Dragonslayer

by Emilie Richards

  The Jesus walking on water was female, and she looked something like Garnet.

  Thomas could not look at the mural without something clutching at his throat. There would be people who would see it who would not understand, people who would think it was blasphemous. He felt sorry for them, because the images were the essence of Christianity. He believed that the man Jesus would have approved.

  For a moment he felt that approval. Something moved over him. He felt as if someone had touched his shoulder, as if someone was in the room with him. He stood in a hollowed-out storefront, in a neighborhood that God seemed to have abandoned, yet he felt a presence he remembered from other, better times. A presence stronger, surer, brighter than he had ever felt before.

  He turned instinctively, but the room was empty except for the mural and the picture looking down at him from the front of the church. He was as alone as he would ever be, yet he felt comforted and strengthened.

  He bowed his head, but no words would come. Frustration warred with faith. He wanted to cry out, to command the tranquility that had ebbed away to return and fill him again. But the harder he struggled to hold on to that brief moment of inner peace, the less comfort he felt.

  He stood with his head bowed until the pain was too great. He straightened, then started toward his study when the front door swung open.

  Ferdinand walked in, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of his khakis. His trench coat was wide open, despite a heavy snow falling outside.

  “So, what do you think, Padre?” he asked.

  For the first time Thomas gazed at the young man through the lens of his own pain and saw a fellow traveler. Ferdinand had struggled for simple survival for most of his life, yet this masterpiece had sprung directly from the tortures of his childhood.

  The young man understood pain, and Thomas felt a kinship with him that he could never have experienced in his days at Deering Hills Community. He beckoned for Ferdinand to join him in front of the mural.

  He found he had to clear his throat to speak. “Thank you seems pretty lukewarm. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Then you like?”

  “I like.” He waited for Ferdinand, and they stood together staring at the mural. “I can’t even find words to tell you how much I like it.”

  “My mama went to church. She took me. I had to look some of this up, but I remembered some.”

  “You’ll always be welcome here if you want to give church another try. You know that, don’t you?”

  “I’m going away.” Ferdinand folded his arms. “My mama’s been trying to get me to go live with her. She left when I was little because my old man beat her bad. She tried to take me, but he said he’d kill me first. He’s crazy. He would have found us, and she didn’t have no way to stop him. But she sent me letters all the time at my aunt’s house, so I’d know she still wanted me. Now I’m bigger than my old man, and he’s afraid of me. I guess I coulda left a while ago, but I didn’t want to desert the Knights. You know?”

  “I know. But now you’re ready?”

  “Yeah. I guess. She wants me to go to art school.”

  “Judging from this, you can probably show your teachers a thing or two.”

  “You think I’ll make it?”

  Thomas heard the young man’s self-doubt. Ferdinand had never been anywhere except the Corners. He had never lived any other kind of life. And since adolescence he hadn’t had to face life without the backing of his gang.

  “I know you’ll make it,” Thomas said. “Dorothy Brown left money in her will for you to paint this mural. Did you know that?”

  “I didn’t do it for money.”

  “Dorothy would have wanted you to go to art school. We’ll call it a scholarship.”

  “I’ll be leaving soon.”

  “The Corners will miss you.”

  Ferdinand looked at him. “Now that Demon’s gone, things are different.”

  Thomas knew what he meant. It wasn’t only Demon’s arrest that had changed the atmosphere in the community, but also the discovery that the Coroners had not been responsible for Wolfman’s death. Suddenly there was no tangible reason for the two gangs to be at war. They didn’t have the long history of hatred other big-city gangs had. They had sat next to each other in school classrooms, played together as children at city playgrounds. They had tenuous bonds as well as trumped-up excuses for anger.

  There was hope here. Just a fragment, but more than there had been a week ago.

  “Jails are crowded, and judges can’t do much about kids like Demon. It won’t be long before he’s back out on the streets again,” Thomas said. “What kind of neighborhood is he going to come back to, do you think?”

  “Who knows?”

  “If we make the right kind of changes here, he won’t be comfortable. He’ll move on.”

  “Buena suerte, Padre.” Ferdinand gave Thomas a playful sock on the arm. “Me, I’m going to a place where I won’t be comfortable. You know?”

  “You can be comfortable anywhere. Just remember there are people here who believe in you. Believe in yourself.”

  “I think He believes in me.” Ferdinand inclined his head toward the mural.

  “I think so, too.” Thomas waited for the rush of shame to come, as it always did when he mouthed platitudes he no longer felt. But there was no shame, only an emptiness waiting to be filled.

  “Maybe I’ll come back and see you.”

  Thomas turned to him and smiled his warmest smile. “I’ll be waiting for that day.”

  “I’ve got the diapers. Six packs, but the way Candy says she changes that baby, they’ll be gone in a week.” Garnet rummaged through a series of shopping bags. “I’ve got her present, and one for Francis. I’ve got the sweater Tex crocheted for Matty—” She looked up. “Do you believe Tex crochets? Can you see me with a crochet hook in my hand?”

  “Right now I just want to see me with a steering wheel in mine.”

  “All right. Let’s go.” Garnet picked up two of the bags and watched Thomas get the others.

  She followed him out to his car. She still thought of it as his. When she had to drive somewhere she always took her own car. Their possessions were still separate, the possessions of roommates.

  She settled into the passenger seat and relaxed as he pulled onto Wilford and wove through the streets that would take them out of the Corners. She had been looking forward to this jaunt all week. They were taking Christmas presents to Candy and Francis. She had talked to Candy often by telephone, but she hadn’t seen Matty since his birth. She was eager to see for herself that he was doing well.

  Thomas seemed less excited about the trip. He had seemed pleased that morning when he shared Ferdinand’s visit with her. But as the afternoon drew closer, he had grown quiet. She knew returning to Deering Hills was hard for him. How could it not be? The symbol of his former success sprawled across a hill in the center of town, visible from almost everywhere in a five-mile radius. How could he help but compare himself and what he had achieved in the Corners with what he’d once had?

  Did he compare her with Patricia? Garnet didn’t have to take a long look at herself to see how different she was from the stereotypical minister’s wife. She was no shepherdess, no beaming helpmate. Her skirts were too short and her vocabulary too colorful. She said what she thought and did what she wanted. She wondered if he was reluctant to take her to his old home.

  “Why don’t you show me around town a little while we’re there?” she asked. She supposed the question was a test.

  “What would you like to see?”

  “Your church.”

  He was silent.

  She considered the possible reasons he hadn’t said yes. The visit might be too painful for him. The church, after all, had been the scene of Patricia’s death. It was a symbol in Thomas’s mind of all his failures.

  Or perhaps he didn’t want her there because it would be too blatantly apparent how drastically his life had changed.

  “All r
ight.”

  At first she wasn’t sure she’d heard him correctly. “All right?”

  “All right. As in yes.”

  “Really?”

  “I’ve stayed away too long.” He glanced at her. “I’m glad you’ll be with me. I don’t think I’d want to go back alone.”

  She stared straight ahead for the rest of the trip.

  Matty was adorable, with a ready smile and dark curly hair. Candy looked well, and Francis looked as if his hours outdoors on a work crew had honed his body from a boy’s into a man’s.

  They seemed happy in their new life. Candy helped Marcia around the house and no longer had to pretend. Marcia was frankly grateful for the help. Francis had already been promoted and given a raise. The reports were that he was an enthusiastic worker with real aptitude for construction. His boss, Stu Wilson, who had never been blessed with a son of his own, seemed to think Francis had the potential to learn all the building trades.

  There was only one part of Candy and Francis’s life that brought them sadness. They had grown up in the Corners. Their friends were there, and so were their memories. But they could not go home for visits. They were happy to live in Deering Hills, but they still wanted the Corners to be a part of their life, too. And even with Demon’s arrest, they did not feel safe enough to go home with Matty.

  “I feel sorry for them,” Garnet said after the visit, as she and Thomas drove toward the Deering Hills Community Church. “They’ve been uprooted, with no chance to go back and renew their old ties. Candy has friends in the Corners with babies. She could sit and have a soda and talk to them about Matty. She likes Deering, but it’s not home, and she doesn’t feel like she fits in with the other young mothers in the neighborhood, with their private-school educations and their imported English prams.”

  Thomas was silent. The problem had been nagging at him, too. It was Christmas, the season of goodwill. Yet Candy and Francis were still afraid to return to the Corners. A young couple with their first child, afraid to come home at Christmas.

  There had been another young couple...

  “Thomas?” Garnet said, wondering if he heard her.

  “Maybe we can do something,” he said.

  “What?”

  “Let me give it some thought.” His mind was whirling with possibilities. For a moment he forgot they were headed to the scene of his greatest failures. He forgot that the church he ministered to had only one member for every two hundred or more of the faithful at Deering Hills Community. He could think only about the celebration of Christmas that had eluded him all week.

  He turned into the church parking lot, and suddenly all his memories came crashing down on him. He parked, but for a moment he could not get out of the car.

  “You were never supposed to be perfect,” Garnet said, reaching for his hand. “There was one perfect man, or so the Bible tells us, and his name was not Thomas Stonehill.”

  “I was glorious in my imperfection,” he said bitterly. “A man trying to play God.”

  “On anybody’s sin list, trying to do too much good is way at the bottom.”

  “I did it for myself.”

  “I doubt it. Not at first, anyway. Later, well, maybe you got carried away. Power does that to people.”

  “I haven’t been inside that door since I turned in my keys.”

  “Then it’s time.” She opened her door and got out. The parking lot was icy, and reluctantly he got out and went around the car to give her his arm.

  “I’ll bet the parking lot wasn’t icy when you were the minister,” she said, hoping he would smile. “I’ll bet you were out here with your giant bag of rock salt and your snow shovel before the snow even hit.”

  “It didn’t dare fall when I was the minister.”

  She laughed and rubbed his arm. The church loomed just ahead of them, one tall copper spire pointing straight to heaven, surrounded by a sprawling two-story building of tan brick that went on and on. From the outside Thomas pointed out the additions that had been constructed during his tenure. Then he opened the front door. She tried not to think about what had taken place on this spot.

  He looked perfectly calm. His blue eyes didn’t show any of the turmoil she knew he must be feeling. “We’d better let the office know we’re here, then we can wander around,” he said.

  “Shall I come with you?”

  “Of course. I want to introduce you.”

  She walked beside him, but she dropped his arm. The church halls were cool, institutional beige lined with pale, tasteful watercolor landscapes of the Holy Land. She thought about Ferdinand’s mural and tried to imagine it anywhere inside this building.

  The office was a series of rooms. The main one faced the hall near the sanctuary, with glass windows, much like a doctor’s reception area. An older woman with tightly permed gray hair looked up from her desk as they approached. “May I—” She stared at them, then pushed herself to her feet. “Thomas? Is that you?”

  Before Thomas could respond, the woman was shouting behind her. “Thomas is here! Thomas Stonehill! He’s come back to see us.”

  She disappeared for a moment, then reappeared followed by a small stream of women. In seconds she was hugging him ferociously while the others waited their turn. Garnet stood to one side, watching. She wondered if this answered the questions he must have asked himself about what kind of reception he would get here.

  He hugged each woman in turn before he motioned for Garnet to join him. “I’d like to introduce my wife,” he said. “Garnet Stonehill.” He named each woman in turn.

  Garnet shook hands, murmuring polite greetings.

  Afterward the first woman, whose name was Barbara, put her hands on her hips. “Well, we heard you were back in town, but I had to see you to believe it. Why haven’t you come back to visit us before?”

  Garnet wondered if he would be honest.

  He was. “There were too many painful memories connected with this place.”

  They all nodded and clucked sympathetically. Garnet had a vision of the women, as a unit, serving Thomas chicken noodle soup every day at lunchtime and tucking his napkin on his lap. They were all comfortably past middle age, beautifully groomed and—she bet—absolutely efficient at their jobs. She could see that they adored her husband.

  Her husband. She wondered how the women felt about Thomas’s new marriage. One of them, a woman named Marie, smiled at her, a very down-to-earth, genuine smile. “I’ll bet Thomas has told you stories.”

  Garnet doubted Marie was talking about the stories Thomas had told her. “Not enough,” she said with a smile.

  “Well, I will fill you in.” Marie took her by the arm. “Let me show you the office.” Garnet looked over her shoulder as Marie pulled her along. Thomas smiled and shrugged.

  She was regaled by Thomas stories for the next fifteen minutes. It was another side of Thomas’s days in this church, a side he had never told her about. She heard about a man Thomas had befriended because, on a hospital visit to one of his own parishioners, Thomas discovered that no one ever visited the lonely old man in the next room. So he had added the old man to his visitation list, and months later, upon his death, the man—though atheist to the end—left a small fortune in stocks and bonds to the church.

  She heard about the couples Thomas had married and others he had refused to marry, about the families he had comforted and the dying he had sat with. She heard about sermons that had filled the huge sanctuary and sermons so controversial that half a dozen deacons had resigned over them. She listened to the love seeping through the stories, the love of an older woman for a young man who, in a unique capacity, had shared some of the important moments of her life. Her husband’s death, her grandchild’s christening, the troubled antics of a teenage son.

  Garnet came out of the office wondering if she had ever known Thomas at all.

  She found him talking to a man near his own age. He gestured for her to join him. “Garnet,” he said, “this is Chris Shallcross, the seni
or pastor at Community.”

  They shook hands. Chris Shallcross was tall and dignified, but his smile was warm and—she realized with appreciation—admiring.

  “I was just telling your husband that I have big shoes to fill here,” Chris said.

  “And I was telling him to be careful not to fall into the trap I did and try to fill them,” Thomas said.

  “He was also telling me about your church in the Corners. I don’t know if I could do what Thomas has done there, but it sounds like important work. I think our board would like to help in any way we can. Money, personnel.”

  “There might be some projects we could work on together,” Thomas told him. “I have one in mind right now.”

  “I’d like to hear about it.”

  “Garnet, will you let Dorothy or Marie show you around some more while I talk to Chris about this?”

  She nodded. Thomas looked different. For a moment she didn’t know why; then she understood. The tension was gone. He looked relaxed and at home. He looked like a powerful man who was once more in control of his life.

  He smiled at her, as if he realized what she was thinking. “I’ll join you just as soon as we’re done,” he said. “There’s more snow expected, and we’ve got a long drive home.”

  Home. Not “back to the Corners.” Home! She was comforted by his word choice.

  That evening Garnet turned on the Christmas tree lights and watched them sparkle joyously. She had spent little money on holiday decorations, but there was no doubting the season in this room. Fat red candles from the grocery store decorated the windowsills. Holly from a parishioner’s bush lined a bowl filled with pine cones and seedpods. Loops of gold and silver tinsel hung over the door, and dangling from the door frame was a sprig of mistletoe.