PodCastle

* Author : Kat Howard
* Narrator : Eve Upton
* Host : Graeme Dunlop
* Audio Producer : Peter Wood
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First appeared in Clarkesworld Magazine. Read it here!


Rated R.
The Saint of the Sidewalks
by Kat Howard
Joan wrote her prayer with a half-used tube of Chanel Vamp that she had found discarded at the 34th St. subway stop. It glided across the cardboard – the flip side of a Stoli box, torn and bent – and left her words in a glossy slick the color of dried blood: “I need a miracle.”
You were supposed to be specific when asking the Saint of the Sidewalks for an intervention, but everything in her life was such a fucking disaster, Joan didn’t know where to start. So, she asked for a miracle, non-specific variety.
She set her cardboard on the sidewalk, prayer-side up. Then lit the required cigarette – stolen out of the pack of some guy who had been hitting on her at a bar – with the almost empty lighter she had fished out of the trash. You couldn’t use anything new, anything you had previously owned, in your prayer. That was the way the devotion worked: found objects. Discards. Detritus made holy by the power of the saint.

Joan took a drag off the cigarette, then coughed. She hadn’t smoked since her senior year of high school, and she’d mostly forgotten how. Thankfully, she didn’t have to actually smoke the thing. Cigarette burning, she walked three times around her prayer, then dropped the butt to the sidewalk, and ground it out beneath her shoe.
Then she waited to see if her prayer would be answered.
Other people waited too, scattered along the sidewalk where the saint’s first miracle occurred, with their altars of refuse and found objects, prayers graffitied on walls, or spelled out with the noodles from last night’s lo mein.
The rising sunlight arrowed between the buildings, and began to make its progress down sidewalks lined with prayers. This was how it worked: if the sun covered your prayer, illuminating it, the saint had heard you. There was no guarantee of an answer, but at least you would know you had been heard. For some people, that was enough.
If your prayer caught fire, if holy smoke curled up from its surface as the sun shone down on it, that was a sure sign you had been blessed. Heard and answered, and your intention would be granted. A miracle. If she just had a miracle, things would be better.
Joan didn’t need to watch to follow the progression of the sun. Cries of disappointment and frustration were common. Gasps of joy and gratitude much rarer.
Everyone had theories about how the saint chose to grant prayers. Some said it was whether she liked the altar, or the things you used to make your prayer. Others said she could feel the need in your heart, and mend your broken life that way. Joan hoped it was the latter, since it wasn’t like her hasty scrawl and filthy cardboard was that impressive. Certainly not compared to what was next to her – a salvaged player piano, painted with neon daisies, tinkling through a double time version of “Music Box Dancer.” Though really, Joan hoped the saint had better taste than to pick that one.
She tapped the toes of her left foot on the sidewalk as she waited, just below the cigarette. Maybe it was bad form to be impatient about a prayer, but Joan didn’t care. She just wanted to know. Plus, she really had to pee.
The sun crept closer, the light crawling over her ancient Docs.