The Glein/River Incident
All stories ended in death.
Lost in the white noise of the
engine, that was the first thing that popped into King James
White's mind as he idled down 16th Street. Sitting tall and
straight in the car seat, he shifted uncomfortably, visibly
muscled, but not with the dieseled appearance of prison weight. A
head full of regal twists fit for a crown, he had the complexion of
burnt cocoa and fresh crop of razor bumps ran along his neck. The
thin trace of a goatee framed his mouth. He scanned the streets
with a heavy gaze, both decisive and sure. He hated driving and
doing so put him in a foul mood. Not a gearhead by any measure, he
neither had oil in his blood nor an overwhelming need to be under a
hood. For that matter, he didn't have any love for huge rides,
trues and vogues, ostentatious rims, booming systems, or any of the
other nonsense which seemed to accompany a love of cars. A ride was
just a ride. He much preferred walking, to have the earth solidly
under his feet.
His ace, Lott, who rode silently
beside him, simply believed him to be cheap, not wanting to pay the
nearly $3 per gallon unless he absolutely had to. Lott always
seemed a week past getting his low cut fade tightened up. His large
brown eyes took in the passing scenery. His FedEx uniform – a thick
sweatshirt over blue slacks; his name badge, "Lott Carey" with a
picture featuring his grill-revealing smile, wrapped around his arm
– girded him like a suit of armor. Lott drummed casually to
himself, caught up in the melodies in his head.
Scrunching down in his seat again
to check the skyline – as if maybe the creature might fly by in the
open sky line by day – King turned at the sound of a beat being
pounded out on the dashboard.
"What?" Lott paused mid-stroke
under the weight of King's eyes on him.
"What you doing?"
"Nothing." Lott grinned his sheepish, "been caught" smile, both beguiling and devilish. A row of faux gold caps grilled his teeth.
"We supposed to be looking for this thing."
"We don't even know what this thing is."
"What you doing?"
"Nothing." Lott grinned his sheepish, "been caught" smile, both beguiling and devilish. A row of faux gold caps grilled his teeth.
"We supposed to be looking for this thing."
"We don't even know what this thing is."
"What kind of man would I be if I
ignored that?" King asked.
"A man. An ordinary
man." Lott began drumming again. "Ain't nothing wrong with
that."
For days King trailed a beast
strictly on the say so of a mother's plea. Not even a year ago,
he'd have dismissed the tale as another barber shop story told to
pass the time, little more than a campfire story in the hood. The
only monsters who prowled about in the dark were strictly of the
two-legged variety. That was before he found himself caught up in a
new story. One filled with magic, trolls, elementals, and dragons.
The shadow world, an invisible world, once seen couldn't be unseen.
Now the world of demons and creatures was far too real. All he
knew, all he had sworn, was that nothing would prey upon the weak
and defenseless in his neighborhood.
Descriptions of the creature
changed with the teller of the tale. Sometimes it had wings.
Sometimes the body of a lion. Sometimes it had the body of a snake.
Sometimes claws. King feared he might be dealing with more than one
creature, which was equally as bad an alternative to facing one
creature with all of those characteristics. Even in a concrete
jungle, life belonged to the swift, the strong, the smartest. King
stalked among it, the latest generation of street princes. And
heavy was the head that wore the crown.
"We heading over to Glein?" Lott
asked in his lazy drawl, obviously pleased with himself. He loved
accompanying King on his little missions.
"That where the Harding Street
bridge folk ended up?"
"As long as the problem is swept
under someone else's rug, the mess is considered clean."
"I think so. Been hearing reports
about it. Been wanting to check out this 'tent city.'" For his
part, King was energized by Lott. It was like there was nothing he
couldn't accomplish with Lott by his side. King the pressure piled
on more these days. Everyone seemed to turn to him for answers. To
solve their problems. The streets were becoming his even moreso
than they were his father, except he hated the sheer…
responsibility of it all.
Lott rolled with it all. The
FedEx gig was working out. The company would be promoting him soon
and he'd get a better shift. His story, too, had changed much in
only a few in an abandoned house. He had a job with a future. And,
for the first time he could remember, he had a friend who'd walk
through fire for him, one for whom he'd do the same. Lott wasn't
one to swear oaths to allegiances to anyone, but once he called
someone friend, he was loyal to the end. And King was his
boy.
King wasn't the type to make
friends easily. Investing in people wasn't worth the effort: in the
end, they all abandoned him. A melancholy cloud had settled on King
over the last few months, but it wasn't anything either felt the
need to talk about. Not every little feeling had to be talked
through. Sometimes it was better to just let folks be.
They continued west on 16th
Street passing Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, Methodist Hospital,
and the Indiana State Forensics Laboratory. On Aqueduct Street,
they pulled into a gravel lot. Signs pointed toward the Water
Company, but they were more interested in the park across the
street. Calm and resolute, King stood motionless, taking in the
tranquility. His tall and regal bearing swathed in a trenchcoat,
matching his black jeans and black Chuck Taylors. The wind caught
his open coat ever so slightly, the brief flutter the only
movement, revealing the portrait of Medgar Evers on his T-shirt.
And the butt of his Caliburn tucked into his waist. And he never
looked more lonely.
Only a few nights ago, they
cleared a corner. It was one of those little runs King didn't tell
Wayne Orkney – the other member of their triumvirate, who was also
on staff at a homeless teen ministry called Outreach Inc – nor his
mentor, Pastor Ector Winburn, about. The grumbles of their
disapproval of his off the book runs would echo in his ears for
weeks.
But Lott would be all
in.
For all of his bravado and
certainty whenever he went about his business, King needed someone
to watch his back. To Lott, he wasn't Robin to King's Batman, but
rather Batman to King's Superman. He rather reveled in that
image.
Dred, though eastside hadn't been
heard from; Night, once king of the west side, had been dropped by
King (so the story went). The Eagle Terrace apartments bordered,
but was a respectful distance from, Breton Court, King's undisputed
dominion. A couple of non-descript fools, in baggy t-shirts and
baggier pants who couldn't have been more than fourteen years old,
not even a hard fourteen. Lott could practically smell their
mother's milk on their breath. The first one leaned toward tall, a
little bulk about the shoulders but with thin legs, like a
basketball player growing into his body. A threat from the waist
up, it was a dead giveaway that he'd found a set of weights and
concentrated on his arms and never worked his legs. The other was
short, stocky, with brown eyes too big for his head. Too quick to
show his teeth, he cracked endless jokes about doing the other's
girls heedless of the fact that he was on the clock. And that two
brothers who meant business stepped to them from the
shadows.
"You gonna have to move on," King
said with no play in his voice.
"This is our spot. Who gonna move
us?" the tall one said. His head had been filled with how good
he was, the tone of entitlement in his voice.
"I am."
"I know you?"
"Name's King. Don't make me tell you again."
"I am."
"I know you?"
"Name's King. Don't make me tell you again."
He'd said it and he meant it.
King wasn't much older than either of them, but he had the hard and
tested body of a man. As it was, it wasn't a fair fight. Lott hung
back, mostly to enjoy the show and guard for the unexpected. But
these two boys? King had this.
The lanky one turned as if to
walk a way, but King read the positioning of his feet and the
shifting of his weight to know that the fool planned to swing on
him. When the boy pivoted to throw his punch in "surprise," King
jabbed him in the kidneys, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed
him onto the hood of a parked car. King had a way of blazing in and
dropping fools before they knew what hit them.
A grin had broken and then froze
on the face of the other boy. He reached under his shirt tail. King
drew his Caliburn and trained it on the boy. Whenever he pulled out
the
Caliburn, folks knew what was up.
"You got something you want to
show me?"
"No," the boy slowly dropped his
hand to his side.
"Good, cause I'm only saying this
once. This here was a friendly warning. Our neighborhood is
tired of this mess. So why don't you give it a rest. We
cool?"
"We cool."
"We cool."
Lott reached into the boy's waist
band and removed the Colt. He emptied it of its bullets and tossed
the weapon into the bushes. "I didn't want any surprises should he
scrap together some courage as we walked away."
King and Lott walked down the
alley of the apartments nodding but not smiling to the folks they
recognized. The respect left Lott so swoll, more so than any
workout; respect born out of the work, of doing right by the
neighborhood.
"You a good man."
King trained himself to keep full
reign on his emotions. Prided himself on his ability to
compartmentalize, remain objective, and disciplined. Some mistook
it for aloof or indifferent, as if he didn't care, but Lott knew he
cared too much.
With the Caliburn tucked into his
dip, King adjusted his stride. He rolled his shoulders slightly,
like a boxer entering a ring. Though it fit in his hand with a
natural ease, as if he was always meant to wield it, he was still
getting used to it.
"You need that?" King asked as
Lott retrieved a bat from the back seat.
"Ain't all of us got weapons
tucked in their shorts."
"Don't be jealous. It's not the
size."
"When that thing busts a cap all
premature, don't come limping to me."
A hill rolled down from the
street leading into an impenetrable tract of trees, a scenic
backdrop to the park. Lott put on his pimp roll strut for all eyes
to see as he moved toward the bridge. His was a puffed up
exaggerated gait accompanied by a cool blank stare, his face locked
into a grimace of put on hostility purposefully designed to make
old ladies clutch their purses and white suburbanites cross the
street if they were in his path. He always saw himself as a wrong
time/wrong place sort, always getting caught up in situations he
didn't start but felt compelled to finish. In his experience, only
jail or the grave were the typical finish lines that awaited
him.
Despite his carefully contrived
appearance, there was no way to ease down the hill and maintain any
sense of street cool. They could take only a few awkward steps at a
time, down the steep incline, as rocks littered the grass and made
it difficult to maintain their balance and sure-footing. Down,
down, down they went and it was as if they left one world and
entered another. It didn't take long for the sounds of traffic
overhead to fade against the steady thrum of the rushing White
River. The currents roiled, the water climbed high up its banks due
to the melted snow and recent heavy rains. The greenish water
appeared brackish with up tilled silt, not that the White River was
the healthiest of waterways to begin with.
Scattered among the thin brown
weeds passed for grass was rebar and smashed concrete. A red and
white umbrella canted against a tree. A bed of large white stones
formed a channel leading from a pipe to the river. The bridge
loomed above them, dwarfing them. It never seemed this large
whenever they drove over it. The slate gray arches gleamed, only a
few years old since the city remembered this side of town. The
arches created an echo chamber as the water rushed under
it.
"Some nice work." Lott nodded
toward the groups of tags along the base of the bridge. The
spray-painted figure of a life-sized, 1950s-era wind-up robot with
a head of a kangaroo. Two sets of names in so stylized a script,
the letters were indistinguishable. The final figure was of a
Latino boy with his cap turned to one side with an expression
reminiscent of Edvard Munch's "The Scream".
"Too bad you can't tell what
they're saying." King squatted in front of the formation of rocks
on the opposite side. Halfrotted textbooks, newspapers, and
Mountain Dew bottles littered the ground in between. Sweatshirts,
pants, the occasional blanket, coats, and towels piled between two
rows of stacked rocks. Another circle of stones, all charred, had a
grill top resting on them.
"Odd place to lay out your
stuff," Lott said.
"It's a mattress."
Lott stared at the arrangement
again and pointed to the blackened rocks. "Yeah, I see it now.
That's his stove. We in someone's squat."
"Someone not a part of tent city."
"Means we on the right track."
"Someone not a part of tent city."
"Means we on the right track."
"You ought to wipe your feet
before entering a man's abode. It's just plain rude."
At the sound of the voice, King
and Lott turned. Merle's slate gray eyes peered at them. His
craggily auburn beard matched what wisps remained around his huge
bald spot. Aluminum foil formed a chrome cap, which didn't quite
fit atop his head. A black raincoat draped about him like a
cloak.
"You stay here?" Lott
asked.
"It's one place I stay, wayward
knight, though not my secret place. You don't think I only spend my
time with you lot. Sir Rupert craves the outdoors." A washcloth
popped up, causing King to jump back. A squirrel peered left and
then right, then dashed from beneath the cloth and scampered past
his legs.
Lott could never shake the
feeling that Merle never quite trusted him, like they shared a best
forgotten secret only the crazy old man knew. He would chide
himself for caring what the bum thought of him, though part of him
feared it might be jealousy as Merle seemed to have King's ear in a
way he didn't.
"Don't mean to bust your roll or
nothing," King said, "but we on a mission."
"Oh? A quest? Is it that time
already? Mayhaps we'll encounter a questing beast." Merle danced in
a circle around King, hands spreading from his face in jazz hands
wiggles as he cried out. "'A star appearing in the sky, its head
like a dragon from whose mouth two beams came at an angle.' An egg
shaped keystone, mayhaps a tower. A keystone illumination on the
winter solstice. A sacred geometry. A date carved in stone. No
wait, a stone unearthed from under a poplar tree, archaic names
scribed into it along with strange symbols. A silver chalice, the
Chalice of Antioch."
With that, Merle
curtsied.
"You done?" King
asked.
"It is finished," Merle
said.
"Come on, we're checking in on
Glein."
"So shut up and stay down," Lott
said.
"Aren't you people supposed to be
sassy?" Merle said. "Wayne would say something sassy."
They tromped through the woods.
The smell of car exhaust from overhead gave way to the trill of
budding flowers and furtive spring. Merle occasionally muttered
about the state of his shoes or the ubiquity of mud in the tract of
land. Undistracted, King charged forward. Glein, the tent city, was
the name of this ad hoc ministry. Rumors spread about how a church
sponsored the site. They collected men from their various squats
and put them up here. The men had their own assortment of stories.
Vets, businessmen, and Ph.Ds alike among their number. Some found
themselves without homes after the housing market crashed, or after
layoffs. Some simply had dropped out of society, not wishing to
live by anyone else's rules. Some were simply sick. The church had
a regimen for the men and if they worked it, they were moved to
some apartments the church owned. The whole set up had an odd vibe
to it. Wayne said that Outreach Inc, was investigating, but if the
site dealt strictly with older men – most of whom had already
checked out of society – it was out of their purview.
"I feel like I've been here
before," King said.
"Déjà vu is the word," Merle
said. "God's way of telling you that you're exactly where you're
supposed to be."
"So I'm right in line with my own
destiny."
They wound along the river's
edge. Branches snapped underfoot and leaves crunched as their
inexperience as woodsmen betrayed them. The scent of campfire swept
through the trees. Still early Spring, the blues and yellows of the
tents popped against the bleak landscape, easily spotted against
the brown background of bare trees and dead leaves. Easily spotted
once one chose to look for them.
A lone figure leaned against a
thin tree, using a long wooden spoon to stir within a large metal
saucepan. A University of Miami jacked, blue jeans, socks pulled up
over the cuff. A thick beard, gray streaked hair. A thick skim of
gray to his face, as if caked in ash. A black bag slung over his
shoulder. A foot shorter than King, but he barely glanced up at
their approach.
"Who that is?" the man
asked.
"King."
"You say that like it's supposed
to mean something."
He had. It did. It meant the
weight of responsibility. It meant the consciousness of leadership.
It meant the burden of his people. "I'm here to help."
"Anyone ask for your help?" the
man asked.
"Methinks, young liege," Merle
said, "that perhaps this situation bears further
investigation."
"What? You rule these here parts…
King? You got a crown tucked away in that mess of hair of yours.
Maybe you just got a cape under that jacket or
something."
"There are things out here." The
heft of the Caliburn became acute in King's waistband.
"And what you gonna do?" The man
took a bite of his macaroni and cheese. His face upturned and with
a shrug, took a heaping spoonful. Bits of food flew from his mouth
as he spoke. "You ain't nothing but a punk with a gun. We know
what's out here. And we got our own protection."
King didn't notice any movement,
but he sensed something was amiss. It was as if now that his eyes
had been opened to the story he found himself in, he could see it
all around him. His eyes widened as he caught sight of the shadow.
Perched on a thick limb, hidden in gloom among the tangle of
branches, the creature's granite gaze narrowed to grim slits
studying King. Now that King spotted it, he recognized the
silhouette of such beasts from atop cathedrals and lining many
buildings downtown. A gargoyle. Industrial magic come to life.
Obviously the great beast which haunted his streets. A supreme
grotesquerie, a disturbing ornamentation to the camp. Its concrete
body transmogrified to flesh, stone to color – gray, like shark
hide – newly awakened; cracks and dents gave way to barely healed
wounds. Scars.
Knees bent, ready to flex, its
corded muscles tensed with the patience to squat immobile for
decades. Nails which could drive into a skull with the ease of
digging into overripe cantaloupe, gripped and re-gripped the
branch. Lids over lizard eyes, the beast frowned, a fool grimace of
slobber and bared fangs, leering down at them. In its eyes, King
saw brooding nightmares invested with the lusts, hatreds, and
angers of its creators.
King pulled out the Caliburn with
the ease of reflex. As he assumed a battle posture, Lott fell to
his flank, preparing to guard it as well as stand by his friend.
Another reflex. The creature became a mass of snarling lips,
murderous eyes, claws, gothic wings and clenching talons. King
fired a shot, hitting it center mass.
"No!" the man and Merle screamed
in unison.
Their piercing cry shattered King
from his battle fervor. The gargoyle spread its bat-like wings,
fibrous and leathery, flapping them to stir the camp. The creature
skimmed skyward.
Lott ducked as the gargoyle dove
in and swooped low, barely dodging as its talons grasped at empty
air. Wind whooshed as it passed him. Off balance, he didn't have a
chance to reposition himself and swing his bat. The beast, however,
grabbed its intended target.
Talons dug into King's shoulder,
tearing deeply before it flung him into a tree. Mid-swoon, the
world spinning. The beast was a series of half caught images.
Yellow orbs. Huge teeth gleaming. Gaping jaw. The creature towered
over him, swaddled in shadows, feral eyes gleaming down at him.
Atonal chittering gave way to a blast of the beast's fetid breath.
Sick with pain, King raised the Caliburn again and took
aim.
"King, stop!" Merle cried out.
"You are the intruder here."
"But it attacked us." King
paused, half-turning toward Merle but not wanting to take his eyes
from the beast.
"Only after you so carelessly
brandished your Caliburn. Were all those years with Pastor Ector
wasted? Didn't he teach you how to think? You can't fight every
battle with guns. Jesus didn't arm his disciples and start taking
out Roman soldiers."
"I'm not Jesus."
"Believe me, I know. You would've
early on called out Judas as 'a trick ass bitch' or some such."
Merle reached for the pointed snout of the gargoyle, holding his
hand out as if letting it catch his scent. Blood trailed down the
beast's bulbous belly. "Oh dear, the wound is serious. It will take
much to heal it."
King searched the beast's eyes
again. Truly seeing it this time for what it was, he saw the soul
in its eyes, the passion of devotion, awakened to yet another new
age from its long sleep. Gentle. Protective. In a lot of ways, it
reminded him of Percy, the young boy who so often followed them
around. Large, awkward, yet ferocious when those he cared about
were threatened. Only then did it occur to him that he might as
well hunt a unicorn.
"Thanks for looking out for us, O
king. We are much safer without our protector in play," the man
said.
"I didn't know."
"You don't know much." The man
stroked the back of the gargoyle with the affection of a boy and
his dog.
Merle sidled alongside King.
"It's okay, King. We are all ignorant about something or another at
one time or another. The question is: are you willing to
learn?"
"And you know things?" King asked
without sarcasm.
"I know your real name. I know
your father. I know the magic. I know your call."
"Anything else?"
"I know your glorious doom." Merle turned from him.
"And you'll stand by me through all of it?"
"I will be by your side until I'm not."
"Anything else?"
"I know your glorious doom." Merle turned from him.
"And you'll stand by me through all of it?"
"I will be by your side until I'm not."
There is no guarantee with
friendships, Lott thought to himself. It was easy to make promises.
The true test was if the person would be around when times got
tough. Friendships were forged in fire.
Looking back, they would consider
this to be the good days.
KING'S WAR
BY MAURICE BROADDUS
COMING SOON