"Like a True Nature's Child"
Philadelphia – 1984
Within a few days Penance fell into a rather easy routine at the church. His mornings started quite early, as Vanki ran a strict inspection of the kitchen facilities everyday by 5:00. There was cider to heat and confections to bake, all to leave in the narthex of the church for attendees of the two early masses. But these masses were sparsely attended, and the prep work for them was pretty light. The real work in the kitchen was in putting together food for the volunteers to pick up by noon; they took it all to several soup kitchens around the neighborhood. The work was demanding, and Vanki nearly a slave driver when it came to kitchen matters. Penance did quite well for him, though.
After all, he'd survived being Cadha's assistant, hadn't he? Next to her Vanki was a purring kitten. He thought about the Scottish woman while chopping a mess of onions; they really didn't make 'em like her anymore, did they? She was a different breed: a radically strong and independent type, not so much by nature, but by necessity. Back then a poorly-run kitchen didn't just mean you burnt a roast and then had to pile the kids into the station wagon for a trip to McDonald's. It meant starvation. As a result Cadha was quite gruff, and direct to the point of rudeness, and she never once minced her words. She could actually be a real witch, sometimes. Oh, the stories he could tell about her, and that kitchen!
Penance blinked. He wagged his head; the chopped onions were getting to his eyes, and he figured he might as well focus on the task at hand.
On alternating afternoons Father Kenaz had Vanki and Penance set up a little soup stand along one side of the church. Many of the locals in the impoverished neighborhood took them up on the offer of a free, hot meal. Penance manned the ladle, giving each person a fair portion of the meal. At first he was afraid he'd suddenly look up from his stewpot and find Whip staring at him across the table, but the freckle-faced girl never once showed up. He figured she was probably too proud to take a handout.
That, or she'd come across another 'rich-looking white kid' trespassing in her alleyways, and he was carrying a fistful of hundred-dollar bills.
Penance had more pressing things to worry about than the girl, anyway. He soon learned that there was at least one Immortal member in the congregation at St. Hubertus. He discovered this while meditating in the cemetery one day during the Sunday service. The church was packed then, and Penance figured he'd have the best chance to suss out any potential threats at that time.
He wasn't disappointed. No sooner had the boy fallen into that dark 'hole' in his mind than he felt the jolt of a nearby Immortal. Penance could 'see' the inside of the church quite clearly, and his mind danced amongst a line of people snaking up to the altar for communion. He saw Father Kenaz doling out a wafer to someone in that line, and that is where he felt the jolt.
Who this person was Penance didn't know, exactly, and his mind didn't give him a clear picture of them. He made sure to find a perch near the church entrance so he could watch all the members of the congregation as they left. He sat atop the stone wall of the cemetery and scanned the crowd below him. No one stood out in particular, until Penance felt a tingle at the nape of his neck. He looked at the church entrance and noticed a suspicious man sauntering down the steps. He was a squat, fat thing, with buggy eyes and thick, vulgar lips. He looked a little like Peter Lorre, if he'd been in an accident with a steamroller.
The man looked up at Penance as he passed, and the look he flashed was unsavory. His eyes lingered on Penance, scanning the boy head to toe, before he finally rounded a corner and disappeared from view.
The encounter skeezed Penance out, but he didn't have to think very long before deciding upon a course of action: it would be foolish to just pack up and leave the area immediately. For one: it was almost impossible for any Immortal in the neighborhood to know that Penance was one of them, and even if they did know what he was then it would be doubly foolish for the boy to leave the protection of holy ground. No, even if some hunter had his scent, he wouldn't be flushed from the bushes so easily. He'd have to keep his head on his shoulders (ha!) and keep a close eye on the situation as it developed. But one thing was abundantly clear to him, now:
He absolutely couldn't stay here much longer.
Vanki spent nearly all his time chatting with Penance about the 'old country'. Penance did his best to convince the golem that he'd been to Finland within the past decade, but by the boy's math it had been a little over 90 years since his last visit. That said, he could hold his own in a conversation about the country: the weather was still brutally cold, the scenery ungodly pretty, and the rye bread still savory-sour and as dry as desert sand.
There was more to Finland than that, of course, but you'd be surprised how far you could get in a conversation armed with just those facts.
That, and Penance's ability to actually speak the language seemed to be all Vanki needed from him. Under other circumstances the gruff man might've been loath to spend so much time with some snot-nosed kid like Penance, but he was desperate to have even a small reminder of his homeland close at hand. He even nicknamed Penance Lumi Korvat— 'snowy ears'— on account of those damned sprouts of gray hair above his ears. Penance managed to get almost all of his hair to conform to that absurd dirty-blond color, but of course it didn't quite take on those two trouble-spots. Naturally the boy was not amused by the nickname, but it seemed to make Vanki happy, so Penance figured he would have to let it slide.
Grudgingly, at least.
Vanki gave him vague reasons about why he came to America, and he didn't really want to talk about his own life in his home country. Penance could guess, however, that it was a very colorful story, and Vanki's departure from Finland might not have been under the best possible circumstances. For one thing Vanki's name wasn't even a real Finnish name. It was actually a word.
It meant 'convict'.
Penance didn't press 'Vanki' on any of these points; from his own experience the boy knew that just because someone uses a fake name doesn't mean that they're entirely untrustworthy...
Penance briefly stopped chopping vegetables and looked up at the shelf in front of him; Galabeg leered down at the boy from his perch atop a tin of paprika.
"You heard me, you fleabag," Penance grumbled. "I'm only mostly untrustworthy..."
X
X
X
Even with the grueling kitchen work and cleaning duties on his plate Penance had ample free time on his hands. He spent much of it in the library next door, shuffling through the empty aisles and exploring the drop-cloth-covered stacks. One day he found himself suspended off a shelf, legs braced against the metal scaffold above the stack, upper body dangling upside down off the shelves like a bat. Galabeg lay perched on the adjacent bookshelf, staring lifelessly at the boy. Penance was reading that book he found earlier: The Little Prince. It was a short book, but a really trippy read. He found it fitting that he was suspended upside-down, and all the blood was rushing to his head; it put him in the right state of mind to actually enjoy the book. But, then again, so would a massive concussion. He decided not to indulge himself in that particular pleasure at the moment, though.
Of course, if any more blood ended up in his brain he'd probably end up blacking out, falling off the shelf and landing on his head, so six of one...
"Huh. This story's about a kid, but there's also a fox in the book, Galabeg." Penance's voice echoed in the empty library. "Kid's walking around in some kind of desert, and a random fox just comes up to him right out of the blue." Penance looked over at Galabeg. "And then it starts talking to him, 'cause why not, right?" The boy chuckled. "Ridiculous!"
Penance scanned the pages, distantly mouthing words as he read them.
"Hmm. I don't think you'd like this fox, Galabeg. No, he's not like you at all. He's actually kinda friendly; he keeps asking for the kid to 'tame' him, for some reason."
Penance pulled the book from his eyes and looked over at Galabeg.
"Yeah, I know, right?" The boy shook his head and returned to the book, reading the passage aloud:
.
.
"I am looking for friends," said the prince. "What does that mean- 'tame'?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties."
"'To establish ties'?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..."
.
.
Penance slowly moved the book away from his eyes. The boy stared 'up' at the floor below him, his lips scrunched. Finally he shook his head and shrugged:
"Stupid nonsense," he grumbled.
The boy looked over at the severed fox's head and scowled:
"And just so you know, Galabeg: you're a dime-a-dozen..."
Tennis shoes tromped over plastic sheets in the aisle behind him. Every muscle in Penance's body tensed, and the boy caught a breath in his throat. The sound began on the other side of the bookshelf, and it moved on past the boy's perch, slowly circling around to his side of the shelves. Penance, still hanging upside-down, watched that far side of the bookshelf like a hawk, waiting to see the first hint of life emerge from it. Finally a single foot moved out into the open.
Immediately Penance twisted his feet, releasing his legs from the scaffolding above the shelf. He kicked the shelf as he fell, reorienting his body, and when he landed on the ground he was square on his feet, and he brandished his little knife in one hand, snarling.
He was rather proud of his snarl. He'd worked quite hard on it over the years. Through much practice he'd learned how he could twist his tender little lips in on themselves, straining them to a macabre degree, nearly flipping them inside out. It made his pearly whites appear to jut from his head when he did it just right. It was disgusting stuff, and it made him look like some kind of psychotic chimp.
Seriously: it was a thing of beauty.
Penance had to come up with something to make himself look off-putting to any 'predators' out there, realistically, given his unintimidating features. Otherwise no one would ever think twice about taking on some scrawny, knock-kneed kid like him. As an added bonus that special little snarl happened to hurt like hell, so it got him good and pissed for whatever fight he might be raring for.
Alas, there was no fight to be had this time; Whip slowly sauntered into view. The girl crossed her arms and leaned against the bookshelf, chuckling:
"Like I said: you're a cat, not a fox..."
Penance quickly relaxed his body, and he put his teeth back in his head.
"Whaddya want?" Penance mumbled.
"To talk."
The boy put his knife back in his sock:
"I don't."
Whip looked around the empty library. Her massive ponytail shimmied about as she moved her head.
"Is this supposed to be your own private little clubhouse, kid? When you're not working over at St. Hubertus, that is."
"Yeah, it's my clubhouse. And I've got a 'no girls allowed' policy. So, you know..."
"Don't have cooties, I promise." Whip looked around, clucking her tongue. "Shame about this place, really. This was supposed to be a big 'ol 'community center'. Help revitalize the neighborhood, and all. Lots of them do-gooder fine folk pressed really hard to make it..."
"Father Kenaz did, too," Penance nodded.
"That a fact?"
"He told me that he went through the building before the renovations began and blessed it all with holy water. For good luck."
Whip scoffed.
"He must've used a bad batch," she said. "The fine folks' interests went elsewhere long before the job was done, and the money dried up before even this raggedy-ass little library on the first floor was half-finished."
"How'd you know I was working at the church? I never saw you there."
Whip smirked:
"I got more eyes in this neighborhood than just my own."
Penance grunted. He picked up his backpack from the floor and walked past the girl. Whip gripped one shoulder strap, stopping the boy in his tracks. He locked eyes with her for a moment, and then the girl gently tugged the backpack up and down.
"Feels like... what: some canned goods? Green beans and peas?"
"Pineapple, too," Penance pulled the backpack away from her.
"Why—"
"'Cause I like pineapple," the boy continued walking.
"You're gonna bug out soon, huh? Storing up food for the trip?"
"That's the plan, yeah."
Whip followed the boy down the stacks. Sunlight struggled through dust in the air, hitting the youths' bodies in irregular rays through boarded windows. It beamed off Penance's new dirty-blond hair, and Whip couldn't resist a comment:
"Guess you put that dye to good use— uh, well, to use, anyway..."
He could feel the girl's smile tickling the nape of his neck. It burned a hole in him, and he ground his feet to a halt, turning with crossed arms. He stared up at the girl, eyes narrowed:
"What?" He growled.
Whip put one hand to her lips, covering her mouth with her slender fingers. The laugh shone quite clearly in her big brown eyes, though:
"Promise you won't get mad?"
"No."
Whip giggled. Penance didn't even know she could giggle.
"Don't take this the wrong way, okay?"
Seriously: any sentence that followed those words could only realistically be taken one 'way', and it was never good.
"It's just..." Whip gripped Penance's chin and tilted it up a little, bringing his face into the light. The boy allowed this, but the look on his face must've been priceless.
"It's just that you kinda look like...well... like a boy version of Madonna, you know?"
Penance immediately turned on his heels and marched off. He shook his head and growled.
"I mean, a very masculine version of Madonna, and all..." Whip raced to catch up to him. "C'mon: you seriously don't see what I mean?"
"No," he said.
The boy reached the men's restroom. The door had been taken off its hinges to allow painters better access to the walls, and he had to shoo Whip back as he crossed into the room.
"No girls allowed." He pointed up at the bathroom sign above the door. "Seriously."
"Can't have someone else in the room when you're taking a leak?" The girl scoffed. "You got yourself a shy bladder, or something?"
Penance tossed his backpack down near the doorway and shook his head:
"I'm not peeing," he said. "I'm taking a bath. Vanki won't let me in the kitchen if I smell like a moldy tube sock." Penance motioned back to the window again: "Now, seriously: get out, will you?"
"You really want me to leave, huh?"
"Like, more than anything in the history of ever..."
"And nothing I can do will make you change your mind?"
"Can't think of a thing." The boy took two steps into the bathroom when a plastic thump sounded at his feet. He looked down to find a little plastic box leering up at him. Letters were worn off the top of it, but underneath there was a picture of a sandy desert with a pyramid in the background next to some swaying palm trees.
And then there was a camel standing in profile up front, staring right up into Penance's eyes. Looking right at him. It was almost smiling.
The boy cursed.
"You kiss your mother with that mouth, kid?"
"Can't remember," Penance bent down to pick up the cigarettes. Whip again called to him before he could touch them:
"I get to stick around a little, then? After all: you're not a thief, are you?"
Penance sighed.
"I'm not," he mumbled. The boy snatched the cigarettes off the floor and stuffed them into his backpack before again disappearing into the bathroom.
Whip leaned against her side of the open door:
"You gotta have some experience with those things, don't you? I never even heard you cough on that one I gave you the other day. It's almost like you've been smokin' those things for years. When'd you start, anyway?"
Penance sighed as he pulled off his Orioles shirt. He leaned against the bathroom wall and set to work unlacing his Reeboks:
"They started making Camels back in the 1910's," he answered. "It was the first time anyone thought to make cigarettes in packages; before that you had to hand-roll 'em yourself. That was really messy stuff— inconvenient— and the taste was really harsh. But Camels, well, they were easy to carry. And they were really, really smooth..."
"Nice history lesson." Penance could almost hear Whip's eyes rolling. "You gonna answer my question? Why Camels, anyway?"
"Brand loyalty," Penance snarled under his breath.
"Was it because of the pretty picture on the carton? Y'know: the whole camel-in-the-desert thing?"
"Why the hell would that make me wanna smoke a cigarette?"
"Dunno," Whip said. "I mean, kids like colorful pictures, don't they?"
"I'm not five years old!"
"Hell, the way you handle a cigarette you may have been when you started. But you're not smoking a brand that uses some kinda plain packaging, are you?"
"The packaging doesn't matter. Anyway, it's just a drawing of a regular ol' camel. It's kinda classy-looking. It's not like they're using some kind of ridiculous cartoon character to get kids' attention, or anything like that." Penance stopped unlacing his shoes for a moment. "Hmm. That would be kinda evil, I guess..."
He twisted the faucet on one of the sinks and waited for the hot water. He looked back at the doorway suspiciously, and then he quickly poked his head outside at Whip. Slowly, wordlessly, he reached out and took hold of his backpack, and then he eased himself back into the bathroom.
"Suspicious, aren't you, white bread?"
"I know you enough to be suspicious, yeah." Penance again ran his hand under the faucet, and when he felt the water begin to warm up he stripped off the rest of his clothes. "What did you wanna talk to me about?"
"You," Whip answered after a long pause. The tone in the girl's voice was subdued, and far more serious than before. It made Penance pause as he worked a splash of soapy water onto his arms.
"Nothing very interesting to talk about, there," the boy answered.
"You may not be a thief, Pen, but you sure are a liar, aren't you?"
"Now who's being suspicious, Whip?"
This time the pause outside was even longer. Finally Whip answered him, and her voice was nearly a whisper:
"I know you enough to be suspicious, kid. Yeah..."
X
X
X
After Penance emerged from the bathroom there was no sign of Whip. Part of him was actually a little disappointed, but by the time he'd trundled back through the stacks and retrieved Galabeg he figured it was really for the best.
"She's got a short attention span, huh?" Penance held the ratty fox's head up in front of his face. "Thank God for that, I guess..."
The boy stuffed the fox's head into the collar of his shirt and started off through the stacks. When he rounded a corner he nearly plowed right into Whip, who was leaning against a shelf and scanning the book he'd been reading earlier.
"He carries a good conversation, doesn't he, white bread?" She asked. "For you to talk to him that much, I mean..."
Penance glared at her:
"For one thing Galabeg is a she. For another, I'm not actually talking to her when I'm talking to her."
Whip arched her brow:
"That doesn't even make a little sense—"
"Isn't there some other person you can pester?"
"Yeah," Whip nodded. She tapped on the book in her hand and then motioned to Penance with her chin, "but I wanna pester you."
"Why?"
"'Cause you are not 'just like a hundred thousand other little boys', are you?"
Penance pushed past her, wandering down another aisle. He stopped to lace-up his shoes, and Whip's feet tromped along the top of the bookshelf above him. He didn't bother looking up.
"My brother, growing up, was into all that pulp stuff. Y'know: cheesy sci-fi trash and cheap fantasy stories. Stuff with words like 'astounding" or 'weird' in their titles. I guess it was just a way for him to escape, you know? Me, I never much cared for books. I'd rather go into town and raise a ruckus, go hopping around on rooftops, climbing fire escapes, that kinda thing. Not my brother. He was a dreamer; he liked to imagine things. Like the impossible..."
Penance finished lacing up his shoes:
"What's your point, Whip?"
The girl sat down on the shelf and looked down at the boy:
"He'd really have loved to meet you, kid. He really would."
"I don't know what you're talking about—"
"You jumped off a six-story building the other day—"
"Nope," Penance shook his head. "There was a fallen power cable dangling from the side of your building. I shimmied down on that. You just couldn't see me 'cause it was getting dark—"
"If that were true then your palms would be more screwed-up than Christ's—"
"Blasphemy. Nice."
"Before that," Whip held up a finger, "you took a tumble off that other rooftop—"
"I told you: I didn't hit the ground head-on. I was clawing at all the fire escape railings; I hit most of 'em on the way down—"
"If that were true then your body would have to be all bruised up, wouldn't it?"
"Yeah. So..." Penance's eyes widened. He looked up at the girl with a sudden, indignant glare.
"You don't have a mark on your body, kid. Not anywhere on your body—"
"You peeked—"
"Yeah, I did—"
"Pervert!"
Whip rolled her eyes:
"Oh, yeah. That's absolutely me. Yes sir: I totally got my jollies from ogling your scrawny—"
"What is it you want from me, exactly?" The boy got to his feet and leapt halfway up the bookshelf, snarling up at the girl. "Say you're right— this little delusion of yours: what's your interest in me, exactly, Whip?"
Whip stared down at the boy; she smiled, amused at his vitriol, and she gently adjusted the dog collar around Penance's neck:
"I think," she said, "that if my 'delusion' was right, that it'd be very, very cool."
The boy pulled away from her. He jumped off the shelf and shouldered his backpack.
"I also think," Whip continued, "that that kinda thing might just make someone become a very lonely person. Y'know, the kind of person that has to find something... unusual to talk to—"
Penance stared back at the girl:
"What: you think I'm crazy just 'cause I talk to a stuffed animal head?"
"Crazy?" Whip rested on her side and slowly shook her head. She stared down at the boy, again surveying his dirty-blond hair. "Maybe... kinda just a little, well..."
"What?" He crossed his arms.
"Borderline," Whip cooed. The girl quickly launched into song, and her voice wasn't too shabby: "Feels like you're going to lose your mind..."
Penance tried his best not to react, but the singing hit him like a bundle of feather to his feet; a laugh escaped his lips, and he tried to pass it off as a sarcastic scoff, but that also failed. It was contagious; Whip joined him, and soon both the youths filled the echoing library with their belly-laughs. When they were done there was a warm silence between them. The smile on Penance's face slowly fell away, and when he looked down at his neckline— Galabeg's dead eyes staring up at him— he became much more somber.
"Whip?" he whispered.
"Yeah, kid?"
The boy looked up at her, and his eyes were cold steel:
"Thanks for the extra cigarettes. We're all even now. So leave me alone."
The girl opened her mouth, but Penance cut her off:
"Please."
Whip sighed, puckering her lips. All the freckles on her brown face contorted with the movement, and she drew a slow breath. She got to her feet and leapt off the shelf, touching down gracefully. She walked towards the open window slowly, and she turned once, looking back at the boy:
"It's a cool 'delusion', you know," she said. "If it's real. Dunno why I make such a fuss over you; maybe my geek brother kinda rubbed off on me, a little. Like I said: he'd have loved to have met you..." The girl set her rear on the windowsill and whipped her legs about, dangling them outside. "I didn't really mind meeting you, either, Penance. Good luck to you, I guess." She looked him in the eyes, her face morose: "And to your little fox friend, I suppose..."
Whip disappeared out the window, and Penance was left in the moldy silence of the empty library. He stood there for a time, just staring at his feet, and finally he nodded:
"That's good, isn't it?" He mumbled. "Took care of that problem pretty nicely, didn't we?"
He found The Little Prince resting on the shelf by the window, and he gently retrieved it, carrying it back to the small cart where he found it. It was open to a random page, and Penance's eyes were drawn to a sentence near the bottom:
.
.
. "One runs the risk of crying a bit if one allows oneself to be tamed."
.
.
The boy slowly stopped walking, and he stared down at the book for several seconds. His teeth ground together like sandpaper, and after a moment he let loose a vicious snarl and hurtled the book as hard as he could through the air. It spun end-on-end across the library, and when it hit the far wall it left a noticeable dent in the drywall, and a small cloud of dust billowed in its wake.
