Copperhead

by Alexi Zentner

  “I went to a party,” Jessup says. “Girl from school. Victoria Wallace. Her boyfriend’s on the football team. Aaron Burns. Victoria’s house is past the university. Out in the country a bit. There were probably a hundred kids there.”

  The black cop takes the lead again. “You get in a fight last night? At this party?”

  “No, sir,” Jessup says.

  “Really? You sure about that?”

  “Yes, sir. There was a kid who gave me a hard time about . . . about my family history, but we didn’t go at it or anything. Nothing physical.”

  “Who was this kid?”

  “Kevin Corson. Black kid,” Jessup says. He has to stop himself from flinching. Why did he have to say the second thing?

  “You two didn’t mix it up?”

  “No, sir. He was pretty drunk. Drinking all night. Mad, too,” Jessup adds. “Played for the team we beat last night, and I laid him out good at the end of the first half.”

  “Laid him out?”

  “Yes, sir. Caught him right in the chest as he was trying to catch a ball. Came down on top of him and his helmet popped off. He dropped the ball, I picked it up and ran it in for a touchdown. He was puking on the sideline after. Pretty sure he had a concussion. Knocked him out of the game.”

  “Kevin Corson?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  SMOKE SIGNALS

  Jessup sees the curtain move in the living room window. Jewel peeking out. He wants to wave to her, to smile, to signal to her it’s all going to be okay. Is this going to be her life?

  Jessup tells the cops he left the party, got in his truck, drove to see his girlfriend, came home.

  “You know Corson outside of football?”

  “No, sir. Overlapped at a couple of football camps, but different sides of the ball. Enough to say ‘hey,’ but nothing more than that.”

  “Any problems in the past? Anything before the party last night?”

  Jessup thinks about the parking lot, about Corson jabbing his finger into Jessup’s breastbone. “He came up to me after the game. Said it was a dirty play. Kicked out my taillight.”

  The black cop is watching him closely, but behind him, Jessup sees Hawkins squint.

  Fuck. He’d told Hawkins last night that he didn’t know how it happened. That he’d come out of the game and just found the taillight shattered.

  Hawkins doesn’t say anything. Doesn’t write anything in his paper pad.

  “And what did you do?”

  “Just drove away, sir.”

  “He kicked out your taillight, and you just drove away?” The black cop is baiting him. Scornful. All but calling him a pussy.

  “That’s correct, sir. I didn’t want any trouble. I was going to meet my family at Kirby’s. I was hungry and in a hurry. A burger sounded better than a fight.” Jessup risks a smile.

  “And last night? At the party? What happened with you and Corson?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Jessup says.

  “Because we hear that you two had a scrap.”

  “No, sir,” Jessup says. “He yelled at me, accused me of some things, but he didn’t touch me, I didn’t touch him, just a lot of talk.”

  “He accused you of things? Like what?”

  Jessup stares at the cop. Pegs him at forty-five. Nothing like the fat cop they saw outside of Kirby’s last night. This one—he can read the name tag now, says “Cunningham”—is clearly trying. Got an agenda. He’s gone a bit soft, age creeping up, a small pudge over his belt, but Jessup bets he runs four, five times a week, lifts weights, but none of it enough to fight off the wrong side of forty. He’s got a wedding ring on, so probably kids, too.

  Jessup makes a decision.

  “Said I wanted to call him a nigger.”

  The yard is quiet. There’s the sound of a car heading away from them on the main road, but nothing else other than wind. Hawkins takes a step, his boots squeaking in the snow.

  Cunningham narrows his eyes. “You called him the N-word?”

  “No, sir,” Jessup says. “I did not. He said I wanted to call him a nigger.”

  “Did you?”

  Hawkins takes another step, grabs Cunningham’s elbow. “Hey. Come on now, Marcus.”

  Jessup doesn’t say anything. Cunningham keeps staring at him, and Jessup stares back, neither one willing to look away.

  DAVID JOHN

  Is that what this is about?” David John says. “Some boy is angry because he thought Jessup wanted to call him the N-word? That’s enough to get the cops all the way out here in the country?” He doesn’t emphasize the word “boy,” says it like it’s just part of the conversation, but he doesn’t have to emphasize it.

  Jessup says, “This is bullshit. I didn’t call him anything. Corson’s the one who said ‘nigger,’ not me. I don’t say that word.”

  Cunningham looks like he’d be happy to draw down on both him and David John if he thought he could get away with it, if there wasn’t anybody to see him. “For a word you don’t say, you’re saying it an awful lot,” he says, his voice almost a growl. “You’ve said it three times in the last minute.”

  Hawkins still has his hand on his partner’s elbow, and now he gently pulls, turning the black man a quarter turn. He says, “Come on, Marcus, let’s talk for a minute.”

  Cunningham is reluctant, but after a few more seconds of staring at Jessup and David John, a hard, tight, deep look in his eyes, he and Hawkins walk down the lane toward the road. They stop at the edge of the driveway, Hawkins talking quickly, emphasizing, Cunningham saying something occasionally, his arms crossed, even from fifty yards away the fury in his body as easy to see as the sun in the sky.

  David John stands his ground. Jessup is expecting anger from his stepfather, but there’s only sadness.

  “How much trouble are you in?” he says. “Did you get in a fight with this Corson kid at the party?”

  “No, sir,” Jessup says. And it’s the truth. “Motherfucker came at me, talking shit about you and Ricky—”

  David John cuts him off. “Watch your language.”

  The muscles in Jessup’s chest go tight. There’s a bruise on his ribs he hadn’t noticed earlier. He bites his teeth together, remembers that the best thing he can do is take a breath, don’t respond right away. Gives himself a second. Realizes that he’s exhausted. Drained. Played his ass off, gave up his body on the field, everything that happened with Corson, with the truck, the party, the accident, dropping Corson’s body into the car, staying out late with Deanne, up early with the sun flashing off the snow, dragging the deer out of the woods, and now this, standing in his yard, covered in blood. All he wants is a shower. All he wants is for all of this to go away.

  He’s still trying to decide what to say when David John softens. “Sorry,” he says. “You’re not a little kid. It’s just, you know, one of the hardest things about being in jail is how much swearing there is. It’s just not very Christian. Sets me on edge to hear it at home.”

  Jessup stifles a laugh. “Really? The swearing was one of the hardest things about being in jail?”

  Jessup can see the quick change from earnestness to humor, David John taking a glance to the end of the driveway and then broadcasting a smile. “Okay. Yeah, that’s as dumb as it sounds. But do me a favor, okay? Don’t swear like that. Don’t use the N-word. Don’t say ‘ain’t.’ Any of it. Don’t talk like that. It makes you sound dumb. Don’t give them any ammunition.”

  THEM

  Them. Jessup knows David John isn’t just talking about the cops. He’s talking about all of them. The liberal elite, the pointy-head academics and fake-news journalists who talk about the Blessed Church of the White America like it’s some fascinating study of inbreeding gone wrong, the black preachers grandstanding and calling what happe
ned in the alley a hate crime, not once acknowledging that Ricky was minding his own business, that he was doing the right thing, coming into work late at night to fix a plumbing problem, simply changing his shirt when those two boys attacked him. Them. The mayor telling every reporter who would listen how Ricky and David John don’t represent Cortaca, how Cortaca is a good town full of good people, how this should be considered a hate crime, Blessed Church of the White America a circus, everybody who goes there to pray a clown.

  And David John isn’t just talking about that, either; he’s talking about every politician calling for good Americans to pull themselves up by their bootstraps without ever stopping to ask if they have any boots, every teacher Jessup has ever had looking at David John and Jessup’s mom and seeing two parents who didn’t go to college, who didn’t grow up in a house where academic excellence was prioritized over paying the bills and making sure the heat and the water and the electricity stayed on, and conflating that with stupidity. Them. Because poor white always means dumb to them. They look and listen and think that a lack of a certain kind of knowledge—David John can fix almost anything, taught himself enough high school math to make sure Ricky got through algebra, can write letters home from prison that make Jessup’s mom, Jessup’s sister, Jessup himself feel like it’s going to be okay, but he can’t hang a diploma from a fancy university on the walls, can’t live in a house with a formal dining room, can’t drive a new car made with German engineering, can’t come home from work with hands that are as clean as when he left the house—means a lack of intelligence.

  That’s one of the things Jessup suddenly realizes he should have told Deanne: how smart David John is, how hard he works, how infuriating it is to see in all of the articles, to hear from all of the blowhards on television, the assumption that his stepfather is a dirt-chewing moron, living in a trailer out in the country like an inbred, a plumber wallowing in shit, a God-fearing member of the Blessed Church of the White America because he’s too stupid and lazy to think for himself. Every time somebody like David John—or Jessup or Jewel—says “ain’t,” says anything that makes them sound like their neighbors and kin, anything that shows that they are part of a tribe of people who don’t have things handed to them, who have to work for everything, it’s just proof to the people who were born on a greased chute of ease, every door opened, every opportunity given, every hand extended, that poor folks get what they deserve.

  David John did everything right by his family, putting in sixty hours a week mucking up piss and shit, taking on two boys who weren’t his blood and treating them like sons, a good husband, good father, teaching the kids to study, to work hard, salute the flag, and praise Jesus, and all of it, everything, balancing on a razor wire. Everything taken away because two black boys born into money—the sons of a police chief and a teacher, of two lawyers, their entire lives just handed to them on a platter—didn’t like Ricky’s tattoos. Them.

  Jessup knows exactly who David John means when he says “them.”

  ANSWER

  The cops are walking back over to Jessup and David John, but the black one peels off and gets into the squad car. He starts it up and backs the cruiser down to the end of the lane. Hawkins watches, waits, and then turns to David John and Jessup.

  Jessup shakes his head, “I didn’t—”

  “Shut the fuck up.” Hawkins is furious, almost feral. “I’m going to ask you this once, and I want you to tell me the truth. Honest answer, Jessup. You understand?” He looks at David John. “This can all go away, but only if your son tells me the truth. You got that? Is there anything I need to know about last night?”

  Jessup glances at David John. David John gives the smallest nod possible. “Go ahead, Jessup. Paul’s good people. You might not remember him because, well, for obvious reasons, being a cop and all, he tries to keep a bit of a low profile at the church. But he’s church people.”

  Hawkins softens a bit. “I’m glad you’re out,” he says.

  “Me too. Now, Jessup,” David John says, looking at him, “what happened?”

  Hawkins holds up his hand. “Hold on. Let me tell you what we’ve got, and then you tell me what happened. Want to make sure there’s no mistakes here.”

  Jessup wonders if the world is unspooling around him. His legs feel shaky. All he’s had to eat this morning has been a banana and a Snickers bar, running on three, four hours of sleep. He could use a shower, a sandwich, even a nap before he has to work. Instead, he’s standing on the driveway, talking to . . .

  Hawkins talking. Bunch of kids sleeping over at Victoria’s, sleeping it off, one of them heading out in the morning and seeing the sun glinting off the metal and broken glass of the Mercedes smashed up at the edge of the woods down the hill from the driveway. Corson in there, no seat belt, going to be an autopsy and they’ll check for alcohol and drugs. Assumption is that this is just a standard tragedy, kid turns off his car and puts it in neutral instead of park, too drunk to stop it. There’s always some dumb teenager on a Friday night, at least nobody else was in the car. That’s what they think at first, but Cortaca on a quiet Saturday morning means there’s plenty of cops showing up at Victoria’s, and plenty of cops means plenty of talking to plenty of kids, and Jessup’s name comes up.

  “So,” Hawkins says, “first assumption is that this is just some stupid nigger”—Jessup realizes he has to stop himself from flinching, the familiar word so unfamiliar out of this uniformed cop’s mouth, Jessup not lying when he told Cunningham it is a word he doesn’t use—“who doesn’t know how to use a parking brake, but with David John coming home yesterday . . .” He sighs. “We started roll yesterday morning with the chief of police talking about David John getting out of prison and that we should all be looking out, any excuse to pull you over. He’s got it in for you, and the orders are, if we’ve got anything, if anything is hinky at all with you, let’s make sure we get it on paper, cover our asses. And then, all of a sudden, here we go, it’s Saturday morning and another dead nigger—”

  David John interrupts. “We don’t talk like that in my house. This is a Christian household.”

  Hawkins squints. “Fine. Another dead Negro, which would be a good start in my book, but we’ve got all these high school kids blurting out a name, and that name belongs to David John’s kid. It’s not a good look, Jessup. Let me ask you again, is there anything I need to know about what happened last night?”

  There’s only one answer Jessup can give.

  “No.”

  FOREST, TREES

  Hawkins makes a show of it for his partner watching from the cruiser, writing things down in his notebook as he asks Jessup to walk him through everything that happened last night, football game through right this minute.

  “You don’t leave anything out,” Hawkins says. “You want to make this all go away, it’s a lot easier if I don’t get any surprises. Good or bad, you tell me.”

  “You can trust Paul,” David John says.

  Jessup wants it to be true, but he can’t help but think about what it means that Hawkins hides himself behind a badge and a uniform. Lying in wait. He knows he can trust his stepfather, but this cop is different. Doesn’t matter what David John says.

  He mostly tells it straight. Jessup tells him about Corson kicking out the taillight in the parking lot, dinner at Kirby’s, getting pulled over—though Hawkins obviously knows that part, doesn’t correct Jessup or remind him that last night he said he didn’t know what happened to the taillight—about Corson confronting him at the party.

  “About when did this happen?”

  “Eleven o’clock.” He pulls out his phone. Looks at his texts to and from Deanne. “I texted my girlfriend at ten fifty-five. This was, at most, five minutes after that. The whole thing with Corson only lasted a couple of minutes.”

  Hawkins stops writing. Looks at Jessup. “Some girl at the party videoed most of it. Keep that in mind. When you talk
about what happened, you stick to the truth.”

  For a moment, Jessup thinks he’s going to be sick. He can picture the video in his head: the grainy darkness, the headlights of Corson’s car, the interior light with the door open, the sick thud of Corson against the truck, the shaky movements of a girl holding her cell phone watching him lift Corson’s body into the Mercedes. But that’s not what Hawkins is talking about. The video isn’t from what happened in the driveway. Nobody saw that.

  Jessup tries to tell himself it’s as if it never happened.

  Hawkins continues. “You come off looking pretty good. You can tell Corson is drunk, and even though he’s clearly trying to provoke you, you don’t say or do anything dumb. Stand your ground without aggression, and the girl keeps it rolling. Even if you’d gotten into a scrap, that would have been okay. Anyway, the video follows Corson walking out the door with his friends, keeps shooting it until Corson gets in his car. Harder to see once she goes outside, but you can tell it’s Corson getting in the car by himself, driving away. Time stamp runs it from ten fifty-nine to about eleven ten.” He’s got his pen back on the pad again, writing. “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. I was embarrassed,” Jessup says. “Wanted to leave but thought that would look weak.” He tells Hawkins about the beers, sees David John scowl at the drinking, but that’s a conversation for another time. “Left about eleven forty-five.”

  “If we ask around, people will confirm that time frame?”

  “Yeah. They should. I mean, I don’t know how much kids were watching the clock.” The picture! He can hear how excited he sounds, almost pitiful, like a puppy looking for attention. “There’s a picture! Most of the guys from the team. Right before I left.” He scrolls through until he finds it on his phone. Hawkins and David John look at it. Jessup points at the time: 11:43 p.m.