King Maker

CHAPTER THREE

Wayne got the phone call at 7:30 in the morning. A wave of unruly locks fell onto his face as he reached for the phone. His mattress groaned in protest as he rolled over. Typically, he didn't take calls that early because clients had to respect the boundaries of his life. As much as he might have cared about them, he wasn't at their beck and call nor was he their taxicab, nor their nursemaid, nor their errand boy. Their lives were steeped in (mostly self-created) drama and he had to carve out rest from it or be forever caught up in it. Kay sniffed at the back door, pawing quietly to be let out. Wayne poured food into his bowl and refilled the water bowl. He opened the back door and stared at his phone. "One missed call. Parker." He always checked the messages left on his voicemail. The frantic-edged voice of Parker Griffin trembled through the poor connection of the cell phone.

"Hey man. You got to ring me back. Someone dropped a body on my block."

Wayne sighed. He wouldn't have time to run into the offices at Outreach Inc. and his mouth watered for the taste of too-strong coffee sweetened with honey if he was lucky (donations were down and they hadn't been able to buy sugar in a while). Two phone calls later, and he was on his way to the address Parker gave him. The other call had been to the office to let them know it was going to be one of those days.

The battle for Parker's soul had been waged in earnest for the last year. Parker was one of the many boys on the cusp of manhood who could go either way. Extremely intelligent, Parker's laconic drift through his daily routine belied his eyes which little escaped and keen mind which analyzed street scenarios with the acumen of a political strategist. Wayne only wished that Parker could imagine himself as anything but destined for street soldiering. Wayne would get him into a GED program; Parker would nearly finish, then drop out. He'd get him into job training; he'd nearly finish, then drop out. He'd get him a job, he'd nearly get through probation and then quit. Yet there was something special about Parker – a desperately clung-to innocence or the measure of something salvageable or maybe he simply saw a bit of himself in the boy – that made him keep trying. All Parker needed was to sink his hooks into the straight life and not be tripped up by the lures of short cuts and the promise of easy cash.

Every war demanded an enemy and in this war the enemy came in the form of Junie Walker. As Wayne approached, Junie smiled stupidly, high on whatever he'd managed to get a hold of that morning. The skin of his face stretched tight over his skull. Wayne took the measure of the man in one meeting. A would-be soldier not nearly as competent as he aspired to be. If Wayne could spot that Junie was losing his own battle with the needle, surely Junie's employers had to know that he was a catastrophic fuck-up waiting to happen.

Parker led Wayne down the alleyway, the path suffering from the erosion of green as grass sprouted in the many cracks of the sidewalk. Bushes – more branches than leaves, brown and long unpruned – overtook fences. A gap-toothed grin of missing slats, the remaining posts of the wood fence were either broken or spray-painted with the latest gang tags. ESG. Treize. The letters ICU within a circle. MerkyWater. Non-stop traffic ground along the road, dogs marked their trespass in harsh barks, and air-conditioning units barreled along like over-worked engines. Wayne stalked the too-familiar scene as if he were home.

"He's in there." Parker stopped short and pointed to a trash can.

"He?" Wayne asked, still studying Parker. He was troubled, though neither Parker nor Junie set off any survival alarms. However, Parker's posture bothered him. The careless shrug of his shoulder. The faux deference to Wayne. No, there was something calculated about this performance.

"The dead dude."

Wayne pulled the lid free from the bin. Arms and legs sprouted up, a potted plant of limbs. He jumped back, holding the lid as a shield. Inching forward again, as if at any moment the limbs might snare him, Wayne risked peering into the garbage can again. A naked black man was folded into the container. His head cocked at an unnatural angle, a small entry wound dotted his forehead. Bruised purple with a burned black rim, a small-caliber gun had done its work close up. Wayne couldn't help but note that his knees were ashy. Funny the things the mind chose to lock on to. A hard heart had to have walked up on this man whether he was in the life or not and ended him. Wayne searched Parker's eyes, but no longer saw any hope in them. Only a deadened hardness.

"The police are going to have some questions," Wayne said, not knowing what to do with the lid. He needed to make some phone calls, yet he didn't feel right covering the man like he was inconvenient trash. Nor leaving him exposed to all passers-by.

"You got my back though, right?" Parker asked.

"As long as you didn't have anything to do with this." Wayne continued to stare into the trashcan.

"Cool."

Junie skulked off, fading into the background of the alley, a rat scavenging for food in a dumpster then scuttling for cover when exposed. Suspicions aside, Wayne wouldn't give him up. To be known as a snitch would cost him the trust of all the kids he worked with. Every day he'd wonder if it'd be worth it if only to rid the world of a Junie or two.

Tying them up for hours, the police had plenty of questions for both Wayne and Parker. They had more questions, more for Parker especially, but were satisfied enough to let them go. Wayne had time to make the afternoon drop at Outreach Inc., a ministry for homeless and at-risk teenagers, so he swung by his house to get Kay. On the television – which he'd left on so that Kay wouldn't get lonely – the news reported that on the other side of town, six year-old Conant Walker had been shot while standing in front of his kitchen window. The day just kept getting better and better. He pushed past the crowd flanked by IMPD officers; onlookers – though not witnesses, as the interrogating uniforms found out – to the latest murder scene. The intersection of 10th and Rural marked one of the city's highest crime areas, yet he ambled about as if he wasn't a walking anomaly against the neighborhood backdrop of decay and violence. Kay tugged against the leash to get a better sniff of the area, but Wayne kept it taut. He knew better than to let the Rottweiler stray too far or to let him get past his guard. Even as he selected him from animal control, he was warned that the dog had no hope of being socialized. He'd been rescued – if rescued was indeed the proper term – from a dog-fighting ring. Abused and taunted for as long as he drew breath, his personality was mercurial on his best days. No, his fate was his scheduled euthanasia, for his sake and the public's. Wayne adopted him without hesitation. If Wayne didn't believe in redemption and hope, there was no point in him taking another breath.

Wayne graduated from Indiana University with a major in Computer and Information Science and a minor in Psychology and joined the staff of Outreach Inc. right out of school on the recommendation of his Bible study leader. As a case manager, he did a little bit of everything, but mostly what he did was build relationships with the teens and early twentysomethings who were his clients. Drop night was when Outreach Inc. provided meals and activities for their clients to get them away from their situations. It was a safe night off the streets for the kids. Funny how they still thought of themselves as kids even though most were in their late teens.

The Neighborhood Fellowship church building offered free space for Outreach Inc. The burnt brick facade, once a public school with the design sensibility of a penitentiary, overlooked 10th Street onto an abandoned gas station with a gravel lot.

"All right everyone, I need twenty seconds of silence," Lady G bellowed. The room fell silent, to everyone's surprise.

Lady G stood tall and proud, a commanding darkskinned beauty if one could see past the layers of clothes with which she wrapped herself: a T-shirt under a long sleeve thermal shirt under a grimy, faded blue hoodie, under a jacket that had seen better days. No matter the temperature, she carefully selected her wardrobe in order to hide her shape. And wore gloves with the fingertips cut off.

A cell phone rang, strains of Soulja Boy Tell'em's "Crank That", Rhianna Perkins' fave, echoed as if muffled. Rhianna clutched at her buxom chest before plunging her hand into her bra – no longer capable of supporting her engorged breasts – clearly visible through the threadbare material which stretched over her protruding belly. She fluffed her breasts after fishing out her phone, her voice a little more than a rasp. "I forgot to check my 'luggage'."

The room raised up in cries of "aw" and "nuh-uh", faux disgust at being silenced for such a phone search, protesting a tad too much to believe over Lady G and Rhianna's latest antics. Rhianna was a foot shorter than her cousin, with more curves, even when not carrying a child, though this would be her second in her fifteen years. She slept with anyone who could provide a roof, with her babies fulfilling her quest to be loved. Having a baby wasn't so hard, she often said. The fact that her mother actually raised the child and likely the second was an irony which eluded her.

"I'm so sick of that song," Lady G said.

"That's my joint," Rhianna said.

"I'm tellin' you, no one older than sixteen can get with it."

"How are you doing, ladies?" Wayne asked. Kay lay at his feet, unassuming yet on guard.

Lady G slipped on earphones, retreating into herself, her hair slicked back and shaved underneath her lengthy ponytail. Despite being seventeen and having already been shot, stabbed, and beaten in the last year, she carried herself no different than her younger cousin. She tugged at her gloves before thrusting her hands into her coat pocket, hiding her scars well.

"Fine." Rhianna turned away.

Wayne was inured to the various armor the ladies donned to protect themselves. It was like this every week, the intervening days between Drop nights allowed the bricks of their walls to fall back into place. Each conversation needed to re-establish the semblance of trust.

"How's the baby doing? We still on for me to take you to your doctor's appointment? That reminds me…" Wayne pulled out a bottle of vitamins. "Those are for you."

"Thanks," Rhianna said. It was only one word, but the thawing had already begun. Appeasing her "what have you done for me lately?" defenses was rarely difficult.

"If you come in next week, we can get you enrolled in food stamps."

"What good are food stamps when you got no place to cook?"

"We're working on that, too. Things improve with your mom any?" Wayne knew there was no point in asking about her father.

"Nope."

"You still see the baby's daddy anymore?"

Lady G balled her hand and punched her thigh repeatedly, drawing their attention. Familiar with her case file, Wayne didn't press her. Her life didn't start easy as her mother tried to cut her out of her stomach while pregnant with her. Despite being born addicted to crack, her mother took to beating her, the worst typically coming at Christmas time when the Christmas lights became an improvised whip. After a house fire, she fell into a pattern of moving from house to house, becoming a couch surfer before she hit her teen years.

"No, I don't see him anymore," Rhianna lied, more to Lady G than Wayne. She planned to meet Prez later on that day.

"Don't waste no time with petty niggas," Lady G said with a sing-song lilt as if along to the words of a new joint.

"I know, I know. 'Do better'."

"I'm just saying, no dude better touch me, much less hit me over no butt. Do better."

"I ain't gonna trip." Rhianna's whisper sounded even more hoarse.

"You stand by yourself, you stay by yourself."

"Girl," Rhianna searched for a retort but found none, "…boo." Then she upticked her chin toward another table. The trio's attentions shifted to the large boy sitting by himself.

"What you looking at?" Lady G's tone raised up in the posture of attack that was now reflex. No perceived slight or challenge went unmet.

"Nothing." Nearly tipping three bills, Percy had been watching them as his personal dinner theater. Mounds of food – half already consumed – filled his plate. Sheets of paper lay scattered next to his plate as he doodled while lost in his thoughts. He had a darker knot above his left eyebrow in the shape of a crescent moon, his downcast eyes searched for the television remote. The batteries for it rolled along the table; he'd taken them out after fumbling with the buttons in an effort to get it to work.

"Oh, I know you're looking at something," Lady G said.

"You want you some of this?" Rhianna rose to the sport. Neither of them knew how to react to someone, a male especially, who was always around without the agenda of getting into their pants. Yet Percy was always nearby, trailing them more like a faithful puppy than anything creepy. They didn't trust his faithful protectiveness either. "You are way too special."

"You got to get some game. Can't come up in here looking like Super Mario in black face."

"Look here, Negro Gump…"

"Jesus loves me this I know, for the Bible tells me so," Percy began to sing to himself. He rocked back and forth, contenting himself to wait them out. There was only so much for them to make fun of: he was slow, fat, had yellow teeth, was not especially handsome, and his clothes were secondhand filthy. Though his nose was long numb to it, he knew that he stank. Wayne's eyes filled with pity every time he saw him and it made Percy sad to see him sometimes. Lady G and Miss Rhianna, they'd laugh and laugh and laugh – they had such pretty laughs – but eventually they exhausted themselves. There were worse fates, he knew, like being ignored entirely.

"Ladies, that's enough," Wayne snapped. He made a production of him clearing his plate in disgust, letting the girls' eyes linger on him, and joining the boy at his table. Percy lowered his eyes even more, his shoulders sank and he leaned his head away from him, the same body language Kay assumed when painfully cornered but not wanting to attack. "They didn't mean anything, Percy."

"I know." The world was a simple place to Percy. There were good people (like Wayne) and there were bad people (like Prez). Better to be born simple and not realize the horrors around you. He looked up at Wayne with complete trust in his eyes. Theirs were a simple little band, assembled by loss.

"Sometimes they go a little too far."

"I know."

"I happen to know they care about you." Wayne placed his hand on his shoulder. The boy flinched at the touch then shied away as if shamed by the contact.

"I know."

"You're probably the safest guy in their world and they don't know how to act around you."

Lady G got up and walked over to the piano that sat at the other end of the room. It had been donated by a family which had no further need of it, but hadn't been serviced in a while. She pecked tunelessly at it. Percy closed his eyes as if enjoying a concert recital.

"They can't trust. When you trust someone only to have them do you dirty…" Percy trailed off as he observed Wayne studying a crumpled piece of paper. He pushed the piece of paper under another.

"Who is she?" Wayne noticed the resemblance to Rhianna but said nothing.

"Just a girl," he said. "Little ones to Him belong. They are weak but He is strong."