Children of the Knight (42 page)

After wandering a bit, almost giving up hope of finding him, Reyna finally spotted the muscular teen just down the street, painting a single-story house with a little girl, whom Reyna deduced must be his sister. Suddenly butterflies filled her stomach, and she hesitated. For the first time she could remember, she was nervous because she actually cared what someone other than herself thought.

Wow, I’m either cracking up or growing up, but whichever, I’m scared shitless!

Smoothing out her hair and tugging on her tunic to accentuate a bit more of her lithe figure, she nervously crossed the street and stood behind Esteban. His back was to her as he helped the adorable three-year-old move a small paintbrush up and down. The color going on now was purple, of all things. A line of mostly empty paint cans sat beside them.

The little girl turned and saw Reyna.

“Who are you?” she asked, causing Esteban to whirl around protectively. Seeing it was Reyna, he gave her the head nod and returned to painting.

“That’s just Reyna, Rosa,” he told the little girl, his voice deep and emotionless. “She thinks she’s better’n us.”

Reyna smarted at that, but knew she deserved it.

“I think she’s pretty,” the girl said, pulling away from Esteban to approach Reyna, who squatted down so she could look the little girl in the eye. “Can I touch your hair?” the little one asked, and Reyna just laughed.

“Sure, sweetheart,” she said and felt real joy as the tiny hand caressed her silky ponytail. “Wow, smooth,” the little girl gushed, and Reyna laughed.

“I think your hair is pretty too,” she assured her with a warm smile.

Esteban stayed in his crouched position, scowling at the exchange with obvious distaste.

“You can hold me if you want,” the girl offered, so Reyna scooped her up and stood, the light-as-a-feather child grabbing her around the neck in a big hug of joy. “I like you, Reyna.”

Reyna felt almost giddy. She’d always wanted a little sister and now it felt oddly as if she’d just acquired one. That seemed to be how this neighborhood worked. “I like you too, Rosa,” she replied sincerely. Then in a conspiratorial whisper, which she knew Esteban would hear, she said into the girl’s ear, “I like your brother too, but don’t tell him I said that.”

Rosa just laughed. “Okay, I won’t tell Este you like him.”

Now Reyna cracked up, and Esteban had no choice but to join her. That
was
pretty funny, after all. Reyna gazed down at him, her eyebrows raised questioningly.

“Well,” Esteban said with mock harshness, “don’t just stand there. Grab a brush and get to work…
Lady
Reyna.”

She grinned. “Thought you’d never ask.”

And so they sat and painted and laughed at Rosa’s funny yammering about everything under the sun while they finished turning Esteban’s residence into a multi-colored something that vaguely resembled a gingerbread house. For the first time in her life, Reyna felt like she was home.

The graffiti-cleaning operation continued throughout the afternoon, with residents and storeowners assisting with the painting. There was so much graffiti and scrawling and tagging on walls and fences and buildings and the bus stop benches that the majority of Arthur’s knights wound up eventually working on this detail. As the day wore on, the entire neighborhood began to look like an acid trip gone bad. But it now appeared clean and fresh, rather than dirty and rundown, and that energized both knights and residents alike.

On the large wall beneath the “Pray for Peace in the Barrio,” painting, which they’d left intact after scrubbing off some of the tagging over it, Enrique, Luis, Lavern, and some other artistic members of the group painted a simple mural of Arthur with his sword in hand and the knights crowding around him. It was not worthy of the Louvre, but given the short time they’d spent on it, they were pleased with the result. And so were the locals. They clapped and cheered as the boys added more and more detail to the scene.

The day turned into a kind of street party, with everyone pitching in to clean and rebuild and repair. And always center stage was Arthur directing this group or that, praising this effort or that, encouraging, patting his knights on the back, helping to load or unload, chatting amiably with the residents. His charm and the efforts of his knights won over the entire neighborhood, which was exactly what he had hoped would happen.

G
IBSON
was sitting at his desk texting Justin again and angry because his son had not responded, when the call came in. He snatched up the landline phone and more brusquely than he’d intended said, “Yeah, Gibson!” He listened a moment, and his mouth went dry. “You sure? Okay, get every available unit out there ASAP.”

Ryan walked in swigging from a large bottle of liquid antacid. “Damn, I hate ulcers,” the older man spat.

Gibson made eye contact with his partner and listened a moment more. “Yeah, don’t move till we get there. Ryan and I will lead you in. Don’t blow this!”

He hung up and looked at Ryan’s raised gray eyebrows. “We have him, Ry. He’s got hundreds of kids over in Boyle Heights, probably gangbangers. I’ve called for backup. Lots of backup.”

“Let’s roll.” Ryan slipped the antacid bottle into his pocket, and they ran from the room.

E
XHAUSTED, but satisfied, Arthur and his knights stood in the center of the neighborhood late in the afternoon and looked around at their handiwork. The streets were cleared of trash and debris, the homes and businesses now multi-colored but clean and graffiti-free. At least on the surface, the neighborhood had been transformed, like Cinderella’s pumpkin turning into a golden carriage. The happy, grateful residents and storeowners, whose excitement was palpable, stood with the kids in awe of what they had done, and their gratitude and hopefulness was the real gift to this community.

Esteban stood beside Reyna. Each held Rosa’s hand, with Esteban’s mother beaming beside them. The painting crew, led by Enrique and Lavern and Luis looked like walking rainbows with splashes of myriad color splattered all over them. They grinned at the freshness their hard work had brought to this place and these people.

Jack and Lance stood beside Mark and Chris, next to Arthur, who sat astride Llamrei once more. Lance flicked his eyes at Jack, who caught the movement. Quickly, so no one else would see, Lance did a quick flex with his right arm, tapping his still small, but very sore, bicep. They both laughed silently, and Jack patted him on the back.

Mark and Chris had not done as much of the heavy lifting as the others, because they’d been entrusted with the care of Llamrei, lest the noise and distractions spook the animal. But the two of them had washed her down, scrubbed and brushed her mane and tail, groomed her coat, fed her, and even tied to her bridle some ribbons the local children had given them. Many of these youngsters had helped bathe and groom and feed the horse, allowing Mark to have fun and also feel a sense of accomplishment by day’s end.

Arthur gazed around in wonder, along with all the locals. These were
his
kids, and this is what they had accomplished in just one day. Might
for
right. It
did
work, and it
would
work. Today was only the beginning.

“Methinks, my noble knights,” he called out to the throng, “ye have much to take pride in. Behold the fruits of thy handiwork!”

The locals applauded and cheered as Arthur’s multitude of knights erupted with gushing excitement, clapping each other on the back, high-fiving each other, truly proud, some for the first time in their young lives, of having accomplished something great, something meaningful, something that helped other people rather than hurt them.

So filled with excitement of purpose, Reyna did something she rarely did, something impulsive. She turned and kissed Esteban joyfully on the lips. So startled was he that when she pulled away, his mouth dropped open comically, and she burst out laughing. He grinned and shook his head in wonder, and Rosa giggled with delight.

The mural of Arthur and his children on the area’s largest building, directly below “Pray for Peace in the Barrio,” stood out strikingly in the background and accented exactly what this moment signified. Hundreds and hundreds of kids, many of them enemy gang members, had descended on this neighborhood not to make war, but to bring peace. And it had worked.