by Russ Linton
"Whoa, hold on Momma, you gonna knock me off this porch."
She stepped away, her hands on his arms. "You come in here," she said. She stepped inside, guiding him as though he might not cross the threshold. "How long you been in town?" She let the screen door slam before punching him in the arm. "Where you been?" she asked, her eyes smiling but her mouth set in a frown.
Reggie put his hands up. "Hold up, give me a second to answer, Momma."
She squinted at him. "It better be good. You better be going to give me a reason not to knock you upside your head." She walked toward the living room, dragging him behind her. "You come sit down and you tell me why I haven't seen you in years."
Reggie didn't fight as she led him to the recliner. "I'm gonna bring you something to eat, and you think about what you gonna tell me." She wagged a finger and disappeared toward the kitchen. "It better be good."
"It be good," he called.
No, it wasn't. He sunk into the chair and for a minute, he could smell his dad. A mix of aftershave and hand-rolled cigarettes, sweet and acrid. His eyes went to the urn on the mantle and lingered before he took in the room.
Nothing had changed inside. The battered recliner, the thin-footed provincial French sofa, at least that's what the salesman had called it, sealed in plastic; even the old cabinet television, a black and white tube encased in oak and crowned with picture frames. His gramps in his Army uniform. His Dad, before he lost his job and the factory closed down.
Danger sense released him and he slunk further into the recliner.
"You gonna want some eggs? I got eggs and grits. I'll whip them up right quick so you better get your story straight."
"Yeah, Momma," he muttered. Fear unraveling, his head dipped and he fought to right it. Eyelids fluttered. He breathed in the lingering smoke infused in the chair and slipped into sleep.
***
Bleary, the room came into focus under a damp haze. Momma sat on the couch across from him with a mug in her hand. "Those eggs be cold as stones by now."
He followed her gaze to the tray setup next to the recliner. Eggs and grits, he didn't realize how hungry he was. "I'd eat them on ice, Momma, if you made them."
His mom shivered and half-smiled. "I can warm them."
"No," Reggie said and reached for the plate. "Don't bother yourself." Even room temperature it was better than week-old takeout. Much better. He didn't dare tell her about what he ate at home.
"So where you been?" She asked while she stared into her mug.
"Around." He shoveled in another mouthful.
"Don't you give me that," she took a sip. "You go in the Army, I get a few letters, then nothing."
He shoveled faster to let the food keep his mouth busy. She continued to stare. Keeping his mouthful was a good way to avoid the conversation, even though he knew she'd still cuff him for manners, but the plate was nearly empty. He set it aside and scooted to the edge of the chair. "I went and done something stupid."
Her eyes closed and her head wagged back and forth. When she opened them again, they fell on the mantle. "You get involved with drugs?"
"No, nothing like …" he stopped. "Maybe."
She clasped the mug in both hands and peered into it again. Her head rocked and her lips pursed into a tight knot. If he were younger, this is the point he'd try to run.
She didn't move. Her voice was a hoarse whisper, "Reggie."
He stood and walked across the room so he wouldn't have to see her. He propped his forearm on the mantle and pressed his forehead against it right below the urn. "Nothing like that.
"I ain't putting you on that mantle, Reggie."
Neither of them spoke and the sounds of the outside world drifted through the screen door, through the drafty windows, echoed in the hollow space beneath the house. Cars prowling on the street, the whoop of sirens, angry shouts, all layered above a stereo out there thumping and thumping. Away from the quiet neighborhood where he'd bought a fake house under a fake name, he wasn't sure what exactly he'd been doing for the past five years.
"Did Gramps really die of cancer?"
There was a quiet, as quiet as this place could be and Reggie heard the mug gently settle on the coffee table. "You gone and joined that program."
Reggie didn't answer. He didn't need to.
"Lord, why'd you go and do a thing like that?"
"Did he? Gramps, do you know?" He faced the couch and made eye contact. He wasn't sure why he thought she'd have any more information, but he needed to understand what happened. Was it a natural death? Had the tests done him in? Were they going to come for him? What had that fear been about when he refused to answer the call?
"I never knew him, Reggie. You were born. Your daddy kept bouncing between home and the streets. Your daddy didn't say much but he did keep running his mouth about the checks Grandpa used to get from the government. I never wanted him to encourage you for that, but it was better than where he ended up."
Reggie squeaked onto the couch. The cloying smell of plastic was not, as his Momma always argued, better than the cheap cigarettes and aftershave.
"He musta said something about Gramps."
"Cancer, they said," she folded her hands and rubbed her fingers together. "But your daddy did tell me a story once. At the funeral he said he remembered the coffin. A simple pine box with a flag folded on top. A few black soldiers showed up to play 'Taps' on a trumpet. After that he remembered racing to the coffin to throw it open. He had a little Army man, one of them green ones, that he and his daddy used to play with. He wanted him to have it. Those soldiers were busy trying to calm his momma down, nobody was paying any attention. When he threw that lid back," she paused and shook her head, "the coffin was empty."
"What?"
"That's what he said. Empty. One of the soldiers shut it up real quick. He went running to his momma saying, 'He ain't in there! He ain't!' and she only cried harder. Tell him 'that's right, he with Jesus.' Nobody listened."
Reggie stopped fighting the slippery pull of the plastic and fell limp against the sofa. "He's alive?"
"No, no, I didn't say that. We all die." She pursed her lips again and she spoke with fire and conviction. "It ain't right if you don't. If you put an empty coffin in the ground." Her eyes went bloodshot and tears pooled in the corners. She shuddered. "Why you let them do that to you?"
He covered her fidgeting hands with his own. "I thought it'd be better. Why didn't you tell me?"
She fell against his shoulder, her body heaving in great sobs. "Tell you what? To stay here? Tell you not to go? What are you gonna do here? Sit on the porch and watch the other boys get rich beating and killing each other? Your daddy made his money selling dope and smoked every damn penny. There weren't nothing for college. Nicest thing he ever bought me, with clean money, from his factory job, was this couch. A lousy piece of furniture. That's all I got, not even a funeral for him neither. Donated his body for the white folk at the hospital to cut and learn on so they'd burn it up cheap." She fell into him with all her weight, her fist pounding his chest. "And now they got you. They got you!"
Her words turned to incoherent screams and Reggie held her tight. Grief poured out. Grief and fear. She was afraid for him, her blows trembled with it and her strangled cry rattled with the same clenching pull in his own chest.
They sat together for a long time. He felt her tears soak through his shirt, damp on his skin. He pulled her tighter, trying to take that helplessness from her and onto himself, where he could manage it like he always did, but she never let go until she'd worn herself out and the sobs turned to exhausted whimpers.
"I'm okay, Momma. I'm not dying. They try to hurt me, I'll know."
She sat up and sought truth through tear-stained eyes. "You need to leave, Reggie. Leave here and don't come back." Her voice trembled again.
Reggie hadn't thought that far ahead. When he came here, he wasn't even sure what he'd find. The flight out for his next mission left in less than twelve hours. He hadn
't thought again of running, mostly because he didn't want to face that overwhelming hit to his senses. He'd destroyed the pager but he knew they'd check the drop site to confirm he'd picked up the message. Winston wouldn't have filed whatever report; if he had, Reggie felt sure his sense would have told him.
"I don't need to be in a hurry, why you want me to leave?"
"Can't you see? It's dangerous here. Things have only gotten worse since your daddy died and his crew fell apart. These gangs are all fighting, all split up. Their leaders keep dyin', but that don't help. It only make things worse. They can't stop him …" She looked away as if aware that her fevered warnings had released words which she'd never intended to say.
"Stop who?" Reggie gripped her arms. "Who, Momma?"
"Reggie, I can't."
"Yes. Yes you can." He knew the slip wasn't innocent, he could tell by the tone of her voice. More fear.
She looked away. "Your daddy, Reggie. They say he come back. Come back to kill the ones that killed him."
***
It wasn't hard to track Easy down. As much as the neighborhood had changed, old habits died hard. Only a few blocks away there was a park with a decent hoop. Close to a school, the court was neutral ground and always had been. Reggie guessed Easy went there more and more, trying to find those younger days. He'd only half-expected that was the case, but he found him there all the same.
What he didn't expect was how the whole court cleared out when he arrived.
Easy dribbled the ball a few times and almost lost it. He tucked it under his arm and with effort, raised his chin to look Reggie square in the eye. "Shit, Soldier Boy. You look like your old man."
That's when Reggie understood. This wasn't just the fear of the street. They were afraid of him.
Less than five minutes and Easy'd told him what he wanted to know. Where he needed to go to find him.
"You with us, right? You gonna tell him that?"
Reggie didn't answer.
He left and headed for the east side of town, toward the burnt-out factories he'd watched from the train.
The sun was low in the sky. Light blazed off the patchwork of square window panes, each reflecting a different shade of gold. Bricks ran alongside the columns of windows in thin pillars that arched at the roof. On the ground floor, the windows stopped, replaced with rolling doors and smooth concrete walls, all of which were a solid mural of color and flowing shapes—a canvas made from the empty shell.
At one time, the chain-link fence might've kept people out. Now bent and buckled, there were places where you didn't so much climb as walk into the property. Weeds tore through the concrete lot and bordered the factory walls in low clumps. Reggie walked toward the building, looking for a way inside, his senses calm and steady.
He circled the outside and spotted several ways in, gaps under the bent loading dock doors and holes in shattered windows. He kept these in mind as he continued his walk of the perimeter. Even if his senses were steady, he saw no reason to abandon caution.
On the far side, a matching building flanked the first. Here, the concrete had completely given way to layer upon layer of weeds and grasses. Thin saplings grew toward the center. A carpet of wild vine ran along one corner all the way to the roof several stories above. Light from the sun cut through the upper windows and fell like a volley of spears on the green ground.
Reggie walked into the courtyard and watched in silence. Small birds hopped between window sills, ignorant of the desolation. The shafts of light roved the ground as the sun fell in the sky.
"My Lord, you look like your daddy."
Reggie jumped. Nothing had alerted him to the fact he was being watched. It took several heart beats for him to convince himself this was a good thing.
Behind him, in the shadow of the building, stood a man. There had been a familiarity in the voice, an inflection or tone, but he couldn't be certain. "Come out of there so I can see you."
His grandfather stepped into the light.
He'd never met the man. All he'd ever seen was the military picture sitting on the television. Reggie had always asked his dad if he'd been in the Army, the resemblance was so strong. His dad, before he'd turned to the streets anyway, would laugh and say, "That could just as well be you."
The man facing him had hardly aged from that picture taken forty years ago. No uniform, just a pair of jeans, a soiled shirt, and a denim coat with a flared collar. But he looked the same. How did that make any sense? The Augmentation slowed aging, but not this much.
"Daddy?" Reggie breathed.
His grandfather bowed his head and took another step closer. "Your daddy's gone on to heaven. You know that."
Hope shriveled in his chest. He shook off the disappointment. "Gramps. Why are you here? How?"
Gramps smiled and Reggie fought back a shiver. The resemblance was so strong, but Dad had stopped smiling when Reggie was still a kid.
"The Lord Jesus gave me his gift."
"What gift is that?"
"Life eternal."
Reggie narrowed his eyes. "You mean the program?"
Gramps chuckled and moved closer. Reggie flinched as he placed a hand on his shoulder. "All they did was try their best to kill me. I was their guinea pig. But little did they know, I couldn't die."
"Where have you been all these years?"
"Hiding mostly." His grandfather pulled away and wandered toward the middle of the courtyard where the rays of sunlight laced the buildings together above him. "They juiced me up real good once. My spirit left and they thought I was gone. Kept cutting on me to find out why. When they were done, they left my body on a cold slab." He turned and his smile broadened. "My friend came to scoop the pieces into a pine box to send home. The war was on by then, easy enough to say I died overseas. But when he got there …" The smile remained but pain flashed in his eyes. "Well, I was whole."
Reggie shook his head in disbelief. "So you weren't in the coffin."
His grandfather nodded. "That was easy. They kept us separate from the whites. A few close friends in the service helped."
"You've been here all that time?"
"Oh no. Lord, no. I've been all over the world. Spent a lot of time in Africa, where a black man is nothing more than another black man. I wanted to hide and forget all about what happened." He walked to a concrete bench, choked by the weeds. He sat and gestured beside him, but Reggie stood firm. He shrugged. "Then I found Jesus and I understood."
"What is there to understand? They killed you, or tried. Stole your life. Forced you to run and hide."
His grandfather raised a palm. "Nobody took nothing from me. I was given a gift. I needed to use it."
"They say you're killing folks."
"That what they say?" He chuckled. Actually laughed, and his straight, white teeth parted. "God's will ain't murder, Reggie."
He knew his gramps had gone to church. A regular Sunday ritual with the rest of the neighborhood. His dad had even taken him for a while, to the same church, where the ministers spoke in fiery tones and the parishioners exclaimed their agreement for the whole room to hear. That was before the factory closed. But all this talk about God felt wrong.
"Why? You trying avenge your son? He chose that life, you should know."
The smile faded. "I know. And every day I wish he hadn't. I'm not here for revenge. God gave his only Son to save the wicked. That's what I'm trying to do, save them."
"You ain't killing them?"
Discomfort wrinkled the elder's brow. "They all repent, Reggie, one way or another. They repent of their sins."
"None of that is helping. Can't you see? I don't agree with what Daddy did, but at least when he was in charge, he protected the neighborhood. He was a leader. Yeah, he was a criminal, but he held some kind of order. With these drugs fueling things and nobody to take charge, this place is a warzone."
"It was that way long before I came back. Drugs. Booze. What's the difference? And crime is crime. Sin is sin."
"You don't
understand," Reggie said as he closed the distance and took a seat next to his grandfather. "I went through the Augmentation too. I'm part of that program, and the things I've seen …"
A strong hand gripped his knee and that smile blinded him again. "I know. I heard a thing or two. It's okay."
Feeling that hand on his knee and the knowing gaze that scrutinized him, Reggie could almost see his father sitting there, counseling, speaking to him, like a child. He wanted to believe the illusion, but he shook his head and stood.
"It ain't okay." He looked around the overgrown brick space, saw the fading rays disappear against the sky. "Listen, the government is out there, trading drugs for guns in a damn jungle." He waited to see the reaction in his grandfather's face.
He considered Reggie's words for what felt like a long time time before he finally answered. "Satan's always out to tempt the children of the Lord, Reggie."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means I don't think the source matters. If people weren't giving in to temptation, these drugs would show up and nobody would care."
"But the government … they're only making it worse." Reggie couldn't follow the broken train of thought. "If you're gonna punish anyone, it should be them."
"Reggie, I know firsthand the terrible things they're capable of. And hear me, their day of judgment will come." His grandfather looked up at him and the courtyard seemed to tilt. The light dipped behind the building, the last rays reflecting into a darkening sky then gone. Shadow drew across his face, and the age of his years settled into the creases of his forehead and cheeks. "On the black wings of locusts, they will be consumed and cast into the infernal pit, but not before each of us has been called to answer for what we have done. And when I'm called, I will proclaim to Him that I have spent my last days saving the souls of those who can be saved and dispatching the wicked. What can you say you've done?"
Reggie stared blankly. His danger sense had remained quiet. There was no danger here, to him, from this man or lurking in the deepening shadows of the building. Yet he felt his familiar companion: fear.
