'I am.'
'I know you?'
'Name's King. Don't make me tell you again.'
He'd said it and he meant it. King wasn't much older than either of them, but he had the hard and tested body of a man. As it was, it wasn't a fair fight. Lott hung back, mostly to enjoy the show and guard for the unexpected. But these two boys? King had this.
The lanky one turned as if to walk away, but King read the positioning of his feet and the shifting of his weight to know that the fool planned to swing on him. When the boy pivoted to throw his punch in 'surprise', King jabbed him in the kidneys, grabbed him by the throat, and slammed him onto the hood of a parked car. King had a way of blazing in and dropping fools before they knew what hit them.
A grin had broken and froze on the face of the other boy. He reached under his shirt tail. King drew his Caliburn and trained it on the boy. Whenever he pulled out the Caliburn, folks knew what was up.
'You got something you want to show me?'
'No.' The boy slowly dropped his hand to his side.
'Good, cause I'm only saying this once. This here was a friendly warning. Our neighborhood is tired of this mess. So why don't you give it a rest. We cool?'
'We cool.'
Lott reached into the boy's waistband and removed the Colt. He emptied it of its bullets and tossed the weapon into the bushes. 'I didn't want any surprises should he scrape together some courage with our backs turned.'
King and Lott walked down the alley of the apartments nodding but not smiling to the folks they recognized. The respect left Lott so swoll, more so than any workout; respect born out of the work, of doing right by the neighborhood.
'You a good man.'
King trained himself to keep full rein on his emotions. Prided himself on his ability to compartmentalize, remain objective, and disciplined. Some mistook it for aloof or indifferent, as if he didn't care, but Lott knew he cared too much.
With the Caliburn tucked into his dip, King adjusted his stride. He rolled his shoulders slightly, like a boxer entering a ring. Though the gun fit in his hand with a natural ease, as if he was always meant to wield it, he was still getting used to it.
'You need that?' King asked as Lott retrieved a bat from the back seat.
'Ain't all of us got weapons tucked in their shorts.'
'Don't be jealous. It's not the size.'
'When that thing busts a cap all premature, don't come limping to me.'
A hill rolled down from the street leading into an impenetrable tract of trees, a scenic backdrop to the park. Lott tugged at his shirt front as if preparing to get into character. With an exaggerated bounce to his steps, he strutted for an unseen audience. But he had his game face on, a mask of unflinching stone etched into flesh. In his cool stare was a flicker of warning and a hint of hostility. He may have despised battle, but he never ran from one. And too often he sought them out with the determination of a man trying to get into the drawers of a woman he knew was no good for him. Resigned to his old way of thinking — the only way he knew — a lifestyle that ended in being locked up or in an early grave.
Despite his carefully contrived appearance, there was no way to ease down the hill and maintain any sense of street cool. They could take only a few awkward steps at a time, down the steep incline, as rocks littered the grass and made it difficult to maintain their balance and sure-footing. Down, down, down they went and it was as if they left one world and entered another. It didn't take long for the sounds of traffic overhead to fade against the steady thrum of the rushing White River. The currents roiled; the water climbed high up its banks due to the melted snow and recent heavy rains. The greenish water appeared brackish with up tilled silt, not that the White River was the healthiest of waterways to begin with.
Scattered among the thin brown weeds passed for grass was rebar and smashed concrete. A red and white umbrella canted against a tree. A bed of large white stones formed a channel leading from a pipe to the river. The bridge loomed above them, dwarfing them. It never seemed this large whenever they drove over it. The slate gray arches gleamed, only a few years old since the city remembered this side of town. The arches created an echo chamber as the water rushed under it.
'Some nice work.' Lott nodded toward the groups of tags along the base of the bridge. The spray-painted figure of a life-sized, 1950s-era windup robot with the head of a kangaroo. Two sets of names in so stylized a script, the letters were indistinguishable. The final figure was of a Latino boy with his cap turned to one side with an expression reminiscent of Edvard Munch's 'The Scream'.
'Too bad you can't tell what they're saying.' King squatted in front of the formation of rocks on the opposite side. Half-rotted textbooks, newspapers, and Mountain Dew bottles littered the ground in between. Sweatshirts, pants, the occasional blanket, coats, and towels piled between two rows of stacked rocks. Another circle of stones, all charred, had a grill top resting on them.
'Odd place to lay out your stuff,' Lott said.
'It's a mattress.'
Lott stared at the arrangement again and pointed to the blackened rocks. 'Yeah, I see it now. That's his stove. We in someone's squat.'
'Someone not a part of tent city.'
'Means we on the right track.'
'You ought to wipe your feet before entering a man's abode. It's just plain rude.'
At the sound of the voice, King and Lott turned. Merle's slate-gray eyes peered at them. His craggy auburn beard matched what wisps remained around his huge bald spot. Aluminum foil formed a chrome cap, which didn't quite fit atop his head. A black raincoat draped about him like a cloak.
'You stay here?' Lott asked.
'It's one place I stay, wayward knight, though not my secret place. You don't think I only spend my time with you lot. Sir Rupert craves the outdoors.' A washcloth popped up, causing King to jump back. A squirrel peered left and then right, then dashed from beneath the cloth and scampered past his legs.
Lott could never shake the feeling that Merle never quite trusted him, like they shared a bestforgotten secret only the crazy old man knew. He would chide himself for caring what the bum thought of him, though part of him feared it might be jealousy as Merle seemed to have King's ear in a way he didn't.
'Don't mean to bust your roll or nothing,' King said, 'but we on a mission.'
'Oh? A quest? Is it that time already? Mayhaps we'll encounter a questing beast.' Merle danced in a circle around King, hands spreading from his face in jazz hands wiggles as he cried out. ''A star appearing in the sky, its head like a dragon from whose mouth two beams came at an angle.' An egg-shaped keystone, mayhaps a tower. A keystone illumination on the winter solstice. A sacred geometry. A date carved in stone. No wait, a stone unearthed from under a poplar tree, archaic names scribed into it along with strange symbols. A silver chalice, the Chalice of Antioch.'
With that, Merle curtsied.
'You done?' King asked.
'It is finished,' Merle said.
'Come on, we're checking in on Glein.'
'So shut up and stay down,' Lott said.
'Aren't you people supposed to be sassy?' Merle said. 'Wayne would say something sassy.'
They tromped through the woods. The smell of car exhaust from overhead gave way to the trill of budding flowers and furtive spring. Merle occasionally muttered about the state of his shoes or the ubiquity of mud in the tract of land. Undistracted, King charged forward. Glein, the tent city, was the name of this ad hoc ministry. Rumors spread about how a church sponsored the site. They collected men from their various squats and put them up here. The men had their own assortment of stories. Vets, businessmen, and Ph. Ds alike among their number. Some found themselves without homes after the housing market crashed, or after layoffs. Some had simply dropped out of society, not wishing to live by anyone else's rules. Some were simply sick. The church had a regimen for the men and if they worked it, they were moved to some apartments the church owned. The whole setup had an odd vibe to
