Rudy Barth, the Street Prophet

a story by Justin Carter

Justin Carter is the author of Brazos (Belle Point Press, 2024), which can be pre-ordered here. His short stories have appeared in BULL, HAD, Passages North, Rejection Letters, and other spaces. Originally from the Texas Gulf Coast, Justin currently lives in Iowa and works as a sports writer and editor. He's on Twitter—or whatever it's called now—at @juscarts. 

RUDY BARTH, THE STREET PROPHET

It’d been awhile since I’d seen Rudy Barth. About halfway through senior year he’d dropped out, moved to Louisiana and became a prophet. He’d been talking for a little while about following God’s calling, so it wasn’t a big shock, especially since he was failing his classes anyway—he’d got so into the Jesus movement that he wasn’t studying at all and sometimes he’d wind up missing class because he’d just be out in the courtyard, strumming Switchfoot songs on his guitar and talking about saving souls. After school, he’d head down to Newell City Park and do the same thing some more. I went down there to listen sometimes, even though being saved probably wasn’t something that was in the cards for me—there was part of me that thought about Pascal’s wager, but not a big enough part of me to do anything about it. But seeing as Rudy had been one of my best friends since junior high, I’d go hang with him even when he was just singing songs about God, no matter how uninteresting I found that to be.

But then, all of a sudden, that part of my life was over. Rudy wasn’t at school for a couple days, and when I finally asked one of his worship friends about it, he told me that Rudy was on fire.

What that meant was that he’d gone to Lafayette, Louisiana, which was where Brody Farnsworth was. Brody was like, the guy for all the Gulf Coast evangelicals. He ran this street preaching group called the Lord’s Fireters. It was a pun on fighters, obviously, and all the kids thought it was really clever even though it wasn’t.

Brody had come to Newell about a year before this, part of this preaching tour where he went around to various small towns, trying to convert people. And I have to admit, he was charming. When you think about street preachers, you probably think about middle-aged men yelling on the corner about how everyone’s going to hell, but Brody was nothing like that. He couldn’t have been older than twenty-five, though he had the beard of a fifty-year-old. He was paper thin and had full-sleeve tattoos, and he wore skinny jeans and a tight-fitting Underoath t-shirt and had his septum gauged—he did this trick where he put a straw through it.

And like Rudy, he played guitar, which was a big part of what drew Rudy in. Music had this power over him. Before Brody, he tried to get this folk-punk project going, played a few shows around the area, but the songs were all secular, these things that were a little too influenced by Against Me! It wasn’t until after Brody that he started to see music as this vehicle for Christ, this way of taking the things he was feeling about God and putting it out there in a way that drew other people in.

When Brody visited, he gave a long, impassioned speech about salvation, but he didn’t use the kind of words that you usually hear at a church, no fire and brimstones, no condemnation. It was all about building a relationship, couched in these terms that felt like they’d come out of a business class. Then he sang some songs—mostly acoustic covers of Christian metal bands—and handpicked a few people to go pray with him under this big oak tree—it was one of the things the town was most proud of, this gigantic oak tree in the park that had been planted at some point in the 1800s, a kind of pillar of the community, which of course felt like some kind of sign according to Rudy, who said it was like the whole on this rock I build my church thing, and from that point forward he’d have all his prayer meetings under the tree.

I wasn’t one of the ones who got picked to head over to Brody’s little circle, which was fine—he probably saw that I wasn’t bowing my head and closing my eyes when he recited the Lord’s Prayer, wasn’t looking toward him with the reverence that everyone else had. Whatever it was they talked about over there—Rudy refused to ever tell me what it was—it changed him, started him down this whole new path, which reached its local endpoint when he left to become a street preacher too.

But I had no clue how deep it would all go. That he was going to start performing miracles, that he’d eventually have an army of followers behind him who saw him as a prophet, as a kind of third coming of God.

---

In 2011, my buddy Jordan was trying to date this girl named Crystal. The two of us were twenty, but Crystal was seventeen and still in high school. I guess, looking back, it was a little bit creepy, but I don’t think it ever went beyond holding hands, so it wasn’t as creepy as it could have been, though I suppose the fact he’d known her since she was fourteen might have been a little bit of a red flag, especially considering Jordan ended up getting raided by the FBI for CP about eight years after this.

Crystal was nice but she was also really, really religious. Like, listened to Superchick levels of religious, which I knew because I was basically forced to be their perpetual third wheel, a buffer to make sure they weren’t alone and tempted by worldly lust. Any time Jordan wanted to take her somewhere, he’d text me and see if I was free and if I was, he’d come by and pick me up before he went and picked her up. It was how I ended up seeing every movie that came out that year, sitting awkwardly on one side of him while him and Crystal touched their fingertips together, which was about the extent of their PDA.

That particular night, we were going out to this bible study, which wasn’t my kind of place but when you’re young and you don’t move out of your hometown for college or the Army, you have to spend time in places you wouldn’t normally go, which was how I kept finding myself surrounded by Christians. I was working at the time for a company that did commercial soil analysis and everyone there was at least thirty, most of them older, so I had to make do by hanging out with the Jesus people. That would all change once I was twenty-one and could start going out to bars, but in a place like Newell the years between high school graduation and alcoholism are a liminal space. You do what you have to do to not be alone and then you kind of forget about those years afterwards.

Bible study was at this girl’s house. I think her name was Lacey. I mean, I know it was, but I don’t remember if she spelled it Lacy or Lacey, which I think tells you all you need to know about how much of a bit part she played in my life. She was dating a youth pastor and I think they were both in their mid-20s. His name was Lawrence, but he went by L-Rence. I guess he thought it made him sound hip or something. He wasn’t there that night though, because he was actually having an affair with this other youth pastor’s girlfriend out in Booth. It was a funny story—after he got caught, the church made a huge deal about it and excommunicated him, which really just meant he got fired, except they put a notice about it in the church newsletter.

Anyway, we pulled up to Lacey’s place and there were a bunch of cars there already. She lived pretty far outside of Newell—you’d take County Road 83 for a long way then turn down this other long road. It was a pretty run-down house, a rental that was the only place in her price range. She’d just moved in a few months before, so it was pretty bare inside.

I’d say most of the people there were still in high school, but I did run into Franklin Brown, who was a year under me in school. We used to go to video game parties together, the kind where you stayed up all night playing Halo with a bunch of TVs all wired together, everyone hopped up on Monster and Flaming Hot Cheetos. That’s what he was doing that night too—not Halo, because I guess that wasn’t appropriate for the venue, but he was over in front of the TV playing LittleBigPlanet 2.

“Hey man,” Franklin said. “Didn’t think I’d see you here.”

“Jordan brought me.”

“Ahh,” he said. Franklin and I hadn’t talked in four or five months. Not on purpose, but just because people lose touch. Last time I’d seen him, we were in separate lines for the midnight release for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 1. I was there with Jordan and, yep, Crystal, because this thing between them—if you could even call it a thing—had been going on awhile. We chatted a little, just catching up on stuff—his parents getting divorced, mostly, which was a shame because they’d always been real nice when we had the Halo parties at his place. I think he understood the me-Jordan-Crystal dynamic pretty well because it was a common one, all these church kids always out in groups of at least three to help ‘em reduce temptations.

“How about you?,” I asked. I knew Franklin went to church but I didn’t necessarily take him for a bible study guy. After he got headshot by someone in a game, he’d let out a whole strand of cuss words.

“For the Lord,” he said. There was a pause. “I’m kidding.” Another pause. “I mean, I’m not kidding, but mostly I was just bored tonight. I’m surprised you said you’d come, even if you’re just playing go-between. An atheist at bible study.”

“I’m not…” I stopped. I didn’t really know what I was. “I just don’t…it’s complicated.”

“Better not let that slip unless you want a whole night of them tryin’ to convert ya.”

I think plenty of people did know that though. I was actually surprised, when Jordan would drag me to stuff with Crystal and her friends, that I didn’t get preached at as much as I expected. Maybe they thought I’d become a Christian if I was just around a lot—proximity and all that. They were good kids, for the most part. Some of them wouldn’t be good people once they got a little older and fell into the wrong circles, but I’d lost touch with all of them by then, gradually unfriending them on Facebook after each anti-abortion rant or post about immigrants.

I tried to mingle with people, but it was hard—everyone just wanted to talk about the bible, which I guess makes sense—it was a bible study, after all. But maybe I was expecting it to really only be a “bible study” in name, like it was really just an excuse to get together and have a party without using that kind of language to describe it. Does God like parties? I wonder that, sometimes—lot of these kids tried to find loopholes around their beliefs, like they’d think it’s a sin to do worldly things but if you call the worldly thing something God would like, it’s all okay. I dunno, but I gave up on talking to people and wound up in the kitchen next to a Chick-fil-A nugget platter. I think I ate like fifteen of them. Small town Christians love their Chick-fil-A.

I’d just been standing around for maybe ten minutes, idly chatting when someone came by the table, when Jordan came over. He had this huge grin all over his face.

“Rudy Barth’s on his way here,” he said.

“Wait, really?”

“He’s doing some ministry up in Houston and someone messaged him, so Jake went to pick him up. Just called and said they’re about ten minutes away. Can you believe it? Rudy Barth, man. Here with all of us.”

“It’s just Rudy. You’ve known him since we were kids.”

“You don’t get it. He’s a miracle worker. He healed a blind woman in Mississippi last month.”

“He didn’t do that.”

“Man, he really did.”

“He’s a charismatic guy. People just like to believe in him.”

“Can you just try not to harsh the buzz when he gets here?”

“Come on, Jordan. You know I ain’t that guy. I’ll let all these kids believe what they want to believe about him. I just think you’re too smart for it.”

“Maybe you just need to really listen to him.” He walked away, leaving just me and the chicken nugget platter again. I was excited to see Rudy because it’d been so long, but I was also real skeptical about what, exactly, I was going to see, who he’d be these days. In his absence, he’d grown into this mythical figure. I didn’t think he was out there curing disease and fighting evil and all that, but I wondered if Rudy himself believed it. If he was a grifter now or if he was just the same Rudy I’d always known and all these rumors were coming from somewhere other than himself, the way one whispered rumor can turn into anything.

I didn’t have to wonder long about Rudy and his genuineness or any thing else about him because a few minutes later, the door opened and he stepped inside. And I don’t really know another way to say this—he looked like shit. He’d grown his hair long, but it was all matted up like he hadn’t washed it in weeks, and he’d probably lost thirty pounds, which was bad since he was always a rail. He had a bunch of stick-and-poke tattoos going all the way up both arms.

But then there were the eyes—this piercing blue that was full of a kind of energy that the rest of his body lacked. As soon as he walked in the door, people flocked to him. He held up a hand.

“One at a time,” he said. “I want to speak to you all—to understand your journeys.”

He walked across the room, a line forming behind him. Rudy squinted his eyes until it looked like they weren’t even open. He sat down in a recliner and someone brought a bible to him. Someone else got him a glass of water. It was a fucking dog and pony show.

“Tell me,” he said, “what ails you.”

Everyone started coming up to him, kneeling down and whispering into his ear. He whispered back into theirs. It was stupid—I don’t know how else to say it. I watched for a minute or two then went outside. No one else was there—they were all inside, waiting for these blessings. I went over by Jordan’s car and pulled a Black & Mild out of my back pocket, lit it. If there was a God, it was in moments like that where I thought I might have felt him—out in the darkness, miles away from town, puffing on a cigarillo. Those were the times when I could see myself communing with something, whether it be a higher power, the cosmos, nature. I don’t know. I didn’t really sit around and think much, but when I did, and when I started to ponder how I’d find my spot in the universe, I knew that spot wouldn’t be found by believing that a kid I’d known since elementary school was praying away sickness. It all felt perverse. I finished the cigarillo and contemplated lighting another, but I didn’t want to run out of them, so instead I just climbed onto the hood of the car. No one came out of the house—they were too enamored by Rudy. He was a star and they were the things orbiting around him—not planets, because there’s a weight to the word “planets” that I don’t think that living room held. They were debris, trapped in his gravitational field.

Eventually I got tired of not smoking, so the only solution to that seemed to be to dig out another Black & Mild. Franklin came out of the house. He must have spotted the red bud because he made a beeline straight for me.

“I guess you didn’t want to witness all that,” he said.

“It’s a circus.”

“I think he’s a phony. I really do”

“You’re probably the only one.”

“Oh, for sure. They’re eating him up in there. He’s magnificent, man.”

“I don’t doubt he is.”

“You just doubt the things he says.”

“Of course I do.” I took another drag of the cigarillo and held it out to Franklin to see if he wanted some of it, but he shook his head.

“It’s weird. I believe in miracles, and I believe there’s prophets out there, but…”

“You can’t believe Rudy’s one.”

“I mean, come on. He makes it into such a spectacle.”

It was nice to know I wasn’t alone that night. That at least one other person didn't think Rudy was really a prophet. We stood there silent for a minute or so and then Franklin started talking about a baseball game he’d watched the night before. At first I thought it was going to be an allegory for something but it turned out he just really wanted to talk about the baseball game. It ended on an unassisted triple play, which I guess there could have been an allegory in that, something about the Trinity. One player, three outs, one God, three parts. Probably a stretch. He just thought the play was badass.

After he finished talking about baseball, the door opened again, and Jordan walked out.

“Rudy asked about you,” he said. “I wasn’t really sure what to tell him.”

“What’d he ask?” I said.

“He wanted to know if you might be up to talking with him.”

“Depends on what he means.”

“Dude.”

“I mean, I’m not looking to have him convert me.”

“You said you weren’t going to cause a problem.”

“I’m trying to avoid causing a problem.”

“Crystal was right.”

“What’s that mean?”

“She thinks you’re a bad influence on me.”

“What the hell.”

“Don’t say hell.”

“I mean, come on, Jordan. A bad influence?”

“My faith matters, man.”

“I’m not saying it doesn’t.”

“It’s tough, to have a non-believer around all the time.”

I couldn’t believe him, but then again, I could believe him. Wasn’t that the whole thing.  

“This is extreme,” I said. “All I’m saying is I don’t know if I believe Rudy’s a prophet. It’s common sense.”

But I knew right then that Jordan was gone, that whatever friendship we had was poisoned, beyond repair. I didn’t believe in Rudy. Everyone else did—well, except Franklin, but he hid it better. Rudy would eventually come outside and we’d just kind of stare at each other, neither of us actually making any movement toward doing anything but staring. We’d stay that way for maybe three full minutes before he walked back inside. I never spoke to him again. There’s this rumor that he’s on some kind of government watch list, that they think he’s a danger to the nation. A cult leader. I’d believe it. This one time in eighth grade, we had a mock election in Texas History class and Rudy won, became the governor of our classroom. And then the next six weeks, we had another one, and Rudy won again. Six elections overall. Six wins. Didn’t matter who was challenging him. Didn’t matter it was a ceremonial position that didn’t do anything except sit at the front of the room and lead the recitation of the Texas Pledge every day. He just kept winning. Election Day would come and he’d talk about patriotism and student leadership and doing the right thing and we’d all vote for him again because he made us believe he really gave a shit. And that’s what he’s doing now, only I worry the power ain’t just for show this time. You hear whispers. You don’t want to believe them, but that doesn’t stop you from hearing ‘em.