“What can I do?” Thomas asked.
There was no disapproval on his face. No blame. Just an obvious willingness to do whatever needed to be done to salvage the situation.
Garnet felt a peculiar relief. Almost as if someone, somewhere, had forgiven her for this mistake. “She wants that wedding. Do you think you’re up to doing it between contractions while I deliver the baby? It might not be pretty.”
“Are you up to being the groom?” Thomas asked Francis.
“Yeah, sure. I-”
“Go find two witnesses. They can stand outside the door. That will be legal enough. I’ll boil the water.” Thomas still had his hand on Francis’s arm. He squeezed it. “And don’t forget to come back, son.”
Francis definitely looked as if that thought had entered his mind. Then he nodded. “I don’t have to watch, do I?”
“You can stand up at her head,” Garnet said. I’ll cover her with a sheet.”
“I’ll get my brother and his girlfriend.”
“You do that.” Thomas released his grip on Francis’s arm. The front door slammed behind him. “Is she going to be all right?” Thomas asked.
“I think so. The baby’s in a good position, and Candy’s been taking care of herself. But she’s young and scared, so be prepared for anything. I’ve already called the ambulance, but you can be sure the baby will get here before they do.”
“What about a doctor?”
“Do you know one who’d be willing to come to Wilford Heights?” When he didn’t answer, she smiled a little. “Thank you, Thomas.”
“For what?”
She didn’t know how else to say it. “For being here,” she said. “Now find me some clean towels and sheets and forget the water.” Then she disappeared through the doorway again.
4
The baby was a boy, seven pounds six ounces and perfect in every way. The delivery had taken twenty minutes. Twenty-four hours later, the mother and father were probably still dazed.
Thomas hung up the phone in his study on Monday morning and stared at the blotter on his desk as he thought about Francis and Candy.
“Study” was an exaggeration, almost as much a one as referring to the room just beyond as a church. Like Mother and Child, the Church of the Samaritan had once been a store, in this case a hardware store. It had been vacated two years before Thomas saw the space, saw the for-rent sign tacked to a piece of the plywood covering the shattered front window and saw the potential.
The landlord had been willing to donate the use of the building. A tax deduction was better than no compensation at all, and Thomas had agreed to do the renovations necessary to open the doors. The landlord had even thrown in the small apartment on the second floor. He was tired of low-class tenants who forgot to pay their bills, he had told Thomas. It cost more to evict them than he realized in rent. This way, he could deduct the cost of the apartment, too.
Thomas had carted trash to the curb by himself for a week. The building had been a flophouse for derelicts, a place to score drugs, a home away from home for gang members. Refuse was hip-deep in places. Vermin of all sorts infested what was left of the walls. The storeroom in the back—now Thomas’s study—had been gutted by a fire.
At the start of Thomas’s second week of hauling trash, a man offered to help. The word was out, he said, that Thomas was a preacher. He didn’t look like no preacher. Thomas agreed. He got cleaned up when he preached, he explained. But who wanted to haul garbage in a suit and tie? The next day there were two men, the next four.
It took three months to open the doors of the church for the first service. The handful of people who showed up were mostly just curious. A few of them had helped Thomas tear down walls and nail up new ones in their place. A few had shaken their heads along with Thomas when those new walls had been covered with gang graffiti. A few more had been with him when he slathered the graffiti with three coats of paint.
But a lot of his helpers had never yet set foot in the church for a service. Some claimed they had churches of their own; some wanted nothing to do with formal worship; some had simply disappeared into the stream of Corners life, and Thomas had never seen them again.
Now, six months after the doors had been flung wide, Thomas’s congregation had tripled. That was the positive way to view the changes. The negative was that there were still fewer than thirty committed members of the Church of the Samaritan. And very little could be accomplished by thirty people.
But yesterday the Church of the Samaritan had added one more. Thomas relaxed in his chair and smiled as he thought of the baby Garnet had delivered into the world. The child’s beauty had been a surprise. Thomas had never presided at a birth. The youngest babies he’d seen were the ones he’d baptized in his former church, pink and white perfection in white lace christening gowns. This baby had been as red as an apple, and his face had been screwed up in dismay at the world he’d been brought into. Still, his tiny features had been perfect, and after he’d been bathed and calmed and put to his mother’s breast, he had seemed as much a miracle as the wealthiest, most pampered and protected child in the city.
Matthew Francis, to be called Matt.
At a knock on the study door, Thomas looked up. The door opened before he could respond, and Garnet poked her head inside.
He hadn’t expected to see her. She had been outwardly grateful to him for support yesterday, but he wondered if cynicism still simmered just beneath her gratitude. He stood and made his way around the desk.
“Recovered yet?” he asked as she entered.
“Everyday stuff for me.” She smiled a little. She’d never seen Thomas in casual clothes. Somehow, in jeans and a slightly tattered polo shirt, he was even more formidable. “But not for you,” she added. “Ready to do it again?”
“You can’t have another patient who needs a wedding.”
“You’re right.”
She wasn’t dressed in white today. She was wearing black stretch pants and a soft, brick red shirt tied at her waist with a multicolored scarf. Her hair was wild; today the inevitable necklace was made of ropes and ropes of brightly painted wooden beads and carved animal heads.
“I’m glad you came by,” he said. He realized he meant it. And the moment he realized that, he wasn’t glad to see her anymore.
“I thought you’d want to hear about Matty,” she said.
“Of course.”
She watched him fold his arms, as if to ward her away. She had thought for a moment that he was genuinely pleased she had come by. Now she tested the theory that for some reason he had changed his mind. “Shouldn’t I be here?” she asked. “Is it improper for me to be alone with you in here?”
“The door’s open.”
“Do you have a jealous wife?”
“I don’t have a wife at all.”
“Hot damn. I’ll bet the deacon’s daughters had designs on you.”
He didn’t know why he responded. “I had a wife. She died.”
“I’m sorry.” And she was sorry, though Thomas didn’t look sad. His expression hadn’t even changed, but she knew how easy it was to cover emotion. It was one of the first things anyone who wanted to survive the Corners had to learn.
She wondered if his wife’s death had had anything to do with his decision to come here. Or had he been sent by a church hierarchy hoping to establish a religious presence, a mission in the ghetto? His arrival in the Corners was almost as mysterious as the man himself.
“What about the baby?” he asked.
“Candy and Matty were dismissed from the hospital this morning.”
“That seems awfully soon.”
“She was lucky they took her at all, since the baby was an hour old by the time the ambulance got there. Candy’s got no insurance, and she’s not on welfare. Francis has been supporting her with whatever he could make doing odd jobs.”
“Is he a good worker?”
“Yes.”
“Would he be willing to work construction?”
“Not here. In Deering Hills.”
She frowned and wondered how Thomas could be so out of touch with reality. Deering Hills was one of the most expensive suburbs of the city. It was green-landscaped hillsides, house prices starting in the high six figures, and high schools with television studios and high-tech computer laboratories.
“How could a kid like Francis get a job in Deering Hills?” she asked. “Don’t you have to have a college education just to clean up litter on the streets? Hey, forget that, there is no litter in Deering Hills, is there?”
“I’ve called someone I know, a man named Stu Wilson. He’s willing to give Francis a job.”
“But Francis doesn’t have a car. Could he take the bus that far? Isn’t Deering Hills the kind of place that only schedules public transportation when housemaids from the city are coming and going?”
“You said yesterday that Candy and Francis can’t stay here.”
“Sure, I said that.”
“Did you mean it?”
“Yeah, I meant it.” Garnet fingered a cheap glass paperweight on his desk. It was the only decoration in the room. The study was as Spartan as the man. She looked at him. “There are a lot of people who stay here who shouldn’t.”
He supposed she thought he was one of them. “I’ve found Candy and Francis a place to live in Deering, if they’re willing to move.”
“Willing?” Garnet considered. “Candy’s miserable where she is, and now she’s terrified for Matty. Francis wants to do the right thing by her, though God knows where he picked up his morals. His father left his mother before Francis was born. His mother gave up on everything a couple of years ago and drinks herself numb every chance she gets.”
“Deering Hills is a long way from home.”
“In their case, that’s for the best. Where would they be living?”
“A woman I know has a garage apartment in back of her house. She says it’s small, but I’ll bet it’s five times larger than Francis’s bedroom at the Heights. Marcia’s nearly seventy, but she refuses to have household help. If Candy was willing to do the daily cleaning and Francis was willing to do the yard work, it would help Marcia.”
A smile crossed his face so quickly that Garnet wasn’t sure she had seen it. “They’ll have to pretend they’re not helping, though,” he added. “Candy can bring Matty to visit in the mornings, then just naturally offer to help with the dishes. She can dust when Marcia’s not looking.”
Garnet understood. “And Francis can mow the lawn in front of the garage, only he’ll just forget and mow the whole yard.”
“Exactly.”
“Do you really think it will work?”
“Stu Wilson needs a new carpenter’s assistant. Marcia Branthoover needs help. The kids need to get out of here.”
“I’ve already given them some baby clothes and equipment Mother and Child had on hand, but they’ll have to have money to help them get started.” Garnet pulled her checkbook out of a bulky patchwork leather purse. She flipped to her check register. “I can spare some.”
“I’ve already written them a check.” He reached around the top of his desk and pulled the check out of his drawer.
She looked up. “Lord, does everything always come this easily to you?”
He handed it to her. “What makes you think any of this was easy?”
“You make it seem effortless, like you’ve got hundreds of people just waiting in the wings to help anybody you give a nod to.”
He decided her face was as insolent as her hair. No eyes should see straight through everything and everyone. No nose should be lifted in such disdain. And her mouth... It was harder to think about her mouth, the mouth that spoke without thinking and regretted nothing. The mouth that curved in unrepentant smiles and world-weary frowns. The smooth, seductive red lips.
“Does it please you to think I might not have worked hard to make this happen?” he asked.
“It would please me more to think you had to slave. I don’t know, Thomas. You just look like a man everything comes easily to. Though God knows why you’d have ended up here if that was true.”
“I’m just slumming for a year or two. Remember?”
“Did I say that?” She smiled and thought she saw it register somewhere just behind his eyes. “Since you’re keeping track, did I say thank you just now?”
“It’s not necessary.”
“Should I go down on my knees and thank anyone else?”
“Something tells me there aren’t any calluses there.”
“And yours are probably as tough as an armadillo shell.” She turned to leave, then turned back. “Look, I almost forgot. Watch your back for a while. The Knights know about yesterday.”
He took her arm before she could turn away again. Her flesh gave under the pressure of his fingers. “What have you heard?”
Pointedly, she looked down at his hand. He released her immediately. “Very forceful, Thomas. Andre would be impressed.”
“What have you heard?”
She considered several versions of the truth, but finally settled on the one that didn’t leave out strategic information. “It went something like this. ‘Yo, girl. You done what we told you not to. Now you and the padre gonna be sorry.’“
“Andre?”
“That’s Andre in front of his buddies. Andre by himself would have been more articulate and less threatening.”
“You should get out of here.”
She stared at him for a moment before she spoke. “No, I shouldn’t.”
“Then you don’t think he means what he says?”
“He means it.”
“Then he could hurt you?”
“Or worse. Yeah, I know. But I also know how to take care of myself. I’m not a fool. I grew up here. I’ll be careful. But nobody’s going to chase me out of the Corners. I’m staying here till the day I die.”
His fingers itched to take her arm again, but he knew how little good that would do. There was something in her voice, something that went far beyond stubbornness. “I’ll talk to him.”
She shook her head, and her hair flew around her shoulders. “That’s not a good idea. He’ll have to be even more macho with you.”
“I’ll talk to him.”
She grimaced. “Good luck, then. Just catch him when Demon’s not around. Demon will be ready for you next time.” In the doorway, she turned once more. “When should Candy and Francis be ready to leave?”
He didn’t want to abandon the subject of Garnet’s safety, but the choice wasn’t his. He had nothing to say about her life or her decisions. “They can move in today, if Candy’s feeling up to it.”
“She’ll feel better the sooner she gets out of Wilford Heights. I’ll drive them myself this evening.”
“I’ll go over and tell them about Marcia’s place now. I’ll leave directions with them. The apartment is furnished. All they’ll need to get started is their clothes and whatever things they have for Matthew.”
“And a thousand prayers. Maybe they’ve hooked up with the right guy after all, huh?”
Thomas could hardly tell her no. He didn’t advertise his belief that if he prayed a thousand prayers, ten hundred of them would be wasted.
Andre lived in a small frame house in a row of similar houses half a mile from the church. Once the neighborhood had existed solely to supply a local factory with workers. The houses had been as alike as the proverbial peas in the pod. Now, time and spotty maintenance had given them the individuality they had lacked. Some had been recently painted or covered with siding; some had been stripped by sun and rain down to bare wood. Some had porches, alive and green with hanging plants in the summer. Some porches had fallen away.
Andre’s house was one of the nicer ones. The sidewalk was still lined with golden chrysanthemums and silver dusty miller, despite a frost or two. Some imaginative soul who favored
yellow and pale blue had painted house and trim until it was storybook picturesque. Hardly a house for the self-proclaimed leader of the MidKnights.
Thomas had trailed Andre from a distance for most of the last hour until he could catch him alone. It was late now, but the porch light was on. Thomas waited until Andre was on the porch before he got out of his car.
“Andre?”
The young man turned. His hand slid inside the ever-present hoodie.
“I just want to talk to you,” Thomas said. “If you have to hold a gun in your hand just to have a conversation, then we’re in trouble already.”
“Who’s there?”
“Thomas Stonehill. Padre, to you.”
“Yeah.” Andre seemed to think about his decision. Then his hands fell to his sides. “What do you want?”
“I just want to talk.”
“Yeah. Sure you do.”
“Can we sit on your porch? Do you want to go somewhere for coffee?”
“Don’t drink coffee.” Andre looked around. “You can come on up. Just keep it down. My mama’s sleeping.”
Thomas walked up the sidewalk. There was a zigzagging ramp up to the porch instead of steps. He held his hands carefully away from his sides, in case Andre had some idea about being double-crossed. He saw Andre near the door, and the porch light went off. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust.
“What do you want?”
Thomas turned toward the sound of Andre’s voice. Now he saw the young man’s silhouette in the far corner. Thomas leaned against the railing beside the ramp. “I want to ask you to leave Garnet alone, Andre. She’s just doing her job. For that matter, I’m just doing mine. We’re trying to make this a better place. For us, for you, for your friends. And for that little kid who was born yesterday. A little kid who’s never going to hurt you or the Knights.”
“You don’t know nothing about it.”
“Then tell me about it.”
There was silence from the corner. Finally Andre spoke. “What you come here for, Padre? You think we need you? You don’t know nothing about nothing.”
“I know killing people is wrong. Sometimes I’m not sure what I believe, but I know I believe that. And threatening to kill them’s wrong, too. Threatening to hurt them, hurting them. All wrong. There’s no good that can come from any of those things.”
Dragonslayer Page 6
