The Sacrifice

by Joyce Carol Oates

  Sweating, and his heart pounding with the strain. They were shouting at him through the window asking him for his driver’s license and vehicle registration. How many times Anis has been stopped by cops in Red Rock and across the river! Each time like it will be the last time, you make a wrong move.

  Not sure how to react. Shut-mouthed, silent like he didn’t know the language. Or, quick to obey.

  Silent might be mistaken for resistance. Quick-to-obey might be mistaken for mockery.

  You didn’t want to move too much, or too quickly. White cops anxious they gon be shot-at tonight and primed to shoot first.

  The (older, thick-face) cop yelling at him to lower his window was louder than the other (younger, pimply-face) cop and standing closer to him so Anis lowered the window moving slowly and deliberately. The kind of old-style window you crank by hand, and that takes time. Black man, thick-neck black man in smelly work clothes, scarred-looking face, heavy-lidded eyes, mouth not smiling—the cops were excited having cornered their prey, but like their prey they could not know precisely what would come next.

  Slow-moving like a crippled old animal. Yet in the predators’ eyes, a dangerous old animal.

  Anis considered asking the angry cops what the “parade” was all about?—shaking his head to indicate he wasn’t one of those blacks.

  Considered asking them if there was some way he could get back to Depp Street, or was all the streets blocked by that damn “parade” . . .

  The Smith & Wesson .45-caliber revolver heavy in the left-leg deep pocket of his work-pants. He’d had the revolver in the glove compartment, now in his pocket. Moving the gun from the closet to the car, from the car to his pocket had to mean something. Seeing the posters—WHITE COPS DID THIS. He’d come to believe—almost—that white cops had raped his daughter like everybody say and that fact was unbearable. A man just could not live with it, and be a man.

  The button on that pocket had pulled off long ago. Say he reached into the pocket, seized the gun, could he raise it and fire, before the cops shot him? Brain calculating the odds even as he was smiling now, trying to smile at the cops, friendly-seeming lifting his hands so the cops could see yes, OK, he did not have a weapon and did not appear to be the kind of black man who carried a weapon, except of course there is no black man who does not carry a (hidden, deadly) weapon, and the cops knew this, they’d been trained to know this, sharp-eyed, excited and eager.

  Yet, they’d allowed Anis Schutt to reach into his rear pocket—slowly—and to remove his wallet. In the midst of jammed traffic, a dozen cops in view in just this section of the street, red lights flashing. Allowed Anis to open the wallet with his splayed fingers, and fumble for the laminated New Jersey license, miniature photo of a glaring black man likin to rip out your throat with his teeth. And—slowly, his lower back seizing with pain—reaching over to the glove compartment, to fumble for the registration. Closely they watched Anis through the lowered car window and through the smudged windshield as one might watch an animal not only deadly-dangerous but unpredictable and Anis continued smiling at them, feeling muscles in his lower mouth twitching and straining against the assault of pain.

  The cop’s voice, now he wasn’t shouting, sounded high-pitched, querulous. “‘Anis Schutt’? Seems like that’s a name I know.”

  Anis sat quietly. Arms on the steering wheel now, big-knuckled hands visible.

  The cops talked together loudly, like Anis was deaf.

  “Y’heard of him? ‘Schutt’? We know him, do we?”

  “Yah. ‘Schutt.’ He’s—ya know who he is?—the father of ‘Syb’la Frye.’”

  “Fuck he is! Jesus.”

  Still, Anis sat quietly. The pain in his back was suspended as if in anticipation of a greater pain, from another source, to which the afflicted man must give one hundred percent of his attention.

  “Mr. Schutt, you the father of that girl? ‘Syb’la Frye’?”

  Shook his head no.

  Shrewdly the younger cop said, “You livin with her, though? Says here ‘939 Third Street’—right?”

  Shook his head no.

  “No? You ain’t? Changed residence, and this driver’s license ain’t up-to-date?”

  Anis mumbled an inaudible reply. The cops asked him to repeat what he’d said so he repeated what sounded like Just moved out Officers. Meanin to change that.

  The younger cop took the auto registration to a nearby cruiser to run a check. Anis was feeling light-headed the way you’d feel if small strokes of lightning were striking your brain. Reasoning So many people here, they ain’t gon just shoot me. Too public.

  The narrow street was jammed. Behind Anis, a city bus was stalled. Vehicles were being abandoned. Drivers were shouting at one another. Cops were yelling, brandishing billy clubs. There were no pistols in sight. Not yet.

  The old police tactic, from union marches of long-ago, Anis had been hearing all his life, is the cops fire at a “sniper”—the sniper “returns fire”—cops discharge as much ammunition as they can, hundreds of rounds of bullets, as long as ten minutes solid firing, in the direction of the rooftop, the building, the hiding place where the “sniper” is crouched. You’re in the “cross fire” you hit the pavement and lay right there, don’t even try to crawl away.

  Or even if you lay still not breathing sometimes they shoot you anyway. Cop bullets flying wild.

  Cops blocked his view. Anis couldn’t see the marchers on Camden Avenue. But he believed they were still marching—hundreds, thousands of marchers—ten thousand? And all for justice, for Sybilla Frye?

  Again he thought They ain’t gon shoot me this time. Feels like, they gon let me go. A sensation of disappointment came over him though also relief. Though also dismay. Fuck!—he’d have to return to his old, debased life. Have to crawl into his skin like crawling into a befouled bed.

  Now came again the God damn spine-pain, like a vise gripping his lower back, obliterating all thought.

  The second cop returned. Anis had been thinking the cop would just hand back the registration and the driver’s license and tell Anis Schutt to sit his ass still in the vehicle until the street was opened up, but turned out, both cops had more questions to ask and there was an excitement in their voices a signal for trouble.

  Where was Anis headed. Where did he come from. Where did he work. Where did he live if it wasn’t Third Street.

  And where’d he been at the time his “daughter” had been kidnapped in October.

  To these answers, Anis mumbled replies. In the midst of his mumbled words stuttering, stammering like a terrible quake beginning deep inside his body and moving out. Last time they’d stopped him, Anis had not stuttered, he was sure.

  Looking at their prey with contempt but also pity. If he’d been a true black man like a Kingdom of Islam warrior he’d have shown it by now, the white cops is thinking.

  Now ordering Anis Schutt to release the lock of his trunk, which Anis did with careful, deliberate motions. In his rear-view mirror he saw the younger of the cops staring into the trunk, moving a few items, sour-faced seeing nothing suspicious. The cop then peering into the rear of the car, saw nothing suspicious yet in loud voices both cops ordered Anis to step out of his vehicle.

  Was this happening? He’d thought that it was not going to happen. In the jammed traffic, some vehicles were being closely inspected but most were not. Vehicles driven by black youths were the ones being searched. Lone drivers and middle-age or older drivers, not. But they were asking him if he was carrying a concealed weapon or anything that was “sharp” and he tried to answer them saying No sir but the spine-pain came so sudden, he nearly fainted. “Oh Jesus God”—whisper like a prayer escaped his lips.

  His right leg lost strength, a nerve tingling and aching from his buttock to the sole of his foot.

  “Watch it!”—the elder of the cops regarded him with a kind of involuntary sympathy, ravaged-looking black man, wincing pain in his face. There is no disguising such pain. “Lean against t
he car, Mr. Schutt.”

  They hadn’t drawn their pistols. They had captured their prey but not a dangerous prey after all. The pain came so bad, even leaning onto the car, grabbing at the roof wasn’t enough to keep him standing. Apologizing to the cops Sorry, oh Jesus I am sorry, my leg . . .

  He was on his knees on the pavement. White cops standing over him uncertain what to do with him. He’d tried to stand, you could see he had tried. But he had not the strength, he’d sunk to his knees on the pavement. And it was a confused time. Not far away, there were pounding feet. Black boys running. Cops shouting at them. Sounds of sirens. Like a wounded animal Anis groaned aloud in misery, indignation, fury scrambling to haul himself back to his feet, to stand upright and confront the cops pitying him. And the older cop gripping his arm as if to help him, and the younger cop hovering close, and both of them talking to him and the words had no meaning, he’d ceased listening for there went Anis’s hand into the left-leg pocket, fumbled to grip the gun, nickel-plated handle, and his finger on the trigger that was always larger than you expect, and in a movement graceless but expedient as all of Anis’s movements had been since the cops had first approached him in his vehicle he managed to remove the heavy revolver from the pocket, aimed it upward, and fired—a quick shot—and another shot, and another—the first bullet struck the older cop on the underside of his jaw blowing much of the jaw away, second bullet seemed to have struck the cop’s forehead above his right eye tearing away bone and gristle, and the third bullet, and the fourth and fifth bullets, striking the younger cop in his face and neck where the bulletproof vest couldn’t save him so taken by surprise his face was an utter blank like a moon, in an instant shattered and bloody, broken.

  The white cops were down. Within seconds it had happened. Anis gripped the gun lifting it in both hands, in an ecstasy of triumph aiming the long barrel at whoever was approaching, and another time fired, the final bullet, though his finger continued to jerk the trigger on the emptied chambers even as he was being shot, he hadn’t seen where the final bullet had gone, eyes shut as he dragged himself along the pavement, beyond the front grille of his vehicle; in his confused memory this was a dead end on Ventor, by the river, he would crawl into someplace on the dock, a hiding place of the kind boys knew about, one of those big pipes into which he’d crawled as a boy; a pipe not so long you couldn’t see the dim halo of daylight at the farther end, and you could hide there. Still, they were firing at him. Yelling at him and at one another and their shouts sheer sound, animal-sounds of rage. The long-barrel gun had slipped from his fingers. Dragging his useless legs, his broken spine. Muscled shoulders, thick-muscle neck, they were firing in a half-circle around him crouched and each of them aiming to kill. And his face pressed now against the part-collapsed chain-link fence, and his torso, outstretched arms . . . This was the dead end of Ventor he could not crawl past to get to the dock and the river and the big open pipes, Anis Schutt would die here straining against the badly rusted fence like an animal that has crawled away to die amid mummified remnants of newspaper, styrofoam litter caught in the chain-link fence where even now he could anticipate the weight of a booted foot on the back of his neck. Shooter down! Finish him.

  Afterword

  Though it is set decades later, The Sacrifice is strongly linked to my novel them (1969). The Detroit “riot” of July 1967—(more accurately called, by individuals who’d lived through it, the Twelfth Street Riot)—as well as the Newark “riot” of July 1967—resulted in a number of carefully researched studies into “black urban civil disorder” in subsequent years, but these were not available to me at the time of the composition of them.

  Among the many books, articles, and online materials consulted for The Sacrifice are three which have been of particular interest:

  The Algiers Motel Incident by John Hersey (1968)

  The Report of the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders (1968)

  The Special New York State Grand Jury Report in the Tawana Brawley Case (October 7, 1988)

  About the Author

  PHOTO BY STAR BLACK

  JOYCE CAROL OATES is a recipient of the National Humanities Medal, the National Book Critics Circle Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, the National Book Award, and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction. She has written some of the most enduring fiction of our time, including the national bestsellers We Were the Mulvaneys; Blonde, which was nominated for the National Book Award; and the New York Times bestsellers The Accursed and The Falls, which won the 2005 Prix Femina. She is the Roger S. Berlind Distinguished Professor of the Humanities at Princeton University and has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters since 1978. In 2003 she received the Common Wealth Award for Distinguished Service in Literature, and in 2006 she received the Chicago Tribune Lifetime Achievement Award.

  Discover great authors, exclusive offers, and more at hc.com.

  Novels by Joyce Carol Oates

  With Shuddering Fall (1964)

  A Garden of Earthly Delights (1967)

  Expensive People (1968)

  them (1969)

  Wonderland (1971)

  Do with Me What You Will (1973)

  The Assassins (1975)

  Childwold (1976)

  Son of the Morning (1978)

  Unholy Loves (1979)

  Bellefleur (1980)

  Angel of Light (1981)

  A Bloodsmoor Romance (1982)

  Mysteries of Winterthurn (1984)

  Solstice (1985)

  Marya: A Life (1986)

  You Must Remember This (1987)

  American Appetites (1989)

  Because It Is Bitter, and Because It Is My Heart (1990)

  Black Water (1992)

  Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang (1993)

  What I Lived For (1994)

  Zombie (1995)

  We Were the Mulvaneys (1996)

  Man Crazy (1997)

  My Heart Laid Bare (1998)

  Broke Heart Blues (1999)

  Blonde (2000)

  Middle Age: A Romance (2001)

  I’ll Take You There (2002)

  The Tattooed Girl (2003)

  The Falls (2004)

  Missing Mom (2005)

  Black Girl / White Girl (2006)

  The Gravedigger’s Daughter (2007)

  My Sister, My Love (2008)

  Little Bird of Heaven (2009)

  Mudwoman (2012)

  The Accursed (2013)

  Carthage (2014)

  Credits

  COVER DESIGN BY ALLISON SALTZMAN

  COVER PHOTOGRAPH © BY NAGIB EL DESOUKY / ARCANGEL IMAGES

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  THE SACRIFICE. Copyright © 2015 by The Ontario Review. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  FIRST EDITION

  Title page photograph © artcphotos/Shutterstock, Inc.

  ISBN 978-0-06-233297-4

  EPub Edition JANUARY 2015 ISBN 9780062332998

  1516171819 OV/RRD 10987654321

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