"My dad's no longer here."
"You are a hurt and angry child."
"What did you say to me?" King hated this. He wanted to punch something. Someone. And Pastor Winburn… he hated the man to see him like this. So weak. Pathetic. He wanted to prove himself to the man. To be the man Pastor Winburn saw in him. To even be better than him. Such was the way of fathers and sons.
"You were a… knight. A hero. Now you acting like some simp who's been played by a girl."
"You have no idea what it's like to think you know someone, to love them, and realize it's nothing but lies."
"Nope. Because love is strictly the provenance of the young. I was never young, never hooked up with anyone, and never got hurt by anyone. You're the only one who has ever been through something like this. In the history of mankind."
"You're not helping." King's face remained inscrutable. He kept his face a pallid mask, unmoved even by his own pain.
"It's all right to be angry with Lott. Lady G. Both of them. This whole situation. It sucks."
"I should be beyond that."
"Why? You still a man."
"And I don't want to put you in the middle."
"What middle? They did wrong. I'm pissed at both of them. Love them, but I'm pissed at them."
"They were laughing at me."
"Who?"
"Both of them. I did this for them as much as anyone else. To be a hero to Lady G. To be worthy of Lott's friendship."
"To prove yourself to them. I'm sorry if I don't seem real sympathetic. I'm not going to pretend to know what draws a silly country girl's heart. I'm not trying to minimize the dull shock of sorrow you want to wallow in. I'm really not. My heart hurts for you. I wish you could just remember the good times you had with them and hold on to the love you have for them. But I also know you can't just yet. Right now all you can do is think of the pain. All you can do is re-visit each memory through the lens of that pain and question everything."
"I just want to make all the hurting stop."
"I know you do. I know how hard it is to open up and reveal yourself, only to be rejected. That's the big fear of relationships." Pastor Winburn drew up his sleeves and revealed a scar line of old track marks. "The world is a painful place, full of things and people that will hurt you. And I know the temptation to numb yourself from it and do whatever it takes to keep us from dealing with life and what's going on. That's an easy path to walk down. You're no different than any other addict out here, you just used a relationship to numb yourself. Living life on your own strength, within your own fears."
"That's easy to say."
"What you've been doing hasn't been working." Pastor Winburn rolled his sleeves back down. "How about you listen to someone else other than yourself? You want to run away from folks and be all alone, that's on you. But you'll have no one speaking into your life except you. You don't want to be alone with your demons unattended. They are so many and it gets awfully noisy with all of those competing voices in your head."
"Everything just seems so… It's too much. Too loud. It's confusing."
"I wish I were one of those quick-to-forgive people. How when I feel dishonored, disrespected, or disavowed, or otherwise holding on to memories of someone's mistreatment of me, I can just go 'I forgive you' and all of the hurt and ill will just vanishes. It's like we feel this tacit pressure from other Christians. They hear our struggles with the pain of our situations — the anger, the hurt, the sheer pain of it — and confuse that with not being able to forgive. Almost as if we aren't forgiving on their time table or that a good Christian would have forgiven by now. Or faster. Or better. On-the-spot forgiveness works with smaller slights, but deeper wounds require more, especially if they tap into a familiar one. Sometimes we have to ask if part of what has wounded us is us carrying something else with us from the past that we are connecting to this present person or circumstance. That's part of what forgiveness is about, freedom from the things which hold on to us. A hardened heart can't feel the love nor the forgiveness a faithful and just God has to offer, it has walled itself off. Pursuing forgiveness is agreeing with God that there needs to be healing and trusting Him to heal us through the process. And sometimes it's a hard, long, messy process. But what's broken can be redeemed. And there's a real you that you have yet to find."
King leaned against his kitchen counter. "Help me understand how to do that. How to get to the real me."
"You're always asking 'what do I need to do to make this work?' because you operate out of a need to control. Faith and control don't exist well together. When you are moving from a place of faith, you're asking 'God, what are You going to do to make this work and how do I get involved with that?'"
"I want to be that man."
"Look, King… I've seen how you've carried yourself. How you've fought. There's always going to be someone stronger. Everyone loses some time. It's what you do. In defeat, that defines you. You can become broken and bitter, just like in victory, you could become petty and small. Victory is a matter of spirit, not might. You have a mighty sword by your side, but you do not have to draw it. To wield it is to draw blood. Real love risks and offers redemption."
"Where do I start?"
"Go back and clean up what you messed up." Pastor Winburn put a tentative hand on King's shoulder, not wanting to crowd him if he wasn't ready. But King neither flinched nor pulled away.
"You always have a lesson for me. Just like a father."
"King, I… I was never your father. Though I'd have been proud to call you my son."
"There's more to being a father than blood. How about you listen to someone else other than yourself."
Lott dribbled the basketball three times, took aim, bounced it three more times, held his pose for a moment, then released his shot. The ball arced through the net-less rim without sound. Putting on a limp pimp roll strut to chase down his own rebound, he pretended to evade a couple of defenders before laying back with a fade-away jumper. The game was easier this way.
The other day he was in a pickup game with folks he knew from around the way. And he was every bit as alone. No one on the court chatted with him. No girls flirted with him from the sidelines. No one met his eyes. No one passed him the ball. Getting a rebound resulted in elbows to his gut or face. Too aware of their scrutiny, their wariness, he retreated. He knew what to expect, but the pain of the reality was nearly too much. Maybe underneath it all he wasn't this awful person — the villain in everyone's story — maybe he was still the caring, loving little boy his grandmother tried to raise. But it seemed, he could sense it in his heart like stomachs turned in his presence. He just wanted to get away. To retreat.
Lott's disheveled hair needed tightening up, a week overdue. His large brown eyes checked for anyone who neared him. His tongue traced where his row of faux gold caps once grilled his teeth. A scraggly beard scrawled along his face in tufts like a child's cotton ball art project. Lott had lost his job at FedEx. It was the job Wayne had helped him get through Outreach Inc which took him out of the streets, and he'd been there for a couple years. He'd been doing well. They were even talking about promoting him again. Then the stuff with King and Lady G went down. He loved them both. He'd hurt them both. It was selfish of him to get with Lady G no matter the love he believed he had for her. She was King's girl. He was King's ace. And he betrayed them and it grieved him. He carried the weight of the pain he caused to work with him. The shame ground him down, affected his performance. His supervisor said he'd become bored and spiteful at work, not all the young man he thought he was giving a second chance to. And definitely not living up to the potential he thought he saw. Then that was that. Lott didn't disagree with his boss's assessment and would've fired him his own self. But the part that hurt was the fact that even during the firing, his boss had a sting of pain in his eyes, as if begging Lott to find the words to keep him from doing what he had to do. As if it hurt him to be adding to Lott's pain. Lott welcomed the firing. He welcomed the punishme
nt. He knew he had to suffer for what he'd done and just wished everyone would stop giving a damn about him so he could throw his life away in peace.
"Why'd they have to do him like that? He was a good kid."
"He was into some dirt."
"No more than anyone else. And he was trying to put it behind him. Folks wouldn't let him."
So the whispers about him went. But he knew how they saw him. This unfeeling monster. Beyond tears. Beyond redemption. Sometimes a body had to move on, get away from a place. Run from the memories, history of hurts and betrayals, otherwise they became trapped by a story. A tale told by others and believed by more. Such was his story. A story that would define him in such a way that he began to believe it himself. One that wouldn't allow him to grow out of it. He had to break his routine, his habits, shake up his world and paradigm.
The ball swished through the net. But there was no roar of a crowd. Nor any elation in his heart. Only the dull ache of moving when he didn't want to. He ran down his own shot then dribbled out for another.
Lott could never figure out why he wanted, needed, to block it out, to kill off the person he was. Because he hurt. The pain bobbed and ebbed, varying in intensity, but always there, and he simply never wanted to hurt again. Pain drove people mad and the self-loathing he felt was a raging fire fed by bits of his soul. One he'd do anything to quench. His life in drugs was no different than how he treated women, they were both attempts for his selfish need to come first and allow him brief moments of escape. What he hated was how he was powerless to make any of the changes he knew he had to make. His life was a runaway train, one he tried his best to ride out because to change, to stop, meant he'd risk losing Lady G or his friends and that he couldn't bear.
Instead, he lost everything.
The scorched earth of his life left him with a profound regret at having taken himself away from the people who loved him. Whom he loved. Pangs of guilt gnawed at him whenever he went by their old spot, overwhelmed by a sense that home was forever lost to him. No one wanted any part of him, they all turned their backs on him so that he could move on. And perhaps they could escape the chaos he brought with him. He didn't blame them. He hated himself probably more than they did. He had no idea what real betrayal was, what depths he was capable of sinking to.
"I am not a man," he thought.
He always had this vision of the kind of man he wanted to be. Noble, but a bit of a roughneck. Honorable. Honest. True. Trustworthy. A hoodrat knight. He didn't want to be the kind of man his father was. Quick to dive into any bit of pussy that strayed across his path. No matter whose woman she was or whether Lott's mother was in the picture, Lott's father was a ghost in his childhood and absent in his adulthood.
Lott lined up his next shot. Dribbled again. Let it fly. It clanged off the rim and off to the side toward a group of fellas.
"Li'l help," he said, nodding toward the ball that rested in the grass by them. The men cut him a sideways glance, one sucked his teeth, and kept playing. Lott picked up his backpack and walked off, not wanting to feel their judgment or their pity.
Off 52nd Street and Georgetown, along a windy bend, was a tiny church, Bethel United Methodist, behind which was a cemetery. The last few weeks he'd called the spot home. All the drama in his world sucked up all the emotional energy, and he had nothing left to care about anything else. Not his job. Not where he lived, which was a good thing since he lost his room at the Speedway Lodge, formerly a Howard Johnson's, soon after losing his job. And the graveyard matched how he felt. Dead inside.
Lott knew too many bodies buried in this yard.
There was a spot under a tree out of view of most of the cemetery and far from the street where he stayed. The closest thing nearby was the utility shed of the apartment complex. Three men chatted up a girl. Lott's wary gaze followed them. He'd seen the "hey, you girl" routine often enough. Brothers pushing up on a girl, trying to talk to her. He didn't like their predatory leer nor how they crowded the girl. A pack moving to cut off her escape routes. A feral gleam leapt to the eyes of the tallest of them. With the hint of a nod, the man behind her grabbed her while the other scanned the deserted lot and unlocked the storage shed. They dragged her in with the tallest man being the last to enter the shed.
"Careful. Don't jump if you can't see bottom," Lott heard an internal voice say, but he was to his feet and half-running toward the shed before his mind caught up to things. The latch on the shed had been torn out at the hinges and the rust on the nails indicated that it hadn't been secure in a while. Pressing his ear to the door, he heard the sounds of struggle and muffled cries. His blood heated up. The door slammed open behind the force of his kick.
A vegetable odor filled the room, the smell of spent seed seeped into the woods. They turned and froze at Lott's entrance. Two of the men held the girl down, each one clamping down on an arm, though one attempted to cup her breast. The third, the tall one, pulled at her panties. Spitting into his hand, he slowly began to stroke himself. The more she fought, the more excited he got. Despite Lott's unexpected entrance, he kept touching himself.
"What the hell are you doing?" Lott yelled.
"What it look like, money?" The first one looked up from the struggling girl.
"You want in on this train?" the tall one asked.
The girl locked eyes with Lott. A few acne bumps dotted her forehead, red and swollen against her toffee-colored skin. For a moment, all he saw was Lady G. Then she came more into focus as the girl she was. A little thinner and lighter skinned, though still in need of having her honor defended. Lott took two steps in and planted his foot into the crotch of the first boy. The other two scrambled to their feet, but not before he put his full weight behind a punch that dropped one to the floor.
"Get out!" Lott yelled to her.
The girl tore out without hesitation. The third man leapt at Lott, grappling him about the middle. Lott kicked backwards, slamming them both into the wall, taking the wind out of the assailant. Then the ground fell away from under him. All he could think of was all the friends he'd hurt, the trust he'd betrayed. The life he'd fucked up. Panting, the tallest one noted the fight leaving Lott and began to punch him. Lott took the blows to the ribs and the stomach, but not in the face though, as he wrapped up and collapsed into a ball. Sirens snapped the men out of their rage fugue, the tallest administering another kick before cutting out.
"The hero got his ass wa-za-za-zah-whooppedzz!" the tall one shouted on the way out. Then, in case he was a snitch, too, he warned, "Keep your mouth shut."
Lott stayed on the floor, with the pain as comforting as any blanket.
CHAPTER FOUR
Near the intersection of Sussex Avenue and Faygate, two streets over from Martin Luther King Jr Boulevard, the houses on the block were piled on one another. With barely a few feet between them and their small, fenced-in yards, each was close enough that everyone could hear everyone else's business. However, most people neither saw nor heard anything, especially at the two-story home on the corner. Bound to his wheelchair after his wounds suffered at King's hands, Dred remembered being confined to the house. Many nights he retreated to his chamber, bereft of any furniture, more cavern than room. Its steep shadows gave the illusion of it being deeper than it was. Bay windows faced the moon, yet the light never seemed to penetrate much beyond being a dim glow about the window. He found a certain comfort to his cave. Despite owning several stash houses, money houses, pea shake houses — none in his name, of course — he needed a place to lay his head. A place to call his own.
The muscle memory, or lack thereof, of the wheelchair faded as he now walked down the stairs, into the hall in front of the living room. The clack-clack-clack of paws on hardwood floors echoed behind him as Baylon's dog trotted past the open doorway. Baylon manned the doorway, allowing entry to Naptown Red.
"What you no good?" Naptown Red's uneven skin tone gave him the appearance of a high yella Rorschach test. His bulbous eyes, yellowed and bloodshot, were
framed by black moles. His auburn hair had once been straightened, but now came back in natural, though no comb had touched it in a while. Whiskey seared his breath and seeped from his pores. The man tugged at his privates before reaching out for a hand clasp.
"Ballin'. Shot callin'." Dred took his hand and bumped shoulders with him, unaffected by the gesture. He nodded toward the next room where the others had gathered. Of course Red had been the last to arrive. He thought it proved that he was the man, that everyone waited on him. But as far as Dred was concerned, every now and then you got a fool. Naptown Red was so far behind and always sleeping on the game — a mistake his mom should've corrected before he was born.
Dred tired of a life of inconvenience and neglect. Every off-center smile was a threat; every unturned eye a challenge; every undeferred step disrespect, so easily insulted because "respect" was what defined them. Look at them, his foot soldiers. Naptown Red, scheming-ass nigga, not fooling anyone; Baylon, a tragic, perpetual fuckup; Garlan, so insecure in his role as muscle, certainly no Mulysa, but he'd have to do; and Nine, who insinuated herself into the group with promises of handling a particularly meddlesome problem for him. Something about being in her presence made you want to trust her. Love her. Shaped by rage, formed by scorn, molded by uninterest, Mulysa was a magnificent hatred. Now he sat at court waiting on a judge to let him know if he could sleep in his own bed tonight.
Eyes half-closed in on-setting ennui, Baylon stood on the fringes as the others gathered. His body reeked with the stench of death. From its sockets, pale yellow, bulbous, unnatural eyes — eyes which had seen so much, like staring into the sun — were dulled to lifelessness. His clothes seemed to cling tightly to his body like seaweed to a sunken ship. Baylon took a few uncertain steps. The grave called, but he continued to resist it. The air, stale and musty, swirled about to embrace his lithe form. Melancholia and weariness enveloped him, though his horrid body hid a certain nobility. The silence was tangible around him, as if taking one last peek at his gravesite, longing for his disturbed peace. He knew that folks considered him soft. He used to be, but now he'd been through a lot. Lost a lot. Being in the life changed you. You didn't get to just throw on a suit and enter the square world. You were boxed in and down for life. Little more than a dog gone savage from pain.
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