Sandhill Street: The Loss of Gentleness

by Rob Summers

  Chapter 7 The Lockout

  Dignity waited a day to give his parents a chance to cool down before he called them, but he got no answer. No one was picking up the phones at Leasing House, and no one responded to his messages left on their answering machine. Very odd, since his parents were generally prompt in answering phone calls, and so were Guiles and Oblivia. This icy treatment had to be deliberate. He began to feel more anxious, with tightness through his chest and a rapid heartbeat that kept him from getting much sleep that night.

  After a few days, he enlisted Reason for friendly support and because she was family, and walked down to Leasing House to try talking to his parents directly. As they approached the impressive façade of the place, so high and elegant, they observed that the rich curtains in the windows were all drawn closed, something they had never before seen there, certainly not in the afternoon. In front was a trim lawn with a few rosebushes. Two antique-style lampposts, standing up straight and black on each side of the walk, they noted as a recent purchase. When they had passed all these, they came close enough not to be able to see the missing roof.

  Also new was the gold plate above the doorbell, informing visitors that this was Leasing House. When he rang, he could hear the tone echo inside, but no one came. He knocked on the storm door and they waited. After some time, he knocked again, very firmly, but still no one came.

  “I know they’re here,” Dignity said in confusion. “There’s Mom and Dad’s car parked at the curb and Guile’s car right behind theirs.”

  Reason stepped forward and tried to open the door. “Since when do the Leasings keep their storm door locked?” she asked.

  “Since never, I’ll bet. What is this? More rejection? Are they that angry?”

  They waited some more.

  “Let’s go around back,” Reason suggested.

  “OK, maybe they’re all at the back of the house for some reason.”

  “I really don’t think so. I think this is deliberate. I can practically feel their eyes on me. But let’s try it anyway.”

  As they returned to the sidewalk to go around the house, they met Gentleness, who was idling along with an eye toward the other side of the street where Dread House stood. When they explained their situation, the tall boy asked to join them and they agreed to it. They went down a narrow sidewalk between houses, passing a high dividing fence, and stood in the alley looking at the back of Leasing House.

  Here the view was not so presentable. Piles of junk filled the backyard, mostly crammed into overflowing cardboard boxes that were rotting from exposure. The only open ground was a narrow, winding path to the backdoor. Dignity saw something scurrying away that looked like a rat and felt glad it was not summer, for who knew what kind of bugs would be breeding back here then? Nearer to the house the trash piles were mostly broken boards and drywall. But the greatest shock was that much of the back wall of the house was missing.

  “Heavens, I didn’t know about that!” Reason said, gaping. “Gentleness, did you know this had happened?”

  The teenager nodded. “It’s been going down little by little since the roof blew off.”

  This shocked even Dignity, who could seldom rouse himself to concern about home repairs. “Roof and wall missing,” he said, “and they’re spending money on fancy lampposts and a gold plate over the doorbell in front! It’s—it’s—”

  “Insane,” Reason supplied, and no one dissented.

  Nearly as disgusting as the trash filling the yard was the condition of the house’s interior. With the roof gone, the floor of the attic had long served as a porous and deteriorating shelter from the elements. For years wind and rain had done their work. Floors were warped and furniture was rotting. Even on this cold day, the smell of the place assaulted them. Yet in most of the rooms expensive items could be seen, such as seasonal decorations, framed prints, a stereo, and a wide screen TV.

  Dignity began to notice that some of the house’s inhabitants were visible, for with no wall to shield them, they could be seen in the rooms. They were wearing coats, of course, against the November chill. There was his father—coated, hatted, and mufflered—seated in a reclining easy chair and watching the television. On the next floor below him, the Leasing’s servant woman Pinch, who Dignity had helped to find her job, was doing some ironing. He could see her breath puffing in the cold. Oblivia Leasing came from a room in the front of the house and entered a pantry. She took an item from a drawer and returned to where she had been.

  “Let’s go,” Reason said. “They know we’re here, but they don’t want to talk to us.”

  Dignity didn’t move. “You know, we could just walk right in through that gap on the ground floor. We could just walk in and talk to them.”

  Reason thought about it, her little forehead creased. “I don’t think we had better, not without yelling to them first to announce ourselves. Why don’t you just give a holler to your dad?”

  At this, Gentleness spoke. “They don’t like it when anybody does that. They like to pretend that the wall and roof are still there, and they want everyone to pretend with them. Muddy Sluggard came back here once and yelled for Prevarica, and after that the Leasings wouldn’t speak to her for a month.”

  “Well, that’s just ridiculous,” Reason said. “They should be getting it fixed, not pretending there’s no problem.”

  Gentleness nodded to this but said, “They’re in a bad way. The front of the house is all they’ve got left that looks good, so naturally they want people to approach them that way.”

  “And then they don’t answer!” Dignity said in exasperation. “So they don’t leave us any choice but to come back here. I can’t just let the Leasings get control of Mom and Dad. I know what Guiles is like. Before long he’ll have them believing awful things about me.”

  “I wouldn’t be surprised if he finds some way to bilk them out of their money, too,” Reason added. “Guiles always could talk Neglect into anything.”

  “But the worst part is that we’re locked out like this, and I’m not allowed to see my own parents. Because you know this was Guiles’ idea. Mom and Dad never did anything like this in their lives.”

  “I know they haven’t.”

  Dignity set his jaw. “I can just feel Guiles triumphing over me. He never did like me. Now he’s free to tell other relatives anything he wants to make up about me, and I can’t appeal to Mom and Dad to support me.” He kicked at the ground.

  “He may even get them to write you out of the will,” Reason suggested.

  “And I’m right and he’s wrong, and I can prove it! How about if I just chuck a brick or two up there and get somebody’s attention?”

  Gentleness took Dignity by the shoulder. “Please don’t do anything. Give them some time to cool down. Let them make the first move, huh?”

  Dignity took a deep breath, looked to Reason, and smiled. “The kid’s smarter than me.”

  “Isn’t he?” She laughed. “Thanks, Gentleness, you’re right. Nobody gets justice served up exactly when and where they want it. Let’s go home.”

  Dignity and Reason did go, but Gentleness went back to a lounging sort of watch on Dread House to see if Wittily would appear, for his admiration of her had lately heightened to infatuation. It was all mixed up with that hug she had given him after her scare in Grace House. He had felt like her rescuing knight and wanted to feel like that again. So here he was. He was pretty sure, considering what she had said to him and his sister, that she would not answer a phone call, or even the door, but maybe he could just ‘happen’ to run into her.

  Before long a middle-aged man in a business suit approached him and struck up a conversation. Gentleness was always happy to talk with anybody.

  On the following afternoon, Mr. Power sat behind his colossal desk in his downtown office and fiddled with a desktop ornament some subordinate had given him. It was a statuette representing a burly man (identified
as ‘boss” on the base) playing golf. He gripped a golf club that could be swung back until the mechanism caught. Several representations of employees’ heads came with the set, each with a printed identification on the forehead, such as secretary, executive, or purchaser—and each face painted cartoonishly aghast with fright. Far from being offended, Mr. Power liked this gift. Today he placed an employee head labeled ‘lawyer’ on the tee, pressed a button, and the little club popped down and drove the head into a net on the end of the base. He laughed.

  The door opened and his secretary Miss Abject showed in Lawyer Temptation of the firm of Snare, Pitfall, Trial, and Temptation. Slim, dapper, and still boyish at forty, Temptation smiled as if sharing some secret joke with Power.

  “Heard the one about the Heavenite that got away?” he said.

  Power winced. “Just tell me what happened.”

  Temptation seated himself with an ankle across his knee, revealing a silk sock. His haircut was trendy and his glasses lenses spotlessly clean. “You aren’t going to like this.”

  Power emitted a threatening grunt.

  “OK, we wanted to see Dignity respond in one of two ways. Either he grovels to try to get his parents back or he gets all red faced and demands that they talk to him as his right. Needless to say, either way we win: he’s your puppet.”

  Power stared at him with hatred.

  “OK, so one of the men we have watching Sandhill Street saw Dignity and a couple of others approach Leasing House and try to get in. Nobody answers the door, of course—all according to plan. They go around back, they’re there for a few minutes, and then they come back to the front and head home, two of them do. Our man approached the other one, a teenage boy named Gentleness. He’s—”

  “I know who he is,” Power said. “One of Humility’s boys, a Heavenite boy.”

  “Yes, and he talks easily. Our man got out of him that Dignity would have tried to go in the back of Leasing House, that he’s really ticked and would have forced the issue, but that the boy talked him out of it.” Temptation cracked a knuckle. “That’s the long and the short of it. We expected some such Heavenite interference, and we’re prepared to deal with it. Over time Dignity is sure to cave. After all, it’s his parents.”

  “And the boy, what are we going to do about him?”

  “Gentleness?” Temptation hesitated with a bright grin. “No plan, sir.”

  “I want him out of the way. The sooner we shut him up, the sooner Dignity caves. Am I right?”

  Temptation could do nothing but agree.

  “So tell Officer Pain to have him picked up and jailed.”

  Far from being shocked, Temptation brightened as he made a note of it. “You’ve got it. We’ll think of something to charge him with. Just hold him for the usual two days?”

  “If that’s all the better you can do,” Power said testily, “but try to get him on something solid, something serious. It wouldn’t hurt if we could put the lot of those Heavenites in jail.”

  “We’ve had Truth arrested repeatedly, but Grace keeps springing him.”

  Power snorted. “Not this time, by God. Anyway, with Truth it’s a case of his trying to get arrested. Some kind of bid for publicity.”

  Temptation leaned forward as if making a move to stand up. “That’s all I have, sir.”

  “Wait a minute. I want an update on our operatives inside Grace House.”

  The lawyer stroked his jaw as if hesitating to say something. “That would be Miss Worry, then. She was never what I would call an effective agent, and now she’s become almost useless. You may recall that she was exposed some years ago.”

  Power passed over admitting that he could not remember. “What about the others—um, Selfishness, and that Confusion woman, and Bits Bitterly?”

  “Out of the picture, sir. Actually, Selfishness still sends in a report now and then, but he’s so ineffective that we’ve had to cut him to one quarter pay. OK, it’s a hell of a place to penetrate, and that’s the sad reality.”

  “It’s your job to get this done,” Power said mercilessly, and he glanced at the little plastic head in the net on his desk. “Restore Selfishness to full pay and light a fire under him. Get Worry moving. And get more of our people in there, at least one.”

  Temptation stood. “We’ll get it done,” he said brightly.

  Though the lawyer looked like a man who was lying through his teeth, Power let him go. Probably, he reflected, Grace House was as tough to crack as the man had said. Tough to crack by penetration of spies, that is. But this plan with Dignity’s parents, on the other hand, had the sweet simplicity and brutal directness of a kidnapping. He finally had that arrogant wimp Dignity cornered, and he was not going to let him go. As Temptation had said, it’s his parents.

  He placed another helpless head on the tee before his plastic golfer and pushed the button