King's Justice

CHAPTER SIX

On the corner of New York Street and Rural Avenue, Outreach Inc. bustled with newfound life and excitement. Not that their old ministry home was a bad place: they had shared space with Neighborhood Fellowship Church, however, the penitentiary-styled refurbished school wasn't quite… "them." It didn't achieve the atmosphere they wanted, unlike the renovated double home they now inhabited. Home being the key word.

Brown furniture and wood shelves filled the olivegreen walls of the great room. A television armed with Nintendo 64, which had been donated: the ministry always a generation or two behind the latest game system.

Wayne stood in the adjoining dining room which also ran the width of the house yet seemed so much brighter than the great room. Perhaps the sky-blue walls reflected light better. Five teens studied the blank pieces of paper in front of them, as if they contained alien script they struggled to decipher. Baskets of crayons, colored pencils, and markers filled their respective baskets in the center of the table. Wayne's Rottweiler, Kay, lay at their feet, his head on his paws. He lifted his head high enough to loll his tongue over Wayne's outstretched hand. Kay chewed up furniture at home, more out of boredom and loneliness rather than anything malicious, but Wayne didn't have the heart to crate him. Instead, he brought him to Outreach Inc.

"You are making this too hard. Just draw a picture of what you think it means, what it would look like for you, to 'Make It.'" Wayne clapped his hands on the back of Lamont "Rok" Walters.

Rok's mind danced with images of new cars, a Benz, with new rims. Jewelry, lots of fat rings. A house, maybe one for his granmoms, too. New clothes from which he could pull a roll of money from his pants. Huge speakers for his system. Resting poolside with some honeys pouring Cristal for him. Then he realized he was in an MTV video and that his imagination had run dry. The last time they did this exercise, Rok drew a close-up of a black arm with a swollen vein like a bulging blue python throbbing as if nearly sated. Dangling from the arm was a needle, the pink swirl of a load about to be plunged into the arm, a thin trickle of blood escaping the piercing point. All against a backdrop of dark clouds, bulbous and threatening. The assignment was to draw a perfect day.

Rhianna crayoned a page from a coloring book merrily to herself. It didn't matter her age, she was suddenly six again, her tongue stuck out in fierce concentration as she chose her colors and stayed within the lines. The purple, violet red, and mauve, for the wings of the smiling butterfly, its body black and its smiling face peach. Not brown, which Wayne found interesting. Not content to simply color the picture, she drew in the background, adding a lawn, a few flowers, and sun and clouds against a blue sky.

As Wayne prattled on about the possibility of any of them becoming doctors or lawyers, or having a spouse and kids, he might as well have been talking about discovering that they were really a Jedi or a superhero.

"This is bullshit." Rok pushed away from the table. All eyes fell on him and rather than face their curious scrutiny, he dashed up the stairs.

"Esther, you…" Wayne gestured for Esther Baron to watch to the rest of the kids. She nodded that she could handle supervising them. Wayne hadn't initially thought much of Esther. She was a nice enough volunteer, but volunteers came and went and he thought she had the whiff of a suburban girl slumming to make herself feel good, so he'd all but dismissed the possibility of her lasting. Still, she was there the night the Durham Brothers attacked Prez and Trevant, associates of some of his clients. And she returned without a mention of the evening.

The stairs creaked in alarm at Wayne's heavy-set frame in quick ascent. He understood the simmering frustration most of the kids – like Rok – experienced. Like never having the right words to express the confluence of complex emotions swirling within him. How he had to break them down into simpler things he understood. Hurt. Anger. The call and response of the streets. Quietly, and he'd never admit this to anyone except a fellow staff member, Wayne was pleased with Rok's retreat. Not that he had run from the table, but the fact that Rok chose to run upstairs rather than out the door. Positive steps had to be measured and counted differently, Wayne had long ago learned. In this case, whether Rok realized it or not, he had fled to the prayer loft.

Rok huddled in the back corner of the room, arms around his pulled-up knees. A hint of the lost boy inside the fifteen year-old budding man struggling to burst free. Haloed by prayers other folks had scrawled upon the walls. I give up. I'm so sick inside. Just give me a little hope, something to hold onto through the night. I want my baby back. I want my mommy back. I want my family back. I want to be whole.

"You OK?" The words sounded terribly naive to even Wayne's ears, but he had to start somewhere. Rok simply eyed him. Not cold or hard, but wary as if wanting to lower his guard if only once. Wayne was good at reading faces, to know when someone was struggling and needed prayer for them to hang in there, struggling alongside them as if willing hope upon them. Praying for God to use him like a mirror, for them to see themselves as he saw them: precious, beloved. And he knew he couldn't always wait for them to make the first move. Believing in the power of presence, Wayne scooted near, but without crowding him.

"Have you ever lost anything?" Rok asked the air.

"Yes." Wayne brushed some accumulated dirt from his Timberlands, careful not to meet Rok's eyes. It allowed the boy a measure of privacy, space to be vulnerable.

"Have you ever lost everything?"

"No."

"Well I have. About twelve times. Maybe I'm tired of losing everything."

The words hung in the air without the need for comment or the reflex of offering a contrived platitude. Wayne didn't pretend to have all the answers, and as much as his heart wanted to wave a magic wand and make all the hurt go away and make everything better, nothing lasting was ever built that way. So Wayne simply listened, reassuring Rok that he'd be there as much as he'd let him and help him develop a plan to get to where he wanted. By the time they walked downstairs, the other kids were leaving, papers in hand. Rok walked out without meeting either Wayne's or Esther's eye.

"That go OK?" Esther asked.

"Okay as can be expected. Even baby steps are steps forward." Wayne began to clear off the table, returning the crayons to their boxes and stacking the unused paper.

"That how it is?" Esther brushed a curl of hair back behind her ear, then collected the scissors and bottles of glue.

"Yeah, you learn to re-evaluate how to measure success doing this work. Don't matter their situation, they're just like the rest of us: too often can't get out of the way of their own bad decision-making and instead take ten paces back."

"Oh."

"But you seem to be getting the hand of how things work around here." Wayne flashed her a reassuring smile. Some people weren't built for the continual heartbreak the job entailed. Pouring themselves into a person only to have them make bad decisions, or continue to hurt themselves or worse.

"I guess." Esther Baron believed in hope. She had been raised in a family who believed in hope, and strove to pass on that hope. She had been with Outreach Inc. for nearly a year now because she wanted to be a part of the hope. Quiet, though not shy; more thoughtful than anything else, maybe lacking the confidence to share her thoughts, she plunged into Outreach Inc. with both feet. To this day she couldn't describe what she did: mother, sister, friend, confidante, advisor. She was… there. If she had business cards, that's how they would read: Esther Baron – There.

"Don't sell yourself short. The longer you stick around, the more you'll see some stuff that will make you question the world you live in."

"Like…" Esther's eyes widened and she blushed as if wanting to swallow that last syllable and pretend it didn't happen. Yet there was the pleading of unasked questions yearning for answers behind the strained grin masking her face.

"You want to talk about it?" Wayne asked out of mercy, reading her need to finally talk about what happened that night. That was another thing he had learned about people: they talked when they were ready.

"It's just…"

"You don't know where to start?"

"Is that normal?" Esther eased into one of the dining room chairs.

"Ain't nothing normal out there. Actually, it may be better to redefine what you think of as normal." Wayne pulled a chair out across from her and straddled it backwards.

"People being killed."

"Too often."

"But…" Esther hesitated. "Ripped in half?"

"I…" Wayne started then thought better of his initial response. There was no immediate transition into a world of trolls, sorcerers, zombies, and dragons unless there were some ten-sided dice involved. Better to start in an easier place. "You see the kids we work with? They're invisible. No one sees them. They may have a sense about them, the same way you could be in a darkened room and know that you weren't alone. People know when to walk around them or speed out of the way of a bum begging for change. Their powers of invisibility are huge: if you stop to talk to a homeless person, you seem to disappear also. People turn their eyes from you as if you no longer exist. That can do something to a person's psyche."

"So you're saying I'm nuts?"

"Not at all. Your eyes have been opened. Most people have no idea what goes on in this city. At night. In other neighborhoods. In the shadows of downtown."

"The kids whispered about dragons over at the Phoenix." Esther let the words float out into the ether, not knowing if she hoped he would deny it or pray that he wouldn't. She sensed she was opening a door she wasn't sure she could close later.

"That would explain why we've had trouble catching a cab."

"I'm serious."

"There's a whole other side to the city. Probably every city. I'm not going to say you get used to it, but you learn to be open to the ideas of other lives and possibilities."

The moment of silence between them gestated. Then, suddenly aware of it, they glanced down. Maybe he meant to just be reassuring, but without realizing he did it, he had reached across the table and taken her hand.

Many of the boarded-up buildings surrounding the spot at 30th and Central looked like bombed-out brick shells. The sidewalk was chewed up, dented in and split as if something heavy had been dropped onto it at regular intervals. Rush-hour traffic sped along, the snap of car doors making sure they were locked whenever they were caught at a stoplight. The faded purple awning was an oasis, a reclaimed spot within the blight of the neighborhood left to decay. The name Unleavened Bread formed a cross around the "E"s. Amber lighting suffused the cafe. Two rows of long black tables – topped with glass bowls filled with artificial flowers and surrounded by uncomfortable, tall-backed, wooden chairs with wicker seats along them – led to a formica countertop. Off to the left, a space had been carved out for community or church groups to meet. A mountain vista had been painted on a wall by a local street artist. Wood paneling ran halfway up the wall, the top half of the wall stenciled with gold and purple script of Bible verse references. Revelation 21:1-3. Psalms 34:1. Romans 13:1 and 10:9. Deuteronomy 30:19. And of course, John 3:16.

A woman everyone called Queen took in ex-addicts and ex-cons to employ, believing that everyone needed a chance to turn their life around. A jowlyfaced woman, with short curly hair and dark blotches on her face and thick lines worn about her mouth, wandered from the kitchen to the counter complaining that her sugar was up. With a slow amble, stiff-jointed thick legs and swollen ankles, glasses dangled about her neck by a chain over her orange and black frock. Her heavy bosom rested on her belly.

"Name on the ticket?"

"Percy."

"Hello, Percy. I'm Sister Jackie, but folks round here call me Queen. What can I get for you?"

"I'll take a bowl of beef vegetable soup." Percy pointed to the daily special. He tended to order whatever was written on top. Or by picture. Queen also let folks who couldn't afford a hot meal stop in to fill their bellies without question or shame.

"Good choice. Everything in the soup is from our garden in Mulberry, Indiana."

"You have any toast?"

"We know how to improvise. It's how we do. Make the best of what you got." Queen smiled then ambled back into the kitchen.

Not wanting to flip through the copy of Our Daily Bread devotional tucked between the salt, pepper, and sugar, Percy found a discrete corner and plopped down to read until his food was ready. A comic book, Cullen Bunn's The Damned, caught his eye. The idea of demons and gangsters had a newfound appeal to him. Sister Jackie brought him out his soup, which he ate without thought or muster. So he never noticed the man sliding into the chair across from him.

"I knew your daddy." Born Robert Ither, Naptown Red smiled as he settled into the chair. Naptown because Indianapolis was always so far behind all the other big cities, always sleeping. Nothing going on. Red because of the slight reddish tint to the man's hair. Like soldiers, everyone had another name. His back to the wall, he surveyed the other customers and kept note of anyone entering the cafe. Black pants, slick purple shirt, and a crocodile smile under "cut-you-fornothing" eyes, he didn't look like anyone Percy wanted to hang out with.

"Who are you?" Percy rolled up his comic book. Black moles circled each of the man's bloodshot, heavy eyes. Splotches checkered his face, parts of his skin closest to his hair line lighter than the others. His long feral auburn hair had been straightened but kept unkempt. Percy smelled the alcohol wafting off him. The man rubbed his belly, a sated chieftain, and tugged at his privates too often. Percy always looked into the details of everything.

"Folks call me Naptown Red. What you going to do with your life?"

"I don't know. School. Got to get through that."

"Thinking about the future. What part you want to play in this here game." Red fancied himself maneuvering to pick up where Night left off, gambling that it would be easier with the would-be heir in tow. To do right by the boy would give him added street credibility. But as he studied the overweight and alltoo-soft boy, Red took Percy for weak. All knightly virtue seen as a weakness to this would-be next king of the streets: courtesy, patience, gentility, chivalry. All such things needing to be mocked or punished.

"Ain't thought none on it. Don't seem like it's for me."

Queen brought out his soup without comment. Red eased back until she left. Percy smiled and nodded his appreciation.

"I'm offering you an opportunity. I got a package coming in. Thought I might take care of you with it."

"Why?" Percy asked. The man bothered him. All of the talk of taking care of him, of looking out for him reminded Percy of his momma. All of her fiendish attempts at parental provision always had the taint of using you for her own ends.

"Like I said, I knew your daddy."

"Nah, I don't think so." Percy brought his spoon to his mouth, blew, winced at its heat and blew again before taking the bite.

Naptown Red cut his eyes. There was nothing hard about the boy. He had trouble believing he was any kin at all to Night. Night was one of the baddest motherfuckers he knew. He came up fierce. Hard. Feared.

"Are you finished?" Queen said without any trace of disdain in her voice despite her wary gaze cast at Red.

"Yes, ma'am." Percy cleared his arms as she took the bowl from him.

"You could be running the sweeper on them rugs out there," a voice yelled from the kitchen.

"Right after my cigarette break," Queen said. "Gonna take two pulls and call it a break."

"Look here, boy." Red leaned towards him once Queen was out of earshot. "You got to choose which side of the line you going to stand on."

"I think I have."

"You in church or something?" A man for bad plays, Red gave him another once-over as if he'd misread the menu. That thing ticked in his chest. Weed took the edge off his anger and he'd been angry for a long time. Pushed into the life, he fucked the world because he felt fucked, but the first and foremost victim was himself. The boy wasn't the one. He'd have to make other arrangements. "You sure ain't your daddy's son."

"No, I guess not." If Percy was insulted, he gave no indication. He simply opened up his comic book and kept reading.

Good Hope Missionary Baptist Church was dedicated in 1891. The church had a lot of history. A lot of history. There used to be a dirt road out front where folks would hook up their horses and buggies. The streets had changed, living in their own separate world, with the economics of poverty: extortion, prostitution, gambling, stolen property, drugs. All enforced by the violence of gangs and subsidized by welfare checks thus tacitly approved by government neglect. Police rarely patrolled for fear of their own safety.

"Lord have mercy, you'll see me on the TV." Big Momma scooted out of her chair with a dancer's grace heedless of her stiff hip, sore legs, and swollen arms when she saw King come through the front doors. She raised one hand, palm out, and hopped in place. Then she suddenly stomped five times. "That's how good it was. Do you hear me?"

"I hear you." King stopped in his tracks. A portrait of Redd Foxx cast his eyes to heaven from his shirt.

Big Momma was hyped up to a near-wail, stoked on a spiritual high, a one-woman amen corner. "Who did it?"

"God did it," voices from the hallway called back.

"I just can't keep it to myself. Do you hear me? I done cried and shouted and danced, OK? And I thank God for the rain. When you get the Lord in you, you can't just keep Him to yourself. You got to share Him. It just keeps getting better and better and better. I'll go on a mountaintop telling people what the Lord can do. He'll carry me through. He answers prayer. We been praying 'send some help' cause His people were struggling. Then you rose up."

"I didn't do anything special." King stepped back, uncertain if she was actually talking to, or even about, him.

"And He ain't through blessing us through you yet. You know how they say if you take one step, He'll take two? Who did it?"

"God did it!" the voices from the hallway called out.

"Is he in?" King asked.

Big Momma stepped in front of him with a conspiratorial whisper, as if requiring a code word for him to pass. "Who did it?"

King let out an exasperated sigh. "God did it."

"He in his office."

Pastor Ecktor Winburn felt his calling to evangelize the unsaved as well as the un- and under-churched. Hustlers, drunks, prostitutes, drug dealers, drug addicts, all the left-behind, fall-through-the-cracks folks. He was also in King's life, the man who showed him how to be and live as a man.

King's father, Luther White, ran the streets, hustled, and stole, and thus ended up dead before King had entered pre-school. His mother rarely spoke of the man, though when she did, it was like he was two different men: the would-be gangsta and the man she knew and believed in. When others talked about his father – uncles, friends – there was a near-reverent air. Luther was cool. Admired. Half of them wanted to be him.

All King knew was that he was dead and gone.

He missed having a father, that firmness that could put him in check. Then his mom got hooked on drugs. King could never remember having a one-on-one conversation with her after that. By the time Pastor Winburn came into his life, he'd already seen his share of trouble. Smoked a little weed, getting into fights, telling teachers what they could go do. Because he imagined himself in charge of his life. His life changed after he got caught and arrested for stealing. The court put him in contact with Outreach Inc., who helped get him back on track. It was his then case manager, Wayne, who put him in contact with Pastor Winburn. Once King started going to his church, Pastor Winburn became a bit of a father figure, affecting him whenever they chatted. He helped King learn how to rein in his temper. They went on spiritual patrols, walking through the neighborhood, praying for and talking to folks. Pastor Winburn taught him discipline, and how to be a man, but the life still called. And though many years had passed, King still had a lot of unanswered questions about God. And still struggled with his temper.

"Someone certainly got her praise on this morning," King said.

"That's what we do here. We praise God not only on a Sunday, but it could be a Wednesday. A Thursday. A Tuesday. If it ends in 'day' we ready to praise." Pastor Ecktor Winburn leaned back in his chair. A low-cut Afro with gray streaks drew back from his forehead lengthening the appearance of his face. A black suit hung from him as if he was a scarecrow funeral director, his tie too thin. He hunched his shoulders close and bridged his spider-like long fingers, his suspicious eyes taking the measure of him. "The lesson was on One Accord. If we can't come together down here, what we going to do in heaven? We should be a foretaste of heaven, but we pretty much taste-testing hell."

"It's bad out there."

"I don't need to hear tales of how bad it is on the streets. I know all about the rapes, drugs, murders, and violence. You think it's bad now? Fifteen years ago you couldn't slow your car down here without twenty folks running up to you to sell drugs." Pastor Winburn hesitated, choosing his words with care. King remembered a time when the man shared freely with him. "Only God has the remedy."

"God is not my friend. Not these days. Not while things are like this."

"You ought to come by some time. We a live wire here." Pastor Winburn lowered his voice.

"I remember."

"Look here, churches plant where they plant and deepen their roots by drawing on the community they dwell in. When we in the hood, I don't look for my members to come up over the mountain. We're made up of who we are, where we are." Pastor Winburn smiled and spread his arms in his all-are-welcome embrace. King had heard the sales pitch before. "This is our neighborhood. I know I taught you that. Not what you been doing."

"You mean this?" King pulled the Caliburn from his dip. He let the light reflect from it for a moment, then laid it like a sacrificial offering before Pastor Winburn.

"So what I been hearing is true? Is this what I taught you? Is this how you solve problems now, to return fist for fist and gun for gun?" The pastor rubbed the bridge of his nose, the gesture managing to convey disappointment. "What is this, King? You set up a private police force? Your own little army with you as the general? Are you making your own gang?"

"It's the best defense, because the police don't show. I'd like to do things your way, pastor. But it's hard when it seems no one cares or no one is around. Not the police. Not the church. Not God."

"Look at you." Pastor Winburn got up and circled King. "You always worried about doing something big. You as flashy as any of these other knuckleheads. Forget that all you have to do is reach one, teach one. No, you might as well go ahead and get yourself a cape and put a big K on your chest."

The no-nonsense edge of him keened against King, as well as the sweetness of the man. "It's not like that."

"What's it like then? If you fight your enemies with what tools you have, you'll be defeated. Maybe killed. The system is part of the problem."

"Exactly." King finally jumped in. "That's what I been fighting against."

"I don't know why you so quick to amen somebody. Your wild ass is part of the problem, too. Look here, you can't give someone a block of cheese a day and then ask, why are you hungry? Cause, damn, I only got some cheese. But next day, where am I? Down waiting for my next piece of cheese. The system provides a chain, not a safety net, just enough to string us along, not enough to let us go free. On the other side, if all I'm doing is waiting for the next crumb from master's table, I ain't no better. And you just out there shooting up all the cheese you can find."

Pastor Winburn came up from Alabama, working everything from oil to iron, until he ended up in Indianapolis searching for new job opportunities. He'd made so much money in his little businesses, he thought it was time to give back to the community. So he decided to become a pastor. He leaned against his desk in a conversational pose, but he'd caught the fire of his rhythm.

"From the pulpit to the back door, we scared of these folks. Scared of our own. People who had leprosy had to stay so many feet from you because they were scared you were going to catch it. Here's the thing: a doctor can't examine you unless he touches you. And we have to lay hands on this neighborhood. People don't live here cause they want to. They didn't look all over the city and say 'I want this slum.' They live here cause they have to. There are two kinds of black folks: those scrambling to get out and those who give up and stay here. See, those scrambling to get out, they always looking to live where white folks live. I don't mean that in no hateful way, I mean they chase the same picket-fence dream white folks do. Always dreaming to get away from 'bad elements' and such. Not a bad dream, I guess. Other folks get a different story trapped in them. They don't think they can do any better, believe the world is against them, since they don't got any opportunities nor any point of dreaming, white folks' dreams or otherwise. So they spend they days trying to get by or get over. They do whatever they have to do to survive. That's a bad story. If not bad, then venomous. Defeated.

"Now, me? I'm a been there, done that type. I don't believe that a person who's never done anything can help anyone here. It takes a certain type of shepherd. We relate well. We can show that God did it for us. So I have a mission here. Built a third type of folks. Those who choose to stay here and commit to making a difference. And the mission has to get down on its knees to get results." Pastor Winburn fully slipped into the comfortable glove of his sermon rhythm, straightening and letting his arms go to add emphasis to his words. "The people have a desire to work, they just need to be coordinated. You remember the story of Nehemiah? Before he got there, no one was doing anything. But when he got there the whole city got together and started working. The people had a mind to work. Now there were those who were standing around in the first place not doing anything, and when he started doing something, they wanted to come up and talk. Come on down and let's plan what we're going to do. Well I'm on the wall and I don't have time to come down."

He'd come in hoping to catch a word, not be blasted by the fire-hose torrent of judgment. He didn't have time to formulate any response before Pastor Winburn continued.

"I guess that's my warning to you. Serving as your personal prophet. The role of a prophet is to bring the word of the Lord to bear on a specific situation, to shake up your spiritual life. You have to make a choice. What the future holds if you stay on your present course frightens me.

"On the other hand, God is a God of restoration. He's restoring hope in this neighborhood. He's restoring lives. He's restoring dignity. And you do it one person at a time. You need to be a part of His program, not Him getting on board with yours. A leader leads by example. You can say what you want from the pulpit, but you have to go where your people are. Model what it is you're teaching. Christ met needs then preached the gospel."

King shifted his weight under the appraisal. Part of him still sought the old man's approval. "I'm just one man."

"One man makes very little difference. I don't care who you are, King. But all of us together, we can do anything. Now choose." Pastor Winburn had always challenged him, pushed him to be a better man. He laid the facts out like a dinner spread on a table then said "now choose." Right or wrong, it was always his choice to make and Pastor Winburn would be there.

King stood up to leave. Pastor Winburn spread his arms in a way that reminded him of holding his hand out to a dog to let it catch his scent before petting him. The pastor put his arms around him in an embrace. King didn't exactly return the hug, but he didn't pull away either. He returned his Caliburn to his dip.

Cool air cut through King, his T-shirt offering little protection against the elements. Sitting on the front stoop of the church, he needed a few moments to collect his thoughts, to sift through Pastor Winburn's words. The old man had a way of getting under his skin and pushing his buttons. The neighborhood smelled of car exhaust and backed-up sewers. Damp sidewalk and pooled water against the curb provided evidence of the rain burst. The cars sped along, too many in a need of muffler repair, their tires rumbling over the uneven strips in the road. The church faced a network of alleys, carving up the block and snaking between homes. Brown vines filigreed the fences. Pairs of sneakers hung from the lines overhead. A shuffling from the alleyway caught his attention, putting King on high alert. A figure staggered out of the alley, and then collapsed. King darted across the street to the wail of screeching tires and blaring horns. King crouched over the crumpled form and rolled him over. It took him a moment to place the emaciated face.

"Prez?" King asked.

Somewhere between what should have been his sophomore or junior year of high school, the boy stank of nicotine, stale beer, and crack sweat, shaking like a pair of dice. Cuts on his face were half-healed, jelly-like wounds of having been raked with talon-like fingernails. His face bruised to blue, his lips swollen and split. His hair littered with flecks of fuzz and pebbles. A series of scrapes and scratches along his long, lanky arms.

"King?"

"It's me, Prez."

"They're out there. And they're coming for us."