The Confession of Copeland Cane

by Keenan Norris

  *

  The day after my Sherrod story went online, Mrs. Greenberg emailed me. Even though the piece was garnering attention, revealing to people on the other side of town what it was like to live a few miles east, Mrs. Greenberg didn’t pay much mind to it. Ravenscourt was dated for demolition. The place was old news. And it was a simple story of poverty and loss. It was small picture, with a lowercase s and a lowercase p.

  If I couldn’t write about the big picture, the least I could do for my next story would be to write about a big event. She emailed me a flyer: there would be a town hall the next night in downtown Oakland to address what had happened at the BART station. Persons involved, as well as local celebrities and academics, would discuss it. “The community came together in the case of the bigoted barista of 2025. Now is the time to address injustice in our community once again. Si se puede!”

  I had a sinking feeling as soon as I finished reading the flyer. Not sinking like the sunken place, more like sinking into all that stuff that I seen in the Youth Control when they had me all drugged up, except now instead of falling thru landfill, I was falling into somethin’ hella suspect and basically boojie. Mrs. Greenberg needed someone to cover the event and write a story on it. I knew it would be pointless to ask her if any of the other students would step up and do the job.

  “Can you send me bus fare?” I wrote back.

  She Western Union–ed me some cowries and like that I was dispatched downtown.

  The integrated lakeside church sat in the shadows off Grand Ave. at the edge of a park underneath a crew of trees that seemed to stand guard like so many COs. The line to get in was hella long and diverse, young and middle-aged and elderly, black and white and Latin and Asian and Pacific Islanders who reminded me of Miguel lookin’ hella long-haired and light-skinned Creole, if Creole people was huge enough to hoist up houses and shit. Ever since ’20, you don’t see people of different races stand in line shoulder to shoulder breathing in each other’s stank, dank breath. Least you don’t see hella white people thick in a crowd with the rest of us.

  But that night was different. I spotted a poster peaking between swaying, waiting bodies. It reminded me of the speakers for the evening, a three-person panel that would discuss the BART brutality incident: a Berkeley ethnicity, education, activism, and American studies professor, a comedian, and the white dude who called the cops on Mr. America. I got the feeling that the event might be about everything and everybody but Mr. America.

  Inside the church, I peeped the scene. People was milling around, socializing and speechifying. It was brothers in dashikis and Jordans and brothers in BART worker gear and brothers in business attire, Asian cats in basketball shorts and Jordans and Asian cats in Financial District fits, and white cats who looked like Men’s Wearhouse models and white cats with long blond dreads who looked like they had took every spray can in the store to they clothes, all the colors of the rainbow and none of them matching. Complected women both black and brown dipped in deep Afrocentricity, rockin’ headdresses to the heavens, Angela Davis shirts, and camouflage fatigues, shared space with black, brown, and white women who all somehow sported the same steelo, that downtown San Francisco, on they j-o-b and too busy to be bothered business suit.

  I overheard a man whose voice sounded smooth as a Soclear newscaster say that he used to work in the VC space, but now he was funemployed, taking time off to see how the other 99 percent controlled their blood pressure. The chuckleheads around him laughed like they was inside his joke. From the outside, I had no idea what any of it meant. Another cat with the same unsoiled speech which coulda sprouted anywhere in America spoke to a circle of women who looked up at him like he was ’bout to drop some jewels. “Everything,” he said, “is cyclical, it’s a cycle of sorts, a feedback loop where you get out what you’ve put in on all ends. Businesses’ investment in our communities,” he told them, “must be matched by the community’s investment in business. That’s why Trump was such a tragedy. If you looked past the racism and psychosis, the man did have a plan for Black America, but who looks past racism and psychosis these days?”

  I guess it was good to see so many people of so many different races and ethnicities and fashion choices in the same space, sharing the same air. I knew networks was important. But what did any of this have to do with Mr. America?

  I dipped thru the networks and made my way toward the stage. The techs worked away at the back of the stage. They performed the sound checks and light checks, making things buzz and thunder and boom-bap and go dark all of a sudden, and then bright spotlight the one man who sat still behind a foldout table in the middle of the stage. It was not the comedian and it was not the professor. It was Deadrich. He sat there calm and cleaner’n a muhfucka in his bone-white Brooks Brothers and his red-and-black authentic 86 Air Jordans. He sipped water from a paper cup while the techs zipped around him. He sat behind a long table with an empty chair on either side of him and a microphone in front of each chair. I tried to process the scene: Was he the person who called the po-lice on Mr. America? Was I gettin’ my white people confused? I had took Deadrich for a comrade, or at least as someone who wadn’t in conspiracy against black folks. Or maybe he didn’t have nothin’ to do with the incident. Maybe he was just sitting there receiving free water cuz he could. Maybe he knew nobody would question him if he just went and sat up onstage like a boss.

  The techs seemed to think he belonged there. They kept refilling his cup from a giant pitcher of water. I wondered when the event would begin and what role, if any, he was there to play. I watched his wondering blue eyes wander the church, taking everything in. They wandered from back to front and from one set of pews to the next. I could see that he was about to see me when a commotion broke out at the back of the church. A group of masked protestors burst in. Wadn’t no time to think about what was about to happen, they entered so fast, but a memory of the Capitol fully on fire and the White House on lockdown flashed up.

  “*8:46!” they yelled.

  NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE,

  NO LOVE FOR PO-LICE.

  NO JUSTICE, NO PEACE,

  NO LOVE FOR PO-LICE.

  They masks all read *8:46, and I could see behind they masks that most of them was POC, black and tan and olive-complected, but a few were white as well. In the audience, folks of all colors leapt out they seats and threw up they fists. “FUCK TWELVE!” someone yelled. “Fuck twelve, fuck twelve / Fuck twelve, fuck twelve, fuck twelve!” others began to sing. Folk cheered and chanted over the obscenities: “No justice, no peace / No love for po-lice.”

  “DEVONTE!” a masked protestor stepped forward screaming.

  “SAY THEY NAME!!” the others cried back.

  “GEORGE FLOYD!” a woman screamed.

  “SAY THEY NAME!!”

  “ALAN BLUEFORD!”

  “SAY THEY NAME!!”

  “TYISHA MILLER!”

  “SAY THEY NAME!!”

  “TRAYVON!”

  “SAY THEY NAME!!”

  “BOBBY HUTTON!”

  “SAY THEY NAME!!”

  I lost consciousness of the man on the stage and leapt up and yelled with them: “SAY THEY NAME!!”

  “OSCAR GRANT!”

  “SAY THEY NAME!!” I yelled again.

  **

  The sound system roared awake like a giant, crying higher and higher till it drowned out the chants. The people in the masks ripped them joints off. “No more fake investigations. No justice, no peace! Let’s settle it in the streets!” a high yellow lady with a big Afro and reddish-brown freckles declared. Then she turnt on her heel like you did that one day when I first seen you and walked right out the church. The other protestors followed after her, and some folk in the audience ran behind them. I started for the exit, too, making my way back into the networks of people. I weaved between the stunned funemployed folks and made for the door. Then I heard Deadrich’s mic’d voice burst across the church.

  “YEAH, YEAH, COOL, I GOT YOUR SOLILOQUY OF A
TEXT MESSAGE. I’LL MAKE SURE TO READ IT. NO, WE HAVEN’T STARTED. WE’RE RUNNING LATE FOR SOME—IS THIS GODDAMN MIC ON?”

  The whole church went silent as all eyes turnt from the protestors to the stage. Deadrich stared back at us, all of us, and turnt actual, not racial, white. For a second, nobody in that piece knew what to do. Then Deadrich said, “Well, I guess we’re getting started. I apologize for my language. Can we cue some music?”

  The techs scattered behind the stage curtain and Stevie Wonder started singing.

  Deadrich looked back to his phone and stood up from his seat, picked the mic off the table, and stood. He made a throat-cutting gesture and the music stopped mid-Stevie. Who was this dude? I wondered as I made my way to a seat amongst the networkers. And what was this event I was fated to witness? And what did any of this have to do with the po-lice and my battered friend?

  “I’m Douglas Deadrich. I’ll be the moderator for tonight’s event.”

  “Nah,” someone yelled from the audience. “You the cracker who called the cops on that boy, got him beat up!”

  “No, no, no, no, no,” Deadrich said, shaking his head. “Not me.”

  “Then who is you?” a voice that probably wadn’t draped in business attire questioned.

  “The white man who called the police, precipitating the terrible incident that we are here to discuss, is not here tonight. I apologize for his absence.”

  “No need for you to do that,” the same woman said. “He should apologize for his own self.”

  “Punk-ass white boy!” someone shouted.

  “Again, not me,” Deadrich pointed out. He went to his phone and started reading from it louder’n people was yelling. “‘Due to concerns over his safety, John Henderson, a local business owner who mistakenly’—hear that: mistakenly—‘called police on a BART train dance performer, has asked me to appear in his stead for tonight’s event.’”

  “What about that boy’s safety!?” someone clapped back, and I found myself clapping along with half the audience at the comment. “Coward ass!” another voice yelled out.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Deadrich said. “John Henderson has been a friend of mine since childhood. We went to school together and we do business together. I believe that I can express his perspective, his thoughts and feelings about the matter, in a fair and honest manner. I’ll vouch as a community member, business leader, and activist myself that John and his wife, Armineh, have always supported opportunities for minorities and the underserved. He acknowledges that he made an error in judgment …” The apology, which was a lot about what his friend did for the community and not much about what he had did to Mr. America, rattled on and Deadrich read every word of it. “… and that’s why I’m confident that we can make amends tonight and move forward as one community,” he concluded.

  Stevie Wonder started singing again, and the comedian, who towered over Deadrich despite Deadrich being over six feet tall easy, came out from behind the curtain and took the seat to Deadrich’s right. He leaned into his mic and laughed loud enough to break a window. That got Deadrich to stop talkin’. “I apologize, too,” the comedian said. “Sometimes I just laugh for no reason. Nothing’s funny. It just happens. Douglas, can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” Deadrich said.

  “Can you sit down?” the comedian asked. Everyone laughed. Deadrich sat. The music stopped. “Can I ask you another question?”

  “Shoot.”

  “I’d rather beat your ass than shoot you, and I’d rather interrogate you than fight you—c’mon now. My second question: Do you think people need to call the police on black people less, or do you think the police need to de-escalate and interrogate more and shoot and beat less?”

  “Both.”

  “But if you had to choose?”

  “The police are the ones responsible. My friend isn’t trained to react to a crisis.”

  “Is he trained to see a crisis where there isn’t one, though? That’s the question.” Deadrich didn’t respond.

  I remembered that I should be taking notes. I started scribbling, “What is this man doing here??” That was not journalism. I reprimanded my own self. I needed to get on-task and take notes on what was being said, not ask questions that nobody was gonna answer. But I did wonder what Deadrich’s intentions actually was. Was he really just there to speak for his friend? Was he tryna bridge a gap between black and white people? Or was he an agent on the low for law enforcement?

  “Can I tell you a story?” the comedian asked.

  Deadrich nodded, and the comedian told us a story that began with how great his life is: hella money, beautiful wife, millions of social media followers and whatnot. This brother was living so good that he figured shit was sweet to where he could act like he was free, smoke his weed, throw on a face mask for the cold air and whatever new germs was flying around, and take a walk by the lake as the morning sun glorified the earth. He told us that if he got his walk out the way by dawn, he could return home and fall back asleep right about the time his wife would wake up. Then she couldn’t nag on him for not taking care of his health, not to mention she would have to deal with the munchkins while he went back to snoring. Two birds, one stoned rock star, he quipped. But one dark morning a new cop fresh outta elementary school pulled up next to him, braking hard. Kindergarten cop leapt from his car, barking orders and drawing his taser and shit. The comedian stopped stock-still, wondering what he had done wrong. The cop yelled somethin’ about a masked burglar and motioned at his real firearm and threatened to shoot the comedian where he froze. Old boy explained to us that if not for his years of onstage ad-libbing, he mighta reacted slower and met his Lord and Savior right then and there. Instead, the cop ordered him to the ground and the comedian dropped like he was stolen goods. He told us how he hit the pavement flat nose and fat lips first. That was painful enough, but the worst part, he said, was that even though he escaped the taser, his fall scuffed his vintage Jordan rookie sneakers beyond mint condition. “The problem is perception,” the comedian said. “Someone, whether it was the cop or whoever called the cop, perceived me to be a thief, not because I was masked (wearing a mask in public is a civic good when you’re as ugly as I am), but because they wanted to see me that way. That was their preexisting perception of me, and that perception precipitated action, ergo: Fuck your friend, whoever smelt it done dealt it.”

  Deadrich didn’t respond, just nodded kinda noncommittal. I couldn’t call it if the comedian was just a good talker, or if it was some truth to what he was sayin’ and some intelligence to how he said it. I eye-hustled the room: the black people was split on whether the comedian was funny or not, the white people looked like they was about to shed tears for some reason, and the Latins and Asians was somewhere in the middle not knowing how to feel about the shit.

  As the comedian concluded, a woman dressed to the tens came from behind the curtain. This was the Education, Activism, and American Studies professor from the posters. Late as fuck, I thought, but fine as hell. Her freckles spotted a face the color of dust. She was wearing a skintight black blouse and black yoga pants over her slim-thick frame. I know I’m wrong for thinkin’ looks first—my own sin of profiling. Did I mention her red-and-black Air Jordan high heels was hittin’, too?

  The lady took her mic from the table and walked out in front of the table like we was her college class and she was finna lecture us for the midterm. “Hello, everyone,” she said. “My name is Sarina Jayachandra Campbell-Zayas, principal of Rockwood High School in East Oakland, visiting lecturer at the University of California.”

  It was one of them “come again?” moments, Jacq. Cuz I had seen the Rockwood principal’s candy-red Corvette, but I had never actually laid my eyes upon the woman herself. Here she was, not just our principal but a professor, too. And what about that degree again? And what about Mr. America?

  “We have a tendency to localize state-sanctioned white supremacist terror against marginalized persons,” the principal said.
“I said, we have a tendency to localize state-sanctioned white supremacist terror against marginalized persons, and we have a tendency to universalize crimes committed by marginalized persons against the powerful. I said, we have a tendency to universalize crimes committed by marginalized persons against the powerful, brothers, sisters, and trans folks. We must think more systematically, we must think more systematically, we must think much more systematically about the violence meted out by the state against marginalized persons, particularly against women, trans women, trans women of color, and people of color generally, particularly African-descended people, particularly African-descended persons. The systemic threats encountered by the constantly surveilled black body in our white-dominated postbellum apartheid nation-state …”

  Dear Jacq, I was, cross my heart and hope to die peacefully, truly attempting to understand all that gum-flappin’, I swear I tried. But as she just kept going in and going on, I just got more and more confused. I felt the audience around me get just as sideways.

  “I’ve learned a lot tonight,” Deadrich said after the professor finally sat down.

  I waited for someone to say different, but all the outta pocket audience members had been removed or hushed up or talked at into silence. And wadn’t a single mention of Mr. America. The comedian had hovered around it, but he only spoke about “perception” and about hisself and about Henderson. I wadn’t tryna learn how not to call the po-lice and I wadn’t really tryna teach white people nothin’. I wanted to know what reparations would come to my brother whether a lesson got learnt or not. Mr. Henderson seemed like he was breaded up pretty good; why couldn’t he just chunk Mr. America off some money? Why couldn’t Deadrich, or any of them jokers, do that, instead of teaching and learning and acting like we was in a classroom? Who were we here for, really?

  “Not only have I learned a lot from this discussion,” Deadrich said, “I feel inspired. I’m realizing how I personally can take action and I hope everyone here feels the same way.” I remembered Deadrich was the moderator and realized that he was ’bout to segue some shit, but what he said about taking action caught hold of me. “Let’s open the floor to questions for the panelists,” Deadrich said in the same light-bright-and-all-the-way-white way he said a lotta things.