Brendan shouldn’t be here. He only wanted to get away from his dad, but now he could end up strapped to a bed in a dirty storage room where perverts took turns doing things to him. He tried the door handle—locked. The car smelled of body odor and farts. Brendan gagged.
Their church was a sagging building wedged between Paul’s Pawn Shop and Nailed Nails Beauty Salon. The glass front had been filled with two giant images of Jesus suffering on the cross. Beneath that it read: HE DIED FOR YOUR SINS. LET HIM EMPOWER YOU. SERVICES THURSDAY – SATURDAY 7PM, SUNDAY 10 AM.
They parked and both Ellis and Dwayne got out. Brendan’s door still wouldn’t open. “Whoa,” Ellis said, opening the door for him, “it’s a safety lock. Relax.” Then Brendan was out of the car, free, and running down the double-wide sidewalk, the cool air refreshing his face, cleansing his lungs. There had to be a cop around here somewhere, had to be. This was a dangerous area—cops would be patrolling. People jumped out of his way; someone called him “a little fag” and another person laughed, saying, “that’s it—run, white boy, run!”
Brendan passed store fronts so rapidly that the glow from the inside lights created a streaking haze like something from a dream. Dwayne and Ellis were running after him, maybe yelling for someone to grab that kid, grab him and you can have a free taste. The block ended and Brendan turned left, spinning his head back down the sidewalk to check if Dwayne and Ellis were, in fact, doing what he feared, and Brendan crashed into something hard, maybe a wall, and tumbled backwards onto the concrete.
A large black man with an enormous belly stood over him like a beast over injured prey. “Better watch where you going,” the man said. His puffy jacket lent him even more girth; he might have anything hidden under that coat—knife, gun, rope, duct-tape.
Brendan was back in school but not in Mr. Cantor’s class listening to a stupid story about a scared cat ( a story that would, years later, get him into this mess), but to the directions from the DARE cop about how to escape a kidnapper. “If someone is trying to grab you or hurt you, don’t play fair. All bets are off. Kick them in their groin. Grab their hair. Bite them. And, above all, make as much noise as possible.
The man started to say something else, to move closer, too, and Brendan released a howl with every once of air and shred of energy he mustered. It might have been the death-cry of a stabbing victim or the hysterical scream of Dad in the funeral home.
The man glanced around, but didn’t run. He wasn’t afraid. He knew he would be okay. He could do whatever he wanted to this white boy because nobody around here wanted the police showing up, asking questions.
The man reached for Brendan with a huge, monstrous hand, like comically inflated one, only made from stone. Brendan screamed harder, throat burning, and readied himself to play as dirty as he had to. This man’s balls were probably the size of baseballs, so it shouldn’t be tough to hit and even crush.
The hand came closer (
“What are you doing?” This question broke through Brendan’s screams and the mighty hand withdrew. Dwayne stood behind Brendan, dress shoes inches away.
“Helping this kid,” the big guy said.
“He’s with me,” Dwayne said.
“Then you deal with him.”
“That any way to talk to a man of God?”
The big guy shook his head. “You a false prophet.”
Brendan blinked and Dwayne was in the big guy’s face, nose to nose. “I’ll drop your big black ass right here, right now. You know why? Cause God’s in my heart and He guides my punches.”
“Get the fuck out my face,” the big guy said, yet he was backing up and then, miraculously, walking down the sidewalk. He disappeared into the night and Dwayne turned to Brendan.
“I know you’re scared,” he said. “I’ll drive you right back to the funeral home. Ellis and I are not going to hurt you. We are men of God.”
When Dwayne held out his hand (
Ellis was standing outside the church. “Are we going in or going home?” he asked.
Neither Brendan nor Dwayne said anything, so Ellis unlatched the combination lock. Just because Dwayne had helped him, didn’t mean Brendan should trust these men, but he couldn’t run away again. There had to be another way. The metal grate that slid down over the glass front rattled when Brendan passed beneath it.
The place stank of flowers. He didn’t see any flowers, however. Past the entrance, the place opened up into a large structure that could serve any number of functions from pizza joint to modest theater. Rectangular card tables with metal folding chairs were arranged throughout the room like a cafeteria. On each table stacks of fliers appeared to be grouped in some kind of order. Religious posters, most depicting Jesus either on the cross, ascending to heaven, or offering a chalice of wine, decorated the walls. Fluorescent lights gave the room an unhealthy, almost alien glow. At a far table on the right, three people (two women, one man) all dressed in some sort of black suit, were folding fliers and building individual stacks.
“This is your church?” Brendan asked.
“Not quite,” Ellis said.
The three people folding fliers turned and one woman jumped to her feet and trotted toward them. Her ensemble did not hide her large, bouncing breasts. When she drew closer, she stopped, covered her mouth, and then ran the rest of the way to Dwayne. “What happened? Are you in pain? This is terrible.”
Dwayne waved her off. “Just one of God’s trials.”
She put her arms around him without clutching and guided him to a chair. “Let me help you.” She touched his hand and he lowered the handkerchief. She didn’t say anything for a moment, composing herself. “I’ll have to stitch it some. It shouldn’t hurt much.”
“So much for my pretty face, eh?”
She smiled. “It was never that pretty to begin with.”
Then he had her on his lap and was planting a large, powerful kiss on her. Brendan hadn’t been to many churches but so far this one wasn’t following the usual protocol. The woman laughed, batted him away playfully and then told him to sit tight while she gathered supplies. She went into a room on the left that might be a bathroom.
“She’s wonderful,” Dwayne said to no one in particular. “Only wish I’d met her first.”
Brendan opened his mouth to ask what he meant and Ellis said, “Let’s go into the Empowerment Temple, Brendan.”
“The what?”
His smile betrayed neither jocularity nor sincerity; with one hand on Brendan’s shoulder, Ellis led him through the room past all the tables and the only other two people there. Two large wooden doors stood closed at the end of the room. The smell of fresh flowers plumed from the other side of the doors like a smoke cloud pushing into a room. That smell was the odor of Delaney’s viewing room. Flowers crowded around her coffin in such potent colors that they seemed to taunt her with their vibrancy. He shouldn’t be here; he should be with Delaney. But what if whatever was behind these doors offered a more genuine path to safety than he had previously found? What if there really was only one true powerful God? That was worth a few more minutes, at least.
“This is your church, through here?”
“It isn’t much,” Ellis said, “but this is where we find God.”
He pushed where the doors joined. They swung open as if floating. They were thick doors, padded with insulation. The aroma of flowers rolled out, momentarily suffocating all other senses. This room was half the size of the first room and instead of florescent ceiling lights, candles provided the only illumination. There might have been hundreds of them, set up on small tables, in specially designed racks, arranged in some type of pattern across the floor or, apparently, placed haphazardly to provide additional light where the kneeling people needed it. There were no chairs, only small rugs on which the fifteen or so people in the room knelt. The only sound was the faint hungry crackle of all the flames.
On the far wall hung a full-sized, three-dimensional Jesus on the cross. It was so life-like that for a moment Brendan thought it was a person standing up, arms wide as if welcoming everyone in a big hug. In fact, this Jesus was larger than life. Brendan walked into the Empowerment Temple, Ellis shutting the doors behind him to block the fluorescent light, and Jesus grew bigger. The statue (stone or wood?) was taller than Ellis, which meant the
