Controlling the dogs once they entered the sanctuary, however, was a different matter entirely. They had been locked up for too long and the sudden freedom and excitement were overwhelming and irresistible.
Under the bemused countenance of a crucified Christ, the dogs began scent marking everywhere in the sanctuary. Then other dogs tried to cover those marks. Gabriel watched all of their antics without judgment or rancor. There was no point trying to catch them. He knew he could clean the smell of urine. Smoke damage, however, would be a much larger problem—if there remained anything left to clean at all.
Gabriel heard the sirens approaching and turned to face the crowd in the sanctuary—dogs chasing each other, Luke and Greg trying to leash as many as they could, Sid running to catch Louis, the isolation dogs surprisingly energetic and scratching to get out of their cages.
Then the first searching fingers of smoke poked through the wet towels they had used to seal the basement door. A debilitating fatigue overcame the priest. They were out of time and options.
Gabriel allowed himself a brief moment of despair and then he forced his mind to clear. His eyes landed on the stained glass image of Isaac and then the crucifix. In the juxtaposition of those two symbols of sacrifice, he suddenly saw a way forward.
“Greg!” Gabriel shouted. “You need to pull out these IV lines! Time to get the dogs outside.”
“We can’t,” Greg said. “What if they’re contagious? You’d be releasing this virus into the neighborhood.”
“They’re not contagious anymore.”
“And who told you that? God?”
“The mayor of the City of New York. That’s close enough for me right now.”
“But what if she’s wrong, Gabriel?”
“I just can’t abandon these dogs in a house of God to suffocate or burn to death… not when they might also be a key to helping those kids who are still sick.” He hoped his stated rationale sounded reasonable, because his real prayer was pathetically naïve and ran counter to all his actual life experiences.
“Releasing these dogs is a big call,” Greg said. “And you won’t be able to take it back.”
“This is my church. I will take the responsibility.”
“No,” Luke said. “We share in this. We all take responsibility.”
“Agreed,” Sid said.
Greg was silent for a moment and then nodded his concurrence.
30
Kendall had to jog to keep up with the mayor as she charged toward McGreary in front of an angry crowd that had mushroomed to over three hundred.
“Stand your ground, Lieutenant,” she commanded. “Let FDNY handle this.”
“Was the city fire department your idea, Mayor?” McGreary pushed back. “A false alarm so you could send more of your own in and take control? It’s not going to stop us. I have orders.” As he finished his sentence, plumes of black smoke began to billow out of the church’s basement windows. He pointed to the smoke. “This for real?”
“What’s it look like?” the mayor snapped.
“Aw, crap,” McGreary groaned.
The first fire truck and several ambulances pulled up beside the Guards’ temporary command center. The fire chief jumped off the truck and ran to the mayor and McGreary while the rest of the fire crew began pulling hoses.
The chief acknowledged the mayor, Kendall, and McGreary with a curt nod. “What do we know about the fire condition?”
“Nothing,” the mayor and McGreary answered in unison.
“The smoke just started,” Kendall added.
“The news is reporting four people inside and a mess of dogs,” the chief said. “That right?”
“Over a hundred dogs,” the mayor answered.
“Shit,” the chief spit. “And they won’t come out?”
McGreary shook his head.
“And whose fault is that?” The mayor poked a finger at McGreary.
“I don’t care whose fault it is,” the chief said. “I’m gonna need the folks standing around the front of the church cleared away so we can get a line and smoke crews through that door.”
“That’s it then,” McGreary said. “We’re going in.”
“You can’t,” the mayor protested. “It’ll be a war. This is a church. If you start pushing those people, this time they will push back.”
“I’m sorry, Mayor,” McGreary said. “More than you know. But my overriding charge in this situation is to protect life and property. It seems pretty clear to me that there’s no choice.”
“The dogs in that shelter may be critical in helping to find a cure,” the mayor said.
“I don’t know if that’s true, but if it is, then that’s all the more reason to make sure they’re secure.” McGreary pushed past her and his men followed.
McGreary directed his troops to clear a perimeter around the church. Kendall saw that his own officers behind the barricades were getting antsy. The NYPD on one side of the fight, the Guard on the other, and over three hundred innocent protestors in the middle. Just one drawn weapon would mean disaster.
“Stand down!” Kendall yelled to his own officers. “NYPD, stand down! Do not engage. I repeat, do not engage.”
McGreary caught Kendall’s eye and nodded his thanks.
31
Andy observed the smoke coming from the church and for one blissful moment, he forgot about everything that had come before. No hard hands. No stinging slap. No grief pressing down on his chest. The smoke triggered no memory, no vestigial image embedded in his tortured mind. For the first time since he was eleven years old, Andy was completely and utterly forward-looking.
He left the group of protestors and ran to the church with a single objective—save the dogs.
Andy was within five feet of the narthex door and reaching for the handle when a rifle butt slammed into his cheek. He heard something in his face crack an instant before the pain blinded him and he collapsed to the sidewalk. Something salty, warm, and nauseatingly metallic leaked into his mouth. He knew that taste: blood.
Andy looked up and saw a blurred image of Owens standing above him, rifle butt raised, coming in for another hit.
“I told you we’d catch up,” Owens sneered. Andy raised his arms to block the blow—or at least he thought he did. There was an unpleasant disconnect between what his brain said and what his muscles would do.
“Alexa,” Andy whispered.
Then something took Owens completely off his feet. His rifle clattered to the concrete.
Andy heard a single shot before he went dark.
32
The rifle discharge was the only excuse the other Guard troops needed. All the frustrations of their current assignment, the monotony of perimeter patrol, the heckling by the crowd, and the pressure of the cameras combined in the worst possible way at the worst possible time.
The cops saw Kendall entangled with Owens and they forgot all about “stand down” and “do not engage.” They tried to protect and assist their commanding officer and friend. The Guard advanced to stop them.
Then the crowd of protesters broke through the line of Guards like a baseball team in a dugout-clearing fight, and any semblance of control or order became a memory.
Hands became fists, protest placards became bats, and rifles became first barriers and, when that failed, bludgeons. The lines between aggressor and victim blurred. Members of the crowd—ordinary people caught up in the moment—became as energized and hostile to those in uniform as rock-throwers protecting their country from armed occupiers. The street and the sidewalk exploded with the sounds of confusion and physical violence.
McGreary shouted orders for the Guard to secure their own weapons and desist; the mayor found a bullhorn somewhere and was shouting orders to the NYPD to disengage, back away, and assist the fire department.
But it was too late.
And the cameras captured all of it.
33
When Gabriel finally took a breath and surveyed the scene before him, he tr
ied to choke back his panic. The sanctuary had filled with smoke much faster than the basement—an inevitable consequence of warm air’s rising. Gabriel heard everyone starting to cough and knew he needed to abandon the fantasy of other options.
“Are all the IVs out?” he called to Greg.
“Yeah,” Greg answered.
“We need to get all the dogs outside!” Gabriel shouted. “Now!”
“What about leashes?” Luke asked between wheezes.
“We’re out of time!” Gabriel slammed open the church door.
The act of opening the door sucked in a wall of fresh air, which was precisely what the smoldering heat needed. The first flames bloomed in the sanctuary and a deep and angry rumble started in the basement.
“Now, now, now!” Gabriel shouted.
Sid grabbed Louis and shoved the puppy in his coat. Greg waited by the door, urging the dogs to follow. He didn’t need to, though. Nick, Scrabble, Blinker, and the strays from the park led every other dog in the church outside to momentary safety.
Over one hundred dogs ran through and among the crowd, excited to be free.
34
Owens was strong, but he was no match for Kendall in a street fight. Although Kendall wasn’t interested in hurting the soldier, he needed to get to Andy and Owens would not quit. Kendall finally landed a hard blow to Owens’s mouth that appeared to stun him. After that, Owens stepped back into the crowd.
With Owens in temporary retreat, Kendall tried to find Andy, but the street had fallen into confusion. He watched as the dogs ran out of the church and began moving as one, following some invisible current, heading east through the crowd. Wherever the dogs ran, the fighting slowed and then stopped. One moment members of the crowd pushed and shoved against angry soldiers or pulled away from frustrated cops. Then the dogs passed through and the humans paused to watch. Upraised arms and weapons were lowered, and shouts and curses were abandoned in mid-sentence.
In later interviews, those who had participated in the conflict tried to explain the change they’d experienced when the dogs ran among them. Most said it had just been the right distraction at the right time. But others implied that they’d felt something more; that seeing the dogs had reminded them of old promises to do better, or that it had simply been too hard to hold on to self-righteousness and anger in the face of such grace. Even McGreary would later admit to Kendall that he’d sensed something deep within him shift—a great unburdening: “Watching those dogs run free, it was like when the last bout of nausea from the worst stomach flu passes and you’re finally able to get some damn sleep.”
Whatever was happening to the civilians, police, and Guard, one person on the street in front of that church remained unaffected. Owens had returned and he was in the place that experienced combat soldiers call “the Gray”—the place where they hear and see nothing except for the combatant directly in front of them.
Kendall knew he was that combatant.
Owens drew his handgun and pointed the weapon at Kendall’s head. McGreary tried to reach them but Owens and Kendall were too far away.
“Owens! No!” McGreary screamed at him.
Owens fired. He was no more than five feet from Kendall.
Kendall saw a muzzle flash and then the pack of dogs driving between him and Owens. He squeezed his eyes shut against the bullet’s impact.
In his darkness Kendall saw his wife and daughter. He longed for more time with them and to know the look on Deb’s face when she opened the wrapping on that bike, the quiet comfort of more family dinners and movie nights, the warmth of close walks, the different tones of his child’s laughter. Then they were gone.
He saw his old partner.
Phoenix was coming for him one last time. Kendall’s legs crumbled from the impact.
But it wasn’t the bullet that brought him down; it was the force of one word.
Forgiven.
35
After almost all the life had run out of the sanctuary, Gabriel darted into his office. He grabbed Molly with one hand and Eliot with the other and ran for the narthex door. The flames curled along the sanctuary walls. The room was hot and filling with bitter smoke.
Gabriel glanced up at the stained glass image of Abraham and Isaac. Isaac’s face was growing longer and more grotesque in the heat. The boy’s eye began to droop down like a Dalí watch, his mouth a growing circle of darkness and silent anguish.
Gabriel forced himself to look away. He saw a human figure standing by a pew near the chancel. The smoke cleared for a moment and he got a good look.
Channa called to him. He sent Molly and Eliot out the door to safety with a prayer and then met his old friend in the aisle. When he reached Channa’s spot, she was gone, but he heard whimpering from the floor. Hips’s wheelchair tire was wedged under one of the pews. Gabriel caught the dog’s eyes—big and brown, filled with fear and confusion.
Gabriel tried to undo the straps on the wheelchair but quickly realized that there wasn’t enough time to take the contraption apart without tools. He hooked his fingers around the bottom lip of the pew and he pulled. Nothing. These pews had been bolted to the church floor for decades. His eyes found the hanging crucifix. “Not in Your sanctuary. This shall not be Your ram,” Gabriel begged. He pulled at the pew a final time.
Not even a millimeter. The pew would not give up a creak or groan or the slightest whisper of indulgence.
Hips was in full panic now, clawing at the pew that held him captive.
Gabriel dropped down and cradled the dog’s head in his arms. “I will not abandon you.”
36
Kendall opened his eyes uncertainly, looking for blood and waiting for the excruciating pain, but he found himself whole and unharmed. The bullet never found its mark. Someone must have taken the hit for him—a person or one of the dogs in the passing pack. That was the only explanation. But the only one on the ground besides him was Owens himself.
McGreary appeared at Kendall’s side as his soldiers surrounded Owens and confiscated his weapon.
“Where are you hit?” he asked, breathless.
“I’m… not.”
“Are you wearing a flak jacket?”
Kendall shook his head.
“He was five feet in front of you.”
“I know.”
“So where the hell did that bullet go?” McGreary struggled to answer his own question. “He went down just as he fired. He tripped? Or something bumped him and he aimed high?”
“I don’t know.” Kendall looked around; wherever the bullet had gone, it hadn’t hit anyone else, thank God.
“You sure have some damn good luck,” McGreary said, pulling him to his feet.
37
Andy struggled to remain conscious. His left eye had swollen shut and his right could see only blurred images. He touched his cheek and winced as his fingers ran over the flap of hanging skin. An emergency medical technician was talking to him, but it all sounded as if it were coming from underwater. He felt softness beneath him and assumed he was on a stretcher.
Kendall’s face appeared above his and then Luke and Sid were next to him.
“You’re gonna be OK, Andy,” Kendall told him. But Kendall’s words lacked their usual conviction. “Just a nice scar to tell the girls about when…” Kendall’s voice cracked before he could finish.
Louis popped his head out of Sid’s coat and barked. Andy smiled—his attempt to comfort them all. “Sounds like music,” he tried to say, but his words came out blurred and jumbled.
They pushed Andy’s stretcher toward a waiting ambulance.
“You taking him to Riverside?” Kendall asked.
The EMT nodded. “We’ll take good care of him. Promise.”
Andy heard their voices, listened to their concern for him, and felt—maybe for the first time in his life—lucky. Perhaps that love had been there for him all the time and his hardest fight was yet to be, the one with himself, where he would need to accept that he was worthy of that love i
n real time. Everything that had happened before had brought him here. He was not merely the sum of his memories, but only a child born from them.
Andy tried to sit up on the stretcher and got as far as an elbow. He saw the dogs from the church joined together and running with one intention and in one direction.
He knew where they were going even if no one else did.
And he saw the crowd—the grieving, the curious, the sad, the amused, the angry, the fighters, the fallen, and the long-since beaten—follow them.
“The park,” Andy whispered. Kendall leaned in and Andy grabbed his arm. “Get to the park.”
“OK,” Kendall said, but Andy knew it was only to placate him.
They lifted him into the ambulance.
“I’m going with him,” Luke said, and jumped in.
Andy struggled to get off the stretcher but the EMT and Luke held him down. He needed to make them understand. “Another Mount Moriah…”
Andy could see enough through his one eye to know that Kendall didn’t understand. None of them did.
“We’ve got to get him to the hospital,” the EMT said gravely. “Like now.” Without any further discussion, the EMT climbed into the ambulance and slammed the door closed.
As the ambulance began to move, Andy spoke the first words that came into his wounded head. “Shema Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad—”
38
Sam saw the multicolored flashing LED lights below long before the helicopter actually passed over the shelter on the way to the park.
“Blue-and-white lights are police?” she asked.
“Yeah,” Tom said, looking out the window.
Just Life Page 31