BEDROCK FAITH


By ERIC CHARLES MAY

Akashic Books

Copyright © 2014 Eric Charles May
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-61775-196-7


CHAPTER 1

1993: A Homegrown Miscreant Returns


By seven that evening, every resident on the 1800 block of 129thStreet knew that Stew Pot Reeves was out of prison and backhome; home being his mom's redbrick two-flat located at thevery east end of the block where the road came to a halt before thehigh stone wall of a railroad embankment.

As a chilly wind waggled naked tree branches beneath an overcastsky and sent bits of debris pinwheeling across bare, damp ground,word of his return traveled from house to house. Some called neighborson the phone, while others threw a wrap over their shoulders (itwas early March) to trot next door or across the street with the badnews, each messenger beginning their bulletin with: "Did you hear?Stew Pot's back!"

Those receiving the news widened their eyes in surprise orwinced in anguish. "Stew Pot's back? The judge gave him thirty years.It hasn't been half that long. Who was it said they saw him? Was itMrs. Motley?"

Yes, it was Mrs. Motley. Tallish with a body that kinder neighborhoodsouls called slender and harder hearts labeled as bony, she hada skin tone the color of butterscotch and a head of silvery white haircombed back in a tight bun. A former school librarian, by then fiveyears retired, she lived next door to the two-flat in a large woodenfour-square with a teal paint job and black stationary shutters. Thatafternoon around four she'd been sitting on her blue living room couchsipping tea from a china cup, the saucer held chest high, when a yellowtaxi stopped in front of the two-flat. (Although she had not leftthe house that day and expected no visitors, as usual she was dressedas if important company was coming or she had somewhere importantto go: beige silk blouse, black ankle-length pencil skirt, stockings,and black low-heel shoes.) There was a row of lace-curtainedwindows across the front of the room with the couch backed againstthe sills. Mrs. Motley set the cup and saucer on the nearby in-laid coffeetable, lifted a white lace panel aside, and looked past the railing ofher roofed porch. Her round wire-rim glasses were set low on her longnose and she had to tilt her head to see over her bifocals.

The house's high first floor gave Mrs. Motley a commanding viewof the street, and she was able to make out the forms of two peoplewithin the shadows of the cab's backseat. Folks in Parkland seldomtook taxis, so she was surprised when the cab's rear door opened andher next-door neighbor, Mrs. Reeves, stepped out.

Normally a Nervous Nelly sort of person, that afternoon the petiteMrs. Reeves looked unusually at ease in a green headscarf and a worngray coat. A tall man, much darker than she, followed her out. He hada shaved head and a goatee, and wore an open peacoat and denimoveralls. A bit of white T-shirt was visible above the bib and the pantshung loose on him, the front hems bunched over the insteps of blackbrogans.

There was a turning circle at the base of the embankment wall andafter the tall guy closed the cab door, the driver made a slow turnaroundand headed back west. Leaning closer to the window, Mrs.Motley saw that the tall guy was also broad across the shoulders, histhick goatee a furry frame around his wide mouth, and his shavedhead was shiny, even under the overcast sky; the noggin reminding herof the smooth side of a greased coconut.

Standing alongside him at the curb, Mrs. Reeves's brownie facebarely reached his chest. The man said something to her which Mrs.Motley could not make out, and for the first time in ages Mrs. Motleysaw Mrs. Reeves smile: a spread of tiny teeth in her small, almostchinless face. It caused Mrs. Motley to wonder if the two were lovers,and if so, how much cash Mrs. Reeves was forking over to him; moneybeing the only reason Mrs. Motley could think of for why such a strappingfellow, who appeared to be in his early thirties, would be with awoman old as Mrs. Reeves, who was sixty if she was a day.

The idea that her east-door neighbor was keeping a honey pie inwalking-around money bothered Mrs. Motley more than a little bit.The two-flat's parkway and front yard were neighborhood anomalies:weedy and trash ridden. The windows were hung with dingy sheets,the white paint on the window frames and doorways were flaked andfaded, and the downstairs apartment had been vacant for years. Likeother immediate neighbors, Mrs. Motley felt the two-flat's conditionbrought the whole block down; a situation made all the more maddeningfor the neighbors by the fact that money was not the issue,for Mrs. Reeves had a perfectly good job Downtown clerking in theDepartment of Motor Vehicles.

The couple strolled up the walkway to the two-flat's front door,where they paused so Mrs. Reeves could insert her key. While turningthe lock she said something over her shoulder. It was then thatthe young man smiled, revealing a white wall of large teeth withinthe frame of the goatee. And when Mrs. Motley saw that, a chill sweptover her.

After the young man merrily followed Mrs. Reeves inside, Mrs.Motley dropped her hand and the lace curtain fell back into place.Sliding to the front of the couch and with her arms crossed, she leanedforward and slowly massaged her goose-bumped biceps.

When Stew Pot Reeves had gone to prison fourteen years before atage eighteen, he'd been a tall, skinny boy without enough hair on hisface to weave a sweater for a fly. That's why she hadn't recognized himat first. But there was no mistaking that big-tooth smile; she'd seenit too many times to ever forget it. Mrs. Motley had always assumedhe would remain in prison till the end of his sentence, by which timeshe figured she would be in either Heaven or the old folks' home.But here it was, 1993, and he was back. The maker of so many Parklandmayhems—arson and pet murder, just to name two—was back. Her firstimpulse was that she could not take the stress of living next door tohim again, that she would have to move. But could she do that? Couldshe actually leave this house that her grandfather had built, and whereshe'd been raised, and where she'd raised her own child, and whereher parents and husband had taken their last breaths?

To her left, glistening like a hearse, was an upright piano whereshe and her mother had once played side by side. To her right was theredbrick fireplace, its innards charcoaled from years of use where asa youngster she had done her first reading, lying on her stomach asthe flames cast wavering light across the pages, an image that wasrepeated years later when she sat on the floor with her toddler son,reading aloud to him from storybooks. She now gazed beyond the sky-blueliving room, with its white moldings and ceiling, through the widepassageway to the apple-green dining room where the furniture—anaircraft carrier of a table, a dreadnaught of a sideboard—were likemost of the house's furniture, heavy, dark, ornate wooden pieces shepolished to a high sheen. (The same went for the hardwood floorswhich were like honey glaze in color and gleam; the varicolored rugsspread across them presents her now grown son had purchased overseas.)The house and everything in it had come to her, she the onlychild of sibling-less parents. She saw it as her legacy, and though she'dbeen raised to believe vanity a terrible thing, she couldn't deny the immensepride her legacy gave her, even though she knew it set her apartfrom many of her neighbors, the majority of whom lived in homes farless elaborate. (A few of these folks, and she knew this for a fact, consideredher pride nothing more than snob arrogance.) She loved herhouse, despite it being drafty in winter and hard to cool in summer,despite having to haul laundry up and down the basement steps, despiteall the rooms that were becoming more and more of a problemfor her to keep clean. But, could she stand living next to Stew Pot? Justthe thought of it brought a sour expression to her face.

For twenty minutes or so, Mrs. Motley sat there on the couch frettingover her dilemma. Coming to no conclusion she rose slowly, forher knees gave her a bit of trouble, and exited the room carrying thechina saucer and cup of now cooled tea. With perfect posture, shewalked to the back of the house through a wainscoted hallway, movingpast a grandfather clock and the thick posts of a stairway balustrade.

At the end of the hallway was a big yellow kitchen—yellow walls,yellow fridge, yellow stove—where the air was thick with the fumesof lemon-scented cleaner. As Mrs. Motley poured the tea down thedrain of the stand-alone sink, she heard the two-flat's screen doorbang shut. Setting the cup down, she went to her own back door andpeered through the window's parted yellow polka-dot curtains. Nextdoor Stew Pot was headed toward the alley with an armload of phonographalbums. He wasn't wearing the peacoat, and his white T-shirtshowed off his robust arms. When he reached the chain-link gate, hekicked it open and dropped the records into the black garbage can.

Afraid he might catch her watching, Mrs. Motley yanked downher door's window shade before Stew Pot could turn around; but afteronly a few seconds her desire to see became overpowering and shepulled gently at the edge of the shade to take a peek. She saw StewPot heading back toward the two-flat and let the shade go as if it werehot. His black brogans thumped loudly on his porch steps and whenthe screen door bang wasn't followed by the slam of the inside door,she knew he wasn't finished.

Scared to look but too curious not to, she waited behind the safetyof the shade. Before long the screen door banged again and Mrs. Motleypeeked once more. Stew Pot had another tall armload of albumsthat he also dumped in the garbage can. When he turned around thattime, she saw that his jaw was fixed in a grimace and his eyes in afurious squint; however, he didn't so much as glance over the chain-linkfence separating the yards. Feeling safe from discovery, she kepton peeking.

Stew Pot took one more trip carrying albums, two trips carryingstacks of magazines, one trip carrying a stereo and speakers, and onecarrying a clock radio and a portable TV. The magazines he droppedatop the records, the electronic equipment he stacked behind thefence. He then made two trips with women's clothes—dresses, blouses,skirts—that he piled on the records. When the screen door bang afterthe second clothes trip was followed by the inside door slamming,Mrs. Motley knew he was finally done.

She sat at her broad kitchen table which was covered with a yellowoil cloth. Have Stew Pot and Mrs. Reeves gotten into an argument already?she wondered. Should I call the police? Though she held Mrs. Reeves primarilyresponsible for the way Stew Pot had turned out, at the sametime Mrs. Motley had never wished the woman ill.

She decided not to call the police, since it wasn't likely that 911would send a car simply because she'd seen Stew Pot throwing stuffaway. Using her yellow wall phone, she instead called first one, thenanother nearby neighbor, who were also retirees. (She spoke in herusual unhurried way, her mellow pronunciation as precise as herhandwriting or posture.) Later on these folks contacted other neighborson the block, which got the word-of-mouth rolling, and by seventhirty, as they sat down to their suppers, neighbors on the block knewnot only that Stew Pot had returned, but that he was already actingthe fool.


(Continues...)

Excerpted from BEDROCK FAITH by ERIC CHARLES MAY. Copyright © 2014 Eric Charles May. Excerpted by permission of Akashic Books.
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