Listen to the Lambs

by Daniel Black

  Back at the rotunda, Elisha hated himself for what he’d done. Only nasty, vile people do things like that, he thought. But still, he couldn’t forget the man’s touch. It was light and easy, like the hairs of a feather, and Elisha wondered if he’d ever see him again. Again? He chuckled. He hadn’t seen him at all! Even if Elisha did, he wouldn’t recognize him. Elisha knew the man was black from the texture of his hair, but that’s all he knew for sure. He could see him tomorrow on the street and never know it was him. But if they touched, Elisha believed, he’d know. Most men’s hands were rough and calloused, but the shadow man’s were soft and spongy, like thick terry cloth. Perhaps they’d been looking for the same thing—a human touch—and, once achieved, he, like Elisha, would return to a life of physical neglect. If Elisha was lucky, he thought, they’d one day meet again.

  By week’s end, his inheritance had been liquidated. The land, somewhere in South Georgia, had been sold to the county for a little over $60,000 and the plot on which the dilapidated house stood brought $56,500. The sale was quick and easy. A developer had bought the other abandoned houses, so he was eager to make the purchase. It would take a few days for the paperwork to be filed and checks cut, but it was a done deal. Elisha hadn’t mentioned his plan to The Family for fear they’d try to dissuade him, but now there was no turning back. He’d signed the appropriate papers and cried his last tears. It was finished.

  At the next family gathering in The Upper Room, he laid bricks of cash upon Lazarus’s bed. The others stared. Only The Comforter knew what Elisha had done.

  Cinderella covered her mouth. “Oh my! Where’d you get all that money from?”

  Legion thumbed several bundles. “Who you done robbed, man?”

  “I sold what my mother left me. Everything. All of it.”

  They halted. Each knew his love for Sorrow, and now they felt the pain of his emptiness.

  “It’s enough to pay his bail and lawyer fees, too, I hope. It should be. It’s all I have.” He turned to hide his tears.

  The Comforter declared, “‘What you’ve done unto the least of these, you’ve done unto me.’” Elisha sighed. “Your day of abundance shall come.” She nodded as if it already had. “Only when you’ve given everything have you given at all. God honors only those who give all.”

  Elisha wanted to explain that he wasn’t upset or regretful; he simply hoped his mother understood what he’d done and why. She’d provided an inheritance and now he’d surrendered it to someone else. But it was right. It felt right. And Elisha had no doubt Lazarus would’ve done the same for him. Actually, Lazarus already had.

  Cinderella reported that the protest seemed to be working. Her eyes beamed fluorescent green. Media presence had leveled but not decreased, so she and the others were encouraged. Every day people from one of the TV stations camped out at the protest site, talking to both picketers and bystanders, keeping Lazarus’s name visible and his case alive in viewers’ minds. Legion’s sporadic lunches undergirded their strength, she acknowledged gratefully, and come what may, she would never forget es support. Never.

  “You’re an incredible person,” she told Legion. “People really don’t know who you are. I suppose they never will. But you’ve saved my life. I thank God for you.”

  E play-punched her shoulder and said, “Whatever, girl! You know I got you. I got all of y’all. Don’t ever question that.”

  They thanked Legion. E went on to say that e’d secured a lawyer for Lazarus—a real, bona fide lawyer—one of the best in the city.

  “What!” Cinderella shrieked. “How?”

  “Don’t you worry about that. Just know I got him to take the case.”

  Everyone looked at Legion with suspicious gratitude.

  Cinderella pressed the matter. “What’s it gonna cost? A real lawyer’s an arm and a leg!”

  Legion’s pursed lips confirmed her thinking. “He’s doing it as a favor”—e paused—“but still it ain’t free. I gotta give him something.”

  Elisha clutched the moneybag. “How much?”

  Legion’s head shook. “I don’t know, but he guessed it might be somewhere around fifty thousand dollars.”

  “Wooo!” “Geesh!” “Seriously?” they mumbled.

  “And that’s cheap.”

  The Comforter replied, “Where there’s a will, there’s a way. We’ll make it happen.”

  Elisha handed the bag to Legion and said, “Take what you need. That’s what it’s for.”

  “We need only ten thousand right now. For the retainer.”

  “Just take it!” Elisha said. “I’d feel better about it.”

  Legion confessed, “I don’t have anywhere to keep that amount of money.”

  The Comforter intervened. “Give it here. I’ll keep it safe for us.”

  She went on to report that Lazarus’s son, the fourth Lazarus, paid him a visit. The others were shocked and surprised.

  “He heard his father needed him, so he went to see about him.”

  “How’d it go? Do you know?” Cinderella asked.

  “Of course she knows,” Legion teased. “Come on!”

  The Comforter said, “There are things Lazarus needs to repair. It won’t be easy, but it must be done—if he’s to be free. The lambs have spoken.”

  “What does he need to do?” Legion asked.

  The Comforter thought how to answer without saying too much. “He must align those who’ve come before him with those who’ve come after.”

  No one understood.

  The Comforter tried again: “He must reorder the steps of his fathers and reset the steps of his sons. Only then will God hear his cry.”

  They still didn’t understand, but they nodded anyway. At least the part about fathers and sons made sense, so they looked satisfied. Somehow, The Comforter was orchestrating all of this. They knew that much for sure.

  “Isn’t bail usually a tenth of the set amount?” Cinderella asked.

  “I think so,” Legion said. “If you go through a bondsman.”

  The Comforter offered, “Let me see what I can do tomorrow.”

  Anticipation mounted. It had been a while since Lazarus was among them, and now they sat in The Upper Room like a lost tribe of vagabonds. Waiting. Everyone felt the void. Like a body with a hole in the chest. No heart at all. Present, but not alive; functional, but not living. They’d gotten so used to having him that his absence felt personal, disrespectful even, as if someone had taken their God away. The atmosphere around them had changed, they believed. Wind began to blow the day of Lazarus’s arrest and it never quite settled. In the evenings, it carried a sharp, chilly edge that usually didn’t come until autumn. Cinderella kept a red tattered sweater—the same color of her shoes—nearby at night to keep the nip away. And practically every afternoon, regardless of the forecast, a shower popped up, without prelude of dark clouds, and dashed away within minutes. The Family read these signs as God’s displeasure, His abysmal discontent with human beings. The Comforter had explained this. She said the activities in the skies were always relative to God’s assessment of universal harmony and balance. All one had to do, to know the mind of God, was pay attention to the weather. It spoke daily.

  With the rising of a full moon, Legion told a story so fantastic even The Comforter winced. Yet e swore it was true.

  “This happened just last week. I was walking over by Atlantic Station, near Ikea, when suddenly I fell into a deep pit.”

  “What!” Cinderella shouted. “Did you hurt yourself?”

  “It’s a wonder I didn’t! The crater must’ve been thirty or forty feet deep and just as wide. The top closed up like a black hole in space. I couldn’t see nothin’, and I mean nothin’! In any direction. I couldn’t even see my hand in front of my face.”

  “Was construction work going on or something?” Cinderella interrupted again.

  “Girl, I don’t know!” Legion shot her a look of frustration. “But it had to be something more than that. The hole was as big as
a house. And I’m telling you … it was pitch-black. And hot as fire! I thought I was in a damn sauna. I could hardly breathe. Since I couldn’t see, I was scared to move, but after a few moments I stuck my hands out and tried to feel my way around. I reached a wall that was slick as glass and hot as a burning woodstove, so I backed away. I screamed, but no one heard me. My voice echoed off the walls. I’ve never been so scared in all my life.”

  The Family frowned as they listened.

  “I couldn’t climb out. There was nothing to grab hold of. And even if there was, it would’ve been too hot to touch. Sweat poured all over me.”

  Elisha whispered, “What did you do?”

  “Nothing. What could I do? I just stood there, trembling, burning up.”

  Elisha marveled, not at the story but at Legion’s masterful performance. This child ought to be onstage, Elisha thought. For every description Legion had an accompanying antic that brought the tale to life.

  “After a few minutes, my clothes were wet, but still I couldn’t see anything. So I breathed a little easier and sat down right in the middle of the floor. It was hot, too, but not like the walls.”

  With pierced eyes, The Comforter stared at Legion, not for the story’s details, but for God’s lesson in it.

  Cinderella voiced what others were thinking: “Was anyone else there? Had someone maybe fallen into the hole before you?”

  “I don’t think so. When I called out, no one answered. And I didn’t hear anyone scampering around.”

  “It was just you, down in this inferno, all by yourself? With no light?”

  “That’s right. Nobody but me. I thought maybe I was in the middle of a nightmare, but I wasn’t. It was real. The sidewalk just opened up and swallowed me.”

  “Oh, Legion! You’re such a storyteller!”

  E frowned, pissed. “This ain’t no story, girl! This is real. It actually happened.” E looked to Elisha for support, but Elisha had none to give. Of course The Comforter was in another world. “All I could do was sit there and wish to be rescued. Everything I’ve ever said or done flashed across my mind. It was like I was living my life over again, but this time I was watching it unfold.”

  “Yes,” The Comforter said. “Yes.”

  The others waited for elaboration, but it never came. The Comforter nodded in silence. There was something she understood, that only she understood.

  “After a while, the strangest feeling came over me. It was like I knew the place. There was something familiar about it. I calmed down and tried to figure it out, but I couldn’t. Even the sweaty, stuffy odor was recognizable, but I couldn’t figure out how. I walked around the walls of the structure until I knew I’d made a complete circle. That’s how I knew the size of the hole. Then, once again, I backed away and sat on the floor. I’m telling you … I knew this place. I don’t know how, but I did. Maybe in another lifetime or something, but I’ve definitely been there before.”

  The Comforter smiled.

  “What is it?” Legion asked her.

  She laughed and said, “Every heart knows home.”

  Huh? The others frowned. They would’ve probed further, but they’d learned better. With The Comforter, they’d discovered that if you don’t get it the first time, simply wait for the revelation.

  “How did you get out?” Cinderella asked.

  Legion squirmed and said, “That’s the crazy part! I was sitting there when, all of a sudden, I felt something brush against my face. It scared me at first, so I fought against it, until I realized it was a rope.”

  “A rope,” Elisha said.

  “I know this sounds crazy, but I’m telling you the truth. It just dropped out of nowhere. I couldn’t see it, but I could feel it, dangling midair.”

  Cinderella’s eyes rolled. She’d heard more than enough.

  “Listen to me! I wouldn’t make this up. I know I tell stories all the time, but this one’s true!”

  The urgent sincerity in Legion’s voice captured Cinderella and returned her to the moment. She stared into Legion’s anxious eyes.

  “I grabbed the rope and began to climb. It was hard, but eventually I got to the top. There was no opening, though. Just a ceiling with the rope hanging from it. But when I pushed on the ceiling, it gave a little, so I pushed harder until I broke through.”

  “Oh, Legion, stop it!” Cinderella cried. “You can’t expect anyone to believe that!”

  With mouth agape and eyes bulged wide, e said, “I’m telling you! This is what happened! I fought my way through the top like a baby coming out of a womb. There was no one around. When I finally crawled out of the hole and looked down, there was nothing but solid concrete.”

  “You gotta be kidding,” Elisha said.

  “No, I’m not. It’s like nothing ever happened. I looked around and everything looked normal. I even touched myself to make sure I was real.”

  The Comforter gazed at him. “You can’t go back. Not to stay. You’ve been delivered.”

  “From what?” e asked.

  She clutched es hands lovingly. “Your past.”

  Elisha and Cinderella murmured interpretive possibilities, but even then they didn’t understand. Legion tossed es hands and stopped trying. All e knew was that it was real, it had definitely happened, and something about the place felt eerily familiar. That was the extent of es knowing.

  “Every life goes backward, at times, in order to move forward,” she added. “Growth extends in both directions.”

  No one comprehended her meaning. She sighed deeply and sauntered down the slope and into the known world. The other three talked about lighter things and slept together, spoon fashion, on Lazarus’s bed in the middle of The Upper Room.

  Chapter 26

  Monday morning, The Comforter exchanged flowing white garments for a solid red dress and black shoes. She’d scavenged and found women’s clothes in a trash bag just outside an old folks’ home. Taking only what she needed, she retied the bag and stood it upright as if she’d never touched it. Her hair she coiled into thin, long ropes and tucked beneath a matted salt-and-pepper wig. Instantly she was ancient, older than the wind, aged enough to be Lazarus’s mother. She was ready.

  Two nights prior, after leaving the others on Lazarus’s bed, she took a broken razor blade and slit her left cheek. She’d be his mother, she’d decided. Surely they’d take bail from a frail old lady. But since no one that age had survived without scars, she had to look the part. All her personal wounds had been healed. Yet this one would be visible and elicit the sympathy of men. Recently scabbed over, the mark was fresh enough to make others frown and old enough to cause them to wonder what happened. And that’s what she wanted—a sympathetic distraction—to move officers’ hearts away from Lazarus and the crime and toward the woes and tribulations of a little old black lady who couldn’t hurt a flea. Hunched over on a makeshift cane, she reduced her five-seven height by three inches and raised the tone of her voice a scratchy octave. Had The Family seen her, they never would have known that she was The Comforter.

  Approaching the entrance to the county jail, she trembled like Miss Jane Pittman on her way to the “whites only” water fountain. A few officers offered their assistance, but The Comforter declined graciously, wanting not pity but sympathy for her cause. At the information window, her voice fluttered as she asked, “Who do I speak to about getting my son?” Others looked around, wondering who this woman was and whom she was trying to set free.

  “Oh, good morning, ma’am!” a young female officer said. Her hair was newly cornrowed and eyebrows redrawn in perfect arcs. “That office is upstairs, on the third floor. Do you need assistance getting there?”

  Like a Parkinson’s sufferer’s, The Comforter’s head and hands quivered. “No, ma’am. I think I can manage. Might take me a minute, though!” She cackled, eliciting from the officer an uneasy smile. With each step toward the elevator, The Comforter became the mother Lazarus needed. Her eyes grew misty with concern and longing. She thought of hi
m not as Lazarus III or even Trey but as her baby boy who needed his mother’s protection. She wondered, for the first time, what he’d been eating in there and if other men had tried to “bother” him. Did he have a warm cot to sleep on or had he reclined on the cold, hard floor? “My, my, my,” she murmured like old church mothers. “Help me, Lord Jesus.”

  On the third floor, she found the appropriate department and told a young male officer of her desire. He touched her hand warmly, as if she were his own mother, and said, “Who’s your son, ma’am?”

  Before naming him, The Comforter responded, “He was innocently accused. Grabbed off the streets like a common criminal, although he ain’t never hurt nobody!” Tears fell long before she’d intended. “And I want my son home. He’s the only one I got. Ain’t got no help without him.”

  “Ma’am, what’s his name?”

  “And he got a boy he need to finish raisin’. The child’s wanderin’ in the wilderness without his daddy.”

  “Ma’am—”

  “One day y’all gon’ know who you arrested and you gon’ have to repent. Don’t, the Lord gon’ hold you responsible on Judgment Day.”

  The officer scowled. Something in The Comforter’s tone felt predictive and unsettling. He stood to regain control of his nerves. “Ma’am, what’s your son’s name?”

  She trembled and swallowed hard. Then, her eyes grew wide as quarters and she hissed, “Lazarus Love.”

  Chills covered the officer’s arms. “Let me see if I can find someone to help you.” Clearly unnerved, he escaped through a rear exit and returned seconds later with an obvious superior.

  “Good morning, ma’am. I’m Lieutenant Tyrone Bennett.”

  The Comforter struggled to stand, leaning heavily upon the tree limb that accompanied her. The officer extended a strong, broad hand and The Comforter returned an even stronger one.