A Knight of the Word

by Brooks, Terry

  But there was more. In some strange way, she knew, they needed each other. It was hard to explain, but it was there. She took strength from him, but he took something from her, as well. Something. Her brow furrowed. Something.

  She rose and walked to the railing, abandoning the bench. She stared out over the bay to the mountains, their jagged peaks cutting across the horizon. What was it he took from her? A hope? A comfort? A companionship? Something. It was there, a shape, a form at the back of her mind, but she could not quite put a name to it.

  The afternoon was lengthening. Already the sun was sliding rapidly toward the horizon, its light tinting the clouds that masked it in myriad colours of purple and rose. It would be dark soon. She glanced at her watch. Four-fifteen. She wondered what she should do. She had already decided to meet John Ross for dinner, to tell him of her conversation with O'olish Anntneh, to try again to persuade him of the dander he was in. But it was too early yet to go hack to the hotel and call him.

  She walked out of the park and through the market, ambling along through the stalls of fruits and vegetables, fish and meats, and flowers and crafts, pausing now and again to look, to listen to the itinerant musicians, and to talk with the vendors. Everyone was friendly, willing to spend a few minutes with a visitor to the city. She bought a jar of honey and a fish pin, and she tasted a cup of apple cider and a slice of fresh melon. She reached the brass pig that marked the far end of the market, turned around, and walked back again.

  When she had made the circuit, she went back into the park and looked around. The park was almost empty, dappled with shadows anal splashed with light from the street lamps. Even the Indians had moved on, all but one who was asleep on the grass, wrapped head to foot in an old green blanket, long black hair spilling out of the top like silk from an ear of corn.

  Nest looked around. She kept thinking that Ariel would reappear, but so far there was no sign of her. She checked her watch again. It was five o'clock. Maybe she should call Ross. She had the phone number of Fresh Start written on a slip of paper in her pocket. She could probably reach him there. She looked around for a phone and didn't see one. But there were several restaurants close at hand, and there would be phones inside.

  Then she heard her name called in an excited whisper. `Nest Come quickly!,

  Ariel was right next to her, hovering in the fading light, a pale shimmer of movement,

  `Where have you been?' she demanded.

  The tatterdemalion's face brushed against her own, and she could feel the other's urgency. `Out looking. There are sylvans everywhere, and sometimes they can tell you things. I went to find the ones who live here. There are three in the city, and all of them make their homes in its parks. One is east in the Arboretum, one is north in Discovery, and one is west in Lincoln'

  She paused, and then the words exploded out of her in a rush. `The one in Lincoln,' she hissed, `has seen the demon!'

  'Some kids set fire to a homeless man under the viaduct last night' Simon Lawrence announced, looking into his tonic and lime as if it were a crystal ball. `They doused him with gasoline and lit him up. Then they sat around and watched him burn. That's how the police caught them, they were so busy watching, they forgot to run'. He shook his head. `Just when you think some measure of sanity has been restored to the world, people find a way to prove you wrong'

  Andrew Wren sipped at his scotch and water and nodded. `l thought that sort of thing only happened in New York. I thought Seattle was still relatively civilised. Goes to show'

  They were sitting across from each other in easy chairs on the upper level of the lobby bar in the Westin. It was five o'clock, and the hotel was bustling with activity. Participants from a handful of conferences the hotel was hosting were streaming in, identified by plastic badges that announced their company name in abbreviated block letters, one tag indistinguishable from another. With the day's meetings and seminars concluded, drinks and dinner and evening entertainment were next on the agenda, and the attendees were ready to rock and roll. But the corner of the bar in which Simon Lawrence and Andrew Wren sat was an island of calm.

  Wren watched the Wiz check his watch. He seemed distracted. He had seemed so since his arrival, as if other things commanded his attention and he was just putting in his time here until he could get to them. They had agreed to meet for drinks after Simon had been detained earlier in the day at a meeting with the mayor and been unable to keep their noon appointment. When he was done here, the Wiz had a TV interview scheduled. Maybe that was what he was thinking about: No rest for the wicked, Wren thought sourly, then immediately regretted it. He was being perverse because he hadn't found anything bad to write about Simon Lawrence. No skeletons had emerged from the closet. No secrets had revealed themselves. The anonymous tips had not panned out. His instincts had failed him. He sipped at his drink some more.

  `I appreciate your meeting me, Andrew' Simon said, smiling now. He was dressed in a dark shirt, slacks, and sport coat, and he looked casually elegant and very much at ease amid the convention suits. Wren, in his familiar rumpled journalist's garb, looked like something the cat had dragged in. 'I know I haven't been able to give you as much time as you would like, but I want to make sure you feel you've been given full access to our records:

  Wren nodded. `I've got no complaints. Everyone has been very co-operative. And you were right. I didn't find so much as a decimal point out of place.'

  The smile widened. `You sound a tad disappointed. Does this mean you will be forced to write something good about us?'

  Wren pushed his glasses up on his nose. 'Looks that way. Damned disappointing to have it end like this. When you're an investigative reporter, you like to fond something to investigate. But you can't win them all'

  Simon Lawrence chuckled. 'I've found that to be true'

  `Not lately, I'll wager.' Wren cocked an eyebrow expectantly. `Lately, you've been winning them all. And you're about to win another.'

  The Wiz looked unexpectedly sceptical. 'The shelter? Oh, that's a victory all right. It counts for something. But I wonder sometimes what it is that I'm winning. Like that general, I keep thinking I'm winning battles, but losing the war.'

  Wren shrugged. 'Wars are won one battle at a time'

  Simon Lawrence hunched forward, his dark eyes intense. The distracted look was gone. `Sometimes. But some wars can't be won. Ever. What if mine against homelessness is one?'

  'You don't believe that:

  The Wiz nodded. `You're right, I don't. But some do, and they have cogent arguments to support their position. A political scientist named Banfield posited back in the early seventies that the poor are split into two groups. One is disadvantaged simply because it lacks money. Give them a jump start and their middle-class values and work ethic will pull them through. But the second group will fail no matter how much money you give them because they possess a radically present-oriented outlook on life that attaches no value to work, sacrifice, self-improvement, or service. If that's so, if Banfield was right, then the war effort is doomed. The problem of homelessness will never be solved'

  Wren frowned. `But your work is with women and children who have been disenfranchised through circumstances not of their own making. It's not the same thing, is it?'

  'You can't compartmentalise the problem so easily, Andrew, There aren't any conditions of homelessness specifically attributable to particular groups that would allow us to apply different solutions. It doesn't work like that. Everything is connected. Domestic violence, failed marriages, teen pregnancy, poverty, and lack of education are all a part of the mix. They all contribute, and ultimately you can't salve one problem without solving them all. We fight small battles on different fronts, but the war is huge. It sprawls all over the place'

  He leaned back again. `We treat homelessness on a case by case basis, trying to help the disadvantaged get back on their feet, to reclaim their lives, to begin anew. But you have to wonder sometimes how much good we are really doing. We shore up people in ne
ed, and that's good. But how much of what we do is actually solving the problem?'

  Wren shrugged. 'Maybe that's best left to somebody else'

  Simon Lawrence chuckled. `Who? The government? The church? The general population? Do you see anyone out there addressing the specific causes of homelessness or domestic violence or failed marriages or teen pregnancy in any meaningful way? There are efforts being made to educate people, but the problem does way beyond that. It has to do with the way we live, with our values and our ethics. And that's exactly what Banfield wrote decades ago when he warned us that poverty is a condition that, to a large extent at least, we cannot alleviate'

  They stared at each other across the little table, the din of the roam around them closing in on the momentary silence, filling up the space like water poured in a glass. Wren was struck suddenly by the similarity of their passion for their work. What they did was so different, yet the strength of their commitment and belief was much the same.

  `I'm sounding pessimistic again; the Wiz said, making a dismissive gesture. 'You have to ignore me when I'm like this. You have to pretend that it's someone else talking'

  Wren drained the last of his drink and sat back. `Tell me something about yourself, Simon,' he asked the other man suddenly.

  Simon Lawrence seemed caught off guard. 'What?'

  `Tell me something about yourself' I came out here for a story, and the story is supposed to be about you. So tell me something about yourself that you haven't told anyone else. Give me something interesting to write about' He paused. `Tell me about your childhood'

  The Wiz shook his head immediately. `You know better than to ask me about that, Andrew. I never talk about myself except in the context of my work. My personal life isn't relevant to anything'

  Wren laughed. 'Of course it is. You can't sit there and tell me how you grew up doesn't have anything to do with how you came to be who you one. Everything connects in life, Simon. You just said so yourself Homelessness is tied to domestic violence, teen pregnancy, and so forth. Same with the events of your life. They're all tied together. You can't pretend your childhood is separate from the rest of your life. So tell me something. Come on. You've disappointed me so fair, but here's a chance to redeem yourself'

  Simon Lawrence seemed to think about it a moment, staring across the table at the journalist. There was a dark, troubled look in his eyes as he shook his head. `I've got a friend; he said slowly, reflecting on his choice of words. 'He's the CEO of a big company; an important company, that does some good work with the disadvantaged. He travels the same fund-raising circuits I do, talks to some of the same people. They ask him constantly to tell them about his background. They want to know all about him, want to take something personal away with them, same piece of who he is. He won't give it to them. All they can have, he tells me, is the part that deals directly with his work-with the present, the here and now, the cause to which he is committed.

  °I asked him about it once. I didn't expect him to tell me anything more than he told anyone else, but he surprised me. He told me everything.'

  The Wiz reached for his empty glass, studied it a moment, and set it down. A server drifted over" but he waved her away. He grew up in a very poor neighbourhood in St. Louis. He had a brother and a sister, both younger. His parents were poor and not well educated, but they had a home. His father had a day job at a factory, and his mother was a housewife. They had food on the table and clothes an their backs and a sense of belonging somewhere.

  'Then, when he was maybe seven or eight, the economy went south. His father lost his job and couldn't get rehired. They scraped by as long as they could, then sold their home and moved to Chicago to find work there. Within months, everything fell apart. There was no work to be found. They used up their savings. The father began to drink and would sometimes disappear for days. They drifted from place to place, often living in shelters. They started taking welfare, scraping by on that and the little hit of income the father earned from doing odd jobs. They got some help now and then from the churches.

  'One day, the father disappeared and didn't come back. The mother and children never knew what happened to him - The police searched for him, but he never turned up. The younger brother died in a fall shortly afterward. My friend and his little sister stayed with their mother in a state-subsidised housing project. These wasn't enough food. They ate leftovers scavenged from garbage cans. They slept on old mattresses on the floor. There were gangs and drugs and guns in the projects. People died every day in the rooms and hallways and sidewalks around them.'

  He paused. `The mother began to go out into the streets at night. My friend and his sister knew what she did, even though she never told them. Finally, one night, she didn't come home. Like the father. After a time, the state came looking for the children to put them in foster homes. My friend and has sister didn't want that. They preferred to stay on the streets, thinking they could stay together that way'.

  `So that was how they lived, homeless and alone. My friend won't talk about the specifics except to say it was so terrible that he still cries when he remembers it. He lost his sister out there. She drifted away with same other homeless kids, and he never saw her again. When he was old enough to get work, he did so. Eventually, he got himself off the streets and into the schools. He got himself a life. But it took him a lot of hard years'

  Simon Lawrence shrugged. `He had never told this to anyone. He told it to me to make a point. What difference did any of this make, he asked me, to what he did now? If he told this story to the people from whom he sought money--or if He told the press, what difference would it make? Would they give him more money because he'd had a hard life? Would they give him more money because they felt sorry for him? Maybe so. But he didn't want that. That was the wrong reason for them to want to help. It was the cause he represented that mattered. He wanted them to help because of that, not because of who he was and where he came from. He did not want to come between the donors and the cause. Because if that happened, then he risked the possibility he would become more important than the cause he represented. And that, Andrew, would be a sin'

  He stood up abruptly, distracted anew. 'I'm sorry, but I've got to run. You're staying over for the dedication tomorrow night, aren't You?'

  Wren nodded, rising with him. `yes, but I'd like to . .'

  'Good', Simon teak his hand and gave it a firm shake. 'If the newspaper's paying, try Roy's, here at the hotel, for a good dinner. It's first-rate. I'll see you tomorrow.'

  He was gone at once, striding across the lobby toward the front door, tall form scything through the crowd with catlike grace and determination. Andrew Wren stared after him, and it wasn't until he was out of sight that it occurred to the journalist that maybe, just maybe. Simon Lawrence had been talking about himself.

  Nest Freemark found a phone booth across from the park and dialled the number for Fresh Start. It was after five now, the sun slipped below the horizon, the last colour fading fast in a darkening sky. Ariel was hovering invisibly against the building walls behind her, and the streets were filling with traffic from people on their way home from work. The park had emptied long ago, and the grassy rise was a shadowed hump against the skyline.

  It was beginning to rain, a slow, chilly misting that clung to Nest's skim. On the sound, a bank of fog was beginning to build over the water.

  Tie lady who answered the phone was not Della, and she did not know Nest. She said John Ross wasn't there and wasn't expected back that day and she couldn't give out his home number. Nest told her it was important she speak to him. The lady hesitated, then asked her to hold on a minute.

  Nest stared off into the gathering darkness, itching with impatience.

  'Nest Hi, It's Stefanie Winslow' The familiar voice sounded rushed and out of breath. `John's gone home, and I think he's shut off the phone, because I just tried to call him a little while ago and I couldn't reach him. Are you calling about dinner?'

  Nest hesitated 'Yes. I don't thin
k I can make it'

  `Well, neither can I but I think maybe John was planning on it. Wi11 you be by tomorrow?'

  'I think so.' Nest thought furiously. 'Can you give John a message for me"

  'Of course. I have to go by the apartment for a few minutes. I could even have him call you, if you want'

  `No, I'm at a pay phone'

  All right. What should I tell him?'

  For just an instant Nest thought about dropping the whole matter, just hanging up and leaving things the way they were. She could explain it all to Ross later. But she was uncomfortable with not letting him know there was new reason for him to be concerned about his safety, that something was about to happen that might change everything.