He had ignored Garnet’s departure.
Now there was no more work. The community had come together for this brief, shining moment. There were still people coming in from the streets. He saw MidKnight's colors and Coroner's colors. He saw someone in the back who might be Andre, and closer to the front he saw Francis’s brothers, with their mother between them. No one was pushing or shoving, no one was speaking. Everyone stood together, witnessing a small miracle.
The St. Michael’s choir went on to sing more carols. Their voices were fine and strong, and the others joined them when the songs were familiar. The choir from the Church of the Samaritan stepped forward to sing a gospel version of “Go Tell it on the Mountain.”
Finally the singing ended and Thomas’s own part in the program arrived.
He stepped forward and opened the Bible that he had carried under his arm. The lights were dim, but not too dim to make out the familiar words.
He swallowed. The pages blurred mysteriously in front of his eyes. For a moment he was sure that he wouldn’t be heard. He knew he couldn’t speak above a whisper.
He began, and his voice wavered, just as he’d feared. He pushed on, reading the familiar, comforting words from the Gospel of Luke, and his voice grew stronger. He told the story of a humble woman and man, caught up in a drama that had changed the world. He told of a baby so beloved, so awaited, that angel choirs and beacon stars had announced His birth, and shepherds and wise men had come to pay tribute.
Finally he closed his Bible. A minister from a church at the far end of the Corners stepped forward for a benediction. He prayed that those gathered there that night would remember that all children were holy.
Thomas looked over the bowed heads, his heart full and yet emptier than it had ever been. He had worked tirelessly for this moment. Both the procession and the reenactment had been more poignant, more memorable than he had dared to hope. But now it had ended. Some people would stay; more would come and go through the evening. Candy, Francis and Matty would leave in a little while to be replaced by another young couple and their child. But his part in the drama had ended.
He would go back to his empty apartment and his empty personal life. He would go back to face the demons that tormented him, the memories of a faith that was no longer his.
He would go home to think of Garnet.
If one thing wasn’t perfect about the events of the night, it was that Garnet wasn’t there to witness them.
He scanned the crowd again as the benediction ended. Heads lifted, candlelit faces were glowing with faith and hope. And one face toward the door of the warehouse, a face more beautiful to him than any of the others, lifted just as his gaze found it.
The night had been perfect after all.
He couldn’t return to his apartment for another hour. The alley outside the warehouse was crowded with people wishing each other Christmas happiness. He was interviewed by the television crew about the meaning of the reenactment. His status as former pastor of Deering Hills Community and the tragic history of Patricia’s death were mined by the young anchorman for all they were worth.
But he also had an opportunity to talk about his ministry at the Church of the Samaritan, and what he and his small congregation were trying to build here in the Corners. He talked about hope, about taking back city streets, about providing opportunities for babies like Matty, for families who were struggling against terrible odds and kids who believed their only opportunity for protection and community was joining a gang. When he was finished, he knew that most of what he had said would be edited away, but he hoped that the core of his message, the simple words of a Nazareth carpenter, “Love thy neighbor as thyself,” would still shine through.
He went to the church to find people still lingering there, as if reluctant to let go of the evening’s experience. Finally he closed and locked the front door of the church when the last well-wisher had gone home. He turned off the lights one by one until the church was dark. Then, because he had no alternative, he went upstairs to his apartment.
He wasn’t sure what he wanted to find. Garnet was back in town; he knew that now. The day she had returned from Florida was unknown. She might have been back for a while. She’d had no reason to announce her return. He had told her their marriage was over. He had been the one to sever all ties.
But the thought that she might have come back and been here for days without letting him know filled him with despair. The thought that she might just have returned, that she might be waiting in the apartment for him now, filled him with a different kind of despair.
The door was ajar, and he knew what he was going to find.
Garnet was in the bedroom, folding clothes that she had left behind and stacking them neatly in a suitcase. “I won’t be long,” she said without looking up. “I just need my warm clothes. I’ll be back to get everything else at the beginning of next week.”
“There’s no hurry.”
She tossed her hair from her face and flicked him a quick glance. “Sorry to disagree, but I think there probably is.”
“I meant that I don’t need the room.”
“I’m glad I’m not inconveniencing you.”
The words could have been sarcastic, but they hadn’t been said that way. She seemed to feel no emotion whatsoever.
“Where will you be living?” he asked.
“With Tex. My apartment will be ready on Monday. It just needs another coat of paint.”
“I can help you move.”
“Thanks, but I’ll manage.” She looked up from folding a sweater. “That was very inspirational tonight, Thomas.”
He nodded.
“You must have worked hard to pull it off.”
“It took some time.”
“I’m sure you’re proud.” She stared at him, then shook her head. “No, I forgot, you wouldn’t feel proud, would you? It probably wasn’t perfect. You’re probably ashamed.”
“I am proud.”
“Well, good.” She went back to her packing.
“How was Ema?”
“Happy. And the girls look better than I’ve ever seen them. She sends her love.”
“And your mother?”
“She’s happy, too. For the first time ever she’s found a decent man. I think she’ll be getting married soon.”
“I’m glad. I-”
“Thomas, there’s no point in polite conversation, is there? We aren’t going to survive this as friends, you know. You’ll look at me and see your failures. I’ll look at you and feel angry that you gave up so easily. We’ll be better off just to get this out of the way quickly and be done with it.” She turned toward her dresser for an armload of sweaters.
He formed a hundred answers but didn’t have time for even one. There was a knock at the front door. Another well-wisher, he supposed, who was coming to share good feelings.
He didn’t want to answer the door; he wanted to walk through it and keep on walking. Whatever hope he’d had of salvaging anything from their relationship had died with Garnet’s words.
He opened the door anyway to find Andre standing on the threshold. He had never felt less hospitable or patient, but months of work aimed at a moment like this one were too important to destroy now. Andre had come to him. He had to listen, regardless of any personal crises.
“Hello, Andre.” Thomas stepped back and gestured him inside, scanning the stairway to see if Andre was alone. “Were you at the warehouse? I thought I saw you there.”
“I was there.”
Thomas closed the door. “Have a seat. What’s on your mind?” He softened the abruptness of his words by sitting down on the sofa to signal that he planned to give the young man his complete attention.
Andre didn’t sit. He had taken off a wool watch cap. He twisted it in his hands as he looked around the room. “You don’t have much, do you?”
“No.” He was going to have even less in a few minutes when Garnet walked out of his life. Thomas saw that she had closed the b
edroom door, although it was still ajar. He could see flashes of her green sweater through the crack as she walked back and forth, packing her clothes.
“Why do you do what you do?”
Thomas’s attention was snagged by Andre’s tone. “I’m not sure what you’re asking.”
“Did God call you or something?”
“I thought so once.”
“But now you’re not sure?”
“There are a lot of things I’m not sure about. But I’m sure that what we’re doing in that church down there is good. And I’m sure that what happened tonight is good.”
“How do you know?”
It was a fair question. “I feel it inside me, I guess. And I look around and see that no one is hurt by what I do, but that a lot of people claim their lives are better.”
“You look around.” Andre paced, twisting his hat. “That’s all you got to say?”
“Believe me, I’d like to be able to give a better answer.”
“You used to believe in God. In Jesus.” It wasn’t a question. It was definitely a statement.
Thomas nodded. “Yes.”
“I did, too, when I was a kid.”
Thomas didn’t say the obvious, that in many ways Andre was still a kid. “What happened to make you stop believing? Or did you?”
“I grew up.”
“On tough streets, in a tough neighborhood. You don’t get too much Jesus in a place like this one, do you, Andre?”
“You don’t know what it’s like, what it do to you living in a place like this.”
“I don’t know it the way you do, that’s true.”
“I went to church with my mama when I was a little kid. They told me all about how much God loved me. All that Jesus crap. Then I’d go out and dudes would be prying radios out of people’s cars or slinging right there in front of the church.”
Thomas knew all too well that slinging dope was a favorite Corners Sunday afternoon pastime. “Go on.”
“When I was eleven, my cousin told me I had to be a Knight. There wasn’t no way out of it. I didn’t be a Knight, they’d make sure I didn’t live long enough to be anything else. So I was a wannabe for a few years. I kicked with the MidKnights, but I didn’t do it all the time. Just enough to keep them from coming after me.”
Thomas’s attention wandered. He could still see Garnet moving past the door. He suspected she had slowed her packing. She was too considerate to break in on this conversation. She would wait until Andre left before she left herself.
“Then I got to be sixteen, and it was time for initiation,” Andre said. “You know about initiation, Padre?”
“No.”
“You got to do something bad. You got to prove you’re tough enough to be a Knight.”
Thomas tried to pay attention to what Andre was saying. “And so you were forced to do something to show you were man enough to belong?”
“They said I had to be jacked in, and I knew what that meant. I got to steal something.” He flopped to the edge of the sofa, as far away from Thomas as he could sit. “Do you think someone can do something bad and then get forgiven for it?”
Thomas knew the beginnings of a confession when he heard one. Andre had his full attention now. “I believe that with all my heart.”
“You don’t even believe in God.”
“I’m not sure of some things, but I am sure that forgiveness exists.”
That seemed to satisfy Andre. “That night there was three of us. We was told to get somebody’s wallet and bring it back. They took all our money, so we wouldn’t have no way home except by walking unless we got a wallet with some money in it. Then one of the brothers drove us out of the city.” He stopped.
Thomas tried to prod him on. “Were you afraid?”
Andre didn’t look at him. “The place they took us to was Deering Hills.”
A cold wind seemed to sweep through the apartment. Thomas sat frozen, afraid to hear what was coming next, and afraid not to.
“You know about Deering Hills. You was living there once,” Andre said.
“Yes.” Thomas calculated Andre’s age. He had been sixteen on the night he spoke of. He was nineteen now. Three years ago. Three years.
“They dropped us off in the middle of town. I went one way, the other two went off somewheres else, I never did hear where. It was a cold night, and I wasn’t wearing much warm clothes. I started to walk. All I wanted was to grab a wallet and get out of there. Deering Hill’s the kind of place where cops follow you around if you black.”
“Yes.”
“I saw a church sitting on a hill.”
Thomas leaned forward and put his head in his hands. He felt the sofa move beneath him, and he knew Andre was pacing again. “Go on,” he said in a low voice.
“I saw a church, and I wasn’t going to bother with going there, because it was late at night and there wasn’t any cars I could see in the parking lot. Then a car turned in from the road. I saw a woman was driving, and I knew I’d found my mark.”
“You didn’t mean to kill her, did you?” Thomas squeezed the question out of some sane part of himself. The only part that could still speak.
“I got to the door before she did. All I wanted was her purse. Just her wallet. I told her that, but she didn’t listen. She tried to push me away, then she made like she was going to scream. I couldn’t let her scream. I knew the cops’d be all over me. I pushed her hard to shut her up. She fell back, like she didn’t know I was going to push her.”
“And she hit her head and died.”
“I didn’t know that till the next day. I got her wallet, and I ran real fast. I walked for a long time, then I got a bus into the city. When I got back to the Corners I gave the wallet to the main man. He threw away all the ID and kept the money. I got to be a Knight.”
Thomas looked up.
“And the next day I found out she was dead and I’d killed her.” Andre twisted the hat in his hands.
Thomas stared at him. Patricia’s killer was standing an arm’s length away. He had come of his own accord, the first real step in a life that could someday be filled with meaning.
Andre had killed Patricia.
Thomas was filled with such fury he could hardly breathe. Every instinct he possessed told him to take justice into his own hands. Andre deserved punishment. He was larger than the boy, larger and stronger. Thomas could feel the blood rushing to his fingertips. His hands tingled with the desire to hurt Andre.
Andre stood there as if he expected punishment. He stood regal and tall and indefinably different.
“How could you come to me this way?” Thomas asked.
“I don’t know where else to go.”
Thomas shut his eyes. Anger was a red cloud tinting the room, tinting the very darkness that should have helped him grow calmer. It suffused his very being, threatened to shut off the air he breathed.
He saw Patricia on their wedding day, a glowing young bride with her whole life ahead of her. He saw her at the window of a country inn at Christmastime, her face serene with happiness. He saw her in a million different ways, some that he didn’t want to remember and other, happier ways that he had allowed himself to forget.
And he saw her at prayer, a bishop’s daughter, whose religion had been lived and not spoken. She had believed in God. Her faith had never wavered.
His faith in God had wavered. But he had told Andre that he believed in forgiveness. Patricia had believed in forgiveness, too. He opened his eyes, not sure how much time had passed. Andre still stood before him. Waiting. A young man poised on the brink of a life that could be filled with meaning. A young man with so much to give.
Thomas extended his hand. Andre swallowed hard; then he grasped it. As Thomas watched, tears filled the young man’s eyes. Answering tears filled his own. Andre joined him on the sofa, and they sat together in silence.
In the bedroom Garnet sat on the edge of the bed. Tears slid down her cheeks. There was no privacy in the small apartment. Sh
e had heard Andre’s confession, and she knew the woman he had killed must be Patricia. She knew her own anger and sorrow must be only a small fraction of what Thomas felt. She wished that she could go to him when Andre left and soothe his pain, but that was no longer a possibility.
By the time the front door had closed and Andre was gone, she had washed her face and finished her packing. She gave Thomas a few moments alone, then opened the bedroom door.
He was sitting with his face in his hands. Her heart twisted painfully at the sight, but she lifted her suitcases and carried them toward the front door.
“I heard it all,” she said quietly.
“He killed Patricia.”
“I know.” She set down the suitcases. “Are you going to turn him in to the police?”
Thomas looked up wearily. “No.”
“No?”
“Andre isn’t Demon. He’s suffered for three years because of what he did.”
“A woman died.”
“He never meant to kill her, not even to hurt her. He was caught up in something that got out of control.” He got to his feet. “He came to me, knowing I would probably go to the police. I think he was ready to be punished by somebody else. He’s been punishing himself since that night. But if he was sent to jail, and I think he probably would be, no one would ever have a chance to reach him again. He’s vulnerable now, and he’s made the first step toward a new life. I’m not going to cut him off before it begins.”
“Then he just walks away?”
“No. I’ll talk to him when I’m under control again. We’ll decide together what he should do. Community service, maybe, or going back to school. Something that assures me he’s on the right track.”
She nodded. Thomas was being fairer, kinder than anyone should ever have to be. He moved to her side, and when she looked in his eyes, she saw that neither fairness nor kindness had come easily. And she saw something else.
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