Children of the Knight, Michael J. Bowler [classic book list txt] 📗

“Such inventions ’twere not even dreamed of in my time, Lance,” he remarked as the Metrolink train sped through the night. His eyes roamed everywhere, at the dark windows, the other passengers, the advertisements papering the interior walls of their train car. “Methinks even Merlin had not foreseen such marvels.”

Despite Lance’s admonition that Arthur’s medieval-style clothing would make them stick out “like sore thumbs,” Arthur insisted on standard attire for these excursions: heavy leather pants, knee-high leather boots, and a billowy long-sleeved tunic. He’d wanted to carry Excalibur with him at all times, but Lance assured him they’d be arrested for carrying a weapon before they got five blocks.

“Hell,” he told Arthur, “I could get busted for carrying my little-ass pocketknife on the street. This city sucks!”

Arthur frowned at Lance’s use of language, not entirely understanding the boy’s modern slang, but sensing just by the words and tone that his speech was not appropriate for a knight.

And, in fact, Lance had been incorrect—almost no one even noticed Arthur’s odd attire when they were out and about, except maybe some businessman-types aboard the Metrolink. This was Los Angeles, after all.

On one particular night, Arthur and Lance cantered through a bleak, ghetto area on Llamrei’s back. The storm drain system allowed them easy entrance and egress to and from many of the more troubled neighborhoods in the city. Lance had begun adopting a clothing style similar to Arthur’s. The man seemed to possess an endless store of clothing of varying sizes, but all of a type worn in his own time, the time of knights and squires.

He’d told Lance he didn’t exactly know how all these things, including the weapons, had ended up with him in this present time, but he did know why they had appeared, and that was what mattered. Lance wouldn’t wear the leather boots. He lived, and would probably die, a skater and always wore his skating shoes, in part because he’d often bring his board and skate alongside Arthur when they were walking. But he’d taken a liking to the billowy tunics and baggy leather pants, and the leather overcoats kept him very warm at night.

They kept to the shadows and mostly just observed life for these disenfranchised peoples. Arthur shook his head in dismay at the sight of homeless people dumpster-diving for food, at the run-down, graffiti-covered, dilapidated homes and apartment complexes, at the prison-like housing projects. Small children running unattended in the streets at night disturbed him.

Tonight, several children, dressed shabbily, most without shoes, approached Llamrei with caution, but with delight painted across their dirty faces. Arthur smiled down at the children and encouraged them to pet the mare.

“It’s okay,” Lance assured them. “She don’t bite.”

The children gathered round and happily petted the silky white coat.

Llamrei whinnied with approval.

“What’s his name, mister?” one little girl asked, giggling with delight at the horse’s reaction to her touch.

“It doth be a ‘she’,” Arthur replied, “and her name be Llamrei.”

“You talk funny,” a small boy, probably no more than ten years old, stated flatly, causing the others to laugh and Arthur to smile.

“That I do, lad,” Arthur agreed. Then he glanced back at Lance and nodded. Lance told the children about Arthur’s crusade, outlining in basic terms what they hoped to accomplish. They listened in wide-eyed wonder, in the end agreeing to spread the word. It sounded like great fun, they all agreed.

“It be about more than fun, young ones,” Arthur assured them. “It be about thy future and that of all the children in this city.”

The children nodded solemnly, then skittered off into the darkness to spread the news. Arthur looked at Lance.

“Well done, my boy,” he said reassuringly. “Thou has a gift with children.”

Lance blushed and looked down. “Oh, uh, thanks.”

Arthur spurred Llamrei on into a different neighborhood that looked similar to the last, but peopled with African- Americans, rather than Latinos or Caucasians. Lance attempted to explain about the races and how some of them liked to be called.

“Are not all of these people we encounter ‘Americans’?” he asked as they trotted slowly down a dark and gloomy street.

“Yeah, I guess,” replied Lance. “They just—” He paused, uncertain how to continue. “They just want to separate themselves out, I guess, so, you know, every group gets to feel special. I don’t know how to explain it.”

Arthur glanced at him. “I believe thou just did explain it, Lance,” he said. “Alas, t’would seem humanity has not changed in all these centuries. When I did first achieve the High Kingship of Britain by pulling Excalibur from the stone, the initial dilemma I faced was to unite the various warring tribes. The Gaels hated the Galls who hated the Normans, and warfare ruled the land.”

“What did you do, Arthur?” Lance asked, finding himself really interested in the answer.

“I did then what we shall do now—I gave them all a purpose in life other than hating one another.” He smiled and spurred Llamrei on down the street.

Lance considered this response, having already been given a vague outline of Arthur’s plan. He suddenly realized that the man had not yet told him how that plan was to be implemented.

Arthur paused his mount at a shadowy intersection, keeping her within the darkness of a non-functioning street light. They watched as women, obviously prostitutes, strutted seductively up and down the street in their short skirts and stiletto heels, signaling to passing cars.

Young men and teen boys lurked in the shadows here and there, waiting. Cars would pull up, and one of the young men would approach. Money was handed out the window in exchange for a package. The cars vanished into the night. After a couple of these exchanges, Arthur glanced at Lance quizzically.

“I’ll explain later,” Lance whispered. “Don’t want ’em to see us.”

Arthur nodded.

Lance noticed a woman and a boy of about twelve meeting in front of a shabby, run-down single-story house with a dead front lawn and a battered shopping cart in the driveway. The boy handed his mother some change from his dirty pants pocket. The mother counted the money, frowned, and then slapped the boy hard across the face, almost knocking him to the ground.

“This is all you got, you worthless piece of garbage!” she hollered, loud enough for the drug dealers and prostitutes to take notice. “Get your ass back out there and get me some real money or else no supper!” The young boy, hand to the cheek that was slapped, backed away from his mother and turned to run down the street. The prostitutes laughed and returned their attention to lighting each other’s cigarettes.

Lance touched Arthur’s shoulder nervously. “Let’s go,” he whispered, “before he sees us.”

But it was too late. The boy rushed into their shadowed hollow and stopped short upon seeing the horse and her riders. Afraid he would call out, Lance hurriedly said, “It’s okay, kid. We won’t hurt you.”

The boy looked anxiously up at man and boy, and then fixed his eyes on the horse. He broke into a wide grin. “Wow,” he murmured, eyes huge with wonder, “I ain’t never seen a real horse before.”

“Me, neither,” agreed Lance. “Not before this one. Her name’s Llamrei. I’m Lance, and this is Arthur. What’s your name, kid?”

“Lavern,” the boy answered, adding shyly, “Can I pet her?”

“Of course,” replied Arthur. “You can do more than pet her. You can join our crusade.”

Lavern turned his wide eyes from Arthur to Lance.

“It’s cool,” Lance assured him. “Want to hear about it?”

Lavern ceased petting Llamrei’s soft coat and nodded. So Lance told him.

The boy soaked up every word, and smiled broadly when Lance had finished.

After leaving Lavern, Arthur and Lance rode on in this same fashion for several more hours before returning to Arthur’s “castle,” as Lance had dubbed it, to sleep.

Lance chose not to go to school the next day so he could practice his swordplay and archery skills with Arthur. He enjoyed these times more than anything in his whole life. It wasn’t just the strength and power he was gaining; it was Arthur, himself. Lance had never met anyone like him.

Of course, if Arthur’s story about being from another time was true, there really hadn’t ever been anyone like him before. But it was more than that. He felt relaxed around Arthur, more than he’d ever felt around any grownup. Arthur was just… well… real.

After resting that afternoon, Lance decided to show Arthur the pantheon of glitz, glamour, and sleaze in Los Angeles—Hollywood Boulevard. They set out that night in tunics and leather pants, and both sported a leather strap tied around the head to keep their hair in place. To the casual passerby, they likely appeared as father and son, despite Lance’s skin being of a browner shade than Arthur’s.

Hollywood Boulevard, as always, teemed with nightlife, and it wasn’t even a weekend. Arthur walked alongside Lance, who rode his skateboard, and they navigated their way along the sidewalk against the press of bodies streaming in both directions, while the king’s eyes shifted rapidly from the endless sidewalk stars commemorating some celebrity, to the seething faces bobbing in and around them from all sides.

Whenever they came to a fire hydrant or other obstacle, Lance deftly ollied over it, much to Arthur’s enjoyment. He found less enjoyment in the odd mix of people they passed on the street, from punkers and heavy metal rockers, to a large number of tattooed and facially pierced teens and younger kids hustling and bustling, likely homeless or runaways. But despite all these people slithering about, no one even glanced at their odd attire.

“See,” Lance said, rolling up to Arthur and deftly flipping his board up and into his hand with ease, “I knew no one’d pay any attention to us here.”

Arthur, nodded, appalled and fascinated at the same time. He gazed open-mouthed at the steady stream of honking cars, the eclectic variety of people, the flashing traffic lights, and blasting music from passing cars or open storefronts. He could never in his wildest nightmares have conjured such a world!

The astounding progress of man on the one hand, and the astonishing degradation of human life on the other confounded him. How, he wondered, could humanity have come so far in its inventiveness, and yet place so little value on the human soul, on the human being in general? “Things” seemed in this world to be of much greater value than people.

Suddenly, he stopped and pointed across the street. “What doth they be doing? It be similar to last night, and you promised to explain.”

Lance turned in the indicated direction. A drug dealer was selling a bag of something to a skinny blond boy with long, shaggy hair, who looked to be around fifteen, wearing dirty jeans and a tank top undershirt.

“He’s a pusher, man, same as those guys we saw last night.”

“A ‘pusher’?” Arthur repeated questioningly.

“Yeah, ya know, dope?” When Arthur gazed blankly at him, Lance tried again. “Drugs, man. They mess up your head, make ya act all crazy. Meth is hot these days. Always weed. So’s smack. It ain’t for me. Gotta keep my head clear for skating.”

Arthur stared at Lance in horror. “Why hath no one stopped this?”

Lance shrugged. “How? It’s everywhere, man.”

Arthur turned and observed the dealer melt into the shadows of an alley as the shaggy-haired blond pocketed his purchase and sauntered off down the street, disappearing into the crowd. He shook his head in dismay, realizing anew the enormity of the task before him. How had humanity come to such a state?

They continued walking until Arthur stopped at an electronics shop