CHAPTER ONE

 

King James White had spent his entire life on the west side of Indianapolis. Despite being funneled through Child Protective Services, in and out of homes – more out that in by his teenage years – he'd attended schools 109, and 107 (transferred to be a part of their advance placement curriculum because his high intelligence was noted despite his efforts) for his elementary years, 108 for Junior High School, and then Northwest High School for the couple years he could stand being in high school.

  The rhythms of this side of town were as familiar as the constellation of razor bumps along his neck. Exiting on the 38th Street ramp from I-465 – the highway loop that circled Indianapolis proper – he expected the same rotating cast of panhandlers. The homeless vets who couldn't quite pinpoint what war they were veterans of. The folks who needed money in order to get home, who turned down rides to said home. They swapped time with a woman whose sign told the tale of her being pregnant and homeless. The weather-faded backpack and mottled teddy bear wrapped in a blanket were nice touches, but she'd been "pregnant" for over two years now. When off shift, she or the vet or the lost couple were picked up by a van. Begging was just another way of life in the hustle.

  Turning east off the ramp took one to the corner of 38th and High School Road. Three of the corners of the intersection had gas stations on them. The fourth – the north-west corner – was a collection of store fronts. The Great Wok of China's kitchen caught on fire a few months back, the timing of which worked out well for the lingerie and marital aids store next door. The owner had been embezzling money and the new ownership was in place and was planning on relaunching the store with basically the same name with the letters jumbled, familiar yet different. The adjoining Karma record store would be down for a month or so. Folks would have to get their drug paraphernalia somewhere else for a time. The lot behind the store fronts was a deserted concrete slab built on a hill nicknamed Agned for reasons no one any longer remembered, enclosed by a Dairy Queen and a Shrimp Hut, thus free from casual prying eyes, especially so early on a Sunday morning.

  Though it was still Saturday night as far as Caul was concerned.

  In a North Carolina Tar Heels jacket, Caul stood a bulky seven foot five, towering over both King and his best friend, Lott Carey. Under a thicket of dirty hair, his eyes gleamed red in feral madness. A jagged keloid ran down his left cheek. His thick lips drew back to reveal teeth painted black within his wide mouth. Curiously, he had neatly trimmed fingers, except for the nail on his pinky which jutted out an inch and a half.

  "It's over, Caul." King cold-eyed the giant. Tall, though still easily a half-foot shorter than Caul, King wasn't overly muscled like one of those swollen brothers just out of prison. The sides of King's head were shaved clean. The top of his head in short twists, almost reminiscent of a crown. King let the wind catch his leather coat, allowing the handle of his golden Caliburn to be seen. A portrait of Marcus Garvey peeked from his black T-shirt. Skin the complexion of burnt cocoa. His eyes burned with a stern glint, both decisive and sure. His lips pursed, locked in a mission, as he focused on the task at hand. He stepped defiant and sure, confident without issuing a challenge. Though prepared to meet one if need be.

  "It ain't over, you Morpheus-looking motherfucker. You ain't po-po. You can't arrest nobody."

  Lott had told King he thought the sunglasses were too much. The weather was getting too warm to justify the leather coat. Still, King liked the look. Lott lowered his head to conceal an "I told you so" smirk.

  "I'm telling you to go." King put both his hands up, signing for everyone to just calm the hell down. He pitied the thugs he ran across more than anything else. Social outcasts masquerading as the definition of loner cool, no one would have them, not school, not family, not friends, not relationships. They didn't know how to connect, and in their loneliness they turned angry, little more than sullen children destroying what they couldn't have. In Caul's case, he terrorized the elderly during their grocery store runs, jacked people at ATMs, and harassed women going about their business. The final straw, he threatened King's girl, Lady G. King and Lott took a personal interest then.

  "You telling me something now? Don't think I didn't notice that you brought your boy."

  "Boy? I'll climb all over you like a spider monkey." Lott checked his watch to mark the time before his shift was due to start at FedEx. He hated to wear himself out before going to work, but when King asked, explaining the threats made to Lady G, his face went hot and he knew he'd call in sick if he had to.

  "Don't think that I can't snap your back over my knee and fuck the stump of you right here," Caul snarled. The keloid arched upward as if waving at King.

  "What is it with you people? Always talking about 'fucking' other dudes then say how they ain't gay," Lott said. "How player is that?"

  "It ain't gay if your eyes are closed," Caul said.

  "Is that how it works?"

  "A hole's a hole."

  "We don't want any more trouble. We just need you to move on–" King began.

  "Or what? You think I'm scared of you? Or your little gun? I've had guns pointed at me before. Been shot more times than I can count."

  "I'm thinking there's not too hard to get to," Lott said.

  Caul's world turned red. The heavy-lidded gaze of the fiend snapped to full fury. He hated when people assumed he was stupid. That just because he was large, he was also slow. His teachers had always treated him like the large simpleton taking up precious classroom space until the jails caught up with him. At some point, he bought into their beliefs about him and it angered him. But he stuffed that anger back onto itself, allowing indo smoke to chill him out most days. Today he needed to wipe that "better than you" grin off the tan-skinned one's face. With his FedEx uniform – as if that made him someone. Caul snarled and charged Lott without further comment.

  "It wasn't my fault," Caul said as he swung, to the ghosts only he knew.

  Skin the color of burnt butter, and with the delicate features of a male model playing at being thug, Lott danced out of the way of Caul's lumbering charge. True to his word, Lott skittered up Caul's back, wrapping his legs around the brute's chest while attempting to subdue him with a choke-hold. Caul cantered backwards, slamming Lott into the wall of the Wok of China. The air escaped from Lott with a sudden gasp.

  King's vision blurred the scene before him, shifting, merging with another scene as familiar as memory. Caul lumbered toward him, stumbling from the shadows of a massive cave. Past two great fires he strode toward King. The giant gnawed on the bone of a human clutched in one hairy hand. Blood smeared about his lips like barbecue sauce after a ribs repast. The dreamy déjà vu sensation annoyed King, like weed getting his head up at the most inopportune times. King shook his head to clear it, then jumped back, barely avoiding Caul's thrown punch.

  King ducked under the clumsy attack, cursing himself for an ill-thought-out strategy with no end game in mind. The fact that he and Lott's blood got so roiled at the idea of someone menacing Lady G was all but dismissed by the pair. The threat of the Caliburn was just that: an empty threat. King was loath to draw the weapon if the situation didn't warrant it. Ever since the Glein River incident. The weapon called when it demanded to be used. On its terms; any time else was an abuse. King threw a couple of quick jabs into the man's kidneys which seemed to annoy him more than anything else. What did he hope to accomplish? His only plan was to beat this man's ass under the guise of asking him to move on.

  The mistake most people made – it occurred to King as he stepped out of range of Caul's massive swipes while leading him away from a shaken Lott – was to use the same weapons against all enemies. There was nothing to be hoped for going toe-to-toe with Caul. That was fighting a superior foe on his terms. No, the only weapon against strength and size was smallness, stealth, and speed.

  As if reading from the same battle manual, Lott charged Caul, tackling him at the knees. The giant collapsed to his knees, catching himself before his head hit the concrete. Scrabbling for purchase, he hoped to wrench Lott into his grasp.

  King withdrew his Caliburn. The gold glistened in the early morning light. Lott's eyes widened. Caul turned, following Lott's gaze, his sight landing on the gun. Shifting his grip, King swung the weapon in a low arc, clocking Caul just above the temple.

  "So what do we do now?" Lott asked.

  "Call the police?" King examined the unconscious giant.

  "And say what? Where I come from, snitches get stitches."

  "Self-defense."

  "Trouble just seems to keep finding you."

  The morning had barely dawned.

 

A pair of New Balance tennis shoes – gray and mottled with mold – dangled from the overhead phone line. A schoolyard prank gone awry to the casual passer-by; an advertisement, or ominous warning and cause for alarm, to those more in the know. King sucked his teeth in disgust and wondered how long they had been there and if it were too late to stave off the attempted infection of his neighborhood. His philosophy was simple: if a community didn't take control of itself and one guy entered who could think, the community would have a problem. If people in the neighborhood took control, however, that guy knew he had opposition. Most times before he stood against opposition, he would leave for an unprepared, less-resistant neighborhood. Now, in LA or Gary, they might go toeto-toe with opposition. Not here. Not in Indianapolis. Not yet.

  "Back it up." King waved the Outreach Inc. van back a few more feet then held his palms up for it to stop. Armed with a broom, he jogged around to the front and hopped up along the hood to the roof in a limber movement.

  "This is stupid," Wayne said. Brushing back a few of his long braids which had fallen into his face, he turned all the way around, revealing a scar on the back of his neck. A tight knit shirt stretched across him, showing off the stocky build of a football player, with the light gait of someone who knew how to use their size should the necessity warrant. A quick smile broke up what otherwise would have been a hard face. "You better not leave any shoe prints up there."

  "A little work now prevents a huge, pain-in-thebehind worth of work down the road."

  Breton Drive separated the assemblage of townhouses of Breton Court from Jonathan Jennings Public School 109. The school was designated a zerotolerance zone and once Night's drug crew had been dismantled, it was one in deed as well as word. King stared at the shoes as if they personally mocked him.

  "It's a pair of shoes."

  "It's a declaration," King said. "Says someone intends on dealing out of here soon. It's a set-up notice. Well, message received. Now we're sending one back."

  "Yeah, throw up a pair of tennis shoes and see how many brothers it takes to take them down."

  "Two. One to do the work and another to wear his ass out with complaining about it." King waved the broom handle about, a blind conductor directing an unseen orchestra. Eventually one of his haphazard swings connected with the shoes and they tumbled free. "There. Now they know. You try to set up shop in this neighborhood, there are folks around here who care enough to stop it."

  "Uh huh. If you close your eyes, you can hear your applause."

  "Come on." King gathered the shoes, holding them with two fingers well away from him. "We going to be late."

 

Fumbling for change, Percy emptied out his pockets, carefully counting out each penny with great deliberation. Percy tipped nearly three bills. Droplets of sweat swelled, coalesced, and then ran as a trickle down the darker knot above his left eyebrow. In the shape of a crescent moon, the keloid etched his burnt mochacomplected skin. He huffed with anxiousness under the weight of the eyes of the man behind the cash register of the Hoosier Pete convenience mart. The line behind him now ran three customers deep, with the bell on the door jangling as more people entered the gas station convenience store. A stack of Giant Sweet Tarts piled in front of him, his nervousness increased as he glanced at the total on the cash register and then his quickly dwindling pile of change. The pennies eventually stopped. Twelve cents short. Percy stepped back dumbfounded as if a set of equations didn't equal out.

  "Come on, man. You see him all the time. You know he good for it," an older man said, dressed in an offwhite hat with matching shirt and slacks with a pair of sandals. Old-school casual. A toothpick protruded from his mouth, a cup of coffee and a newspaper filled his hands.

  "Nah, it's all right. I'll put something back." Percy's downcast eyes rarely met anyone's gaze.

  "No, it ain't all right. It's not the point," Old School said.

  "He not have it, he put something back. It's only twelve cents." The Indian cashier had witnessed variations of this scene every day. In a few minutes, he'd be due to be cussed out. Maybe called a sand nigger, despite being born in an Indianapolis suburb. Or told that his mother should have aborted him; that was, when he wasn't being accused of having sexual congress with her. He knew it was coming and the reality of the scene playing out again frustrated him.

  "That's my point. It's only twelve cents."

  "Twelve cents is twelve cents," the cashier said. He pulled at his black-streaked white beard. Weary eyes drifted from Percy to the lengthening line. He knew it was pointless to reason with people once they built up a head of steam, but he went through the motions anyway. "He short twelve cents. I let that go. You short twelve cents. I let that go. By end of day, no more shop."

  "Leave that boy alone. You see he simple," another voice cried from behind Old School.

  Percy grabbed a pack of Giant Sweet Tarts, but was told to put it down. This was about principle now. The rising hostility in the shop rattled Percy. Each face a mirror of anger, distrust, and resentment. Everyone was just so… mad. He felt bad for the man behind the cashier and searched his pockets again hoping he missed a quarter.

  "Your shop is in our neighborhood," Old School said. "No more customers means no more shop, too. You move in here, happy enough to take our money out of the neighborhood, but you can't be bothered to be a part of it."

  The Indian man trembled with his own missing rage. Uncertain eyes, not wanting any trouble, also didn't want to be cheated. The constant accusations, the constant attempts of folks to get over on him; the constant vigilance exhausted him. They didn't see their machinations as attempts to take food out of his family's mouths. The ugly mood in the neighborhood had been building for weeks now. This was why he bought a gun.

  "Look at you. Even now I bet you think we going to rob you. Typical." Old School sipped from the coffee he hadn't yet purchased.

  "This is bullshit. We regulars, too," the agitated customer behind him amened. "Can't you be bothered to know us?"

  "Fellas, fellas… it's all right. I got it." The name badge on the arm of the FedEx uniform read "Lott Carey" and featured a grill-revealing smile. A thick, navy-colored sweatshirt over matching pants, the uniform had the formality of one having donned armor in preparation to joust. Lott strolled toward the front of the line with his pimp-roll strut for all the eyes to see. Obviously pleased with his "swooping in like a superhero saving the day" entrance moment, his smile showed off the row of faux gold caps which grilled his teeth.

  "Thanks, Lott." Percy shoveled his candy into his about-two-sizes-too-small jacket.

  The Indian gentleman took the quarter with a sigh of relief and handed the change to Percy, who then pocketed it.

  Lott watched his change go into Percy's pocket but didn't say anything. "Come on, we going to be late."

 

Despite the elbows pummeling her side – and the mad screeching of what sounded like a cat being slowly lowered into a wood chipper – Big Momma was slow to wake. Her eyes fluttered, spot-checking the rising sun against the accusing red glow of the night stand clock's numbers. With the care of not wanting to crush a newborn, she rolled over. The boy wailed, locked in a nightmare, and thrashed about beside her. She pulled her night gown tighter around her, conscious of the possibility of her heavy bosom spilling out.

  "Had! Had, boy, wake up. It's OK, it's OK. Momma's here. Momma's here." She shushed the boy awake, reassuring him while guiding him from whatever nocturnal terror lay in wait for him each night. The boy's eyes focused with a hint of recognition, though Big Momma was rarely certain about what actually flitted through the ten year-old's addled mind. Had's mother smoked crack while pregnant, increasing her habit as it went along as if medicating herself through the pregnancy. The effects of which played out like a sad movie across his sullen face. His somber brow furrowed, fine crease lines worried into his head.

  With Pokémon characters splayed all along them, the pajamas seemed wholly too young for him, yet fit him both physically and mentally. The brightness of the clothes only made his dark skin appear that much darker. He popped his thumb into his mouth and began to suck.

  "Help me, Lord. Lord Jesus help me." Big Momma drew up her sheet. Holes began to wear through the threadbare material. She made do, treating them gently and kept neat, because she wouldn't be buying new ones for a while. Poverty was no excuse to not carry her head high. She threw the sheets from her and sat up, checking the curlers in her head. Thankful he was awake but quiet, she left Had in the bed. Her bones grated with her first morning steps as she eased into her day with a resigned sigh. The floorboard creaked under her uneasy waddle. She poked her head in Lady G's room only to see clothes slung along the headboard of the bed, perhaps to dry. The piles littered the floor without any discernible pattern except maybe to be able to know where all of her earthly belongings were in case she had to scoop and run. But it had been months and Lady G had neither scooped nor run.

  Each step brought a huff as she descended in a sideways canter. Black smudges trailed along the wall. Creating a mental to-do list for that weekend, she'd have to scrub them and tell the kids to use the banister like they were supposed to. She ambled along the plastic runner from the door through the living room. Faded family photos and Polaroids hung on the wall next to a painting of a very European and beatific Jesus. Plastic covered her couches. Folding chairs centered around a large television. Toys littered the floor. Crayons rested on a beat-up coffee table. Gospel music played from the kitchen, always Mahalia Jackson. The kitchen still smelled of chicken and macaroni from the previous night's dinner. Cereal boxes, cookies, and bags of chips lined the top of the refrigerator.

  Lady G wiped her hands on a towel then placed it back on the oven door. A pink bandana tied her hair back. She pulled the sleeves of her black hoodie back down her arms. Black jeans led to black-trimmed pink boots. The remaining dishes from the sink were now dried and stacked nicely on a rack on the wiped-down counter. A few acne bumps dotted her forehead, red and swollen against her toffee-colored skin. Before Big Momma could step fully into the kitchen, Lady G turned her back to shield the view of her hands.

  "Had awake?" Lady G pulled her fingerless gloves over her burn-scarred hands.

  "Boy's going to send me to an early grave." Big Momma paused out of respect. Folks had secrets and shames, stuff they either weren't ready to talk about or would never talk about. There was no point in pressuring them with crowding them or leaving them without the space to protect their dignity. She averted her eyes by pretending to fuss about her day's clothes. "You up awful early."

  "I already ironed your good blouse," Lady G said. "Started coffee. Got breakfast ready."

  "I know I got no right this morning." Big Momma didn't have much by way of too many rules, but she didn't want to be taken advantage of. Everyone had to pitch in somehow, if not rent or bill money, then helping out around the house. No one lived free because life was about handling your responsibilities. Big Momma picked up the blouse in faux inspection. She sniffed the shirt, enjoying its freshly starched smell. When she took Lady G in, she wanted no more than to give the girl someplace stable. She had a lot to give, seeds scattered and sometimes they fell in thorny places, like with Prez (oh, that boy broke her heart) and sometimes the soil was fertile and grew up quickly. Like with Lady G. "But can I ask one more thing?"

  "You always got the right." Lady G was one of the rare ones. She wasn't as hard as she believed she was. Hard, yes, because a child shouldn't have to live the way she had had to or see the things she'd had. Still, she wasn't through-and-through hard, the kind of hard that used up all the good and innocent inside. No, Lady G still had an innocence she protected, a vulnerability she treasured.

  "Can you get Had washed and dressed?"

  "Sure thing, Big Momma."

  Had was a new case. He slipped in behind Big Momma to a bowl Lady G filled with cereal. Tipping the bowl to his mouth, he lapped noisily from it, all smacking lips and deep-throated gurgles. The little boy was a set of wide, inquisitive eyes over the rim of the bowl. His head seemed two sizes too big for his body. He stopped mid-slurp, as if aware for the first time that others were in the room.

  "He's always just made those noises ever since you took him in," Lady G said.

  "The sound of leftover nightmares, girl." Big Momma checked the wall clock. "Look at the time. Go ahead and go on, girl. You going to be late."

"What about Had?" "Never mind. I got him. You go."

 

The days of the week blurred into a dismal sameness, but Sundays broke them out of their lethargy. This day was one with a spell cast on it, all blue skies and cutting chill. The Outreach Inc. van pulled up in front of one of the row homes which led to Breton Court.

  "Right here, man." King pointed to the side of the road.

  "You sure about this?" Wayne slumped forward on the steering wheel.

  "We stop the little things, the big things take care of themselves."

  "Looks to me like you trying to tackle big things, little things, and everything in between." Wayne checked his watch and thought to himself: we settle more ghetto mess before 9am than most people do all day. He pushed against the driver's seat, which sighed as he exited.

  King opened his door without glancing back, purposeful and focused, and walked with that determined saunter of his. Directly to the second door from the end. He rapped five times, loud, but not a po-po knock. A plumpish woman, short but unintimidated, cold-eyed him.

  "Excuse me, ma'am. I need to see you and your husband."

  "What is it?" She wrapped her shawl around her tighter, about to get her church on, as she sized him up. She fixed a hard but without attitude mask on her face, her mood preparing to be potentially fouled by this busybody, do-gooder type who was probably used to his looks getting doors opened for him.

  "Your son, he was down paintballing the candy lady's house. He needs to get down there and clean it up."

  "DeMarcus? Get over here, boy." Pipe-cleaner arms ducked behind his mother. Ten years old if a day, unsure of the stranger at the door and instinctively seeking shelter behind his formidable mother. "This man says you out shooting up a woman's house with that paint gun of yours."

  "Wasn't me." The words sputtered out as reflex. He stared without shame at King.

  "Don't lie to me, boy," his mother said, used to coaxing the truth or at least navigating the lies of boys.

  "Before we get po-po out here. Clean it up or FiveO." King met the boy's eyes. Treating him like a man capable of accepting responsibility for his actions. He had to catch them while they were young. "Which one he want?"

  "I'm sorry, Momma." The voice was barely audible.

  "What you do that for?" The mother grabbed him by the shoulders, more embarrassed than anything else.

  "That old lady was talking crazy to me," the boy whispered, cornered by truth.

  "So you go down and tear up her house?" King pressed.

  "Thanks, we got this." The mother's still-respectful tone didn't invite dispute.

  "Got my eye on you. Be checking on that house tomorrow," King said as a parting reminder to DeMarcus.

  "You too much, man," Wayne said as they turned up the corner heading toward their actual destination.

  "What do you mean?"

  "You too much. What a brother can't ease up for nothing?" Wayne nodded up the way to the figure approaching them. "Lookee here, lookee here."

  Poured into her jeans, braless beneath her halter top, her sashay had men erect from half a block away, Rhianna Perkins sauntered up. Always down for a party, a party that needed to be paid for when it was over, her eyes glimmered with recognition. Her hair flared, interlocked locklets in need of re-twisting. Despite the swell of her belly, she carried herself with a fierce sexiness. Upon closer inspection, her worn, bruised skin added a hint of purple to her sepia complexion. Something about her easy crocodile smile made her appear much older than her sixteen years.

  "When you gonna come see about me?" she asked.

  "I do. I never forgot about you. You're still part of our neighborhood," King said. "We got to all pull together."

  "You all harambee like a motherfucker now." She licked her lips as if appraising a freshly prepared plate of filet mignon. "I know, you gone all crusader now."

  "Just a man on a mission."

  "You never struck me as a missionary man. Lady G don't give it up easy, so it must get lonely. Maybe I can help."

  Scenes like this normally amused Wayne. King was a visionary type. It wasn't as if he considered himself above other people, he just wasn't as much a man of the people as he liked to believe he was. He was so caught up in how things ought to be, the behavior of people often left him confused. So whenever he was confronted with a situation he couldn't talk or punch his way out of, he was left with an awkwardness with belied his level cool. However, the sight of Rhianna hurt both of their hearts. The daily reality they had to relearn was that not everyone could or wanted to be saved.

  "Come on now, sister. You better than this."

  "I'm just open about what I do. Those other girls do dirt, too, they just like to hide it."

  King had a reputation for being largely indifferent to women. Most blamed his break-up with his baby's momma and his subsequent estrangement from his daughter, Nakia. Yet, despite his protestations and the various walls he'd built around himself, Lady G got under his skin and invaded his heart like a hostile takeover. She held his interest and attention in a way few women had. And part of him feared that in the sharing of this tiny part of himself, he had done something dangerous. Which he had, for her. Lady G. King was drawn to her and she to him. He decided to risk loving Lady G, then and always.

  "Come on, man," Wayne said, "let's get inside."

  The Church of the Brethren was a victim of a spate of local fires. Fire investigators suspected drug addicts illegally squatting. Without the necessary insurance to rebuild, the standalone building was left as little more than a warehouse lot. Burn marks scored the edges of the sallow, off-white façade. Sheets of plywood – with the date of its condemnation spray-painted across it – served as the door. The stain glass windows above the doors remained intact. Off-white and yellow painted wood mixed with brick which had been equally painted, marred by scorch marks.

  "I heard what you did down at Badon Hill," Wayne said.

  "What'd I do?" King pulled at the rear door, the nails of the board pulling free with ease.

  "Brought down another gang trying to get a stranglehold in the neighborhood."

  "Man, I haven't done half the stuff they say I've done," King said.

  "That's how legends get born."

  "That's how fools get dead."

  "If that's the case, we in the right place."

  The inside of the building had been gutted, the stripped, water-damaged walls and seared columns stood revealed like charred bones. The remains of a soot-covered choir loft split down the middle before toppled pews which couldn't be salvaged. Black rocks scattered across the floor, like fossilized cockroaches. A giant cable spool commanded the center of the room.

  "No chairs?" Wayne asked.

  "No coffee and donuts either. We ain't going to be here that long, so I figured we could stand. I just thought it was important that we met."

  "A symbol, good and round. You think like a king." Merle scratched his thigh, abating the itch of whatever had crawled on him during the night. The old man had his back to them though he seemed to appear out of nowhere. Unlike King's leather jacket, Merle wore a long black raincoat whose lining had been removed. A tall man, but the coat hung loosely on him, like a scarecrow lost within a blanket. A cap made of aluminum foil crowned his head. He stroked tufts of his scraggily reddish beard as he searched about the room as if he had whispered something.

  "Each of us has a role to play," King continued, unperturbed.

  "What's his? Minister of Drunken Crazy Talk?" Wayne asked.

  "Hand holder. Life guider. Purpose pointer. Gift shaper," Merle said.

  "Ass painer."

  "Hold up. Here come the others," King said.

  King didn't need to even turn to know Lady G had come into the room. His heart knew and leapt at her presence. His mood, so fierce and dark before, lifted like a breeze blowing away storm clouds. A shock ran up his body, his breath shortened in shivering excitement. In the same way, when she left a room, his world grew a little bleak.

  Percy ducked under the door entrance. King didn't know what to do with him. Everywhere they went, the big boy-man was there. Not quite underfoot, but always around. He meant well, knew the players, and had a heart to match his girth, but King wondered if that was enough.

  Lott trailed in Percy's wake, his head bobbing as he walked. His face only betrayed his thoughts if you knew what you were looking at. He studied the structure with an eye toward its integrity, possible ways it could be attacked, and escape routes. A quiet, pensive man with a restless heart, and who often let moments pass when asked a question, unafraid to allow an intimidating silence to build. Connected, instant and deep, King and Lott shared a strange kind of intimacy, a wary bond of old friends. Their shadows clashed against the wall like black swords.

  "What you listening to?" Lady G made room for Lott next to her. She thought him too much of a roughneck pretty boy, but she put fingers on his arm as he sat down, an innocent, friendly gesture. He hesitated, a slight hitch to his movement before he sat down. Part of her enjoyed the effect it had on him.

  "Going old school. Something King turned me on to."

  Lott pulled the earphones from his ears and plugged his iPod into a set of speakers he withdrew from his backpack. The gentle strains of the Impressions' "It's All Right" began.

  "Oh yeah." Lady G closed her eyes and gyrated to the building groove.

  "All right now." King joined them.

  Wayne took a seat around the makeshift table, then patted the spot next to him for Percy to join him. Wayne was always partial to Percy, reminding him of one of his brothers. Wayne carried around a silence with him. They all had pain in common, each of them with that bit of them which remained closed off. It reared itself, a creeping shadow, whenever the topic of brothers or family came up. A set jaw, clenched teeth, a determined silence. Resolute. Final. A pain unspoken.

  An awkward lumber into place, Percy glanced around with a huge grin – the joy of acceptance – on his face. He wished Rhianna were here to see this. He studied the others for a moment as if gathering the nerve to fall in with their swaying.

  Merle stood on the outside allowing them to take their seats. It wasn't his role to sit among them.

  Without comment or planning, everyone chimed in on the chorus. "It's all right to have a good time, cause it's all right." Looking around at each other, they burst into a fit of laughter. It was a perfect moment.

  "We a band of misfits," Lady G said.

  "Surely the flower of the ghetto," Merle said.

  "So what we doing here, King?" Wayne sniffed, though he otherwise ignored Merle.

  "It's kind of like a brain-storming session. Trying to figure out our next move." King rubbed the back of his head, letting the coarse stubble across his neck scrape his fingertips. The razor bumps read like Braille, but he was due to get his cut trimmed up. Lady G could handle the twists. "We need to go bigger."

  "Why us?" Lott asked.

  "Why not us? If everyone kept asking that question, nothing would ever get done. I want us to be about something. A mission. Be about granting mercy and stopping murders. Defending and honoring women rather than using and degrading them. I want to end the fighting. I want to quit letting our community poison itself."

  "You want to take the ghetto out of black folk," Wayne said.

  Everyone chuckled except King. He wore the pained expression of not being taken seriously. Maybe he did dream too large. The wasted lives of good people troubled him; even if that was the life they chose for themselves, he couldn't help but pity them. Good people. Drugs were here to stay. Like cigarettes and alcohol, it was only a matter of time before the government and laws made their peace with them. Until then, someone was going to service the demand. Which meant gangs were here to stay, too. These were times of crises and opportunity.

  "It's absurd to build a tower atop of two combating dragons. Such was Vortigern's error," Merle said.

  "We need to do more." If King heard the doomful note in Merle's prophecy, he ignored it. He wasn't quite in the mood to divine if Merle spat out gibberish or was obliquely providing one of his lessons. Either way, it was less trouble to simply move on. That was King's way.

  "We?" Wayne asked. "We been tearing around all over town. Feels like we the only firemen in a city full of brush fires."

  "Why do we do the work of the gendarmes?" Merle asked.

  "Ain't that why we pay their salaries? What's my tax dollars getting me?" Wayne asked.

  "Like you've ever paid taxes," Lott said.

  "To Caesar, render unto Caesar. And to all a good night," Merle said.

  "It's not enough." King raised his voice to cut through the burgeoning chaos. "I don't think we've made a bit of difference."

  "What do you want us to do?" Wayne asked. "Keep in mind, I'm on full-time with Outreach Inc. now. They got me going into schools, building relationships with kids, trying to get them on the right track. Lott here just got promoted at FedEx. Finally getting a decent shift. And Lady G is earning her GED and preparing for college."

  "I know. Damn it. It's just not enough."

  "Come on, King." Lady G took his hand. With her touch, he began to calm down. "Let's take a walk."

  Locked in dark thought, King believed dreams to be important. Merle more so. His dreams lingered with him, coming unbidden between moments. Snatches of images. Dragons took to the air against smoke-filled skies. Razed buildings. Cars on fire. Only the occasional person seen running. Like an owl on a field mouse, a dragon swooped down and gobbled them in a single swallow. Slick and coiled, serpents writhed, their bodies filling the streets, crushing everything in their path. Their sides bulged with digesting bodies. The grass slick with blood, men fought with futility, their hollowed faces tired of grieving. The dragons and serpents crowded the land and kept coming. Inexorable.

  It was why King rarely slept and drove himself and those around him so hard. Each day brought a new task. A new crew to get information on. A new openair market to disturb with his presence. A new head to bust if things got out of hand. Lott especially warmed to the task, loving to fight. Given a just cause, he perfectly rationalized his violence.

  Wayne, however, wanted no part of that; and the blind relish the two of them took to their operation, the more uncomfortable he became. They were an unchecked fire and inevitably, the wrong person would be caught up in it. King felt responsible, burdened, and now refused to hear advice. Not Wayne's. Not Merle's.

  "King is kind of closed off." Wayne watched King and Lady G skulk off. "I've known him longer than anyone. The man is a living wall." They were on the verge of something, something potentially transformative. Wayne sensed it and wanted to be a part of it, but hated the hound-dog way King sometimes carried himself. There was a fine line between being real and being seen as weak. And this was an inauspicious start to whatever it was King had planned.

  "Child of the morning, I have the same old wound," Merle said, "but I believe he is the right man."

  "Something made him hard. He guards himself and won't let anyone in. I know that I'm his boy and all, just like I know King is ride or die," Wayne absently brushed dirt from the table, not wanting to meet anyone's eyes. "Not to go all female or anything, but I have no emotional sense that King even cares about us."

  "It's not good for brothers to fight one another."

 

The moody silence allowed King a retreat to his grim thoughts as he locked himself away in darkness. He grew sickened by his own rage. The hallway led from what was once the church foyer to what was once the nursery. Charted memory verses littered the wall. A pictogram of a white Noah on a huge boat, animals popping out from all over, sailed merrily across a sea of blue. Forty days and forty nights, God sent the waters to flood the earth to cleanse it of all unrighteousness. That was probably the only time the land knew peace. The kids sang a story about Noah collecting animals two by two. All King pictured was all the dead bodies the storm left in its wake.

  "What are you doing, King?" Lady G slipped her hand into his and rested her head on his shoulder.

  "You know what I'm doing. I'm trying to make a difference."

  "Right. All cause a raggedy homeless guy says you have a grand destiny. An important role to play."

  "We all do."

  "I know, baby. But…" Lady G took his delicate, knobbed hands and ran hers along them. "You all over the place. You run from this to that, no rhyme or reason, just always running. Just caught up in the idea of being important. You don't have a plan. You don't have an endgame. It's like as long as you keep moving, keep doing, that's enough for you. You don't see how lost you are."

  King only half-listened to what she said. He took comfort more in the idea of her. The warmth of her hand. The realness of her proximity. King saw himself taking shape in her eyes. She made him braver, more sure. Everything simply made sense when she was around. The two understood each other if neither knew why. Years of solitude made them secretive, selfprotected, with that closeted fear that the more they revealed about themselves, the more folks won't like them. Years of pain and scars haunted them. Maybe they simply recognized the reflections of their own haunted expressions in each other's eyes. All he knew was that she held his demons at bay. She was the light to his dark. When he gazed into her eyes, he saw the faithful and honorable man he wished to be. They worked. But he couldn't escape the feeling that they weren't real.

  "What do you suggest?" King asked.

  "When was the last time you spoke to Pastor Winburn?"

  The name caught him off guard. He couldn't even remember mentioning him to her. In a lot of ways, King was raised by Pastor Ecktor Winburn, the father he thought he wanted.

  "I ain't spoke to him in a minute," King said in halting measures.

  "Don't you think it's about time?"

  "Do you?" King asked.

  "I only want one thing."

  "What's that?"

  "For you to be true to yourself and come home safe."

  "Go on off to school." King squeezed her hand.

  "Bye, love." She raised their entwined hands and kissed them.

  "Bye, baby."