buzzing like wasps, aggressive arc lights setting filling stations afire in blinding auroras. Shiny faces move in and out of his vision, crossing streets at a cocaine-induced angle, shuffling past him in a bog of alcohol fumes. Hands in pockets, shoulders hunched against wind or rain, he leans against a lamppost on Eastern Avenue, watches the world spin by without him.
It seems as if he has lost himself in the haze of the city. In shop-windows, he looks blurred, as if he is out of focus with the rest of the world. He realizes just how badly out of focus when he is taken behind the local discount electronics store by members of the local gang and beaten senseless for no particular reason save that he's white.
'Yo disrespected us, coming onto our turf.' The gang leader spits into Jack's face as Jack sprawls in the filth of the back alley. He is tall-at least a head taller than Jack-and rangy. His eyes are buggy. 'We find you here again, we pin yo pale mutherfuckin' ass to the rear end of a garbage truck.' He kicks Jack insolently in the groin. 'You listenin' t'me, whitey?'
Jack tries to nod, instead groans with the pain.
He must have passed out after that because when he opens his crusted eyes, dawn has crept into the alley. The gang leader and his cabal are nowhere to be seen, but Jack isn't alone.
A man of middle years with an angular face the color of freshly brewed coffee is crouched on his hams, regarding Jack with sympathetic eyes.
'Can you move, son?' He has a voice like liquid velvet, as if he is a singer of love songs.
Fully awake now, racked with pain, Jack pulls himself up against the slimy brick wall at the rear of the electronics shop. He sits with his legs drawn up, wrists resting loosely on his knees. Sucking in deep breaths, he tries to deal with the pain, but it covers so many parts of his body, he feels dizzy and sick in the pit of his stomach. All of a sudden, he rolls over and vomits.
The man with the velvet voice watches this without surprise. When he's certain Jack is finished, he rises, holds out his hand. 'You need to get cleaned up. I'll walk you home.'
'Don't have a home,' Jack says dully.
'Well, I doubt that, son. Honest, I do.' The man with the velvet voice pushes his lips out. 'Mebbe it's a home you don't feature going back to at this point in time. Is that it?'
Jack nods.
'But you'll want to, I guarantee that.' He bends a little, taking Jack's hand in his. 'In the meantime, why don't you come with me. We'll mend what needs to be mended, then call your folks. They must be frantic with worry about you.'
'They probably don't know I'm gone,' Jack says, which probably isn't true, but it's what he feels.
'Still and all, I do believe they have a right to know you're okay.'
Jack isn't sure about that at all. Nevertheless, he looks up into the man's face.
'My name's Myron. Myron Taske.' Taske smiles with big white teeth. 'Will you tell me yours?'
'Jack.'
When Myron Taske realizes that's all Jack is going to say, he nods. 'Will you let me help you, Jack?'
'Why would you want to help me?' Jack says.
Myron's smile deepens as it grows wider. 'Because, son, that's what God wants me to do.'
MYRON TASKE is minister of the Renaissance Mission Church farther down Kansas Avenue NE. The clapboard building that houses the church had once been a two-family attached house, but first one family defaulted on their mortgage, then the other. The building was put into receivership by the bank.
'Which was when we bought it,' Taske says as he leads Jack through the side door into the rectory. 'Lucky for us, one of the bank's vice presidents is a member of our congregation. We were searching for a new home and this became it.' He winks. 'Got it at a good price.'
'But this area's filled with gangs, crime, and drugs,' Jack says, and winces as Taske applies peroxide with a swab to his numerous scrapes, cuts, and lacerations.
'And where better to accomplish God's work?' Taske indicates that Jack should take off his shirt. 'Which begs the question, what were you doing on that wild corner in the middle of the night?'
'Hanging,' Jack says sullenly.
'Why weren't you home and in bed?'
Jack shrugs off his shirt. 'I thought it would be safer out on the street.'
The reverend stares at the black-and-blue marks across Jack's rib cage. Softly, he says, 'You didn't get those to night, did you?'
Jack bites his lip.
'Father or brother?'
'Don't have a brother, do I?' Jack says defensively. How would things go for him at home if he said his father is beating him? Anyway, it isn't his father's fault that Jack is so stupid.
Myron Taske, silent, contemplative, continues his work patching Jack up. As it turns out, he is a singer, every Sunday, leading the choir in three joyous songs at the end of his sermon. He loves to sing love songs of a sort, love songs to God's grace and goodness here on earth as in the heavens. This he tells Jack as he bandages him up.
'Everyone here is black?' Jack says.
Myron Taske leans back, regarding Jack over small eyeglasses he has set on the bridge of his nose for the close work. 'Anyone who wants to be closer to God is welcome here, Jack.'
Finished with his work, he packs up the first aid kit, stows it back in a large armoire that dominates one wall. On the opposite wall is a painting of Christ's face, resplendent within a golden aura.
'Do you believe in God, Jack?'
'I… I never thought about it.'
Myron Taske purses his lips again. 'Would you like to now?'
Before Jack can answer, a sharp series of raps comes on the door: three short, two long.
'Just a minute!' Taske calls, but the door swings inward anyway.
The doorway is entirely filled by a man of humongous height and girth. He must weigh close to 350 pounds. He is the color of a moonless night, his eyes yellow, teeth very large, very white, except for his left incisor, which is gold. Embedded in its center is a gleaming diamond. His hands are the size of other people's feet, his feet the size of other people's heads, his skull as bald as a bowling ball and twice as shiny.
'Jeremiah Christmas, Gus, didn't you hear me?'
Gus's face, scarred along both cheeks, is like a black lamp that sucks all the daylight out of the room. His gravelly voice is just as terrifying.
'Sure I heard you, Reverend.' He walks into the room on legs whose thighs are so thick, they make him slightly bandy-legged. 'I wanted to see for myself who you picked outta the gutter this time.'
'News travels fast,' Jack says, without thinking. He sucks in his breath as Gus's yellow eyes impale him on a stake.
'Good news travels fast,' Gus rumbles. 'Bad news travels faster.'
'Gus is a storehouse of aphorisms,' Myron Taske says for Jack's benefit. 'A
Gus's enormous belly shakes when he laughs. He moves into the room like a sumo wrestler, like a force of nature.
Still with his eyes on Jack, he says to Reverend Taske, 'This one's different, though. He's white.' He squints, addresses Jack without missing a beat. 'That's one butt-ugly beating handed to you.'
'It was my fault,' Jack says.
'Yeah?' This seems to interest Gus. 'How you mean?'
'I was standing on the corner over Eastern.'
Gus nods his monstrously huge head as he circles Jack. 'And?'
'And I got dragged into the alley and beaten. Guy said to me I disrespected him.'
Gus appears on the verge of annoyance. 'By doing what-all?'
'I was on his turf.'
Gus's gaze swings to the reverend. 'Andre,' is all he says.
Taske nods sorrowfully.
'Shit, I told you the preachin' wasn't gonna work on him.' Gus is clearly disgusted.
