"You know where I was. I was in California going to school," Eric replied. That was what he told the cops. That was what he wanted everyone to believe. Chester was not so easily thrown off by such a story.
"I'm your brother, man," he said. "You didn't even tell me you had left. Nobody's heard anything from you for a whole fuckin' year. What's going on with you lately?"
"I'm sorry? Did you want me to invite you over for a slumber party so we could talk over ice cream? I was busy with school, man. Relax," Eric answered.
"What the hell are you wearing?" Chester asked, looking over Eric's casual jeans, gray hoodie, and well-worn Vans. "Der Richter shows up to a rally dressed up like a California frat boy?"
"Der Richter?"
"Ya," Chester said, as if it should be obvious. "Why do you look so surprised? That's been the case for the past year now."
"Nobody told me anything about it."
"Nobody could find you," Chester replied. "You just fell off the map."
"What happened to Hayden?" Eric asked.
"That's what we all want to know. It makes sense. Hayden was closer than any of us to Taylor, but the night Taylor got arrested, he named you Richter. Hayden didn't take that well, which is no surprise. A dark horse, that one is. Flies off the hanger and makes too many impetuous decisions. That's probably why Taylor left this to his third instead. You. You been running things for a whole year and you're telling me you didn't know about it?"
"I'm not a Richter. I abandoned Die Gerechten. So technically, I'm exiled," Eric told him. "Hayden is Richter."
"Ya, but you're back. That changes things."
"Is Hayden here?" Eric asked, gazing back down into the woods.
"Ya, Hayden's always here, but you can't walk up in there dressed like that. I got boots and an extra shirt in my truck you can borrow. Get your shit together and I'll take you down there," Chester told him.
Once Eric had locked his old shoes and hoodie in the car, he followed Chester off the road and down the narrow path that led deeper into the darkness. They walked about half a mile down before Eric started to see a bonfire whipping about a mile further below between the trees. They soon approached the opening and there were others. Eric heard irrationally loud talking and the shattering of beer bottles against tree trunks. He couldn't see the others yet, but he knew the routine. Something was about to happen. He knew it by the gagging stench of beer and weed that greeted him as he drew nearer. Many a night he had come to the same spot with the intent of getting as drunk as he could manage. After several beers, he could do anything Die Gerechten asked him to do, and not reserve a second thought for the person or people he was doing it to.
He soon came to realize that that night was one of those nights. They had someone. He could hear a woman sobbing somewhere in the midst, "What do you want? I don't have any money, but I can get some if you let me go. I won't tell anyone you did this, just please let me go! Please! I have a little boy! I just want to see my little boy again!"
“Shut up! Nobody gives a fuck about your kid!” someone shouted back at her, and she screamed when a beer bottle flung at her head and busted against the tree trunk she curled next to. The beer and glass bubbled out onto her face, burning into her eyes. She could not reach up to clean it out because her hands were tied in front of her and her ankles were bound. “I can’t see!” she cried, as the alcohol fried away at her pupils. “Help me!”
Eric didn't know who she was or how she got there, but what they planned to do with her was all too familiar. There was a rope loosely fitted around her ebony neck, and the other end of it ran back to a pickup truck where three guys sat in the back with a pack of beer. They threatened to turn the truck on if she didn't shut up. She pursed her lips, trying so hard to keep quiet, in fear of what they would do.
Eric couldn't look at her anymore. A year ago, he didn't know anyone black. A year ago, he would've sat right there with them and watched it happen, believing that somehow she deserved it, either for something she had done in the past or something she would do in the future. Even if she hadn't done anything, he might have thought that her kind had done enough on her behalf and were tearing the country apart. He might have thrown a bottle at her too, feeling that if the blacks would not leave white territory, he would have to make them leave.
However, he didn't hold those same feelings he had a year ago. He actually did know someone black, and to imagine her in that woman's place made him sick. If he could never justify Chantel being treated like that, then what justification could he have for leaving this woman in that position? Who was to say that she wasn't like Chantel? That she wasn't beautiful or smart or had everything going for her? That she didn't have a productive life or people who loved her? That she wasn't a good person who had never harmed anybody? That she didn't mean something to someone else?
When he considered all of that, color was the most inadequate and unjustifiable reason to tie a noose around someone's neck. He wanted to say something to her, but to tell her that he was sorry would not do her any good. As much as it bothered him, he had to let it go. He was outnumbered, and she was not the reason he had come. He had his own Hell to confront. In the end he did nothing, and passed her by.
Chester tapped his shoulder, drawing his attention away from the captive and redirecting it to two guys and a woman approaching them.
"So it wasn't just a rumor. Eric Chandler is back," the woman said to him. That was Hayden.
She smiled at him but her pig-like blue eyes were less than cordial. It was more the smile one would give after hearing a dirty joke, and less so when reuniting with an old friend. Eric didn't recognize the other two who followed her, but their purpose was not hard to guess. Eric was on dangerous ground and his every move was being watched.
"Apparently, I've been missed," Eric replied, glancing around at the guys who were progressively closing in around him. "Well, here I am."
"Daddy let you come out and play this late?" Hayden asked.
Her laugh was shared at intervals among those who watched. Of course, he didn't blame them for turning on him after he'd fled Colorado. He abandoned them when Die Gerechten was in crisis, and most of them didn't have John Chandler as a father to cover up their tracks. They couldn't run like he had. They had to face the police when they came knocking. They spent the time behind bars. They took accountability and a criminal mark on their record the rest of their lives. That was the risk of claiming Die Gerechten, and they had all sworn to take it, but when the time came to prove that loyalty, Eric was the one who ran. Hayden, who had faced hostile opposition when assuming a role as Richter, had no problem reminding everyone that that had been the case.
"How was California?" she asked him. "You got a tan. It looks good on you. Must have been a hell of a vacation lying on a beach somewhere. No cops going door to door asking for you. No black gangs driving up from Denver to throw bricks through your window. Nobody's leaving your mother death threats under her windshield wiper, are they? As far as everyone else is concerned, you're clean. You've never heard of Die Gerechten in your life, nor were you ever associated with it. You would never do those things, right, Eric? Daddy did his job. Raises some questions, doesn't it? Is this really what Taylor had in mind when he picked you? You're a pussy." She spat on his boots, and Eric rubbed it off into the dirt.
"You should let that woman go," he said.
Hayden laughed. "Look at him trying to act like a Richter. You're no different than her, boy. Just because I let you walk in here without hog tying you first don't mean that you're gonna walk back out of here. You're just another nigger to us now. Nah, you're worse than that. You're a coward, and now it's my burden to decide what to do with you next."
"Doesn't have to be a burden," Eric replied. "I'll take her spot for free and I won't fight. If you let her go, you can have me. It's a good deal. You want me anyway, and I'd probably last longer than she would, which means twice the fun. You can do whatever you want to me and I'd probably still be alive t
o feel it."
"You sadistic bastard," Hayden laughed. "So what are you, a nigga lover now? I can't believe how watered down you've gotten. Really, man, where's the real Eric? This is just sick." She laughed again and mimicked a high pitched girly voice, "Let her go. You heard the Richter, guys. Let the bitch go."
"No!" Eric shouted, advancing on the truck, but the engine of the pickup truck roared as the three guys sitting in the back jumped off and got in the front seat. The woman screamed for God's mercy but God wouldn't hear her. All anyone heard was the roaring of that engine, as it raced away, the final blow that broke her neck. Death was mercifully quick.
"So you were saying?" Hayden said to Eric, as if a human life had not been desecrated in front of them. "Something about a good deal?"
Eric struggled to keep himself in check, and Chester, who had grown up with Eric, feared that Eric would end up saying something that would get him killed. He spoke up before Eric even had a chance to say what was on his mind.
"It's you who should be asking him for a good deal," Chester said. "Whatever you believe about Eric, Taylor didn't pick you. He picked him. Eric wasn't the only one who left when that bust happened. Names got thrown out there and guys had to run, not because they were deserters, but because they were getting shot at in retaliation for what happened to Reginald James. They were running for their lives because they were loyal to this brotherhood and everything we stand for. Just because a guy leaves Die Gerechten territory, doesn't mean he's not out there fighting on a different front. Now, you can say what you want, but nobody has done for this brotherhood what Eric has done, and every guy here knows it. Every guy. If anybody's gonna bring Die Gerechten back, it's him. Eric is Richter, and you can accept that or you can bounce."
"So that's how you guys see it, huh?" Hayden replied, nodding at them. "I'm out there watching your backs and making sure your families sleep safely at night, while the niggs are out shooting down white cops and tearing neighborhoods apart. I'm trying to undo the damage that guys like Taylor have done to the image of Die Gerechten. I want people in our community to respect what we do, not view us as the nuisance. That's what they see when they look at you! You're kids throwing tantrums! You're thugs!
"We're not going to be that way anymore. We're not going to trash our own territory like Taylor did. We have one enemy. We have one goal, and that is to give power back to whites. Now for those of you who just want to be punks and follow Taylor to prison, then by all means, make Eric der Richter."
"Ok. Done," Chester replied. "Call us punks. Call us thugs. Call us whatever you want, sweetheart, but he's here and he's der Richter."
"No," Eric replied. "I'm not der Richter. In fact, I'm here to put Hayden in my place."
"What?" Chester demanded, turning on him aggressively.
Hayden was taken aback by the statement as much as anyone. "You want me to be der Richter?" she questioned skeptically. "Why?"
"Because I want out," Eric said. "I want my name cleared with Die Gerechten. I don't want anything to do with it."
The severity in Hayden's expression softened just enough to tell that the request disturbed her. In spite of her feelings about Eric's disappearance, she hadn't prepared herself for the inevitable decision she would have to make after such a request. Like Chester, she had known Eric since high school. She had traded lunches with him in the cafeteria and spent many an afternoon studying at his house or kicking his ass in Call of Duty. He was there for her first real heartbreak, and she had been there when the jocks had shoved him against lockers. Eric was the one who kept their spirits up and made jokes about the whole thing, even though he was usually the one with the biggest black eye.
However, not everyone could just shrug it off like he could. Their friend Mason Colvert found a harder time bouncing back from incidents like that. He put a bullet in his head his junior year. It was Eric who found out first and told Hayden. It was Eric who stayed by her side through the whole thing and kept her from returning to that school in retaliation with a gun in her own hand. It was Eric that convinced her to take back control in a different way and join Die Gerechten, committing herself to a larger cause outside the small confines of her high school.
Those problems will go away after high school, he had told her, but the bullies out in the real world who threaten your life and your family, those are the ones you should be more worried about.
It was Eric that she protected, and now he was asking her to turn against him. If she was looking to earn respect as der Richter, she would have to do it. It wouldn't matter who he was or how close she was to him. If he were any other DG member, she would not even blink an eye at giving the order. She could not treat Eric any differently.
Swallowing her emotions and blocking out every memory with him in it, she put on her leader face, and said, "The way out is death. If you forfeit your oath, you forfeit your life."
"If I die," Eric reminded her.
"You will die," she assured him quietly. "You have officially turned your back on us. Nobody here will tolerate it. No one will show you any mercy."
"I'm not asking them to," Eric told her. "But if I survive, you disclaim me. I'm out of the brotherhood."
"He's crazy," Chester piped in, desperate to vindicate his friend. "Too many goddamn beers. He doesn't know what he's talking about."
"He wants out," Hayden replied. "Give him what he wants."
"No," Chester declared, stepping defensively between Eric and Hayden. "He's drunk. He's not right in the head."
"I'm sober."
"He's sober," Hayden confirmed.
"I'm not doing it," Chester told her firmly, shaking his head. "I won't touch him."
The others waited for Hayden to reply. If she meant to establish herself as der Richter, she would have to demand respect and this was her first test. Defying der Richter was traditionally an offense that yielded severe punishment, but Hayden was too small in frame to take on Chester physically. It would take the muscle of the guys around her to subdue him, but even then, she was not keen on beating two of her friends half to death in one night, especially since Chester was more likely to live and retaliate against her later. He already doubted her ability to take command of the gang, in which she was currently the only female member left. His skepticism would have to be squashed and it would have to be squashed that night. If she couldn't take him on physically, she would bind him psychologically.
"As Eric said, I'm der Richter, and therefore I not only control what happens to him but I now have full control over what happens to you. Lately though, it seems like you have different opinions than mine, which is problematic, because my opinion is the opinion of Die Gerechten. You have a problem with me, then you have a problem with Die Gerechten, and that is a question of loyalty," she said. "If you really are down for DG, then you'll shut up and throw the first punch."
"Just do it," Eric told Chester. "Get it over with."
"I'm not gonna fight you, Eric."
"You don't have a choice," Eric answered. "It's fine, man. I won't hold it against you."
"Wait," Hayden said, before Chester could act.
She stepped up to Eric, as if to confront him for a fight. She challenged him with her eyes, measuring her strength against his strength. It was her last attempt to confirm that this was really what he wanted. At least, if he attacked her first, she would have no reservations about fighting him.
Eric didn't move. He held her gaze steadily but he refused to take the first shot. Again, Hayden tried to shut out the image of her high school best friend and to see him for what he was now. A traitor to his own.
"Alright," she whispered to him, nodding. "You're out. If you live through it."
Then she stepped aside to clear the path for Chester. "Take the swing, Chester or I'll put him down myself."
Chester looked at Eric as if to say I'm sorry, and shoved him back. Eric straightened back up. Chester shoved him again, making him stumble, then he took the swing at Eric's nose.
Then the others took swings at him. They threw punch after punch, pounding Eric to the ground, stomping on his head, and kicking him in the stomach. The force was so brutal that Eric choked as vomit and blood came up through his mouth. Yet, he didn't fight back or shield himself from the blows. He had to endure it until they were done, and only until they were done.
Gradually, his mind checked out from the scene. He went somewhere else. His mind escaped to Chantel, and took refuge in every memory he had with her in it. The first time he saw her in Physics class. The way she crossed her legs with her favorite book at the fountain. The way her lower lip poked out slightly when she was pissed at him. The way she smiled, and how her brown eyes caught the light around her when she did. How easily she laughed and the airy, sultry way in which she did it. The gentle comfort of her breathing against his chest as she fell asleep beside him; trusting him.
It was those things that kept him focused, and reminded him that he was doing the right thing. He was doing right for her, and for everyone else he loved.
It was the only way he endured what came next. He was thrown on his stomach, ripped open his shirt, and his hands were tied behind him. Then they took off their belt buckles and whipped him like an animal. The leather and metal ripped across Eric's back and tore the back of his head. Somebody must have got bored with that because they turned him over again and started beating him again with fist, boot, and belt. Something punctured his side twice, but he was so bruised and swollen that he couldn't tell where the pain was coming from until a warm, thick liquid started oozing out of his side. His instinct was to put pressure on it and stop the bleeding, but he couldn't move his hands. They bent unnaturally against his palm, and he swore they too were broken. For him, the ordeal didn't last long after that. Whether it was from passing out or being knocked out, he stopped moving altogether and laid motionless in the dirt.
Nonetheless the blows kept coming until finally Chester intervened. He shoved the others back. "Back off!" Chester roared, pushing a guy back who tried to get in another hit at Eric. "He's gone. He's out, man. He's dead."
Grey Page 17
