Mission of Hope. Allie Pleiter

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СКАЧАТЬ he showed little signs of slowing down his service to God, his body occasionally reminded him of the truth in “the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak.”

      “Didn’t I just get through telling you the very same thing? Reverend, I don’t think when God spared you and Grace House through the earthquake and the fire that He did it all to have you collapse in the basement. You’ve got to slow down. You’ll do no good to anyone if you hurt yourself.”

      His long and fast friendship with the pastor—since boyhood, going on twenty years now—had given him leave to speak freely with Reverend Bauers, but even Quinn knew when too far was too far. And even if the reverend’s insistence on ordering the Grace House basement was a bit misguided, Quinn wasn’t entirely sure he should be the soul to point it out. People reacted in funny ways to the overwhelming scale of destruction. His own ma bent over her tatting every night, even though Quinn was certain there’d be little use for lace in the coming months. Many people focused on ordering one little segment of their lives, because they could and because so much of the rest of their lives was spinning in chaos.

      “I can’t seem to stay away,” Reverend Bauers said, giving a look that was part understanding, part defiance. “I keep getting nudges to tidy up down here, and you know I make it a policy not to ignore nudges.” Reverend Bauers was forever getting “nudges” from God. And Quinn believed God did indeed nudge the portly old German—he’d seen far too much evidence of it to dismiss the man’s connection with The Almighty. Only no one else ever just got “nudged.” God seemed to be shouting at everyone else—or so they said. People were talking everywhere about God’s judgment on San Francisco or claiming they’d heard God’s command to destroy the city—and/or rebuild it, depending on who you talked to.

      Only, after twenty-six years, God had yet to nudge or shout at Quinn. Reverend Bauers was always going on about purpose and providence and such, and he’d so vehemently declared that God had spared Quinn for some great reason that Quinn mostly believed him. The reason just hadn’t shown itself yet, nor had any of God’s nudges.

      Quinn sighed as Bauers slid yet another box out of his way, poking through the cluttered basement. “There must be something down here,” Bauers said, almost to himself. “Over there, perhaps.” He pointed to a stack of shelving that had toppled over in the far corner of the room and motioned for Quinn to clear a path.

      It took nearly ten minutes, and Quinn was tempted to offer up a nudge of his own to God about how dinner might be soon, when suddenly Bauers went still.

      Quinn looked up from the shelf he was righting to see the reverend staring intently at an upended chest. “Oh, my,” Bauers said in the most peculiar tone of voice. “Goodness. I hadn’t even remembered this was down here.”

      “What?” Quinn cleared a path to it.

      “That’s it, isn’t it? And there should be another one—a long, narrow one—right beside it somewhere.”

      Quinn stared from Bauers to the pair of chests, his heart thumping as he recognized the shape of the long narrow box. He must have been, what, twelve? Surely not much older. He caught Bauers’s gaze, the old man’s eyes crinkling up when he read Quinn’s expression.

      “Mr. Covington’s things.” Quinn began tearing through the boxes, bags and beams between him and the pair of chests. “Those are Mr. Covington’s…”

      “No, man, not just Mr. Covington’s, and you know that. Those belong to the Bandit.”

      Quinn had reached the chests, fingering the latch on the longer box. He remembered what was inside now. He remembered thinking that that sword and that whip were the most powerful weapons on earth. He blew the dust off the box and set it atop a crate. “Do you think it lasted?”

      “I see no scorch marks or dents. I’d venture to say it’s in perfect shape.” He picked his way quickly through the room until he stood next to Quinn. “But we’ll not know a thing until you open it.”

      Chapter Four

      With a deep breath, Quinn undid the pair of latches on either side of the long wooden box. Inside, carefully nestled in their places on a bed of still amazingly blue velvet, lay a pair of swords. Even with the patina of twenty years, they gleamed in the basement’s faint light. “His swords,” Quinn remarked, not hiding his amazement. “The Bandit’s swords.”

      Reverend Bauers’s hand came to rest on Quinn’s shoulder. “So many years. Such a long time ago—for both of us.”

      Quinn could hear the smile in Reverend Bauers’s voice, sure it matched his own as he remembered the daring heroic feats of the Black Bandit that had once captured his young imagination. A dark hero who roamed the streets at night, offering aid to those who had none, supplying food to needy families, even sending money once to fix Grace House. The Black Bandit legend had woven its way into San Francisco’s history—everyone’s mother and grandmother had a Black Bandit story—but Quinn and the reverend were two of the only four people in the world who knew Matthew Covington had been the man behind the mask. He cocked his head in the clergyman’s direction. “Wouldn’t we like to have our Bandit back now, hmm?”

      Quinn picked up the sword, turning it to catch the light. When he was twelve, this sword had seemed enormous. Too heavy and long for a slight boy. Time and trials had done their work on Quinn, however, and he was a tall man of considerable strength. He wondered, for a moment, if he remembered any of the moves Mr. Covington had taught him. “Do you remember that day, Reverend?”

      There was no need to explain “that day.” Bauers would know Quinn was referring to the day he met—and marred—the noble English businessman. Bauers’s smile and nod confirmed his understanding. “Evidently, I’ve remembered it better than you. You, who have the most reason of all to remember that day.”

      Quinn’s introduction to Matthew Covington had been, in fact, by injury. He’d taken a knife to Covington’s arm as the Englishman tried to stop a robbery. A crime Quinn and his buddy were attempting—stealing from Grace House. It was amusing, in a sad sort of way, to think they’d thought times hard enough to steal from a church back then. Those times were nothing compared to what they were now.

      Still, Quinn was young, impressionable and desperate for decent food. His father’s love of the whiskey bottle hadn’t made for much of a steady home life. Trying to steal from Grace House Mission—an organization bent on helping his impoverished neighborhood—had been the low point of his life.

      It had also been the turning point. Back in that garden, watching Matthew Covington bleed, Quinn had realized he had two choices in life: up or down. Dark or light. Hard or easy. And, when it came right down to it, destruction or redemption. That day Quinn chose to climb his way out of the mess his young life had become, and Reverend Bauers had been the first to recognize it. That troublesome day, and the tense ones that followed it, marked the beginning of Quinn’s unusually close relationship with the reverend. Uncle Mike had been known to say that Bauers was the real father Quinn never had; and it was true.

      Quinn swung the sword in a gentle arc. It felt so light now. “Do you think he knows? Everything that’s happened here?”

      Bauers smiled. “Matthew and Georgia wired money last week and asked that we wire back a list of needed supplies. His own son is fifteen now.”

      Quinn tilted the sword again, admiring it. Even though Bauers had only been able to secure him a year or two of fencing lessons, he knew it was an outstanding weapon. It had a graceful balance and tremendous strength.

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