After the Rain

by Vanessa Miller

  The front door opened wider and Candy stood next to Iona, her duffle bag slung on her arm while her hand was inside the bag. “Did you come all the way out here for me, Lou? You want me to get in the car so you can try to shoot me?”

  “What are you talking about?” Lou looked innocent. “I didn’t try to shoot you.”

  She dropped the bag, aimed the gun that was in her hand at him and pulled the trigger. “I wasn’t trying to shoot you either.” And then she shot him again.

  ~~~~

  “This is 911, what’s your emergency?”

  “I don’t know what’s going on outside; people are yelling and screaming. My husband is scheduled to perform surgery on a very sick woman in a few hours. He needs his sleep.”

  “Thank you for calling, ma’am. We’ll send someone to your neighborhood.

  The next call to 911 was more frantic. “I just heard the sound of gun fire. This shouldn’t be happening in our neighborhood. I want the police here immediately.”

  The third caller screamed, “Help us! We are in the middle of some turf gang war or something.”

  The 911 operator said, “Ma’am, the police have already been dispatched.”

  “Well send more. Something terrible is happening at the black people’s house next door.”

  ~~~~

  Nina heard the shot. She glanced out the window and saw Isaac laying on the ground. “Nooo!” She ran down the stairs, but before she could get outside she saw Donavan, beaten and bruised. He was stretched out on the floor while Ikee dabbed at bloody spots on his face and arms with the wet towel in his hands. Nina screamed.

  “I got him, Mama. He came back to us and he’s alive. Praise God,” Ikee added, “he’s alive.”

  Nina wanted to stay right there and help Donavan, but Ikee’s words brought her comfort. Her son had come back to them, and although bruised, he was alive. Now she needed to know if her husband was still alive.

  As she stepped onto the porch, Nina first heard the sirens. Then she saw Iona holding a gun on one of the men. Candy was picking up Lou’s gun as he hopped around, screaming about being shot in the arm and leg.

  Nina ignored the entire scene unfolding on her front porch, all she was concerned about was the man lying on the ground, not moving… her man. Nina slid down on the ground next to Isaac and lifted his head onto her lap. “Somebody call an ambulance.”

  Nina wrung her hands as she paced the floor of the intensive care unit. She didn’t know what to do but to call out to the One she had trusted since childhood. She left her family and went to the hospital chapel to pray. The place was empty; she sat on one of the pews, alone with Jesus, and gazed up at the wooden cross that was suspended from the wall above the altar.

  Tears welled in her eyes and began sliding down her cheeks. Her beloved husband and son had both been rushed to the hospital. Isaac still hadn’t woken up and Donavan was having a broken arm and cracked ribs attended to. Both of them could have been killed and Nina was at a loss for understanding this one. They had lived for God for a long time, but these people kept coming after them. Looking directly at the cross, Nina screamed out loud, “Why is this happening?”

  She got down on her knees, steepled her hands, and then began pouring her heart out to the Lord. “I don’t understand any of this, Lord. We did it right this time. We raise Ikee with knowledge of you, and no knowledge of the street life. But he still gravitated to the streets and my family is suffering once again. I want to be done with these people. Let someone else drag these gang bangers out of the muck they wallow in. I’m tired of sacrificing my family for the very people who keep coming after us.”

  She had told Isaac that she believed in his ministry, but after the way those monster attacked her son and her husband, Nina had had enough. Her heart could take no more. “Help us, Lord. Because if You don’t help us, I don’t know what we’re going to do. If Isaac or Donavan suffers complications and dies, Ikee will be devastated… and I will be destroyed.” A jolt of pain went through her body, and she closed her eyes. She started weeping again as she tried to form the words that were in her heart. She was so overcome with sadness that all she could say was, “I trust You, Lord.”

  Nina stayed on the floor, hoping to hear from God, but after about thirty minutes of hearing only the sound of her sobs, she dried her face on her sleeve and stood up. She hadn’t heard God’s voice audibly, but she was confident that He had heard her prayers, and that knowledge alone was enough.

  She headed back to the ICU, praying that Isaac’s condition had changed for the better since she’d been gone. As she rounded the corner and started down the final stretch of hallway, she could see Diana standing at the nurses’ station. The frantic look on her face mirrored how Nina was feeling. Nina rushed over to her as the nurse buzzed her into the ICU. “Oh honey, I’m so sorry that we had to call with such horrible news.”

  Diana hugged her mother-in-law as the tears stained her face. “If I would have known something like this was going to happen, I never would have left the house. I wish he had let us stay with him tonight.”

  “And then we’d have another loved one in the hospital.”

  “I can’t lose him, Nina. I just cannot lose my husband.” She touched her belly. “I didn’t even get a chance to tell him that I’m expecting again.” Diana sobbed as Nina provided a shoulder for her to cry on.

  “He’s going to be okay,” Nina assured Diana. “The doctors are putting a cast on his arm and he has some cracked ribs, but Donavan is strong. He survived what those animals did to him and he will survive this healing process.” Nina was absolutely positive that her son would survive.

  They started walking down the hall headed to the waiting area where Iona and Ikee were seated. Diana said, “Forgive me, Nina. I didn’t even ask how Isaac is doing.”

  Nina tried to smile, but her lip trembled at her attempt. “He’s still out,” Nina said. “We’re just waiting on him to wake up, and then we’ll know…then we’ll know.” They stopped walking, and Diana provided a shoulder to cry on. Once she calmed herself, Nina was embarrassed at the display of weakness. “Look at me, blubbering all over you like I don’t have any faith at all.”

  “Hey,” Diana halted Nina’s apology. “You don’t have to be so strong for us all the time. God is not going to take away His love if you fall apart with the rest of us just once.”

  ~~~~

  Isaac was with his mother and his brother Donavan. They were laughing and joking just as they had done when he was a kid… but only when his daddy wasn’t home. When daddy came home all the laughter stopped. And the house became like a horror movie.

  But Isaac wanted to stop laughing because he wanted to warn his mother that she needed to get away from daddy, because he was going to kill her. And he wanted to warn Donavan about the street… tell him to stay away from crap games, because he was going to get himself killed. But the words wouldn’t come out of his mouth. He just kept playing and laughing with them as if the world was this perfect place where mothers didn’t get attacked and murdered, and brothers didn’t die early deaths in alleyways.

  “Help them, Lord.” But even as he mumbled those words, Isaac knew it was too late. He couldn’t help his family. His mother waved at him as she went back inside that house of horrors. “No, don’t go in there,” Isaac screamed, but she wasn’t listening.

  He swung around looking for his brother. Isaac looked on in utter terror as he saw Donavan pick up those dice and head toward the alley.

  Isaac turned angry eyes toward heaven. He screamed at the Lord, “If you won’t let me help them, why am I here? I don’t want to watch them die all over again.”

  “They are gone,” Isaac heard the Lord say to him.

  Then as if his body was being turned in a thousand different directions, images of men, women and children drifted by. Their faces were hollow, with no life and no laughter in them. These people lived a hard street life, and they were walking by him, and Isaac was doing nothing to change
their circumstances.

  “You forgot your first love.”

  “How can you say that, Lord? My church is still in the neighborhood. I minister to any and all who come. It’s not my fault that hustlers would rather sleep in on Sunday morning.”

  Isaac didn’t get a response to that, and then the images left him as everything went dark again.

  Chapter Nineteen

  After sitting in the waiting room for hours, they were finally allowed to see Donavan. Ikee was beside himself with grief. His brother’s face was swollen, his arm was in a cast and his ribs were bandaged. “I wish I had stayed at the house with you. Then they would have just taken me and left you alone.”

  “Don’t talk like that… would have killed you,” Donavan told his brother through swollen lips.

  Nina put her arm around Ikee and let him lean on her as he broke down and cried. “I’m sorry, Mama.”

  Nina didn’t know what to say to her son, because he was, in fact, the reason that Donavan and Isaac were in the hospital. But she didn’t want Ikee to feel any worse than he did right now. Her baby was growing up, he was getting to the point where he didn’t need his mother. But for today, he needed her shoulder to lean on, and she would be here for him as long as necessary.

  After about ten minutes, the group left Donavan’s room so that Diana could spend a few minutes alone with her husband. Nina went into the room with Isaac and sat down next to his bed. They had been here before when a vendetta against him caused Iona to be kidnapped. In the process of getting her back, Isaac had been shot. Nina had thought for sure that she was going to lose her husband that night. She was only thankful that he hadn’t been shot again. There was only so much a body could take, even if that body belonged to Isaac Walker.

  “I want you to wake up, do you hear me?”

  His silence was hard to take. Nina’s heart ached from the longing to hear her husband’s smooth baritone voice say her name. “I need you here with me, so don’t get any ideas about taking a tour of heaven.”

  The early years with Isaac were wild, fast and out of control. She still remembered the first night they met and how hard she’d fallen just because he’d shown her those deep chocolate dimples…

  Lost in time…

  Nina and some of her friends decided to leave the college scene and check out a party on the west side. She had worn her black leather jumpsuit that fit like a second skin and accentuated the curves of her voluptuous boom-boom bootie. The three-inch heels on her black leather knee high boots added extra height to her five-foot frame. The strobe lights moved over her olive skin as she stepped into the crowded room. The men and women turned to stare as her hazel eyes glistened in the light. Her friends headed toward the dance floor. Nina sat at the bar and ordered a Long Island Iced Tea. Cigar smoke assaulted her nostrils as King Puff seated next to her blew cancer into the air.

  Mr. Armani inched his way toward her. His diamond bedecked hands glittered in the air as he sauntered. His suit jacket curved nicely over his muscles.

  “Mmmh, mmh, mh,” she said while running her French manicured fingers through her short-layered hair, Nina turned slightly in his direction to put out the welcome mat. His pace quickened, and before long, he stood looking down at her.

  Honey oozed out of his chocolate-coated mouth as he asked, “Have you been waiting long?”

  She looked into those deep chestnut eyes. Eyes that seemed to read her every thought and intent. Lord, have mercy. “Waiting for what?”

  “A man. Someone to take care of you, like you deserve.”

  Although a little too bold for Nina’s taste, he spoke just the right words to appease her vanity. Most guys never seemed very appreciative. She deserved better. Yeah, she thought, I have been waiting a long time. “So are you here to rescue me?”

  “Why don’t we get to know each other a little better first”—he pulled up a seat next to her–“then we’ll see if you’re worth rescuing.” He flashed a dimpled smile.

  Nina thought that smile of his must have driven countless women wild. And she was no different.

  From that day to this, Nina had always belonged to Isaac Walker. Even in the years she’d wanted nothing to do with him, because God had claimed her heart and he was still in the life… she still hadn’t been able to completely erase the love she felt for the man. Which is why, after a decade of being apart, she finally gave in and took him back. They’d now been married for almost twenty years and Nina wanted twenty more.

  ~~~~

  Johnny had arrived back in town in time to meet Candy at the precinct as she was being charged for shooting Lou Jones. However, the police didn’t really care that she shot Lou twice, she could have filled him full of bullets and they probably would have thrown a party. The charge was leverage.

  Johnny sat down in the chair across from Candy and handed her a cup of coffee. “It’s been a long night. I thought you might want something to drink.”

  “Thank you,” Candy said as she sipped from the cup.

  Johnny opened his notebook, he studied the words on the pages as if he hadn’t written everything on the page himself. “Now, let me see, according to my notes, you have known Lou Jones for a few years, is that correct?”

  “Let’s not play games with each other.” Candy put the coffee cup down. “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. But I want a deal: no jail time and I want access to a good rehab facility.”

  “Depending on what you have to offer, we might be able to work a deal.” Johnny was confident that Candy had enough information to put the final nail in Lou’s coffin, but he had to make sure that she wasn’t just blowing smoke.

  “I was with Lou while the deals were being made. At one point in our relationship, I handled transactions for him and kept a log of his contacts and the amount of product he purchased each time.”

  “Where is this log?”

  “The log is in my duffel bag. I used to keep it in a lock box at the bank, but they closed it down when I couldn’t keep up with the payments.”

  “Is that all you have?” Johnny asked, as he silently prayed that the log she’d created had survived the test of time.

  But Candy surprised him when she said, “Do you remember Shawn Parks and Dion Sampson?”

  Johnny knew both names. Shawn Parks had been rolling with the big dogs. Making moves and claiming territory on the west side. He went to Lou once when Shawn came up missing. A year later when the ground was being dug up downtown to make way for a new parking lot, the bodies of Shawn Parks and Dion Sampson had been found with bullet wounds to their heads. Now the police were confused, because Dion hadn’t been in the life, just a good kid on his way to college. “I remember that case.”

  “The gun I shot Lou with is the same gun that he used to kill Shawn Parks and Dion Sampson. Only he didn’t really want to kill Dion, because he didn’t know the guy. But Lou was tired of working under Shawn and wanted him gone. Dion just happened to be hanging out with Shawn that night.”

  “How did you end up with the gun?”

  Candy leaned forward, all business now. “What about my deal… do I have it?”

  Johnny wasn’t about to pass up this opportunity. If the ballistics on that gun matched, he wanted Lou to go down for his drug trafficking and for those murders. Lou Jones would never see the outside of a prison again in his lifetime. “I’ll talk it over with the district attorney, but if your information pans out… yeah, you’ve got a deal.”

  “I was with Lou when he shot them. He handed me the gun and told me to get rid of it, but I kept it just in case he ever acted a fool on me.”

  Johnny stood up. “Drink your coffee, I’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Don’t forget to check on the rehab. I’m tired of living like this.”

  Johnny stepped out of the room. The district attorney and an undercover cop who’d been working the Lou Jones case with them was standing behind the window watching the interview. “We got him,” Johnny said as he closed the door to the
interview room.

  DeMarco, the undercover cop said, “I thought for sure this thing had blown up in our faces when Lou sent that teenager to pick up the shipment from me.”

  “I got called back home from my assignment so we could figure out a way to get those handcuffs on Lou. And come to find out, my wife was holding a gun on him… and by the way,” Johnny told him. “Your botched job is going to cost me big time at home. My wife will never let me live down the fact that she and Candy took Lou down when we couldn’t.”

  “I’m sure you’ll live with it. Especially since I had to meet up with Lou after everything went down, just so I could get him on record admitting that he ordered that shipment from me.” DeMarco took the big fake diamond earring off and opened it, showing a small device. “Thank God they weren’t up on new technology or I’d be dead.”

  “You two did good,” the district attorney told them as he turned to leave. “Oh, and tell Candy that she’s got her deal. We’ll need to get her into that rehab right away. I don’t want her looking like a crack head when she takes the stand to tell everything she knows about Lou Jones.”

  Chapter Twenty

  Scream, Isaac told himself. As he felt that old familiar inferno kind of heat that burned from the inside out. But screams wouldn’t help him now as he was being dragged back into the abyss. He had thought that he would willingly go through this experience a thousand times or more if it would keep Ikee from ever coming to this place, but he was wrong. He couldn’t endure this place, not even for his son. Oh Lord, help me, they’re trying to take me back!

  “Look at you. Big, bad, Isaac Walker crying for help.”

  Oh God, not again! Not this again! Sweat drizzled from Isaac’s coal black hair. It dripped from his nose like snot. Could he live through another night of god-awful torment? Evil invaded his space and demanded his attention.