The Everborn (21 page)

Jacob Bradshaw resided with his wife Ellen and three sons, not including one particular daughter, across the church parking lot diagonally from the sanctuary, sharing a duplex with his fourth and eldest son, Jacob Bradshaw Jr., whose wife had recently given birth to twins.

If one were to venture deep within the hearts of each member of the Bradshaw clan, saunter straight right smack forward past their pasty-white English Anglo-Saxon identities and along the straight-and-narrow ramparts of their souls, one would come across an inspiringly wide breadth of space in which dwelled the simple yet earnest philosophies of their hearts. These were good people, the Bradshaws. And unlike the lords of the stereotypic evangelical world, a world, which they loved and prayed for but could not respect, the clan never bit off more than their fair share of offerings and contributions. To make a full and honest living, the Bradshaws owned a reputable landscaping business which also provided a place of employment for homeless bodies willing to work.

If homeless bodies were not willing to work but proven nevertheless capable of doing so, they would soon find themselves to be homeless bodies back on the streets and it would be their own damn fault. The Bradshaw philosophy was both simplistic and unclouded: they shared the deeply pervading responsibility of tending to the needs of the poor, and as long as they reached out in doing so, their ambitions were appeased. But in accepting the Bradshaws’ helping hands, the poor shared a responsibility also, the responsibility of catching a firm grip and lifting themselves up and into new and stable lives. It went beyond the old saying that
God helps those who help themselves
. It went more on the lines of God
helps those who need His help, but limits help for those who abuse it.

The
Church on the Rock’s
example of servanthood and devotion to God and to neighbor had spawned an aura of foremost reputation, drawing members from as far as Burbank and the San Fernando Valley. Food and shelter was abundant and in heightened spirituality there was even more profound a wealth. Through experience and conviction, the Bradshaws were convinced that a relationship with God proved a deterrent against irresponsibility, homelessness, drug abuse, teenage pregnancy, and even illness. There was something about the power in the goodness that hid behind the traditional scheme of things and although the Bible was by all means a source of explanation, the power itself was admittedly a mystery not entirely solved.

Then again, a good thing going should not be questioned too much, once it
gets
going.

As for bad things....

...they are
another
story.

***

The last several years had seen the wretch of a man who now called himself Scratch as a mere street vagrant, a vagabond of sorts, a fellow American who’s down on his luck and would like to borrow a few quarters for a cup o’ coffee. Everything before this, even to
himself
, was nestled under the umbrella of enigma and uncertainty. This past was something he cared to share with
no one;
he was not the kind of person loose-lipped over
what kind
of a person he was and the past had a great deal to do with all that. He was introverted and secretive. He always
had
been.

There was a certain section of the sanctuary building, an extension of what had been the auto center, constructed along the flank opposite the parking lot and facing the street. This extension was composed of two floors and a storage attic. The first floor served merely as an expansion for the sanctuary, a necessity evoked by a thriving service attendance rate. The floor above occasionally provided sufficient space for choir practice, particularly when the sanctuary was occupied by other interests, such as rental space for Korean Baptist services. This room was otherwise used as storage space.

The attic was structured by the same basic dimensions as its lower predecessors, with the exception of the fact that it was half the size. The inner stairway situated at the sanctuary’s rear led clear through to the second floor and then ended at the door of the third. The only other access to the third floor attic was from the outside, a white-rock backyard of rooftop terrain, of aluminum air vents and a caucus of telephone cable hookups, laid flat between the deactivated rear emergency exit door and an opposing steel fire escape ladder scaling the building’s side.

Hazy afternoon sunlight filtered into the bowels of what had been once the church storeroom, beams stretching to join with the brownish tile floor like the ground ropes of a carnival tent. Each of the four solitary window panes hung at the side wall facing the street, projecting rain-speckled images at oblong angles. Outside, the morning showers had ceased; inside, showers of a dismal nature, a dark and silent nature, issued incessantly into the dreary ambience.

Scratch, nude and slumped, contorted by shadow, welcomed the ambience, thrived in it...had fashioned it, tamed it, bathed in it. The dim lucidity of an overhead light bulb dangled in the open air between him and the rectangular mirror. Strands of spider web clung from the bulb and neighboring chain, casting a shady network of disjointed lines across the grim features of his face, and upon his neck and shoulders.

There was a spider there and it caught Scratch’s attention. It had caught his attention a while ago and he was still trapped within its awe and spectacle, as though it were nestled there just for him.

That spider....
he thought
.../I’m like that spider. That spider...a black widow...I’m like it...I’m a black widow. Only in reverse. I’m the male, not the female. The king, not the queen. For me, there is no queen. There never has been. There never will be. Bradshaw’s daughter is my whore. She’s using herself for me. And I’m using myself for her. I have to, because I’m a black widow...it’s in my nature...it’s in my destiny, my right to live...my right to live free again, my right to live whole again. And her right has been given to me, because I am special
.

***

Each Sunday, the former auto center garage was filled to maximum capacity with more varieties of humanity than the varieties of vegetables in a victory garden and
The Crow Job
combined. The music...the
music
of the
Rock
...was like every soul was in harmony and together with the vibrant preaching, the
passionate
preaching, the loud and radiant verbs and commands, the rich organ and vibrant soul of the piano, and even the saxophone...the scene was almost like a backwoods gospel extravaganza.

In the farthest row to the rear on the left side facing the pulpit, where the padded plastic seats dwindled to metal multi-colored folding chairs, the hunched and bearded figure of Scratch had wedged himself between a young black woman miserably attempting to hush her Power Rangers-studded infant to sleep and a leather-clad pimply-faced teen. In joining the congregation in a jazzy rendition of
When The Roll Is Called Up Yonder
, Scratch found himself wishing to hear more of the infant rather than the music, completely contrary to the other fellow souls around him. Whereas other people became profoundly annoyed, Scratch took a certain delight in the infant’s screams.

At least someone else is in misery besides me, being here
, he thought.

And oh, how he loved the screams.

But the infant had ceased as the woman began to sway the child to the beat of the music, slowly to its rhythm, slowly to its rhythm, slowly to the music’s own mesmerism. The child was soon busily sucking the tips of its fingers, amused eyes directed towards a threesome of skinheads over and beyond his mother’s shoulders, passers-by pausing to take a lengthy peek at the scene.

Scratch then reverted his attentions back to the front.

At the front of the church, several chairs sat in a half circle to provide seats for the clergy Jacob. Behind these chairs were two dozen more, taken by choir members clad in gowns of tan and red, hand-me-down gowns donated by a church in a neighboring city.

In the midst of praise and worship, Scratch suddenly spied one of the ushers, an older black man garbed in a rather tacky thin yellow jacket, hastening through a crowded aisle towards the front, where the clergy sat facing the congregation. Scratch swung his view towards the rear, in the direction where the man had emerged, at the far left entrance. A uniformed policeman stood momentarily in the center of the opened doorway before he disappeared outside. Curious heads darted from the doorway to the usher as Mr. Yellowjacket quickened his anxious speed, conscious of the attention drawn and slowing awkwardly because of this, fearful to alarm anyone. Clearly, he was doing a bad job of
that
. He arrived at the chair of Pastor Jacob, knelt and whispered into his ear.

The whispered words of Mr. Yellowjacket were few and to Scratch it seemed as if the pastor was spared the gory details of the news itself of the apparent discovery that morning. Pastor Jacob was escorted towards the rear church entrance, where the awaiting officer reappeared and then disappeared with Mr. Yellowjacket and the pastor out into the cloudy Sunday morning air.

How nice, how delightful
, Scratch mused, and like Mr. Yellowjacket, the congregation turned to one another, whispered into the ears of one and then the other.
How
reeeeally
delightful that events should all come down this morning, right smack in the middle of Sunday morning service. They could’ve come down yesterday, but they didn’t. They came down today. They came down
now
.

Scratch knew what was coming down
.

And he smiled a razor-scared, bearded smile.

***

Later in the service, the assemblage of taciturn worshippers listened with distress and disbelief as their associate pastor, a pasty white man with a tacky thin black jacket, released the news of the calamity: Pastor Bradshaw’s daughter, twenty-one-year-old Alice, had left for an evening out with her boyfriend Friday night and hadn’t returned since. She was by now officially declared missing, leaving only her boyfriend’s blood-ragged body behind in a motel room several cities away.

The thing that Mr. Blackjacket failed to mention, or rather, what the authorities had failed to mention to him, apparently, was that the boyfriend’s eyes were missing. Scratch had hoped in the announcement that he would include the eyes. He longed to hear about the eyes. He craved to feed the anticipation of the congregation’s reaction to the eyes.

Oh, well. No goddamn big surprise.

***

After the service, alone in the church attic...

...well,
almost
alone....

He continued to stare in the rectangular wall mirror at his rough nakedness beneath the dim web of light, into his own eyes and beyond. His self-inflicted scars trailing his face and brow, creating blackened furrows beneath his growth of beard, were now absent in his mind’s eye. In his mind’s eye, he was a newborn baby, readying to emerge into the world once more, to emerge anew. His ambitions, his dreams, his realities of what was meant to be swelled from within his soul and they had done so since he was revealed the mysterious secret of who he was and what he was supposed to do to be who he was.

Ever since a handful of days ago...

...when he woke from a deep sleep and his typewriter spoke to him.

He never had been much of a writer at all, although the desire to write had swept over him time and time again; he was always into
other
things, his typewriter had been old and dusty, had been that way for a very long time.

But that all changed not long after the little black boy had come along for the last time, for the last of several dozen times, had come to haunt him, to taunt him, and about a week ago he had taunted and haunted his last. Scratch never dreamed he would catch him, would put him out of his own wretched misery, but he had. And it was not long afterward when his typewriter came to life, after never having been used for so many years...it came to life, it spoke to him, and gave him the gift of a script, a guideline for the present, the past, and the future, however inconsistent and incomplete.

Yet it
was
complete, in a way, despite its many missing pages and deletions. It was complete, because after he managed the black boy’s death,
finally
the boy’s death, it arrived not long afterwards. It was like the boy’s death was the end of a long haul and the script was a magical trophy, a revelation on paper, in black and white.

And it told him what was going to happen. It made him know what he was supposed to do. It opened his eyes to things meant to be. To the rebirth.

He had always been a disillusioned madman of sorts, confused in a bitter world, never knowing his real father, barely knowing his real mother, unless infancy counted for anything, with the exception of a later nocturnal visit or two....

It was a nocturnal visit that changed his life when, long ago in his infancy, the Unhuman Thing took him away from his mother, out into the dead of night, out into an identity that never was supposed to be.

Oh, but it was supposed to be, now, wasn’t it? When I killed the little ghost-boy, and the typewriter spoke, that
proves
it was supposed to be, young Alice
proves
it was supposed to be, after
all.

Despite the sins the Unknown Thing imposed upon him throughout his life, despite the burdens and agonies of broken realities and self-inflicted wounds, self-inflicted both on others and on his own person, on his body...