Dominion

by Randy Alcorn

  The old man’s eyes started to glaze. His mouth kept moving, but he was in transition. “I remembers those ol’ songs, songs black as night, black as the raven. ‘Steal away.’ ‘Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.’ ‘I’ll Fly Away’. ‘Just Over in Glory Land.’ ‘In the Sweet By-and-By.’ We always sung about ‘one day acomin.’ We knew this weren’t the day.”

  Obadiah was somewhere else now. Was he thinking about his mama? Clarence wondered. His wife? His daughter? Little Felicia?

  Suddenly, so low and quiet you could barely hear, he began singing a song Clarence vaguely remembered from childhood. “I does not know why all aroun’ me, my hopes all shattered seem to be. God’s perfect plan I cannot see. But one day, someday, he’ll make it plain.”

  Clarence envied for a moment the simplicity of his father’s faith. But in another moment, he pitied the old man who clung to promises made to slaves who were beaten and raped and ridiculed and sold like cattle.

  “I don’t understand,” the old man continued to sing, “my struggles now, why I suffer and feel so bad. But one day, someday, he’ll make it plain. Someday when I his face shall see, someday from tears I shall be free, yes, someday I’ll understand.”

  It was awkward at the table. Nobody knew quite what to do when Grandpa edged off into his other world.

  Zeke and Torel left Dani alone to observe through the time portal a great ancient civilization in northern Africa, near modern Sudan. She viewed with fascination the coal black people who called themselves Kushites, whom the Greeks called Ethiopians, which meant “dark skinned.” She watched them develop their own alphabetic language, build pyramids, masonries, ironworks, and complex waterways. She marveled at their excellence in architecture, education, and the fine arts. They were one of the most vigorous and advanced civilizations the world had ever known. Suddenly she saw the writing of the psalmist, and it thrilled her: “Ethiopia shall soon stretch out her hands unto God.”

  She watched as Jeremiah was rescued by a black African, then as Simon—from Cyrene in Africa—carried the cross of Jesus. By the time of Christ, this black people group was sending ambassadors to Arabia, India, China, and to Rome. She saw a number of Africans gathered on the day of Pentecost, converted to faith in Christ. She saw the church at Antioch, among the chief leaders Simeon, called ‘Black Man,’ and Lucius the Cyrenian. She watched the Antioch church send out Paul and Barnabas to evangelize Turkey, Greece, and Italy. It inspired her to see black church leaders sending missionaries to reach pagan white Europeans with the gospel. She wished Harley could see this. She wished she’d learned about it back in the Shadowlands.

  She watched, intrigued, as one man came to the fore in this ancient drama, a man born just before Christ. He was the chief officer in charge of Ethiopia’s treasury.

  Something inside this man—Dani recognized it as the voice of Elyon—told him there was more than the petty ethnic-centered gods of races and nations, such as the three-faced Kushite lion or the Egyptian ram god. There must be a true God who made all races and nations and reigned over all. This Ethiopian sought to know that one true God. He’d heard of a God who brought justice and redemption to a band of slaves, delivering them from the Egyptians a millennium and a half earlier. This was a God who could not be manipulated, who did not exist to fulfill the agenda of any man or nation.

  The Ethiopian welcomed the opportunity to travel to Jerusalem. After a few weeks of observing Jewish worship and faith, he began his long journey back by carriage through the Sinai desert to Egypt, from which he would travel another eight hundred miles to his home. Along the way he studied the Hebrew Scriptures, of which he had obtained a scribal copy for his queen at great price. As Dani watched him riding in his chariot, she felt the longing, the ache in his heart to know the truth. It thrilled her.

  Suddenly a man appeared on the scene, Philip, a Jewish Christian convert. He had already gone to reach the Samaritans, who had been hated as half-breeds but whom he knew should be embraced because all racial barriers had been broken down in Christ. Now, sent by God’s Spirit, he went to the Ethiopian.

  Dani listened as the black African asked questions, and Philip, the brown Jew, explained how God’s Son had suffered and died and risen for all men that they might be forgiven of their sins and spend eternity with him, along with brothers from all nations and tribes and languages.

  The Ethiopian listened in rapt attention, sensing this was the missing piece to life’s puzzle. The man came to faith in Christ as he sat in his chariot. He asked Philip to baptize him in water by the road. Dani wept at the sight of this baptism, feeling as if she were there. It moved her more than any she’d ever witnessed.

  Dani watched in excitement as this black national leader continued to study and grow in his faith on the journey home. Back in Ethiopia he became an outspoken witness for Elyon’s Son. She watched many in that nation come to Christ, knowing the descendants of these people would migrate to west Africa and seventeen hundred years later many would be taken to the new world as slaves. She realized her roots for the first time—she and her family were descended from the very Ethiopians she now observed. Churches were established, thriving churches. She watched the decades become centuries as some of the greatest theological minds of early Christianity—including Augustine, Tertullian, and Origen—came out of the black churches of North Africa.

  As she watched the courage and conviction of the first African Christians, the strongest bulwark of early Christianity, she swelled with wonder and the right kind of pride. The spiritual heritage of her people, she realized for the first time, did not simply go back a few hundred years to American slaves. Many people of her race embraced the Christian faith before the first white churches were born, before the gospel traveled north to Europe or spread to Asia, and fifteen hundred years before it came to the new world.

  She marveled too, as she followed the timeline of history, that the Christian church was solidly grounded in North Africa over six hundred years before Mohammed lived and Islam began. She watched the flourishing ministries of over five hundred bishops in the African church, then grieved as she witnessed Islam’s military conquest and persecution of African Christians. She wondered why she had never before heard this part of history. But she thrilled at the vibrant Christian faith and perseverance of her ancestors, even amid the suffering and enslavement by Muslims.

  Dani wept at length, feeling pain eclipsed by joy. Finally she felt a hand on her shoulder. Thinking it might be Elyon’s Son, she peered up at the broad smile of a coal black face she immediately recognized. It was the Ethiopian man, baptized by Philip, now in the full-time service of the King of the universe. Dani and the man walked and talked and exchanged stories. He introduced her to many of his family and old friends, who became her new ones.

  On Wednesday, Clarence sat through his third funeral service in the past four weeks. He didn’t want to come, but Geneva talked him into it. The boy killed in a knife fight Sunday night was Robby, a thirteen-year-old who lived just two blocks away. Geneva told Clarence he’d met him the day after they moved in, but he didn’t remember.

  Clarence looked around in the funeral chapel at the number of blue bandannas around heads and knees, and clothing accents of every kind, from blue shoelaces to blue yarn on belts. Whoever this kid was, he obviously claimed Crip.

  It was an open casket. Often teenage funerals weren’t anymore. When someone is shot at close range, it doesn’t lend itself to viewing the body.

  The funeral was impersonal compared to Dani’s and Felicia’s. The minister didn’t know the boy. Apparently they didn’t go to church.

  A young woman with a face aged more than her body stood up and said, “My Robby was a good boy. He jus’ hung with the wrong crowd. Some of you the wrong crowd!” She pointed defiantly at some blue-accented teenagers. “I know you his set, but you took my baby from me. Won’t never forgive you for that. Never.” Her lower lip quivered.

  “I told Robby ten times if I told him once, ‘You tied your
shoes this morning— maybe the funeral director’s gonna tie ’em for you tonight.’ Well, one of you’s gonna be next, you hear me now?” She pointed menacingly at certain faces in the crowd. “I know whassup. I know whatchu thinkin’. You boys thinkin’ no good. I see it in your eyes. You thinkin’ revenge. Don’t do it. Don’t go kill somebody else’s baby tonight. Let it end here. Let it rest. Just let it rest!”

  She pled with them, as other mothers sitting in the crowd said quiet amens.

  After the short service, Clarence watched as teenage boys and girls walked by the coffin, many of them dropping in blue flags. The girls cried openly, while the boys brushed off tears quickly, pretending they were reaching for their hair or swatting a fly. Some of the older boys looked grim and thoughtful. Their eyes suggested something was brewing. Clarence thought Robby’s mother might be right. Revenge. He shuddered at the thought. It was like the old feuds, but much worse—the Hatfields and McCoys with Uzis.

  Clarence and Geneva were among the last to walk by the boy’s body. In the casket lay three of his favorite stuffed animals, most prominent a green camel with red balls hanging around its jaws.

  He was just a little boy.

  Geneva walked over to Robby’s mother, whom she didn’t know except for a brief conversation at Kim’s Grocery. She put her arms around her and hugged her and cried with her. That was Geneva.

  After Geneva rejoined him, Clarence looked back at Robby’s mother one last time. She removed the blue flags from the coffin, handling them quickly as if they contained an airborne virus. She threw them on the floor, then kicked them for good measure. She looked at her baby, hugged the body that had once contained his spirit, and cried loud and long, as only a mother does who has lost her little child.

  Meanwhile, on the streets outside the funeral chapel, the Rollin’ 60s Crips passed the word that at nightfall they’d gather at Austin Park. They’d be puttin’ in some heavy work against the Woodlawn Park Bloods and the Loc’d Out Piru Gangsters. The Crips would make them pay for what they did to their homeboy.

  The Rollin’ 60s Crips met at the fringes of Austin Park, adjoining a Northeast Portland cul-de-sac where there were three R6C houses. They gathered with two sets of Bloods on their mind—the Woodlawn Park Bloods and the Loc’d Out Piru Gangsters. Crip intelligence knew Robby, a Rollin’ 60s baby gangster, had been put away by two Bloods from one or both of these allied sets.

  The drums had been beating ever since the funeral, word passed everywhere about the meeting at Austin Park. The Rollin’ 60s Crips convened here when there was a gang infraction, discipline problem, or when Bloods needed to get kicked. They’d plan moves, hit tactics and strategies, and pump each other up. They’d choose a riding party, a group of shooters to invade enemy territory, to mount up, embark on a mission of revenge.

  Forty or so homeboys had showed. Tyrone recognized most of them, though he’d never seen them together at once. He gazed in awe at the fashions, studying them as if he were a freshman girl on her first day of school.

  Two homies wore baseball caps backwards, another tipped to one side. He saw three dudes with hairnets and others with a variety of bandannas, most of them blue with white swirls, some covering heads, others wrapped around knees. Some of the homies had long hair combed straight back into a tail or braided at the neckline, others wore pageboys, others “fades,” highly styled flattops with geometric designs etched into the sides.

  Several guys wore huge Le Tigre knit shirts buttoned to the top and hanging loose, others pin-striped baseball shirts, still others oversized plaid Pendleton long sleeves. Ty could see many tattoos, most of them R6C. Footwear was all-white athletic shoes with black shoelaces or all-black athletic shoes with white shoelaces. Some sported Crip-blue shoelaces, mostly unlaced.

  Black Raiders jackets were everywhere. Some homeboys wore overalls, partly unfastened. Others wore black, brown, or gray oversized Dickeys, khaki work pants, or starched and creased Levi’s. Most of the pants were worn low, sagging or dragging on the ground.

  Serious soldiers dressed in combat black. Black leather, black shoes, black everything, to blend into the night and to confuse rivals and 5-0s. They knew home-boy blues made an easy target, so they weren’t flagged out. Even though it was almost dark, most of them wore shades.

  The girls, outnumbered two to one, wore variations on guy clothes, leaning heavily to the darker colors and favoring jackets with fancy cursive or Old English lettering. They wore heavy makeup, with excessive dark eye shadow.

  Blasters were everywhere, playing the latest rap, the latest funk, along with songs of sex and violence and cop-killin’. There was a Geto Boys song about women being whores, and raping a girl because she left her curtains open. The song ended with, “Then slit her throat and watch her shake till her eyes closed.”

  The boys seemed to enjoy it, with no thought that the woman degraded and raped and murdered in the song could be their mothers or sisters. While some girls drifted away from this music, others stayed and gyrated to the beat. Ty glanced sidelong at his friend Jason, another fourteen-year-old wannabe, eyeing the Crip girls. Both felt tense, but tried to look cool.

  Gangster Cool, GC, head of Portland’s Rollin’ 60s, was a transplant from L.A. His father had been an Original Gangster, an OG Crip with a bad rep, still serving hard time at Folsom. GC had seen him face to face as a six-year-old at a jail visit and never since. GC himself had gone to juvy for armed robbery at fourteen but was back out in a year and became a Ghetto Star by eighteen, earning OG status just like the daddy he’d never known. Now he was twenty-one, a streetwise veteran with charismatic charm, a high roller entrepreneur with a thriving crack cocaine business.

  GC wore his hair in a g-ster do, with rows of skinny french braids secured with blue barrettes. A turkish rope, a thick gold chain, hung around his neck. He had the sculpted good looks of a movie star, a Denzel Washington image, with an unshakable street-smarts confidence. Ty stared at the most prominent feature of GC’s face, a four-inch scar he’d gotten in L.A. in a knife fight with Eight Trey Gangsters. GC started talking, and the homeboys listened in rapt attention, like they never did at school.

  “Yo, 60s. Ready fo’ some action? Ready to be down fo’ yo’ hood?”

  “Yeah. We ready, man. We down.”

  “We kings of da turf,” GC said. “This our dominion.”

  One of the homeboys was Mookie, who’d received a recent promotion. Behind him stood Shadow, GC’s lieutenant, minister of defense. He wore gray work gloves for handling weapons and doin’ work—which usually meant beating people up.

  “Soldiers watchin’ fo’ Po Po?” GC asked Shadow, who nodded. Po Po was one of the nicer gang names for the Portland Police. “First,” GC said, “we got to do some discipline.”

  Shadow yanked a young boy up by his collar. Ty recognized him. His name was Pete.

  “Somebody say you snitchin’ on us, boy,” GC said to Pete.

  “No way, man,” Pete said, voice trembling.

  “Cops been talkin’ to you,” GC said.

  “They talkin’, but I ain’t listenin’.”

  “Well, maybe you talkin’ and maybe you not. We not so sure. So we gonna give you a reminder of what happens if you do.” The gang responded with grunts. Ty watched in fascinated horror as they beat up the boy and kicked him until he was almost unconscious. This was one of the cardinal gang rules, one step beyond pledging for a fraternity—you join and you have to submit yourself to any mistreatment the older gang members care to dish out. Ty noticed his friend Jason was nowhere to be seen.

  “You next?” GC looked at Tyrone. “Sup, little man? Hey, I seen yo’ family’s car. Bumper sticker say ‘Proud parent of honor student.’” They all laughed. “Well, honor student don’t count for much here, boy. Street smart’s what counts. That’s what gets you your green and the homegirls, the best little Cripalettes. Don’t matter about math—’cept you know how to count up yo’ money!”

  GC slapped hands with several of
the homies, including Mookie. Shadow, the hard-faced enforcer, stood guard.

  “Hear you been claimin’ us, honor student,” GC said to Ty.

  “Well, uh…”

  “You sound stupid, honor student. Claimin’ us or not?”

  “Been doin’ some wallbangin’. Just strikin’ up the hood a little.”

  “Advertisin’ the set, huh?” GC seemed impressed. “You just a toy or what?”

  “I seen his piece on Miller,” one of the older boys said. “He fresh.”

  “On Miller? Seen it too. That yo’ work, nigger? Nice piece. Def. So you wanna kick it with us? Wanna be mo’ than a tagger?”

  “Yeah,” Ty said.

  “Know how big this set is?” GC asked Ty. “Hundred of us. We stick to our own hoods unless a war’s on, then we join up, help each other.”

  A hundred. Ty was impressed. It never occurred to him GC might be exaggerating.

  “Hey, I’m a 60 from L.A. Set’s over a thousand deep there. Big sets join as nations for a major war and we could take the city apart. You should see the East Coast Crips. Go from 1st Street out to 225th. Harbor City! One set, takes five divisions of cops to invade their turf. Crips lots bigger than LAPD!”

  More low whistles and hand slapping, like the punctuated amens at Ebenezer that encouraged Cairo Clancy to keep driving home his points.

  “There be hood and there be N-hood,” GC said. “Take all the sets in N-hood, and man you got power, big time. Portland way behind—it’s L.A. twenty years ago. But our sets be gettin’ deeper every day!” He stared at Ty, as if trying to read what was inside him.

  “Why you claimin’ us, boy?”

  “Sixties is the main set in my hood.”

  “That all?”

  “Gangsters kill my mama and my sister. Maybe Spics or Bloods.”

  “Heard about that. Nobody know who did it, huh? Hey, we kill somebody, we proud, don’t hide it. But we don’t just kill somebody’s mama wid no reason. They scum, Bloods are. Spics too.” He looked at Ty. “You ready to get jumped in?”