Child of Gilead Read online

  Douglas S. Reed

  The Hurricane Group

  Copyright © 2020 by Douglas S. Reed

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Wolf and Boy is a Native American legend of unknown origins.

  Printed in the United States of America

  Library of Congress Control Number 2020910039

  A record of deposit for this book is available from the

  Bermuda National Library

  ISBN 978-0-947481-87-2 (Paperback)

  ISBN 978-0-947481-88-9 (e-Book edition)

  Cover & Book Design by Danna Mathias

  The Hurricane Group

  2 Loyalty Drive

  Somerset, Bermuda MA 01

  Also by Douglas S. Reed

  Garden’s Corner

  For my younger brother, Kemet,

  wherever you may be, always know this,

  you are loved.

  Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

  —James 1:27 (NIV)

  If you think that you can only touch God by abandoning everything in this world, I doubt very much that you will touch God.

  —Thich Nhat Hanh,

  Going Home: Jesus and Buddha As Brothers

  Thus saith the LORD; for three transgressions of the children of Ammon, and for four, I will not turn away the punishment thereof; because they have ripped up the women with child of Gilead.

  —Amos 1:13 (KJV)

  CHAPTER

  One

  “Take the road less traveled, my son. Always. No exceptions.”

  Sounds like the start of a fairy tale, or some sort of fable. Kind of like the ones they read to us in school. But it’s really Mama’s playful way of talking fancy. It’s just her way of reminding me about her golden rule. Her law. And though they’re words that Mama can’t claim as her own, “They do,” as she always tells me, “reveal a higher truth about what it takes to live a more meaningful and transcendent life.”

  “Most importantly,” Mama is quick to add, “the Road Less Traveled is the true way, and will best keep a child away from harm and danger.”

  All this elegant talk beats Mama just saying, “Boy, just do as I say. Take the long way home. Never take the shortcut.”

  But taking the Road Less Traveled makes life a little more difficult. It means getting off the bus a stop early or riding in the last car of the train and walking out the station’s back exit. Both put me about four long blocks further from my home. A real pain. Mama doesn’t care.

  Perhaps that’s because the path she prefers I take seems almost too good to be true. There are nice brownstone homes set along quiet, tree-lined streets. You pass my school and its peaceful playground. You never see any children playing there. Nor do you ever see a Mr. Lonely—that’s a man with no family, no friends, no home—sleeping on one of the park’s benches. There are a lot of churches along this path, too. Some are small storefront churches. Some are big and look like cathedrals, like the one Mama and I go to. Mama says, “Walk this way home and you’ll know that God is in this place. You’ll see all that you need to feel good about life—a nice home, a school nearby to enrich your mind, and an altar to worship at.” Most importantly, Mama says, “There’s peace and there’s quiet along this path, so you can listen to God talk to you.”

  But The City is a kind of funny place. You can walk a few blocks and feel like you found a little piece of heaven. Yet, turn a corner and watch out! You’re surrounded by…madness! That’s what Mama calls the world outside the peace and quiet of the Road Less Traveled. She calls it… The Madness.

  It’s kind of hard to tell where the Road Less Traveled ends and The Madness begins, and vice-versa. The circular path of the Road Less Traveled flows into The Madness at opposite ends of a simple two-block cluster of small storefront businesses. Businesses like Chef and his Golden Sun take-out spot, and Injun Rah’s pizza joint. The Madness is where you’ll find brothers and sisters from the Dark Continent selling traditional garb at their fashion boutique. And not long ago, The Madness was where you’d find my grandpa’s old candy shop. A sort of general store. I can’t tell you much more, because I’m not allowed to go there. It’s an old, battered corner store. It sits across the street from what had been, at one time, an old gangsta social club called Illusions. Illusions’ window used to be black with its name written in script and in dripping blood red paint. But now it’s a nail salon with a windowpane that is large and clear, so that when you look inside, you see a group of lady manicurists from the Far East at work. The Madness is the world. It’s a place where you can find anything and everything you want. I think that is good.

  But Mama says, “No, no, not so fast. Don’t be fooled by those profiting amid The Madness.” According to her, there’s no nobility in always giving people what they want. “Drug dealers give people what they want. Does that make them noble?” That’s Mama talking. I’m just a kid.

  “Stay away from The Madness. Take the Road Less Traveled, my son. Always. No exceptions.”

  Mine is the story of a little boy who doesn’t always listen to his mama.

  CHAPTER

  TWO

  There’s a light that shines dim but steady at the point where a smoothly-paved road leading out of town meets the ragged, rock-strewn path of the low country. It’s a tiny speck of light, one that radiates from within a battered wooden shack store that stands alone and secure amid the vast darkness of an open field.

  Inside, the Old Man stands behind a glass-encased counter filled with candy. He is lean and sinewy, robust and fit for a man in the early light of his sixties. He surveys his empty store with a keen eye, searching for anything he may have forgotten to do before closing. The Old Man sees that all is well.

  But this is no ordinary closing for the night. He has made plans that will take him far from here. How long he’ll be gone, even he can’t say for sure. One week, two weeks, perhaps three. So, this pause to look around the shop one last time has more to do with reassuring himself that the people of this village will be ok. The Old Man hasn’t told anyone of his leaving. He’ll just up and go without notice; kind of like the way he seemingly appeared out of the blue ten years before. Cruising along this unpaved road, he spotted a group of children playing beside an old, abandoned shack, and the small, empty home behind it. This was the place the Old Man had been searching for.

  It belongs to me.

  In no time, the tiny home out back was tidied up and rebuilt and became the place he would call his own. And just as fast, he had a hand-painted sign in the doorway of the once-abandoned shack. It read simply: Hannah’s.

  No one needed to ask the man where he came from. The people of the village deemed him as one of them and embraced what he had to offer. A little country store set along an open dirt field—three miles from the center of town, and a quarter mile from the last cluster of ranch homes along the main road. For adults, it offers a welcome respite after a long day of work at the slaughterhouse. The Old Man always has a cooler full of
cold drinks, and a group of picnic chairs out front for them to sit on after a day spent spilling the blood of lambs.

  Still, only a handful of adults actually make their way to Hannah’s on any given day. Perhaps they’re scared off by the steady flow of children who, when they hear the Old Man ring the bell on the front porch of his store, seem to magically emerge from the thicket of trees just off on the horizon; many of them hopping across the stream that runs deep and forever steady out in the back of the little house. Leaping from one bank to the other, the children know that Hannah’s is really their place. At first glance, the Old Man seems to have very little to offer them except a small assortment of candy and ice cream bars. But the children come because they are welcomed. The land around his small shop is their playground.

  However, the time has come for the Old Man to tend to business up north in The City, a place where there’s a million lights that shine higher and brighter than those here in this little village. There are answers to questions he’s been waiting on for years. The time has come to seek them out.

  CHAPTER

  THREE

  You can tell a lot about grown-ups and what they think about kids just by the names that they give children. I know a kid named after a bottle of liquor—Ci-roc. And I know a kid named from a word plucked out of the dictionary—Omnipotent. Seriously. I’m not making this up. These are names of kids in my school. To have a name with no meaning is sad. It’s like having no name at all.

  The parents I’ve learned of in the Bible were different. They gave thought when naming their children. Ishmael… God hears. Jacob…God protects. Samuel… Asked of God. If your mom or dad gives you a name like that, there’s no doubt that you’re in store for big things. You know you have a purpose. As Pastor, from our church, says, “You know your destiny by the name your parents give you.”

  I don’t think most kids today are in store for anything big with the names they’ve been given. They all seem to mean one thing only, ‘God’s little lost child’.

  But Mama says that my name has meaning, that I’m named after someone who saved her life. So, my name has significance. Still, when you ask who is telling this story, I think I’ll play like God and simply say, “I am is telling you this story.” I kind of like that. You won’t have power over me by knowing my name.

  ∏

  Mama and I live along the Road Less Traveled in a nice, neat, three-story high brownstone. It’s just her and me in this big house that was passed down to us by her parents—my Grandma, who’s retired and living back on a nice tropical island out there in the Sargasso Sea, and my Grandpa, who died shortly before I was born.

  There’s no daddy in my life so I can only tell you about life with Mama. And it’s ok. I don’t have any real complaints. Mama’s a teacher. She doesn’t work in the neighborhood school I go to, but she is close by. Mama used to teach art, but this past year she was asked to be a second-grade teacher. Life with a mom who’s a teacher means I practically OD on education. I guess it’s almost like having a preacher for a father—Jesus, Jesus all day long. With my mama, there’s no idle time for idle thoughts. Everything is a teaching moment. But Mama is not like your typical teacher at school. She’s not about cramming boring information and test-taking skills into your head; useless and uninspiring things that kids end up forgetting the very next day. Many times, Mama doesn’t even ask questions. Instead, she waits for you to ask one. She waits to see how deeply you’ve been thinking about things. So, when we go to the movies to see something like Charlie and The Chocolate Factory, it’s expected that I’ll ask questions. Questions like, “Why do bad things happen to the children in this story?” and “Why did the boy’s father deny his child something he really loved?” Mama is just trying to have me achieve some sort of wisdom. Mama says schools are not in the business of teaching wisdom, at least not in The City. They’re just in the business of profiting off children by selling new programs and giving tests every year meant only to complicate learning and keep kids confused and dumb. She says schools have become a soulless factory where teachers have to justify the jobs of bean counters, people who make up silly methods to teach 2 + 2 = 4, and who talk about “data this and data that.” And because this is how the powers that be want children to learn, Mama has taken it upon herself to help me seek a deeper understanding of the world. That’s what a good parent is supposed to be… a teacher of wisdom. Still, it would be nice to sometime just be able to come out of a movie and ask, “So, where are we going for ice cream?” But with Mama, she finds a teaching moment out of a little movie… in the summer. That’s kind of crazy.

  Life with Mama also means reading a lot of books, which I actually kind of like to do. I just don’t like having to write about them when I’m done. Mama makes me write some sort of summary, or character sketch, or even a new ending. Mama takes it easy on me with math. She’ll never admit it to her friends at work, but she thinks math is overrated. The principal at her school would have a baby cow if she heard Mama say something like that. “Math is so important,” is what most people say. But Mama mocks them and says, “You’re right. You need math in order to hoard money, and to measure walls to keep people out. You need math in order to make and drop bombs. Wow, imagine a world without math.” But her friends tell her that a whole lot of pain and suffering has been caused by words and ideas written on a page. Still, Mama tells them that stories—well-told stories—though they may not reveal facts like a history book, serve a higher purpose. They reveal life’s ultimate truths. She believes stories are the best way to get children to learn what is most important in life—how to relate to and understand people. Good stories reveal how we’re all connected. “Besides,” she is quick to add, “where’s the humanity in a bunch of numbers on a page, anyway?”

  But my life is not all about school and education. It includes some work too. I have basic chores around the house, like helping take out the garbage and putting away the dishes in the dishwasher. I spend time helping Mama clean out the basement’s studio apartment whenever it’s vacant, like it is now. That’s time spent scrubbing out the refrigerator and bundling up old newspapers and magazines Mama keeps down in the apartment. It’s hard work and it’s boring work. However, Mama says it’s important work because we get to open our home to someone in need. Mama likes short-term rentals and she usually rents it out month-by-month to students from the art college down the street from us.

  I need to keep it real… I don’t feel the same way as Mama about opening our home. I just see it as strangers, one after another, coming to live with us. They’re intruders in our space. And no matter how quiet a person may be, their life becomes part of your life. If I had any say in the matter, I would always keep it empty. I prefer it to be just me and Mama alone in this world.

  CHAPTER

  FOUR

  There’s an 8:04 train that will take the Old Man to The City. That’s what the schedule posted on the station’s window reads. There is no one there to tell him otherwise. It’s Saturday and the tiny log cabin ticket stand is closed for the weekend. There are no other travelers for the Old Man to confer with. And, as is so often the case with the Old Man, he is alone.

  Not that he minds. He takes a seat on a small bench out front and he waits. The Old Man pulls out a switchblade, and repeatedly flicks the blade open and then closed again. He begins to carve his name on the wooden bench, but after a few carvings, the Old Man stops and flicks the blade closed. Instead, the Old Man begins to think about the long ride ahead—twelve, thirteen, perhaps as long as fourteen hours. Enough time to reflect on the life he once knew back in The City. More than enough time to think deeply on what it is he hopes to find upon his return.

  The Old Man pulls out a small Air Mail envelope. He stares at it for a moment. The postage stamp of the Queen in the upper left-hand corner is starting to peel off. The Old Man gently rubs the stamp back down to its rightful place and takes the letter out of
the envelope. He has read it many times before, and he does so again with eyes that reflect the same sense of anticipation as when it first arrived two days ago.

  To My Soldier,

  I hope life is treating you well. You and I are probably the last of a dying breed that communicate solely through letters and cards. I like that we’ve not gone the way of the world.

  You’ve written me often, asking about the child. And each time, it has been met with a profound silence. You’ve wanted to see the little girl who is not so little anymore. That little girl we left behind in the madness; the little girl who chose to stay behind, perhaps waiting on a return we both know to be impossible. You’ve wanted to see for yourself how her life has turned out. You’ve wanted to know for a long time if we were right in the path that we chose for her.

  Go to her. And while there, share with anyone who doesn’t know you and is foolish enough to confront you, let them learn, “Your kind does not win.”

  The Old Man slips the letter into the envelope without reading any further. He begins to think back upon a little girl, seven or eight years of age. She is dressed in a pink short-sleeved shirt and white shorts. She wears tiny pink sneakers with a unicorn on the side. The little girl sits behind the counter of her daddy’s candy shop, humming a song. Crayons are scattered atop the counter. She is feverishly drawing away, lost in a world of her own creation.

  For the Old Man, there is clarity that comes with this memory. He knows that this journey is about one thing only, and that’s keeping a vow he made to himself long ago, “No harm must ever come this little girl’s way again.”

  CHAPTER

  FIVE

  Mama rarely lets me go out into the world by myself.

  Mama’s idea of independence is to allow me to walk over to the library once school is out. That’s nothing. It’s only one block away. And once I get there, I cannot leave. I have to wait for her to come and pick me up after work. Sometimes, if the moon and the stars are aligned just right, and the weather is nice, maybe, just maybe, she’ll let me go to the corner bodega to pick up a loaf of bread or something. Sometimes, she’ll have me drop off a pair of shoes at Pharaoh’s. Pharaoh is a cobbler whose shop is a block and a half away from our home. It’s along the Road Less Traveled. It’s one of the few places I get to go to by myself. And the only reason Mama lets me go there is because she’s kind of chummy with Pharaoh, the owner.