Devils Within

by S. F. Henson

  “That ain’t what I mean,” Carhartt—Zeke—says.

  The first guy holds up his hands. “Man, I ain’t puttin’ no swastika nowhere.”

  “We shouldn’t be talking about this, y’all.” Zeke glances around. “Especially not here.”

  “Settle down, Zeke. We ain’t nazis.” Camo pulls a can of Skoal from his back pocket and pops his finger against it. “All I’m sayin’ is whoever painted that will leave us alone. You don’t see us runnin’ around with no blacks or Mexicans. ’Cept for John, here.”

  “I can’t exactly avoid them,” another guy says. I know that voice. I slide closer. “A few of them are on the team.”

  Holy shit. It’s Rainey.

  My heart drops to the bottom of the bleachers, bounces all the way to the gym floor, and splatters on the waxed boards. The same boards we’ve played on together. Where’s he’s played with Brandon and Ellis and Mateo. What the hell is he doing with these guys? How are those words coming out of his mouth?

  “Whatever.” Camo tucks a clump of tobacco between his lip and gums. “We saw you at homecoming. Looked like you and that Kingsley was havin’ a good time.”

  “Guys,” Zeke says. “Seriously.”

  Rainey shrugs. “I gotta do all that team-building shit. Besides, some of them are all right, but it’s not like I’d have them at my house.”

  “’Course not.” Camo spits into a drink can. “I ain’t breakin’ bread with ’em, but ain’t tryin’ to do somethin’ crazy like run off to join the Klan neither.”

  Zeke swipes his ball cap off and settles it back on his head. “I can’t with this shit. Y’all are talking like they ain’t even people.”

  Rainey laughs. “Didn’t realize you were so fragile, Z. Sorry we’re not sensitive enough for you.”

  Zeke throws up his hands. “Screw you, Rainey. I’m out.” He bumps Camo’s shoulder as he walks off.

  “Nate Clemons.” I jump and almost fall into the assholes below. A police officer stands in the gym door, impatiently tapping a pen against a clipboard. He’s not one of the ones from the other day, but he has the same military bearing.

  I swallow hard and walk toward him, trying to collect myself before I reach his side. Hearing Rainey say that shit shook me up. I’d expect it from the others guys in that group, but not him. He and Brandon are friends. The guys with Rainey glance at me briefly, then turn back to their conversation and their chewing tobacco. They think they’re different from neo-nazis, that they’re not as bad because they’re not riding around in bedsheets and burning crosses. It almost makes me sad for them. They don’t get it.

  I guess racists come in as many colors as people.

  The officer leads me to my homeroom classroom and closes the door. He places a recorder on the teacher’s desk and mashes a button.

  “Nate Clemons?”

  I nod.

  The officer sighs and gestures at the recorder. “I’m gonna need you to speak out loud, son.”

  “Yes, sir. I’m Nate. Clemons.” My hand goes to Mom’s button. I pause with my hand in midair, then drop it to my side.

  “I’m Officer Davis. Have a seat.” He points at the closest desk.

  I force myself to breathe slowly, normally. This is a standard interview. I’ve done nothing wrong.

  Except I have. This is all my fault.

  I need to spill everything right now. This is my chance. Before things get worse.

  “Where were you between the hours of ten and eleven thirty this morning?”

  “I was in history until ten fifty, then lunch.”

  He scribbles on the clipboard. “What time did you arrive at lunch?”

  Hell, I don’t know. “I put my books in my locker, then went straight to the lunchroom.”

  “Did you go outside?”

  “No.”

  He doesn’t even look up. “Not at any point?”

  “Not until Maddie told us—”

  “Maddie Lyons?” He sounds robotic, bored even. How can he be bored when something this major is happening? What’s wrong with him?

  “Yes. She—”

  “And ‘us’ is …”

  “Me and Brandon Kingsley.”

  The cop flips back a couple pages and makes a note. “So you lied to me. You did go outside.”

  I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans. He’s twisting my words. “No, I didn’t go out this morning. Not until after lunch.”

  “But you did go out.” It’s a statement, not a question.

  “Yes, and saw the graffiti.”

  “Saw it or sprayed it?”

  I narrow my eyes. “Saw it.”

  “And had you seen that message before?”

  Say yes, a voice in my head pleads. Rip the duct tape off your mouth and talk. I watch the cop. He checks the time on his watch and sighs again.

  He couldn’t care less about the hate speech. He just wants to catch someone and go home. If I told him the truth, I doubt he’d actually listen to me. He’s more likely to put words in my mouth like he’s already done. He won’t understand the danger. And thanks to my doctored school record he’ll think I’m some delinquent playing a sick joke.

  “No.” The lie rolls off my tongue like a well-greased ball bearing.

  “Have you ever used those words?” he asks.

  “No.”

  “Have you ever heard anyone use those words?”

  “No.”

  “Have you been in contact with any spray paint recently?”

  “No. Wait, yes. While working on the homecoming float.” This is what I get for being social.

  He perks up. “When was that?”

  I shrug. “A couple weeks ago?”

  “What happened to the paint?”

  “No idea.”

  He looks irritated. “Show me your hands.”

  I extend my arms, palms up. The officer examines my fingertips.

  His eyes shift to my face. He flings my hands away in disgust. “Do you have any other information regarding this incident that you would like to disclose?” His voice is as robotic as it was with his initial questions.

  Speak now or forever hold your peace.

  “No,” I say evenly.

  He tears a page from the back of his stack and hands it to me. “Thank you for your cooperation. You will be contacted if we require anything further. If you think of anything else that will assist this investigation please contact me.”

  The paper lists two different phone numbers and an email address for the officer.

  “That’s it?”

  “You’re free to go. The remainder of classes have been cancelled for the afternoon.”

  The cop shows me out. He flops his head back with a heavy sigh. “All this shit over a little graffiti,” he mutters as he walks back to the gym.

  When he’s out of sight, I slump against the bank of lockers. My hands shake so hard I’m afraid I’ll tear the page. I don’t care who’s watching anymore. I grip my button and close my eyes and force myself to see my mother’s face instead of those ugly words on the concrete.

  A little graffiti. That’s how he sees the hate speech stamped on the sidewalk.

  One thing is clear. I’ve crossed a line. It’s too late to fess up. I lied to the police. Why would they believe anything I say now?

  I have to figure out how to stop The Fort on my own. Before Step Three begins. If I don’t, that asshole cop will have more than just a little graffiti to deal with.

  702

  There’s only one way to keep Brandon and Lewiston safe: give The Fort what they want.

  Me.

  I wait until that point where I can no longer tell if it’s late night or early morning, when even the night creatures have gone to sleep and the world is at its most still and quiet. I wait so long I’m afraid I’ll back out. Then, before I can change my mind, I shove my clothes in a dirt-crusted black duffle bag I found in the back of my closet, not because I’ll need them, but so Dell won’t have to take care of them once I
’m gone.

  God, I hope they don’t know about Dell yet. If I leave now, there’s a chance they won’t find out he’s here. If I leave now, there’s a chance I can stop Step Three from happening.

  I may not be able to prevent The Fort from hurting another Dell or another Brandon or another town, but I can make damn sure they don’t hurt this one.

  After I earned my red laces, he decided I was ready to move up to the “real work.” “You’re a man now, son. Time to truly commit to the cause and save the White species.”

  He dragged me to this small town in West Virginia where tensions had been rising. The cops there sucked almost as badly as the ones in Farmer. Someone had called 911 about a robbery. The cops saw a black man who allegedly fit the caller’s description on the dark front porch of a house. They told him to stop. The man raised his hands. The cops saw something shiny and opened fire.

  Nineteen bullet holes later, the police felt safe enough to approach the man and remove his “weapon”: a freaking house key.

  The cops got additional training. The man got a closed casket.

  The black community in that town was outraged. They protested with peaceful sit-ins. They rioted with violence—rocks and looting. The police were too self-righteous to admit they’d been wrong, and too chickenshit to face the protestors themselves.

  So they called him.

  The Skynbyrds went first, taking Kelsey with them. She wasn’t smiling or giggling then. She said the whole thing made her stomach turn. When the flyers didn’t scare anyone off, the men started on Step Two.

  I painted my first swastika on a beauty supply store window. On the other side of the glass, a display of wigs rested on mannequins, a line of decapitated heads on spikes watching me spray hate. The swastika’s shadow fell over their mouths like a censorship bar, but the symbols did nothing to quiet the people. Our graffiti only made them angrier.

  The peaceful protests ramped up, with protesters marching around the clock. The people in that town tried to avoid violence. The Fort made sure that didn’t happen. They hurled the town into Step Three, attacking with bats and pipes. They goaded the people into fighting back to protect themselves, and then twisted it so that the protesters looked like the violent ones. Every punch and grunt and scream shot me back to that Middle Eastern kid who’d earned me my red laces. They were his screams, his grunts, his blood, his face twisted in agony.

  I hated myself more than any supremacist ever hated another person. I couldn’t participate and I couldn’t flee, so I did what any coward would. I hid. I ducked behind the shell of a smoldering car and waited.

  I smeared blood from the street across my face and hands and clothes and blended in with the group as they returned to the trucks. No one knew I hadn’t done a thing.

  We broke the people, killed the riots, and the town went back to its normal, oppressed existence. That’s when Kelsey and I decided to run, so that we wouldn’t be on the wrong side of history again.

  And now, look at us. It’s happening again and we’re both in the middle of it all over again. Lewiston could easily turn into that West Virginian town. Those guys in the gym proved that racism here is a hive of hibernating hornets. Whack the nest enough and all those feelings will wake up and attack.

  Kelsey and I are stuck in the same cycle. No matter what we do, or how far we go, we just circle around and around and around.

  Well, I’m jumping off the merry-go-round. It’s going to hurt like hell, but I’d rather be bruised and broken than let that happen to Brandon.

  I’m tiptoeing to the stairs when my phone vibrates. Incoming call: Brandon, flashes on the screen. There’s no reason for him to call this early, or to call at all. We have a strictly texting relationship.

  I’m back in my room in flash. “Brandon?”

  “They … someone …” He sounds hoarse, strained.

  Tentacles of fear snake around my chest and squeeze. “Are you hurt? Did they attack you?”

  “No, no.”

  The tentacles loosen and I sigh into the phone. “Good. Then why the hell—”

  “Not me,” Brandon says.

  The duffle bag slips from my shoulder. The buckles rattle softly as they hit the wooden floor. An image of Mrs. Kingsley leaps in my head, her body on the ground, hair haloed with blood. I will kill them if they went after Brandon’s family. This time it will be straight murder.

  “It’s my granddad. Well not him, but his statue. I’m scared, man.” He starts speaking fast, his words tumbling over one another. “My whole family’s freaking out. The cops have been in and out since Henry saw it on his way home from night fishing. They want to put surveillance on us. Pop said no, but I kind of want it. I want the police watching me. What if—what if they try to do it for real?”

  “Whoa, slow down. Do what for real?”

  His voice drops to a whisper. “Lynch me.”

  The phone slips from my hand. I bobble it, barely stopping it from clattering to the floor. “What?” I ask, pressing the phone to my ear again. “Why? Why would someone l-lynch you?”

  “Because of the noose,” he says. “They hung a noose on Granddad’s statue.”

  There are so many police cruisers downtown we can’t even get close.

  Dell parks down the block and cuts the engine. “They must’ve called every guy in four counties.”

  “They’re finally realizing this is more than a school prank.” I crane my neck. The officer who interviewed me dashes along the outside edge of the crowd. He doesn’t look bored now. He looks pissed, but I’m betting it has more to do with the early time than the noose.

  Dell massages his temples with one hand. “I knew we should’ve told them since the start.” He slams his palm against the steering wheel. “This is what I get for panicking and listening to some kid.”

  I hunker down in my coat. “Well, we sure as hell can’t tell them now.”

  Dell glares at me. “That’s exactly what we’re gonna do.” He reaches for the door handle.”

  “They’ll think we did it,” I say. “We march up there and tell them a pack of neo-nazis from Kentucky is responsible and they’ll think we’re covering our asses. And if they actually believe us and check our story, then what?” I drop my tone. “Why would we be all the way down in Alabama? We’re just a like-minded gathering of peaceable folks tucked off in the Kentucky hills where nobody can bother us.”

  Dell grimaces. “I told you not to imitate that man again. It’s unsettling how much you sound like your father.”

  Tell me about it. I pull my own jacket tighter. “It’ll be our word against theirs. Who do you think the cops will believe? Especially once they uncover our real pasts.”

  A flash goes off down the street and the officers yell. Shit. The media. A skinny guy scurries between two cops and hops into a van with CHANNEL 9 NEWS painted on the side. A noose hanging from the statue of the first black man to integrate the West Alabama public school system is bound to earn national attention, which means reporters will be swarming like sharks on chum.

  More exposure means more of a chance for Lewiston to discover the wolf hiding in their flock.

  “Are they setting me up?” I ask. My mind goes to Kelsey again. To the look that flashed in her eyes on the street. Did she let me go because she’s still on my side, or because The Fort already had a plan in motion?

  Dell shakes his head. “Your name would’ve come up by now.”

  My breath fogs the window. I swipe the cuff of my sleeve over it and watch the cops. One of them stands on a ladder, gingerly lifting a coil of rope from the statue’s neck. He drops it in a large evidence bag.

  “Then it doesn’t make sense,” I say. “The Fort is here because of me. Why haven’t they come after me yet? Why target Lewiston like it’s any other town?”

  Dell rubs his hands together and blows into them. “They came all the way down here. It would be a waste if they didn’t have some fun while they were at it.”

  “Then why not make
the town turn on me?”

  He considers for a minute. “You ever see a cat catch a mouse?”

  I roll my eyes. “Cliché much?”

  “Hear me out. It’s not about the kill. Cats don’t just pounce on their prey and bite their heads off. They injure the mouse first, so it can’t get away, then play with it for a while. Only when they get bored or the mouse starts to die on its own do they kill it.”

  “Yeah, but The Fort is playing with the town, not me.”

  Dell scrubs his hand over his graying whiskers. “It’s no fun if they out you from the get-go. Lewiston would turn on you all right. They’d throw you in jail and The Fort would lose their toy. They’re not ready to kill you yet.”

  A shiver works through me.

  Dell’s eyes widen. “Not literally kill you. I didn’t mean—”

  “No, you’re right. They will.” I meet Dell’s eyes. “I can’t give them that chance.”

  The beginnings of a plan start to take shape, the way fuzzy gray mountains on the horizon become clearer the closer you get. Handing myself over to The Fort would keep Brandon and Lewiston safe, but it’s only cutting one head off a hydra. I think I know how to kill the whole damn creature.

  705

  “Thanks for coming.” Brandon tugs on his tie. He looks as nervous as I feel.

  “No problem,” I say, scanning the never-ending stream of people filing into the Lewiston A.M.E. Church for the community togetherness service. I’m not sure what I’m looking for—fatigues among the suit pants, combat boots in step with high heels, Kelsey? I’m being ridiculous. Jumpy. Not myself. Not even the fake me.

  “Sorry I didn’t come earlier,” I say. Dell has barely let me out of his sight since the noose incident.

  “You couldn’t have gotten to the house anyway,” Brandon says. “In fact, you probably won’t be able to come over for a while.” He fiddles with his tie again. His mother sweeps his hand aside and gives the next man in line a piece of paper that has the order of the service printed on it.