10

Outside the window a truck gunned its engine in sync with the out-of-tune morning chimes from St. Michael’s blocks away. In fifteen minutes Garnet would be late for work. She had awakened late after a restless night, and judging from a peek at the living room couch, Thomas hadn’t awakened at all.

She imagined his night had been restless, too. Their celebration dinner had lasted into the wee hours. She had borne the greater part of the conversation, but he had relaxed as the evening wore on. She knew how painful his revelations had been, but she believed—or hoped—that it had helped him a little to tell her about Patricia.

It had helped her. She paused in the middle of twisting her hair on top of her head and examined the face staring back at her. She had been so wrong about his first marriage. Thomas did not look at her and wish she was Patricia; he did not even want her to be like Patricia. He had loved his wife—his sorrow would not be as profound if he hadn’t— but she didn’t think he wished for marriage to someone like Patricia again. He needed a woman who would stand up to him, who would insist that she be included in his life. Ironically, when Patricia had finally rebelled, she had died.

The face of a brash, worldly-wise woman stared at Garnet, but this morning she could see more than the obvious. The woman in the mirror had blamed Thomas’s rejection on herself. She had believed herself to be the cause of Thomas’s impotence. He had not wanted to make love to her because she had failed, just as she often had, to be good enough, bright enough, attractive enough.

The worthless teenager who had turned to drugs and alcohol, to absences from school and unprotected sex, stared at her. Garnet knew she had come a long way in the intervening years, but apparently she had not come far enough. She could still let her own perceived inadequacies drag her down. She could still blame herself for things that were not her fault.

“So grow up already,” she said, turning away from the mirror.

In the living room she noted that Thomas slept on. Finn had called almost half an hour earlier to tell her that he wouldn’t be able to walk her to work. He was ill and furious at his body for forcing him to take the day off. She had promised him she would let Thomas accompany her. But Thomas had never gotten up, and she wasn’t about to wake him. Not when he seemed to be sleeping so peacefully.

His arm was thrown over one stubbly cheek. The covers were twisted around his hips, and his pajama shirt was unbuttoned. She studied him, but not dispassionately. Naming what she felt when she looked at Thomas wasn’t easy. Desire wasn’t broad enough. Love was too frightening. Yearning? Well, perhaps that was closest.

She yearned to be held in his arms. They were strong arms, arms that could hold back the world as well as embrace it. She yearned for the intimacy of passionate nights and lazy, sensuous mornings.

Thomas was all man, yet he claimed not to be able to consummate their marriage. What secrets were still locked away inside him?

They were married. Husband and wife. But she had never seen him without his clothes. She let her gaze rest on him for another moment; she knew if he awoke, he would see longing in her eyes.

Thomas slept on as she finally closed the door quietly behind her. She left the building through the church, although there was another exit. She supposed it was silly, but she wanted to see if the room had changed somehow after yesterday’s triumph. The impact of Dorothy’s funeral would be felt in the Corners for weeks to come. She wondered if success lingered in the very rows where the two gangs had sat.

The church didn’t look any different, but Garnet walked through it and felt different. She felt hopeful, a luxury she had carefully schooled herself against in days past. She worked hard to change things, but she rarely let herself believe that things could change on the most basic level. Believing was too painful. Now she was close to believing anyway.

She locked the front door behind her, instinctively scanning the street before she turned the lock one last notch. She planned to take precautions, but this morning she wasn’t really worried about her safety. There had been no trouble on her walks with Finn. And she hoped, after yesterday, the MidKnights and the Coroners had better things to think about than harassing her.

There were cars passing, it was nearing rush hour. But there was no one on the street who looked as if he didn’t belong there.

She started down the steps. It was a rare, crisp November morning. Yesterday’s drizzle had stopped, and the sun was peeking between the units of Wilford Heights. No one was sleeping in Kensington Park. She could almost pretend that all the city’s homeless had been taken care of for the night at the Kensington Hotel and places like it.

She said good morning to a grandmother with a stroller and shoo to a neighborhood dog who had nothing better to do at that hour than follow her to the clinic.

She had almost reached the end of the block when a car on the opposite side of the street caught her eye.

There was nothing particularly noteworthy about it. It was a dark gray sedan with rusting chrome and one rear side window held together with duct tape. There were plenty of beat-up cars in the Corners, and usually she didn’t think twice when she saw one.

But this one caught her eye. Maybe she was jumpier than she’d thought because Finn wasn’t with her, or maybe her instincts were just finely tuned after years of inner city life. Whatever the reason, she let herself examine the car as it passed. The windshield and the window on the driver’s side were both tinted for privacy, She could hardly tell anyone was inside, much less discern anything about them. There was only a little traffic on the street that morning, and it was speeding by. But the car in question moved slowly, as if its occupant or occupants were scanning the street—or the sidewalk.

Garnet looked for a place to take cover. She didn’t expect to have to use it. She imagined the driver of the sedan was looking for an address, maybe even for the dog, who had found refuge on a stoop half a block behind her. But one night in a parking lot had taught her to heed warnings. True, the Coroners and the MidKnights had sat like choirboys at Dorothy’s funeral and even teamed up to carry her coffin. But they were the same young men who normally carried weapons and roamed the streets looking for trouble.

There was a doorway up ahead, with a low wall jutting forward in an L shape to shield the entrance. From experience she was sure that the space would be crammed with garbage cans, but there had to be room for one slender female body. She moved faster, keeping her eye on the car as she did. By the time she reached the wall, the car was well past her. She hesitated, turning to see if there was any reason to wait, but the car had apparently rounded the corner and was now out of sight.

She kept watch for the next block, but the car didn’t return. Nothing else seemed out of the ordinary. Just yards from the clinic she had relaxed her guard when tires squealed behind her and a car turned onto the street from a narrow alleyway. She caught a flash of red, of a window spider webbed in silver, of the muzzle of a gun tied with a red bandanna, just before glass exploded outward and a volley of shots disturbed the pleasant sounds of morning.

“She’s all right. All right, Thomas! Are you listening? One of the bullets grazed her shoulder, but that’s it. Even with an automatic, these guys couldn’t aim.”

“Automatic?” Thomas gripped the telephone receiver harder.

There was silence as Tex seemed to realize that sometimes not being one hundred percent truthful was kindest. “Look, whoever shot her was serious. We know that much. But he was also a lousy shot. Garnet’s fine. Furious, but fine.”

“Where was Finn?”

“He called this morning and told her he couldn’t take her to work. He picked up some bug and he’s home in bed. He told her to... get somebody else to walk with her.”

Thomas banged his fist on the telephone table. “He told her to get me, right?”

“She didn’t want to wake you.”

There were a few choice names for a woman who behaved like Garnet. Mentally Thomas went through them all.

“One more thing,” Tex said. “She says the car was gray. And just before they started to shoot, she saw a red bandanna tied to the gun.”

“When will she be ready to go?”

“They’re cleansing the wound now, but she’ll be able to go in an hour or so, just as soon as the police are finished taking her statement. Do you want to come and get her, or do you want me to drop her off?”

Thomas hung up after assuring Tex that he would be by to pick up Garnet himself.

He had one hour. He could go and make a fool of himself at Garnet’s bedside, or he could find Andre. The choice seemed simple. Perhaps Garnet had seen a red bandanna, but it wasn’t the Coroners who were angry at her. She had helped Francis, one of their own, when she had delivered Candy’s baby. Unless they were trying to confuse this issue for purposes he didn’t understand, there was only one explanation for what she had seen. The MidKnights wanted to throw suspicion on the Coroners. And they had done it by false flagging, by showing Coroners red when they shot at Garnet.

She could have been killed. He found himself in the chair beside the telephone table. Shock washed over him. She could have been killed. Yesterday’s truce in the war between the Coroners and the MidKnights had lasted only a few hours. Now it was in full swing again, and Garnet was still a target.

She could have been killed, and he could have been left with nothing. Until that moment he hadn’t realized how much she filled his life. She was light and warmth. He had married her to protect her, but she had never needed him the way he needed her. His contribution to her life was debatable. Despite their marriage, she had almost died today. But her contribution to his life was so far-reaching that he couldn’t even see an end to it.

Except the ending that would come when she left him.

He found Andre in a boarded-up house the city had promised to tear down ten months before. When they needed a private place to gather, kids in Deering Hills got keys to their parents’ summer cottages. MidKnights had no keys or cottages, nor did they need them. They had made this house theirs, despite numerous complaints to the authorities. The outside walls were sprayed with graffiti to warn away strangers. When the city finally got around to tearing down the house, the block would become a battlefield.

Thomas took the steps to the porch two at a time. The door rattled under the assault of his fist. There were two shorties lounging on the porch throwing signs at each other. They were the youngest of gang members, no older than thirteen, and the elaborate hand signs that proclaimed their membership in the MidKnights looked like the slapping, clapping games of another more innocent generation.

“Hey, you can’t go in there,” one of the boys said when Thomas shoved the door open.

“You’re supposed to be in school,” Thomas said. “Get going.”

“Yeah?” One of the kids stood. He didn’t stretch to Thomas’s shoulder. Thomas stared at him. The kid rested his hands on his hips, but he didn’t meet Thomas’s eyes.

“Why aren’t you at school?” Thomas asked.

“‘Cause I don’t like them teachers at the middle school.”

“Why not?”

“They be saying the Knights are bad.”

“If you don’t show up, they’ll think the Knights made you stay away.”

The kid cursed like a pro. “I don’t gotta listen to you.”

Thomas stared at him. “I think I know your grandmother,” he said at last.

The kid squirmed.

“In fact, I know I do,” Thomas said. “Letitia Whitney. Right?”

“So?”

“So, when I leave here, I’m going to give Letitia a call and tell her we had this talk.”

“So?” The kid cursed and squirmed some more, scuffing his toe against the porch.

“So maybe if you leave right now you won’t be more than an hour late for classes. Letitia doesn’t have to know about our chat.”

The other kid stood. “Don’t let him—”

“And you’re Annie Wade’s kid, aren’t you?” Thomas asked.

The two boys scurried off the porch. There was no guarantee they were going to school, but at least they started in the right direction.

“I’m going to call the attendance office this afternoon,” Thomas shouted after them. They walked faster.

“What you doing here?”

Thomas turned to find Andre in the doorway. His hair was in neat cornrows that hung halfway to his shoulders. Thomas was struck with the young man’s proud male beauty. With his fierce dark eyes and mahogany skin, he looked like an African deity. He never should have had to fight the battles of urban America. His fitness for other things, for anything he chose, had never seemed more apparent.

“Garnet was nearly killed today. By a bullet from a Knight's gun. Or am I boring you with old news?”

Andre lounged in the doorway, smoking a cigarette. Behind him, Thomas could see movement. Andre was not alone. Thomas didn’t care.

“I heard,” Andre said.

“You heard right.”

“What makes you think it was us who done it?”

“There was no reason for anyone else to do it and pretend it was one of the Coroners.”

“Maybe it was them.”

Thomas fought to read Andre’s expression. He knew that the most important communication would not happen with words. There was only so much that Andre could say. But his eyes spoke volumes.

“I don’t think so,” Thomas said. “And you don’t, either.”

Andre shrugged.

“You didn’t plan it, did you?” Thomas asked.

Andre shrugged again.

“So who did? And don’t shrug again, damn it. You’re upset about it, too.”

“I don’t know.”

Thomas was silent, assessing Andre’s answer. Then he nodded. “Okay.”

“She’s not supposed to get hurt.”

Thomas was surprised Andre had admitted that much. “No?”

Andre tossed the butt of his cigarette into the bushes beyond the porch. “That's what I said.”

“Well, she was.”

“Yeah. And I don’t like somebody busting a cap like that without my say so.”

“Can you find out who it was?”

Andre’s head barely moved, but Thomas took it as a sign. “The police should be told,” Thomas said.

“Cops?” Andre snorted. “We take care of our own business, Padre.”

“It’s not your business to take care of. There are courts and higher justice.”

Andre folded his arms. “Higher justice? Like your God, maybe?”

Thomas didn’t answer.

“You don’t say much about God,” Andre said. “I hear you talk a lot, but I don’t hear you talking about God. You believe in God, Padre? Or just in trying to pretty up the Corners?”

It didn’t surprise Thomas that Andre had picked up on his greatest failing. The young gang leader was highly intelligent, and years of life in the Corners had taught him to pick out anyone’s weakness and twist it to his advantage. He had survived, even risen to be a leader, by his abilities.

“I believed with all my heart until a few years ago,” Thomas said. “Then my wife was murdered, and I didn’t believe anything anymore.”

“What kind of preacher can you be?”

“The honest kind. The kind who doesn’t pretend the world’s filled with easy answers.”

“You walking and talking a lie.”

Thomas looked past the young man’s ridicule. “You understand what I’m talking about,” he said. “You’re a lot like me. You’d like to believe, too. You’ve seen things in your life that make it hard. You’ve done things you’re ashamed of.”

“I’m not ashamed of nothing.”

“You’re a better person than you believe you are.”

“You don’t know nothing about it.”

“I think I do.”

“You can leave now.”

Thomas nodded. “Whoever shot at Garnet should go before a court of law. Will you think about that?”

Andre didn’t answer. Thomas wondered how much of what he had said had fallen on deaf ears. He hoped none of it. He felt a strong kinship with the young man. He and this product of the Corners streets had a lot in common.

“Tell me you’re done,” Garnet said. The policeman who had come to the emergency room to get her statement was Finn’s partner, Jake.

Jake, who had the dark good looks of a television cop, grinned. “Just about.”

“I lost blood today, pal. I’ve got to go eat a hamburger or something.”

“Yeah, right. I’ve lost more blood shaving.”

“Well, go nick yourself again and leave me in peace.”

“Just one more question about the gun you say you saw.”

“Say I saw? If you don’t believe there was a gun, go pry a dozen bullets out of the wall of the discount store!”

“Garnet, Garnet.” Jake shook his head. They were old friends. Tex and Finn had tried repeatedly to match them up, but Garnet had never had the urge to be hooked to a cop. Nor, of course, had she ever had the urge to marry a minister.

She looked up, and the minister himself was standing in the doorway. He looked surprisingly the worse for wear. “Don’t come in,” she said. “Not if you’re going to read me the riot act, Thomas. I’ve been through enough.”

“Are you really all right?”

She could have drowned in the emotion in his eyes. She stood on unsteady legs. “Fine. Really.”

He crossed the room and enfolded her in his arms. He didn’t care that a cop was looking on. He needed to hold her to be sure she was really all right. She seemed to melt against him. The sensation was delicious. She was pliable, boneless.

She was unconscious.

“Damn.” Thomas lifted a sagging Garnet in his arms and carried her to a gurney in the corner. “Get a nurse,” he told Jake. “What are you doing questioning her when she’s in this shape?”

Jake got up. “She seemed fine. She insisted.”

“She would have.” Thomas rubbed Garnet’s hands as Jake left. After a minute her eyes opened.

She looked at him for a long time, as if she was piecing together this final chapter of her morning drama. “I can’t believe I did that,” she said at last.

“Garnet, you’re going to stay here overnight so they can keep an eye on you. I’m going to insist!”

“Not a chance. It’s a reaction. That’s all.”

Thomas looked up to see Tex in the doorway, with Jake right behind her. “She fainted,” he said.

“She’s been through a tough time. It’s probably just starting to hit her.”

“She needs to stay here overnight.”

“They’ve got people sleeping in hallways here. I think she’d be better off somewhere else, someplace where she could get some rest.”

Thomas realized there was wisdom in Tex’s words. He looked at Garnet. Her eyes were closed, and she looked very pale. He thought of their war zone apartment and discarded that possibility immediately. “I know a place,” he said finally.

“Hawaii?” Garnet asked. “Bermuda?”

“Close. Are you up to a short trip?”

She opened her eyes, and surprisingly, they filled with tears. “I would like to get out of here for a while,” she said softly.

He pushed her hair off her forehead. Until that moment he hadn’t even realized his hand was trembling.

Thomas’s marriage to Patricia Collins had been celebrated before five hundred family members and friends. Their wedding gift from her father the bishop had been a small cottage on a lake just three hours from Deering Hills. Before the wedding he had warned them of the need for a minister’s family to get away from time to time. Owning the cottage gave them few excuses not to.

Thomas had used every one of those few excuses over and over again.

Now, as he pulled onto the gravel road that led to the lake he tried not to remember the times he had refused to come here. The cottage had been too far away. He had been too busy, too invaluable, too obsessed with his own importance. Finally they had found a renter, with the intention of using the rental income for occasional nights out together. Those nights had been few and far between, too.

“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” Garnet asked.

He debated not telling the truth, but even to be tactful, he couldn’t lie. “There’s a lake up ahead. The house we’ll stay in belongs to Patricia’s father now, but it used to be Patricia’s and mine when we were married. I gave it back to the bishop after Patricia died. He only took it on the condition that I would come here whenever I wanted.”

“Did you come here often with her?”

“Almost never.”

“And since?”

“Not at all.”

He slowed to a standstill. The brush beside the road ahead, rustled visibly. As they watched, two deer, a stag and a doe crossed in front of them.

Garnet put her hand on Thomas’s arm and held her breath. The deer took their time crossing, as if no one had ever mentioned hunting in their presence. “Do you think there are others?” she asked.

“I’ve never been here when I didn’t see deer. Everyone on the lake posts their property. I think the animals sense it.”

“Hey, maybe we should post the Corners.” She smiled, to let him know she was teasing. “This is wonderful.”

She still looked pale, but the stress had seemed to disappear from her face with each mile they traveled. Thomas covered her hand with his. The deer passed from view, but the oaks and poplars lining the road swayed in the breeze against a brilliant blue sky. “Winter comes earlier here than it does in the Corners. We might see snow.”

“Snow that hasn’t already turned to slush.” Suddenly she yearned for it. “There was a park across from the hospital where I took my training. I used to get up early on mornings when there’d been snow just to go over and look at it before everyone trampled it.” She looked at him, embarrassed to have revealed something so sentimental. “That probably sounds silly.”

“It sounds like you.”

“No, too sappy.”

“You’re gifted at extracting beauty from little things.”

She tossed her head. “Well, if you don’t extract it from little things, you might not find any at all. There aren’t too many Taj Mahals in the city.”

He started the car again, and her hand fell to her side. He didn’t want the moment of intimacy to end. He smiled at her. “There aren’t any Taj Mahals here, either, but the sunsets are spectacular.”

She felt as if he had filled all the bitterly cold places inside her with sunlight. “I wish you’d smile more often,” she said. “It does funny things to me.”

“I’ll smile nonstop for the next few days.”

“Few days? We can’t stay a few days. You’ve got a church, and I’ve got a clinic.”

“Tex is taking care of Mother and Child. Greg is organizing Sunday’s service without me.”

“What?” She turned, ignoring the rasp of the seat belt against her bandaged shoulder. “Thomas, that’s crazy. Tex can’t function without me. And Greg hasn’t had any experience—”

His smile disappeared. “You are not indispensable, Garnet. And neither am I. The clinic and the church aren’t monuments to us. If they don’t survive while we’re gone then they weren’t meant to.”

She sat back and let his words sink in. “If I’m not indispensable,” she said as they entered a clearing, “then what in the hell am I?”

“A woman who needs a few days away from gangs and bullets and death threats.”

“And who are you?”

“Her husband,” he said.

“Tell me you need a few days away, too.”

He needed a few days with her. He needed to be sure she was all right. He needed to be sure she would continue to be. But he couldn’t tell her that, because it was too revealing. “I do,” he said.

“The last time you said those words, they got you into more trouble than you’d bargained for.”

“They might again.” He stopped the car. The cottage was just ahead of them. He turned and touched her hair. “For the next few days we take care of ourselves and each other. We don’t worry about anyone or anything else.”

“Like two married people on vacation?”

“Yes.”

She didn’t ask how married they would be. Suddenly everything seemed possible. “Will you feel strange being here with me?”

“I’ve hardly ever been here,” he assured her. “I’ll only feel as strange as you do.”

“Then you won’t feel strange at all, because I think we were meant to come here.”

“Meant to come here sounds surprisingly religious coming from you.”

“I might surprise you in a number of ways.” She smiled at him again and thought of days alone together in a lakeside cottage. Suddenly the world was a brighter place than she had believed it to be that morning.