Goines On: Relics

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Goines thought he spotted a vacant handicap parking spot near the head of the row nearest Walmart’s grocery entrance. As he approached the spot, a huge rear-window version of the “JESUS SAVES” sign accosted him from a large dark vehicle in the top spot.
    Goines took a photo of the rear window, feeling strangely subversive, as though he were doing surveillance and being observed doing so, if not by a Walmart security camera then perhaps by a local police officer in the patrol car parked across the road alongside the store front between the two entrances.

    Somewhat surreptitiously, Goines checked each side of the vehicle, finding as he expected a smaller version of the sign on either side.
    He wondered vacantly whether the vehicle belonged to the man in the Sunday suit he had seen carrying a tent version of the sign inside the store a week or two earlier. And Goines remembered he had never tried to find out whether Walmart sold the sign, having dismissed the idea as preposterous. But if the man had been granted this top spot to display the sign – all day, every day?....
    Was that even legal? What was that police car doing over there? Goines dismissed the thought of asking the officer about local ordinances concerning advertising in store parking lots. To ask would be mere banter, like joking with the officer, and Goines didn’t feel like it. He had been sick for a week and was out shopping only because the Goineses really needed a few things. A dozen eggs, some more bananas, a couple of gallons of distilled water.
    Wryly, Goines wondered whether the man considered the reddish stains on the “JESUS SAVES” sign to be relics of the crucifixion.

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