Don't Ask - the story of America's first openly gay Marine.

by B. K. Dell

  She didn’t mean Texas.

  The real reason that she did not want conversation was because she didn’t want to have to duck, dodge, and weave her way around the inevitable question, “Where ya’ll headed off to?”

  She told one lady behind the counter that she and Jackson were on their honeymoon. That may have been motivated by some wishful thinking. The lady gave her a peculiar look that Stephanie could not identify. Perhaps she figured that she was being lied to because Stephanie had no wedding ring, or perhaps she could not figure out where in West Texas they might be honeymooning.

  As soon as Stephanie finished pumping her gas, she stepped back into her car to discover Jackson was awake. “Baby, I would have pumped the gas for you,” he said.

  “You were asleep,” she told him.

  “You should have woken me up.”

  Stephanie didn’t say anything. She wanted to tell him that waking him up would defeat the whole point of her demanding to drive. She wanted him asleep the whole way. When he was asleep she didn’t have to worry about how he was feeling.

  “I’m fine,” he said, predicting her thoughts. They weren’t hard to predict; it was the pattern that she had been in recently. “Don’t worry.”

  How could she not worry though? The trial was in only six days and she knew that they might be taking him away from her. She started the engine. Perhaps I just wanted to drive. There’s a cathartic feeling of the open road – the feeling of fleeing. She was worried about her own state as well.

  As she pulled back onto the highway, she turned the music back up. Jackson did not adjust his car seat to its upright position, but stayed reclined, his body slack and relaxed the way she wanted it. “Just go back to sleep,” she pleaded. She saw her purity ring on his left hand. It looked silly on him because it was obviously a girl’s ring. To get it to fit him, he had to wear it on his pinky.

  It comforted her. She could not help but think about that first week after Jackson came home on bail. He was doing his usual routine of playing it cool and hiding his feelings. She tried to give him space, even though it meant fighting every impulse she had to try to open him up.

  “What happens if they put me in prison?” he finally asked late one night, far past the hour that he had planned to go home.

  “Then I will wait for you,” she said earnestly.

  “No. It will be too long to wait.”

  “Not for a man like you.”

  “No, I mean…what if they only let me out when it is already too late for you to have a child?”

  Stephanie frowned, “We will just have to trust in God.”

  “Don’t you think that the little voice telling you not to wait just might be God?”

  Stephanie laughed. “No, because I don’t have a little voice like that.”

  “Well, I haven’t been sentenced yet. Don’t you think you might hear something rational in your head saying you deserve better; you go be happy.”

  Stephanie let out a long sigh, the kind that was frustrated and sweet. Jackson had heard it many times. He missed it while in Afghanistan. She put her hand on top of his hand. She adjusted her purity ring on her finger so that the face of it pointed upward. She said, “This ring symbolizes a promise. It’s not just about abstinence. It’s a promise based on a belief that there is one person that we are meant to find. Without the belief in a soul mate, the purity ring doesn’t make much sense. This ring means that I believe there is one man I will always be with, and in a way, have always been with. I have been waiting for you since before I met you, and I will continue to wait for you as long as it takes.”

  As she spoke, she was looking down at the ring. With her other hand she rotated it back and forth on her finger. When she finally looked back up toward Jackson, he had tears in his eyes. He placed his hand on her cheek and drew his face in to kiss her. He kissed her gently for a long time, the tenderness and sincerity of his touch caused her to tear up also.

  When she finally pulled her head back, she quickly yanked the ring off her finger and placed it in his palm. She said, “I think you need this more than I do. You’re the one who has a hard time remembering the promise I made.”

  After that day, Jackson went back to playing it cool – as he saw it, or clamming up – as she saw it. That was the last day that she had seen him release all that tension and pain through expression and through tears. Stephanie had done a magnificent job of resisting the urge to tell the Marine, “You need to cry.”

  She saw the sight she was waiting for on the horizon, so she turned down the radio. As soon as she did, she was able to hear Jackson’s quiet snore. She was unaware that he had fallen asleep again so quickly. Hearing his gentle snore reminded her of how much she loved everything about him. She had turned down the radio to say something to him, but did not want to interrupt his sleeping. When she finally woke him, the Dallas skyline was no longer peaking over the horizon, but looming over the two of them. “Wow,” he said, “looks like we’re here.”

  When they got out of the car in the middle of downtown Dallas, Jackson began to feed coins to the parking meter. He turned the lever for one hour, looked at Stephanie, then added more coins for another hour. With two hours on the meter he frowned, looked over the spread of alleys before them and added even more coins. “We’ll have to remember where we parked,” he said tonelessly.

  For the next three hours they searched, winding down one alley and then the next, intentionally seeking out the more desolate turns. They headed south. “There’s one,” Stephanie would say as she saw a drain pipe fastened to a wall. Jackson would immediately rush to it and try to pry it away from the brick and the stone, but he never found anything behind them. As the hours drug on, his actions became less enthusiastic.

  Stephanie tried to hide her frustration with what she was seeing as a futile effort. She tried to keep her voice steady when she said, “We should probably get a hotel. We can come back and look more tomorrow.”

  “Not yet,” said Jackson and his stride lengthened, making it harder for her to keep up.

  “I think our meter has expired, did you look at the time?”

  “It will be fine,” he said dismissingly.

  “Jackson, you already checked that one,” she said as he bent down to investigate a drain pipe. “I think we are going in circles.”

  “It wasn’t this one, it was different.”

  “No Jackson, I am telling you, we’ve been here before.”

  “Would you just let me do this?” he shouted.

  After that, Stephanie didn’t say another word. He knew that she was a little mad, but he knew that she would give him enough slack to be a little rude. He took it. The rest of the time they searched in total silence. When they returned to their car, there was a parking ticket underneath her windshield wiper. Still she did not say anything. Jackson felt pretty stupid.

  In their hotel room, she finally spoke. The entire time she had been silent, her mind was repeating one sentence. As soon as she decided to say it, she would instantly decide not to say it. She finally said, “It’s not going to bring him back, you know,” then instantly wished she hadn’t said it.

  He didn’t answer for a while. He was angry, not really at her, but at the whole situation, maybe even at God. He was frustrated that he could not find what he was searching for. He told her, “You didn’t know him. He never quit. Caleb would have searched every drain pipe in Dallas, every single one. That’s just how he was. What kind of tribute would it be to him, if I did any less?”

  Stephanie reached for him and held him. She kissed his neck and said, “Well, let’s get to bed then. We’ve got a long day tomorrow.”

  The next day was Saturday, so the parking was free. The sky looked dark and Stephanie feared that it might rain. She asked herself if Jackson would be so crazy as to keep this search up in the pouring rain. She knew she didn’t have an answer to the retort, “Caleb would. Caleb wouldn’t quit just because of a little rain.”

  After five hours,
it hadn’t started to rain, but the sky was getting darker and the alleys they were heading down appeared less and less safe. Stephanie drew her body in close to Jackson’s arm every time they would pass any homeless. She was wrapped up pretty tight in his arm when they heard the sound of water splash under their feet. They could see far down the alley to where a group of homeless men had started a fire. Jackson crouched down to investigate the drainpipe as he had the hundreds before. The tips of his fingers, already calloused and a little bit bloody, struggled to get some space between the pipe and the wall. When he did this, he saw something wedged behind it. It was grimy and black, the exact color of the entire alley. It felt stiff, like thin cardboard; Jackson did not think this was the treasure for which they had been hunting. He dipped it quickly into the water from the drain and wiped it off. The bright red he discovered underneath was as bright as a new dawn, the only splash of color in the bleak colorless alley.

  Jackson, already crouching, had to lower himself down to the ground. He sat with his jeans right in the puddle of water and didn’t even notice. He didn’t show Stephanie what he found, in fact, he suddenly felt all alone in the world. He had not expected the emotions that hit him. He said, “Caleb was here,” looking at the alley. He suddenly realized that it was not just the symbol, but a real piece of Caleb’s history. “Caleb was here. He fought for his life here. He almost died here.” Jackson broke down in tears. Stephanie fell to the ground too and wrapped her arms around him as he began to wail, “Oh God, I am so sorry. I am so sorry. Caleb, I’m sorry. Please forgive me. Please forgive me.”

  CHAPTER THRITY-EIGHT

  Inside the courtroom, Jackson could not take his eyes off Michael Ponce. He had not seen him since the day that Caleb died. Something had changed, not just in Michael Ponce’s face, but his whole presence. His shoulders slumped lower, he seemed shorter. Despite the slouching, his mannerisms did not convey a feeling of languor. He had a unique energy to him, a nervous, caffeinated energy. His wrists looked wiry and his eyes twitchy. The lines on his face had grown deeper. He seemed to have aged, but without the benefit of the serenity that comes with age. He had the face of an older man, but the petulant sneer of a teenager…and the agitated glare of a true believer.

  In this fight, as in any fight, there was a full spectrum of combatants. There were those who merely sought attention, like Stacy; those who would rather destroy the other side than build up their own, like the vandals and the protesters; those who simply liked to fight, like Jerald Schaefer; and a very narrow category of true believers, those who actually just believe in the cause. There are fewer of these at any one moment than most people think.

  Jackson was not sure of when it happened, but at some point between the day that Caleb died and the day of Jackson’s trial, Michael Ponce had become a true believer. Michael Ponce had made this fight his own.

  “What I will show you today is that Jackson Brooks is not only guilty of murder, Jackson Brooks is guilty of hate,” the prosecuting attorney was already beginning his opening statement.

  Jackson Brooks sat in the front of the courtroom behind a desk with his lawyer, Joseph Landry. Landry reached over to give Jackson two gentle pats on the side of his arm, as if to remind him of what he said earlier: “Don’t let any of this get to you today. Their attempts to smear you will only illustrate their lack of facts. Once we win this thing, the only person left defining your character will be you.”

  “And if we don’t win?”

  The pause that Landry made was not meant to be dramatic, it was only the time necessary to deliberate whether he had to sugar coat bad news to a Marine. He said, “You go to prison.”

  “Think about that,” the prosecuting attorney continued to the jury. “Is hate a crime? Is it a crime to hate someone? It might shock a few of you here to know that it is. Depending on your viewpoint, you might be pleased or disappointed to know that we are not here today to debate the legitimacy of having hate crime laws. We are not, let me repeat, not here to discuss the use or legality of hate crime laws. Those laws are already on the books. Your job as a jury is to follow the laws of this country as they are written and to determine if Jackson Brooks was in violation of those laws. More specifically, we are here today to determine if Jackson Brooks is guilty of unlawful hatred. I plan to demonstrate that he is.”

  Jackson wore Stephanie’s purity ring on his finger. Her engagement ring was in a box in his right pocket. He held in his hand the red flag he had found in Dallas. If they were going to take him straight to prison, they needed to know – by his personal effects – just what type of life was being put on hold, and what type of promises were going to be stuffed in an envelope and filed into a drawer. Jackson wanted the first thing he got his hands on upon regaining his freedom, besides Stephanie herself, to be those two rings and one inspiring symbol.

  The prosecutor’s name was Albert Randolph. He was big city raised and ivy league educated. Growing up he once wanted to be a fireman, but after twenty-three years of schooling, at some point he decided to be a lawyer. Last night he could not sleep, not from nerves, but from excitement. He was like a child on Christmas Eve. Visions of incarcerations danced in his head. He salivated to see his name in print the way a rock star longs to see his name on a marquee. He pictured his reception at the cocktail parties – in ballrooms with more glitz and glamour than Jackson or Caleb had ever seen – with a new appendage added to his title. Albert Randolph, the man who convicted Jackson Brooks. Albert Randolph, the man who avenged the Caleb Hertz murder. Albert Randolph, the man who, for one sparkling moment, stood up and did something great with his life, something noble.

  “Just so you know, the defense is going to bring out a lot of witnesses that will testify to a different version of the story of what happened. Do not believe them. There’s an easy step to uncover their lies; one must simply reflect on the infectious nature of hate, of prejudice, of intolerance. With a deeper understanding of the principles at work – the same principles that once motivated the Inquisition, the Salem witch trials, the McCarthy hearings, and the men who not so long ago turned fire hoses on people in this country – you will see that hatred acts like the current of a tidal wave, drawing everything and everyone into its path. Hatred is a cancer that spreads. Hatred leads to hysteria, and hysteria leads people – sometimes even heroic people – to act out of ignorance and fear.

  “It is only when we understand these principles that we can understand how one, twenty, or even twenty thousand testimonies can and should be viewed as different mouthpieces for the same big lie. Do not underestimate the power of mob mentality. Do not suppose that it is harder for two dozen men to lie at the same time, than for one man to lie on his own. My friends, it is easier!”

  Caleb’s mother entered the courtroom. It was obvious to anyone who looked at Cheryl Hobbs that she had not been late. The interruptions in her eye-liner, combined with the hurried attempts to repair it, were clues that she had been crying. She’d had a hard time convincing herself to walk through those doors. Jackson turned his head to see what everyone was looking at. He and Cheryl inadvertently made eye contact and Jackson quickly looked away. He could not bear to face her, not in that moment. It was too much pain and guilt to deal with now. He could feel it burning his face like a hot coal.

  By the time Cheryl Hobbs sat down, people realized that they had not been the only one who stopped everything to watch her. There was no motion and no sound in the courtroom until she sat down.

  After a brief opening statement from Jackson’s attorney, the prosecution began to call their witnesses.

  “Were you in contact with Caleb Hertz during the time he bravely served his country?” The first witness to take the stand was Stacy Oliver.

  “Yes, I was.” Stacy’s tone sounded half like a beauty contestant and half like a man on a quiz show who had just hit his buzzer.

  “How were you in contact?”

  “Through letters.”

  “And what did Mr. Hertz’s lett
ers to you say?”

  “They spoke of desperation, lonely and frightened desperation.”

  Jackson watched him curiously. He realized that he could not look at Stacy Oliver without picturing the mug shot of him that had circulated all over the internet.

  “When you say frightened, what do you mean?” asked Randolph.

  “I mean scared for his life.”

  “You mean of the terrorists?”

  “I mean of the Americans,” said Stacy.

  Albert Randolph was a bad actor, he asked in artless feigned astonishment, “The Americans?”

  Stacy leaned far into the microphone and tilted his face toward, not the jury, but the television cameras and said robotically, “That is correct.”

  “Did Mr. Hertz mention which Americans he was afraid of?”

  “Yes, he did.” Stacy now sounded a little bit like the car in Knight Rider.

  “Is the man that Mr. Hertz claimed to fear most in this courtroom today?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  “Can you point to that man?”

  “There he is!” Stacy’s excitement appeared to have been suddenly unleashed. He dramatically stood up out of his chair, shouting, “That’s your man, Jackson Brooks!” The way that Stacy stressed his name was like the way an old fire and brimstone preacher would say the name Satan.

  Stacy was a bit disappointed when there was no murmur in the audience, no dowager in the back gasping or fainting. The Judge did not pound on his gavel, and no one came to immediately lead Jackson away in handcuffs. One of the jurors coughed twice. He could have been sending an audible message, but he was probably just clearing his throat. The prosecuting attorney whispered, “Please sit down.”