Unexpected Dismounts (39 page)

“Satan? Was that his name, or—”

“That’s what Marcus always call him, but not to his face. He don’t really have much face. Marcus said he got messed up in a shootin’ or somethin’. I don’ know. He knew him before. I didn’t know him then and I don’t wanna know him now.” Zelda shuddered. “That’s all I can do right now, Miss Angel. I’ll do more later, I promise. But Miss Liz say I don’t got to do it all at once.”

“Miss Liz has got it going on,” I said. “We’re good, Zelda. And thank you.”

“What’s the other thing?”

“I’m sorry?”

“The other thing you wanted to aks me. You said there was two things.”

I let go of her hands and wiped mine on my shorts. “I just need to know if you’ll help Ophelia.”

“That girl got raped?” Zelda said.

“Yeah.”

“You want
me
to help her?”

“I think you can.”

“Why?”

“Because you two have a lot in common.”

Zelda pulled in her chin. “She way more high class than me, Miss Angel. You should be the one to help her.”

“No, see, that I learned from you,” I said.

“Whachoo learn from me?”

“That I’m not the only one who can help. Besides, it’s all God anyway.”

I waited and watched.

“Maybe it is,” she said.

That had to be good enough. For now.

So the only two people I didn’t hear from that day were Kade and Chief.

Chief had left the station with Ulysses and Stan the night before without a word to me. I was left to wonder what things he’d warned me he was going to explain to me. Maybe I didn’t want to know. Maybe I never would.

As for Kade, he’d disappeared after he was questioned about Troy. I didn’t ask anyone else about him or Chief. I was too afraid of the answers, and God’s only input was the empty ache that made it hard to get out of the chair after Zelda left.

I realized as I sat there that I hadn’t opened the envelope from Ms. Willa. If the check was enough for at least a down payment on the second house, that would be a good thing, yes, God?

But there was only a letter folded into the envelope, written in Ms. Willa’s own hand, by the looks of it. There weren’t that many flourishes at the bottom of the Declaration of Independence.
Dear Spunky Allison
, she’d written.

I’ve thought long and hard about this. Every time I’ve come to a decision about what I wanted to donate for your young women, and why I wanted to do it, you’ve given me a shake and I’ve had to rethink. At my age, you can’t count on waking up for another day of thinking, so my decision is now final. I will not be giving you money for a house.

I tried not to feel like I’d just been blindsided by a buffalo, and then decided I had a right to. How many times had this woman invited me in for tea and a donation and sent me home empty-handed? And I was rattling
her
cage? I almost crumpled the paper. Except that there was the whole business of her saving my life. And Desmond’s.

Yeah. She’d given me enough.

So I went back to the page for the sign-off. But there was more.

I’ve taken your policy to heart, and I agree that these women need to do the work of getting back on their feet themselves. Here is what I propose. I will purchase a building on St. George Street that is currently owned, and just barely, by some old friends of mine. They call it the Monk’s Vineyard or some such nonsense. I told them years ago it would never fly. You and your women can start a business there, perhaps two, one upstairs, one down. I’ll provide you with the capital for the first five years. I trust by then you’ll have everybody off the streets.

I look forward to watching this grow, Spunky Allison. I’ll expect you for tea weekly.

She signed it,
Yours very truly, Willa Renfroe Livengood
.

At least I thought that was how she signed it. I couldn’t see it through the blur.

“You cryin’, Big Al?”

I looked up at Desmond. He had put on clean jeans and a T-shirt with no writing on it and a plain metal cross on a leather cord I had never seen before.

“Where did you get that?” I said.

“Mr. Chief gave it to me,” he said.

“When?”

“That day we was washin’ everybody’s feet.”

“O-kay,” I said. “Did he tell you why?”

“Yes.”

“Any particular reason why I haven’t seen you wear it before?”

He couldn’t quite contain a small smile. “You gotta wait to hear that, Big Al. You and Mr. Chief are gonna be sur
prised.”

I closed my eyes and massaged my temples. “Listen, Des, I haven’t heard from Chief today. I don’t know if he’s coming. I mean, he doesn’t even know you decided to be baptized.”

“’Course he does. I called him.” Desmond let the smile go all the way across his face. “He tol’ me he wouldn’t miss it for nothin’.”

I blamed my shakiness on the broken ribs and the torn leg and the crutches I had to hobble out on when Owen escorted us to his car to drive us to Sacrament House. In truth, every wobble and quiver came from the wavering between dreading and hoping.

“Ally, I think you need to retire that motorcycle. You’re like a poodle on a circus bike with that thing. You’re like—”

“Owen,” I said, “stop. Seriously. Just stop.”

He didn’t look at all offended. In fact he smiled like the proverbial canary-swallowing cat as he settled me in the backseat with my crutches and checked Desmond’s seat belt three times in the front before Desmond said, “If it get any tighter Imma choke, Mr. Schatzie.”

When we pulled out of Palm Row, Owen was still beaming at me in the rearview mirror.

“All right, I give up,” I said. “Give me the rest of the metaphors. I can handle it.”

“Metaphors? No, I’m smiling because I bought something today.”

“You gettin’ a Harley, Mr. Schatzie?” Desmond said. “Cool, dude! You got to let me pick out the color. You got to get you one of them hot paint jobs—”

“Des,” I said. “Mr. Schatz isn’t buying a Harley. You’re
not,
are you?” Come to think of it, the man would do just about anything for Desmond.

“No. I bought a house.”

“What’s wrong with the one you got?” Desmond said. I saw his head extend over the top of the seat. “You ain’t movin’? Mr. Schatzie, you can’t be movin’, now.”

“It’s a second house,” Owen said with exaggerated patience. “In fact, that’s what I think it should be called: the Second Sacrament House.”

“I don’t get it,” Desmond said.

“Owen?” I said.

“I had breakfast with Bonner Bailey this morning and made him my offer. I buy the house and donate it to your ministry you have going, and you don’t sell your house.” Owen pulled up to the light at St. George and King and flashed his dentures again into the rearview. “He thought you’d agree to that.”

“Oh, Owen …”

“You think that’s a yes?” he said to Desmond.

“I think that’s a ‘I’m fixin’ to cry so don’t ask me no more questions till I get myself back together.’ And then she usually say yes after that.”

“Well, that’s a good thing, because we’re headed for that new house right now.”

“What about my baptism?” Desmond said.

“Like I said, that’s where we’re headed.”

When we turned onto San Luis, cars lined the street on both sides. Owen drove all the way down to the other end of the block before he concluded there were no more parking places.

“I’ll turn around and drop you off,” he said as he pulled into the deserted construction site on the corner. “Then I’ll see if I can’t find a space over on—”

I didn’t hear the rest of his plan. A figure had caught my eye, someone standing beneath the skeletal framework of a building yet to be, hands in his pockets.

“Let me out here, Owen,” I said.

He stopped the car and looked at me yet again in the rearview mirror. “I’m not going to have you going all the way down this street on crutches.”

“You can wait for me, then,” I said. “There’s somebody I need to talk to.”

I refused his attempt to help me out and got the crutches untangled and under my arms. I heard him back the car out as I swung my way to Garry Howard.

He didn’t look up until I had almost reached him. A shock of white hair fell over his forehead, but it didn’t conceal the deep lines in his brow. I’d never seen the Reverend look unkempt and vulnerable. I almost wished I’d cleared my throat to give him a chance to recover his dignity. That must be why Bonner always did it.

“Are you here to say I told you so?” he said.

“No,” I said. “I’m just … here.”

He gave me a frail glance and returned his gaze to the half-framed structure. “I had a vision,” he said.

“I know about those.”

“Not just for the school. For Troy.”

“I’m sorry?” I said.

“I always thought I could get through to him somehow, help him be a better man. He did so much for us, I thought I could do that for him. I knew he had his flaws, but I thought I saw good.” The Reverend Garry bowed his head. “Foolish,” he said.

“I can tell you that there was good, once,” I said. “But evil cut to the root of the good somewhere along the line, and the flaw became tragic.”

“You were wiser than I was.”

“I didn’t come up with that. Anything remotely coherent that comes out of me is all God.”

I waited for the frown. The Bible quote. The insistence that if I would only come to church, I could be healed of such blasphemy.

He only gazed up again. I could feel the hurt etched in the long creases of his face.

“I don’t know what to tell my church,” he said. “They had such high hopes.”

“Tell them you feel God’s pain for Troy.”

He looked at me, startled.

“As long as we can still feel God’s pain,” I said, “there’s still hope for the church.”

“Big Al!”

I looked behind me at Desmond, who was hanging halfway out of the car window.

“I got to go get
bap
tized!”

“There’s still hope, Garry,” I whispered.

I left him staring at his broken vision.

It wasn’t until Owen dropped us off in front of Sacrament House that I saw everyone was gathered not there, but across the street. Old Maharry Nelson, Bonner and Liz, India and Hank, Nita and Leighanne, and the man-HOGs in leathers had formed a circle on the front lawn. Ophelia sat willowy and quiet on a lawn chair. Zelda was beside her, looking awkward and dutiful. Hank was there too, whisking Desmond into the house that I could only stare at.

Blossoms of freesia and pinks festooned the porch railings and trailed down either side of the front path as if they’d been dropped there by frolicking flower girls. The late afternoon light made pink shafts across the communion table on the porch and cast the long playful shadows of my family on the grass.

“Hobble on over here, Al,” Hank said from the steps. “A little help, yes?”

“You don’t have to carry me,” I said to the platoon of HOGs who mobilized outside the car. “Seriously, guys.”

There was no stopping them. I was all but CareFlighted up the drive and inserted into a lounge chair. When they stepped away, I saw the pond.

Someone had scrubbed the slimy green into smooth white stone; that action had Mercedes’s MO all over it. Fungus-less water, rosy with sunset, filled the pond to its flower-lined brim, and beside it—a Tupperware pitcher, and a neatly folded pile of Harley-Davidson beach towels.

“Oh, my loves, a footwashing,” I said.

“No, Miss Angel,” India said. “A baptism.”

She nodded toward the front door, where four figures emerged, each in a black swimsuit that covered her cleavage and her midriff and every other part of her she had once shared with whoever would pay to touch it.

Mercedes, stately as a queen.

Jasmine, eyes lustrous, without a tear in sight.

Sherry, milky white. Pure.

And Desmond. Clad in black swim trunks and T-shirt and the cross Chief had given him, shed of the swagger and the fist bumps, but fully clothed in the shine of his latte skin.

From his black mama. And his white one.

The Sisters and their Brother knelt around the pond. Hank stood in it, shin deep, and invited each in her turn to join her. Each set herself on her knees in the water and bowed her head, while Hank poured from the pitcher, in the name of the Father. And of the Son. And of the Holy Spirit, whose presence whispered in the water and the light and the very air we breathed.