Dragonslayer

by Emilie Richards

  “Maybe you’ll be called on to do some things you don’t believe in. But what price do you pay if you don’t? If you’re on the outside, and there is no one to stand beside you, the world is a lonely, frightening place.”

  Pain flashed across his face. Garnet knew that no one in the room doubted that Thomas personally understood what a lonely, frightening place the world could be.

  He continued. “The gang of twelve was different, though. There was no one to stand up for them. Even their leader was nailed to a cross, and there was no one who could stop it from happening. They died, one by one, and there was no one to interfere, no one to avenge their deaths, no one to drive by in the night when the streets are dark and dangerous and shower the houses of their persecutors with bullets. No one to wear colors for them, to spray-paint buildings with threats for them.

  “But there were those who lived to carry on their message. They met in secret places and wrote their stories, their beliefs, for others to use. They had their ‘bible,’ the same way our gangs do today. They had juice—influence. And as the stories spread, as the beliefs were weighed and practiced, the gang of twelve became a gang of millions.”

  Thomas walked down the aisle until he was standing in front of Beulah. “And in the name of that gang of twelve and their leader, Jesus of Nazareth and his apostles, wonderful things have happened, but terrible things have happened, too. We have evoked their names as we’ve gone to war, led murderous crusades for purposes that Jesus would never have sanctioned, kept our brothers and sisters in poverty or looked down upon them because of their race or creed.

  “That can happen, can’t it? Even a gang with the best of intentions can get out of control. Even leaders—” he looked right at Andre, then at Ferdinand “—even the best leaders, the most intelligent and courageous, can make bad decisions.”

  Finally he turned away. “But wonderful things have come from the gang of twelve, too. Men and women have reached out to their brothers and sisters in more ways than I can tell you about today.”

  He walked up the aisle. Garnet listened as he extolled the beauty of Christianity, the purposes and principles of the gang of twelve, the way the world could be made a better place because of what one gang, two thousand years ago, had begun.

  Then, as he had done the last time she had heard him speak, he focused on what they could do in the Corners to use those principles to make their community a better place. There was nothing radically new about what he asked for. Brotherly love. Reaching out to those in need. Standing up for what was right. Moving, one step at a time, toward goals that would enhance the quality of life for everyone.

  He ended in the pulpit, his gaze fastened on Andre and Ferdinand. “The gang of twelve still has memberships available,” he said. “The initiation rites differ from church to church, but at the heart the intent is the same. We must practice what the gang’s leader preached. The commandments are simple. Love one another. Love God. The rest falls into place.

  “But it is never easy. No matter what form your membership takes, no matter what your level of commitment, membership is never easy. If your life must be simple and uncluttered with decisions, if you don’t want to question anything your friends or even your leaders tell you, then membership is not for you. But if you are willing to take risks, if you are strong enough to do what you know is right and sometimes to sacrifice, then there is always a place in the gang of twelve for you.”

  There was silence. Garnet forgot to breathe. Then Thomas brought his hands down on the pulpit and announced the final hymn.

  She expected Andre and Ferdinand to flee at the first opportunity, and perhaps they would have if Beulah had been easily able to maneuver the aisles of the church. But by the time Beulah’s chair was humming toward the doorway, Thomas was already shaking hands with departing parishioners.

  Garnet stood back, accepting congratulations on her marriage to Thomas from members of the congregation. Dorothy Brown, pillar of the Corners community, was the first to hug her and wish her well. Dorothy had been the first Corners resident to help Garnet solicit funds for Mother and Child, Dorothy with her white gloves, disarmingly gentle smile and razor-sharp tongue. Dorothy, now pushing eighty, still maneuvered and plotted and stirred the community to action. She was a voice for both stability and change, and Garnet wished there were a thousand more like her living on the Corners’ troubled streets.

  “So, I picked the right Sunday to come here to church,” Dorothy said, after the hug had ended.

  “You’re not a member?”

  “Not me. I make the rounds. That way I keep all the preachers in this neighborhood straight.”

  “Well, I’m sure Thomas is properly honored to have you today.”

  “That man of yours, he’s not so bad at what he does,” Dorothy said. “Maybe he’ll be even better now that he’s got you. More relaxed.”

  “Why?”

  “You can’t figure that out, this marriage is in trouble already,” Dorothy said with a wink.

  Garnet grinned and gave Dorothy another hug before the older woman moved away to speak to Thomas. Garnet continued to smile and shake hands, but she kept Andre and Ferdinand in her line of vision, just as she’d done when she spoke to Dorothy.

  Thomas had told her about his conversation with Andre the night she had been beaten. Andre had been at home and could not have taken part. But Andre was a MidKnight, the closest thing to a leader the gang had, and she knew where his loyalties lay. Even if he had not ordered her abuse or taken part in it, he would support those who had. She was not fooled by his attendance in church. She imagined it was a scouting mission. He was finding out how the land lay, and it would be only a matter of time before he used the information in negative ways.

  Thomas had wasted his sermon.

  She watched as Beulah waited patiently in line to leave. Since they had once lived on the same street, Garnet had known Beulah most of her life. Garnet had admired the woman’s courage when multiple sclerosis forced her into the wheelchair. As a teenager she had spent one memorable spring day planting flowers along Beulah’s front walkway as Beulah supervised; then she had sat in Beulah’s sparkling clean kitchen and eaten homemade cookies as reward.

  Beulah had taught Ema to crochet. Jade had found her to be a good listener when their own mother was too busy earning a living cleaning offices day and night. Beulah had been a friend to neighborhood children, a kind, loving mother to her son. There was no reason she should be held responsible for Andre’s failures.

  Garnet squared her shoulders and moved forward, past a fidgeting, tattooed Ferdinand to Beulah’s side. She squatted. “Beulah, do you remember me?”

  Beulah turned. Her face, a chart of life’s sadnesses and triumphs, lit up. “I thought that was you, Garnet honey.”

  “How are you?”

  “Still getting around. Andre’s always there to take me anyplace I need to go.”

  Garnet looked into Andre’s face. He was watching her closely. “I’m glad to see he takes care of you,” Garnet said, turning to Beulah. “Do you come here often?”

  “Never before. But I heard this preacher was good. My preacher left, and the new one preaches hellfire till I go away each Sunday morning with a sunburn.” She laughed. “Between you and me, this one’s prettier to look at, too.”

  “Between you and me, I’m married to him.”

  Beulah slapped her thigh. “No... Well, congratulations!”

  They chatted as the line shortened. Then it was only Andre and Ferdinand between Beulah and the door.

  Thomas held out his hand. “Hello, Andre. I’m glad to see you again.”

  Garnet watched Andre’s struggle. Then, as his mother looked on, his hand shot out for a quick squeeze. Afterward Thomas held his out again, this time to Ferdinand, but he didn’t relinquish it quickly, as he had Andre’s.

  “You’re the artist, aren’t you?”

  Ferdinand looked startled. “Me?”

  “Dorothy Brown tells me tha
t you’re very talented. I believe some of your work was once on that wall.” He tilted his head toward the wall where the graffiti had bled through.

  “So?”

  “So? I’d like to see some more of what you can do. There’s a whole big space up there where something beautiful and creative should be. I don’t have much money to give you, but maybe we could come to terms?”

  Ferdinand sneered. Beulah slapped his wrist before he could say no. “You do what the preacher says,” she ordered. “You’re just dying to get your hands on some paint and a big space that people’ll want to see. Don’t be tellin’ him no when you be dying to say yes.”

  Ferdinand mumbled something unintelligible.

  Thomas moved to Beulah’s side and took her hand. “I’m pleased to know you, Mrs. Rollins.”

  “You know my boy?”

  Thomas nodded. “We’ve met several times.” He looked at Andre and watched the young man’s eyes narrow. “Your son’s a born leader,” he said, looking at Beulah.

  “He’s a good boy.”

  Garnet swallowed a laugh. Suddenly life was funny again, as it hadn’t been since the attack in the darkness. They were kids, these phantoms who had moved through her life leaving pain in their wake. Dangerous and volatile, but kids nonetheless. She watched Thomas push Beulah through the door and down the sidewalk a little ways. She put one hand on Andre’s arm and one on Ferdinand’s to stop them from following.

  “Did either of you gentleman beat up a defenseless woman in a parking lot a couple of weeks ago? I can tell you right now, I'm not going to make it into the gang of twelve if forgiveness for something like that is one of the initiation rites.”

  Andre shook off her arm. Ferdinand seemed to feel trapped.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “You were warned,” Andre said.

  “As a matter of fact, I know you weren’t there,” she admitted, “but I sure as hell expect better from you, Andre, than to condone it. Your mother deserves better.”

  She turned to Ferdinand. “And you, you big hulking heap of God-given talent, get a life, why don’t you? Paint Thomas’s mural. Stop hanging out with junkies and criminals. And don’t ever lift a finger toward another woman or I’ll make it my mission to be sure you serve time for it!”

  “I wasn’t there,” he mumbled. “I didn’t have nothing to do with it.”

  ‘‘Are you bragging or whining?’’

  His string of expletives was as colorful as his art.

  “Well, apology accepted,” she said. She dropped her hand and watched him sidle through the doorway.

  Thomas came to stand beside her as Andre and Ferdinand followed Beulah down the sidewalk.

  “Andre taught himself to read before first grade. I’d forgotten that until today.” Garnet sprinkled a combination of herbs into fresh vegetables she had stir-fried while Thomas watched. Then she added tomatoes and chick-peas and set the mixture on a back burner to finish steaming.

  In the days since she had come to live with Thomas, she had begun to cook more vegetarian meals. From the sparse furnishings in his apartment to the worn necks of his suits, the man advertised that he lived on a tight, tight budget. Between them, she suspected, they did not have enough money to eat meat as a mainstay.

  “I’ve been to his house. Where did you live in relation?” he asked.

  “Three... no, four houses down. The house was shabby then. Now the porch is gone and the roof is sagging. They’d condemn it if it had been built anywhere but the Corners.”

  “And you knew Andre and his mother pretty well?”

  Garnet shrugged. She was chopping garlic and onions to add to bulgur wheat. The vegetables would be served over it. “Andre was a cute little boy, and I had all the requisite maternal hormones of a budding young woman. I used to play school with him. Mostly we did recess—I wasn’t much of a teacher. But by the time I got interested in playing with big boys, Andre was reading by himself.”

  “Was he a success in school?”

  “You’re kidding.” She looked up from the cutting board. “What planet did you grow up on? Smart kids don’t do well in schools like the one in our neighborhood. The classes are huge, and the teachers are burned out. There’s nothing for gifted kids to do while the other kids are struggling along, so they make trouble to get noticed. Pretty soon they’ve been noticed right out of the system and onto the streets.”

  “Are we talking about Andre or you?”

  “Tricky, Thomas. Very, very tricky. Why don’t you just ask me about myself and see if you get an answer?”

  He was silent. She clamped her teeth together and remained silent, too. She was at the stove again, and the tiny kitchen was filled with mouth-watering smells before he spoke.

  “Start wherever you feel comfortable.”

  “In other words, I don’t owe you any explanations I don’t want to give.”

  “You don’t.”

  She wielded the spatula like a professional chef. “What do you want to know?” she asked, placing the conversation squarely in his lap.

  “Tell me about life on your street when you were growing up.”

  It was as impersonal a request as she had ever heard. Her answer was the same. “We had about twenty houses on our block. The garbage was collected on Mondays. The ice cream man came on Tuesdays and Saturdays in the summer.” She tasted her concoction and added salt.

  “We’re playing games.”

  “Yes, we are.”

  Garnet made a pleasing silhouette at the stove. Her hair was tied back, and her feet were bare, despite the faulty heating system in the apartment. Thomas watched her bend and sway as she stirred, as if the popping and hissing of frying vegetables was music for dancing. He could not pretend he didn’t want to know more about her. “Tell me about you.”

  “Much better question.” She looked at him and realized she did want to share. It seemed important, somehow, to tell him who she really was.

  “I was one of those kids like Andre,” she said at last. “Not nearly as bright, but what I didn’t have in brains, I made up for in spunk. By the time I was eleven, it was pretty clear I wasn’t getting much out of school. I had a well-meaning teacher that year. She heard that Light Academy for Young Women was looking for scholarship students.”

  “I know about the academy.”

  “Well, you’ve got to understand, they had all these incredibly rich young ladies who needed ex-po-sure, thank you, dahling, to the real world. So they wanted a few students from the real world to give it to them. I was chosen. I wasn’t quite riffraff, not quite civilized. A perfect choice.”

  He detected unhealed pain under the hard shimmer of her words. But he wasn’t sure. Garnet was a master at suppressing her feelings. If he asked if she was hurting, she would tell him no, and probably believe it, too.

  “How long did you attend?”

  “Long enough to finish convincing myself I was worthless. The Corners started the process, the academy finished it up nicely. By the time I was fifteen, I was skipping school more often than I was going. The headmistress would call my mother to complain, but Mama was hardly ever home. She worked twelve-hour days, and when she wasn’t working, she was trying to wring a little fun out of life with whatever man she’d taken under her wing that month. She was only sixteen when she had Ema, eighteen when she had me and an old woman of twenty when Jade was born.”

  “You weren’t close to her?”

  “Wrong. We adored her. Still do, in fact. She moved to Florida a few years ago, but I call her every week. She did everything she could for us. She never got angry. She hugged us and praised us and cooked big elaborate meals whenever she was home. She just wasn’t home very often.”

  “Were you suspended from the academy?”

  “Dropped out.” She looked at him. “I got pregnant.”

  He stood very still, then he nodded, as if that was perfectly understandable.

  “Damn it, Thomas, take off your minister hat. It’s okay to react
. I was sixteen and pregnant. I was also in terrible shape by then. I’d been drinking and smoking steadily for a year, and I’d been doing worse. The drawer beside my bed was a pharmacy. If a friend gave me something to try, I tried it. I wasn’t hooked on anything except trying to blot out the reality of my life, but that was bad enough. I weighed half what I weigh now, and I’d forgotten what it felt like to be sober.”

  “The baby?”

  “Died.” She stopped stirring and put a top on the pan. She faced him, leaning against the stove with her arms folded. “When my mother found out I was pregnant, she marched me to the public health clinic in the city. A nurse sat me down and showed me pictures of babies whose mothers had lived the way I was living. My mother cried. I cried and sobered up fast. By then I knew I wanted to have the baby. No one could persuade me otherwise, though God knows they tried. I started taking care of myself from that minute on. But it was too late.”

  “You miscarried?”

  “No. I delivered at seven months. My mother’s car was in the shop, as usual. By the time she found a neighbor who would take me to the hospital, I was too far along to move. She called an ambulance, but it took an hour to arrive. Even for a preemie the baby was tiny, but she was breathing when she was born. We did what we could while we waited. But the ambulance arrived too late to save her.”

  For a moment he wanted to go to her. He wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her. But everything about the way she was standing told him that was not a good idea.

  “You wanted to know about me,” she said.

  “Why that story? Why not the time you fell off your bike and scraped your knee, or the first time you went to a movie with a boy? Are you trying to shock me? You haven’t.”

  “Because it tells you everything you’ll ever need to know about me, Thomas. After I recovered, I took a good look at my life and saw I had two choices. I could go back to living the way I had before I discovered I was pregnant, or I could start telling other girls what it’s like to lose a child and know you’re directly responsible, along with the Corners, and its lack of health care services.”