Halvah or Daniel Beloved of God

Daniel Beloved of God, Part Three

The sewers were backing up. Ah, the smell of Manhattan, Daniel thought, motor oil and garbage rotting, thick, moist human goo.  In the country, the first rain cleanses.  In New York City, it backs up the sewers and washes pigeon poop off the high rises down onto the pedestrians.

 “Hurry up and make up your mind,” Daniel ordered.  He knew what happened after dark in that part of town.  The needy and vague-eyed — from drink or drug or mental illness — materialized from crevices of abandoned buildings, crying and moaning and demanding money while in the distance sirens wailed, but always in the distance.

  A loud crack echoed in the alley across the street, probably just a trashcan being emptied for use as shelter from the rain, but it sounded like gunfire.  

“Okay,” they muttered.  “But what shall we do with the car?”

“Drive it around back where it might have a chance of surviving the night in tact,” he replied, “but I doubt it.”  He followed the car and then helped to remove anything of value.  Bags of clothes, guitars, and pillows.   One of the girls handed him a terra cotta sculpture of a young man’s head. 

“This is Aragorn.  He goes everywhere with us.” She explained.

 “Aragorn?”  Daniel asked.  The thing weighed a ton.

 “You know, from the Lord of the Rings.” 

 “Oh yeah?” said Daniel, “Leave him here.  No one is going to steal him.  I know what.  He can be Aragorn, Defender of the Volvo.”  Giggling they set the sculpture down on the driver’s seat where in the dim light it looked like a severed head.  “That’ll scare the crap out some poor wino just trying to find a place out of the rain,” he told the girls. They giggled nervously then followed him on a zig-zag path down broken sidewalks, past boarded up storefronts covered in obscenities, always careful not to step into the gutter rivers of piss and worse.  Every now and then they heard a scream or a car screeching on rain-slicked streets, normal sounds for that part of the city but he could tell from the gasps behind him,  they would not last long in the city.  Soon they would be begging to leave, to return home to a safe suburb where the lights are out by ten and the police have little more to do than investigate mailbox crime.  Some place like his parent’s house on the river, idyllic, but sometimes too peaceful for his mother.  Periodically she had to suffer for Christ.

Then it dawned on him.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen Marcia.   One summer had passed, at least.  Maybe two.   During that time, he’d moved many times. Maybe she had too.  Maybe she’d married and moved to the suburbs. Maybe she’d died.  No that wasn’t possible.   His mother would have told him.  Maybe he’d be stuck with the girls and forced to walk them all the way to Father Frank’s.  Maybe that was a better plan in the first place.  Maybe, maybe, maybe.  He couldn’t decide.   

 “Let me go!” Daniel heard from behind. His heart stopped as he turned.

A creature of considerable size and weight had one of the girls tucked under his arm like a long, lost teddy bear and was dragging her back into the alley.

 “Oh baby, baby,” he moaned, eyes half closed, “Come with Daddy.”  He was dressed head to toe in rags, his face smeared with too much dirt and soot to tell his race, his bloodshot eyes empty.  

Daniel looked around for something to swing at him.  There was nothing.  They were cut off from the civilized world, up against a massive creature whose senses were lost to reason.  Negotiation was futile. He had nothing to offer that would tempt the man from his prey nor was there anything nearby with which to distract him.

© Copyright 2013  JTTwissel