The Retreat (4 page)

Stealing a car was not that difficult. Will's father was a smooth car thief and Will had become an able apprentice. By the time Will's father had gone to prison two years ago on a seven-year sentence, he had taught Will how to steal everything from cars to a girl's heart. Odell had also taught Will another trick, how to be invisible, since he was barely around for Will and his two younger siblings. Will's mother did not mind Odell's absence so long as she was able to maintain a comfortable lifestyle that did not require her to work.

Will got an adrenaline rush whenever he stole an exotic car. He loved to speed down the highway and test how fast a car could go before he turned it into Tony's chop shop or his gang leader, D-Loc. The job, like all other jobs, had its down moments. Boredom grew from a lack of a challenge.

Like this Mustang GT that Will was about to steal. It was jet-black, with gold racing stripes along the top of the car. It had R1 drifting rims to match. The owner obviously cared more about the look of the car than its safety, because Will didn't see any car alarm.

Will leaned into the window to double check the interior, but no red light flashed in the midst of the darkness. Will had had this car in his sights for a few weeks now. The occasion had arrived where he could finally claim it. Will removed the dealer-issued key from his pocket. It was amazing what a car thief could accomplish with a VIN and a stack of money. Car dealers were willing to part with duplicate keys to the cars Will planned to steal, which made stealing cars a lot easier, but more boring. It wasn't the same as hot-wiring a car.

His suspicion was confirmed that there was not a car alarm as he entered the car. After he inhaled the vanilla-scented air freshener, he revved up the V8 engine. Will pulled away and got halfway down the block before he turned on the radio and was engulfed by Kelly Clarkson.

“What kind of crap is this?” Will said to himself.

He scanned the radio stations and found a hip-hop station that played the latest Jay-Z song. The music put him in an aggressive mood. So he scanned the stations until he found a jazz station. Will would not consider himself a jazz fan, but the slow melancholy sound of a saxophone or trumpet was soothing, checking any adrenaline that lingered after a boost.

Will had been a car thief since he was eleven. At fourteen he joined a local gang called the Untouchables. They found his skill helpful and lucrative. Now he was barely nineteen and he was already restless, ready to do something different. What, he was not sure of yet.

Lost in deep thought, Will neglected to stop at a red light, which prompted a siren to flash from a police car. The police siren grew louder as it approached Will and pulled just behind his rear bumper.

“Oh, shoot.” Will turned off the music.

“Pull over!” the officer said from the loud speaker.

Will's size eight black-and-white shoe pressed on the accelerator. The Mustang GT went from sixty-five miles per hour to ninety in a matter of seconds. The police were in hot pursuit. The engine roared as the Mustang cleared one hundred miles per hour, leaving the scent of burnt rubber in its wake. He maneuvered around cars that obeyed the thirty-five-miles-per-hour speed limit, and cleared the intersection right when the light turned red.

As the speed increased, so did the interest in his activities. One police cruiser quickly became three. Will's adrenaline, no longer under the spell of Coltrane, spiked. A blur of jagged thoughts crisscrossed his mind before he pulled things into focus: he had to shake the police. The three behind him would be matched by the flying “Squirrel,” the Eurocopter AS350 training its infrared on him. Once the Squirrel had him in its sights, Will's fate would be sealed.

Will approached another red light and hooked a right. If not for the aftermarket sway bar that held the 'Stang to the ground, the chase would have been over. Instead, it created a small window of opportunity.

A black SUV, lurching to avoid him, collided with a rust bucket Honda. The damage was enough to stop the police cars dead in their tracks. Will did not have time to worry about the mess fading in his rearview. Instead, he gained a mile of distance and then darted into a residential neighborhood. Turning off the lights, he slid into the curb, a not-so-anonymous car at rest in a very anonymous suburban neighborhood. The sounds of the sirens grew faint, but then seemed to be picking up. No time for reflection. Will turned the car off, got out, and chucked the keys across the street. Time to move.

His baggy pants hung low and made him feel like he was entered into a sack race. But Will pushed on, running until he could not run anymore. No matter. Will was not that much taller than a bar stool, so it was easy for him to hide. Wait! What was that? Will heard the helicopter in the distance. No time to hunker down. He needed another set of wheels. Running alongside the edge of the neighborhood, he reached the back end of a commercial building. He saw a late model minivan idling in the empty side lot.

As Will drew closer, he could make out the words “Celebration Christian Center” stenciled along the side of the van. About fifty paces out, Will slowed down and started to advance on the van, crouching as he moved toward the driver's side door. The door was suddenly thrown open. Will pressed hard against the side of the van. The guy who got out was head and shoulders taller than Will, so Will had to act before the guy turned around. The guy moved to close the door, and with his profile exposed, Will tackled the guy against the door. While the guy was stunned, Will delivered several swift hooks to the guy's chin. While the punches staggered him, they did not render the man helpless.

The guy braced himself against the van and used his free hand to grab the nape of Will's sweatshirt, swinging him to the ground in a heap. Now Will was at a disadvantage as his much bigger opponent towered over him.

“Are you out of your mind?” the man asked, his voice a loud but nervously cracked baritone.

Will managed to right himself, and kicked the man in the groin. He howled like a wolf. Back on his feet, Will followed his kick to the groin with a knee to the face. Now the guy was on the ground, and Will stomped on his stomach until the man yelled out in pain. Will then gave the man a punt to the head.

There was no more resistance. Will patted the man's pockets. He grabbed the keys from the front pocket and drove off in the van. He exited the parking lot and merged onto South Street. Will tried to shake off the events that had just unfolded, but that was foolish on his part. He embraced a smooth ride until he flipped on the radio. He heard a lot of rambling and hollering.

“What's this he listens to? Lil' Jon?” Will turned up the stereo. It became clear that the speaker was not a rapper, but a preacher with a thick Southern accent.

“One sin! One sin is enough to get you tossed into the fires of hell. So you have to ask yourself before you commit that sin, is it worth it? Is it worth it to burn in hell for all of eternity?”

Somebody should have told the preacher that we're in hell already, Will thought. Preachers who spent all their time talking about a better life after this life were basically admitting that this life was a mess. Will did not know what would happen after he died. He really didn't care. All he wanted was to be away from this world.

“These chicken-neck pastors want to teach milk and honey. Well, you can't get to heaven living like the devil. It's either holiness or hell,” the preacher roared.

Will tried to recall what would qualify as a sin. He used profanity, but then he thought about the Bible and it didn't say anything about profanity being a sin. He smoked weed, but that came from the ground, so it was natural. If God did not want Will to smoke, he should not have created weed. He could not put his finger on any sin he could have possibly committed.

He had sex, but he always used a condom, so God would appreciate safe sex. Besides, sexuality was normal and natural. He could not wrap his brain around any outright sins, but he could not fathom why, on the inside, he had this burning desire to confess. It wasn't the type of burn that consumes, but the type that lingers until it becomes a gray cloud in one's soul.

Will changed the station, but came across another fire-breathing Christian.

 

“Jesus comes like a thief in the night. You never know when. It could be at this very moment and you want Him to say, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.' You do not, and I repeat, you do not want Him to say, ‘depart from me, I never knew you.'”

Will's body temperature shot up 400 degrees. His pores started to open up and drops of sweat started to leak out. Will turned off the radio. That last line stuck with him. He could not understand what would make Jesus say He never knew someone. What could a person possibly do that was that consequential? That was when Will came to the conclusion that God was a cold piece of work.

He patted his pocket for a blunt, found one, and inserted it between his black lips. He patted his pocket again for his nickel-plated lighter, but to no avail. The events of tonight had been too much for Will to deal with without smoking.

“Where my lighter go?” Will said to himself. He never left the house without his lighter, so the fact that he had a blunt in his mouth with no lighter was very strange. What was also strange was that the cigarette lighter in the car had been removed. So he assumed that Christians did not smoke. Just then, he spotted a liquor store beyond the intersection. The dirty neon sign was popping on and off like a beacon.

Will pulled off of South Street and into the parking lot. The liquor store sat on the corner of a strip mall, next door to a Mexican restaurant and cleaners. Will entered the liquor store with purpose, but got sidetracked.

From the corner of his eye, he saw a magazine with a girl who had a behind the size of two basketballs on the cover. The magazine stood out in the midst of the other adult material. Above the magazine section stood a sign that gave a five-minute time limit for reading the material.

Judging by the condition of the magazines, the liquor store's clientele either didn't see the sign or didn't care much for the rules. He scanned through the magazine, then placed it back on the shelf as he made his way to the cash register.

“Lighter,” Will said as more of a demand than a request.

The white guy at the cash register handed Will a lighter in exchange for a five dollar bill. Will took the change and made his way back to the van. He got back inside, felt his pocket, and retrieved his blunt. Blunt in his mouth, Will was ready to smoke, but he hesitated. He felt the urge to turn the radio back on.

Will had never heard preachers speak with such passion and conviction. Most of the preachers he encountered were what he liked to call the Liquor Store preachers. They would preach the gospel and then ask for an offering so they could buy beer. Will turned on the radio and a more mellow voice spoke.

“We all mess up sometimes. Lord knows I do, but the scripture says that the Lord makes us new mercies every day. So you do not have to carry your past into your future. You can decide to land anew and God is waiting for you. No matter what you've done.”

Tears started to well up in Will's eyes. He came face-to-face with the person he had become: taking things that did not belong to him and using a survival-of-the-fittest mentality that rationalized his actions. But in this hot van he was struck with the realization that his petty crimes had impacted countless lives.

Who knew what that man with the van was about to do? Now he lay in the middle of the street, beaten, and for what? Who knew how much debt people accumulated to buy a replacement car because their insurance policy may not have covered the ones he'd stolen from them? Who knew how many jobs were lost because of the cars he'd stolen? What if someone was one tardy away from being fired by an inflexible boss, and Will had stolen his only means of transportation? Will had become (it would be funny if it weren't so sad) a menace to society.

“Don't wait, tomorrow is not promised. Make a choice to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior, and He will remove your sins. You might not feel like you deserve it, but the scripture says that His ways are not your ways.”

Will crossed Paramount Street and turned down a poorly lit alley. A group of guys hung out underneath a streetlight. They wore all black, with beanies. A little flicker of light indicated that they had been smoking. Will pulled up and turned off the lights when he got near the group. He hopped out of the van and exchanged fist bumps with the group.

“What's this?” D-Loc asked him.

D-Loc was the Untouchable's leader. He put in enough work to get everyone's respect in the hood. Even though he was only twenty-four years old, Will saw him as a father figure. Shaped like a bowling pin, only the whites in D-Loc's eyes stood out. A chill swept through Will's body whenever he stared at D-Loc for a long period of time.

“I had a problem with the other car,” Will said.

“Oh, so you steal a church van?” D-Loc said.

Will couldn't care less about stealing a church van, as he thought about the Mustang GT he had to abandon in order to keep from being caught. “Look, I can get you another whip. Just give me a minute.”

“It'll do,” D-Loc said.

Of course Will knew that a minivan and a drive-by were exclusive concepts. They needed something with some muscle and a little bit of a pickup.

“Give me twenty minutes; I'll find you something better,” Will said.

“We don't have time to waste, so you got twenty minutes before we leave.” D-Loc looked at the minivan.

Will watched as D-Loc scanned his crew's eyes. J-Rock had just been put on, and the drive-by that was about to occur was his initiation. Droopy was a veteran street soldier. D-Loc handed Will a chrome pistol.

“It ain't a fancy tool kit, but it'll get the job done,” D-Loc said.

Despite being in a gang, Will did not like guns. Guns were a magnet for trouble; however, he could not afford for his crew to do a drive-by in a church van. So Will took the gun and wedged it into the front part of his pants.