Sandhill Street: The Loss of Gentleness

by Rob Summers

Chapter 13 Prevarica Summons Christmas Early

  On the last Saturday before Christmas, in the late afternoon, Prevarica Leasing walked into Quake Dread’s bedroom, threw her coat and hat on the bed, and plopped down on the floor beside Quake and Wisdom. She saw that the boys, who were playing checkers with an oversize board and pieces, looked up at her without surprise. They were used to her treating Dread House as her own these days, often popping in and out of the place, usually followed by several neighborhood kids. It was now her right, and she always took advantage of her rights. No one could oppose her, not even Wittily Dread who used to dare to call her friends a flock of parrots. Wittily was quiet enough now and Prevarica’s friends more numerous than ever, for the local kids had all heard of Wittily’s apology for writing her disgusting, nasty poem, and Prevarica had told everyone that Wittily had also retracted every word of it. Well, Wittily had tried to when interrupted by Gentleness, and that was close enough. So Prevarica was the winner and Wittily was known by all to be an admitted liar.

  The pretty little girl looked at the game, which Wisdom was winning, and said, “It’s getting awfully close to Christmas, isn’t it?’

  Wisdom answered with a barely audible ‘um’ and moved a checker. Quake answered her more appropriately, “Gee, Prevarica, it sure is.”

  “And everything’s so warm and happy at our house. I got to go buy decorations with my new nanny, and we spent the afternoon decorating. We put holiday music on the stereo and pretended it was Christmas already. It’s even better than last year now that I have Confusion for a nanny, and also because Aunt Folly and Uncle Neglect are staying with us. They dote on me, you know. I’m their favorite over Rage and Plausible. In fact they already bought me presents and put them under the tree we just put up. Then Aunt Confusion—that’s what I call her—put some presents under the tree for me too. Do you have any presents under your trees yet?” She did not wait for an answer. “Christmas time is the best time of year, and especially this year.”

  Wittily came to the open doorway and gestured to her brother to get up. “Mom says you have to take the trash out because the container is full and she wants it empty before she starts dinner.”

  Prevarica smiled up at her. “Hello, Wittily. Are you having a nice weekend?” When the older girl looked miserable and said nothing, she added, “How’s your boyfriend?”

  “He’s not her boyfriend,” Wisdom said.

  “Oh, I think I know differently. Although they don’t get much chance to be together, do they? Say, Wittily, here’s a riddle. What kind of bird doesn’t fly?”

  Wittily stiffened and didn’t answer. Prevarica felt safe taunting Wittily about her jailbird boyfriend because the older girl’s parents had ordered her to be very nice to her. That was because the Dreads were in money trouble and needed help. Prevarica’s father could help them, and probably would, but first the Dreads would have to learn their lesson. (That’s what her father had said.) Wittily was learning her lesson.

  However, the Dreads really shouldn’t be allowing Wisdom to visit with Quake today, for Grace House residents were supposed to be off limits to the good people of the neighborhood. Maybe the Dreads thought no one would notice if it was just a kid like Wisdom, but Prevarica had noticed and at her first opportunity would tell her father. He would praise her for telling and say ‘that’s my princess.’

  “I don’t think your house is ever going to get a City Seal,” she said to Wittily, “not when you’ve got Gentleness for a boyfriend. We’re going to get our Seal soon. You’ll be in a good position to see it from here. I’ll have to come over here to look at it on the front of our house.”

  After gesturing once more to her brother to get moving, Wittily drifted away down the hall. Prevarica knew that it was killing Wittily to put up with her.

  “Yeah, I wish it was Christmas already so I could open my presents,” she said.

  “Well, you’ll just have to wait,” Wisdom said without lifting his gaze from the board. “Everybody has to wait till Christmas morning.”

  She had always hated it when anyone would tell her to delay anything. It angered her. Such restrictions invariably made up her mind for her that she would not abide delay. So it was now. She could almost feel her next words forming, independent of her own thought.

  “Not me. I’ll just go home and open my presents now.” Since neither boy responded at once, she said it again. “I think I would like to open my presents now.”

  “You can’t do that,” Quake said. “You’re parents won’t let you.”

  “My Uncle Neglect and Aunt Folly will let me, and my nanny will. I can do whatever I want.”

  She really believed it. She was a girl who had recently triumphed in every way. Why shouldn’t she celebrate however she pleased? Who would deny her? She would summon Christmas early, and it would come. Ah, life was good.

  Wisdom moved a checker and said, “King me.”

  She reached out and knocked the checker beyond the edge of the board. Then she looked at Wisdom with a sly grin. “Queen me,” she said. The silly boy looked almost frightened, as if she had done something to hurt him and not just shoved his stupid old checker. “What’s the matter?”

  She got no answer, so after a few more minutes of their stupid game, she went home to Leasing House. As she had expected, Neglect, Folly, and Confusion were only too willing to humor her about the presents. The four of them gathered in the living room by the tree, and one by one she opened the gifts.

  She received from Uncle Neglect several packs of candy cigarettes (“Hard to find nowadays,” he said), a six pack of non-alcoholic beer, and a credit card with a balance. From Aunt Folly came several romance books with the kind of pictures on the covers that promised her more enlightenment than she had yet gotten from watching Love Maze. Her Aunt Confusion gave her two CDs by a rock band called Decomposition and a children’s book, My First Nietzsche. She greeted each present with an exclamation of delight and with practiced, perfect manners. In fact she was genuinely happy. When the little group broke up, she carried her gifts upstairs, arranged them on her dresser, and went to taunt her brothers with the news of her premature enrichment.

  In Dread House, Wittily had locked her bedroom door against intruders and was brooding. She wasn’t normally so very moody as this, but the events of recent weeks had depleted her spirit. With the City threatening her family, she found it harder and harder to imagine herself safe, or even—loyal. For how could she be patriotic toward a government that seemed bent on crushing her father’s beleaguered business? That had falsely arrested Gentleness Orchard and had held him in prison for days?

  Gentleness the doofus, Gentleness the Eagle Scout. She had never liked him, but lately the memory of his sweet sanity had haunted her. Simplicity and goodwill were more attractive than she had thought. The trouble was that for her to approach his artless, innocent spirit would necessitate giving up her bitter anger toward a lot of people who deeply deserved it. That she would not and could not do. He had his prison but this was hers.

  She walked to her window and looked up the street to Grace House, up to its highest point where the new cupola had recently been finished. Curiously, above the cupola something glowed, or burned. No it was something gilded, caught in the light of the late afternoon sun. She jumped in place and exhaled: it was her statue! The workmen must have brought the replica and put it in place that very day. There was Freedom. A young man seemed to leap from the dome of the cupola, arms upswept, palms offered, and head thrown back. She was too far away to see his expression, but she knew that his face reflected joyous abandon. One of her soft hands clawed against the window glass.

  Gradually she calmed down, and her gloom, temporarily pierced by the sight of the statue, returned. Someone with a spirit like that leaping youth could be free even in a prison cell, while she, on the other hand, could be free nowhere. Jailed by her own vengeful spirit, she could
only look out through the bars. She could hardly count all the people she hated and disliked. Oh, how she hated Prevarica! How she would love to get her hands around that skinny little neck and squeeze. And she hated the whole Leasing family, and the Mammons, and the Powers. Her friend Slothie Sluggard had been like this, always ready to condemn, and she had been hauled away to who-knows-where with no change of heart. What Wittily needed, she thought, was a new friend, someone who would teach her to let go of her grudges.

  There wasn’t anyone. Gentleness was gone and his family was off limits to her; well, except for a kid like Wisdom. She would keep and cherish her grudges like everyone else. Almost everyone else.

  Someone knocked softly at the door and she opened to find Quake and Wisdom.

  “There’s a white Humvee downstairs,” Quake said, “and they’ve brought a bunch of clothes that the Heavenite navy sent us to wear to the ball they invited us to, and they want someone to sign, and I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Why didn’t you ask Mom and Dad?”

  Quake grinned. “’Cause I knew they’d say no.”

  Wittily looked at Wisdom. He lived in a house with people from another country, and another government ruled him. Freedom. They were half a block away but they breathed a different air and saw a different sun than she did. She could not walk that half block.

  “We sent back their invitation,” she said testily to her brother, “so why are they still pushing it? Do you think we want a Heavenite vehicle parked in front of our house where everyone can see it? You should have told them to go.”

  “Lieutenant Justice said—”

  “Never mind what he said! Tell him we won’t accept delivery.”

  Quake nodded to this. “You won’t come down and tell him though?”

  “No! And Wisdom, you’ll have to go home now. You can’t come here anymore. I’m sorry.”

  She closed the door. This was useless. What good did it do her family to break all contact with Heavenites, even harmless little Wisdom, if the Heavenites kept coming to them, knocking on the door, offering them things? As long as Heavenites could be seen approaching the house, the Dreads’ reputation would remain in tatters and no one would trust them. Only one thing could save them, then, and that was to join in active war against the Heavenites, to hate them, gossip about them, and tear them down. Yes, that would do it. Let Wittily Dread be quoted around the neighborhood as having called the Grace House residents a bunch of dangerous fools, let her even write a mocking poem about them (and oh how cleverly she could do it!), and the Heavenite visits would stop.

  She could do it. It would save them. She went to her desk and brought out paper and pen. This was something she had to do. But she sat staring, thinking about the boy in jail. Finally she began to write, but not what she had intended. When she was done, what lay before her was this.

  To Gentleness

  Gentleness, I hate you.

  When I want their blood,

  You want crumbs from Heaven,

  Fallen in the mud.

  When your head is shaven,

  When your spirit prays,

  Gentleness, I hate you!

  Change your stinking ways.

  Gentleness, I love you,

  Since you never come

  With me when I go and

  Mock them every one.

  Since your words are slow and

  Never used to harm,

  Gentleness, I love you.

  Hold me in your arms.

  Smash their faces, stun them,

  Batter them with blows!

  Join me, and we’ll crush them,

  Heaven surely knows.

  But you never hush them.

  Though well-armed with laws,

  You refuse to shun them,

  Traitor to my cause.

  In a war’s confusion

  Can I hear you speak?

  May your simple words be

  With me when I’m weak.

  Let us grant them mercy

  Heaped like altar coals.

  Be, in my delusion,

  Loyal to my soul.

  Gentleness, I hate you!

  Change your stinking ways.

  Go away, don’t taunt me.

  This I say by day.

  But at night you haunt me

  With your holy charms.

  Gentleness, I love you.

  Hold me in your arms.

  Part III The Battle of Sandhill Street