buddha on the road

It was him!”
“I don’t think so, Matt. I think he was a bum.”
Jim sat down heavily. They were in the alley behind The Mandeville Hotel, where they’d walked on their way back to Aunt Lacie’s flat. Matt walked nearly every day, hoping the air and exercise could calm his overburdened soul.
In a doorway cut into the non-descript brick of the posh hotel’s rear wall they’d seen a man sitting cross-legged on a piece of cardboard. His bald head sat, fat and lumpy, over his shirtless chest and swollen belly. He was humming. To Matt he was a statue stuck in the niche of a cave somewhere in India.
Matt had run into the hotel and bought a bunch of flowers, determined to strew the petals at the feet of the idol in the alley. Then Jim had stopped him.
Now he paced at the end of the alley, lucidity trying to swim through the swamp of obsession, glancing back and forth between his brother and the doorway.
Jim looked up. “Look, I’m in no mood for this.” He ran his fingers over his short hair. “I’m sorry. I’m just tired. Tomorrow I’ll take you to the Buddhist Centre so you can meditate, OK? But just leave that man alone. Remember, ‘Thought-habits can harden into character. Guard your thoughts.’”
Matt crouched close to Jim. His lips moved, then he nodded. “Yes. ‘The way is in the heart.’ The Buddha also said that.” He glanced down the alley. “I’m just going to look at him.”
Buddha hadn’t moved at all. Matt knelt, prostrated himself before the seated man, his lips moving in prayer. Jim moved quickly down the cobblestones. Buddha’s eyes opened slowly.
“‘A man is not a good man simply because he is an able talker.’”
Jim stopped walking. Matt sat up, eyes wide, jaw slack.
“It is you,” he whispered. “Jim, it’s him!”
“Jim nodded. “Maybe, Matt, maybe. Let’s go, though. We need to think this over, right?”
“No, no,” Matt shook his head violently. “Master Lin Chi said, ‘If you meet the Buddha, kill the Buddha.’” He stood and kicked in one fluid motion.
Buddha’s head snapped back and an X-shaped cross of blood opened on his forehead. He made no effort to escape.
Now Jim was running, diving, tackling his brother, whose fingers were a vise on Buddha’s throat. The impact of Jim’s body tore Matt’s hands away and Buddha simply tipped sideways and rolled away like some carnival toy.
Jim sat up, holding Matt’s hands at his side. The Buddha was gone.
Matt screamed and ran toward the street, his head full of static and his heart drained.