Sandhill Street: The Loss of Gentleness

by Rob Summers

Chapter 18 The Return of Gentleness

  In the very early morning an officer led Dignity and Reason through the City mortuary and stopped near a figure laid out on a table and covered with a sheet.

  “That’s him. The Mayor has arranged for a hearse to come around to the back over here and they’ll take the body to whatever funeral home you want.”

  “This was murder,” Reason said with bitter certainty. “Don’t think for a moment that we believe that story about suicide.”

  “I’m sorry, lady, but it happens. Drugs get smuggled into prisons, and sometimes there’s an overdose.”

  “Just shut up and go away,” Dignity snapped.

  “I’ve got to stay here till you leave.”

  “Then just shut up,” Reason said. “Oh, why doesn’t God send more artillery shells?”

  When the hearse came, Dignity told the driver to take them to Grace House, for he had no idea what funeral home to take Gentleness to and thought the boys’ parents should decide what to do. He sat beside the driver, but Reason chose to ride in back with the corpse. As they rode out under the pre-dawn stars and across the quiet city, a TV news van swung in behind them. Reason even thought she saw a video camera behind its windshield.

  “Dig, we’re being followed.”

  “I see them. I guess Gentleness’ case is finally getting some coverage. The scum. It’s a bit late now.”

  Reason drew back the sheet and looked at Gentleness. He had been shaved bald. His eyes were closed and every muscle relaxed, and his features were a mixture of child and man. She began to cry in a calm, unintended sort of way. Here was a casualty, just as Grace had warned them. She supposed they had won the battle, however such things are measured, but she couldn’t help feeling that she had rather they had lost and that Gentleness were still alive. Clearly, their mission had failed somehow.

  What was the problem anyway? she asked herself. Just one casualty, after all, and he a mere boy. They would manage without Gentleness. But something told her that they could not get by without him. How could they get by without him?

  She took out the abominometer and saw that its reading was the highest yet—99. She shook the instrument and glared at it. How in the world could it not be all the way up to the limit, to “wrath to the utmost”? Just a little higher and maybe the King would come back and level this City and all its evil. She remembered the scripture, ‘You have put to death the righteous man; he does not resist you.’ What could be worse than that? Apparently something was, and so the City still stood.

  Her eyes were dry by the time the hearse turned onto Sandhill Street. Then they opened in surprise. All up and down the sidewalks on either side, and thicker as they drew closer to home, the neighbors were out. Scores of them stood in the cold, watching them go by. She saw a black armband, and then another, and another. When the driver at last parked in front of Grace House they were quickly surrounded by a silent crowd. The people stood like lost sheep while Dignity and the driver got Gentleness out on the cart and began to roll him toward the house.

  A girl grabbed at the side of the cart sobbing. It was Wittily Dread.

  “He thinks I hate him,” the girl said wretchedly.

  “No, no, of course not.” Reason, who was even slighter than Wittily, tried to lever her away from the cart. “He never hated anybody, and he never thought anyone hated him.”

  “God, that’s the truth.” The girl stood back as neighbor men moved in to help.

  “Thank you, Mr. Wag,” Reason said. “Yes, Mr. Moper, if you’d just get on this side.” She turned to Wittily. “How did everyone know we were coming?”

  “It was on TV. Nobody’s been to bed tonight, and we saw on special reports about how he was on death row and died of a drug overdose before the execution. Then they showed live coverage of this hearse coming back.”

  “He didn’t die that way, Wittily.”

  “I didn’t think so.”

  “He was murdered.”

  “Yeah. I want to die too. Please, may I go in with you?”

  Many hands gripped the sides of the cart and began lifting it up the steep cement stairs to the front yard.

  “Sure, you can go in with us. Come with me.”

  Grace directed that the body be laid in his own suite on a table long enough to accommodate the boy’s height. Then he called in Reason, Dignity and Wittily and brought them near the table where the corpse now lay dressed in a shirt and slacks but no socks or shoes. The sheet was gone.

  “I have taken the extraordinary and almost unforgivable step of temporarily excluding his immediate family,” the old man said, “and they have with the greatest reluctance agreed. I did this in order to give you three the chance to tell me if you think there’s anything that can be done.”

  “Done?” said Wittily. “What do you mean done? He’s dead.”

  Dignity thought back many years to retrieve some sort of answer. “Sir, we’ve seen the dead raised, you and Reason and me. I still don’t understand it, and it gives me the willies when I think about it, but Honesty, back when she was named Doubt, died of a heart attack out on the front walk. We brought her in the house and something happened. When you pulled the covering off of her, the King had brought her back to life.”

  “I can hardly believe it even now,” Reason said. “Sir, if Honesty, then why not Gentleness?”

  Grace did not reply at once. “I wonder if you quite know what you’re asking for? A reversal of the natural order is not something to be had without cost. Remember that Gentleness died in accordance with the law. No, Reason, he did. I don’t mean City law but the law that says sin must have its price, its victim. Nothing was unfair about his being captured when you and Dignity didn’t want him, was it? I’m sorry, my dear, I don’t say that to hurt you, but to make you understand what is before us. You see, the Battle of Sandhill Street is not over, as you think. Now is the real turning point.”

  The old man placed a hand on Gentleness’ shoulder. “He died according to the law, I say, and yet you three would like to be able to use the law against those who killed him. The cost I spoke of is simply this: that you accept a new status in which all your claims against your enemies are relinquished and your proofs given up to flames. You of course will not be able to appeal to the law for justice for yourselves, either, in any matter in which you know yourselves to be innocent. You’ll have no escape from false accusations and no shield from punishment, no more than he did. That includes accusations coming from Leasing House. Do you understand me?”

  “Pardon me, sir,” Reason said, “but that sounds simply horrible. No more justice?”

  “No more justice. You will be trying an experiment to see if you can get by without it. If it works, then Gentleness, who was killed by justice, will be raised. Do you want to try it? Wittily?”

  The girl looked frightened but her mouth was set in a firm line. “I’ll try anything, even if it kills me.”

  “You won’t die, I promise you. Dignity?”

  “I don’t understand,” Dignity said. “From now on do I just let myself—and Mom and Dad—be cheated and taken advantage of?”

  “I don’t see why you should, but if it does happen despite your efforts to prevent it, then you have to let it go by. I mean what I say: no justice, either for you or for them. Reason?”

  The little woman hesitated. “And what if next time,” she gestured toward the corpse, “it’s my own child? If Wisdom were murdered, would I have to let it pass, choke it down without a murmur?”

  “Our King has given us our example on that,” Grace said.

  Reason clutched her little hands together. “I couldn’t do this for anyone but you. But let’s go ahead. I’ll try.”

  “Dignity? I want a clear answer now.”

  “Yes, Ambassador. Let’s try it.”

  “Very good. I believe the pictures of Guiles’ City Seal contract were confiscated and burned
by the police, isn’t that so? But Reason, were there any copies?”

  “I made photocopies and gave them to Dig.”

  “Bring them here, won’t you Dignity? I warn you that we’re going to burn them.”

  After he went out, Reason said to Grace, “If that’s the direction this is taking, then let me go get all my notes. I’ve been keeping track of events since Neglect and Folly went to Guiles’ house, writing down dates and all that, making a real lawyer’s case of it. That should burn too, shouldn’t it?”

  “Yes, go get your notes. And won’t you also ask the boy’s parents to join us now? They’re in the sitting room down the hall.”

  When Reason too had left the room, Wittily pulled a paper out of her purse and approached the Ambassador. “Here, this ought to go on the pile.”

  He took the paper and unfolded it. “Oh, your poem about Prevarica. You’re right, it must be included, though I have to confess I’ll miss chuckling at it. Miss Wittily, since we have a moment here, let me say that I recognize what anxiety you must be suffering just from being in this house.”

  “It’s not so bad,” she said. “Since the City knows about how the Heavenite marines guarded our house, we Dreads are pretty much doomed anyway. What does it matter if I was seen coming in here? I might as well be hanged for a sheep as for a lamb.”

  Grace laughed. “Yes, hanged for a sheep, that’s an appropriate phrase. But haven’t you asked yourself why your house, only yours besides this one, was protected last night?”

  “Who knows?” said the girl, rolling her eyes. “I don’t even know what we were supposedly being protected from.”

  “We saw a real threat of Dread House being overrun by your neighbors when the shells began to fall. In addition, if the shelling had not been so wonderfully accurate, or if some of the patrolmen had approached on motorcycles or on foot, your home could easily have been occupied by City police. As it is, although the marines have withdrawn, their temporary presence served notice to the City government not to molest you Dreads. I think you can consider yourselves safe.”

  “But why would they do that for us?” Wittily asked. “We have no money, surely you Heavenites know that. What made them protect us?”

  “That is a question so profound that I’m afraid I won’t have time to answer it now. Here is Dignity.”

  Reason soon returned with Humility and Faith, Gentleness’ parents. After giving the parents some time near the body, Grace drew everyone aside into a circle of chairs and placed a heavy metal bowl and a spoon on a small table in their midst. He spoke again of what they were going to do, making sure that all understood and agreed to it. Then he turned down the lights, took the various papers and crumpled them into the bowl, and laid by a box of matches. Outside the room’s window it was still night.

  “We are now operating outside the law,” he said, and Reason felt an almost sickening thrill at the words, as if he had said that they had sold their souls. “You have neither weapons nor protection. You have given them up. Whatever happens depends completely on the will of our King.” He took a small vial from his breast pocket and, opening it, sprinkled a little of its contents on the papers in the bowl. “I don’t wish to be unduly mysterious. The powder is autoktonia, a simple mixture obtainable from any Heavenite apothecary and useful as a catalyst in certain reactions. Humility, will you light the papers?”

  Humility took the matches and set the papers burning. They created surprisingly little smoke, and the powder, which gave to the flame a remarkably pure white color, emitted a sweet smell. It seemed only seconds before the papers were consumed.

  Grace now brought out a small bottle of olive oil and, pouring it on the ashes, began to stir with the spoon, creating a dark ointment. When it had reached a thickened consistency, he stopped stirring and pressed the fingertips of his right hand into the bowl. He rose.

  “We have the antidote. Come join me by the table. This is when it becomes fun.”

  The faces of the others seemed to indicate that they could see no fun in it at all. All looked anxious and some scared as they gathered around to watch. Grace rubbed a little of the ointment on Gentleness’ right big toe, moved along the table and did the same to the boy’s right thumb. Finally, he made a cross mark on the forehead. As he wiped off his fingers with a handkerchief and stood back a step, Reason saw no change in the corpse.

  Grace said to them, “I’m going to wake him now, so brace yourselves.”

  Reason got a firm grip on her tall cousin’s sleeve.

  “Gentleness,” Grace said, “in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit: awake!”

  Gentleness woke up smiling.

  Wittily had to be helped to a chair, and Dignity and Reason were not entirely steady.

  Taking Gentleness by the hand, Grace helped him off the table. The boy stood on his feet. The old man then told Faith to bring her son something to eat. The others he sent downstairs to announce the news to the rest of the household and to have their own pre-dawn breakfast.

  At the kitchen table Wittily found herself seated between a now joyous Goodness and another beaming Orchard sister named Peace. They spoke to her in the friendliest manner, saying nothing about her long avoidance of their house and company. During pauses in the conversation, Wittily was thoughtful, pondering what she had just witnessed. She asked herself what it could mean to her and to her family, and as yet had no answer. Perhaps she needed some sleep before she could assimilate all that had happened since the previous evening, but surely her ideas of what life is about could never be the same.

  After breakfast, she strolled home just as the sun rose over Sandhill Street.

  Part IV The Abandonment of Folly