by Jodi Picoult
I took to keeping my nose buried in a Bible. I needed God in my life, because I had a public defender, and when you have a public defender, you'd better hope that God's on your side, too. But I wasn't reading the parts of Scripture I'd read before, when I was learning the doctrines of Christian Identity theology. Instead, I found myself dog-earing the pages about suffering, and salvation, and hope. I fasted, because I read something about it in the Bible. And during my fast God told me to surround myself with other people like me.
So the next day, I showed up at the jail Bible study group.
I was the only guy there who wasn't black.
At first we just stared at each other. Then, the dude running the meeting jerked his chin at a kid who couldn't have been much older than me, and he made a space next to himself. We all held hands, and when I held his, it was soft, like my father's hands used to be. I have no idea why that popped into my head, but that's what I was thinking when they started to say the Lord's Prayer, and then suddenly I was saying it along with them.
I went to Bible study every day. When we finished reading Scripture, we'd say Amen, and then Big Ike, who ran the group, would ask, "Who's got court tomorrow?" Usually, someone would say they had a preliminary hearing or that the arresting officer was testifying or something like that, and Big Ike would say, "All right, then, let's pray that the officer don't throw you under no bus," and he'd find a passage in the Bible about redemption.
Twinkie was the black kid who was my age. We talked a lot about girls, and how we missed hooking up with them. But believe it or not, we talked more about the food we craved on the outside. Me, I would have committed a felony for Taco Bell; Twinkie only wanted Chef Boyardee. Somehow, it didn't matter so much what color his skin was. Had I met him on the streets of Hartford, I would have kicked his ass. But in jail, it was different. We'd team up when we played Spades, cheating with hand signals and eye rolls that we made up in private, because no one expected the White Power guy and the black kid to be working together.
One day, I was sitting in the common room with a bunch of White guys when a gang shooting came in on the midday news. The anchor on the TV was talking about how the bullets sprayed, how many people had been hit by accident. "That's why if we ever go at it with the gangs," I said, "we win. They don't go target shooting like us. They don't know how to hold weapons, look at that death grip. Typical nigger bullshit."
Twink wasn't sitting with us, but I could see him across the room. His eyes sort of skated over me, and then back to whatever he was doing. Later that day, we were playing cards for cigarettes, and I gave him a sign to come back in diamonds, because I was cutting diamond spades. Instead, he threw clubs, and we lost. As we were walking out of the common room, I turned on him. "What the hell, dude? I gave you a sign."
He looked right at me. "Guess it's just typical nigger bullshit," he said.
I thought: Shit, I hurt his feelings. Then: So what?
It's not like I stopped using that word. But I'll admit, sometimes when I said it, it stuck in my throat like a fish bone before I could cough it free.
--
FRANCIS FINDS ME just as I put my boot through the front window of our duplex, pushing out the old casing so that it explodes onto the porch in a rain of splinters and glass. He folds his arms, raises a brow.
"Sill's rotted out," I explain. "And I didn't have a pry bar."
With a gaping hole in the wall, the cold air rushes into the house. It feels good, because I'm on fire.
"So this has nothing to do with your meeting," Francis says, in a way that suggests it has everything to do with the last half hour I've spent at the local police department. It was my next stop after the hospital. I'd dropped off Brit, who crawled back into bed, and drove straight there.
My meeting, really, was not even a meeting. Just me sitting across from a fat cop named MacDougall who filed my complaint against Ruth Jefferson. "He said he'd do a little research," I mutter. "Which means I'll never hear from him again."
"What did you tell him?"
"That that bitch killed my baby."
MacDougall didn't know anything about my son, or what had happened at the hospital, so I had to tell the whole sorry story over again. MacDougall asked me what I wanted from him, as if it wasn't evident.
"I want to bury my son," I told him. "And I want her to pay for what she did."
The cop asked if, maybe, I was just overcome with grief. If I had misinterpreted what I saw. "She wasn't just doing CPR," I told MacDougall. "She was hurting my baby. Even one of the other doctors told her to lighten up."
I said she had it in for me. Immediately the cop glanced at my tattoos. "No kidding," he said.
"It's a fucking hate crime, that's what it is," I tell Francis now. "But God forbid anyone stand up for the Anglos, even though we're a minority now."
My father-in-law falls into place beside me, ripping a piece of flashing out of the window cavity with his bare hands. "You're preaching to the choir, Turk," he says.
Francis may not have talked publicly about White Power in years, but I happen to know that in a locked storage facility three miles away from here, he is stockpiling weapons for the racial holy war. "I hope you're planning on sealing this up," he says, and I pretend he isn't talking about the window.
Just then my cellphone rings. I fish it out of my pocket but don't recognize the number on the screen. "Hello?"
"Mr. Bauer? This is Sergeant MacDougall. I spoke with you earlier today?"
I curl my hand around the phone and turn away, forging a wall of privacy with my back.
"I wanted to let you know that I had a chance to talk to Risk Management at the hospital, as well as to the medical examiner. Carla Luongo corroborated your story. The ME was able to tell me that your son died due to hypoglycemic seizure, which led to respiratory and then cardiac arrest."
"So what does that mean?"
"Well," he says, "the death certificate's been released to the hospital. You can bury your son."
I close my eyes, and for a moment, I can't even find a response.
"Okay," I manage.
"There's one more thing, Mr. Bauer," MacDougall adds. "The medical examiner confirmed that there was bruising on your son's rib cage."
My whole future hinges on the breath between that sentence and his next.
"There's evidence that Ruth Jefferson may have been at fault in the death of your son. And that it could have been a racially motivated incident," MacDougall says. "I'm putting in a call to the district attorney's office."
"Thank you," I say gruffly, and I hang up the phone. Then my knees give out, and I land heavily in front of the damaged sill. I can feel Francis's hand on my shoulder. Even though there's no barrier between me and the outside, I struggle to breathe.
"I'm sorry, Turk," Francis says, misinterpreting my response.
"Don't be." I pull myself up and run to the dark bedroom where Brit is hibernating beneath a mound of covers. I throw open the curtains and let the sun flood the room. I watch her roll over, wincing, squinting, and I take her hand.
I can't give her our baby. But I can give her the next best thing.
Justice.
--
WHILE I HAD been plotting my revenge against Yorkey during my six months in jail, he had been busy, too. He'd allied himself with a group of bikers called the Pagans. They were hulking thugs who were, I assumed, somehow involved with meth, like him. And they were more than delighted to have his back, if it meant they could take down the leader of the Hartford NADS. Street cred like that went a long way.
I spent my first day out of jail trying to round up the old members of my crew, but they all knew what was about to go down, and they all had an excuse. "I gave up everything for you," I said, when I had exhausted even the freshest cut in the squad. "And this is how you repay me?"
But the last thing I was going to do was let anyone think going to jail had dulled my edges. So that night, I went to the pizza place that used to be the unoffic
ial headquarters of my crew, and waited until I heard the growl of a dozen bikes pull up. I threw down my jacket, cracked my knuckles, and walked out to the alley behind the restaurant.
Yorkey, the son of a bitch, was hiding behind a wall of muscle. Seriously, the smallest Pagan was about six-five and three hundred pounds.
I may have been smaller, but I was fast. And none of those guys had grown up ducking from my grandfather's fists.
I wish I could tell you what happened that night, but all I have to go on is what I've heard from others. How I ran like a freaking berserker at the biggest guy, and revved up my arm so that my punch caught him square in the mouth and knocked out his entire front row of teeth. How I lifted one dude off his feet and sent him like a cannonball into the others. How I kicked a biker so hard in his kidney he allegedly pissed red for a month. How blood ran in the alley like rain on pavement.
All I know is I had nothing left to lose but my reputation, and that's enough ammunition to power a war. I don't remember any of it, except waking up the next morning in the pizza joint, with a bag of ice on my broken hand and one eye swollen shut.
I don't remember any of it, but word spread. I don't remember any of it, but once again, I was the stuff of legend.
--
ON THE DAY I bury my son, the sun is shining. The wind's coming from the west, and it has teeth. I stand in front of the tiny hole in the ground.
I don't know who organized this whole funeral. Someone had to call to get a plot, to let people know there would be a service. I assume it was Francis, who now stands at the front of the casket, reading a verse from Scripture: " 'For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of him,' " Francis recites. " 'Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord. And he worshiped the Lord there.' "
There are guys from the drywall crew here, and some of Brit's friends in the Movement. But there are also people I don't know, who have come to pay their respects to Francis. One of them is Tom Metzger, the man who founded the White Aryan Resistance. He's seventy-eight now, a loner like Francis.
When Brit starts sobbing during the reading of the psalm, I reach out to her, but she pulls away. Instead, she turns to Metzger, who she called Uncle Tommy when she was growing up. He puts an arm around her, and I try not to feel the absence of her as a slap.
I've heard plenty of platitudes today: He's in a better place; he's a fallen soldier; time heals all wounds. What no one told me about grief is how lonely it is. No matter who else is mourning, you're in your own little cell. Even when people try to comfort you, you're aware that now there is a barrier between you and them, made of the horrible thing that happened, that keeps you isolated. I had thought that, at the very least, Brit and I would hurt together, but she can barely stand to look at me. I wonder if it's for the same reason I have avoided her: because I look at her eyes and I see them in Davis's face; because I notice the dimple in her chin and think that my son had it, too. She--who used to be everything I ever wanted--is a constant memory now of everything I've lost.
I focus my attention on the casket being lowered into the ground. I keep my eyes extra wide, because if I do that, the tears won't spill over, and I won't look like a pussy.
I start making a list in my head, of all the things I will never get to do with my son: see him smile for the first time. Celebrate his first Christmas. Get him a BB gun. Give him advice to ask a girl out. Milestones. But the road of parenthood, for me, has been wiped clean of landmarks.
Suddenly Francis is standing in front of me with the shovel. I swallow hard, take it, and become the first person to start to bury my child. After pushing a scoop of dirt into the rip in the ground, I jam the shovel into the earth again. Tom Metzger helps Brit lift it, her hands shaking, and do her part.
I know I'm supposed to stand vigil while everyone else here helps to put Davis underground. But I'm too busy fighting the urge to dive into that tiny pit. To shovel the dirt out with my bare hands. To lift the casket, to pry it open, to save my baby. I'm holding myself in check so hard that my body is vibrating with the effort.
And then, something happens that diffuses all that tension, that twists the escape valve so that the steam inside me disappears. Brit's hand slips into mine. Her eyes are still vacant with drugs and pain; her body is angled away from me, but she definitely reached out. She definitely needed me.
For the first time in a week, I start to think that, maybe, we will survive.
--
WHEN FRANCIS MITCHUM summons you, you go.
In the aftermath of my rout of the Pagans, I received a handwritten note from Francis, telling me that he'd heard the rumors, and wanted to see if they were true. He invited me to meet him the following Saturday in New Haven, and included an address. I was a little surprised to drive there and find it smack in the middle of a subdivision, but I assumed it was a gathering of his squad when I saw all the cars parked out front. When I rang the doorbell, no one answered, but I could hear activity in the backyard, so I edged around the side of the house and let myself in through the unlocked fence.
Almost immediately, I was run down by a swarm of kids. They were probably about five years old, not that I had too much experience with humans of that size. They were racing toward a woman who was holding a baseball bat, trying to direct the unruly group into some form of a line. "It's my birthday," one little boy said. "So I get to go first!" He grabbed for the bat and began to swing it at a pinata: a papier-mache nigger hanging from a noose.
Well, at least I knew I was in the right place.
I turned in the other direction, and came face-to-face with a girl who was holding stars in her hands. She had long curly hair, and her eyes were the palest shade of blue I'd ever seen.
I'd been hit a hundred times before, but never like that. I couldn't remember the word hello.
"Well," she said, "you're a little old for games, but you can have a turn if you want."
I just stared at her, confused, until I realized that she was referring to the hook-nosed profile poster taped up on the side of the house. I wanted to play, yes, but Pin the Star on the Jew wasn't what I had in mind.
"I'm looking for Francis Mitchum," I said. "He asked me to meet him here?"
She looked at me, her eyes narrowing. "You must be Turk," she said. "He's expecting you." She turned on her heel and walked into the house with the easy grace of someone who is used to having people follow in her wake.
We passed a few women in the kitchen, who were bouncing from fridge to cabinets and back like popcorn kernels on a hot griddle, exploding one at a time with commands: Get the plates! Don't forget the ice cream! There were more kids inside, but they were older--preteen, I was guessing, because they reminded me of me not that long ago--held in thrall by the man who stood in front of them. Francis Mitchum was shorter than I remembered, but then, I'd last seen him on a podium. His silver hair was lush and swept back from his face, and he was lecturing on Christian Identity theology. "The snake," he explained, "has sex with Eve." The kids looked around at each other when he said the word sex, as if hearing it spoken out loud so casually was their welcome into the sanctum of adulthood. "Why else would God say she couldn't eat an apple? They're in a garden, for Pete's sake. The apple is a symbol, and the downfall of man is getting laid. The Devil comes to Eve in the form of a snake, and she's tricked into messing around, and she gets pregnant. But then she goes back to Adam and tricks him into having sex. She has Cain, who's born with the mark of the Devil on him--a 666, a Star of David. That's right, Cain is the first Jew. But she also gives birth to Abel, who's Adam's kid. And Cain kills Abel because he's jealous, and he's the seed of Satan."
"You believe in this bullshit?" asked the beautiful girl beside me. Her voice was as even as a seam. It felt like a trick.
Some White Power folks were Christian Identity followers, and some weren't. Raine was. Francis was. I was. We believed that we were the real House of Israel, God's chosen o
nes. The Jews were impostors, and would be wiped out during the race war.
I grinned. "When I was about their age, I was starving and I stole a hot dog at a gas station. I didn't care so much about stealing, but for two weeks I was convinced God was going to smite me for eating pork."
When she met my gaze, it felt like the space between the moment you turned on a stove's pilot light, and the moment it was blue and burning. It felt like the possibility of an explosion.
"Daddy," she announced. "Your guest is here."
Daddy?
Francis Mitchum glanced at me, turning his attention away from the clot of preteens he'd been talking to, who were staring at me, too.
He stepped over the tangle of adolescent limbs and clapped me on the shoulder. "Turk Bauer. It's good of you to come."
"It's an honor to be asked," I replied.
"I see you've already met Brittany," Francis said.
Brittany. "Not officially." I held out my hand. "Hi."
"Hi," Brit repeated, laughing. She held on a moment too long, but not enough for anyone to notice.
Except Mitchum, who--I assumed--did not miss much. "Walk with me a bit?" he said, and I fell into step beside him as we returned to the backyard.
We chatted about the weather (late start to spring this year) and the drive from Hartford to New Haven (too much construction on I-91S). When we reached a corner of the yard, near an apple tree, Mitchum sat down on a lawn chair and gestured for me to do the same. From here, we had a bird's-eye view of the pinata game. The birthday boy was up to bat again, but so far, no candy had been spilled. "That's my godson," Mitchum said.
"I was wondering why I got invited to a kids' party."
"I like talking to the next generation," he admitted. "Makes me still feel relevant."
"Oh, I don't know about that, sir. I'd say you're still pretty relevant."
"Now, you," Mitchum said. "You've made quite a name for yourself lately."
I just nodded. I wasn't sure why Francis Mitchum had wanted to meet me.
"I hear your brother was killed by a nigger," he said. "And your father's a flamer--"
My head swung up, cheeks hot. "He's not my father anymore."
"Take it easy, boy. None of us can pick our parents. It's what we choose to make of them that's important." He looked at me. "When was the last time you saw him?"
