comfort about the man, as if the shambling bearded tramp were a filthy protective shadow. If he were the Merle he had heard people whisper and laugh about over the years, by most accounts, he appeared better, younger, now than he did back in the day. Maybe he cleaned up from drugs and such and was now merely homeless. His breath smelled of pork rinds and Funyuns.
'Signs, signs, everywhere are signs.'
'I heard that.' King plopped down on the curb, withdrew a burrito from his bag, and offered it to Merle. 'Somehow I'm not really surprised to see you here. You seem to get around.'
'That's me. The bad penny.' Merle pinched off bits of bread and scattered them about him. He shooed away the birds, making way for a squirrel to come collect as he will. Without a warning, Merle suddenly bowled over, gripping his head as if trying to keep it from exploding. His face flushed an agonized shade of red, his mouth locked in a silent scream. Collapsing on the ground, he waved King off from helping him. When he next spoke, his voice had the weak rasp of a sick kitten.
'You alright, man?'
'I'm fine. I suffer from spells.'
'You ought to see a doctor. Get that checked out.'
'I'm past the concerns of a doctor. What say you, good King? Caught twixt the knights of Dred and Night?'
'Nah, they just jawing. They needed to show their teeth some.'
'The Night's too long. Night's daddy was a crackhead. Got hit in the head with a shovel.'
'Do what?'
'He was sitting on a curb, people acting stupid. Crackhead just bopped him straight in the side of the old noggin.' Merle tapped the side of his head, dislodging his aluminum cap. He sprayed food with each sloppy bite, losing almost as much as he ate while he spoke.
'My daddy was crazy, so I hear,' King said. He fought to be legally emancipated from his mother years ago. She had two little ones at home and he was old enough to live on his own so that she could concentrate on providing for the young ones. According to his grandma, she was never quite the same after his father's death. Whenever she spoke of him, it was with a mix of awe and sorrow, as if either she had been betrayed or her idea of him had been. At any rate, he had to get his social security benefits transferred into his name but to her address so that she could spend it. They'd make it without him. As would Nakia. More family he'd abandoned.
'An OG OD'd on the streets. Brought down in a fight over a woman. He had to have her, though.'
'My pops wasn't no drug addict.'
'Never said he was. Heavy is the head… and all that.' Merle wiped his hands in the grass. 'Prisons and graveyards are full of fools who wore the crown.'
'Truth and all, I didn't know my father at all to speak of. I just sort of fill in the blanks here and there, the way I'd want them.' King froze, not understanding why he gave up that bit of personal information at all much less to a stranger. A white stranger at that. Like he thought, maybe Merle had one of those faces. Before he could speak again, the homeless man spoke.
'Can I tell you something?' Merle leaned in, still chewing on too big a bite of his burrito.
'Sure.'
'Last night, I dreamt of the dragon.'
'You sound like that's supposed to mean something.' King had an air of being trapped in himself, of not knowing who he was, that came off as rather petulant. 'You act like you ain't right in the head and yet you seem so…'
'Content. I am what I am. I know who I am. I accept who I am.'
King heard a bit too much bite in his tone. 'What does that mean?'
'You war with yourself. You're the 'should've' man. You-'
'Should've finished high school. Should've gotten involved in something larger than myself. Should've let myself fall in love,' King said.
'Instead you hide, afraid of betrayal. A spectator in your own life.'
'Until lately. I don't know how to explain it.'
'You felt the call.'
'The call?'
'To action.' Merle thrust the remaining bread into the air, a makeshift sword jabbing at clouds. He turned the jousting loaf toward King and engaged him in a one-sided duel, waving the bread about in strokes and feints. 'Feelings overtook you. Who you really are wants to take over.'
'And who am I?' King kept turning to face the loaf-wielding man. As much as instinct might have told him to, he couldn't write Merle off as either a bum or a lunatic. He had too much gravitas, too much presence, to be easily dismissed.
'That is the question. I can't answer it for you. Some people are built to lead, some to follow. Which are you, lion or lamb?'
King inspected the stretch of Breton Court like there were parts within the sphere of his influence and the hinterlands, those areas on the outskirts, out of his influence. Prez. Damn. What happened to that brother? Everyone seemed infected with the same sickness, on edge. King saw the fear, the frustration, the cauldron of terror and rage with life reduced to desperation and survival. So many stood by and did nothing; sick of gangs and violence, yet suffering in silence.
'You get off on knowing the rule book without having to share anything.'
'Knowledge,' Merle tapped his aluminum foil helmet with the loaf, then returned to feeding the birds and squirrels, 'is power.'
'Power is power, too.'
'Ah, the first lesson in ruling. That wasn't so hard, now was it?'
'What wasn't?'
'Making a decision. Making the hard choices is a gift.'
'What do…' King didn't know why he sought Merle's advice, or approval, nor could he explain the strange sense of kinship between them. 'What's my next step?'
'Take hold of your destiny.'
'How do I do that?'
'Either you seek it out or…' Merle stood up as if dismissed. 'Here come your boys. Anyway, I have places to be and fey to annoy.'
'What?'
'You're the right guy, my guy. If you were another guy, you'd be the wrong guy.'
Evenings were made to sit out and King relished the few quiet moments. He had grown up in the area though now he spent some time away, maybe to come into his own. His boys were still his boys. So they drank some, listened to the sounds of kids playing, the occasional car horns, and dogs barking from the fenced back patios of the rowhouses.
'Ain't nothing changed,' King said.
'Look around you. Why would it change?' A hard-faced man, with a scar on the back of his neck, Wayne had the build of a defensive linesman, stocky and chiseled, with the swinging step of someone who knew how to use their size should the necessity warrant. Thus also explaining why the plastic chair wobbled every time he shifted his weight. A mane of long dreadlocks furled down to his shoulders. Wayne was King's case manager down at Outreach Inc., a ministry that worked with homeless and atrisk youth. He'd helped King with his emancipation and got his benefits straightened out. Even though Wayne was four years older, the span of attaining his college degree, he hung out with King now out of true friendship as much as anything else. King had a spark about him that drew folks to him.
'You know what your problem is?' King asked.
'What's that?'
'You pessimistic. Now me, I'm a glass half full of Kool Aid sort of man.'
'Just something in the air.' Wayne carried his survival instinct, too. The eyes in the back of his head that let him know when something was up. King respected and depended on it.
'I know. I feel it, too. A vibe. Like a whole lot of anger bubbling out there waiting for an excuse to blow
