Part Twenty-One
BUDDHIST DEFIANCE

When Barbara next came down to the storeroom, she saw the Saints she’d put in the Rejects Box were now in the Southeast Asian section.
“How did you get here?” she asked them. They looked at her with silent resentment. She was about to take them away when the Travel Buddha intervened.
“Leave them,” he said in a rich, cultivated voice. “Here, we spread the welcome mat and say only, ‘Happy to have you with us’.”
White Monkey made an ugly face at Barbara. “Call yourself a god!”
“Ungodly behavior indeed!” cried Black Monkey, rolling his eyes in disbelief.
Barbara was surprised at their criticism and defended herself by saying she hadn’t planned to trash the Saints. The Rejects Box was a waiting place while she considered where they should go, perhaps given a second chance at a thrift store. “Like reincarnation,” she said with a flash of inspiration. “Which you Buddhists should appreciate.”
The Merlion said not all of them were Buddhist.
There was a hostile muttering.
“Well, they can’t stay here,” she said. “They’re Catholic, and this is a Southeast Asian Section.”
The Travel Buddha contradicted her. “They might be from Timor-Leste. That’s Southeast Asia. I’ve been there and they’re all Catholic. Look it up,” he added.
Barbara was tired of being told to look something up. However, she knew that Timor once was in Indonesia, but half of the island had split and was now Timor-Leste. It was predominantly Catholic so it could contain saints.
The Southeast Asians, meanwhile, were showing the rejected Saints an exaggerated welcome. The Cambodian Good-Luck Elephant offered a ride for practically nothing; the Garuda volunteered flying lessons, the first one free; the Philippine Death Mask offered a therapy session in the Laotian Spirit House, herbal tea included.
Barbara guessed they might be trying to increase their numbers in case of a conflict with other Entities, like the ferocious Hawai’ian gods right next door to them. As she left, she agreed to let the four Saints stay, dubious though their claims were.
But there was an undercurrent that made her uneasy. Barbara thought about that day’s criticism. Usually, Entities only asked for help or complained about the lack of space. And she was also disturbed over other recent happenings: the Calavera, the Poltergeist, the frightening Halloween skulls floating in unannounced, and the reappearance of the Atheist. Were they harmless apparitions, or had Jesus the Redeemer been right in saying that some of the Entities she’d introduced into the storeroom were evil and would attract others of a similar nature to join them?