Outcasts

by Alan Janney

  “Not really. Hmph. You know Jesus?”

  Samantha made a small noise of disbelief.

  I stammered, “Well, I…kind of?”

  “Kind of?”

  “Well…you know…I like the stuff…he taught.”

  “You like his message.”

  “Yes ma’am. And church brings me peace.”

  “You go to church.”

  “Holy Angels Catholic Church.”

  “Oh Lordy,” she rolled her eyes at her friends. They cackled. “Got ourselves a Catholic.”

  “Is that bad?”

  “Had to listen to a Catholic for an hour earlier. Refuse to get his hands dirty. So we kept painting and he kept asking the city for money. With his clean hands.”

  Miss Pauline pulled a flip-phone from her pocket and handed it to her friend. “Message Carl. Tell him I’m ready.” Her friend took the phone and started tapping the keys. She cast her gaze back at us. “I don’t message. Can’t see the keys.”

  After a minute, an old beat up Crown Victoria appeared. Once a police interceptor, now the car chauffeured Miss Pauline. Carl, a tall bald man, got out and glared.

  I opened the passenger door for Miss Pauline. She tugged off the orange vest and said, “Well. Climb in the back, I suppose.”

  We did, sliding across the cracked vinyl seat covers. Carl eased the car down the street. Miss Pauline waved a hand at her friends and then spoke to us over her shoulder.

  “Go to church but don’t don’t know Jesus,” she said.

  Samantha shifted uncomfortably. So did I. I cleared my throat. “You could say that.”

  “I could say that.” She looked mildly at Carl. Carl shook his head, eyes on the road. “Boy, how you gonna drive out darkness without the light?”

  No words. My brain went blank. I felt like a little boy being lectured about heart surgery. Nothing I could say was correct. My mouth worked soundlessly.

  She said, “Want me to teach you. About non-violence.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “Why should I?”

  “We want to help.”

  Carl frowned in the mirror. “Miss Pauline a busy woman.”

  “So are we. But I think we’re a good investment.”

  “A good investment.”

  “Yes ma’am.”

  “I believe you. Don’t know why. But I believe you. Take us to the spot, Carl,” Miss Pauline said. Samantha and I rode without speaking, hands in our laps like scolded children. I’d never seen Samantha so intimidated before.

  Miss Pauline had presence.

  We drove to north Compton, a recovering war zone. American military forces had attempted a rescue operation here last year, ten thousand soldiers pushing in from South Gate. Walter, the Infected sadist, allowed them their progress, suffering sustainable casualties, until springing his trap. He massacred the Army, wiping out eighty percent of the American troops. Entire blocks were leveled by rockets, far too big a project for Compton volunteers to handle. The restoration would take years. Decades.

  Carl stopped the car near Willowbrook Park, now a charred wasteland and mass grave site.

  Miss Pauline got out with a groan and walked stiffly to the intersection. Not another car in sight. We followed her, boots crunching on gravel. She said, “The Chemist, he took most his gang north. Downtown. Back in November, or whenever it was. With the helicopters. You remember?”

  I nodded. “I remember.”

  “He took most our men. Didn’t have many to begin with. Compton been getting better, but still didn’t have many men. Lose them to gangs or they just leave. Go looking for work. And what we did have, the Chemist, he takes half. Recruits them into his army. So the Chemist, in November, he leave. Gets in his helicopters and he goes downtown. Takes his army. Leaves maybe a hundred behind. A small occupying force with guns. Some of them have the sickness. You know.”

  “I know the sickness.”

  “Maybe a dozen have the sickness. All kids. The rest are older men with guns. He leaves them behind to hold our city hostage.” She walked around the intersection picking up bits of metal as she told the story. There was no trashcan so she dropped the metal inside a tire. Samantha and I felt like morons, watching her. We started picking up trash too. “So I get my girlfriends. And my girlfriends get their girlfriends. And we don’t let the children come. No kids. Just us old women. Hundreds of us.”

  Samantha dropped a handful of metal shards into Miss Pauline’s tire. Silent. Subdued. The noises of the world had receded. A new kind of powerful quiet. There was only her voice.

  “And we go. We know where the Chemist’s men are. And we go. We praying with each step, real loud, Lord Jesus help us! Help up, God! They hear us coming. We find them. They shoot their guns. In the air. At our feet. It’s about dinner time. They shoot their guns and tell us to leave. But they’re scared. And we keep praying. Oh yes, Lord, we keep praying.” And then, as if the song itself could no longer bear suppression, she sang in rich orotund gospel tones,

  “I’m pressing on, the upward way

  New heights I’m gaining every day

  Still praying as I’m onward bound

  Lord, plant my feet on higher ground!”

  Pain I didn’t know I possessed began uncoiling in my chest, as though strummed by her song.

  Samantha’s hands shook. Tiny cuts began staining her hands red with blood, and she cried quietly. She could see the end to the story already. I couldn’t.

  “We tell the Chemist’s gangs. Tell them, You can stay or go. If you stay, you have to give us the guns. And never touch them again. All the men have the powder on their faces. Can’t think straight. Some start…” Miss Pauline’s breath caught. She straightened up and massaged her lower back, staring off at the blue sky, lost in memories. “Some start shooting us. Killing us old women. Awful. But we keep praying. And we get our hands on them. The men with the sickness, they are too fast. They spooked and they run. You know? The ones with the sickness move like demons. Too fast for old women. But the others. We get our hands on them. Some keep shooting. Some drop their guns and run. Then all the Chemist people start to running. All his worshippers and workers and doctors and nurses and the rest. Hundreds of them. Thousands. They grab what they can grab and they get in cars and drive off. Went downtown, I suppose. Spooked off by us women.”

  Carl might’ve been listening but I couldn’t tell. He walked in circles around the intersection, staring down the roads, a hard man with a hard past.

  “Most men drop their guns and cry. And cry and cry and we sang Glory Hallelujah! A few refuse, so we disarm them. That’s hard. They fight like the devil. But there are hundreds of us, you know. We handcuff them and walk them out of town. Out of our Compton. Except one man.” She wagged her finger at us and made a tsk sound. “Except one stubborn old mule. Oh Lord. There was a hundred men for the Chemist. At the start. We got ‘bout sixty back. Maybe seventy. The others ran off or we pushed’em out. All the ones with the sickness, they fled. Found three of them dead later. Killed themself. Sixteen beautiful women lay dead. Some of us injured. It’s all over, except that one man. We chase him and chase him. He keep shooting. Finally. Finally, sweet Jesus, we old women surround him here. Right here in this street. About midnight. He gone outta bullets. He throws his gun. He punches and kicks. We surround him. We sing!” She laughs at the memory, husky and rich. “We sing hymns. He curses. He punches us. Us old women. Gave me a black eye! Finally we get our hands on him and he cries!” She laughed and clapped her hands, over-flowing with emotion and memory. “He cries and cries. Cries for days. Jesus set him free. Heart-broken man. Made no sense for us women to die and sing for him. You know. It broke him. The sacrifice broke him. So now, where’s that stubborn old mule?”

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Well, you know. He drive me around in my car. We friends now. My good friend Carl.”

  Carl still walked circles around the intersection. Only now did I notice the tears. Samantha sat down du
ring the story. Her face was streaked with blood from where she wiped her eyes.

  “We didn’t kill no men,” Miss Pauline said. “No sir. We wanted their hearts. We wanted them back. I don’t pretend to know about the sickness. That’s up to God. But our men. Well, you know. You can’t drive out darkness with darkness. You need the light.”

  Carl shook his head, like trying to dislodge his grief. “Can’t drive out evil with evil. Praise Jesus.”

  Miss Pauline placed her firm hands on my arms and squeezed. I wanted her to hug me and never release. I wanted to be one of those kids in her yard. “You said we defeated the Chemist without violence. You half right. You more right than most. But there was violence. Yes, boy, oh Lord, there was violence. Violence that makes me cry still. But we took the violence into ourselves. We accepted it, instead of throwing it on others. Martin Luther King. Ghandi. Sweet lord Jesus. They won hearts with their broken bodies. We won our men’s hearts with love.”

  My voice sounded strange. Not my own. “I don’t know how to do that.”

  “Do you love the Chemist? Would you die for him, boy?”

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Then. Well.” Her palm went to my face. Calloused, rough, and soft as angels. “You aint’ ready yet, sweetie.”

  * * *

  We ate dinner at Miss Pauline’s house. Her friends all brought food for her and each other and the kids and us. The gathering overflowed the house into the yard. Samantha and I sat on the sparse grass, leaning against the fence, watching. Samantha hadn’t spoken for hours. Miss Pauline’s guests stared at us but didn’t approach.

  Miss Pauline’s reign as mayor caused pronounced consternation among entrenched politicians. She held office at construction sights while picking up trash. She took meetings and expected attendees to pick up a paint brush. That’s not how it’s done. I could see it on their faces as two groups of sharply dressed constitutes were rebuffed at her fence gate. By children.

  “Missus Pauline say she’ll see you tomorrow at the airport,” they were told by a sassy little girl in a white dress. She shook her finger at them. “That’s where she be cleaning tomorrow. Now she set down to dinner. Good bye.”

  The people loved her. The establishment didn’t. I learned that over my plate of pasta in the span of twenty-five minutes while sitting on her grass.

  Carl sat next to me, his plate heaped with pasta. He was a big guy, broad shoulders, strong arms. “Miss Pauline, she like you.”

  “I like her too.”

  “Then you ain’t dumb. Even though you white.”

  “Mmm.” I waffled my hand. “I’m kinda dumb. But my girlfriend is hispanic. That’s gotta count for something.”

  “She with you, she dumb,” he grinned, big and bright and infectious.

  “I can’t fault your logic. But she’s not.”

  “She blind?”

  “No. Beautiful eyes. And you’re about to get punched.”

  He laughed. I’m hilarious.

  His phone rang. It rang a lot. Carl acted as her political bouncer. He rose with a groan and paced the yard and talked into it. After a minute, he pocketed the device and found Miss Pauline. She listened and nodded and excused herself.

  “Well,” she said at the front gate. She glanced at us. “Better come on.”

  Carl drove, Miss Pauline in the front, Samantha and I in the back. The sun sat on the horizon, casting Compton into shadows. Obviously tired, Miss Pauline leaned her head against the window.

  “Ain’t no place can change overnight. Or over a year. Or ten years. Compton got a lot healthier. But we still got poverty. Hate. Anger. Divisions. Gangs. You know?”

  “I know,” I said.

  “It’s culture. Culture hard to change. Watch Jesus. One reason they killed him, he was changing culture too fast. Why don’t God just work miracles and change a place? Because people got foundations. They got beliefs built and established. God don’t push. He pulls. He calls. Cause people? They don’t like being pushed. You can’t change people by pushing.”

  Samantha shook her head, staring at the ceiling. She’d reached her daily limit of crazy ideas. Samantha had foundations too.

  I asked, “How do you pull people? Instead of pushing?”

  Miss Pauline elbowed Carl. “See? Boy got some brains.”

  “Maybe. Not so sure.”

  “How do you pull people,” Miss Pauline sighed. “These people are broken. Especially the young ones. Need healing. And I am willing to die for them. They know it. It shakes them. I will sacrifice. They know. And that sacrifice begins healing.”

  “Sacrifice begins healing?” I asked.

  “Our goal is grandchildren, really. We want healthy grandchildren. These young men, they already got babies. The women got baby daddies they don’t know. And we love them. It spooks them. I want to spook long-term changes. You know. Little by little. And our current unification? It’s just a start.”

  “What about the Chemist’s super drug? Is that still here?”

  “I think we run out. Hope so. Awful withdrawals. The Chemist, one good thing he did, he disrupted the drug flow. The system broke. He flooded Compton with his own brand. For free. Lord Jesus, help us. Drug dealers out of work, all a sudden. Now listen. You two.”

  She turned all the way around in her seat and locked eyes.

  “We almost here. These OGs. Big important men. They got pride. They act dangerous. We cannot speak their language. You understand? We cannot speak with violence. Cannot.”

  Samantha said, “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “If they hit me…” she said slowly, keeping her eye contact, “…you don’t hit them back.”

  “What about shooting them?”

  “No baby,” she said. “That’s not even funny. They ain’t gonna like you two. Too white. Too many corrupt white cops. So you stay in the car. And don’t get out.”

  “Stay in the car?!”

  I asked, “What’s going on?”

  “Gang dispute. Going to be bad soon. But maybe not tonight. And you will stay in the car.”

  “Miss Pauline.” Samantha struggled to keep her composure. She wanted to explain to Miss Pauline that the two people in her backseat could most likely subdue every trouble maker tonight. She didn’t need to endanger herself. But we’d agreed to travel in secret. Incognito. There was, after all, hundreds of millions of dollars hanging over our heads. “We are good at this. We can help.”

  “Your violence will create more. I don’t want to win this fight, sugar. I want to win their hearts. I want to win their grandchildren. And you will stay in the car.”

  Carl’s headlights washed over an angry mob on the corner. The street lights were busted. Forty people, at least, raging against each other, just this side of fighting. Posturing and cackling, men and women, all under twenty-five.

  “Miss Pauline,” Samantha hissed. “There’s going to be trouble. You can’t go in there.”

  “I’m the Sheriff,” she chuckled. “Ya’ll stay here. Drive away if we don’t come back.”

  Miss Pauline’s arrival was an event. Clearly adored and revered, she circulated throughout the mob distributing hugs and conversation. Carl stayed tight on her heels, stone-faced even when accepting complex hand-shakes. The OGs, the men with most at stake, stayed back, watching impassively. No chance could they admit they loved Miss Pauline, no chance could they hand her power. She moved deeper into the riot, into the danger, and we lost sight of her. A handful of the disinterested sat on our Crown Victoria, laughing and banging on the windows.

  Samantha took deep breaths. “I’m so stressed.”

  “Right?” I agreed, peering desperately into the crowd. “I’m terrified. For her. This sucks.”

  “I see a dozen pistols. At least. And we’re just sitting here.”

  I tore my eyes away and scrubbed my face with fingers. “Can we really drive away if it gets bad?”

  “Hell no.”

  “She asked us to. Demanded it.”

>   “She ain’t my Sheriff,” Samantha sniffed.

  “She should be.”

  Her fingers drummed on the hidden gun beneath her jacket. “An old lady stares down an armed gang. While the mighty Outlaw watches from a nearby car.”

  The crowd shrieked and tensed. Angry shouts. Something had happened. Samantha’s hand flew to the door handle.

  “Wait,” I shouted, grabbing her. “Give her a chance.”

  Our window was cracked. Above the noise, we heard Miss Pauline’s stern voice. Couldn’t see her though.

  “She’s alive.”

  “For how long??”

  We waited forever. Hours. Days. An eternity in fifteen minutes. Finally the crowd began to disperse. The uninvolved grew bored and wandered off. Like an onion, the mob peeled away in layers.

  A half-hour after she climbed out, Miss Pauline returned to her car. She collapsed into the passenger seat, sweating, drained, eyes closed as Carl gunned the engine.

  Samantha might have been nearly as exhausted. “How’d you do that?” she asked.

  “I have earned the right to be heard. So they listen. No deaths tonight, Lord Jesus,” she sighed heavily. “Still a chance those little babies will know their daddies.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The men and women with the sickness. You know? I can’t speak about them. But the men of Compton? My men? You can’t solve their gun problem with guns.”

  We had travelled halfway back to her house when Carl’s phone rang. He answered, one hand on the wheel. He listened and hung up.

  Miss Pauline said, “Well?”

  “Trouble in Northwest,” he answered.

  “Trouble?”

  He shook his head slowly. “You ain’t gon’ believe it, Miss Pauline.”

  “What trouble?”

  “The Outlaw.”

  “The Outlaw??!” Miss Pauline, Samantha and I all said it at the same time.

  “The Outlaw up north,” he nodded. “Throwing grenades.”

  And in the distance, through the partially lowered window, I heard the thump of detonations.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Thursday, February 8. 2019