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Stories from the Verse
Con Version
Chapter 142: Cooper 46
Table of Contents
Previous chapter: Takano 128
Two days later, he got a phone call from the front desk. Walking up to it, he met Dorothy again who gave him a jotted down list of two bedroom apartments near to BBS. She jested that he was trying to leave her, and Brian assured her that he had no complaints about The Paris.
“I need cheaper, more permanent lodging,” he explained.
“Of course, good luck,” she wished him, and he walked out. Half an hour later he found the first of the four choices. It was a second story apartment for two friends, and shabby with thin carpet, a leak in the roof, and a front door that creaked. The last was the real deal-killer because it would make it hard to sneak out and hero at night.
An hour later he found the next. It was a tiny house tightly packed between two commercial buildings with a yard he could almost broadjump across. The roof leaked in multiple places, and he was pretty sure that having thin insulation was not a problem because there was no insulation.
The next was more expensive, and closer, so much that he could probably skip a cab, but he was not sure Tommy would like to walk twenty-five minutes to and from work every day. It was uninspired, drab, but the door to the first story apartment worked, and the roof had no leaks.
The last had already been rented earlier that day.
He turned around and walked home, and foiled a purse-snatching in his normal outfit by tripping the running thief. After grabbing up the thief by the collar, returning the purse to the indignant lady, he hauled him along until he found a police car to drop the teenager off at. Along the way, he took the opportunity to witness to the lad, and ask him questions trying to get the young man to see what problems he was causing. The thief just whined in response that it was his bad luck to be caught by a preacher.
“No, mostly a choir director,” Brian had responded with a soft smile.
“You’re annoying,” the young thief said as he was led along the sidewalk toward a policeman who was just now getting out of his car.
“How’s that?” Brian said genially.
“You’re hard to stay mad at. I should hate your guts, but you’re just calmly smiling at me, like we’re friends.”
“We could be friends.”
“Yeah, I’m a thief, and you’re a goody two shoes.”
“Jesus made friends with people who were a lot worse than a purse-snatcher.” There was no fight, nothing to object to in how the words were delivered, which just left the words to stand or fall on their own as the hearer desired.
“Ah, and if it isn’t the Gold Medalist in the Grab n’ Run 100 yard dash, Keith McGregor. Thank you, sir.” The policeman caught the teenager’s arm, and Brian released him.
“Stopped a purse snatching.”
“Tsk, tsk, you post-war brats. You’re not going to have it so easy all your life. You need to straighten up and fly right.”
“Sure, sure, officer.” The teenager was clearly not taking this seriously.
But Brian was staring off into the distance. He had been born Generation X, and knew even the all-white kids would not have received this kindly a treatment. The uniformed officer was no doubt what would later be called the Greatest Generation, and if not exempted for job or health had fought either Germans possibly at Normandy or Japanese in some tropical hellhole of slimy mud--or both. He had come home, wanted normalcy, and proceeded to indulge the kids.
This thought left him disquieted. He tried to be gentle, curious, kindly while also standing for the Truth Eternal. But maybe that was not what this teenager needed. Maybe he needed an unreasonable, screaming red-faced father to yank his ear hard, and beat some sense into him. Problem was, he was not that man, and it looked like the police officer was not either. He parted from them as the police officer tried to chastise the young thief. Even charity without Heaven’s grace was nothing, he knew. All he knew was to trust, and seek to be kind, but once in a great while, not today, he just wanted to do like Moses’, and grind up a gold calf into dust, and force everyone to drink the dust mixed with water. If only there were some way to change people. The inquisitor in Wenbrunnen had wanted the same thing, along with protecting his sheep from what he saw as a wolf.
“I’m not Moses,” he spoke to himself, catching a few side-eyes on the sidewalk. “I don’t want to send a death angel to slay all the firstborn, and thank Heaven for that. I wonder if Moses had nightmares about the Ten Plagues sometimes.” Pondering various things like the nature of reality, Brian hiked to Lucianno’s Spaghetti House for dinner.
Walking in for the first time, he realized why the clerkess had been a bit fussed about giving him directions. While he was no criminologist, the vibes he was getting were that at least half of the men in the room were in ‘Our Thing’ or as some called La Cosa Nostra, the Italian Mafia. He saw at least three men with visible knife scars on their faces sitting at tables. He was the only Black in the room, and he knew historically the Mafia had not liked Blacks. In fact, the only blondes in the room were two girls. Everything was in shades of dark blue, and dark wood, and crimson leather with hair that was black or brown, and the blonde lady barkeeperess was looking at him with distant pity. Many of the diners eyeballed him, and he wondered if he should turn and leave.
“It's the guy who was preaching to little Keith,” he heard from behind him after the front door opened and closed. “Hey preacher, welcome to the den of iniquity. Ain’t you scared?” A taunting young man walked in and around him, and stood threateningly close. Now he had no choice. If he left, he dragged the honor of his Master in the dust.
“Den? Daniel got tossed into a den--one with lions. God closed their mouths. He can do the same here.” Across the room a dozen mouths closed with snaps, and an ugly light shone in eyes around the room. But before anything untoward could happen, a slight cough was heard from the far wall, and everyone turned that way. Brian did as well, and saw an old, gray-haired man with an almost nice smile who sat against the wall with some old comrades at a well-loaded table.
“I like the preacher man. He’s got steel in his backbone, and unlike most of them, he means what he says.” Just like that, the young man who was eyeing him up for a punch or slash with a switchblade, and the other twenty men who were deciding where to bury his body, went back to their spaghetti dinners. Brian carefully nodded his gratitude to the older man on the far side of the room whom he was pretty sure ran the Mob in Berkeley. The capo nodded back like the king he was, and went back to his wine and conversation with his close associates. Brian breathed out, offered silent thanks, and got a table with the Dinner Special for one.
There is a behind-the-writings look at the thoughts, influences, and ideas of this chapter, along with eleven other sequential chapters of this novel, in mark Joseph "young" web log entry #516: Versers Stymied. Given a moment, this link should take you directly to the section relevant to this chapter. It may contain spoilers of upcoming chapters.
As to the old stories that have long been here:
