A Dark Truth

by Jeff Ross

  When he got it back, it didn’t even appear to have been read. The pages were flat. The space around the staple uncreased. The only evidence of actual human involvement with it was an As I said, Dashawn, you need to dig deeper into the research. C–

  The bibliography was three pages long.

  Of course, we couldn’t say anything. Dashawn had handed in someone else’s work, after all.

  I remembered seeing the same look on his face that day, and after the soccer incident, as what seemed to live there permanently since the night with the police.

  “My dad has a good job lined up in Atlanta,” Dashawn said, capping his water bottle. “My whole family is down there as well. Both sides. I have, like, twenty cousins.”

  “That’s cool.”

  “Yeah, we never see them. Same with my grandparents. I know my mom’s been wanting to live closer. So, I mean, it’s not just…” He inhaled and looked at the sky for a second. “It’s not just what happened. This has kind of been in the works for a while.”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “I’m going to miss this place.”

  “This place is going to miss you,” I said.

  “Not likely.”

  “You know, without you here, there is a very high likelihood of my murdering a scooter kid.”

  “Nah, you’re cool with them.”

  “I am not. They wreck this place. I mean…” I was getting to yelling about it already, even without a scooter in sight.

  Dashawn tapped my arm. “They’re just enjoying the space as well, bro.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I guess.”

  A vanload of middle-school kids arrived. Dashawn grabbed his board and stood up.

  “Let’s split,” he said.

  We walked back to his house, talking about random stuff. Girls, I guess. Videos we’d watched. Tricks we wanted to land before it got too cold to skate.

  “There’s a bonus right there,” I said. “It doesn’t get cold in Atlanta. You’ll be able to skate year-round.”

  “Damn,” he said. “You know what? I never thought about that.”

  “You’ll be pro in a year.”

  “You think that long?” he said. “I’ll be thinking of you when I’m out hitting a bowl on Christmas Eve.”

  We’d reached his house. I put my fist out for a bump. Instead, he stepped up to me and gave me a hug. A man hug, for sure, with all the back patting and thumping, but he didn’t seem to want to let go. Neither did I.

  “So, bro, I kind of lied,” he said, stepping back.

  “About what?”

  “Moving on Monday. I mean, it’s kind of true. The movers are coming Monday. We’re leaving tomorrow.”

  “Seriously?”

  “Yeah.” He looked at his feet, then dropped his board and popped it back into his hands. “I just wanted one last good skate with you, you know? Without all that hanging over us.”

  “I hear you,” I said. “It was cool.”

  “Say goodbye to Tash for me, would you?”

  “For sure.”

  “I always kind of thought she and I would end up getting married.”

  “Seriously?”

  “No.” He laughed. “Tell her that though. I want to hear what she says in reply.” He put his fist out and I gave it a bump, and then he walked inside. I dropped my board and pushed toward home, feeling more empty than I thought possible.

  Chapter Nine

  In the weeks after Dashawn left, I spent a lot of time with my parents. I still went to the skate park and tried to hit other locations with Natasha. I mean, I needed my freedom, and that’s what skateboarding was for me. Complete freedom. But it wasn’t the same without Dashawn. There was no one there to push me. No one to pick me up after a bad slam. No one to get pumped up with.

  Two weeks after Dashawn moved, I was watching the news with my parents. There was a story about a man, a black man, who’d died when a couple of cops jumped on him and held him to the ground. They crushed him to death. There was a video of it as well. The man had a pack of cigarettes in his hand. Apparently he’d stolen them. The police kept yelling “Stop resisting!” at him, though the man couldn’t resist. He couldn’t even move.

  My father shook his head at the story. But my mother was different.

  “Why does he keep resisting?” she said.

  “He isn’t,” I replied.

  “He must have been before the video started. That’s the problem with all these videos—we don’t see everything.”

  “He’s not even moving, and the cops are still on him,” I said.

  “They knew who he was, right, Dan?” she said to my dad. “That’s how the story began. He was known to police. You can’t be a law-abiding citizen who is known to police. There are all kinds of things we don’t even know about, I bet.”

  I couldn’t believe what she was saying. The video showed a man being murdered for a pack of cigarettes. His last words were “I’ll give them back.”

  “So he deserved to die?” I said.

  “Well, no, of course not.”

  I was enraged. I could feel the fury inside me rising. “He deserved to die for taking a pack of cigarettes? That’s not even a real crime. At worst, you’d get a fine.”

  “I didn’t say he deserved to die, Riley. I just said that if he was known to police, then he must be a criminal of some sort.”

  “The reporter said he had no prior convictions.”

  “Well,” Mom said. There was a tone attached. A weary You don’t understand the world tone.

  “Well, what?”

  “Riley, don’t yell at your mother. What’s this all about?”

  “That guy didn’t do anything dangerous at all and now he’s dead,” I said. “Two cops decided that stealing cigarettes was a crime worthy of the death penalty. And it means nothing to you guys.”

  “What do we have to do with this?” Mom said. She pointed with both hands at the television. The report was from a place way west of us. For her it was as if this man was in a different world altogether.

  Which, I was beginning to think, he was.

  “Nothing,” I said. “That’s the thing. We have nothing to do with this.” I wasn’t even making sense to myself, but my words still felt true. “None of it has anything to do with us, but because of that it has everything to do with it. I mean, how fucked up is this country that something like this can happen and we let it go?”

  “Language, Riley,” Mom said.

  “Yeah, that’s what’s important. Cuss words. People die for stealing cigarettes or being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that doesn’t bother anyone around here. On the other hand, one swearword and I’m—”

  “Riley, you’re yelling at us,” Dad said.

  “Nothing is going to happen to those cops,” I yelled. “I bet they’re back on the street next week. They killed someone! That guy had kids and a family and—”

  “It was likely an accident,” Mom said. “They couldn’t have meant to do it. The police don’t go around killing innocent people, Riley.”

  I didn’t want to argue any longer. I would only get more angry. So I left the living room, grabbed my board and went outside.

  It was dark and cold. Leaves were blowing down the street. I went to the curb where I’d first started skateboarding and began slamming down grinds and slides. I hit that curb as hard as I could whenever I landed. It rang out through the neighborhood like shots. A few cars passed, their lights illuminating me for a moment. But that was it. No one cared that I was out there. No one said a word.

  The idea that the man in the news story must have been guilty of something bothered me. And I knew why. Because if that’s what it was for him, then it had to be the same for Dashawn. Dashawn had been beaten by the police, though I’d never told my parents this. He’d been taught a lesson. The guy in the news story was the same. The police were trying to teach him a lesson. A lesson in who had the power.

  I slammed down a 50-50 and fell forward onto th
e lawn. I was sweating even though it was cold outside. The neighborhood was silent except for the few remaining crickets and the gentle hum of cars on the nearby interstate.

  What Dashawn and I had been doing that night was illegal. Skateboarders don’t want to destroy property, and a lot of the time we don’t. I mean, other people do the tagging and graffiti at skate parks, and we get blamed for it. Concrete chips, sure, but a truck backing into a ledge will do the same thing. We leave black marks with wax and paint tearing from the graphics on our boards, but that can be washed away. Nothing is permanent.

  Most people don’t know this though. They see the skaters, hear the noise and think we’re wrecking everything. Those cops might have believed that. It still didn’t warrant the beatdown they gave Dashawn. But when they said those words to him, that they were going to teach him a lesson, maybe they were saying it to him as a skater and not because he was black.

  I wanted to believe this so badly that night. Not because it could bring Dashawn back to town. That would never happen. I wanted it because I’d known Dashawn since we were little kids and he was my best friend, and to think that some people considered him lesser than me because of the color of his skin made me sick.

  I decided there was only one way to find out for certain. I was going to have to go back to the building and skate that spot.

  Chapter Ten

  The trees had lost more of their leaves. The building looked even more stark and gray. It seemed that people had moved into the offices. Computers flashed in the dim light, and the fluorescent lighting burned on all but one of the floors. I waited behind the same tree Dashawn, Natasha and I had hid behind before. I hadn’t told Natasha what I was doing. She had wanted to film some clips that night, but I’d told her I was busy. I’d been blowing her off a lot since Dashawn left. We were still good friends, but it had felt before like skating was all about the three of us, and with Dashawn gone it seemed wrong to be out filming clips with Natasha. I hadn’t even told her about Dashawn’s fantasy of their future life together.

  When it came to skating this spot, I wouldn’t have told her about it anyway. I couldn’t have anyone else around. I needed to be found there. I needed to get busted. I needed to know what would happen after the police arrived.

  I waited for fifteen minutes, watching the building for security. No one came, and seeing as it wasn’t that large a place, I had to assume that if someone was protecting the property, he or she would have made at least one round during that time. No one was inside either. Not that I could see anyway. The thing was, I didn’t want to get busted by a security guard. That would mean nothing. Security guards just tell you to leave, or they threaten to call the cops. They have no more power than a regular citizen.

  I was nervous, I’ll say that much. Maybe more than nervous. There was every possibility that I was going to receive a beating at the hands of an adult. It seemed bizarre to even consider. The worst part of it was that I wanted it to happen. I wanted so badly to be held down and kicked and hit, but at the same time I was terrified of it happening.

  The first ollie sounded like an explosion. It echoed off the walls of the building and came back at me even louder. I popped another couple and then did a quick 180 down a two-step. For the first ten minutes or so, I kept an eye out for the police. But then I got into a groove. I found a flow and started going for higher and faster tricks. I nailed the kickflip to 5-0 and pulled a 180 off the ledge, knowing Dashawn would be proud. I waxed the bench and worked on the blunt slide to fakie. I slammed a few times, but that only meant there was some serious satisfaction once I landed it.

  Then I climbed the stairs to the front door and eyed the handrail. There were deeper shadows against the building. It was getting dark, although it wasn’t even 7:00 yet. I rolled up to the handrail and stopped where I would have to pop to hit it. I figured a board slide would be safest. Just get the front trucks over and glide down on the middle of the deck. There was less precision involved, though the danger of totally sacking myself was much higher.

  It took two tries before I committed and landed on the rail. When I did, I instantly understood why Dashawn had been hitting it so hard. It was perfectly smooth, bottomed out with enough space to turn off and had a very sweet roll away. There were no cracks in the pavement anywhere, so the whole ride was just about as smooth as could be.

  I decided to try a 50-50 down it. I needed a new angle for this. I had to fly slightly farther out and get that much higher to lock my trucks in on the rail. I bailed the first time and slammed to the ground, knocking the air out of myself.

  While I was sitting up to try to breathe again, I noticed that there wasn’t a ledge at the bottom of the stairs. I’d never doubted Dashawn. Not even for a second. But seeing that the roll away was clear for a very long way made me that much angrier. If anyone had even come out here and looked, they would have known the cops were lying. No matter how Dashawn had fallen, there was no way he could have been so badly banged up.

  I checked my body to make certain I hadn’t broken anything and then ran up the stairs again. I thought I’d figured out what I had to do differently. I’d been looking at the end of the rail as I was trying to get onto it rather than where I wanted to land. That is always a recipe for failure. You need to spot your landing, whether it is onto or off of a rail.

  I ran with my board, dropping it and giving one push before prepping for the ollie. I got my foot tweaked on the tail, bent my knees and popped. It all seemed to be going perfectly, but I went a little high and passed right over the rail. I jumped away from my board and landed half on and half off a step. I managed to spin around as I fell so I was going forward rather than backward, but I still fell. I jittered down three steps, and my leg bent back strangely on the flat.

  I was sitting there with my ankle in my hand and my board still rattling down the steps when the first cop car pulled in. I didn’t run—actually, I couldn’t have run even if I’d wanted to. My ankle was throbbing, and though I figured it was fine, it hurt too much to put any weight on.

  The cops turned their headlights toward me, then came to a stop. I recognized the first one. He was the big, thick cop I’d seen get out of the cruiser the night Dashawn was roughed up. His partner was a younger guy. Rake thin with golden yellow hair. They came out as though they had all the time in the world. I stood, testing my ankle, and hobbled to where my skateboard sat against a wall.

  Chapter Eleven

  There was a big, ugly black mark on the bench at the bottom of the stairs. The combination of wax, paint, dirt and motion had turned what had been a shining silver to a dull black. I stood right beside it, my board in one hand.

  “That looked like a nasty fall,” the big cop said.

  “Missed,” I said. I was shaking. I mean, my whole body was quivering. Sweat was drying on my skin, and the early fall breeze was leaving me cold. I was also really thirsty. I hadn’t brought water, for some reason. I took off my hat and wiped at my forehead. Then, just to see what would happen, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my cell.

  They didn’t move.

  “You alone here?” the big cop asked. He seemed bored by the whole thing.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “You can’t be here.” He pointed at the marks. “The developer doesn’t want everything destroyed.”

  “I wasn’t destroying anything.”

  The cop rubbed at his mouth. He still didn’t seem irate at all. “Nevertheless, things get banged up. You have some?”

  “No,” I said.

  “You sure of that? Student card? Driver’s license?”

  “I didn’t bring anything with me.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Jim Riley,” I said, using the fake name we always used when we got hassled by security guards. Jim was a kid who’d moved away in first grade, so we always figured it was safe enough to claim to be him.

  The cop sniffed and pointed at my board. “Well, Jim, don’t you have anything better to
do with your time?”

  “What?” I said, wanting to make this situation as difficult as possible. I wanted the cops to hate me. To need to teach me a lesson.

  “Jumping down stairs. Sliding on benches.” He shook his head some more. “It’s a waste of time, son. You need to learn some things to get ahead in this world. Math and science is the way. Everyone tells me the world is all about computers now.”

  “I do fine in school,” I said. Everything was so casual that it was bothering me. I mean, it was like we were having a friendly conversation. A couple of old friends.

  “I did all right too,” the cop said. “What about you, Mark?”

  “Yeah, I did good,” the other cop said. He was sitting on a ledge, his eyes half closed against the setting sun. “Wouldn’t have caught me dead on one of those, that much I can tell you.”

  “Yeah, me neither.” The big cop laughed at the idea. “Either way, you can’t be here, Jim. The neighbors hear the banging and they call us, and then we have to come here and kick you out. We have better things to do.” Officer Mark was already on his way back to the cruiser, where the radio was squawking.

  The big cop waved at the street and said, “So don’t come back or we’ll have to call your parents, and if they’re anything like mine were, you’ll be in a world of trouble.”

  They sat in the cruiser while I limped away. I wanted to turn around and scream at them. I almost did. But they were gone by the time I got to the path leading up to the bus stop.

  A bus was waiting there, but I walked on by. It was miles to my house. I didn’t care though. I started pushing. I went into the street, onto the sidewalk. My ankle throbbed, but I kept pushing as hard as I could. I skimmed rocks, popped over curbs. Ran red lights.