Goner House: The Return of Patience

Goner House: The Return of Patience

Book 4 of The City Allegories Series

By Rob Summers

Copyright 2012 by Rob Summers

Smashwords Edition

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Scripture taken from the NEW AMERICAN STANDARD BIBLE, Copyright 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by the Lockman Foundation. Used by permission.

No actual persons are represented in this book.

Table of Contents

Part 1 Marshal of Founders Grove

Prologue: An Appointment in a High Place

Chapter 1: Justice and Retribution

Chapter 2: Creative Financing

Chapter 3: Three Pages

Chapter 4: Lawyer Sarcasm

Chapter 5: Fire at Night

Chapter 6: The Land Opportunity Picnic

Chapter 7: Love’s Dreams

Chapter 8: Strengthened by Adversity

Chapter 9: They Think It’s Gone

Part 2 The Damnation of Leasing House

Chapter 10: Reason’s Search for a Lawyer

Chapter 11: Before You Were Born

Chapter 12: Sordid’s Weak Plan

Chapter 13: Shreds of Evidence

Chapter 14: The Return of the City Seal

Chapter 15: Axe’s Parade

Chapter 16: Hypocrisy’s Sermon to the Damned

Part 3 A Highly Improbable Mission

Chapter 17: What’s One Day?

Chapter 18: The HIMF

Chapter 19: Cloaks and Daggers

Chapter 20: Mercy and Love

Chapter 21: The Song of Indifference

Chapter 22: MMCC

Chapter 23: Numb’s Place

Chapter 24: Reason’s Poor Aim

Part 4 The Fop Dignity and the Prig Reason

Chapter 25: A Hauler of Water

Chapter 26: Visiting the Suffering

Chapter 27: The Vision of the New City

Chapter 28: A Line from Tennyson

Chapter 29: Between Two Points

Chapter 30: Call It an Experiment

Chapter 31: A Fan of Johnny Corpse

Chapter 32: A Product of the Concern Corporation

Chapter 33: Our Neighbors the Goners

Other Titles by Rob Summers

About Rob Summers

Connect with Rob Summers

Preface

The key to the allegory is that the houses represent persons; and the characters in a given house represent various character traits of, and influences upon, that person. Therefore, there are much fewer persons in the City Allegories books than there are characters (character traits).

Part 1 Marshal of Founders Grove

Prologue: An Appointment in a High Place

The meeting place, though chosen by his adversary, was almost welcome to Satan. He had been terribly afraid that he would be told to appear before the Throne, but this meeting in an ordinary room in the basement of a ramshackle house was no trial or terror. If anything, it was a bore. Having arrived ahead of his enemy, he looked around with disinterest, wondering why, after he had requested this interview, it would have suggested itself to the King that they meet at one of the houses under discussion. After all, the mere inhabitants of this house were of no importance except as use could be made of them. As for this particular room, no one was here but an adolescent girl asleep in her bed, with just her head showing above the covers. Around her, on shelves and furniture surfaces, lay her heaped up possessions, mostly clothes and electronic devices—nothing he wished to examine.

Not so typical were the tongues of dim flame that ran hissing along the carpet and walls, gathered in the dresser mirror, and even crawled along the blanket over the girl’s skinny body and hovered over her face. But even this was of no interest to him, for he had many in his service whose homes and selves were so attended.

Someone now entered, passing as he had through the solid wall, but it was not the King. A black woman, one of the King’s servants, looked at him but did not react to his presence other than to wrinkle her nose. Unsurprising, for he was well aware that his odor was not welcome to everyone. This insolent one—he remembered her name was Prayer—went to the bed and, while resting her hand lightly on the head of the sleeper, turned to face him, an element of challenge in her posture and expression, as if to say, Do not come any closer; this one is mine. Very well, let her believe so. Smiling at her misapprehension, he flung off his cloak and, since the King had not arrived, lowered himself to speak to her.

Will he be late?

She gravely shook her head. He never is. But Lucifer, he’s decided to Skype you rather than actually appear here.

"He’s decided to what?"

Skype. I suppose he prefers not to experience your—stench. She fetched a slim electronic device from the top of the dresser, adjusted it for a few moments, and handed it to him. An iPad, she said. You’re familiar with it?

He would have thrown it on the floor if not for the eyes of the Lord staring at him from out of the screen. He was being watched, being heard, and suddenly did not wish to show himself in a fit of temper.

I’m more familiar with Windows devices, he said carelessly. Many of my best people work for Microsoft.

I suspected that, she said, and returning to the girl’s side, placed her hand on her head again. She did not seem to mind being touched by the fires around the girl.

In the iPad screen he could see little more than the King’s face, but his enemy appeared to be wearing a plain white robe. Such simplicity in the Almighty amounted to ostentation, a sort of reverse flamboyance intended to draw admiring attention to one’s supposed humility. In contrast his own appearance was more honest. Were the sleeper to wake, his apparition in her room would instantly propel her to a sitting position, eyes popping, voice struggling for a scream. But that would spoil the interview. He had to admit that the ghost-king look he was sporting, borrowed from one of the humans’ movies, was not an advantage in all circumstances.

As for this substitution of Skyping for a plain meeting, it had nothing to do with the redolence of brimstone and burning corpses that he had brought with him, but was, rather, a calculated insult, yet another outrage committed against a brave archangel who had dared to be his own man. He would choose his time and punish the King for it, not by harming him directly, which was unfortunately impossible, but by taking it out on his creations, his people. There is nothing like damaging what your enemy treasures. In this case, his revenge, he thought, would be on little children. Skype me, will you!

"Why did you bring me here?" he demanded of the wretched little screen.

He meant not only that his request for an audience naturally commanded assent and a face to face meeting, but that his importance required the meeting take place elsewhere than in a hovel.

Do you think it’s too lowly for you? the King’s voice answered from the pad. No, it’s too high, since those living there are far above you. Only consider that they’re not yet damned; they still have hope. But I called you there because you claim the house as yours, and no one has come forward to counter that claim.

Trying not to react to the jab about damnation, Satan considered, then laughed quietly. No one has come forward? Precisely! No one loves them! You make my case for me. So you brought me here because you wish to exhibit what you long ago lost to me, what is mine? But you might have done that from outside, from the street. Why this room? Why this girl?

The black woman was looking not at him but down at the girl’s sleeping face. Still, she must be listening intently to his every word while trying to appear uninterested. She would soon be telling others about having seen him, having been in the same room with him.

The girl in that bed has not a friend in the world, said the King. Not a person in this city will say a good word for her. And she deserves no better. I’ve brought you to look at her because I’ve been considering ways to defend her.

Defend! Against what?

Against herself; she has no greater enemy. But also against you.

Don’t you understand that I care nothing for her? Fight me, if you must, for someone of interest, someone of influence. Why do you again and again bother me with skirmishes over little nobodies? Why her?

Just as I said, because no one else will.

Satan did not know what to make of such talk, the usual impenetrable ‘wisdom,’ he supposed, credited to the King by his followers.

So what are you going to do? Befriend her? She won’t have you.

Indeed she won’t. Nevertheless, I have my purposes.

Which are?

Nothing I care to say to you. Now tell me why you wanted to speak to me.

Why? Satan smiled, ready to warm to a well rehearsed subject. I asked you to meet me because I find that your legal affairs people have slipped up, even deceived you, in a certain matter.

The King’s expression did not change. His servant Prayer continued to stroke the girl’s head right through the fumes of fire.

It pertains to the legal, or rather illegal, basis of the military presence you’ve established in this city, Satan went on. I took control here many years ago. Then, rather later, you seemed to think better of having abandoned the place and established an embassy within what remains my territory, and recently brought a battleship into the area. Even so, the government is still firmly mine. True, you have, at fantastic expense, purchased a handful of converts from the populace, but far too few to make the slightest difference in the balance of power among the city’s native-born.

He paused, hoping the King would admit his failure. For many centuries the standard Heavenite defense to this line of reasoning had been the pedestrian and humorous contention that quality trumps quantity, as if the few redeemed were all the King wanted. But today he received no reply at all.

Your intervention in my private affairs has been completely illegal of course, the fiend continued, but what of that? I’m hardly one to sue you over something so petty and inconsequential. Lately, however, you’ve also spread it about that you intend to, at some uncertain date, invade and take the City, thus achieving by brute force what you couldn’t by persuasion. Such a plan, of course, concedes your dismal unpopularity here. Yes, we understand each other: my popularity in the City remains high. Yours—is it enough to say that they use your name as a swear word? But to return to my point, the legal difficulty you find yourself in is—are you listening?

The King had turned his head away—not, he was sure, as if to yawn—but now turned back to him.

If you are, then I’m telling you that your legal difficulty is this. You have sworn to take the City for your converts as their sweet home forever; the legal point being that these Christians are supposed to be worthy. That’s well enough for you, if that’s how you wish to dispose of bloodstained spoils of war. But you’ve made the mistake of defining what you mean by Christian. Specifically, you’re on record as saying they’re the sort to invariably forgive their enemies, pray for those who persecute them, and return good for evil. You don’t deny it?

The King gave him a look that, even coming through an iPad, impelled him to hurry on.

Well, those who have been with you the longest, your very first converts in this city, though you condescend to call them your children, bear no notable family likeness. I’ll admit that the inhabitants of this house, the Leasing family, have treated them badly. Of course that was necessary or how else could it be a test case? And the result? These disciples of yours I’m speaking of, the fop Dignity and the prig Reason, have come to loathe their Leasing cousins. Yes, loathe them and wish them dead. Oh, let’s not be hard on them. Evil for evil is the way of the world. But they thereby prove they are no children of yours and should not inherit.

The King lifted into view a nail-scarred hand, palm outward, and Satan paused. My love is in them, he said. They’ll yet do good to their enemies and even risk their lives for them.

When! Satan said, making the word an insult.

Sooner than you fear. Before Easter.

Is that a wager? Satan crowed. Do I carry my point, you righteous judge, and the only reply you can muster is that your babes need a little more time? You know they’ll do no such thing, and when they don’t, and all your blather of transforming them falls to the ground, will you keep your troops and your battleship stationed here and ask me for more time yet? Or will you salvage something of your integrity by calling off the invasion?

He halted his speech, tottering where he stood, the iPad shaking in his hands, almost overcome by a sense of the peril he was courting by using such rash, insulting language. But even while questioning the King’s knowledge and uprightness, he was deep in self-admiration of his own daring and cleverness. The King would not, of course, cancel the invasion, but he had now been called to account for it, openly accused of his intent to carry it out in denial of his own law.

The King answered calmly, I’ve put my ways in their hearts and written them on their minds. They’ll do as I’ve said. Otherwise, there could be no invasion.

This was too wonderful an opening to be believed. Seemingly on the brink of overwhelming advantage, he strove to pursue the King’s meaning exactly, like someone holding to the light a stolen gem, perhaps priceless.

"Wait. Be clear. Do you say that you’ll call it all off if they don’t risk their lives for their enemies? You’ll give up the City?"

He was well aware that his enemy never lied. An assent would bind him, in fact was the only thing that could bind him.

Yes.

At this, Satan found himself shaking, almost collapsing, with gleeful triumph, so overcome that he questioned whether what he felt was more pain than pleasure. The word was spoken, the wager as good as lost!

You fool! he shouted, bringing his face close to the little camera eye. You’ve lost the City! You’ve lost it by trusting in the boundless loyalty of two aging hypocrites who have learned to love quiet prosperity more than they do you or their neighbors. Don’t you know they have spouses to please and children to raise? A couple of shrewd ones able to calculate their own advantage. Ha! That’s something you apparently can’t do.

Shh, said the King. You’ll wake the child. You may go now.

I—I—what?

Where the King’s face had appeared the screen was black. So he put down the iPad, put on his cloak, and without a glance at the woman or the girl, left the house. As he strolled down benighted Sandhill Street, his eyes were shining, his knees quivering. The City was his! No invasion! The City would remain his to defile!

Chapter 1: Justice and Retribution

Ret, what do you think? Extend the park area a few blocks farther down to Flood Avenue here? Lt. Justice pointed to a faded street sign that might have been mistaken for ‘Food Avenue’ if legible at all. But I mean only on the west side of Sandhill. Eminent domain sure doesn’t apply to Hope House on the east!

Lt. Retribution of the Heavenite Navy grinned at his fellow officer. Why stop at Flood? he asked. Why not take the park right up to your girlfriend’s doorstep?

For a few years young Lt. Justice had been dating the daughter of a Heavenite family that lived just down this street in Grace House. He did not mind being kidded about his enthusiasm for sweet Goodness Orchard.

Or for that matter, Justice replied gamely, why not surround Grace House with the park? And Hope House too? I’ll bet they’d love it. Here, let’s set up the holo and see what it would look like.

"So you can show it to her, right?"

Sure, if she’s home.

Justice began to take metal parts out of a large canvas bag he carried with him. By the time they had unfolded and set up the light metal framework of the holo, like a square table with no top, some of the Sandhill Street folk had come out of their houses and had approached them. These included a few from Grace House—not Goodness but others well known to the young officers. Justice greeted little Mrs. Reason, her tall second cousin Dignity, and Dignity’s wife Obscurity, whose hair was prematurely white. With them came their next door neighbor, old Mr. Wag, no doubt curious about the gold buttoned and gleaming white uniforms of the two young men. From down the sidewalk came a white-haired couple who were unknown to Justice and who appeared to be on a stroll.

Greetings, folks, he said to all with a trim smile. "We’re on assignment from His Majesty’s ship the Gloria Dothan, planning some recommendations for remodeling the City after the occupation."

At these words, the white-haired couple looked stricken and without a word turned and headed across the street. Mr. Wag frowned but stayed where he was.

What’s your authority, mister? he said to Justice.

Dignity, a man in his mid thirties, patted Wag on the shoulder. He’s got the highest there is, he said cheerfully. Can you turn this thing on, Justice? I’d love to see it.

Lt. Justice affably flipped a switch and, in the empty square formed by the holo’s upper framework, the City appeared in miniature. The 3-D detail was sharp and in full color, as realistic as seeing the real City from the air on a clear day. Even Mr. Wag had to join in the oohs and ahs. What they saw was their town of some sixty thousand inhabitants, and within the rough circle of its boundaries, every street and building appeared exactly as in reality. The City was in the form of a shallow bowl with the downtown at the low center and a ridge all around the circumference. Beyond the boundaries they could see on all sides some of the rugged, sterile, and deserted plain on which the town stood.

On the west and adjoining the City’s rim was something so bizarre that only long familiarity with it kept the onlookers from exclaiming in shock, for there was the front half of a gigantic battleship, bristling with thousands of guns. This was the Gloria Dothan that Lt. Justice had spoken of, one of the smallest of Heaven’s warships but fully seven miles long, so long that the whole of it could not be kept in the holo’s view of the City. The seeming illusion was possible because ships of the Heavenite navy traveled through land as easily as through water, cleaving rocks and hills that, in comparison to the super-solidity of the vessels, were unsolid as liquid. The Gloria had arrived three years earlier and had been assigned to remain until Heavenite forces would seize the City—until the occupation. From their backyards Dignity and Wag were able to see the upper parts of the actual ship on the western horizon.

I’m sorry the Mopers decided to miss this, Dignity said, referring to the couple who had opted out.

Justice nodded mildly, knowing that the couple had merely been obeying the City law that forbade citizens to make the slightest contact with Heavenite military personnel. Wag, on the other hand, was stubborn and crusty enough to flout the law when he pleased.

What’s this? said Reason, a dark haired woman in her forties. She was pointing to where a swath of the holo-City was green with grass and trees. That’s really just regular neighborhoods to the north of us. There’s no park there.

Not yet, Justice answered. Like I said, we’re planning changes. Lt. Retribution and I are not happy that the only City parkland of any size is Founders Grove. He pointed to another large area of green further to the north. In fact, all the officer teams working on the planning project are in agreement: the new City will have more parkland than not. It’s going to be beautiful.

But where will everyone live then? Dignity asked.

Sir, there won’t be much population.

Oh, of course, Dignity replied with an embarrassed glance at Mr. Wag.

Justice did not understand how civilians could forget that only Heavenites would remain in the City after the occupation and that the number of households that had so far converted their allegiance to Heaven could be counted with little effort. Wag House was not among them.

We’ve been discussing extending this park further south to surround your house, he said to Dignity, knowing how much this would impress him and all other civilian Heavenites.

With a hand motion above the holo, he caused the image of the parkland to sweep down over Grace House and beyond, leaving Grace and Hope houses standing among suddenly appearing trees, but eliminating scores of other homes, including Mr. Wag’s.

Now just a minute there, son, said Wag.

Just a recommendation at this point, sir, Lt. Retribution said. Besides, you won’t be living in your house then anyway, not unless you go Heavenite. There’s something for you to think about.

And here’s something for you to think about, Wag said angrily. Looks like the Mopers went back to their house and called the cops.

The old man had spotted the approach of a City police car that glided slowly down Sandhill Street. But the car did not stop. As even Wag ought to have known, the police were afraid of the Heavenite military. They had tangled with them before and wanted no more of it.

As the car passed on, Mrs. Reason asked, What will be the name of the new park?

Not absolutely decided yet, ma’am, Retribution said, "but the suggestion has been to call it Reason Park. No, sincerely, ma’am, really. You and the other Grace House civilians are legendary in Heaven. Everyone talks about you and how you resisted Mr. Power and all the forces of the City for so many years before the Gloria Dothan came."

With a smile Dignity looked down at his cousin, whose eyes were wide and whose mouth was curled into something like dismay. He had experienced her quiet humility ever since, at the age of twelve, she had been taken in by his parents and had helped to raise the obnoxious little boy that he had been.

Shocked silent, cous’? It doesn’t surprise me a bit. You’ve been a hero again and again.

Nonsense, she gasped.

That’s right, said Wag. Folderol. I hope I never live to see it. And he turned back to his house, faintly tut-tutting.

And Mr. Dignity? Sir? Retribution said. Had you noticed this monument? He pointed in the holo to what must be an immense pile of stone, located on a part of Sandhill Street just north of Hope House. The projected monument was at the center of an as yet non-existent traffic circle. Look close and you can see all the fountains built into the edges of it. The upper sides are bas-reliefs that show some of the scenes from your life, sir. This will be the Dignity Monument. He made a spreading motion with his fingers over that part of the holo, and the monument was enlarged to fill most of the viewing square, so that every detail became clear.

Dignity in turn was shocked silent for several seconds. Finally, he said weakly, I would have to object to that.

His wife Obscurity hugged his arm. Objection overruled. You’re a hero too, even if you never admit it.

Yeah, well, I think we shouldn’t keep the officers any longer.

But when Justice and Retribution had packed up the holo and resumed their walk northward across Flood Avenue, Dignity followed and asked to have a word with them. He pointed to a house on their left with an impressive front but missing its roof, Leasing House that stood just across Sandhill from Hope House. High on the front wall was a City Seal, a high civic honor awarded to few households.

My cousin Guiles Leasing and his family live there, he said.

It must be nice, sir, to have family so close, Retribution said politely.

Not really, Dignity said glumly. He’s some kind of sociopath.

Oh. Sorry, sir.

Justice knows about him. We used to think Guiles was just really touchy and disagreeable, but then he started dividing the family into factions with his lies and manipulations, and in recent years it’s come out that he’s even into fraud. You see, after he got that City Seal, the mayor decided to also make him Marshal of Founders Grove—you know, that big City park area we were talking about off north of here. Being the Marshal is a civic honor that remains within the family that’s awarded it, but the last Marshal died without any relatives to pass it on to, so they gave it to Guiles. The Marshal is just supposed to oversee the Grove and make decisions about its upkeep and use. But to Guiles it was a sweet opportunity to make money. He started selling off park benches and other portable items, and he even had it logged.

Retribution coughed,