Dominion (108 page)

The smell was horrible. Raymond’s stomach turned in revulsion. It was as if he were immersed in hot excrement, the sewage of sin and self. It was putrid. He wanted to vomit, but could not. He was held captive to the moment before relief. There could be no relief here. Only endless self-preoccupation, self-hatred, self-everything, and therefore nothing. Self stripped of its one reference point, the God of the universe, and therefore stripped of its worth, stripped of its humanity. The vomit continued to build within, but it could never be released.

Was hell God’s fury exploding upon him? Or was it his own fury imploding within him? He felt himself shrinking, the ever-narrowing man. In heaven, he somehow knew, his brother Jesse was the ever-broadening man. Jesse had been right. Raymond had been wrong.

“Too late. It’s too late!” he cried, hoping the words would travel far enough to be heard by some other soul, someone else to join the company misery loves. No. There was unlimited misery here. But there was no company.

The fires of blame and excuses and rationalizations and justifications scorched him. He experienced the corroded metallic taste of life without God. No, not life. Mere existence, stripped of purpose. No work here. What he would give to be able to perform even the most menial task, even to flip a burger. It would give some semblance of meaning. No rest here. How he longed to sleep. No rules here. A structureless hell in which there was no hierarchy, no baby gangsters, no lieutenants, no generals. All eternal wannabes without hope of advancement.

“I had a choice!” he screamed at himself in rage and horror. Why had he chosen what any sane man would not? Why would he live forever, paying for his sin, when there was one who had already paid for it? The utter insanity of sin gripped his soul. The Governor’s pardon had been offered repeatedly, every year and every day and every hour of his life on earth. Now it was too late to receive it. Eternal condemnation. No reprieve. No hope. Eternal regret. Everlasting stagnation. Unending despair.

His circle of influence had shrunk to nothing. His life had gone into eclipse for all eternity, erased as if it were no more than a stray pencil mark. He had no turf, no dominion. Those he’d ridiculed as church-going wimps, he knew now, would reign over the universe, participating joyously in the one true dominion.

“I should have listened,” he yelled, hearing not even an echo. “I should have listened to Mama and Jesse and Pastor Clancy.”

He heard a horrible nightmare of a scream. It sounded like a crazed animal crying out in agony as it is riddled by the lead of a shotgun. Terrified, he realized the bloodcurdling scream was his own. More horrible still, he realized no one else would ever hear it.

Clarence answered his home phone during dinner. “Good news,” Ollie said. “We’ve got a DNA match with Gracie’s envelope.”

“Norcoast or Gray?”

“Can’t talk about it over the phone. Let’s save it for tomorrow. I’ll be out most of the day. How about four o’clock tomorrow afternoon?”

“Ollie, you can’t string me out like this. Can’t you just give me the bottom line?”

“No can do.” Ollie sounded like a man who enjoyed holding the cards.

“Okay.” Clarence sighed. “Jake told me you could be a pain in the neck, Ollie. Well, he didn’t tell me the half of it. I’ll be there at four.”

Clarence, Obadiah, and Geneva attended the evening community meeting at Mount Olivet Church. The neighborhood association chairman, Rod Houck, took the floor and pointed to a table. “We’ve got some handouts for you related to discouraging drugs and promoting abstinence. There’s also a sign-up sheet for a new twenty-four-hour hot line and prayer chain through the churches.”

“Amen” and “Hallelujah” surfaced among the nodding heads, reminding Clarence that here, in contrast to meetings he’d attended in the suburbs, a religious consciousness spilled over openly into community affairs.

“First, the bad news,” Rod said. “I’m reading from this yellow sheet called Gang Trends. It gives us predictions based on statistics over the past years. It says, ‘Gangs will become more violent, using military weapons and killing more police officers. They will continue to use and exploit juvenile members to commit crimes due to the more lenient juvenile justice system. They will continue to fund their crimes through expanded drug trafficking. Female gang members will increase. More gang members will become career criminals—less will outgrow or escape gangs. Some gangs will evolve into organized crime groups. Jails will be overcrowded with gang members, and gang assault on jail personnel will increase. Due to budget restraints, some jurisdictions will be forced to limit their efforts to prosecute hard-core gang members for the most serious and violent crimes. The crime level will outstrip the community’s ability to deal with it—courts will be gridlocked with gang cases. Probation officers and parole agent caseloads will increase to the point where supervision of gang members will become superficial and meaningless.’”

Groans surfaced across the auditorium.

“Now I know that’s a tough way to start,” Rod said, “but maybe if we realize what we’re up against, it’ll motivate us to do whatever we can. It may sound hopeless, but I’m convinced we can turn this thing around. We can’t turn it around by ourselves; we need each other. Well, this is a community meeting. Who wants to speak up?”

“I say the gang problem is only as big as we let it be.” It was Frank, Clarence and Geneva’s next-door neighbor. “Everybody these days is sayin’ what we need in this country is more tolerance. I say what we need is
less
tolerance. We’ve tolerated all this gang foolishness, and now it’s killin’ us. Me, I think my New Year’s resolution is going to be less tolerance!”

Laughter and applause.

Jami Lyn Weber from Atkins Street stood up. “Well, here’s one thing we
can
do. You all know Stoney’s is the store that sells most the ball caps and T-shirts in our hood, including most the gang stuff. Stoney’s takes drug money to sew on Crip killer and Blood killer insignias as if they were school mascots. I’ve bought gifts there for years, and so have most of us. Well, last week I told them they weren’t getting my business anymore until they stop working for gangs. They just pushed me off. So I’m asking you, how about a boycott, Dr. King style? They won’t listen to me, but they’d
have
to listen to all of us or they’d go broke.”

Lots of handclapping and amens.

“Dr. King used to say.” Jami Lyn continued, “if a man has to choose between parting with his prejudices and parting with his money, usually he’ll part with his prejudices. So how many of you will agree to boycott Stoney’s until they stop the gang stuff?” Almost every hand in the room went up. “All right, then. Call Stoney’s, drop by and explain, or send them a letter. I happen to have their address and phone number right here.” She held up a half sheet of paper, handwritten and photocopied. “I’ll pass these out, and you pass them on to all your neighbors.”

“That’s a good start, Jami Lyn,” Rod said. “Who’s next?”

“How about we do the same thing at Boyd’s Music?” a man asked. “You listen to that gangsta rap they sell? If I took the words from those songs and said them to a girl on the street, I could be arrested. But the boys listen to this stuff all the time, callin’ girls these terrible names and treatin’ ’em like dirt. You think it doesn’t make them disrespect women?”

“Same with Smitty’s Video,” a woman added. “They carry all this sex and violence crud, and our kids end up watching it. Now I know the main responsibility is ours as parents, but we can sure reduce the temptations by cleaning up these stores. How about a boycott on Smitty’s too?”

“I’ll pass around a sheet of paper,” Rod Houck said. “Sign it if you want to tell Stoney’s and Boyd’s and Smitty’s they’ve got to get rid of their garbage if they want our business. We’re on a roll. Who else?”

Jay Fielding, principal at Jefferson, walked up front and took the microphone, his wife Debbie beside him.

“Debbie and I have been talking and praying about this. Let me put it real simply—we lose the next generation and we’ve lost our country. These kids need a bigger cause. Instead of doin’ battle against each other, they need to do battle against evil, gangs, drugs, selfishness. And not just against something,
for
something. For God. For family. For country. For their children and grandchildren. We can’t let them run wild—that’s giving up on them. We’ve got to set limits. Can’t let them stay out to all hours unsupervised on the street. What happens on the street, 90 percent of it, is bad. We can’t let them wear gang clothes. And we’ve got to take charge when it comes to their friends. When I was growin’ up, my parents always had veto power when it came to my friends. I say we’ve got to reclaim our children.”

The clapping began, and several people stood to their feet. Then everyone stood, applauding both the man and his words.

“No offense to the principal,” one man said, “but some of you know a group of us have been working on starting a charter school. Now I’ve always been a supporter of public schools, but I think things have gotten out of control and we need a fresh start—a place where kids are taught to respect teachers and each other, a place that’s safe, where there’s no drugs and weapons, where learning is
cool
instead of lame. Now they’ve got these schools in some parts of the country and they’re so popular, black folk are getting on the waiting list the week their child is born.”

“Just want you to know,” Jay Fielding stood back up and said, “I’m all in favor of anything that helps our children. If a charter school does that, God bless your efforts—and maybe it’ll help give us leverage to reform our public schools too. I say, go for it.” Heavy applause.

“Now, I’m going to read you a few more statistics,” Rod Houck said, “that reinforce the importance of everything you’ve been saying. Listen to this. African Americans are 12 percent of the population, but 44 percent of all homicide victims in America. Nearly 95 percent of black homicides are committed by other blacks. Half of all children born with AIDS are black. Our infant mortality rate is twice as high, not counting abortions, which are also twice as high. Our unemployment rate is twice as high. Two out of three black children are born out of wedlock, three times the national average. Black children are four times more likely to live in poverty, six times more likely to be on public assistance. A man living in Harlem is less likely to reach age sixty-five than a man living in Bangladesh. But here’s the one that most hits home to me. In the ten largest cities in America, the high school dropout rate for black males is 72 percent.”

A united groan rose from the room.

Reverend Clancy took the floor again. “There’s something else we need in the city, and I say without it
everything
else will fail. We need the church of Jesus Christ.”

Amens and hallelujahs shot up from everywhere.

“Jesus didn’t say the gates of hell wouldn’t prevail against the Democratic Party or the Republican Party or the NAACP or schools or drug rehab centers or recreational programs. He did say the gates of hell wouldn’t prevail against his church. Now I say the churches have dropped the ball. We used to be the center of the community. Well, some of our churches are trying to be that again. There’s a couple of churches in the suburbs partnering with us. We’re taking kids to parks, museums, the beach, the mountains, on camping trips. We’re getting them into summer camps. We’ve got some classes to teach you to communicate with your children, to talk with them about their futures and drugs and sex and standing up for what’s right. Brother Jim from Teen Challenge sent over some information on helping kids off drugs and evangelizing and discipling them in the process. Now I want Brother Don Frasier to tell us what Bridge Ministries is doing.”