by Reed Arvin
“Is there any other way through?”
“Two miles around, but you just end up on the other side of the Nation.” Right away a couple of cars come up behind us; both are cheap Asian models, and neither driver is white. I pull my truck sideways in the street, blocking the cars behind me. “Stay in the truck, Stillman.”
“Yeah, sure.” Stillman steps out with me.
“Shit, Stillman, did you suddenly grow a spine?”
“I’m staying on your hip. Not that I don’t think you’re out of your mind.”
I wave the cars behind us away. The drivers, who are Hispanic, are confused at first, but one of them sights the hanging effigy, waves to the other, and they start backing out.
“Listen to me, Stillman,” I say. “Keep your mouth shut. I’m going to try this nice.” Stillman and I turn around and walk toward the two men, who are sending us their full-on, “please-come-fuck-with-us” expressions. They lift up off their vehicles, loose-limbed, relaxed, and athletic. The one on my left is squat and powerful, like he spends his days in a gym; the other, on my right, is tall and lean, but no less intimidating. I hold up my Justice Department ID. “What’s the plan here, fellas?”
“The plan is, we’re takin’ back our neighborhood,” the tall one says. “We’re the new neighborhood watch.”
The short one laughs. “Yeah. We’re watchin’ for niggers, especially ones from the old country.”
“Especially them motherfuckers,” the tall one says.
I snap shut my ID. “New plan. You take down that offense to humanity, drive out of here with no trouble, and that way you won’t spend the next six months in jail. How’s that sound?”
The tall one eyes me warily. “You’re not a cop. Cops don’t wear suits.” The short one hocks something up, spits, and drifts toward the passenger seat of the truck, eyeing the shotguns as he goes.
“Don’t,” I say, annoyed. “I don’t have time for the full civics lesson, so I’ll keep this short. My friend here and I are officers of the court, which means that even touching that gun is a class A felony. I figure about five years at Riverbend ought to do it.”
“Bullshit,” the short one says, but he looks at the other one doubtfully. “Is that shit right, Wayne?”
“What side you on, man?” the tall one says to me. “Don’t it piss you off they let that African fucker off?”
“They didn’t let anybody off,” I snap. “His trial started today.”
“Ain’t what I heard. I heard he’s out. Home free. Released on some legal mumbo-jumbo.”
“You heard wrong. Now get this thing out of that tree and move these trucks.”
The short one laughs. “Or what?”
I walk back to the truck, unlock the bolted-down tool box in the rear bed, and pull out the tire iron. I hold it in my right hand and walk toward the tall one.
“Shit, Thomas,” Stillman says. “Take it easy, man.”
“Shut up, Stillman.” I walk past him, stopping three feet in front of the tall kid. He’s tense and ready for a fight, but I can see doubt in his eyes. “Five years at Riverbend,” I say. “You know, the place that’s just full of the people you hate. Now move the car, Gomer, or I’m going to personally see that your cell mate is large, black, and very, very gay.”
The tall guy stares at me a long, insolent second—he’s angry but hasn’t lost his mind—and caves. He walks to his car, fires it up, and backs into a driveway to turn around. “You too, move, Jethro,” I say to the short one. “Get that piece of shit out of the road.” He steps into the passenger seat, slides across, and backs out after his friend. They drive down the road, but I know they’re not gone for long.
“Shit,” Stillman says, “how’d you know they wouldn’t beat our asses in?”
“The day guys like that start telling us what to do, Stillman, I’ll quit the department.” I swing the tire iron at the hanging effigy, and it splinters into pieces. I pull the remains down and throw it in the back of the truck. “Let’s go.”
It’s fifteen blocks through the Nation to Tennessee Village, but five blocks away I see Josh Ritchie’s van coming toward us, heading out. I wave him down, and we stop in the street. I roll down my window. “What’s going on?”
“A few cops have arrived, but not near enough. They’re sending everybody out that doesn’t live in the area.”
“OK.”
“The Nationites are pissed, man. There’s a rumor going around that Bol walked.”
“We heard.”
“The Africans are pretty jacked up about the kid in the hospital. Some of them are out hunting for the dudes that did it.”
“They know who it is?”
“Not the name, but they recognized the car from the area. Black Trans Am, ’02 model. But they just call it the car with the bird on the hood.”
I look at Stillman. “Jason Hodges.” I turn back to Josh. “Thanks for the heads-up.”
“You got it.” He rolls up his window and drives on.
“Stillman, if Jason Hodges has fucked up this trial, I will feed him to the sharks.” I haul down to Indiana Street, where Hodges lives. We roll to a stop in front of the house. The carport is empty, and the Trans Am is nowhere to be seen. “He could be anywhere,” I say. “Locked up tight in any of a hundred garages. These guys protect their own.”
“You want to look around, or what?”
I smack the steering wheel. “Dammit, this thing is getting out of hand.” I turn around and head back toward the Village. Along the way, we pass a car full of young Nationites, out looking for action. They glare at us when we pass, but leave us alone. Ten blocks later, we reach the entry to Tennessee Village and what amounts to a mob scene. About forty-five Nationites are milling around the entrance, talking shit, and looking ready for a fight. Two cop cars are parked in the entrance to the complex, barring entry. Behind them, congregated into an angry mass, are fifty Africans. The cops are seriously outmanned, basically hanging on until reinforcements arrive.
“What’s the plan—”
“Listen,” I interrupt. “Listen to that, will you?” The hair on the back of my neck stands up. The Africans are chanting. It doesn’t make any difference that we can’t understand the words. It’s a war chant, and they are not fucking around. Some of the Africans are jumping together, pogo-ing in time to the chanting. High-pitched trills erupt out of the chants every few seconds, alien and angry.
“Jesus,” Stillman whispers. “That is something to see.”
The chant grows louder and louder, wave on wave rising from lungs and voices. The lost boys of Africa send out their warning to the city of Nashville, demanding some damn respect. It doesn’t matter that they’re dressed in Wal-Mart hand-me-downs in all the wrong colors or that their shoes come secondhand from some rich kids in the suburbs. The chant rises and falls like a thunderstorm on the move, and even the Nationites fall silent, watching something awesome to behold. The cops—overmatched in numbers and passion—look scared, and I see one of them keying his lapel mic, probably telling dispatch to get the damn help on the way. But all hell breaks loose before help arrives, courtesy of a nitwit Nationite who hurls a good-size brick out of the crowd into the mass of chanting Africans. One of the boys falls with a blow to the head, and the Africans break suddenly across the police, descending like a wave on the Nation. There’s screaming as Nationites—unfortunately, there are about ten women in the crowd—scatter in every direction. Some of the toughest Nationites take up a position in the center of the melee and prove they know how to fight by decking the Sudanese around them. But they’re badly outnumbered, and the riot rapidly starts to turn against them. The cops are on the backside of the fight, doing what they’re supposed to do in that situation: not get themselves killed. Nationites are streaming past us in twos and threes as they retreat from the scene, but the Africans don’t pursue them. Instead, they turn on the center group that’s resisted them, and for the first time I wonder if somebody is going to get killed.
&n
bsp; Finally—it only takes three or four minutes, but it feels like hours—sirens blare from the left. It won’t be long before the police lower the hammer on what’s happening, and the recriminations begin. In the meantime, a hard-core group of ten Nationites are trying to hold their own against twice as many Africans, and it’s clear they’ll only last another couple of minutes.
The crowd is thinning—at least half the Nationite mob has turned tail—and for the first time, I can clearly see through the crowd to the first row of apartments. A handful of Nationites have broken off and are headed toward the apartments, probably hunting for Bol. A half-dozen Africans pick them up and converge toward them, determined to head them off. They meet in a frenzy of malice I haven’t seen outside a prison yard. They are hitting each other with unspeakable anger, both sides utterly releasing themselves to their frustration.
Meanwhile, a board flies up out of the main crowd and lands near the truck. “We gotta get outta here,” Stillman says. “This shit is out of hand.”
“Where the hell is Fiona?” I inch forward, scanning the crowd, and freeze. Fiona has come flying out of one of the apartments and is clinging to any African she can reach, trying to keep him out of the fight. The knot of battling Sudanese and Nationites is converging toward her. Africans near her are heading over to help, and she’s screaming for people to stop. In another few seconds, she’ll be in the middle of the battle.
I slam the truck into park, open the door, and sprint through the crowd toward her. I dodge a random fist and jump over two boys locked in each other’s grip like wrestlers. Fiona is gesturing wildly, trying to get people to stop hammering on each other. The African she’s pulling on takes a blow to the face, and he drops to his knees. Fiona shrieks at the kid who hit him, who stares at her, face screwed up in anger, trying to figure out whether or not it matters to him that the person in front of him is a woman. I don’t give him or his anger the chance to decide. I put my shoulder into his back, and he goes flying, sprawled out a good ten yards from where I hit him. He rolls over on his side, writhing in pain. I grab Fiona’s arm and start dragging her back to the apartment she came out of, but she’s fighting me, clawing at my hands to let her go. “You’re gonna get killed in there, dammit!” I yell, pulling her back. “Let the cops handle this. It’s out of control.”
At that moment, a cop car and a SWAT truck converge simultaneously on the scene. Within seconds, what looks like ten police with batons raised are spreading out, barking orders and moving people apart.
“Stay here,” I say, holding her fast. “Let them do this.”
She stops struggling and stares, breathing heavily, tears streaming down her face. “My God, what are people doing?” She falls back against me, and I relax my grip. The police wade through the Nationites, who start disappearing back into houses and alleys.
“It’ll all be over in a few seconds,” I say, letting her go. “Just stay calm.”
A few of the cops are taking over the Africans, who are now far more numerous than the Nationites. They’re still amped, not falling back. The cops bark for people to freeze where they stand. The few Nationites remaining ignore this command and run hard in the opposite direction, knowing the cops won’t follow until the scene of the riot is secure. Most of the Africans obey, but a few ignore the cops, some running after any Nationite still in sight. About fifteen yards away from us one of the Sudanese walks rapidly away from the scene, and a cop yells at his back to stop. The African keeps going, and the cop starts to jog after him. When he’s about seven feet away he yells again. “Stop! I’m telling you, stop where you are.” The cop raises his baton.
The African looks back a second, sees the cop almost on him, and takes off running. The cop sprints forward, but only manages to get a hand on his arm. “Damn it, I told you stop. Now stop!” The boy struggles to get free, and the cop lowers his baton on the kid’s shoulder, crumpling him to the ground. He raises the baton again for another blow; there’s a high-pitched wail beside me, and Fiona is out of my grasp and heading headlong for the policeman. The baton starts to come down, but Fiona gets there first and lands on the cop, sending the baton flying. Fiona and the policeman fall to a heap on the concrete. The Sudanese kid scrambles to his feet and takes off, disappearing behind a row of buildings.
Before I can get there, the cop has Fiona’s face pressed down into the asphalt. He wrenches her hands behind her and secures her hands in plastic cuffs like a cowboy on a calf.
“Hang on!” I yell, running up. “Hang on, take it easy.”
“Back the fuck up!” the officer screams, standing up, defiant and angry. “Not one fucking word, unless you wanna get cuffed, too.” He pulls Fiona up to her feet and starts marching her off. She’s bleeding on her temple and lip from the gravel.
Fiona’s hair is flying, and she’s giving the cop hell. “He doesn’t speak English! He didn’t stop because he doesn’t speak English!”
“You sure as hell do,” the cop retorts, pushing her forward. “Son of a bitch!”
Fiona turns her head back to me. “You saw what happened, Thomas! He was beating him!”
Within another minute, the police have the scene secure. They wade into the crowd, cuffing people. Eleven Sudanese and five Nationites end up restrained and lined up on their knees beside the SWAT truck. The Nationite side of the entrance is almost abandoned, but there’s still a crowd of Africans watching from a distance.
I try to figure out who’s in charge, spot a sergeant, and head over. He looks up and nods. “I know you,” he says. “You’re Dennehy, over at the DA’s office. What the fuck happened here?”
“It was full-on by the time I got here.”
He nods. “Well, this is a son-of-a-bitch situation, I can tell ya that. Somebody started a rumor that this African kid you’re prosecuting got off. Any truth to that?”
“None.”
“Figures. Things have a life of their own.”
An out-of-breath cop appears around the corner with the African Fiona was protecting in cuffs. “I got him, Sergeant. If he hadn’t stumbled, I’d never have caught him.” He forces the Sudanese boy down to his knees in the line of the arrested. “Now stay there, dammit.”
The sergeant looks over at Fiona. “Tell me who in the holy hell that is.”
I’m about to answer when Stillman appears, a relaxed smile on his face. “Afternoon, officers. Jeff Stillman, DA’s office.”
The cop looks at him. “What’s your story?”
He points at Fiona. “Assault and battery on a police officer and resisting arrest, for starters. I saw the whole thing. The officer was attempting to execute his duty and Towns physically assaulted him.”
“Don’t worry, she’ll get her turn.” The sergeant yells over at an officer. “Bring the woman over, will ya?”
“You took your time showing up, Stillman,” I say quietly.
“I guess I didn’t feel the need to interfere with the police,” Stillman says, looking at me. He pulls me aside. “Look, this is beautiful, Thomas. She just hit a cop.”
The officer Fiona fought with marches her over to us. “Here she is, Sergeant,” he says, shoving her in front of him. “And you can throw the book at her, far as I’m concerned.”
The sergeant looks her over. “Let’s start with your name.”
Fiona, hands bound, bleeding in two places, shirt torn, and pants dirty, is a blaze of righteous indignation. “I am the Reverend Fiona Towns. Your goons were manhandling my boys.” She looks at the cop with her. “Him, in particular.”
The sergeant looks up. “Reverend? I bet that’s some kind of church.”
“It’s the kind that doesn’t sit idly by while people are brutalized by the police,” Fiona snaps.
The sergeant rolls his eyes. “Frank, what the hell happened on this deal?”
“I gave one of the Africans a direct order to stop,” the officer says. “He refused, and I repeated myself. He refused again, and I put a baton on him. I was in the process of subdui
ng him when this woman attacked me.”
“The boy doesn’t speak English, you imbecile,” Fiona retorts. “For all he knew, he thought you were ordering pizza.”
“That’s his problem,” the officer grumbles. “Your problem is assaulting a police officer.”
“I didn’t assault you, as you so colorfully put it,” she says. “I was keeping you from beating the life out of someone who doesn’t speak English. If anybody was going to get hit, I wanted it to be me.”
“God help your boyfriend, if you have one,” the cop says, under his breath, but not far enough under. Fiona revs up for a verbal barrage, and the cop steps away, waving his hand. “I’m done, lady. Tell it to a judge.”
“That true, Frank?” the sergeant asks. “Did she hit you?”
“More like she jumped on me.”
“Oh, poor baby,” Fiona mocks.
“Well, did she hurt you, or what?” the sergeant asks.
“’Course she didn’t hurt me, but that ain’t the point, Sergeant. I’m trying to subdue a prisoner.”
The sergeant nods. “It’s gonna look a little shitty, Frank. Her being a woman preacher and all. Still, we can’t have people interfering with a policeman doing his duty.” He points to the African. “Bring him over.” One of the officers hauls the African to his feet and pushes him toward the police. There’s a disquieting murmur from the remaining refugees, who watch from stoops and doorways. The sergeant taps the boy on the shoulder. “What about it, amigo? You speak English or what?”
The boy recoils in fear. “No English.”
The sergeant shakes his head. “This’ll make a hell of a headline in tomorrow’s paper. We got a woman and some kid who doesn’t speak the lingo.” The sergeant spits. “Damn mess, is what it is.” He looks back at the Africans watching from their apartment doorways. “How’d this thing get started, anyway?”
“Some Nationites picked up one of the Africans to send a message,” I say. “He’s in Vanderbilt Hospital.”
