Love, passion, and danger collide in this engaging tale of two people separated by circumstance, but forever bound by fate.

Rose Gilchrist. The daughter of a wealthy Pennsylvanian mine owner, Rose has pledged to help the underprivileged of the third world. To do so, she volunteers as a doctor with Médecins Sans Frontières. Her journey will take her from the hills and jungles of Haiti to the perils of war-torn Rwanda. And it is in this African nation that she will discover the greatest love of her life.

David Fitzgerald. A former delinquent from the slums bordering the East River, David was given a choice between prison and enlisting. He joins the U.S. Marines and after three years of service, becomes a second lieutenant. David joins a secret international force of highly trained soldiers whose job is to rescue those brave doctors who find themselves caught up in civil wars around the globe, little knowing he will meet a woman who will change his life forever...

Brimming with vivid detail and emotional depth, Purity in a Dirty World plunders the depths of the human heart.

Purity in a Dirty World

A NovelBy Lawrence Clarke

iUniverse, Inc.

Copyright © 2009 LAWRENCE CLARKE
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4401-6479-8

Chapter One

YOUNG ROSE

1976

Over a span of five generations the rich black river-bank loam had nurtured and nourished the giant and, in return, the statuesque chestnut tree had rewarded and fed the surrounding soil with its seasonal carpet of discarded foliage. At some point in its maturing, the tree had thrown a snaking, knurled, almost horizontal limb halfway across the stream's breadth. While trout may have moved in the turgid pools along the river-bank, here, under the thick branch, minnows played in the deep flowing water, darting in and out of the shade, turning their silver bellies to glint in a day's moving of light and shadow which the tree painted on the gentle flowing canvas of water.

On this warm July afternoon a small girl occupied herself, sitting halfway along the branch, her dainty feet dangling and swinging above the slow running stream. From the shade of the tree, a good landscape artist could have painted a masterpiece of countryside tranquillity. The artist would have captured the smile of contentment on the child's face and he would have noted how the strengthening breeze lifted wisps of her thick, blonde hair before settling it in a slightly different position on her head. An invisible hairdresser seemed to be at work. He would have thanked the gods for gifting him with this specimen of perfect childish beauty and for giving him a being who would bring perfect harmony to the painting of the river-banks, the tree and all the waterside greenery that the river fondled nearby.

A piece of black sewing cotton, dancing and undulating on the Summer wind like gossamer, stretched from her hand down to the flow below, before disappearing among a frenzied shoal of minnows. Beside her on the branch sat a glass jar full of river water and small fish. She yelped with glee as the thread jiggled again. This time the fat red worm had been swallowed from both sides; the rare prize of a double catch. Gently, she lifted the line and plopped her catch into the jar. Her simple method employed no hooks. The fish could not regurgitate the worm's end fast enough to escape.

She stuck to her task studiously and every so often she broke the end off the cotton and threw the worm onto the bank, figuring after a few catches it would have relinquished its flavour. She then reached into the pocket of her jeans for a capped, plastic cylinder and withdrew fresh bait. After tying it to the end of the thread, she plonked her line into the water once more and began to sing softly. She sat there for three hours until her bottom was numb and the Summer wind, swishing through the chestnut tree, began to cool.

The tiny fishergirl picked the jar up with two hands and spoke softly to the fish. "Thank you for making me happy, fishies. Now, I have to go home and you have to go home too." Gently she returned her miniature captives back to the wild.

"Do you always give them back to the river, child?"

The girl did not start. She turned her head slowly towards the figure standing well back in the deep shadows below the foliage of the chestnut tree. The occasional sunbeam that penetrated the murky shade glinted off a pendant of some kind hanging around the man's wrinkled neck.

"Yes, always. What is that necklace?"

"Chontae Luimnigh in Eirinn." The girl looked puzzled. "It's unimportant. What's more important is a kind gesture, and no less than expected. Does it give you joy to catch them?" His voice was soft and melodious. The girl remained still, peering at the dark figure.

"Yes but I never hurt them."

"So I am correct in saying that their prison term is short and clement?"

Not understanding the meaning of his last word, the girl hesitated before choosing another tack. "Do you work with the horses?"

He exposed white teeth as he smiled from the gloom. He appeared to appreciate her intelligence on two counts; to forego asking what the word meant, then to formulate a sensible question to deflect that lack of understanding. "Not yet, child, but I was passing this way and I happened to see your little mercy. Touching for one so young."

"I'm eight, that's not so young."

"You should go on home now. The breeze is strengthening and this windy evening heralds the approach of a storm which will blow through your valley."

"I was just going."

"Tell me, does it give you a thrill when you feel the living force of those small fish in your hands?"

"I feel ... their life. That's all I can say."

"And when you hold the petals of a growing flower, or the leaves on a tree, do you feel the same?"

"They can't wriggle but I feel something too. Why, is that important to you?"

He smiled again. "Little one, you have a long and, at times, a hard road to walk. You will venture into the world to such places that you read about now, to touch humanity, and in that sensation you will feel the joy of its existence and the despair at its destruction. You are a special child and that is a fact. In a few years you will leave this valley and will not return for a goodly part of your life. When you eventually come back, come here to this ancient place under the chestnut tree and perhaps we may cross paths again. Now get your jar and trot home."

She turned to pick her jar off the branch. When she stood and balanced for the walk to the bank, what had been no more than a penumbra to her eyes was gone.

Chapter Two

YOUNG DAVID

1980

Little did he know he was standing on the approximate spot where the first charred body from the General Slocum had been dragged from the East River, below Hell Gate, 76 years before. Nor could he realise that on this cold December night a world famous British rock singer would die across the river in the city. He knew the things that mattered to him however; like here, the spot where he stood, was well outside the limit of the Erin Warriors' territory. It was a smelly, stone beach on the Hunter's Point side of Newtown Creek, facing west towards New York University Hospital and another world, Manhattan.

David was born and bred in the low income housing projects over in Greenpoint. At 12 he was tall and sturdy with as mature an outlook as an 18 year-old and would be willing to stand toe to toe with anyone of that age if that was the way they wanted to fight. But the teenage gangs did not engage each other in the man's way, as his granddad liked to describe fighting in his day. Grandy spoke of Limerick and his village of Annacotty, and the hard noses that populated his homeland, with a tinge of homesickness and nostalgia in his voice. For the most part David listened but out on the new battle front all granddad's fanciful, chivalrous rules had been dispensed with a long, long time ago. Nowadays, here in Southern Queens as David well appreciated, a knife in the back was as acceptable as a punch in the head, even when junior gangs fought. He was insightful enough to know changes were beginning to take place here and in his borough of Greenpoint. The deserted Ropeworks and other abandoned commercial buildings stood now as sentinels to a former age; but rumours persisted that they were being purchased cheaply, along with the land, before the boom times arrived. In 1980 the dockyards were a sad reflection of the days when the chocks were hammered away and the first iron-clad ships glided down the slipways into the oily water of the East River.

David turned his face to the south, gazing across the shoreline at the dusk sheathed derricks of the dredgers that had been cleaning the 25 million-gallon oil spill from the Creek since 1950. He stood with his back to the fast flowing tidal strait. To each side of him his gang members waited. The Chivs, another new Puerto Rican descended gang who inhabited the lower end of Hunter's Point and the foreshore up to Hell Gate Bridge, had come upon the Warriors as they were doing nothing more sinister than throwing stones out into the water. Their leader, unusual for his race, was a big boy perhaps half a head taller that David, and older. He had shoulder length black, greasy hair. A long scar ran from his ear to his cheek bone. The scar was his badge of leadership, just as the healed knife wound on David's neck was David's.

"Micks shouldn't be on this side of the Creek, you fuckers know that."

David stepped slightly forward and tapped a baseball bat on the ground. "I've lived here all my life, greaser, and a mob of shitholes who's found a backdoor way into the country ain't about to tell me where I can walk. The Irish was here long before Ricos. Now, I dunno how much American you unnerstan', lard hair, but if you don't move aside and give us passage back the way we come, I'll match that scar on the udder side of yer ugly face."

The bigger boy looked at him incredulously for a full minute before a smile creased his face, turning quickly to a chuckle and finishing in a loud laugh. He stopped suddenly just as his soldiers were warming to the mirth. All trace of jocularity died. "For a bog mick's brat you got balls, Fitzgerald, but a lesson needs to be taught here, an example made and a message sent to the fuckin' spades and dagos as well, to stay away."

"That's very eloquent, greaser, and you can look that word up in a dictionary if you ever grace a library. Now a dictionary is full of words and most of them you wouldn't fuckin' unnerstan'. And a library, well, that'd be a foreign land right there."

"You diggin' an awful deep grave for you and yer," he said menacingly while looking along the line, "whatever the fuck they are. Now you know the score, mick; you and me or all in. What's it to be?"

A short squat boy of David's age, standing at his shoulder, stepped up to the plate. "Davey, we're ready. There's only 13 of `em, and we got us eight. Let's get to it."

David told the boy to stand back. "You're on yer last legs with the law, Reilly, and I don't wanna be the one that sees you into juvie. But yer offer is noted and thanked for."

"The little mick has balls and, awh, the brat's gat a kind heart." The Chiv's leader looked pointedly at each Erin Warrior. "I want you to remember this, and let it be a lesson to ya all, that this is fuckin' Puerto Rico now, from here to Hell Bridge." An iron bar slid down from his sleeve. "Now, step forward, Mickey Mouse."

David took a pace forward. "So, greaser, that place where you stole in from, I believe it's covered in jungle. Must be a lotta monkeys in those trees. Now, I'm gonna take a rough stab here. Yer fadder, was he very hairy?" Reilly and a few of the other Warriors laughed.

"Yer gonna be in the fuckin' infirmary a long time, Irish, or the morgue." He walked forward and David came to meet him. When the younger boy made his move, it was so fast it took all the watchers by surprise. He dropped to one knee, and instantly he swung the slugger in a low, fast arc. The bulbous end slammed into the bigger boy's kneecap and he stumbled backwards, letting out a loud yowl as he went. David kept moving fast. The next blow took a forearm lifted in defence, and the radius snapped. The baseball bat was raised to strike again when a shot rang out. All movement stopped. One of the Puerto Rican boys, no older than David, was holding a small pistol. "You hit my brudder again and I'll kill ya. Now get outa here, all ya."

"We'll go, Rigo, but holdin' a gun don't mean squat an' I'll see ya in the classroom or the playground. An' we're comin' back here. This is open ground, maybe a wee bit Irish since our people was here first. If any of you want warfare, ya got it, but we're willin' to let ya walk through here an' we expect to be able to do the same."

The Warriors walked across the slimy beach stones, past the glowering Chivs and into the dark. They were 20 yards past when the gun barked. David swung around as his gang dived for any cover they could find. The injured boy had used his good hand to take the gun from his younger brother and fire. The bullet that was meant for David struck Reilly in the neck. The small boy died before receiving medical attention.

A month later in school David beat up on Rigo so badly the boy was hospitalised for a week and David did his second tour in juvenile detention. He made sure, as he broke a rib with a well placed final kick, to say loudly, "Dat's fer Reilly, spic."

Chapter Three

YOUNG ROSE

1980

On Rose's first day of junior high school she served a period of detention. This did not worry her unduly since, by 12 years of age, she was an old hand at dealing with such minor things as the thieving of an hour by over zealous educators; and she had spent a fair amount of her time in lower school dealing with being punished in one form or another.

The excited gabbling of students, taking the next flight of steps up the stairway to the dais of adulthood, was soon forgotten when Rose and her fellow classmates entered their home-room; a domain dominated by a disciplinarian of the old school. Her new teacher was called Miss Cross; a woman who possessed a crumpled papyrus leaf for a face which was in dire need of pressing, or of having something of religious significance transcribed thereon. Rose could well imagine the number of pupils who had made similar judgements, not to mention her name describing her demeanour. With this in mind Rose christened her The Single Wrinkle because she could not determine where one face fold ended and another began.

The teacher introduced herself and then called the class roll. "Primrose Gilleland," she arrived at, and it seemed to Rose that the spectre of a smile rippled through the unironed texture of the crone's face. Rose sat mutely, ignoring the sound of a name that was a constant, troubling source of embarrassment to her when occasionally it surfaced. Eventually the old woman moved on down the list. When Miss Cross finished, she looked over the top of her pinch-nez glasses at the young faces which were made up of a few innocent gazes but the rest were world weary, in the disinterested fashion of cool, early adolescents.

The once authoritatively toned voice now held a hint of phlegmy, cigaretted poison. "I have counted heads and I know that you are here somewhere Miss Gilleland, so raise your hand that I may mark you as present."

Rose stood up at her desk. Heads turned towards the beautiful, small statured student. "May I address the class, Miss Cross?" she asked in a modulated and refined tone. The Single Wrinkle showed no surprise, just nodded imperceptibly. Rose left the safe confines of her seat and strode to the front of the room. She looked around the class before finally resting her eyes on the teacher.

"All of you have heard my name this once. I did not have a choice when this silly name was chosen and my family name is a similar burden. In future Miss Cross, I request that through junior and senior high you refer to me as Rose; if you absolutely need to call a roll, and that should have been left behind in primary school, then that will be the only time in the day that I wish my full name to be used." She lowered her eyes to the class. "If any one of you uses my full christian name, whether coupled to a surname or not," and it was at this juncture her voice took on a more threatening modulation, "you will be sorry, I promise, and with respect, Miss Cross, that includes you."

Her visit to the principal's office was followed later that first afternoon by the detention. A member of the Gilleland staff, Melony, collected her at 4:45 pm.

Her short address was duly reported to her father. He, in turn, gave her a stern lecture on the abuse of imagined power that comes with privilege and money. He enforced his teaching by consigning Rose to her room for a week. For herself, she had made her point, and would stick by it.

Contrary to her initial outburst, during her three years at middle school and on into high school, she was an A grade student, attentive and seemingly interested in the important as well as the unimportant lessons she was taught. Except for morning call, Miss Cross never again called her Primrose or used her surname during teaching periods. Rose settled for the compromise.

It was an enigma to those that gave her basic education that she was constantly serving detention or suspension for things that happened outside of the classroom.

Two students during her high school days made the mistake of poking fun at her name.

"Here comes little shit-yellow petalled Primrose, our own little flowery student. Primrose Pillowland with her top marks bought with daddy's money." This jibe, in the middle of her first year, came from a tall and sturdy female student. It was a dropping of the gauntlet; a testing of the waters. Rose walked on by, noting the remark but oblivious to the giggles. Meanwhile the girl moved up a rung in the pecking order inside her clique.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Purity in a Dirty Worldby Lawrence Clarke Copyright © 2009 by LAWRENCE CLARKE. Excerpted by permission.
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