CHAPTER ONE
'It ain't even right,' King said to stave off the impending silence. He drummed his fingers along the steering wheel. Absently noting the recently closed or unoccupied stores in several strip malls along Lafayette Road, it was as if blank spaces pocked his neighborhood. Even the newly opened Wal-Mart struggled, though neighborhood lore held that within its first week it had to let fifty of its employees go for excessive shoplifting. He hated driving, preferring to walk when he could, but Big Momma asked him to pick up her son and even loaned him her car to do it. King hardly knew Prez — as he was known around the way, though born Preston Wilcox — but Big Momma was a neighborhood fixture. Her word that he was a good kid was all King needed, despite the boy striking him as just another neighborhood knucklehead.
'I know.' Prez had a just-shy-of-amiable halfsmile on his face. The wisps of an attempted goatee sprouted along the sides of his mouth. Eyes fixed on the road, he nestled into his oversized Kellogg's jacket, a picture of the Honey Smacks frog danced on the back. Though late in the summer, the temperatures remained fairly mild.
'You should have your own spot.' King heard the lecturing tone in his voice, but chalked it up to wanting to mentor the boy. The streets had their lure and anything he could do to inoculate Prez to their madness, well, he couldn't help himself. His street, his responsibility — that had always been his way.
'Ain't no shame in it.' A sullenness quilted Prez's face, man-child struggling with independence but having to retreat to his moms. Grandmoms, technically. His moms turned him over to Big Momma so that raising a child wouldn't slow her down. He knew full well that he'd have to hide any of his foolishness from Big Momma because she would have none of it.
'I know. Big Momma ain't gonna let her baby sleep out on the street.'
'Shit, I'd still be on my own if this dude who I stayed with had let me know that he was moving out and his cousin would be taking his place. But his cousin wasn't trying to pay no rent, and it wasn't like either of us were on the lease. So, boom, the landlord kicks us out. We only had till Monday to get our stuff out of there before he puts it out. And the cousin ain't even started to pack his stuff up.'
'Yeah,' King said without commitment, part from having nothing to add, part due to distraction. He eased off the gas as they passed a row of apartments. A little girl skipped into an open door while a woman struggled with pulling a basket of clothes from the backseat of her car.
'What's up?' Prez asked, noting King's focused attention.
'Nothing.' It wasn't as if King was going to say 'That's my baby's momma's place. Look at her. You know she be having men all up in there all hours of the night. In front of Nakia.'
Prez spied a buxom, dark-complexioned woman walking in the front door of her apartment carrying a load of laundry. 'Pretty girl.'
'Reminds me of someone I used to know.'
King flipped through radio stations, though Black radio in Indianapolis only came in two flavors: hip hop and adult soul. He loved hip hop, but he really needed something with a melody right now. His mom called his taste in music the legacy of his father. King had no true sense of who Luther White was, only the legend his mother made him out to be. It was easy to be a legend when you were long dead and gone.
As if Saturday afternoon traffic in front of Meijer wasn't going to be bad enough, they crept the last mile to the Breton Court townhouses due to construction on the only street leading there. Prez eased back in his seat and put one of his Timberlands on King's dashboard. A half-muttered 'my bad' and the foot lowering followed a stern gaze from King. Kids today, King thought, no respect for anything.
Sliding into one of the parking spots, one assigned per townhouse, King grabbed the two bags of clothes from his trunk, to which Prez nodded in appreciation, and carried them toward Big Momma's. Already outside holding court, she slowly fanned herself with a tattered magazine. Her usual courtesans, the neighbors from across the way, sat around the plastic table. King couldn't quite remember the name of his neighbor who lived across from Big Momma, though they seemed like a nice family. Every Sunday they dressed up for church along with their two kids. The neighborhood kids (half of whom Big Momma ostensibly babysat) played with a garden hose, spraying each other and turning the center of the court into a mud slick, a dirt-floored 'slip'n'slide'. The white-haired candy lady, who had lived in the court longer than anyone else, stood on her porch passing out popsicles to any kid who took a break from the hose. Her cats keened against the front storm door like children denied the chance to play with their friends.
'Damn,' he said to himself, as Prez left him with his bags to hook up with a couple of neighborhood knuckleheads who were setting up shop on the corner. Their fixed gazes dared him to do something about their presence. His face flushed with heat, but he wasn't about to return a hard look for each one he received, nor could he afford to get bent out of shape every time some fool stepped to him wrong. Attitude and anger came in shorter supply for him these days so he chose his spots rather than exhaust himself on every bit of drama. However righteous his rage.
Merle never imagined that a Timberland boot in his midsection would be the defining moment of his day.
The abandoned shoe factory on the south side of downtown had been declared a historic landmark, but neither the city nor any foundation knew what to do with it nor wanted to put up the money to restore it for modern use. The owner languished with the albatross of high property taxes, unable to sell it, so the building existed in a state of limbo, between being and not being, and thus was the perfect place for Merle to break into and lay his head. With a flattened refrigerator box as his mattress, visions of dragons, mist, and silver-armored knights filled his dreams.
Waking with a start, disturbing the rats which scurried along the broken bits of crates and skids, Merle knew he had to make his way to the west side of town.
'Sir Rupert?' he called out. A brown and black squirrel, with a gray streak along its back, poked its head through a hole in the bay door of the building. 'I had the dream again. I think the time has finally come. He has returned.'
The squirrel sat back on its haunches, eagerly working at an acorn.
'I know, I know. There have been several false alarms, but this time I know it's real.' Merle wrapped his arms loosely around his knees and gathered his wits while Sir Rupert ate.
The squirrel finished with the nut, turned, and ran out the hole in the door.
'You're right, you're right. We mustn't tarry.' Scooping up his backpack and his black raincoat, Merle slipped between the still-chained doors. The raincoat doubled as his blanket, though its winter insert had pulled free and with a few teeth missing from the zippered lining, he was unable to reattach it. Not much of a clothes horse, he kept his attire simple. A furry hat, the kind a Russian soldier languishing in Siberia would wear, a tattered black sweater with matching jeans, and black socks with no shoes. He had the most difficult of times keeping shoes and suspected Sir Rupert, prankster that he was, of nicking them at night. He pulled the raincoat tight around him, buttoning it only at the middle where a belt might fall. He already missed his normal routine that had him checking in at the Wheeler Mission, then panhandling outside of the Red Eye Cafe — whose owner often let him push a broom for a meal — and avoiding the police eager to sweep him under the city's rug. It would be little more than a three hour haul to the west side that awaited him.
Merle kept to the bank of the White River which was unusually low due to the lack of rain. Though the White River was a natural ley line winding its way through the heart of the city, another one lay closer to Eagle Creek Park, along Breton Street. Whatever called him, he knew his destiny had to lie there. After three hours, he climbed up the embankment to follow 38th Street west.
The Breton Court housing addition had changed considerably in the quarter of a century since it was established. Once a solidly all-white not-quitesuburban enclave, it now languished as a neighborhood in decline. Street lore attributed this to two things. For one, the first black family moved in a decade or so ago. Their white neighbors, not wanting to let a bad element gain a foothold in the neighborhood, harassed them to the point that a UHaul truck was soon being loaded. Unfortunately, they had made a slight miscalculation. The black family was also seeking a respite from bad elements and had more in common with their white neighbors than not. And though they moved, they never sold their town house in Breton Court. Instead, they rented it out. They found the worst of the 'bad elements' they could find and let them live there rent-free for six months. The white flight was more of an
