by J B Hawker
Dawn looked up, wide-eyed.
“Really?” she whispered.
“Why would your church want to do that?” Yvonne asked. “You some kind of cult, or something?”
Gideon straightened his shoulders, controlling his emotions before speaking.
“I assure you that our church is a long-established congregation in Bannoch. Our members set aside funds every year to provide camping scholarships for deserving young people in our community. We have no ulterior motives.”
“Deserving? You think this one is deserving? That’s rich. Do you know what she deserves? I’d like to tell you what she deserves. Did she tell you where she landed herself? The hospital, that’s where. For a drug overdose. What she deserves is a few months in jail to straighten her out, not some friggin’ camping trip with a bunch of Holy Rollers.”
Hope’s biceps hardened, her hand clenched into a fist, and a muscle in her jaw twitched with her efforts to keep from hitting this obnoxious woman.
Sensing his wife’s body language, Gideon patted her knee.
“We believe God is a God of second chances, Mrs. Jones. We are aware that Dawn has had some troubles and made some poor choices in the past, but we think she deserves this opportunity to get away from her everyday stress and think about her future,” he said, trying not to look pointedly around him at one obvious source of the girl’s stress.
“If you are willing to let her go on the trip, we have some permission forms to sign,” Hope said, pulling the papers out of her handbag. “The church’s insurance will cover all the children on the trip, and I will be accompanying them myself, so I can assure you Dawn will be well looked after.”
Yvonne turned to Dawn and asked, “You really want to spend a weekend in the wilderness with a bunch of goody-goodies?”
When Dawn nodded, eyes downcast, Yvonne shrugged.
“Okay. It’s your funeral. At least you’ll be out of my hair for a few days,” she said reaching for the papers.
Gideon handed her a pen and she signed without even reading them.
“Take her, then, but you’ll be sorry. She’s a troublemaker and a big pain in the you-know-what,” Yvonne said, tossing over the papers.
Turning back to Dawn she threatened, “But if you step out of line, even once, you can forget about going. Got that?”
Dawn nodded, blinking rapidly.
Hope and Gideon stood and thanked Yvonne for her time. She merely waved them away, turning her attention back to the television and reaching under the couch cushion for a bag of pretzels.
“Dawn, will you show us out?” Hope asked the girl, who jumped up.
Once outside, Dawn turned to Gideon.
“Did you mean what you said in there? Did you already know about me getting into trouble and all?”
Gideon nodded.
“And that stuff about a second chance?” she asked.
“Of course. We all make bad choices and need a second chance sometimes,” he said.
“I don’t know much about God and stuff,” she said, looking down.
“Well, keep coming to church and we can help you out with that,” Gideon smiled.
“I’m looking forward to our camping trip,” Hope said. “We’ll have lots of time to learn about each other and about God, too.”
“Dawn! Get in here! There’s a baby crying!” Yvonne squawked from the sofa. “If you expect me to let you go camping, you better help out more around here,” she added.
Driving away, Hope commented, “I’m afraid Dawn is going to pay for this trip many times over before we actually head off to the hills.”
“What an awful woman,” Gideon added. “How does she qualify as a foster mother? I wonder how many kids she’s got. I think I’m going to see what I can find out about her.”
“Don’t do anything that will make her take it out on Dawn,” Hope cautioned.
She was surprised at how much she wanted Dawn to go with them on the campout.
…
In a rundown apartment building, not far from Dawn’s foster home, two young men staggered down the dark, foul-smelling hallway and emerged onto the littered sidewalk, blinking in the light.
The larger of the two grabbed his partner by the arm and swung him around.
“So, you know what you gotta do, if you want any more, right?” Biggie slurred.
“Oh man, why’d you drag me out here? That’s primo stuff, man,” his companion mumbled, shielding his red-rimmed eyes.
“Yeah, well you won’t get it again, unless you help me, Keenan. I gotta meet some other guys now, so crawl off somewhere and sleep it off. I’ll call you when I need you,” Biggie said, giving the smaller man a shove.
Keenan stumbled over against the side of the building and slid down onto the pavement. He rolled onto his side with a sigh.
Biggie shook his head in disgust at the sleeping form, then straightened up and walked with purpose down the sidewalk, pulling out his phone as he went.
He wasn’t too impressed with the helpers he’d recruited, so far, but he had to take what he could get. There was still too much product to move before the big job promised, or threatened, by his connections arrived.
Biggie had been excited when Dwayne offered him the distribution rights to Bannoch. It was a wide-open territory with no competition. Biggie expected easy money, but he’d been disappointed. Too many of the kids around town were under their parents’ thumbs. It was hard going trying to convince them to even try the product.
He started by offering them weed, first. After all, it was becoming more legal all the time. If the grown-ups could use it, he persuaded, why not get in on the action, right? However, it was getting harder to convince them to upgrade to the hard stuff, and that’s where the big profit was.
And that was even before something went wrong... a bad batch or something... and that kid died. It was scaring off even some of his regular customers.
He had to do something, because Biggie never wanted to get on the bad side of his suppliers, especially Beto. That guy was crazy. Just thinking about him made the back of his hand throb.
Dwayne had ordered him to sell the stuff and Biggie would do it, somehow. Even if it meant using losers like Keenan to do some of the work.
Maybe if sweet talk and free samples wouldn’t work, he’d have to try Dwayne and Beto’s tricks and use a bit of muscle.
It didn’t help that some of the high school kids, like that Mitchell twerp, were starting to avoid Biggie.
Keenan was a total dope, but he did have one good idea when he’d suggested they should concentrate on the middle schoolers who were easier to impress.
Striding along, Biggie had a brainstorm. The Mitchell kid had a sister in middle school. If she got hooked, Biggie could use her addiction as leverage to get her big brother to help distribute. That would teach him to mess with Biggie, for sure.
Biggie decided that he’d scrape Keenan off the sidewalk later and put his plan into action.
…
TyVon Mitchell had been avoiding Biggie’s known hangouts, choosing to walk home from school another way. His new path brought him to the street where his sister usually walked home from middle school.
He made his way as quickly as his heavy load of books allowed, hoping to catch sight of Ty’Nisha. He wanted to talk to her, and he was also worried about her safety.
He was alert for any signs of Biggie or his rough friends. TyVon had been hearing rumors that these older boys were becoming more aggressive. He needed to tell Ty’Nisha to be careful.
She hadn’t taken his earlier warnings very seriously, but the fact that TyVon had rebuffed Biggie could lead the bully to put pressure on her. TyVon figured it was just the sort of thuggish thing Biggie might do.
TyVon spotted his sister and her friend Aleeshia walking a block ahead of him and increased his pace.
“Hey! Nisha! Wait up,” he called out.
The girls turned and waited. Aleeshia smoothed her hair and tugged at her sweater, prim
ping for her friend’s cute older brother.
As TyVon hurried to join them, he saw Biggie and another guy step out of the dark entry recess in a boarded-up storefront and swagger toward the girls.
TyVon dropped his backpack on the sidewalk and ran up, jumping in front of them.
“What do you guys want?” he challenged.
Biggie stepped back, startled, then looked at Keenan.
“Can you believe this runt?” he said, rolling his broad shoulders and flexing his muscles.
Turning back to TyVon, he sneered, “What’s it to you?”
The punk at Biggie’s side bounced on his toes like a boxer, saying, “Shall I deck him, Biggie?”
“Nah! No need for vi-o-lence. This is a public sidewalk and we got a right to talk to these pretty girls if we want. Isn’t that right, Mitchell?” Biggie replied, glaring at TyVon.
“Ty’Nisha, you girls go home, right now,” TyVon said, still shielding them with his body.
The two girls looked at each other, wondering what was going on.
Ty’Nisha had never seen her brother act so aggressively before. Was he really going to fight these bigger, older boys?
Aleeshia, excited at first to be the focus of the boys’ attention, began to feel afraid. She pulled out her phone with trembling fingers.
“Shall I call the police?” she whispered, loudly, to Ty’Nisha.
The others heard her, and Biggie made a swipe at the phone, but TyVon grabbed his arm and Aleeshia twisted away.
“Get out of here!” TyVon shouted, struggling with Biggie.
Aleeshia cried, “I’m calling the cops!” as she and Ty’Nisha ran away.
Believing her threat, Biggie backed off and prodded Keenan, who’d been taking a swing at the younger boy.
“No need for that. We’re going. Geez, don’t get excited,” he said as they rushed off, leaving TyVon standing on the pavement, his chest heaving.
The girls stood at the end of the block, watching. Aleeshia had her phone in her hand but hadn’t made a call.
“It’s okay,” TyVon called to them, waving them away. “Go on home.”
He straightened his jacket and trudged back to get his book bag, his insides quivering and his cheek stinging where Keenan’s wild jab had scratched him.
What were Biggie and his creepy friend planning to do with the girls? Wild ideas swirled in his mind and TyVon decided he needed to talk to his dad about this. Things were getting ugly.
Chapter EIGHT
“What happened to your cheek, son?” Tyrone Mitchell asked at dinner that evening.
“He got in a fight after school!” Ty’Nisha said at the same time her brother said, “I got a scratch playing basketball.”
“Okay, now. Which is it? Were you in a fight, Ty?” Tyrone asked.
“He was protecting me and Aleeshia, Dad!” Ty’Nisha cried.
“Let your brother talk,” Berniece chastised.
“It was no big deal,” TyVon said. “But I want to talk to you about something, Dad.”
“Yes?”
“There’s this guy we know... not a friend or anything. He’s out of school, but he hangs around and bullies all the smaller kids,” Ty said.
“What’s his name? Do you want me to talk to him?” Tyrone asked.
“No, that’s not it. The problem is I think he’s pushing drugs, now.”
“That’s a serious charge, son. Do you have any proof?”
“Well, a while back he showed me a bag of pills and stuff and tried to get me to take some,” TyVon admitted.
“Okay. You need to tell me all you know about this guy and I’ll pass it on to the authorities. Is he the person you were fighting with today?” Tyrone asked.
“Not really. It was his friend, and it was more a scuffle than a fight. I thought they were hassling Nisha and Aleeshia, maybe because I turned him down about the pills,” TyVon explained.
“Ty saved us from the bad guys,” Ty’Nisha said.
“I’m proud of you for standing up for your sister, Ty, but I don’t like the idea of you fighting,” Berniece said.
“But sometimes it’s necessary, right, Dad?” Ty’Nisha asked. “There’s lots of bad kids around.”
Berniece frowned hearing her daughter’s words.
“Lots of them?” she asked, eyebrows raised.
“Nisha might be exaggerating a little bit, but seriously, there’s some scary people around, even here in Bannoch,” TyVon said.
“Then, it’s a good thing you kids are going to be getting out of town for a nice long weekend soon,” Tyrone said, changing the subject.
“What about if we’re taking one of the bad kids with us?” Ty’Nisha asked.
“What do you mean?” her parents said together.
“Dawn Thompson asked if she could come on the camping trip,” Ty’Nisha explained.
“Why do you say this Dawn is a bad person?” Tyrone asked.
“She’s been to juvenile hall and she smokes and wears really trashy clothes and she does drugs, too!” Ty’Nisha said.
“How do you know that?” Berniece asked.
“She was in the ER for an overdose. Everyone heard about it.”
“How did she even find out about your camping trip?” Tyrone asked. “She doesn’t sound like the type to hang around Mount Zion.”
“I invited her to church,” Ty’Nisha said under her breath, looking down.
When her parents stared at her, Ty’Nisha squared her shoulders, saying, “It’s because the Bible says we need to love the unlovable. Dawn was the most unlovable person I could think of. That was before I met Biggie and his creepy friend.”
“So, you invited her to church. That was a very loving thing to do, dear,” Berniece said.
“Absolutely,” echoed Tyrone. “And she came, did she? So, maybe she’s not a hopeless case, after all.”
“But should she come camping with us good kids?” Ty’Nisha asked.
“Hasn’t your Sunday school class covered Romans 3:22, yet?” TyVon teased.
“TyVon is right. We all make mistakes and bad choices. It sounds like Dawn has made quite a few but remember that the church exists to help sinners find their way,” Tyrone said.
“However, I don’t want you to be led astray by bad companions, so, if Dawn does go camping with you, be aware of her history. You know how to make wise choices and avoid temptation and we expect you both to remember that,” Berniece admonished her children.
…
The evening session of the advanced women’s self-defense class was wrapping up in the Nazarene church basement.
Hope was glad this was the last class of the day. For some reason, she’d been feeling much more tired in the past few days. She wondered if she was coming down with something. It was rare for Hope to feel ill, or to lack energy, so it worried her a bit.
“Okay, ladies! That’s it for today. Good job!” she called out and picked up a towel to wipe the perspiration from her face and neck.
Hope’s sister-in-law, Shebana, grabbed her sports bag and walked over.
“Great class, Hope,” she said. “I just wish this church had shower facilities. I hate driving back to Tillamook all sweaty. My car’s starting to smell like a locker room.”
“I know,” Hope chuckled. “I wish I was in a position to have my own little gym with all the fixings, but since I’m not, I guess we’ll just have to make do and invest in lots of those little hanging pine trees for our cars.”
“Yeah, right,” Shebana said, wrinkling her nose.
She helped Hope to put away the class equipment before they walked up the stairs to leave.
“Are you all set for the Great American Campout?” Shebana asked as they emerged into the cool evening air.
“Just about,” Hope replied. “The church has been really generous about providing all the supplies and equipment.”
“Who is going to go with you to help wrangle the kids?” Shebana asked.
“I don’t know, yet. G
ideon said he’d take care of that. I think he’s out twisting arms as we speak, as a matter of fact.”
…
Across town, Gideon sat behind the wheel of his car, looking at the church directory on his phone, hoping that reviewing the names would provide him with an inspiration of someone who he might be able to convince to help Hope chaperone the camping trip.
He scanned the list twice, shook his head, put the phone down on the passenger seat, and started the car.
As he drove, he wrestled with the problem, growing increasingly frustrated.
Of all the able-bodied members of his congregation, not one was free on the weekend of the campout. A few mentioned that they would have saved the date if they’d known the Millers wouldn’t be available, but now it wasn’t possible for them to help.
Perhaps Gideon could still cancel his other commitment.
He was one of the keynote speakers at a ministry seminar being held in Portland on the same weekend as the camping trip, but there might be someone who could take his place.
After he parked the car in his own driveway, he picked up the phone to call his associate on the seminar planning committee.
Hope saw car lights swing into the driveway and opened the door to greet Gideon.
She was puzzled to see him lingering in the car until she realized he was on the phone. Being a pastor meant being on-call twenty-four hours a day, so this driveway conversation was not that unusual.
She watched as Gideon spoke earnestly into the phone, gesticulating as though trying to make a point.
He frowned at the phone in his hand before slipping it into his jacket and climbing out of the car.
When he saw Hope in the doorway his face brightened, and he hurried to greet her with a hug.
“How was your day, darling?” he asked, walking into the house with his arm around her shoulder. “You look a little tired.”
“I’m fine. What was that intense phone call all about? Is someone in the congregation in trouble?” she asked.
“Sort of. I’ll tell you all about it at dinner. I need to have a shower and get comfortable first,” he said, sniffing the air. “What’s cookin’, Good-lookin’?”
“I’m trying a meatloaf from the Women’s Missionary Society cookbook. I hope you like it,” she said.