15 Minutes Past Sagittarius

A dove should be nesting at this late hour, but there she is, flitting about as if crazed by the full moon. Like a moth drawn to a candle, she tries to reach the silvery orb, only to drop exhausted from the sky – the reflection is farther away than it appears. Again and again she falls from light into shadow, till I see her no more.

I’ve lifted my own dove in this very same glow, produced by blue gels over stage lights, when dancing a pas de deux with Lacy, my ballerina of many seasons. But that was in the past – I’m on duty now, in the back parking lot of a church in urban Atlanta.

The police are tidying up their report just a few blocks away. Next of kin known, but disinterested – the little crack-whore is destined for the paupers’ cemetery which runs downhill from the prison, just above the landfill. Her drama will soon be covered over by the light of the moon. I think of it as a hunters’ moon – I avoid claiming that it actually contributes to lunacy with the pragmatic observation that the bad guys can simply see their targets better. It’s just risen above a branch of that oak against the fence, as if the tree were raising a lantern to reveal the world for which I am responsible.

I seek to recover strength behind Israel Baptist Church, sitting in the cruiser assigned to me as EMS lieutenant for the southern half of the county. The child around the corner is dead, beyond recovery. As I approached, the cop had lifted pencil from clipboard just enough to indicate the door to a toolshed – a sure sign that his most pressing concern was to avoid contaminating a crime scene. The moonlight that could penetrate the one greasy window took a moment before revealing a little black girl collapsed over her knees like a Muslim at prayer, her forehead to the concrete. I had no real hope that the dark pool running from beneath her to the floor drain might be oil. Her skin was the temperature of the night, and my fingers discovered only the wound in her neck – the heartbeat had gone out with her blood, it had been a while since her last sigh.

I wanted to do more for her – at least give her the dignity of pulling her pants up from around her knees. But once death is confirmed it is indeed a crime scene. The medical emergency is over – just cancel the ambulance and fire crews who are en route, and disturb nothing for fear of cheating CSI technicians of their booty. I’ve no more duty to her – only to the file cabinet, providing a medical report to supplement the police documentation. The cop knew her name, having picked her up a few times as a child out too late and loitering at the wrong corner.

The church parking lot is empty, save for me. A few hours earlier it had been filled. They call it choir practice, but at an urban gospel church on a Saturday night surely throats were filled with the same passion and joy as will be shared with the congregation in the morning. Worship that waxes and wanes as does the moon – their song will rise again with the sun. It’s a hot night, but the cool blue of the moonlight makes everything in this world gleam as if from a light within, a landscape under a summer snow.

The peace belies the neighborhood. Somewhere in the shadows nearby is the monster who thought her life worth less than the coins she’d asked for her service. I don’t know that devil, though it’s easy to recognize others – I can diagnose a patient’s drug of choice by the personality of the demon who’s taken him over. There’s a corner suckling at liquor, a whole block loiters with marijuana and hashish, but the nearest intersection is the haunt of crack cocaine, her pushers and her whores.

The girl was fourteen. Her skin had become ashen upon releasing her dove, no moisture left in her body to give it a sheen. Her voice is silenced forever, her dove flung into darkness, with only my prayers to lift her to the light. Maybe that’s why I think of Lacy – she was about this age when I first danced with her.

My virginal Lacy – she danced the Snow Pas de Deux clad all in white and glowing in the stage lights. I appeared in white, too, when I danced with her, my partnering an act of worship of Beauty become corporeal. During this dance our legs grew cold from the dry ice machine rolling a heavy fog over the stage – I can imagine how that felt to the snowflake dancers when they finally found order, forming two columns and bowing deep into the mist. Approaching the final crescendo, I carried Lacy overhead in promenade between them, and paused at center stage. I could feel her leg stretch just a bit higher above me in arabesque, even feel her wrists pulse the last waves of music before the curtain. Nothing so lovely could be real, but there she was, living, perched on my hand as if I’d plucked her from the heavens to present her almost within reach of the first row. As the music receded I could hear the audience draw in the vision with their breath.

Movement in the shadows under the tree catches my eye, but it’s only a breeze stirring dead leaves. Where in the debris has that dove fallen? I would brush away the ashes of the world into which this little spirit was born and, like that oak lifting the moon above the shadows, present her to the heavens, asking God to receive back this child. I can’t save them all – I know that. The choir must rest its voice in the stillness before sunrise, but I search for the prayer that could find the lost dove. No words come – what rises from my heart is a vision of Lacy circling cautiously till she takes my hand, and trusts me to lift her into the lights. I have touched Beauty. I am ready for the next call.