High Crime Area

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Ezekiel smiles, hearing this. He’s amused, he knows that I am inventing, out of desperation; such invention is natural to him, and he admires it, in me.

  I tell Ezekiel that I don’t need him to walk with me. I thank Ezekiel but repeat, I don’t need him to walk with me.

  Ezekiel frowns happily, shaking his head. “Ma’am, I goin to the lib’ry too, infact. That’s where I’m goin, we c’n walk together.”

  “But—”

  “Ma’am, we goin there. Over that way, in’t it?”

  And so my decision is made for me: I will not need to fumble in my shoulder bag. I will not need to reveal the gun shaking in my (white) hand. I will not need to (blindly) fire at Ezekiel staring at me in quick-dawning horror. I will not need to cross over into that other life.

  I am relieved—am I? I am numb.

  And numbly then setting out in the direction of the university library, with my former student. And neither of us has been revealed to the other. And neither of us has been exposed to the other. Now I see the name of the short, dark block: Trumbell. Ezekiel is protective of me, even chiding—“Ma’am, crossin this street, better watch out.” As if the gesture is altogether natural, Ezekiel dares to take my arm—closes his strong fingers about my arm, above the elbow. The gesture seems to be unpremeditated and curiously impersonal but I am sweating profusely now and fear that I will smell of my body.

  “Ma’am, watch out for them fuckin potholes...”

  Fuckin. It is a rude little nudge, this word. Ezekiel speaking to his former instructor in a way to convey both concern and sexual disrespect.

  Once across Cass we make our way onto the near-deserted campus. We are a strange couple—you would glance at us curiously, and perhaps you would stare after us—Who are they? Not lovers—are they? Will one turn upon the other, to inflict harm? To murder? We pass a graffiti-covered wall but it is undistinguished, uninspired graffiti—not graffiti to which I would wish to call Ezekiel’s attention. And passing a row of darkened wood-frame houses, remnants of a residential neighborhood, renovated, with “modern” facades—CAMPUS MINISTRY. THIRD WORLD CENTER. PSYCHOLOGICAL COUNSELING. AFRICAN-AMERICAN HOUSE.

  Tall arc lights illuminate this central part of the campus. Here, it isn’t quite so deserted. Ezekiel is saying that he “go to the lib’ry” every night at this time. Ezekiel insists upon escorting me into the dour granite building, up the steps and inside, where there is a blast of overwarm air, and a security guard seated at a turnstile checking IDs. Here, Ezekiel holds back. And I hesitate.

  The guard is a middle-aged black man. He is wearing a uniform, and it appears that he is also wearing a holster and a firearm. “Ma’am?” he says. “You comin in the library?” He has recognized me as a university person—graduate student, younger teacher. He is aware of but has scarcely glanced at Ezekiel hovering a few feet behind me.

  Seeing that I’m agitated, though making an effort to appear calm. My tremulous lips, dilated eyes. Clammy-pale skin. Gripping the unwieldy leather bag in both hands. I will need to retrieve my wallet from the bag, will need to rummage desperately in the bag to find the wallet, for there are other items in the bag including, in a compartment, the bulky little gun which is a secret, and which no one must know about; and from the wallet I will need to extract the laminated plastic ID card with my wanly smiling miniature face, but these complicated maneuvers are much for me to grasp at the moment. Barely I can hear the security guard’s voice through the roaring in my ears.

  “Ma’am? Somethin wrong?”

  Something wrong? At first the question seems to baffle me.

  “No. I’m meeting my husband here. Inside—here.”

  My voice is cracked. My throat is very dry. The gravely frowning security guard cups his hand to his ear, to hear more clearly this barely audible guilty-sounding reply.

  When I turn, Ezekiel has vanished. As if he has never been.

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  For an exclusive preview of Joyce Carol Oates' deeply unsettling Daddy Love, read on or click here.

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  Joyce Carol Oates

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  Daddy Love, aka Reverend Chester Cash, has for years abducted, tortured, and raped young boys. His latest victim is Robbie, now renamed ‘Gideon,’ and brainwashed into believing that he is Daddy Love’s real son. Any time the boy resists or rebels he is met with punishment beyond his wildest nightmares.

  As Robbie grows older he begins to realize that the longer he is locked in the shackles of this demon, the greater chance he’ll end up like Daddy Love’s other ‘sons’ who were never heard from again. Somewhere within this tortured boy lies a spark of rebellion... and soon he will see just what lengths he must go to in order to have any chance at survival.

  1

  Ypsilanti, Michigan April 11, 2006

  Take my hand, she said.

  He did. Lifted his small hand to Mommy’s hand. This was maybe five minutes before the abduction.

  Did he see their car? she asked him. Did he remember where they’d parked?

  It was a kind of game she’d played with him. He was responsible for remembering where they’d parked the car at the mall which was to teach the child to look closely, and to remember.

  The car was Daddy’s Nissan. A silvery gray-green that didn’t stand out amid other parked vehicles.

  He was an alert child most of the time, except when tired or distracted as he was now.

  Remember? Which store we parked in front of? Was it Home Depot or Kresge Paints?

  Mommy narrowed the stores to two, for Robbie’s benefit. The mall was too much for his five-year-old brain.

  He was staring ahead, straining to see. He took his responsibility for the car seriously.

  Mommy began to worry: she’d made too much of the silly game and now her son was becoming anxious.

  For he was fretting, Is the car lost, Mommy? How will we get home if the car is lost, Mommy?

  Mommy said, with a little laugh, Don’t be impatient, sweetie! I promise, the car is not lost.

  She would remember: the lot that was often a sea of glittering vehicles was now only about one-third filled. For it was nearing dusk of a weekday. She would remember that the arc lights high overhead on tall poles hadn’t yet come on.

  The harsh bright arc lights of Libertyville Mall. Not yet on.

  It was in a row of vehicles facing the entrance to Kresge Paints that she’d parked the Nissan. Five or six cars back. The paint store advertised itself with a festive rainbow painted across the stucco facade of the building.

  The Libertyville Mall was a welcoming sort of place. As you approached the entrances, a percolating sort of pop-music emerged out of the very air.

  Didn’t trust her spatial memory in these massive parking lots and so Dinah never walked away from her car without fixing a landmark in her memory. A visual cue rather than trying to remember the signs: letters and numerals were too easy to forget.

  Unless she jotted down the location of the parked car on a scrap of paper, which she had not done.

  Searching for the car Robbie was becoming increasingly fretful. Tugging at Mommy’s hand in nervous little twitches. And his little face twitched, like a rabbit’s.

  She assured him: I’m sure the car is just over there. Next row. Behind that big SUV. Perpendicular to the paint store.

  Robbie was straining to see. Robbie seemed convinced, the car was lost.

  And how would they get home, if Daddy’s car was lost?

  Mommy asked Robbie if he knew what perpendicular meant but he scarcely listened. Ordinarily new and exotic words were fascinating to Robbie but now he was distracted.

  Mommy what if… Lost?

  Damn she regretted the silly parking-lot game! Maybe it was a good idea sometim
es but not now, evidently. Too much excitement in the mall and Robbie hadn’t had a nap and now he was fretting and on the verge of tears and she felt a wave of protective love for him, a powerful wish to shield him, to clutch him close and assure him that he was safe, and she was safe, and the car was only a few yards away, and not lost. And they were not lost.

  Except: when she came upon the row of vehicles in which she was sure she’d parked the Nissan, it wasn’t there.

  Which meant: she’d parked in the next row. That was all.

  It’s right here, Robbie. Next row.

  You must hide from your child your own foolish uncertainties.

  You must hide from your child your own sudden sharp-as-a-razor self-loathing.

  Dinah was thinking more positively—(a good mother is one who insists upon thinking “more positively”)—what a good thing it is, that a child’s fears can be so quickly dispelled. Robbie’s anxiety would begin to fade as soon as they sighted the car and would have been totally forgotten by the time they arrived home and Daddy came home for supper.

  And Daddy would ask Robbie what they’d done that day and Robbie would tell him about the mall—the items they’d bought, the stores they’d gone into, the plump white pink-nosed Easter bunnies in an enclosure in the atrium at the center of the mall and how he’d petted them through the bars for it was allowed for visitors to pet the bunnies as long as they did not feed them, or frighten them.

  PET ME PLEASE DON’T PINCH ME.

  And Robbie would climb onto Daddy’s lap and ask, as he’d asked Mommy, Could they have an Easter bunny? And Daddy would say as Mommy had said, Not this year but maybe next year at Easter.

  And to Mommy in an undertone, Jugged hare, maybe. With red wine.

  Pulling Robbie through a maze of parked vehicles and certain now that she saw the Nissan, parked exactly where she’d left it, Dinah was prepared to say in relief and triumph: See, honey? Just where we left it.

  6

  Church of Abiding Hope Detroit, Michigan April 12, 2006

  Shall we not say, we are created in God’s image?

  Gently the Preacher moved among the flock of starving souls. His blessing fell upon them like precious seed. His eyes bore deep into theirs, in knowledge of their aloneness and their great hunger which only one of the Preacher’s spirit could satisfy.

  Moses Maimonides tells us that Time is so precious, God gives it to us in atoms. In the smallest units, that we may bear them without harm to ourselves.

  For we dare not gaze into the sun. For the sun will blind us.

  It is the Preacher who gazes into the sun, and risks harm for the sake of the faithful.

  We are a dignified people. We are not a crass cowering cowardly people but a great people, of these United States of North America. We are a people created in God’s image and we abide in the great mystery of all Being.

  Shall we not say that we cannot know the limit of our grace? That we cannot plumb the depths of our own single, singular souls, let alone the depths of God?

  Knowing only that we are brothers and sisters in Being—beneath our separate skins.

  The Preacher spoke in a voice of consolation. The Preacher spoke in a voice of tenderness, forgiveness. The Preacher spoke in a voice that did not judge harshly. The Preacher spoke in a voice acquainted with sin.

  The Preacher did not stand at the head of the flock and preach to uplifted faces but moved between the rows of seats in the central and side aisles of the little church with the ease and grace of a true shepherd. Often the Preacher reached out to touch a shoulder, a head, an outstretched hand—Bless you my brother in Christ! Bless you my sister in Christ! God loves you.

  The Preacher was a visitor at the Church of Abiding Hope. He had several times given guest sermons here in the small asphalt-sided church at the intersection of Labrosse and Fifth Street in the inner-city of Detroit in the shadow of the John Lodge Freeway.

  The congregation of the Church of Abiding Hope—some seventy-five or eighty individuals of whom most were over fifty and only a scattering were what you’d call young—gazed upon the Preacher in a transport of incomprehension. It was white-man’s speech elevated and wondrous as a hymn of a kind they rarely heard directed toward them and yet in the Preacher’s particular voice intimate as a caress.

  Understanding, their own minister Reverend Thomas Tindall could provide them.

  The Preacher was a tall man of an age no one might have guessed—for his stark sculpted face was unlined, his eyes quick and alert and stone-colored in their deep-set sockets, his beard thick and dark and joyous to behold. His mouth that might have been prim and downturning was a mouth of smiles, a mouth of beckoning.

  The Preacher’s words were elevated but his eyes sparked. My brothers in Christ. My sisters in Christ. God bless us all!

  The Preacher wore black: for the occasion was somber. A black light-woolen coat, black trousers with a sharp crease, black shoes.

  The Preacher wore a crimson velvet vest: for the occasion was joyous. And at his neck a checked crimson-and-black silk scarf.

  The surprise was, the Preacher was not dark-skinned like the faithful of the Church of Abiding Hope or Reverend Tindall who was the Preacher’s host. The Preacher’s skin was pale and bleached-looking and if you came close, you saw that it was comprised of thin layers, or scales, of transparent skin-tissue, like a palimpsest. The Preacher was the sole white face in the church and bore his responsibility with dignity and a sense of his mission.

  The Preacher’s rusted-iron hair that was threaded with silver like shafts of lightning fell to his shoulders in flaring wings. Parted in the center of his head that was noble and sculpted like a head of antiquity.

  The congregation stared hungrily perceiving the Preacher as an emissary from the white world who was yet one of their own.

  The Preacher spoke warmly of the great leader W. E. B. DuBois who exhorted us to see the beauty in blackness—In all of our skins, and beneath our skins. The beauty of Christ.

  The Preacher spoke warmly of Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. who exhorted us to never give up our dream—Of full integration, and full citizenship, and the beauty of Christ realized in us as Americans.

  Then in an altered voice the Preacher spoke of his “forging” years in Detroit for he’d been born in this city that was beloved of God even as it was severely tested by God.

  Forged in the rubble of the old lost neighborhood south of Cass and Woodward. In the rubble of destroyed dreams. Now there were small forests of trees pushing through broken houses. Gigantic weeds and thorns pushing through cracked pavement. The very house of his childhood. His father had worked in the Fisher Body plant long since closed. His grandfather had worked at the Central railroad station long since closed. These mighty buildings, fallen to ruins. The grandeur of Woodward Avenue, fallen to ruins. The tall buildings of Bellevue Avenue, fallen to ruins as in an ancient cataclysm. Yet the spirit of God has not forsaken Detroit. His spirit prevails here and will rise again. A strange and wondrous landscape of colors, flowers, vegetation, birds. Feral creatures breed here. Pollution has given to brick walls a beautiful sepia tint. Shattered glass on roadways shines with the grandeur of God. You might think that God has forsaken Detroit but you would be mistaken for God forsakes no human habitation, as God forsakes no man. The great Christian leader John Calvin said, Nature is a shining garment in which God is concealed but also revealed.

  The Preacher was of this soil, for he had been born on the first day of the troubles of July 1967 when Detroit, long smoldering, had erupted into flames.

  The Preacher had been born to his mother in a house on Cass Avenue. The Preacher had been born into a time of “racial” troubles and yet—the knowledge is in us nonetheless, we are blessed.

  For the flaming city on the river had been an emblem of the black man’s deep revulsion for his place in these United States, which had been then a place of ignominy and ignorance—deception and duplicity. God had sent flames to reveal this injustice
. God was the burning city as the God of the Old Testament had been the burning bush. No one could shut his eyes against such a revelation.

  Decades had passed since then. Much had changed since then.

  In a bold voice the Preacher spoke. In the voice of one who knows.

  And now in the new century it was prophesized, the races would rise together. There would be a dark-skinned President in this new century—the Preacher had had a vision, and the Preacher knew.

  To all this the congregation listened mesmerized. Scarcely did the congregation draw breath. Of what they could comprehend they could not believe a syllable of such a fantastic vision and yet, in their souls they did believe.

  All that the Preacher extolled to them, they did believe.

  The Preacher was concluding his sermon. The Preacher was visibly shaken by his own words. On the Preacher’s palimpsest-skin there shone sparkling tears.

  My sisters and brothers in Christ, we are borne upon a vast journey in uncharted seas. I am not one who provides you with easy answers to your doubts but I am one who tells you, you are beautiful souls and from beauty there issues beauty everlasting.

  From my heart to yours, my dear sisters and brothers in Christ, I say to you Amen.

  Through the church came joyously spoken Amens.

  The sermon had ended. The Preacher stood to the side, at the pulpit. As the choir began to sing—“I Love to Tell the Story”—“When I Survey the Wondrous Cross”—“There Is a Balm in Gilead”—the Preacher sang with the choir in his deep resonant voice.

  Now it did seem that there were younger members of the congregation. At least one-third of the choir was comprised of shining young faces.

  At the conclusion of the service Reverend Tindall clasped the Preacher’s hand. Tears brimmed in Reverend Tindall’s glaucoma-dimmed eyes. His face was of the hue of cracked leather. His scalp was shiny-dark, with a fringe of fleecy white hair. He was a vain old man and yet insecure and well intentioned. You could see that he was very proud of his friendship with the eloquent white preacher.