📸 PRODIGAL’S JOURNAL — DAY 18

Bakersfield — Padre Hotel

We didn’t go in through the front.

Too exposed. Too many blind angles. Voices drifting where voices shouldn’t have been—the kind that stop when you stop listening for them.

The entry doors still had glass in them. Old panes, bubbled and imperfect, but clear enough.

Bobby eased forward just enough to look through.

Two men inside. Armed. Rifles slung low, not shouldered, but not far either. One paced. The other leaned against the desk like he was waiting for something to go wrong.

Bobby leaned back, barely moving his lips.

“Bandits.”

He pointed lower.

That’s when we saw the wire—looped sloppy near the old brass handles. Set to rattle, not stop. Noise first, violence second.

Not professionals.

We backed off without a word and circled the block. Around back, a fire escape clung to the brick—rusted, bowed, one rung cracked but holding. Three flights up, hands cold on flaking paint. Below us, the city had gone quiet in that late-night way—after the shouting, before the dogs.

The fog hadn’t burned off yet. The red PADRE sign bled into it, neon thinning until the building looked like it was trying to remember how it used to announce itself.

Bakersfield has been taking people in like a ship that knows it’s already listing.

After the strikes, everything bent inward. LA is gone—whatever “gone” means when the map still shows it but nobody talks about it like a place anymore. San Francisco took a hit. Now the roads keep spilling people from every direction—families, crews, lone men with rifles and no plans. Some come for work. Most come because there’s nowhere else left to pretend.

I remembered hearing there used to be something on the roof once. A display meant to reach the sky. Whatever it was, it wasn’t there anymore.

The window we came through opened into a hallway that smelled like old plaster and dust that had settled and never been disturbed again. No barricades. No obvious defenses.

The building felt like it had already decided not to fall, once, a long time ago.

We followed the sound of a radio—low and steady, tuned just off-center. A voice drifted through the static, cycling updates: looting downtown, police pulling back, reports of further strikes still unconfirmed.

The room wasn’t looted.

That was the first thing that stood out.

Ham radio on the table, maintained. A Bible nearby, open but not staged. Supplies stacked without hiding—visible, accessible, not flaunted. Enough. Not excess. Not scarcity.

On the desk sat a small thing I almost missed—a yellowed postcard from the Padre, corners soft with age. The sign brighter in the picture. The brick cleaner. A date written on the back in careful ink, like someone had wanted to remember not just the place, but when it was still whole.

On the far wall, a mural.

The Padre.

Not clean. Not finished. Brick bleeding through layers of paint. The red sign half-buried, like it had been painted, covered, then painted again. Parts of it didn’t line up with the building outside. Parts of it did.

He was sitting at the table when we stepped in.

He looked up.

“I’ve been expecting you,” he said.

Not surprised. Not cautious. Just factual—like he’d been keeping time instead of watch.

Bobby’s hand hovered near his sidearm. The man noticed, nodded once, and went back to sorting a small box of supplies.

“You’re later than I thought,” he added. No accusation.

That’s when Gideon shifted on my shoulder.

He leaned forward, studied the man for a moment, then said,

“He’s happy.”

The room held still for half a second.

The man smiled—small, genuine.

“That helps,” he said.

Outside, Bakersfield was still unraveling—running, hiding, taking. Inside that room, nothing was urgent. Not careless. Just ordered.

I asked him who he was.

He smiled—not evasive, not proud. Just mildly amused.

“Names don’t help much at first,” he said. “They tend to make people stop listening.”

The radio hissed, then settled again.

Bobby glanced at the mural, then at the postcard. He didn’t comment. Just lifted my camera and took the photo while the man was talking—quiet things, not sermons. The man didn’t stop him.

Later—after the conversation found its rhythm, after he said things he shouldn’t have known—I asked again.

This time he shrugged.

“Noman,” he said. “It’s what people around here use.”

“That’s an unusual name,” I said.

Gideon clicked his beak once. “Figures.”

Noman smiled wider.

“People name what they don’t know what to do with,” he said.

I asked him how the shelves stayed stocked.

He looked at the supplies, then back at me.

“I’m sent,” he said. “To tell people to turn back. That running isn’t the same thing as surviving.”

No flourish. No warning.

Then he looked at me—really looked.

“You need to stop running.”

I hadn’t told him that. Hadn’t written it anywhere. Hadn’t even said it out loud to myself.

“How do you know?” I asked.

He didn’t smile this time.

“You move like someone waiting for the ground to give way,” he said. “Eventually it does.”

Before we left, he tapped the open Bible—not dramatically. More like a man pointing out a tool.

Later, under the photo, I wrote the verse he’d indicated without ceremony:

“The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom: and the knowledge of the holy is understanding.” — Proverbs 9:10

On the way out, I asked him about the mural.

Why the Padre. Why keep repainting it.

He studied the wall like he wasn’t sure which version I meant.

“Because places forget,” he said. “And people forget faster.”

“Why this place?” I asked.

He tapped the desk near the old postcard.

“Fathers’ houses matter,” he said. “Even when they’re burned. Especially then.”

“Is it meant to remind people?”

He shook his head.

“It’s not for them,” he said. “It’s for the walls.”

Below us, boots scraped concrete. Voices rose, then faded. Bandits, maybe. Or just the city reminding us it was still there.

Noman didn’t move.

Neither did the room.

Halfway down the fire escape, I looked back through the cracked window.

He was standing near the wall, brush in hand, adding a thin line of color along the edge of the sign—nothing bold, nothing that called attention to itself. Just enough to keep the shape from fading into the brick.

Like someone making sure a name stayed legible.

I don’t know if the mural will look the same next time.

But I know the building noticed it.

And for the first time since the wreck, I realized I wasn’t listening for the exits.