A Good Neighborhood

by Therese Anne Fowler

  She said, “So if I happen to have a quarter mill laying around, I lose nothing. But if I’m one of the ninety-nine percent who don’t, I forfeit twenty-five grand. That’s a fair system.”

  “I wish it were.” He turned toward Xavier. “Now you’re getting a view of what’s real—which leads me to my next question: Have you thought any more about considering a plea deal? You don’t have to commit yet; I can raise the question with the DA informally, feel him out.”

  “No.” He turned to his mother. “I’ve got maybe five thousand in my savings. If you can help me get the rest, I’ll pay you back.”

  “I’ll handle it.”

  “I’m really sorry for this trouble, Mama.” His voice cracked. “I can’t wait to get out of here.”

  “I know, sweetheart,” she said. “Me, too.”

  The guards were already tugging him toward the doors that led back to the jail.

  “We’ll talk soon,” Harrington called.

  41

  Predictably, Esther, who’d raised so much ire at the Lolita book club meeting, said of Juniper at the club’s next meeting—in Ellen’s house, without Valerie, “She never should’ve gone to the woods with him. You do not go out into the woods unless you mean for something to happen.”

  Predictably, Belinda replied, “Xavier’s the one who should’ve known better.”

  Ellen said, “You aren’t saying he raped her.”

  “No, I’m saying—”

  “He absolutely did,” Kelli interrupted.

  “No offense,” said Ellen, “but are you maybe saying that because you’re white and he’s not?”

  Kelli said, “Are you defending him because Valerie is your close friend? Me, I’m saying he raped her, because she made a purity vow and she took it seriously. You all remember. We heard about it that night they had their housewarming. I remember seeing Xavier there. He was looking at Juniper like a hawk looks at a rabbit.”

  “Give me a break,” said Ellen. “I’ve known Xavier since he was born. It’s obvious Juniper lured him there to trap him as revenge against Valerie suing Brad.”

  Belinda said, “And this is what I’m saying: He should’ve known better than to get tangled up with her.”

  Esther said, “Hank had a vision about this—”

  “What?” said Belinda. “A vision?”

  “Dying people can see things we can’t see. He said he saw a fresh grave.”

  “Whose?”

  “I asked him. I said, ‘Is it yours?’ But he didn’t think so.”

  Ellen said, “That’s not helpful at all, Esther. It probably has nothing to do with this.”

  “He said it did.”

  “What did he say exactly?”

  “He said none of this would be happening if Tom hadn’t died like he did. He said, ‘Then Xavier wouldn’t hate white folks.’”

  Ellen said, “Xavier doesn’t hate white folks! For God’s sake.”

  Belinda said, “Maybe the grave is Tom’s and he’s trying to speak to us through Hank.”

  Esther, who so often had the final word whether we agreed with it or not, said, “Maybe we should quit arguing about this and discuss the book.”

  42

  “All right,” said Carl Harrington, just before Xavier’s release on bond. “Here’s how this goes. No travel beyond state lines. Do not fail to show up for your next court appearance or they’ll put you back in without bond. Don’t break any laws—don’t even get so much as a parking ticket or they’ll haul you in. Also, a restraining order is in place. Do “not under any circumstances attempt to see or contact Brad Whitman or his stepdaughter. And stay at least fifty feet from their property at all times.”

  “That’s impossible. Our yards connect.”

  Harrington said, “You get me, though. Don’t fuck up in any way. I’m going to talk to the prosecutor, feel him out. Then you and I will talk some more.”

  Talking, talking, so much talking, Xavier thought while he changed into his street clothes, and nobody getting anything done, nobody solving the problem. What was it to any of them? A job, that’s it, nothing more. A job. His life was their nine-to-five.

  Dressed now in the same clothes he’d worn to the park that terrible day, Xavier left the jail and got into Valerie’s car. He asked her as they drove away, “Where did you get the money?”

  “Don’t worry about that. What’s important is you’re out.”

  Out. Outside. Fresh air. Sunshine. Humidity. Leaves. Cars. McDonald’s. Car wash. Bike shop. Krispy Kreme. Playground. Park. Cafe. Bookstore.

  He said, “You took my savings, though, right?”

  “I didn’t want to, but…”

  “So you’re broke, too.”

  She said, “I don’t care about that. You are far more important to me than money.”

  “How much is Harrington charging?”

  “I had to pay him a ten-thousand-dollar retainer.”

  “So … that’s already thirty-five grand this has cost us. Christ. Will the ten cover me through a trial?”

  She didn’t reply.

  “Mom?”

  “Probably not. But like I said, I don’t care about the money. I borrowed against the house, so we’re fine.”

  “Sure. Fine.”

  “Harrington is a good attorney.”

  “How so? He wants me to make a plea deal. I can do that for free.”

  “He’s exploring all the angles, that’s all.”

  Xavier felt tears rise yet again. “I can’t go to prison, Mama.”

  “You won’t,” she said, but he knew she had no more confidence in that than he did.

  They drove for a time in silence. Then Xavier said, “I’m going to call and see if I can get some extra hours at work.”

  “Please don’t worry about the money. It’s as much my fault as yours.”

  “Mine? You think I’m a rapist?”

  “No—no! I just meant it’s obvious Brad Whitman’s trying to get back at me for suing him.”

  “So he tries to send me to prison?”

  “I didn’t give him enough credit for cleverness. The surest way to put a knife in me is by harming you.”

  She started crying. Xavier did, too, silently, tears of rage and frustration and sorrow. Growing from this, though, was an even stronger determination for justice. Somehow he’d see it done.

  * * *

  Later that evening, Xavier’s manager said over the phone, “Listen, I know this is a difficult situation, but we can’t have reporters taking up space in the parking lot and scaring off customers. Also, frankly, we have to err on the side of caution, where our female employees’ safety and well-being is concerned. Not that we believe it at all, but … You understand. We hope everything gets resolved in your favor. Good luck.”

  * * *

  In the mail two days later came a letter that read:

  Dear Mr. Alston-Holt,

  Due to recent events that have come to our attention, we regret we must rescind our offer of enrollment and financial aid for the coming academic year. We wish you the best.

  * * *

  The local news trucks and reporters had now been joined by others from farther away.

  43

  With Julia, Lottie, and the girls away, every night after work, once the sun was down, Brad Whitman sat out back under his covered porch looking past the swimming pool, past the fence, past the dying oak tree, and smiled with contentment. Over there, Valerie Alston-Holt fretted over her son’s fate and regretted tangling with old Brad Whitman, he’d bet on it. Over there, Xavier Alston-Holt was brooding but also learning a lesson about what he was and was not entitled to. Out west, at Brad’s folks’ house, Juniper was thanking her lucky stars that Brad had arrived when he did and saved her from even one second more with that bastard son of a woman who was nothing but an opportunist who couldn’t land herself an honest man.

  All right, no, he conceded, Juniper wasn’t thanking her lucky stars. He knew better. That was him just wishing
she’d see it his way. She was still upset and confused about how she could have been fooled so badly. Which was still Brad’s official position on the situation, even as he was pretty sure the boy hadn’t raped her. Probably hadn’t coerced her, either—no more than any boy ever did any girl, anyway. Girls, women, they sometimes needed a little push, a little persuasion. Permission to do what you could tell they wanted to do, as he’d realized was the case with Juniper toward him. Could be she thought he was out of reach, so she’d turned her frustrated attention toward a black boy. Or she was trying to get Brad to pay better attention to her. Hard to say for sure.

  He blamed himself, a little. He hadn’t watched her closely enough, assuming—fool that he could sometimes be—that her moony behavior was all about him. To be fair, he thought, it had been all about him until they’d moved and she’d gotten lured away by that slick operator over there. How did he know Xavier was slick? Black musicians always had a few girls on a string at any given time, the same way black athletes did—everybody knew that. Maybe it was a cultural thing. He’d envied those guys so much back when he couldn’t get a girl to look at him twice. He envied Xavier now—for being young, for getting to be the one who took Juniper to that cabin.

  In truth, for all that Xavier had derailed (at least for now) Brad’s plan where Juniper was concerned, he’d also done him a favor. He’d created for Brad the opportunity to strong-arm Valerie and get her to back off, drop the lawsuit, and Brad rarely walked away from a good opportunity. Now all the pieces were in place for a great big happily ever after, or nearly. In all probability, Juniper was now out of reach for him. But at least he’d come off as the hero once everything shook out. All he had to do was pull the trigger.

  But just for fun, he’d let the boy and his mother twist in the wind for another couple of days, and then he’d start wrapping this thing up for good.

  44

  With Xavier home but silent, and Valerie silent, and the Oak Knoll neighbors reluctant to go on the record with public declarations for or against any of the parties involved, the news reporters cleared out for the time being. Maybe there would be a trial, at which time the reporters would flap back to the tree limbs like the vultures they were and hope to find a carcass.

  For now, though, things seemed quiet. Decent folks had no awareness of all the rumbling that was going on in back-channel media, those dark spaces that are so comfortable for good ol’ boys with deep prejudice and hair-trigger tempers and vigilante mind-sets. Plans were being made. People were mobilizing from a garage not far from Oak Knoll, to make sure the rapist got what was coming to him, since they couldn’t depend on the law to get this kind of thing right.

  * * *

  Having sequestered himself in the house for a week, Xavier finally ventured out one late afternoon with no clear destination in mind. He might drive over to Dashawn’s house and hang out, pretend he still had a life; Dashawn and Joseph both had been bugging him to “leave his cave.” There’d been no word from Harrington on the DA’s inclinations toward a plea deal. Not that Xavier wanted to cut a deal; he just wanted to know where he stood. The silence bugged him; did the DA want him to go down so badly that he wouldn’t even consider some kind of compromise? Valerie said she thought the silence was nothing more than the slow turning of the law’s wheels; his fate was nobody’s priority but his, after all. The DA and Harrington would get to it eventually.

  Eventually.

  Eventually he would be a pathetic loser whose friends had all gone away for school while he awaited trial—it pretty much had to be a trial, or he’d never see his name cleared.

  Eventually might be months or a year or two. He’d been reading about cases that took forever to unwind. Cases where young black men got fucked over because they made bad plea deals. Well, that wasn’t going to be him.

  Maybe, though, Harrington would come back with something that made both him and the DA happy. A misdemeanor charge, say, for fighting with Whitman. Some community service requirement, maybe, and a promise to stay away from Juniper (which he’d keep, since it had become obvious from her and Pepper’s total silence that she had cut him loose). If there was something reasonable to consider, he’d consider it. He wasn’t stupid.

  If not, a trial. Put him in front of a jury, let him say his piece. He wasn’t just some random black perp, a thug from the ’hood. He was half white (not that it should matter). National Honor Society. Lettered in concert band and orchestra. Scholarship to a prestigious private college. No record. An honest face. They’d have to respect all of that. Right?

  Doubtful.

  But possible.

  But unlikely. He’d read the stats. Black men (and if you, biracial boy, aren’t totally white, you are for every intent and purpose black) were more likely to be wrongly convicted and to serve longer sentences than whites. Separate those stats into North versus South and the numbers were grimmer still. People could debate the causes and conclusions all day long; the numbers, though, didn’t lie. Harrington was not lying, either: If Xavier went to trial, he was basically fucked.

  All of this was on his mind while he walked down the driveway to where his car was parked at the curb. He wasn’t paying attention to the sound of a large motor revving, the short chirp of wheels against pavement. Only when the pickup truck that had made these noises was coming up behind him did he notice and turn his head to look—not in alarm, just meaning to ensure that he had room to open his car door while the truck passed.

  In the pickup’s bed was a white man who leaned over the side. He had an object in his hands—a pole? Xavier didn’t have enough time to identify the object, and he didn’t have enough time to avoid it, either. The man yelled, “Take this, rapist nigger!” and swung while the truck came alongside Xavier, hitting him not (thank God, Valerie said later) in the head but on the hand he’d raised in defense as he ducked. He fell against his car hard. Then the driver raced off. Xavier, in the explosion of pain, thought he heard whooping and laughter.

  He said so to the police a short while later, before letting Valerie take him to the ER. The cops listened to his statement without sympathy, saying they’d look for a gray truck but there were lots of them and maybe he should’ve gotten a license plate number and it’d be smart to stay inside if he didn’t want more trouble. Then Valerie said this was horrifying, didn’t they understand, this was a good neighborhood, damn it, this kind of thing doesn’t happen here. Xavier barely heard them; his left hand, even as he kept it in a bowl of ice water, was swollen so badly that it had lost all of its features. It was a balloon hand, a cartoon hand, a hand with fingers that wouldn’t function. Xavier was, temporarily, too stunned to cry.

  There are nineteen bones in the human hand. Seven of Xavier’s were shattered. His tendons were subluxated and dislocated and, in three spots, split. The ER doctor, a black man who unlike Xavier had managed to never get on the bad side of a sociopath and have his life derailed, reported the damage and said, “You’re lucky, my friend. It could have gone so much worse for you.” The orthopedic surgeon, a white guy whose manner could have used a sugarcoat, said, “Professional guitar? Huh-uh. I don’t care who you see for the surgery, none of us can work miracles.”

  45

  But all right, maybe, just maybe, Xavier’s luck was changing:

  Two days later, Wilson Everly told Valerie by telephone, “You’re going to want to sit down for this.”

  She was standing in her kitchen, looking out the window at her tree. “What now?”

  “I just got off the line with Whitman’s attorney. They’d like to offer you the opportunity to get your son’s charges dismissed in return for dropping your suit.”

  Valerie was jolted. “Wait, what? I drop my case and somehow Zay goes free?”

  “That’s what they posit. It’s clearly an attempt at extortion—”

  “Do it.”

  “I understand your eagerness. But they don’t have that authority, exactly. The DA is the only one who can dismiss the charges.”r />
  “So what are you saying? You think it’s a trick? I drop the suit and then the joke’s on me?”

  “No … No, I would have to guess that Brad Whitman has already cleared this with the DA, and that’s given him the confidence to leverage the situation in his favor. May have been his plan all along. If so, we could report it—”

  “And then try to prove all of that mess while Zay’s case continues?” She was gripping the phone so tightly she thought it might snap in two. She said, “No. I don’t care if it’s extortion. Make it happen.”

  “Ms. Alston-Holt, to say that this offends my sensibilities as a law-abiding attorney—”

  “Damn it, I don’t care! Figure it out after Xavier’s cleared.”

  Everly said, “All right, I understand, and I don’t want to prevent a good outcome for him. We can say yes conditionally, and then we proceed only after I somehow get confirmation on the criminal case. I don’t like it,” he reiterated. “It’s like some backroom spy deal.”

  Valerie, though, was doubled over now, holding herself, practically in tears. “Who cares? Do it. Put an end to this nightmare.”

  “Yes, ma’am. And please give your son my best. I can only begin to imagine what he’s been through.”

  “Thank you,” Valerie said hoarsely, her voice almost stolen by her body’s response to his words.

  After the call, she collected herself and went to Xavier’s room. His guitars stood in a row while he lay on his bed, his left hand in a fully immobilizing splint while he awaited the surgery that might restore function in the range of forty percent. It had taken all her skills to keep Zay calm, persuade him that the doctors didn’t always know, that with physical therapy and time, he might regain full function. She didn’t believe it but she needed him to believe it at least for the time being.