Black Knight #12

Fear not for the future.

The young boy... had a young boy. He didn't feel old enough, but there was the kid in his crib, crying from the loud noises outside. He had only been born six weeks ago. Robert didn't feel much more mature.

"We have you surrounded!" blared the loudspeaker. "Surrender the child, and we'll talk! Don't let it end like this, Robert!"

The kid's mother was dead now, along with his mother's mother and his mother's father. Robert's own parents... well, he'd never met them. His earliest memories were of the streets of Dallas, grabbing scraps, finding ways to get by. He didn't really know how old he was, he could only make guesses, based on when he went through puberty, that kind of thing. Birth certificate? Dream on.

He remembered nothing of his parents. He fantasized, dreamed sometimes, that they'd been taken from him in some fantastic, spectacular way; that they'd made some ultimate sacrifice, and that only death itself could have separated them from him. But for all he knew, they'd abandoned him on the side of the road because he was eating too much.

A big, bright spotlight shone through the window, lighting up the ceiling of the old abandoned house. It was ramshackle and falling apart, and no one had lived here in years. It was way on the outskirts of town and it was as far as Robert's shiny, beautiful new car had taken him before running out of gas. "Next time you go on the lam, Robert," he told himself, "buy some gas first." Yeah, buy gas. With what?

He'd met the girl a year ago at a bar that he was sort of working at. She was the most beautiful creature Rob had ever seen... straight, brown hair, deep blue eyes, and the nicest legs. She came into the bar every night for weeks before he got up the courage to say hello. When he finally did, boy, did they hit it off. She loved Robert's candor and told him often that it seemed like he didn't have a care in the world.

Truth was... he didn't. A one-room studio apartment, work every night at a bar, paid under the table 'cause he didn't have a birth certificate. What's to worry about? She, though... she had lots of worries. That's what money bought you. Alcoholic father, mother wanting her to go to Stanford when she wanted to stay in Texas, no brothers, no sisters.

It took a long time before he had the courage to tell her about his life and his past. A lot of courage, and a lot of vodka for them both. That night, they made love, and though it wasn't the first or last time, Robert liked to imagine that was when she'd gotten pregnant.

"Robert! You can't stay in there forever! We know what you did to that girl's parents!"

Besides being an alcoholic, her father was also a staunch Catholic -- so needless to say, she brought the baby to term. She was afraid of him and his temper got the better of him more than once, and she'd come to the bar with bruises. Robert sobbed with her and told her he'd marry her if it would help. She just cried harder when he suggested it.

When the baby was born, it was in a hospital in a nice part of town. Robert wasn't there, since she begged him to wait. Her parents would be there, she said. If my father sees you... he'll kill you.

Who does he think I am? Robert had asked her.

I told him I was raped, she said.

Robert walked slowly to the second-story window of the old house and tried to see out. But the spotlight blinded him, and he couldn't see anything. He wasn't stupid and knew they might shoot him... but he wanted to see the night sky. The same sky he'd looked at and seen every night as he'd fallen asleep as a little boy, never having a roof or a bed of any kind, really. Texas could be a cruel place.

After the baby was born, she stopped coming to the bar. Robert had no phone and she'd never given him her number. He waited and waited, and six weeks went by. He sobbed himself to sleep in a way that he didn't understand, and every morning when he woke up, he wondered: maybe today is the day.

Maybe today I'll see my son.

But the days kept not coming, and Robert grew more and more desperate, until he was ready to do what he'd promised never to do. He looked her up in the phonebook and spent all day getting his courage up -- and he crossed town. North, north, north until the roads were better-paved and the cross-walks actually worked, and people started to give him looks.

She lived, obviously, in a gated community. Living as a street urchin teaches you ways around those, and Robert scaled the wall without even hesitating and plopped down on the other side. Following the street signs and staying in the shadows (to avoid nervous neighbors telephoning the police), he finally came across it. 4742 Amiable Way.

He took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

"Robert, you have two minutes until we tear-gas this whole place! Is that what you want?" Robert shrugged it off. What a stupid bluff. Tear-gas an infant?

Her father's first slurred words were... memorable.

"Who th'fuck're you, you goddamned spic?"

"Robert!" She shrieked out as she ran down the hallway behind her father. "NO!"

"I'm the father of that little boy you've got inside."

That was a few hours ago. The memories from then were a blur. Her father lashed out in anger at her after she said it was true and Robert saw red. He let his temper grab ahold of him when he saw the grey-haired bully swing his fist at the beautiful brown-haired girl who had made his life worth living. He charged at him...

Her father toppled over with the blow. He crawled backwards, disappearing into an adjoining room.

She sobbed on the ground. "Are you okay?" Robert asked, forgetting where he was and what was happening.

But she never answered, because as he asked, her father's drunken aim missed its mark, and the center of her chest splattered against the wall.

Robert screamed.

So did her mother.

Her father swun around and unloaded a shot into her, too.

"NO DAUGHTER OF MINE! NO DAUGHTER OF MINE!" he screamed, over and over. "NOT OF MINE!"

Even with a gun, the white-collar lifestyle hadn't made the drunken Catholic a better close-quarters fighter than a life on the streets might've. Reflex and rage do weird things to you and before Robert realied he was beating him to death through his own tears, he was long dead.

Long minutes passed.

He began to realize how this looked. Three affluent family members dead and a poor bartender with his prints on the gun.

Somewhere, he heard a baby crying. He grabbed it, took the car out front, and ran.

Robert could hear a battering ram on the locked door below. Looks like it was time.

He bent down, and kissed the baby (whom he and she had agreed to name "Brandon") on the forehead. "Brandon," he said. He felt his throat catch. "I'm sorry. But I can't give you the life you need. I don't want you to grow up... a street urchin like me. Or the son of a man who can't give his boy the life he deserves."

BAM! BAM! as the battering ram crashed into the surprisingly sturdy door.

"They'll never stop hunting me."

Robert remembered her stories about her loving uncle who lived so far away and how she would laugh and play on his little farm that his parents disdained so much. Her father's only sibling... her mother an only child.

BAM! BAM! BAM! CRASH!

"Time for me to go, little one. I love you. I do love you."

Weep not for the past.

The young, olive-skinned boy was all tucked in, as the snowy storm blustered outside, a cold March. "Tell me again, Uncle Matthew."

Matthew laughed, and sighed. The little boy's favorite story. Something he'd made up for him when he was so, so young, because he couldn't bear to tell him the truth. The boy deserved, he'd decided when he came into his care, a story for him to hold onto, to have hope with.

Even if it wasn't the truth.

"Okay, Brandon. But then you go to bed!"

The young boy nodded eagerly.

"Once, there was a man, who was brave, and strong... who would do anything for his little boy, even stare death in the eye..."