingers of his other hand pull anxiously at the leg of the grungy khaki pants that hang loosely off his protruding hipbones. Sometimes, he wanders slowly up and down the streets, shuffling his unlaced green tennis shoes. Usually though, he just stands, twitching, as if waiting for some judgment from above.

If you catch his eye, you'll see that his eyes are the color of dark earth and full of all the world’s sadness. Looking into them, you feel connected to the endless wailing of the world, to the unending pain of it all. To look in those eyes is to feel the pain of the thorns and nails. Its best to walk on by, keeping your eyes to yourself and your mind on your own problems.

But you'll still smell him, the smell of sweat and rainwater and he'll shuffle by through town mumbling his nearly inaudible prayer of, “Jesus saves”. When I was younger, his words comforted me; that he still had hope. That he still felt that there something bigger in the universe than himself. I thought it amazing that he felt that any of us could be saved. He gave me some sense of battered hope in the divine.

But then, the last time I was in town, I wandered passed him and caught a glimpse of his fingers moving furiously under his shirt. The ragged edge of the material was riding up his suntanned arm, exposing his concave belly and I saw the thin, sharp edge of a wire protruding from his abdomen. He was twisting it into his skin, grinding it into the starving flesh of his white belly. Yet, there was no grimace of pain, no flinch of distress, just his usual stare of grief and numbness.

I wondered how many years he had tortured himself in front of me, in front of others, and we only saw the ragged town mascot. Why does no one ever come to get him? I know his family and their peeling yellow clapboard house with its broken satellite dish in the yard. I’ve said hello to his brother, his mother, bought groceries beside them at the corner store but I never talked about him, this lost man. Why?

Now, when I think of him and think of the words he always spoke, “Jesus saves”, I now wonder with new sadness if his words weren't so much a statement but a broken-hearted question.

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