Eric Lustbader - First Daughter

"Which was when we bought it," Taske says as he leads Jack through the side door into the rectory. "Lucky for us, one of the bank's vice presidents is a member of our congregation. We were searching for a new home and this became it." He winks. "Got it at a good price."

"But this area's filled with gangs, crime, and drugs," Jack says, and winces as Taske applies peroxide with a swab to his numerous scrapes, cuts, and lacerations.

"And where better to accomplish God's work?" Taske indicates that Jack should take off his shirt. "Which begs the question, what were you doing on that wild corner in the middle of the night?"

"Hanging," Jack says sullenly.

"Why weren't you home and in bed?"

Jack shrugs off his shirt. "I thought it would be safer out on the street."

The reverend stares at the black-and-blue marks across Jack's rib cage. Softly, he says, "You didn't get those to night, did you?"

Jack bites his lip.

"Father or brother?"

"Don't have a brother, do I?" Jack says defensively. How would things go for him at home if he said his father is beating him? Anyway, it isn't his father's fault that Jack is so stupid.

Myron Taske, silent, contemplative, continues his work patching Jack up. As it turns out, he is a singer, every Sunday, leading the choir in three joyous songs at the end of his sermon. He loves to sing love songs of a sort, love songs to God's grace and goodness here on earth as in the heavens. This he tells Jack as he bandages him up.

"Everyone here is black?" Jack says.

Myron Taske leans back, regarding Jack over small eyeglasses he has set on the bridge of his nose for the close work. "Anyone who wants to be closer to God is welcome here, Jack."

Finished with his work, he packs up the first aid kit, stows it back in a large armoire that dominates one wall. On the opposite wall is a painting of Christ's face, resplendent within a golden aura.

"Do you believe in God, Jack?"

"I… I never thought about it."

Myron Taske purses his lips again. "Would you like to now?"

Before Jack can answer, a sharp series of raps comes on the door: three short, two long.

"Just a minute!" Taske calls, but the door swings inward anyway.

The doorway is entirely filled by a man of humongous height and girth. He must weigh close to 350 pounds. He is the color of a moonless night, his eyes yellow, teeth very large, very white, except for his left incisor, which is gold. Embedded in its center is a gleaming diamond. His hands are the size of other people's feet, his feet the size of other people's heads, his skull as bald as a bowling ball and twice as shiny.

"Jeremiah Christmas, Gus, didn't you hear me?"

Gus's face, scarred along both cheeks, is like a black lamp that sucks all the daylight out of the room. His gravelly voice is just as terrifying.

"Sure I heard you, Reverend." He walks into the room on legs whose thighs are so thick, they make him slightly bandy-legged. "I wanted to see for myself who you picked outta the gutter this time."

"News travels fast," Jack says, without thinking. He sucks in his breath as Gus's yellow eyes impale him on a stake.

"Good news travels fast," Gus rumbles. "Bad news travels faster."

"Gus is a storehouse of aphorisms," Myron Taske says for Jack's benefit. "A vast storehouse."

Gus's enormous belly shakes when he laughs. He moves into the room like a sumo wrestler, like a force of nature.

Still with his eyes on Jack, he says to Reverend Taske, "This one's different, though. He's white." He squints, addresses Jack without missing a beat. "That's one butt-ugly beating handed to you."

"It was my fault," Jack says.

"Yeah?" This seems to interest Gus. "How you mean?"

"I was standing on the corner over Eastern."

Gus nods his monstrously huge head as he circles Jack. "And?"

"And I got dragged into the alley and beaten. Guy said to me I disrespected him."

Gus appears on the verge of annoyance. "By doing what-all?"

"I was on his turf."

Gus's gaze swings to the reverend. "Andre," is all he says.

Taske nods sorrowfully.

"Shit, I told you the preachin' wasn't gonna work on him." Gus is clearly disgusted.

"How many times have I told you that kind of language has no place in God's house, Augustus," Reverend Taske says sternly.

"Apologies, Reverend." Gus looks abashed.

"Don't apologize to me, Augustus." He gestures with his head. "Do your penance, seek God's forgiveness."

With one last look at Jack, Gus lumbers out, slamming the door behind him.

There is a silence, out of which Jack struggles by saying, "I suppose now you're going to tell me not to worry, that his bark is worse than his bite."

Reverend Taske shakes his head ruefully. "No, son. You don't want to get in the way of Gus's bite." Slapping his palms against his thighs, he says, "Are you ready to go home now?" He looks at his watch. "It's already after eight."

"I'm not going home," Jack says stubbornly.

"Then I'll walk you to school."

Jack ducks his head. "Don't go to school. They don't want me."

There is a small silence. Jack is terrified Myron Taske will ask him why.

Instead, the reverend says, "I'll call Child Services at nine, make sure the beatings don't continue."

Jack bites his lip. Child Services. Strangers. No, then they'll find out how stupid he is, and his father will be even angrier. "Don't call anyone," he says in a voice that catches Taske's attention.

"All right, for the moment I won't," the reverend says, after a moment's pause, "on one condition. I'd very much like you to come back, because it seems to me that you're ready to talk about God."

Jack remains dubious, but he has no choice. Besides, Reverend Taske is so nice, there's a chance he'll get to like Jack, as long as Jack manages not to look or sound stupid around him. That means, among other things, keeping away from any printed matter the reverend might want him to read. Filled with anxiety, he nods his assent.

"Believe me, the first step is the most painful, Jack." Smiling, Myron Taske claps his hand gently on Jack's shoulder. "You're lost now-even you can't deny that. Consider that in finding God you will find yourself."

THE FIRST Daughter awoke in a room of unknown size; the walls and ceiling, lost in shadows, seemed to mock her. She might have been in a bunker or an auditorium, for all she knew. Whether there were windows here was another mystery impossible for her to solve. A bare lightbulb, surrounded by the knife-edged penumbra of an industrial Bakelite shade, dropped a scorching bomb of light onto her head and shoulders.

She sat bound to a chair that seemed hand-hewn from the heart of a titanic tree. Its ladder back rose to a height above her head; its seat was of woven rush. Lacquered canary yellow, its surfaces were tagged in a graffiti of swooping red and purple, suggesting both bougainvillea and sprays of blood.

Her wrists were fastened to the muscular chair arms with thick leather straps, her ankles bound similarly to the chair legs, as if she were a madwoman in a nineteenth-century asylum. She was dressed in new clothes, not in the sleep shirt and boys' boxers she'd worn to bed. Her feet were bare. She felt the vague need to urinate, but she clamped down on it. She had far bigger problems.

Alli couldn't remember how she got here; she barely recalled the callused hand over her mouth, the nauseating odor of ether rising into her nostrils like swamp gas. After all, it could have been a nightmare. Now she smelled her own sweat, a stew of terror, rage, and helplessness.

"Hello? Hello! Is anybody there? Help! Get me out of here!"

Her straining voice sounded thin and strange to her, as if it were an elastic band pulled past its limits. Sweat rolled down her underarms, rank with fear. Tremors seized her extremities, held them hostage.