Dominion (16 page)

“Quiet, Dani. Don’t talk about that. Of course I forgive you. We’re both forgiven or we wouldn’t be here. Let me just look at you. My little sister. I’ve watched you. I’ve prayed for you. I’m so proud of you.”

Dani never remembered him crying. He and Clarence and Harley and Ellis were all tough on the outside. They could be called every name, kids would throw rocks at them, but they’d never cry. Now here was Darrin, crying unashamedly, but happier than she ever remembered him.

Dani saw her giant companion Torel looking on with others of his kind, studying the scene in front of them as if it were somehow beyond their grasp. Then her eyes again caught those of the Carpenter. She relished the look of recognition in his eyes. In her mind she heard him say to her two words as clearly as if he had shouted them.

“Welcome home.”

“I seen somethin’.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded tense and determined. “I want that hundred bucks!”

“Who is this?”

“Mookie.”

“That your gang moniker? What’s your real name?”

“Just Mookie.”

“Okay, Mookie, you know where old Mrs. Burns lives? Across from the Rawls place where the shooting was?”

“Yeah.”

“Can you meet me there? Right after school?”

“Don’t go to school. But I can meet you there.”

“In an hour?”

“Yeah. A hundred bucks, right?”

“Right—but only if you’re straight up with me, you got it? If you’re foolin’ with me, tell me now, because I’ll find out and I’ll be real mad. You don’t want to see me mad. You telling me the truth you saw something?”

“Straight up, man.”

“Okay. Then the hundred’s yours. See you in an hour.”

Clarence pulled up to Hattie’s house. A slender, sullen fifteen-year-old boy sat nervously on the porch. The boy wore a velveteen sweatshirt with a full breadth of loud shiny colors, reminiscent of one of those roadside-bought canvases of Elvis. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows. Clarence wasn’t sure whether this was a cutting edge urban style, an indication of Mookie’s tackiness, or a fashion experiment gone awry.

“Mookie? Clarence Abernathy.” He stuck out his hand, force of habit. Mookie brushed his fingers awkwardly. Clarence took him inside and sat him in the living room. Hattie Burns brought in milk and cookies, then disappeared as Clarence had asked her to when he called ahead.

“Okay, what did you see?”

“Was walkin’ home on Jackson Street, ’bout midnight. Crib’s on Dennis Lane, two streets past Jackson, but sometimes I walk Jackson and cut across the back way. I see this car drive up like a block away. Heard these big explosions, like an AK but louder. Then saw them screechin’ down Jackson.”

“You saw their car?”

“Yeah. I was duckin’ behind a tree, but I saw ’em.”

“What kind of car?”

“Big ol’ lowrider, a bomber, maybe Impala or Caprice, late seventies.”

Clarence jotted down some notes excitedly in the back pages of his pocket calendar.

“Color?”

“Gold. Weak paint job.”

“Did you see anyone in the car?”

“Two guys. The driver was a Spic for sure, wearin’ a white T-shirt. Had a light mustache. The other guy, I think he had a white T-shirt too. Another Spic, almost sure of that.”

“You positive they were Latino?”

“Spics? Yeah. Positive on the driver, almost positive on the other dude.”

“You’re sure about the white T-shirts? And that you saw two guys?”

“Know what I saw, okay? Where’s my hundred bucks?”

“Hold on. You see a license plate?”

“Oregon plates. The gold ones. Didn’t catch the numbers. Where’s the money?”

Clarence reached in his wallet, took out a hundred dollar bill, and put it on Mrs. Burns’s coffee table, placing an oil lamp on top of it.

“It’s yours as soon as I’m done asking questions. Not until.”

Clarence talked with Mookie another half hour, asking his questions different ways to get more details and make sure the story held up. It did.

After he was satisfied, Clarence walked Mookie to the door, hugged Mrs. Burns, and marched off with a triumphant smile. He couldn’t wait to tell Ollie Chandler he’d found a witness. Or to see the expression on Manny’s face.

“Hi, Daddy,” Keisha said, with adoring eyes. She craned her neck up at her father, her dozens of cornrow braids dangling on her back, the colorful barrettes slapping against each other.

Clarence picked up Keisha and spun her around. “How’s the cutest girl in third grade?”

“Fine. We made pictures today, like Aunt Dani. I painted leaves on a big tree.”

“Good for you, sweetheart.”

“Hi, baby.” Geneva kissed Clarence and took the grocery bag out of his hand.

“Hey, Jonah.” Clarence tackled him gently and they wrestled on the carpet. Keisha joined them.

“We’re having lima beans,” Keisha told her father, with a look of contempt. “I hate limas.” She folded her arms and looked as utterly disgusted as an eight year old could.

“Well, you may as well save yourself some problems and stop hating them,” her father said, “because you’re going to eat them, that’s for sure.”

“But they taste so
gross.
”

Clarence picked her up in his lap and sat down on the dark blue living-room glider.

“Not everything that’s good for you tastes good. Your father knows what’s good and what isn’t. You have to trust your daddy. Limas are good for you, even if you don’t like them.”

She grew quiet, knowing any further statements could mean dad and mom would call in a dump truck and bury her in lima beans.

“Where’s Grampy?” Clarence asked.

“In his room,” Jonah said. “Reading another baseball book he got at the library.”

“I think I see some stories coming down.” Clarence smiled. “He’s been thinking about the old days again.”

Some stories would be just fine. Being with his family was almost enough to make him forget about the world that filled the news, where folks hated each other for their skin color, where men grabbed children by the ear and hurt them, where innocent people got shot by two-bit gangbangers. This was his home, his castle, his family. And if the world went to hell in a handbasket, at least no one could take away his family. At least, that’s what he’d always told himself.

“Daddy,” Keisha said, “you promised you’d read from the Narnia book last night and you never did.”

Celeste pulled the double team, taking her stand next to her cousin.

“Sorry, honey,” Clarence said. “I got a call, somebody I had to talk to. I’ll read it tomorrow night. I promise.”

“What about tonight? Celeste and me wants you to read it tonight.”

“Celeste and
I
want you to read it tonight.”

“But I want
you
to read it, Daddy.”

“No, I meant…never mind. Your mama and I are going out to eat tonight. Carly’s coming over to watch you. We’re going out with her parents.”

“I like Carly,” Keisha said. “Carly’s a good baby-sitter. She’s got her own baby,” she explained to Celeste.

“She’s bringing her baby with her, so you’ll get to see him,” Clarence said. “His name is Finney.”

“That’s a funny name,” Celeste said.

“She named him after a good friend of her father’s.”

“But Daddy, you just
have
to read to us about Aslan the Lion. You promised.”

“But, honey, I told you, I’ll be gone tonight.”

“Then read to us now, Daddy. Pretty please.”

Clarence was about to tell Keisha begging wouldn’t do any good when Celeste stepped out in the hallway from the bedroom, clutching in both hands
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
and pleading silently with her big brown Dani eyes.

“Okay. I’ll read it to you now. But just one chapter. No more.”

The girls shrieked and celebrated and headed toward the bedroom. “But we have to put on our jammies. I’ll get Jonah.” No sooner had she run out of the room than she screamed, “Jonah, Jonah! Daddy’s going to read the Narnia book right now. Put yo’ jammies on!”

Jonah walked out of his room. “Now?”

“Come as you are, Son,” Clarence said. “No jammies necessary.”

They settled in around Keisha’s bed, with Keisha and Celeste propped up against pillows on top and Jonah sitting on the floor leaning back against the bedpost, not wanting to look quite as eager as the girls.

“All right,” Clarence said, “you remember what happened last time we read?” Clarence couldn’t look at Celeste without thinking of when he’d read this book in Dani’s bedroom, six hours before the shooting.

“Edmund was bad,” Celeste said.

“He betrayed his brother and sisters,” Keisha added. “Peter and Lucy and Susan.”

“And the White Witch says she has the right to kill him,” Jonah said.

Clarence nodded, thankful that for once it was a
white
witch, not a black witch. He read a few paragraphs that culminated in the White Witch’s words to Aslan the Lion:

“You at least know the magic which the Emperor put into Narnia at the very beginning. You know that every traitor belongs to me as my lawful prey and that for every treachery I have a right to a kill. You know that unless I have blood as the Law says, all Narnia will be overturned and perish in fire and water.”

“It is very true,” said Aslan. “I do not deny it.”

“Oh, Aslan!” whispered Susan in the Lion’s ear. “Can’t we— I mean, you won’t, will you? Can’t we do something about the Deep Magic? Isn’t there something you can work against it?”