What Came Before He Shot Her

of good.”

            “Don’t know if Aunt Ken’ll let me out, what wiv my marks in school once she sees ’em.”

            “It’s a simple matter for me to speak to her.”

            Joel considered this. He saw a way that returning to Wield Words might work to his benefit, ultimately. He said, “Okay. I like to do it.”

            Ivan smiled. “Brilliant. And before our next meeting, perhaps you’ll write a bit of verse to share with us? As a way to work through the anxiety, you see. Will you try that for me?”

            He would try, Joel told him.

            SO HE USED Wield Words Not Weapons as a red herring. It was essential that life appear normal while he waited for what the Blade would tell him to do. He found the practice excruciatingly difficult because his mind was so much on other things and he lacked the discipline to focus his thoughts on the creative act while the very antithesis of that act was sitting on his shoulder, waiting to happen. But the sight of him sitting at the kitchen table jotting words in a notebook was enough to alter his aunt’s way of thinking about sorting out Neal Wyatt, and as long as that continued to work, Joel was willing to do it. And she  was willing to let him go to Wield Words Not Weapons when the next occasion of the gathering of poets came along.

Joel saw the people differently this time. He saw the place differently. The Basement Activities Centre in Oxford Gardens seemed overheated, ill-lit, and malodorous. The attendees at the event seemed impotent: men and women of all ages who were inadequate to the challenge of effecting change in their lives. They were what Joel had determined he would never  be: victims of the circumstances into which they had been born. Sitting on the sidelines of their own lives, they were passive observers. Things happened to passive observers, and Joel told himself he wasn’t about to become one.

            He had brought three poems, all of which he knew were perfect examples of the wretched depths to which his preoccupation with the Blade had taken him. He didn’t dare take the microphone and read them to the gathering, especially since he’d once been named a Poet of Promise. So he sat and watched others offer their work: Adam Whitburn—embraced, as before, enthusiastically by the crowd—the Chinese girl with blond-streaked hair and purple-framed sparkly glasses, a spotty-faced adolescent girl obviously writing about her passion for a pop singer.

In his state of mind and nerves, it was something akin to agony for Joel to sit through this first part of the evening. He had nothing to offer the poets in the way of helpful criticism, and the fact that he could not attune himself to the rhythms of the meeting did not help his restless condition. He began to think this restless state would squeeze his heart to a stop if he didn’t do something to quell it.

That something appeared to be Walk the Word, as nothing else was on offer. When Ivan took the microphone to introduce that portion of the evening’s activities, Joel borrowed a pencil from a toothless old man. He thought, What the bloody hell, and he jotted down the words that Ivan read off: soldier, foundling, anarchy, crimson, whip,  and ash. He asked the old man what foundling  meant, and while he knew his ignorance didn’t exactly presage success at the contest, he decided to go at it in the manner he’d first been taught, letting the words come from that mysterious place inside, not worrying about how anyone else happened to be putting them together. He wrote:

Foundling learns fast the crimson

            Way of the street.

            Anarchy marks the whip

            That the soldier holds,

            Where the gun reduces

            All to ash.

            Then he stared at what he’d written, and he wondered at the message contained in his own interpretation of the words. From the mouths of babes, Ivan had said in an earlier time when he’d bent to one of Joel’s poems with his green pencil in hand. You’ve a sagacity beyond your years, my friend. But looking at his latest poem and swallowing hard, Joel knew it wasn’t anything close to innate wisdom that had prompted it. It was his past; it was his present; it was the Blade.

When the time came for the poems to be collected, he shoved his in with the rest. He went to the back of the room where the refreshment table stood, and he took two pieces of ginger-flavoured shortbread and a cup of coffee, which he’d never drunk before. After a sip, he loaded it up with milk and sugar. He stood to one side and he nodded when Ivan came up to him.

            “I saw you engaging in Walk the Word,” Ivan said, placing a friendly hand on Joel’s shoulder. “How did it feel? More at ease with the process than you were before?”

            “Bit,” Joel said, although he couldn’t tell if this was the truth since what he’d written at home was suitable only for lining the rubbish bin and the piece he’d just created for Walk the Word represented the first time he’d felt spontaneous with language in ages.

            “Excellent,” Ivan said. “Good luck to you. And I’m glad you’re back with us. Perhaps next time, you’ll be willing to take the microphone. Give Adam some competition before his head gets too big for his body.”

            Joel offered the chuckle that was the expected response. “I ain’t likely to do better’n him.”

            “Don’t,” Ivan said, “be so sure of that.” He excused himself with a smile and wandered off, to engage the Chinese girl in conversation.

Joel remained near the refreshment table until the judges returned with their decision on the Walk the Word offerings. He reckoned the winner would be the Chinese girl since she’d come equipped with a thesaurus and she’d begun jotting frantically in her notebook the moment Ivan had called out the first word. But when Ivan took from the judges the paper on which the winning entry had been written, Joel recognised a diagonal tear he’d created in it when he’d ripped it from his spiral book. His heart began slamming before Ivan read even the first line .

            It came to Joel that he’d defeated Adam Whitburn. He’d defeated everyone who’d made an attempt to Walk the Word. He’d shown himself not only as a Poet of Promise but as the real thing as well. At the end of the reading, there was a moment of silence before the crowd began to applaud. It was as if they’d had to pause and take in the passion of the words, in order to feel that passion themselves before they could react to it. And, truth be told, the words did  constitute passion this time for Joel. They were fully felt, part of the fabric of who he was.

            When the applause ended, Ivan said, “If the poet will stand and allow us to celebrate with him or with her . . . ?”

            Joel, still by the refreshment table, had no need to stand. He moved forward. He heard the applause once again. All he was able to think in that moment was that he’d beaten all of them at their own game and he’d done it by simply creating as he’d been first told to create: directly from the heart and without censoring his emotions. Just for a moment, he’d been a poet.

            When he reached the dais, he felt Ivan take his hand in congratulations. The man’s expression was one of “You see?” and Joel accepted it for what it was: affection, camaraderie, and affirmation of what Ivan had long declared to be his talent. Then his prizes were pressed upon him. These comprised a leather-bound journal for future poetic endeavours, a winner’s certificate, and fifty pounds.

Joel stared at the note when it was in his hands. He turned it over and examined both sides, stunned by his sudden fortune. Suddenly, it seemed to him that his world had altered on the edge of a coin.

Adam Whitburn had no apparent difficulty accepting the situation. He was the first to congratulate Joel when the evening came to an end. There were other congratulations as well, but those that came from Adam Whitburn meant the most to Joel. So did the invitation that Adam extended to him directly after the basement had been cleared and cleaned.

            He said, “Bred, we’re goin for coffee. Ivan’s coming. You join us?”

            “Did Ivan say—”

            “Ivan ain’t told me to invite you, blood,” Adam cut in. “I’m askin cos I’m asking.”

            “Cool.” It was the only word that Joel could think of, and when he said it, he felt idiotic. But if Adam Whitburn wanted to tell him how un cool it was to say something was cool, he didn’t do so. He merely said, “Le’s go, den. It ain’t far. Just over Portobello Road.”