Dragonslayer Read online

  And he had spoken with the voice of God.

  Now he spoke with his own voice. He walked to the front row. No one had to look up to see him now.

  “Dragons breathe fire. They devour cities and families and landscapes. What they don’t destroy, they taint with their smoke and their smell. Nothing in their vicinity is left untouched. You can’t live where a dragon has been. Oh, you might be able to survive. You might be able to skulk around and scratch out a living when the dragon’s head is turned. But that’s different from living, isn’t it?”

  He saw heads nod. Sometimes in his former church his sermons had hovered on such a lofty plane that even he lost the point somewhere close to the middle. But not this sermon. This was something everyone understood.

  They understood because they lived intimately with the dragon.

  “The dragon has touched us, all of us, hasn’t it?” More heads nodded. “His fire smolders on our streets and alleys, in the hallways of our apartments, in our schoolyards and classrooms. Every time one of your children is offered drugs, every time someone is robbed or beaten, the dragon’s fires burn a little brighter.”

  Someone said amen. In his former church no one would ever have dared interrupt Thomas’s sermons. Now he found the man who had spoken and nodded to him. “Amen? Then you’ve seen the dragon, Seth?”

  There were more amens. Thomas moved down the aisle restlessly. “There are dragons within us, too, aren’t there?” His gaze settled on Garnet. Her face showed no emotion, but something about the way she sat, arms folded, fingers tapping against her own skin, told him she was listening carefully.

  “I have my own dragons. Some people call those dragons sins. Some people call them neuroses or problems or even just feelings. But if they scare us, if they make us feel violated, frightened, alone, then dragon is just as good a word as any other.”

  He turned away from Garnet. “Isaiah says that in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.”

  He walked to the front so that he could see everyone. “So how do we get from parched ground, ground that dragons have destroyed, ground where dragons have eaten and slept and roared their fiery roars, to a place green with grass, fertile with reeds and rushes? Grass only grows where it can’t be trampled, doesn’t it? Reeds and rushes grow where calm water laps at their roots. How do we get to that place?”

  The answer was harder than the question. He looked at the faces that were becoming so familiar to him. He wanted to tell them about redemption, about God’s forgiveness and strength. But he could not say those things, because he could no longer feel their truth.

  “I want to tell you it’s easy,” he said. “Believe the right things, say the right things, do the right things, and one day we’ll all wake up and Kensington Park will be green again. Schools and streets will be safe again. We’ll wake up and find that we have only joy inside us, love inside us, hope inside us.”

  He put his fist against his chest. “Would you believe me?”

  He saw heads shaking. He sighed. The sigh was real. Once it might have been for show, but now it came from deep inside him.

  “Would you believe me if I told you it’s not going to be easy?” Heads nodded. “It’s not. I can tell you that much for certain. Legend tells us that St. George slew his dragon. But I’m not St. George. I can’t rise up with a mighty sword and make this a place of grass, a place of reeds and rushes. Neither can you. The dragon is too large, his fire too blistering for any one of us.”

  He walked away, as if to return to the pulpit. But at the pulpit’s corner he stopped. “Could we do it together?” He let the question linger a moment. “If we band together, what can we become? If we band together.. .with God’s help... what can we do?”

  And will you help us, Lord? Or are you even there to hear this plea?

  He moved to the pulpit and picked up his Bible. He didn’t open it. He recited the quote from memory. “ ‘The parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.’“

  He spoke for another ten minutes. He hammered at the idea that, together, they could slay dragons. He spoke of strength in numbers and the way it was multiplied by good intent. He spoke specifically of projects they could accomplish. Together. With the help of the God he had to force himself to speak of. He ended with Isaiah’s quote again.

  Then he looked out over the tiny congregation. “It will take us all,” he said. “All of us, and everyone else in this community who believes what we do. Do we want to slay the dragon? Do we long for a place free from fear? A green, fertile place? Or have we been so singed by the dragon’s fire that we’re afraid to live with only the sunshine of God’s love to warm us?”

  He set down his Bible and nodded to Greg. Then, as Greg played the opening bars of the final hymn, Thomas motioned for the congregation to rise.

  Garnet waited in the background as Thomas shook hands with each exiting parishioner. She chatted about nothing to Ema—because that was the only way Ema would have it— and hugged her two nieces, promising that they could come over to her apartment to play after school tomorrow. When Ema had protectively shepherded them out the door, she was alone with Thomas.

  He didn’t speak. She had already learned that he was a man who wasted little time on pleasantries. If she hadn’t heard him preaching today, she would almost have said he was a man who believed that the fewer words, the better.

  But she had heard him speak. He had opened his mouth, and words had poured forth, golden words, emotional words, words that had bored straight to the heart of the problems in this community. The community she had believed he didn’t care an honest fig about. The community she had accused him of exploiting for his own selfish purposes. The community she had expected him to leave as soon as he tired of trying to help.

  “Save any souls?” she asked.

  “You tell me.”

  “Well, you made them believe change was possible. I saw it in their eyes.”

  “And you think I lied to them.”

  “I don’t know.” She honestly didn’t. For moments during his sermon, despite every screaming voice to the contrary inside her, she had believed he was right. Change. Real change. Lasting change.

  “You know, I think you and I are on the same side,” he said.

  She still wasn’t sure; she still didn’t trust him. She had seen too many do-gooders come and go. And now that she’d heard him speak, now that she’d heard the power of which he was capable and the way he could mesmerize even the harshest critic, she was that much more certain Thomas Stonehill would be gone from the Corners before another year had passed. Gone to bigger and better things and places.

  She pushed her hair away from her face. She hadn’t restrained it today. She liked it best when it was down, liked the feel of it moving over her shoulders and back. She saw Thomas’s gaze flick to her hair, and she guessed that the preacher man disapproved of anything so free, so overtly rebellious.

  “I need you to be on my side today,” she said.

  He waited.

  “I have a patient. Her name is Candy Tremira. She’s about to give birth, and she isn’t married. I saw her a little while ago, and she’s nearly hysterical. Her boyfriend is willing, but neither of them knows anyone who could perform a ceremony. They have a license, and they had planned to go down to City Hall this week. But it’ll be too late if they wait that long.”

  “What does ‘about to give birth’ mean?”

  She shrugged. “I saw her just before coming here. She’s--”

  “Is this the girl in Wilford Heights? The one the Knights warned you against visiting?”

  “Your memory can’t be faulted.”

  “Is she in labor?”

  “She’s about three centimeters dilated, and her contractions seem real enough.”

  “Where is she?”

  “She’s still at home. She’s refusing to go to the h
ospital without getting married first. She says the nurses will look down on her. She says God will curse her baby.”

  “No God I’m familiar with.”

  “Women in labor don’t necessarily make sense, Padre.”

  “I am no one’s father.”

  She heard the irritation in his voice and she was momentarily ashamed. “Will you help, Thomas?”

  He realized she had made a concession. “Would she like to come here? Is she able? Or do you want me to go there?”

  “Here is the border of Knight's territory. She won’t set foot here or in the clinic.’’

  “Then she takes the gang talk seriously.”

  “It’s not talk. Demon is perfectly capable of killing her. I think he’s probably killed before.”

  Thomas listened to the matter-of-fact way Garnet made the announcement. It was almost as if she had said that the local library was closing for repairs, or the Wilford Heights residents had organized a block party.

  “Will she go to the hospital?” he asked.

  “There’s one across town that’s agreed to accept her. It’s far enough from here that I don’t think she’ll have anything to worry about. I’m going to drive up to the back entrance of the Heights after the wedding and take her there myself.”

  “We’d better get going, then.”

  “You’ll do it?”

  “What did you expect?” He let his gaze travel over her. The outfit was familiar, but today she wore it with gold and crystal beads and earrings that dangled so low they almost touched her shoulders.

  She tossed her head, and the earrings danced. “They worked up their nerve last week to ask another of our local clergy to help them. He refused, because their religious backgrounds are different. Francis is Catholic, and Candy doesn’t know what she is. That pastor said that in good conscience, he couldn’t bless their marriage.”

  “I’ll get what I need. I’ll be back in a minute.”

  As she waited for him, she stared at the multiple faces of Jesus in the front of the church. Her mother had never been much of one for religion; Garnet’s acquaintance with Jesus was minimal. But as she stared, the four images seemed to blend into one integrated whole. She wondered what the picture said about Thomas’s ministry. Or about the man himself.

  No stranger would have been able to tell the difference between the Coroners and the MidKnights. There were only subtle variations in clothing. The Coroners usually wore red, the color of blood, somewhere on their bodies, accompanied by baseball caps with the letter "C." Ohio alone had given them the Cincinnati Reds and the Cleveland Indians to choose from. The MidKnights wore somber grays, blues and blacks, work boots with blue laces, dark bandannas or do-rags. The Coroners and the MidKnights might be fledglings in the gang world, but they were catching on.

  Thomas had learned enough about gangs to realize what a dangerous time could lie ahead for the Corners. The Coroners and the MidKnights might be largely unorganized and unaffiliated now, but each day saw them closing ranks, assuming more and more of the traditional gang postures and traditions. Their graffiti showed less imagination and detailed more threats. Police officers he had spoken with claimed that they were seeing more devotion to “lit,” the gang members’ bible of rules and regulations. More members were “strapped”—carrying weapons. And more and more often, they were suspected of committing serious crimes.

  There had been drive-by shootings, too. As Garnet led Thomas through the graffiti-tainted walls of the Wilford Heights housing project, she told him about one involving Candy and Francis.

  “You know Candy used to be Demon Harris’s girlfriend.”

  “Demon was the kid with the cap pulled over his forehead?”

  “Remember that face. He didn’t come by his name without cause.” Garnet stepped around a pile of old rags and newspapers that had been abandoned on the stairwell. “Candy’s a good kid. She’s never had much of a home life, and she developed early. The guys were all over her. She was flattered by Demon’s attention. Without the hat he’s a good-looking man, and he spends money lavishly on his women. Candy fell into his trap. Then she began to find out what he was really like.”

  “He abused her?” Thomas tried not to breathe more deeply than he had to. The stairwell was filthy, and the smell made him glad he hadn’t just eaten. Something small and brown moved at the edge of his vision. It wasn’t a cat.

  “He beat her whenever possible. She knew Francis from her classes at school, and one day she ran into him again at a mall. They started seeing each other secretly. She knew if she left Demon and moved in with Francis, Demon would declare war on Francis and the Coroners.”

  “I gather that’s what happened.”

  Garnet stopped climbing at the fourth floor and turned down a hallway. “Candy finally realized she had to make a choice. Francis was good to her and Demon wasn’t. I think she really believes she loves Francis. So she left Demon and came here to live.”

  They passed a group of three young men, each wearing a baseball cap sporting a "C," bill turned to the back. Garnet spoke; only one mumbled in response.

  Farther down the hallway she continued her story. “It might not have been so bad, but about the same time there was a drive-by shooting on Fourteenth Street. One of the Knights, a kid named Wolfman, was killed. Supposedly the gunman’s car was dark gray or blue and banged up, like one that belonged to Francis's brother. It was late at night, and no one is sure who did it, of course, but a Knight who saw the whole thing swore Francis was driving.”

  “What do you think?”

  “Francis says he wasn’t anywhere near Fourteenth at the time. He has friends who say he was with them, so the cops had to let him go. But the word of these gangsters isn’t worth an inch of this stinking hallway.”

  “You don’t like Francis?”

  “Actually, I do. He’s a quiet kid, a little too macho and swaggering, like all the others. But he’s smart, and he has good instincts. He reads. He finished school against impossible odds, and he wants to get a real job. When he found out Candy was pregnant, he wanted to marry her right away.”

  “Then why did they wait?”

  “For one thing, she’s been terrified that if she married Francis, Demon would be even angrier, and he’d work harder to find a way to hurt them. But there’s more. The Knights are after her, and because she used to hang with them, the Coroners don’t totally trust her, either. So she hasn’t had anybody she could really talk to. She’s been alone through this whole thing, except for Francis.”

  “And you.”

  Garnet was silent.

  “Can they get out of here? Start a new life somewhere together?”

  “They’re going to have to. Or you’re about to sanction the marriage of two dead kids.” Garnet stopped in front of a door and banged twice, paused and banged twice again.

  The door opened. The face of the young man on the other side was drained of all color. He looked pathetically grateful to see Garnet. “She’s crying,” he said. “My mother tried to get her to stop, but she can’t.”

  “You go into labor sometime, Francis, and see if you get through it without a tear or two.” Garnet stepped inside and motioned Thomas to follow. “This is Thomas Stonehill, minister of the Church of the Samaritan. He’ll do the ceremony.”

  “I don’t think Candy’s going to wait long enough for any ceremony.”

  “Why not? She planning to go somewhere without the rest of us?”

  Francis swallowed. Thomas realized he was seeing the young man without any of his macho posturing. He was just a good-looking, brown-eyed, brown-haired kid like a million other kids around the world. A scared kid—a scared kid who was about to become a father.

  A scream split the fetid air of the small apartment.

  “Well, that’s more than a few tears,” Garnet said. “I’d better check this out.”

  Thomas watched her disappear through the doorway. “Is your mother with Candy now?” he asked.

  “She lef
t. She and Candy don’t get along.”

  “She knew you were going to get married this afternoon?”

  “She don’t care.”

  “Anyone else here?”

  “My brothers are around the Heights somewhere.”

  Another scream made Francis turn even whiter. “I think she’s dying.”

  “You should have called an ambulance.”

  “Candy wouldn’t let me. Besides, they don’t want to come into the Heights. The baby’d be a year old before they showed up.”

  Thomas heard the young man’s bitterness. He couldn’t blame him. City services were notoriously unavailable to anyone in the Corners, and especially to anyone unlucky enough to live in Wilford Heights.

  Garnet came into the room. “Francis,” she said calmly, “remember all those movies you’ve seen where somebody has to boil water because a baby’s on the way?”

  Instinctively Thomas reached for Francis’s arm. The young man sagged appreciably.

  “Well, kid, get some boiling,” Garnet said. “And tell me you’ve got clean sheets and towels somewhere.”

  “You’re going to deliver a baby here?” Thomas asked.

  “Either that or it’s going to deliver itself without me.”

  “But you said—”

  “She was only three centimeters. I know. She was. And now she’s a full ten and the head is crowning. In less than an hour. And she’s only seventeen. Lucky thing I brought supplies with me this morning, just in case.”

  She paused a moment to judge the expression on Thomas’s face. She expected to see disapproval. She hadn’t anticipated this scenario. She was angry at herself for casually ruling it out. Candy was young and small-boned, and this was her first baby. She had claimed that she had been in labor all night, but when Garnet had examined her, Candy had only been slightly dilated. It would have been unlikely, nearly unheard of, for her labor to suddenly take off in the short time Garnet had been away.

  But Garnet was a good enough nurse to know that the unheard of usually occurred when no one was looking. And she hadn’t looked hard enough.