After the Rain

by Vanessa Miller

  The host of angels burst with excitement as their general presented himself before them.

  Captain Aaron quieted them once again. “Let’s hear what the general has to say.”

  Michael stood in front of Aaron, his sword was longer and heavier than that of the captain of the host. Jewels were embedded throughout the handle of this massive sword, a symbol of his many victories. The belt that held his sword sparkled with the gold of heaven. Michael had defeated the Prince of Persia more times than he cared to remember. But the enemy was getting stronger as his time drew near. Michael eagerly awaited their next meeting. It would be their last. “The prayers of the Walker family have risen to heaven once more. I know you just lost a great number of warriors in our last battle with the wicked one, and this battle will not be an easy one, so I really need to know if your troops are up for a new battle.”

  “We are always ready, general. You give the command and we will fight until there is no more fight in us.”

  “Good,” Michael said as he continued, “The Walker’s youngest son has decided he wants to be a gangster. If this problem persists, the enemy will get his hooks in Isaac Walker Jr. and never let him go.

  “His dad has pulled so many people out of the kingdom of darkness that we owe him this one.”

  Captain Aaron nodded. “Consider it handled.”

  “You’ve got a week to turn this around. Isaac just told his son about his hell experience. Maybe you can use that to maybe even allow him to see the demonic forces that are at work in the lifestyle he’s craving.”

  “Isaac’s son is so young, do you think we really need to go that far?”

  “He’s Isaac’s son, right?”

  Captain Aaron got the message Michael was sending… a hard head made for a soft behind.

  Chapter Eight

  Ikee couldn’t sleep. He wished that he’d never asked his father anything about his past or the reason he gave up the drug life. Ikee had tried to be brave about it, but the story his father told was terrifying. And now all Ikee could imagine was that demons were in his room jumping off the wall, onto his bed and that they were trying to get inside of his mind.

  Ikee wanted to run back home, but he knew that his dad wouldn’t open the door for him at this time of night. Not after he caught him selling drugs. He would just accuse Ikee of running from a drug deal gone bad or something like that. So, Ikee toughed it out until he finally fell asleep at about four in the morning. Only to be awakened at seven a.m by some guy banging on the door down the hall.

  The man started cussing and calling somebody named Roger every name in the book. Ikee pulled the pillow over his head as he tried to get back to sleep. But that’s when someone knocked on his door.

  Ikee hoped it wasn’t the same man who’d just cussed that other guy out… like he was in charge of waking all the dead beats up and letting them know just how worthless they were. He tried to ignore the sound, but then the person knocked again and said, “Ikee, it’s me, Pete.”

  Pete was the night manager and he was also a faithful member of his father’s church. So, Ikee knew that he was being watched and that his father was probably receiving a minute by minute account of his actions. “What do you want?”

  “I’m getting ready to leave. I wanted to make sure you were okay and to see if you wanted to grab some breakfast.”

  “I’m good. I think I’ll sleep a little while longer.” Ikee didn’t want to tell the man that he had been too scared to sleep until about four in the morning.

  “Okay. If you need anything just ask the front desk for my cell number.”

  “I’ll be fine, Pete. Didn’t my father tell you that I’m a grown man and could take care of myself?” Ikee was gabbing at the man as if his predicament was everybody’s fault but his own.

  Finally, he was able to get back to sleep. This time he wasn’t bothered by any demons jumping off the walls, so he got himself an extra four hours before he hit the street to finish what he started yesterday, before his father interrupted him.

  But Ikee didn’t go back to the trap house. That place belonged to Bobby-Ray and he believed every word his father had told him. There was no way that Bobby-Ray was just going to forgive and forget what Isaac and his crew had done to Bobby-Ray’s daddy. Time would come when Bobby-Ray would want to extract some street justice, and Ikee wanted to be far out the way when that impulse struck.

  Ikee hung out with Young Geeze in youth group whenever his mother made him come to church. Young Geeze was only a year old than he, but he was in the life. So, Ikee called him up. His dad thought he didn’t listen to him, but he heard the things he wanted to. Like that thing about other hustlers having a problem with some new guy selling drugs on their territory. He didn’t know what territory belonged to who, but Ikee figured Young Geeze would know.

  “Hey man, what’s up? You in school?”

  Young Geeze laughed. “School is for chumps. I’m making dollars while them fools is learning to count to ten.”

  “I’m not in school either,” Ikee told him. “I’ve got some stuff to unload and I was hoping that you could help me get rid of it.”

  It sounded as if Young Geeze had just spit out whatever he’d been drinking. “Boy, your daddy is going to break your neck. Is this a joke?”

  “It’s real. And my daddy don’t run my life. I live on my own now so I’ve got to find a way to pay the bills.”

  “Where you at? I’ll come pick you up.”

  Ikee gave him the address and then hung out on the porch with a few guys who were catching people as they walked down the street and selling dime bags of weed to them. Ikee watched how they did it, noticed which one was the smoothest with it and how sloppy the other guy was. Ikee could tell that the dude on his right would be fitted for handcuffs before he had a chance to make any real money. His extra baggy pants were the problem. They were so baggy that the dude had to use one hand to hold his pants while he tried to pull his stash out with the other. But the movements were so awkward because his pants kept falling down. He kept having to pull his pants back up, while trying to collect his money.

  “You been sitting out here for a while. You need something?” The guy who looked like he might last in the game a little while longer than Mr-Pants-Falling-Down.

  “I’m good,” Ikee told him. “Just waiting on a friend.”

  “Gotcha. The way you was watching us, I thought for sure you wanted something.”

  “Naw, just watching. Never know when I can pick up a few pointers.”

  “You’re taking notes, huh?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Well the first thing you need to learn about these streets is that you can’t trust anyone, you hear me, little man?”

  “I got you little man,” Ikee told him and got ready to raise up to show his 6’2 frame. But that’s when a man who purchased from Mr. Pants-Falling-Down came back around the corner wielding a tire iron.

  The man wielding the tire iron threw the bag at the drug dealer as he yelled, “This ain’t no weed. You sold me hemp and some oregano.” Then he swung the tire iron.

  It almost connected, but bending down to pull up his pants saved his neck. The drug dealer swung around too quickly, then fell to the ground. He pointed at the man standing next to Ikee. “He sold the stuff to me. I thought it was the real thing.”

  The man with the tire iron turned in their direction. Then the guy who’d just told Ikee not to trust anyone up and disappeared. Ikee jumped up and leaned his head over the banister, wondering if the man had fallen down. But no one was on the other side of the banister.

  “Where did he go?” the guy with the tire iron barked at Ikee.

  “I don’t know,” Ikee said with a perplexed expression on his face. “He was just standing right here.”

  The pants falling down guy got off the ground and ran like a track star all the way down the street and then rounded the corner.

  The guy with the tire iron kicked the wall. “Somebody gon’
give me my money back.” He turned back to Ikee. “Were you working with those guys?”

  “Naw, man. I don’t know them. I was just sitting here waiting on my ride.”

  “Give me ten dollars,” the guy said to Ikee as if they hung out and borrowed money back and forth from each other.

  “What?”

  “You heard me.” He raised the tire iron in the air. “Give me the money in your pocket or I’m going to wrap this tire iron around your neck.”

  “Hey, I don’t have nothing to do with this.” Ikee started backing away.

  A car pulled up and he saw Young Geeze jump out and rush over to him, just as the tire iron was about to come down on his head.

  Young Geeze grabbed it, swung the guy around and shoved a gun in his face. “You tryin’ to die today, fool?”

  “I told you I didn’t have nothing to do with it,” Ikee yelled at him. He then told Young Geeze, “I’m glad you pulled up when you did. This psycho was trying to take my money because of something somebody else did to him.”

  “You want me to cap this fool?”

  “Let’s just go,” Ikee told him.

  “Naw man, we gon’ give this one some street justice.”

  Ikee couldn’t believe that this man was about to die over ten dollars. He thought about how his father had told him about hell and how there was no out once a person was sent there. He couldn’t let that happen to this guy. A beat down was one thing, but a bullet was way far past right.

  Ikee punched the guy and then told Young Geeze, “I got my street justice, now come on and let’s go make some money.”

  Young Geeze put the piece back in his pocket and hopped in the car with Ikee. “I didn’t feel like killing nobody today anyhow. Why was homeboy trippin’?”

  “The guy that just sold him fake weed ran off so he thought he could jack me for my loot.”

  “Now see, if you had one of these,” Young Geeze pulled the gun out of his pocket and waved it around in the car, “wouldn’t nobody mess with you.”

  “Put that down. You don’t want that thing going off in the car.”

  “You can’t be squeamish if you want to run these streets,” Young Geeze told him.

  “I’m not squeamish… just don’t think guns are necessary.”

  Young Geeze laughed in his face. “Man, if I hadn’t showed up with my gun, that dude back there would have been all over you with that tire iron. And then he would have jacked you for your stash and your money.” Geeze waved the gun around again. “But my peacemaker kept that fool in check.”

  “Just drive this car and get us somewhere so we can make this money.”

  ~~~~~

  The ratchedness was on steroids… and meth, and crack, and just about anything else they could get their hands on. The hood was already a place of poverty and despair. Drugs didn’t help the matter, just made some of the inhabitants crazy and desperate their next fix. And crazy and desperate was not a good combination. So, many people suffered because of the drugs constantly funneled into the hood.

  Ikee had no problem with increasing the pain in the hood, but being a suburb kid, he didn’t understand why trash was thrown on the streets as people walked up and down them as if they thought some invisible person would come behind them and pick the trash up for them. The homes in this neighborhood were also worn to the point where several of them looked ready to cave in.

  Ikee attributed the condition of the hood to the people not caring about their surroundings. But he didn’t attribute any of it to the drugs he and Young Geeze were standing on the corner selling to the zombies that walked by. He didn’t realize that what they were doing was devastating the area faster than any trash dropped on the street or chipped exterior paint.

  “This is so easy. I don’t understand why more people aren’t making their paper like us,” Ikee said to Young Geeze after he made his fifth sale in the space of an hour.

  “Most people are chumps,” Young Geeze told him. “They’d rather work a square job for the man, than get rich out on these streets.”

  A woman came down the street. Ikee rushed over to her. “You need something?” he asked then looked up; her eyes were slits. Ikee couldn’t tell if she was about to fall asleep or had just woken up.

  She started scratching her arms. “Yeah, I need it real bad.”

  “Let’s do some business.”

  “Where you want to go?” the woman asked him.

  Ikee’s eyes shifted. “Why we got to go somewhere. I got the product, just give me the money and we can make this transaction.”

  “I don’t have no money. But I can pay for my product; I’ll do whatever you want.” She reached for his pants.

  Ikee jumped back, getting the message. “Whoa… hey… I don’t want nothing but money.” He didn’t know what had possessed this woman to think that looking like the walking dead was something that would entice men to give her drugs. But Ikee wasn’t interested… not at all.

  Young Geeze came over to him laughing his head off. “Go on somewhere, Candy. Ain’t no freebees being passed out today.”

  “Come on, Geeze. You know I’m good for it.” She leaned toward him. Putting a hand on his arm.

  Geeze swatted her hand away. “You used to be good for it. You might want to look in a mirror. Matter-of-fact, you might want to get off these drugs, because they done you wrong.”

  “It’s all the same in the dark,” she was saying as sirens started going off.

  Geeze’s head swiveled around and then he pushed Ikee. “Run.”

  Ikee looked back, saw the police car advancing on them and did just what Geeze instructed him to do. They cut across the street and started running through a field.

  Geeze started pulling the money and the rest of his stash out of his pockets and throwing them on the ground.

  “What are you doing?” Ikee said. He couldn’t believe that Geeze just threw out the money and the stash. Part of that money belonged to him, because Geeze didn’t have any product to sell today. They’ split up what Ikee had, so that Ikee could sell in the territory that Geeze was allowed to sell in. But Geeze was supposed to give Ikee half the money he’d earned today.

  “You better throw yours out too, man. If the cops catch you with any of it, you getting arrested tonight.”

  Ikee wasn’t trying to go to jail, so he emptied his pockets and kept following Geeze so they could get away from the spot that Geeze claimed was the best on the west side.

  Chapter Nine

  Nina and Isaac spent another night in prayer for Ikee. Isaac thought the boy would be calling and begging them to let him come back home after one night on his own. But Ikee was just as stubborn as his old man had been at that age.

  Isaac was now second guessing himself, worried about leaving Ikee with those drugs he’d purchased. If Ikee got himself arrested and ended up spending years in prison, Isaac would never forgive himself, because if Ikee went to prison, it would be all over for his son. Ikee didn’t know the first thing about hood life, nor would he be able to handle himself in a prison full of true thugs.

  “Lord, we trust You. But help us to continue to trust You even when we don’t see a change to our circumstance.” Isaac didn’t want to fake the faith, not when so much was on the line. So, he needed to tell the Lord the truth. He believed, but he needed the Lord to help him, so that his faith wouldn’t grow weak and cause him to do something that wouldn’t be Christ-like.

  “Amen,” Nina said as they ended the prayer. She then put her arms around her husband as she told him, “God has got this. Ikee is coming back home.”

  “I sure hope so, honey. Because if something happens to him while he’s out on them streets I don’t know if I could ever forgive myself.” He turned to Nina, his eyes begging her to understand his position. “I didn’t know what else to do, Nina. We made huge mistakes with Donavan and Iona as they were growing up. But I really thought we got it right with Ikee… you know? A two parent household, with both parents living godly before him
.” He just shook his head, at a loss for words.

  But Nina told him, “Remember that scripture in bible when the disciples came back to Jesus perplexed because they had cast all these demons out of different people, but then they ran up on a man who had demons that they couldn’t cast out. What did Jesus tell them?”

  Isaac nodded. “He said the particular demons that man had would only come out through fasting and prayer.” Isaac narrowed an eye at Nina. “So, what are you saying? My kid is demon possessed?”

  “No, but what I am saying is that you have some strong genes. Each one of your kids was born with a little bit of street in them. We prayed it away from Donavan and Iona. But we’ll have to dig a little deeper for this last seed of yours.”

  “Okay, well then you do the fasting and I’ll do the praying,” Isaac told her jokingly.

  Nina put hands on hips. “I’m not cooking another meal in this house until my son comes home, Isaac Walker.”

  ~~~~

  Adrenaline had pushed Ikee as he ran away from the cops the day before. He hadn’t thought about anything but surviving. But now that the sun had risen and it was time for him to get out of bed and make his way in the world again, Ikee was stuck.

  He had thrown out his money and his product. He had a couple hundred more dollars in the bank but that was it. The amount he had wouldn’t even pay his rent and feed him next week. Since his father had only paid the rent through the first week, Ikee would have to come up with some money if he wanted to keep a roof over his head.

  Truth be told, Ikee didn’t want this particular roof. The furniture in his room looked thirty years old, the carpet and the walls were dirty. He barely wanted to touch the sink and the toilet, but even though he didn’t like where he was, he knew sleeping outside would be a whole lot worse. His home was so nice… with hardwood floors on the first level and a cozy fireplace to warm his toes.