“Long as you’re going the way they want you to,” Roskovitz went on, “everything’s fine. They let you think you’re on your own. Strong and powerful enough to face whatever comes. King of all you survey, like that.”
Manny gave a tiny nod, a single jerk, almost against his will. This guy was reading him like a book, showing him things he sort of felt, but never thought about before. It left him uncomfortable. And scared. But wanting to hear more just the same.
“Then something happens, and all of a sudden there’s this fork in the road. And you think maybe you ought to take the other way, but soon as you do, all these forces are up in arms. You’re no longer part of them, see. You’re joining the opposition.”
“I’m not joining nothing,” Manny denied.
The guy just looked at him, the gentle gaze now piercing. “You can’t stand in the middle of the road,” he said. “You gotta keep moving, gotta make that choice. And once you choose, you’ve got to commit. You don’t, they’ll keep after you, those forces. When you’re weak or not looking, they’ll drag you back. And once they do, you’re lost.”
The truth of the guy’s words resounded through Manny like the tolling of a great bell. Like the time had come, and the bell of his life was sounding. Bong, bong, bong, like that, pealing in great thunderous power that caused his whole being to shake until he could scarcely get out the words. “So what do I do?”
Roskovitz leaned forward and plucked the Bible from the seat pocket in front of him. “Let me tell you what it says in here.”
****
The night had a physical presence, soft and vibrant and full of mystery. Ariel lay in her bed, separated from Clarice by a nightstand and her churning thoughts. So much to take in. So much to learn.
She recalled scenes she had witnessed and sighed quietly, “I just don’t understand.”
Clarice shifted in her bed, said sleepily, “Understand what, dear?”
They were in the upstairs guest room of Reverend Townsend’s home, a nice red-brick house on a quiet side street not far from the church. Outside their window a car passed along the silent street, a dog barked, a nightbird sounded its lonely cry. Inside all was warmth and comfort.
“Everywhere I look,” Ariel said quietly, “I see God’s blessed creation overlaid with, well . . .”
“Darkness,” Clarice said for her. “Darkness and unseen shadows.”
Ariel looked over, searching the night. “How can you stand it here?”
“You are truly the strangest girl I have ever come across in all my days. The Spirit moves in you. After what I’ve seen at the bus station and hearing you play the harp, there’s no doubt in my mind about that. But, Lord, your questions.” Clarice chuckled softly. “Where were you raised, on a lofty mountaintop up above the clouds?”
Ariel struggled with how to reply, settled on, “Yes.”
“Well, it wouldn’t surprise me one bit.” The bed creaked as Clarice raised herself up to a sitting position. “Now listen here. We live in a fallen world. Our job is not to worry over that, because doing so won’t get us anywhere. Our job is to be servants of the Holy One and make little openings for His grace to come through and touch the world around us. And our strongest tool is prayer. We must pray and pray and pray without ceasing, filling ourselves and our surroundings with His gracious love.”
Ariel listened and heard more than just the woman’s words. She heard the strength, the simple conviction, the years of struggle and giving and living for more than just herself. “You are a very special woman, Clarice.”
“I’m tired is what I am. A woman my age needs her rest. Now you close your eyes and we’ll have us a time of prayer. Then I want you to turn your worries over to the One who can handle them and get some sleep.”
****
“So what brings you down here, anyway?”
“Hard to say,” Manny replied weakly, and pushed his breakfast plate to one side. They were seated in the restaurant of a cheap motel not far from the Washington bus station. The night before, Manny had said he needed to go straight there, he needed to find somebody. John Roskovitz had shrugged those massive shoulders and said that was fine with him, he’d be working down in that area the next day, anyway. Taking it easy, not pushing, just along for the ride.
But the bus station had been a nonstarter. Manny had searched the place from top to bottom, talked to some homeboys hanging out, found no sign of the girl and no one who had seen her.
Unable to think of anything else he could do, Manny had agreed to John’s suggestion and walked with the big man to the motel. He had gone to bed tired and frustrated and angry, feeling both used and confused.
And had woken up feeling exactly the same way.
Manny shook his head when the waitress came by offering hot coffee, then asked Roskovitz, “So what about you?”
“There’s a church not far from here,” Roskovitz replied. “They’re setting up a relief center for local kids. Rich crowd, big church, you know how it is, don’t have any idea what they’re up against. They see these kids hanging around every day and never talked to one of them in their lives. But the Spirit works where it will, and from what I hear these folks have been hit hard. So they heard about some work I’ve done in Philadelphia, bringing kids off the street and getting them started with life. Asked me to come down and help them get set up.”
“Great,” Manny said dully. The Spirit. Guy just tosses it out like he’s on a personal first-name basis with something or someone he’s never even seen. This was another thing that had really messed with his head the night before, all the stuff Roskovitz had laid on him, pointing to place after place in the Bible, laying it all out, saying this was what he had to do. Had to do. Not like, okay, this is something maybe he should think about. No, it was, okay, you want to get a life, you’ve got to do this and this and this.
Crazy.
Manny felt the old urges building. Pushing him up and away and out of there. Back to the street. Back to where he was his own man, not having some former biker trying to scare him with stuff out of a book two thousand years dead. No, this whole scene wasn’t for him.
He slid from the booth, avoided John’s eyes until he was on his feet. “Look, I gotta go check some things out.”
“Sure you do.”
The quiet words swung Manny’s gaze up. Finding the big guy just sitting there calmly, watching him with that same level gaze, like there wasn’t a single solitary thing about Manny he didn’t know. “Yeah, well, look, it’s been great and all that.”
Roskovitz nodded once, twice, three times. “Hard to take it all in, ain’t it.”
“No, hey, I really appreciate it and all, but you know, I got a lot of stuff to take care of.”
“Big world out there,” John agreed. He pulled a pen and paper from his pocket, scribbled, handed it over. “That’s the name of the church where I’ll be. You don’t find me, ask for the assistant pastor. Guy by the name of Hale.”
“Hale. Right. Sure.” Stuffing the paper in his pocket. At least until he was out the door and around the corner. “Hey, good luck with the kids.”
“Hard as it is, you need to remember that the turning in the road won’t be there for long,” Roskovitz said. “Chances like this come and go and leave you trapped worse than before. You need to grab it while you can.”
“Yeah, hey, this is really fascinating,” Manny said, feeling the itch build until his feet were ready to fly, with or without the rest of him. “But listen, I gotta take off.”
“Make the turning while you still can,” John Roskovitz said, the words flying after Manny in his race for the door. “I’ll be praying that you do.”
****
Manny did not walk the streets. He paraded. His steps were a fiery dance of independence. Free from the worries and the pushing and the crazy talk, his own man again. Free.
Washington, D.C. He already loved this place. The avenue he walked seemed to split the town like a knife. On one side was wealth, and al
l the possibilities such riches brought a guy like him. On the other side was ghetto city, drugs and gangs and homeboy turf. The perfect place to hide when he had netted the wares and needed a place to chill.
He pushed through a cluster of pigeons, looked at them standing there; they seemed afraid that one small turn would bring them face-to-face with their worst nightmare. He grinned to himself. Yeah, he was all right again, his head back on straight. All that time, what he had really needed most was a change of scene.
Manny did not watch where he was going, did not need to, not now, not while he was cruising, taking the air, getting the feel of his new home. Every once in a while a little drift of what he had been hearing and thinking about those past few days would pop into his mind. He would push it away even before the thought and the feeling could form and congeal, shoulder it out, and just walk a little faster. Shoving out all that crazy stuff and the strange way it shook him.
He danced along the crowded sidewalk, decided without thinking that he could take the next turning, get on a side street where the going was easier. Taking the corner by half-climbing a street sign, swinging up and around and away, drawing gasps from the passersby, out of sight before the people fully realized what they had just seen.
The side street led away from the glitz and toward the ghetto, the change sudden. He had a feeling a lot of the city was like that, battle lines drawn almost everywhere. His dance was a strut now, showing the locals he was a man in the know, somebody they didn’t want to mess with. Taking another turn, feeling the tension and the anger and the hardship and the drugged-out stress, drawing it in like he did his air, feeding on it. This was his world, the place he could call his own. The same in every city, a dark jungle even at noon, a tangled, fear-ridden strip where only the strong survived. Another turn, not really seeing, just moving with the flow and reveling in the power that seethed with this sense of rebellious freedom.
Suddenly he halted, the world drawing back into focus. He found himself standing in front of a storefront doorway. Manny looked around, had the sense of abruptly coming awake. Bizarre, like he had been heading here all the time, which was impossible because he hadn’t even been looking where he was going. Angry now, pushing at the thoughts and the door at the same time, not paying attention to the words written on smoked glass in pointy, flowing gold letters: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice.
A voice from an alcove to his right suddenly said, “Ah, Manny, excellent, excellent.”
Manny spun about. “Eh, whatsthatyousaid?”
“We’ve been looking everywhere for you.” A delicately slender man pushed through the curtain and walked toward him.
Manny took a step back. Then he realized he was moving away from the door, his carefully honed survival instincts failing him in the clutch. “How’d you know my name?”
“Oh, you have quickly become quite famous in our circles.” He was elegantly turned out, his dark hair caught in a silver ring and well-trimmed beard flecked with gray. He wore a flowing red silk shirt over black trousers tucked into fold-down boots. “How on earth have you been?”
“Swell.” Manny gave the room a quick scan. Dusty old tomes rose to the ceiling, stacked in careless abandon, some of them bound in metal and embossed with strange symbols. The same symbols decorated the ceiling and hung from the walls in ornately scrolled frames. Maps that made no sense were framed alongside the symbols, with great dragons spouting fire and faces blowing stormclouds and edges inscribed in strange script. Brass instruments were arranged under the counter glass and stacked behind the register, all of it beyond weird.
The fellow reached out a ring-encrusted hand. “We’ve been so terribly worried.”
“Yeah?” Manny watched the hand like he would a snake, making no move toward it. His skin crawled like it had that day in the pawnshop. “Who’s we?”
“Why, everyone.” The man masked the retreat of his hand by smoothing down his slicked-back hair. “We had absolutely no idea where you had gotten to. It was like you had dropped off the edge of our little world.”
Our world. The word grated on his nerves like steel fingernails dragged down a mile-long blackboard. Our world. “Somebody’s been following me. I knew it all the time.”
“Oh, if only we could have.” The eyes glittered and stretched with the thin smile. “But you moved away from us, you naughty boy. You vanished. Now how on earth did you do that, especially when you had something we needed so badly? You can imagine how worried everybody has been.”
“Yeah?” Manny felt the eyes drilling him to the spot. There was neither time nor space to pretend he didn’t know what the man was after. He had no choice but to go back to his old palaver. No choice at all. “So I’m here,” he bluffed. “You gonna pay, or is this just all hot air?”
“Oh, my dear young friend, we will pay anything. Name your price. Riches, fame, fortune, it’s yours. All of it.”
All of it. Everything he had ever wanted. Somehow he knew the fellow was telling the truth. But the promise brought him nothing but a chilling doubt. “So what’s so great about this thing?”
The fellow misread his hesitation, and took a step toward Manny, his voice a sibilant hiss. “You do have it, don’t you?”
Manny shrugged, worked to keep the quaver from his voice. “Yeah, sure. I might. Somewhere safe.”
“Of course. My, or perhaps I should say our superiors will be so relieved.” The tension rose a notch. “What the card is, hmmm, I think you know. A young man of your many talents would certainly have tried it by now.” Another step, the glittering eyes so close that the dark center points opened to become bottomless wells. “You cannot imagine how long they have sought this key. It is the bridge, my young friend. The bridge. Now the banner of war can be raised against all we despise.”
“Hey, that’s great.” Struggling to get out the words. Feeling a band tightening across his chest. Wanting to turn and flee. Knowing he had to. But unable to move. “I kinda figured it was something like that.”
“Of course you did.” The pools of his eyes opened further, reaching out to encompass the entire chamber, drawing him in, pulling him down farther and farther, sucking the life and the will and the ability to think right from Manny’s body. “Now tell me, won’t you, where is the card?”
Manny teetered on the brink, ready to fall into the pit, more terrified and trapped than he had ever been in his life. He heard it again then, the hungry growl, and knew without any doubt whatsoever that the beast was there, and hungry, and waiting to devour him whole.
Suddenly Manny glimpsed something. An image came and went so swiftly he scarcely realized it had been there. The image was of John Roskovitz’s gentle gray eyes. And in that same instant there was the sense of half hearing softly spoken words. A prayer. A prayer spoken for him.
The fellow jerked back as though electrocuted. One hand clutched his chest, the other reached for the countertop for support, and he shrilled, “What was that?”
With the power of a lightning bolt, Manny was freed. He gasped a single breath as the room sprang into focus. Then he leapt for the door, clawed for the handle even as he heard the fellow scream, “Wait!” But Manny was waiting for nobody. Not now. He flung open the door and was gone.
Only when he had fled down block after block and stopped in a doorway to scan all directions did it hit him hard. A realization so strong that it could not be denied. A knowing. The whole time he had been running away from one thing, he had been running toward another. One or the other, just like Roskovitz had told him. He had to choose.
A second bolt of knowing blasted him, a voice so strong and commanding it was heard even though it was silent, the impossible made real. It spoke just one word, but a word that shattered his entire world.
Choose.
****
“Arise, my soul, arise,” were the first words Ariel heard the next morning. She turned over and saw Clarice standing by the window, her arms lifted to the rising sun. Her eyes were closed, her voice calm
and quiet and full of joy. “My God, my God, for this day do I give you thanks.”
“Amen,” Ariel said quietly as she sat up in bed, swinging her feet to the floor. She bowed her head, and in a quiet sweeping gift of peace, she felt the sun rise within her own heart.
“With confidence I now draw nigh,” Clarice said. “With heartfelt thanksgiving I shake off my guilty fears. Before the throne I stand and give thanks for the eternal offering.”
“Amen,” Ariel intoned, and in the growing strength of day felt the silent bonds of worship join the two of them together. This was more than a prayer for her. This was a lesson. She both heard the prayer and felt the sense of growing harmony. All was being brought together through this act of private communion. The confusion that had marred her every experience since arriving dispersed, and once again all was being brought together through eternal love, eternal light, eternal healing. She intoned once again, “Amen.”
“Your pardoning voice I hear, O Father. Your grace reaches out to embrace me, the fallen child. Your welcoming herald calls me home.”
“Amen,” Ariel whispered, and knew a longing so fierce that her memory suddenly flashed alert.
When Clarice finished her prayers, she smiled a warm greeting and said, “I can’t recall the last time I have slept so long. The trip must have tired me out more than I thought.”
Ariel nodded and announced, “St. Mark’s Hospice for the Dying. That’s where Miss Simpkins is working. I’ve remembered.”
****
The old gypsy dreamer rose from his trash pile and straightened his battered fedora. Manny glanced up from the crumpled paper he had pulled from his pocket, but was too caught up in his thoughts and his hurry to notice as the crooked-featured man fell into step beside him.
Bad to the bone. That was the way he had always thought of himself. A song by that name had been a theme he had chanted through long nights of carousing. Bad to the bone. The utter wrongness of it all now left him feeling so twisted he had to fight not to stumble.
The Messenger Page 6