Before the teacher could summon security, Tristan was gone.
King couldn't afford to be sensitive. He lived in a hard world, a dangerous world. Pastor Winburn called it a fallen world. Fallen into what King was never sure. A state of disrepair, an invisible "unfinished business" sign lodged on someone's to-do list when they… He… got around to remembering the people left behind. Much like the church he used as a meeting place.
Out of habit, King grabbed a nearby broom and King swept the floor of the abandoned, burned-out husk of a church, keenly aware of the futile gesture. Vandals would one day break in and loot anything the owners missed. Crackheads would use it as a safe haven from the elements to get high. Prostitutes would throw discarded mattresses in the corners and use it as a flophouse for their johns. But King straightened up anyway because he had to do something, no matter how small or ultimately futile.
"You appear haggard and worn." Merle sat, legs crossed over one another at the ankles. Black cracks veined the surface of the circular table, browned with rain rot.
"Not enough sleep."
"You wear your dreams."
"Something like that."
"Hmm." Merle ran his finger along the top of the makeshift table. He licked the soot from his fingertip. "I won't always be with you."
"You dying?" King stopped sweeping and focused on the man for the first time.
"We're all dying. I know my death will be shameful and ridiculous. If you find my remains and I'm in a closet with a belt tied around my neck, wrists, and my gentleman's gentleman… all I ask is that you cut me down at least."
"So you are dying?"
"My safety word is 'apples.'"
"What are you talking about?"
"You have to be prepared. Events are in motion, some courses set, but we are not Destiny's concubine. We have decisions to make. Choices."
King trusted few people. Yet from the beginning, he knew he could talk to Merle. Perhaps it was just that with his brand of lunacy, anything King said would be forgotten moments later. More in truth, King sensed there was something ancient about their bond. "Can I get your advice on something?"
"Most people don't want advice, only agreement."
"I want your honest opinion."
"I know nothing but half-truths and veiled interpretations, but I'll do my best."
"What do you think of Lady G?"
Merle tapped his lip with his sooty forefinger. "If I should tell you she was a poor choice, young, foolish, and empty-headed, would you believe me?"
"She's not even close to that." King's pulse quickened, as if his heart reared at a threat to be confronted. Something about Lady G stirred an over-protectiveness within him, as if he couldn't stand even the thought of anyone speaking ill of her. "That's not the woman I know."
"A grown man fixed by a girl." Merle etched his finger into the table, drawing pictures only his mind envisioned. "What if the girl was not a girl?"
"A monster? An enchantment?" King's mind raced with possibilities. Anything to explain the… hesitation he felt with her.
"No. A plug."
"What?"
"She stops up the hole in you." Merle adjusted the fit of his cap as if tuning in the proper signal. "Somewhere between birth and burial, people learned to twist the simple longings in their hearts – rest, belonging, affection, validation, peace – and tried to fill them with other things. Food. Drugs. Sex. Yet try as they might, the hole remained."
"Try again."
"I see that's too much for you to get your mind around, O Hesistant Spirit. Let's try this more practically then. What if I was to say she would betray you for another, perhaps one of your closest; would you believe me?"
"I'd say you were way off. She's not that type of girl, Merle."
Merle threw his head back and began to sing. "When a man loves a woman…"
"I haven't said anything about love."
"Here's the thing about love," Merle continued, ignoring him. "It goes against the laws governing the universe. Laws of probability. Laws of nature. Laws of common sense. None of them need apply. Love trumps all."
"It all comes down to the right girl."
"The future is like love: something we don't have the luxury to believe in," Merle sniffed. "I need to attend to the others."
Little more than a fallen museum, a curator preserving theologies no longer relevant to the community it served, a layer of dust settled upon the church like a burial shroud. Three chairs presided on a raised platform behind a toppled altar. Promises of health and wealth reverberated in the empty anteroom, echoing only along the cobwebs strung between the chairs. The choir loft cracked under its own weight, a broken bow on the ship of the church stage; an abandoned stage whose dwindling audience found better speakers, better empty promises, or greener pastures to lose themselves in.
His steps pronounced and precise, a boy entered with the solemnity of a wedding's ring-bearer. Except instead of a ring, he carried a white gun – with a pearl handle grip and white shaft – rested atop a purple pillow. With each footfall, flames erupted from candle stands. Two boys, both with the scrawny physique of angry twigs, trailed him, each holding candelabras with five candles.
Last in the processional was a young girl, short and curvy with engorged breasts. Her arms outstretched before her as she held a cup. Pure gold inlaid with precious stones, the cup produced its own luminescence. The hall filled with a suffuse light, dimming the lights produced by the candles. The girl turned and presented the cup to Percy.
"What do you think it means?" Percy asked, his voice held the slightest hitch of a restrained stammer.
"Means you dream of being a pimp," Merle said.
"Really?" Percy sat up, surprised at himself.
"Simple Percy, pure and true. Simple Percy, purehearted fool."
"I'm not stupid." Percy's eyes turned downward, stung by the words of someone he wanted to be his friend. Merle put his hand on the boy's beefy shoulder.
"No, no you're not. Far from it. You're probably the best of us. Thus a pure fool. And still, here you are yearning for the infinitely desirable, yet unattainable."
"A woman?"
"Her love? See, you aren't so dim."
"Why won't King let me come along when they go out?"
"It's dangerous work." Merle turned from him.
"I ain't scared."
"No you're not. And you're more ready than they realize. Don't worry, your time draws near."
"How do you know?"
"Your dream says so."
A nearing thwack-thwack-thwack interrupted them as Rhianna Perkins padded along the carpet in a pair of flip-flops with an orange band. With good hair, though tender-headed, and fine-boned, she walked with a slight waddle, a stride developed because of the fullness of her pregnancy. Her breasts, swollen and tender, stretched out her black and white striped tank top over a lacy pink bra. Her belly protruded as if she attempted to hide a basketball under her shirt. She bent forward. Percy caught a glimpse of her panties rising above her jean line.
"Boys." She caught him peeking. His eyes retreated and he turned his head.
"Milady." Merle bowed. "I see your most sacred of ovens bears up nicely. May I?" He reached out his hands.
"Sure."
Merle placed his hands on either side of her belly. Then pressed his ear to it. "Oh my. Yes, you are. Be patient."
"What's he saying?" Percy asked.
"What happens in the womb stays in the womb." Merle winked.
Life made her tough, not brave. Sex was a position of surrender, a searching for sorrow, a space to fill the loneliness. There was nothing special between her legs or in her center, and she went to bed with men – boys really – with easy aplomb. The idea of rejection or abandonment or being used never entered her calculations. She was a tabula rasa of femininity. One could write any story onto her and she was happy to oblige for the semblance of a relationship; the presence of a man was all the illusion of a relationship she required. She fou
nd it easier to open her legs than her heart: a brash emotional laziness. Her mental efforts focused more on figuring out how to stay alive from day to day.
"He active though." Rhianna grimaced, then pressed her palms into her lower back. "Got no sense. Just like his daddy."
"A hard road, raising a young one alone," Merle said.
"She's not alone," Percy said.
"True." Merle, again, patted the young man.
"Anyway, I'm looking for a new man. King's taken." Rhianna toyed with the gangsta set. She believed that she wanted a thug, just not too much of a thug. Enough to be tough, because she definitely didn't want a softie.
"What about Lott?" Merle asked. His voice had the timbre of urgency, a desperate urging.
"I don't do yellow men, but he's nice."
"Love. It never ceases to baffle me."
Sweating in the field, King's back ached, stretched by the day's labor. Little more than a boy stripped from his mother; man enough to do the work and live the life. A bit filled his mouth. With an angular face and tubercular frame, the white overseers had checked his legs and teeth on the auction block, little more than a work horse's inspection. They didn't take full measure of the wildness in his eyes when they put it in his mouth. Chains clanged with his every movement. The twinge of anger burned, a constant fever beneath his sweaty skin. Drawn up and yanked back, his lips parted. He tasted the iron in his mouth. Spit pooled in it but he couldn't swallow. He vomited, choking as it oozed back down his throat with nowhere to escape around the bit. His tongue brutalized, both by the bit and the bile. And the clenched hatred. His eyes untamed, savage and unbroken, yearned to be free. Not letting anything – not the pain, not the humiliation, not the self-hatred – into his personal world.
King snapped awake on the green checked futon in his living room, legs akimbo. The cuff of the chains still bit into his waking flesh, where he rubbed his wrists. Lady G sank between his spread legs and nestled her back into him. His arms wrapped around her and she felt a rare moment of being safe. He shifted slightly, but there was no hiding from the erection her very proximity caused. She didn't mind. She rather enjoyed the effect she had on him, if only because she knew he'd never make a move she wasn't comfortable with, no matter how much he burned. She liked that.
The living room of his Breton Court town house doubled as his bedroom. He might as well not have owned the second floor as he never ventured up there. He lived without roots. Sweatshirts, T-shirts, and jeans in their respective piles between where the futon stretched out into a bed and the wall. A large television was on another stand, a tray of burning incense beside it. A small stereo system and a stack of books were the only other furnishings in the room. A basket held folded socks and underwear (which he covered when Lady G was over). An end table held an array of colognes, an odd affectation, as if he were never pleased with his own scent and was constantly in search of his true one.
This was their time, their special time. Away from their friends, away from their family, away from their responsibilities, they carved out this space, this time for them, if only to sit and hold one another. They shared the little things, the secret things and the unspoken things.
"What is it, King?"
"I haven't wanted anything in a long time. Haven't felt…" He didn't know if he could find the words to express that, around her, the pain in his chest ebbed and died. It was dangerous to love anything too much. Better to love just a little bit. How he feared that he might be desperately in love with a woman, little more than a girl, whom he should not risk loving because he couldn't afford to lose her. How he had spent a lifetime shying away whenever he thought he found such a love, but she managed to slip under his radar, his wall, and sneak upon him. He leaned down and whispered. "I don't want to give you up."
"I have no intentions of letting you."
"You're a… I should know better." He couldn't stem the spread of weakness, love, when it came to her. His foolishness made him think fondly of himself. So feeling. So ordinary. So full of the helplessness of love. What was it about her that penetrated his defenses? Her woundedness, her strength, her light, her innocence? She had a bird-like defenselessness, fragile pieces of glass, which was his to protect. And he swelled at the idea of being her champion. In his arms, she came to feel unorphaned. He had grown addicted to their moments together and often bent his schedule to maximize their time together. To live for her, to die for her, to never want to let her go. She was his drug of choice and he planned to ride the high for as long as possible.
"You're a child molester!" She exclaimed in faux shock. He talked to her, really talked to her, not talking down to her. He not only listened to her, but expected intelligence and great things from her. She liked being seen and treated that way, though she wasn't always present with him. Not in any real way. Bereft of a part of her soul, she thought. Stingy with her affections, she guarded a virtue only present in her own mind.
"Don't joke." He touched her face. "You're not just eighteen. You talk and act much older."
"There are no children out here."
"I should have the sense and strength to send you off to find someone your own age. Some simple boy."
"You want to be with me. I want to be with you. Eyes wide open." She thought there was space for her in him. Not love, possession. The longing for her. When she looked at him, the thoughts behind the gaze were distant. He wanted to be pulled into her view. He wanted those eyes, that attention, that hungry intent for himself.
The fine bulges fascinated his fingers as he caressed her neck in body worship. She exposed more of herself to his touch. His breathing deepened. Trailing to her breastbone, without protest, he traced the swell of her breasts. He slipped his hand down her top. Her head nuzzled him. Cupping her full breasts and encircling her nipple with his thumb, he found the edges of her areola and circled it. Even a flick failed to elicit a response. No low moan, no sound of any sort. Only non-protest. It was as if she couldn't feel. She didn't feel the kiss he pressed on her. Her internal elusiveness, preserving part of herself as if by instinct.
He turned her head and kissed her. Hungry and probing, his tongue pushed past her lips. He ran his hands along her belly, pressing his hand along her shirt. He kissed the underside of her neck. Pulling at her jeans, he lowered them. To a tremble, a hint of resistance. He slowed. He turned her onto her belly and tugged at her shirt. Her hand gripped it. He knew her worry. The scars. He held firm to the shirt, determined, until she let go. Her back a filigree of scars, spider webs of raised welts and keloids. He followed each delicate bend with his finger. Then with his mouth. Tender, he kissed her back, each kiss an acceptance of her body, of who she was, of her sum of scars. He lowered his attentions, trailing further down her back.
And she offered no protest.
Two broken lovers poured out their sorrow on one another. Not making love as much as reaching for a life preserver before they drowned in a sea of their own pent-up pain. Theirs was the connection of tragedy, even if they never spoke a word of it.
King laid next to her, watched her the entire night, indifferent to his fatigue. He matched his breathing to hers as to not disturb her. To listen to her more clearly. Anything was better than the silence. Yet even her sleeping form threatened to overwhelm him, fill every part of him.
And he couldn't afford to lose her.
CHAPTER SIX
On the corner of New York Street and Rural Avenue, Outreach Inc. bustled with newfound life and excitement. Not that their old ministry home was a bad place: they had shared space with Neighborhood Fellowship Church, however, the penitentiary-styled refurbished school wasn't quite… "them." It didn't achieve the atmosphere they wanted, unlike the renovated double home they now inhabited. Home being the key word.
Brown furniture and wood shelves filled the olivegreen walls of the great room. A television armed with Nintendo 64, which had been donated: the ministry always a generation or two behind the latest game system.
Wayne
stood in the adjoining dining room which also ran the width of the house yet seemed so much brighter than the great room. Perhaps the sky-blue walls reflected light better. Five teens studied the blank pieces of paper in front of them, as if they contained alien script they struggled to decipher. Baskets of crayons, colored pencils, and markers filled their respective baskets in the center of the table. Wayne's Rottweiler, Kay, lay at their feet, his head on his paws. He lifted his head high enough to loll his tongue over Wayne's outstretched hand. Kay chewed up furniture at home, more out of boredom and loneliness rather than anything malicious, but Wayne didn't have the heart to crate him. Instead, he brought him to Outreach Inc.
"You are making this too hard. Just draw a picture of what you think it means, what it would look like for you, to 'Make It.'" Wayne clapped his hands on the back of Lamont "Rok" Walters.
King's Justice: The Knights of Breton Court, Volume 2 Page 9
