Small Great Things

by Jodi Picoult

We drove to a hill that offered a great view of planes taking off and landing at Tweed airport. The runway lights winked at us as we sat on the hood of the car, Brit swimming in adrenaline. "God," she yelled, tipping her throat to the night sky. "That was unfuckingbelievable. It felt like...like..."

  She couldn't find the word, but I could. I knew what it was like to have so much bottled up inside that you had to explode. I knew what it was like to cause pain, for a few seconds, instead of feeling it. The source of Brit's restlessness might be different from mine, but she had been reined in all the same, and she'd just found the breach in the fence. "It feels like freedom," I said.

  "Yes," she breathed, staring at me. "Do you ever feel like you don't belong in your own skin? Like you were meant to be someone else?"

  All the time, I thought. But instead of saying that, I leaned over and kissed her.

  She spun so that she was sitting on me, facing me. She kissed me harder, biting my lip, devouring. Her hands were under the tail of my shirt, fumbling with the buttons of my jeans. "Hey," I said, trying to grab her wrists. "There's no rush."

  "Yes there is," she whispered into my neck.

  She was on fire, and if you get too close to a fire, you go up in flames, too. So I let her slip beneath my zipper, I helped her hike up her skirt and rip off her panties. Brit lowered herself onto me, and I moved inside her like the start of something.

  --

  ON THE MORNING of the arraignment, I get dressed while Brit is still sleeping in the pajamas she's worn for the past four days. I eat a bowl of cereal and I prepare myself for war.

  At the courthouse are about twenty friends I didn't know I had.

  They are loyal followers of LONEWOLF, frequent posters on my site, men and women who read about Davis and wanted to do more than just type their sympathy. Like me, they don't look the way most people would expect a skinhead to look. No one is bald, except me. They're all wearing ordinary clothing. Some have tiny sun-wheel pins on their collars. Many wear a baby-blue ribbon for Davis. Some pat my shoulder or call me by name. Others just nod, the tiniest inclination of their heads, to let me know they are here for me as I pass down the aisle.

  Just then a nigger comes up to me. I nearly shove her away when she starts talking--a knee-jerk reaction--and then I realize I know her voice, and that she's the prosecutor.

  I have talked to Odette Lawton on the phone, but she didn't sound black. This feels like a slap, like some kind of conspiracy.

  Maybe this is a good thing. It's no surprise that the liberals who run the court system have it out for Anglos, and there's no way we could ever get a fair trial because of it. They'll make this about me instead of that nurse. But if the lawyer who's on my side is black, well, then I can't possibly be prejudiced, can I?

  They'll never have to know what I'm really thinking.

  Someone reads the judge's name--DuPont--which doesn't sound like some Jew name, which is a good start. Then I sit through four other defendants before they call the name Ruth Jefferson.

  The courtroom sizzles like a griddle. People start booing, and raising up signs with my son's face on them--a picture I uploaded to the website, the only one I have of him. Then the nurse is brought in, wearing a nightgown and shackles on her wrists. She is looking around the gallery. I wonder if she's trying to find me.

  I decide to make it easy for her.

  In one swift movement, I'm on my feet and leaning over the low railing that separates us from the lawyers and the stenographer. I take a deep breath and hurl a gob of spit that smacks the bitch on the side of the face.

  I can tell the second she recognizes me.

  Instantly I am flanked by bailiffs who drag me out of the courtroom, but that's okay, too. Because even as I'm pulled away, the nurse will see the swastika snaking down the back of my scalp.

  It's okay to lose a battle, when you are in it to win the war.

  --

  THE TWO MEATHEAD bailiffs dump me outside the heavy doors of the courthouse. "Don't think about coming back in," one warns, and then they disappear inside.

  I rest my hands on my knees, catching my breath. I may not have access to the courtroom, but this is a free country, as far as I know. They can't keep me from staying here and watching Ruth Jefferson get carted to jail.

  Resolved, I look up, and that's when I see them: the vans, with satellite dishes. The reporters smoothing their skinny skirts and testing their microphones. The media that has come to report on this case.

  The lawyer said they needed a grieving parent, not an angry parent? I can give them that.

  But first, I pull out my cellphone and call Francis at home. "Get Brit out of bed, and park her in front of the television." I glance at the news vans. "Channel Four."

  Then I take a cap out of my pocket, the one I wore into the courthouse this morning so I wouldn't draw attention to my tattoo until I wanted to. I center it on my head.

  I think about Davis, because that's all I need to make tears come to my eyes.

  "You saw that, right?" I approach a slant reporter I've seen on NBC. "You saw me get thrown out of that building?"

  She glances at me. "Uh, yeah. Sorry, but we're here to cover a different story."

  "I know," I say. "But I'm the father of the dead baby."

  I tell the reporter that Brit and I had been so excited about our first baby. I say I'd never seen anything as perfect as his tiny hands, his nose, which looked just like Brit's. I say that my wife is still so upset over what happened to Davis that she can't get out of bed, can't even be here today at court.

  I say it is a tragedy for someone who has taken a vow to heal to intentionally kill a helpless infant, just because she is upset at being removed from a patient's care. "I understand that we didn't see eye to eye," I say, looking at the reporter. "But that doesn't mean my son deserved to die."

  "What do you hope the outcome will be, Mr. Bauer?" she asks.

  "I want my son back," I tell her. "But that isn't going to happen."

  Then I excuse myself. Truth is, I'm starting to choke up, thinking about Davis. And I'm not going to be broadcast blubbering like a girl.

  I duck away from the other reporters, who are now falling all over each other to speak to me, but they get distracted as the doors to the courthouse open and Odette Lawton exits. She starts talking about how this is a heinous crime, how the State will make sure that justice is done. I slip along the side of the building, past where a janitor is smoking a cigarette, to a loading dock in the back. This, I know, leads to a lower-level door, which leads to the holding cells.

  I can't get inside; there are guards posted. But I stand at a distance, huddled against the wind, until a van pulls out with the words YORK CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION printed on its side. That's the only prison for women in the state, in Niantic. It's where the nurse must be headed.

  At the last minute, I step into its path, so that the driver has to swerve.

  I know, inside that van, Ruth Jefferson will be jolted by that motion. That she'll look out the window to see what caused it.

  That the last thing she sees before prison will be me.

  --

  AFTER I TOOK Brit wilding, I became a regular visitor in her home, and I pretty much ran the website from Francis's living room. On LONEWOLF we hosted discussions: tax forums that pitted Joe Legal, the White worker, against Jose, the Illegal Job Thief; threads about why our economy was being ruined by Obama; an online book club; a section for creative writing and poetry--which included a three-hundred-page alternate ending to the Civil War. There was a section for Anglo women to connect with each other, and another for teens, which helped them navigate situations like what to do when a friend said he was gay (end the friendship immediately, or explain that no one is born that way and the trend will vanish eventually). There were opinion topics (Which is worse: a White gay or a straight black? Which universities are the most anti-White?). Our most popular thread was the one about forming a White Nationalist K-12 school. We had over a million po
sts there.

  But we also had a section of the site where we gave suggestions of what people could do individually or within their cells if they wanted to take action, without promoting outright violence. Mostly, we found ways to get minorities all twisted up believing that there was an army of us in their midst, when in reality, it was just one or two people.

  Francis and I practiced what we preached. We adopted a stretch of highway in a mostly black area, and posted a sign that said it was being maintained by the KKK. One night, we drove to the Jewish Community Center in West Hartford. During Friday night services, we slipped a flyer under the windshield wiper of each car in the parking lot: a photo of Adolf Hitler in full sieg heil, and underneath it in bold letters: THE HOLOCAUST WAS A HOAX. On the back were bullets of facts:

  Zyklon B was a delousing agent; for it to be used as a gas would have required huge amounts and airtight chambers, neither of which were present at the camps.

  There were no remains of mass murders at the camps. Where were the bone and teeth fragments? Where were the piles of ashes?

  American incinerators burn one body in eight hours, but two crematoria in Auschwitz burned 25,000 bodies a day? Impossible.

  The Red Cross inspected the camps every three months and made plenty of complaints--none of which mentioned gasing millions of Jews.

  The liberal Jewish media has perpetuated this myth to advance their agenda.

  By the next morning, the Hartford Courant would run an article about the neo-Nazi element that was infiltrating this community. Parents would be worried for their children. Everyone would be on edge.

  That was exactly how we liked it. We didn't have to terrorize anyone as long as we could scare the shit out of them.

  "Well," Francis said, as we were driving back to the duplex. "That was a good night's work."

  I nodded, but I kept my eyes on the road. Francis had a thing about that--he wouldn't let me drive with the radio on, for example, in case I got too easily distracted.

  "I got a question for you, Turk," he said. I waited for him to ask me how we could get top placement for LONEWOLF in a Google search, or if we could stream podcasts, but instead he turned to me. "When are you going to make an honest woman out of my daughter?"

  I nearly swallowed my tongue. "I, um, I would be honored to do that."

  He looked at me, appraising. "Good. Do it soon."

  As it turned out, it took a while. I wanted it to be perfect, so I asked around on LONEWOLF for suggestions. One guy had gotten all decked out in full SS regalia to propose. Another took his beloved to the site of their first real date, but I didn't think a hot dog stand with gay guys blowing each other in the woods was a terrific setting. Several posters got into a vehement fight about whether or not an engagement ring was necessary, since Jews ran the diamond industry.

  In the end, I decided to just tell her how I felt. So one day I picked her up and drove back to my place. "Really?" she said. "You're going to cook?"

  "I thought maybe we could do it together," I suggested as we walked into the kitchen. I turned away because I thought for sure she would see how terrified I was.

  "What are we having?"

  "Well, don't be disappointed." I held out a container of hummus. On top, I had written: There are no words to tell you hummus I love you.

  She laughed. "Cute."

  I handed her an ear of corn and mimed shucking it. She pulled down the husk and a note fell out: I think you're amaizing.

  Grinning, she held out her hand for more.

  I gave her a bottle of ketchup, with a sticker on the back: I love you from my head tomatoes.

  "That's pushing it," Brit said, smiling.

  "I was limited by the season." I passed her a stick of margarine. You're my butter half.

  Then I opened the fridge.

  On the top shelf were four zucchini propped up to form the letter M, three carrots creating an A, two curved bananas: r, r, and a piece of gingerroot: Y.

  On the next shelf was a cellophane-wrapped package of chopped meat that I'd shaped into the letters ME.

  On the bottom shelf was a squash with Brit's name carved into it.

  Brit covered her mouth with her hand as I dropped to my knee. I handed her a ring box. Inside was a blue topaz, which was exactly the color of her eyes. "Say yes," I begged.

  She slipped the ring onto her hand as I stood. "I was kind of expecting a Hefty twist tie after all that," Brit said, and she threw her arms around me.

  We kissed, and I hiked her up on the counter. She wrapped her legs around me. I thought about spending the rest of my life with Brit. I thought about our kids; how they would look just like her; how they'd have a father who was a million times better than mine had been.

  An hour later, when we lay in each other's arms on the kitchen floor, on a pile of our clothes, I gathered Brit close. "I'm assuming that's a yes," I said.

  Her eyes lit up, and she ran to the fridge, returning a few seconds later. "Yes," she said. "But first you have to promise me something. We..." She dropped a melon into my hands.

  Cantaloupe.

  --

  WHEN I COME back from court and walk into the house, the television is still on. Francis meets me at the door, and I look at him, a question on my lips. Before I can ask, though, I see that Brit is sitting in the living room on the floor, her face inches away from the screen. The midday news is on, and there is Odette Lawton talking to reporters.

  Brit turns, and for the first time since our son was born, for the first time in weeks, she smiles. "Baby," she says, bright and beautiful and mine again. "Baby, you're a star."

  THEY PUT ME IN CHAINS.

  Just like that, they shackle my hands in front of me, as if that doesn't send two hundred years of history running through my veins like an electric current. As if I can't feel my great-great-grandmother and her mother standing on an auction block. They put me in chains, and my son--who I've told, every day since he was born, You are more than the color of your skin--my son watches.

  It is more humiliating than being in public in my nightgown, than having to urinate without privacy in the holding cell, than being spit at by Turk Bauer, than having a stranger speak for me in front of a judge.

  She had asked me if I touched the baby, and I'd lied to her. Not because I thought, at this point, that I still had a job to save, but because I just couldn't think through fast enough what the right answer would be, the one that might set me free. And because I didn't trust this stranger sitting across from me, when I was nothing more to her than the other twenty clients she would see today.

  I listen to this lawyer--Kennedy something, I have already forgotten her last name--volley back and forth with another lawyer. The prosecutor, who's a woman of color, does not even make eye contact with me. I wonder if this is because she feels nothing but contempt for me, an alleged criminal...or because she knows if she wants to be taken seriously, she has to widen the canyon between us.

  True to her word, Kennedy gets me bail. Just like that, I want to hug this woman, thank her. "What happens now?" I ask, as the people in the courtroom hear the decision, and become a living, breathing thing.

  "You're getting out," she tells me.

  "Thank God. How long will it take?"

  I am expecting minutes. An hour, at the most. There must be paperwork, which I can then lock away to prove that this was all a misunderstanding.

  "A couple of days," Kennedy says. Then a beefy guard has my arm and firmly pushes me back to the rabbit warren of holding cells in the basement of this godforsaken building.

  I wait in the same cell I was taken to during the recess in court. I count all the cinder blocks in the wall: 360. I count them again. I think about that spider of a tattoo on Turk Bauer's head, and how I hadn't believed he could possibly be worse than he already was, but I was wrong. I don't know how much time passes before Kennedy comes. "What is going on?" I explode. "I can't stay here for days!"

  She talks about mortgage deeds and percentages
, numbers that swim in my head. "I know you're worried about your son. I'm sure your sister will keep an eye on him."

  A sob swells like a song in my throat. I think about my sister's home, where her boys talk back to their dad when he tells them to take out the trash. Where dinner is not a conversation but take-out Chinese with the television blaring. I think about Edison texting me at work, things like Reading Lolita 4 AP Eng. Nabokov = srsly messed up dude.

  "So I stay here?" I ask.

  "You'll be taken to the prison."

  "Prison?" A chill runs down my spine. "But I thought I got bail?"

  "You did. But the wheels of justice move exceedingly slow, and you have to stay until the bail is processed."

  Suddenly a guard I haven't seen before appears at the door of the cell. "Coffee klatch is over, ladies," he says.

  Kennedy looks at me, her words fast and fierce like bullets. "Don't talk about your charges. People are going to try to work a deal by prying information out of you. Don't trust anyone."

  Including you? I wonder.

  The guard opens the door of the cell and tells me to hold out my arms. There are those shackles and chains again. "Is that really necessary?" Kennedy asks.

  "I don't make the rules," the guard says.

  I am led down another hallway to a loading dock, where a van is waiting. Inside is another woman in chains. She's wearing a tight dress and glitter eyeliner and has a weave that reaches halfway down her back. "You like what you see?" she asks, and I immediately avert my eyes.

  The sheriff climbs into the front seat of the van and starts the engine.

  "Officer," the woman calls. "I'm a girl who loves her jewelry, but these bracelets are cramping my style."

  When he doesn't respond, she rolls her eyes. "I'm Liza," she says. "Liza Lott."

  I can't help it; I laugh. "That's really your name?"

  "It better be, since I picked it. I like it so much better than...Bruce." She purses her lips, staring at me, waiting for my reaction. My eyes move from her large manicured hands to her stunning face. If she's expecting me to be shocked, she has another thing coming. I'm a nurse. I have literally seen it all, including a trans man who became pregnant when his wife was infertile, and a woman with two vaginas.

  I meet her gaze, refusing to be intimidated. "I'm Ruth."

  "You get your Subway sandwich, Ruth?"