One of God's Own Children

Leroy Mathis is a prisoner in his own home, courtesy of an escaped convict named American McGee. To make matters worse, Leroy's Mama is coming to visit, and he can't get word out to warn her in time.

Leroy Matheson took a good look around his kitchen and despaired. It was dirty. It was dirty and cluttered and it made him depressed to think that he was probably going to die soon with a dirty kitchen. His mismatched dishes lay in heaps where he had not placed them. His beloved glass jugs that were once full of sun brewed iced tea were now nearly empty, though he had not had a drop of tea for himself. Trash populated the floor like people in a big city, so crowded and colorful that there was hardly room to step. He tried to find a clean glass to drink from, but there wasn’t any, so he ran cold water from his tap and drank out of his cupped hands. The water felt good on his dry throat, but it stung his cut lip. He hadn’t had a cut lip or a punch in the mouth since he was twenty-one. He was twice that old now, and not the young, strapping black man he used to be.

 

Leroy could hear the television in his living room, the volume turned up far louder than he ever had it. He could hear the opening music to CNN, and he hoped to God that the stories wouldn’t upset his guest. Timidly, like a mouse exploring the home of a ginger cat, Leroy ventured from the kitchen to the living room. His black, rough hands twisted in fear.

 

It had been two weeks since the man had come, white-skinned, stumbling and dangerous, through the unlocked front door with a bottle of Wild Turkey in one hand and a silver revolver in the other. He was wearing nothing more than an oversized pair of jeans still dripping from the night’s heavy rain, and without a word he beat Leroy worse than he could ever remember having been beaten as a young man. The man was younger, maybe twenty-five or so, and stronger than Leroy had ever been. After the beating came the demands. Food and drink. Every phone in the house (there was only one). The remote to the television. And every morning another beating, but not as bad as the first. And this had gone on for two weeks.

 

Leroy wondered what would happen first. Would the young man kill him, or would Leroy kill himself? It was a silly question, really. Leroy was too afraid to take his own life. Besides, reverend Greene said suicide was a sin.

 

From the door to the living room he could see the back of the couch. Above the top of the couch he could see the big white man’s head, shaved with Leroy’s own razor, tattooed with eyes on the back. Leroy believed those eyes could see him, tattoos or not. He had been caught more than once reaching for a knife or a heavy lamp, and the repercussions had nearly killed him. It was like the devil himself stared out of the back of that man’s head.

 

"The police continue their search for American Magee, convicted murderer and arsonist," reported the anchorwoman. Leroy heard the man on the couch chuckle. "Magee escaped police custody while he was being transferred from Sanwatch County Correctional to Parker Valley Prison. As he escaped he seriously wounded two officers, one of which is still in intensive care in Sanwatch Community Care. Police are pushing their search northward, where they believe he will try to cross into North Carolina. Police Chief Paul Eckerman is optimistic about finding Magee, who he says has left an easy trail for authorities to follow."

 

"No, you dummies," growled Leroy under his breath. "He’s done headed south! Monks Corner. He’s in Monk’s Corner!"

 

American Magee (which the anchorwoman said was his real name) must have heard him, or he saw him with the devil eyes tattooed in the back of his head, because he turned and glared at the him.

 

"Hey, old man!" he said, "Did I tell you you could come in here?"

 

Leroy fell back a few steps into the doorway. He hated it that Magee called him "old man," but what could he do about kit?

 

The eyes in the front of the man’s head were near as bad as the ones tattooed on the back, but they were different in that they were red with heavy bags underneath. Leroy was sure this man didn’t ever sleep. He hadn’t since coming to his home.

 

"Sorry sir," Leroy pleaded, "I was just interested to know what was on the news."

 

Magee eyed the old black man for a moment, like he was suspicious the man was going to knife him when he wasn’t looking. He clicked off the TV with the remote, and traded it for the silver revolver that sat next to him on the couch.

 

"Ain’t nothing on the news," he said. "You got any music around here?"

 

Leroy shook his head. He had never been a man for a lot of music. It was fine, but he loved silence. Silence he was never going to have again except in death, he was sure.

 

"Just a couple of records, but I ain’t got no record player anymore," he answered Magee. Then a thought occurred to him. A stupid, irrational thought. "Can I ask you something? I always call my Mamma on Fridays," Leroy lied. He usually called her on Sundays, and she wasn’t really his Mamma, but his dead wife’s. "She’s got to be real worried since I haven’t called in a few weeks, so why don’t I pick up the phone and call her?"

 

The killer called Magee said nothing at first, but glanced at the phone on the wall next to him. Leroy wasn’t sure if the man watched TV all day because he was bored, or if he did it because he could easily keep an eye on the phone from the couch. Magee scratched his bristly chin with the barrel of the gun in his hand. Leroy thought the killer would hurt him for asking, but he seemed to actually be considering it.

 

"You say you usually call her Fridays?" he asked. Leroy nodded. "Go ahead then," he waved with the gun. Leroy let out a breath he didn’t know he had been holding and walked to the wall where the phone hung beside the picture of his wife and a corkboard rustling with business cards and appointments.

 

Leroy wasn’t sure why he was calling his wife’s mother, whom everybody called Mamma. She was a godly woman, a church-going woman, who probably never missed a service in her life. She was motherly to everyone who set foot in her house, and often the first person many of the people in that part of town went to for advice, but as Leroy dialed her number, he wondered how in the world the woman would be able to help him, especially if the killer was far too close for him to ask for help without being overheard.

 

"Hello?" answered Mamma after three and a half rings. Leroy could hear Wheel of Fortune on the television in the background.

 

"Hey Mamma," Leroy stammered. Now that he was finally talking to another living soul besides Magee for the first time in two weeks, he wasn’t sure of what to say. "How are things?"

 

"Thank the Lord, I’m making it," she answered. She always answered that way when people asked how she was. "And how’re you doing, child?"

 

Leroy scratched his head and tried to think of how to answer. He wanted to say he was miserable, that he was a prisoner in his own home, where the warden was a white man with eyes in the back of his head and a gun. He wanted to say that he’d rather be dead, but he was too scared to die.

 

"I’m feeling under the weather, and the house ain’t in too good a shape," he answered. It made him feel lame to complain about the state of his home at a time like this, but what else could he say? Magee was right there, listening. Like he always had been for the past two weeks. Living with Magee was like keeping a snake underfoot, hoping it would leave before it bit him.

 

"That’s a shame," Mamma answered. "I know it’s hard without a wife. Tell you what, child, I’ll be over soon to help you."

 

Leroy straightened up with shock. He stammered, trying to find words to discourage the woman from visiting, but none worked. He tried turning her down, and he even said something about having company, but Momma would not be moved. And like that she hung up. Leroy stared at the receiver dumbfounded, trying to understand how the conversation could have ended so quickly and disastrously. He had just killed his wife’s Mamma.

 

"What’d she say?" asked Magee. Leroy shrugged and lied about it being a normal call, that she wouldn’t expect his call till next week, but he racked his brain for how he was going to keep that woman from coming by for a visit. For an hour nothing came. But she did.

 

Magee was sitting at the kitchen table, right where Leroy usually sat himself, scratching something obscene into his forearm with a safety pin when Mamma knocked on the front door. Magee jumped at the sound, throwing the pin aside and grabbing the gun from off the top of the coffee can. His heavy, bloodshot eyes glared at Leroy, who had been pacing in the hallway, unsure of what to do.

 

"Hey, old man," Magee whispered as he appeared at Leroy’s shoulder, "Them better not be the cops, or you’re going to die right before they do!"

 

And he shoved Leroy towards the front door with the silver gun pointed at the man’s black, leathery neck.

 

Leroy thought he was killing both Mamma and himself when he opened the door. To him the creak of the hinges was like the voice of a coffin lid. He was surprised by how sweaty he was now that he was about to die. He had never considered that he might smell like funk before he started to decompose. He was so convinced that the next sound he was going to hear was a gunshot, that Mamma’s voice actually made his heart jump into his throat.

 

"How you doing, Leroy?" she asked. She was a big black woman with kind eyes and a flowered dress. Her straight, glossy hair was quite obviously a wig, and she was very round, because she was so full of love for God’s children, Leroy had heard Reverend Greene say.

 

"Mamma," he stammered, trying to swallow his hammering heart back into his feeble chest, "how’re you doing?"

 

"Thank the Lord, I’m making it," she said as she pushed past him and the startled Magee into the filthy house.

 

She was in the kitchen before either of the men had the wits to say anything.

 

"Oh my," she said, wagging her head at the state of the dishes. "Lord have mercy, this won’t do. No, sir."

 

"Hey, lady!" shouted Magee, who’d finally gotten over the shock that the woman had walked past him as though he were of no consequence. He waved the gun in her face, his eyes about bulging from his bald, tattooed head. "You sit down right now, or I’m gunna"ow!"

 

Mamma slapped the boy full in the face. Leroy cringed. He wasn’t sure what he felt more of: fear that she was about to be murdered in front of his eyes, or surprise at how strong the old woman appeared to be.

 

Magee didn’t shoot her. He just stood there with his mouth open. He even looked like his puffy, red eyes might even start to cry, something Leroy would have thought to be impossible. For a moment, Leroy thought Magee looked more like a boy than a convict.

 

"Don’t you talk to your elders like that!" Mamma shouted at him. With every forceful word, Magee’s gun seemed to drop a few inches closer to pointing at the floor. "My name ain’t ‘Lady!’ Boy must be stupid or something. You call me Mrs. Cromedy, or Ma’am. You hear?"

 

The white boy finally straightened up from the blow Mamma had dealt him. "Yeah," he answered her.

 

"Yes Ma’am!" she corrected.

 

"Yes Ma’am!" he answered again.

 

Leroy ran his rough hand over his balding head. He had never seen Mamma talk that way to anyone before, and he had never seen the dangerous, murdering white man bow to authority before. He wondered if maybe he had been knocked unconscious or something and was now dreaming.

 

He sobered up quickly as he watched the expression on Magee’s face change again. Mamma had turned her back, and as soon as she did it looked as though the man regained his senses. He was cowering before nothing more than a matronly black woman. He leveled the silver pistol at the back of her head. For a moment, Leroy thought that the bullet was going to go out of that gun and pass through Mamma’s skull and into the drywall behind it. Then another bullet would probably kill him, too. And just like that, they’d be murdered.

 

Mamma must have seen the glint of light on the pistol out of the corner of her eye, because she rounded on that white boy so quick that Leroy nearly missed it.

 

"Don’t you point that thing at me!" she roared. Her heavy hand came down on top of Magee’s wrist, and the gun veered wide and fired. The bullet splintered the wood floor at Leroy’s feet, who nearly fainted. Mamma stood above the white man like a bull elephant, mad and unafraid. It was like she never even noticed that the gun had gone off. Again and again her open hands came down on Magee’s face, who tried to fend her off and forgot about his weapon in the struggle. Soon the killer’s face was red and stinging, and he was pleading "I’m sorry, Ma’am, I’m sorry!" again and again.

 

Finally the blows ended, and Mamma stood triumphant and glorious over the boy like Jesus over the money changers he thrust out of the temple.

 

"Now you quit all this nonsense! And you go and wash those dishes before I beat your hide with them. Boy needs to act like he got some work ethic!" she ordered.

 

Leroy watched the white man with the tattoos of eyes on the back of his head walk dejectedly to the sink and start washing dishes like a chastised son. After watching for a few minutes, he realized that he had not actually said anything to Mamma since she arrived.

 

"Thanks, Mamma," he whispered to her. She just waved her hand dismissively at him.

 

"Don’t you worry about it child. I can see why you’re having so much trouble with the house now. But all that’s going to change. This boy ain’t nothing but one of God’s own children, and like all God’s children, he’s going to work!" she said.

 

A few hours later, Mamma moved some of her things into Leroy’s house. She said she wanted to stay so she could keep a closer eye on the boy, who was never any trouble so long as the big woman was around. Soon the house was clean, and meals were cooked, and the laundry was folded, and nobody was murdered. Then Leroy was able to go back to work. When his boss asked him where he’d been, Leroy just said he’d been sick, which was close to the truth anyhow. Leroy had been sick with fear of death. When he came home, there were full jugs of sun-brewed ice tea waiting for him.

 

Within a couple of weeks, Mamma had Magee going to church as well. As a child of God, she would say, the boy ought to know God’s word. Reverend Greene was delighted to see Mamma so engaged in the work of the Lord, and made a special mention of her efforts in his sermon. "The woman, having tasted of the sweetness of Jesus, has brought another child of God to the springs of eternal life, so that he too might drink." Leroy about died when he saw Magee blush under the gaze of the congregation.

 

Two weeks after Mamma first walked through his door, Leroy was beginning to feel that they had the makings of an unusual, frightening family. But, it had become so routine that the morning Magee left it actually came as a shock.

 

"I’m sorry Mrs. Cromedy, but I got to get out on my own, you know," he explained with a duffle bag in his hand. The bag actually belonged to Leroy, who was standing nearby, listening with a cup of coffee in his hand, but he was fine with the bag leaving if Magee was going with it.

 

Mamma just wrapped her arms around the killer’s neck and kissed him once on the cheek. She was still dressed in her long night gown, and she was crying.

 

"You don’t have to go, child. Are you alright?" she asked.

 

The boy just nodded and said, "I’m making it. I’m fine, I just need to go out on my own now, is all."

 

Mamma wrapped him up in a tight, warm hug she had never given Leroy. He watched in amazement as Magee started to cry a little.

 

"You just call me Mamma, you hear? And I know you got to leave. All babies leave some day," she whispered to him.

 

Magee kissed her on the cheek and called her Mamma, and picked up the duffle bag and the silver gun and went out the door. Mamma and Leroy watched from the window. Only Leroy jumped with surprise when the cops came.

 

As American Magee made his way across the lawn to the road beyond, there were shouts and commotion as uniformed officers with guns and batons appeared from the sides of the house. The surprised Magee squeezed the pistol’s trigger again and again, but no shots went off, and soon he was being wrestled to the ground by four men. Magee started calling Mamma’s name, who stood unmoving from where she watched at the window.

 

"Mamma, where’d all them police come from?" Leroy asked.

 

"I called them this morning when I saw the boy packing up to go," she answered. Her eyes were dry.

 

"And why didn’t he shoot nobody?"

 

She smiled.

 

"Because I took all the bullets out his gun."

 

She dropped a fist full of bullets onto the wood floor, where the clanked and tinkled like little bells.

 

"He’s just one of God’s own children, and all God’s children need a little tough love now and again," she said.

 

Soon Magee and the cops were gone, and Leroy was heading back to the kitchen, wondering what he should have for breakfast. Mamma was right behind him.

 

"Why don’t you cook us up some grits and eggs?" she ordered.

 

Leroy knew that tone. It was the one she used with Magee when she wanted him to know that she wasn’t asking. Leroy opened his mouth to remind her of whose house it was, but he stopped and thought for a minute. He thought about his time with Magee before Mamma came. He remembered how she stood him and his silver gun down like they were nothing but a kid and his toy, and how he had cowered before that gun like it was a venomous snake that would have delighted in nothing more than to bite him. He thought of Magee. Then he thought of Mamma.

 

He started cooking some grits. At least he knew that Mamma wouldn’t hurt him for fun, and that she would leave eventually. All in all, it was safer to live under Mamma’s rule than under a white killer’s, right?

 

Besides, he thought to himself, I’m just one of God’s children. A little work is good.