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Copperhead

Page 20

by Alexi Zentner


  “She looks pretty already,” Jewel says. “She doesn’t need makeup.”

  “Yeah, well, it makes her feel better, kiddo,” he says. “She wears it like armor.” He’s less rushed than his mother is, brushes carefully, starts braiding. Jewel still squirms, but she isn’t whining. “I think you’re going to look like her when you’re older.”

  Jewel is right. Their mom does look pretty. Sometimes Jessup forgets how young their mother is. She’s only thirty-six. Fourteen when she had Ricky, nineteen for Jessup, twenty-five with Jewel. Most of the kids in Jessup’s grade at school have parents in their late forties, early fifties. He’s seen the way the fathers look at his mom when she comes to school events, football games, wrestling matches.

  He finishes braiding, doubles up a hair tie. “Hold on,” he says. Takes the blue ribbon on the table, winds it around the end of the braid, ties it in a quiet bow. He’s actually better at doing Jewel’s hair than their mom is. Too many mornings she’s out the door early to go to work. He’s spent more time than he cares to think about watching videos on the internet to learn how to do Jewel’s hair right. “Looks good,” he says. Pulls out his phone, takes a picture of the back of her head to show her. Jewel approves.

  Brandon claps his hands. “Okay, it’s time. Let’s go. Mrs. Michaels, after you.”

  Obediently, Jessup’s mom heads out the door, towing Jewel and then followed by David John and Jessup. Brandon has the four of them stand on the steps, arranges them like a family portrait, inserts Earl in the back. He looks at his minion, points his finger. “Okay, Carter. Now you should start filming.”

  He directs Carter back partway down the driveway so that he’s got a good shot of the front of the trailer, and then runs a couple of one-twos to check for sound. Carter’s got a headset on now, gives a thumbs-up.

  The news crews have unloaded, too. Three camera setups, all of them trying to make sure that the others aren’t in the shot. There’s a print reporter, too, with a photographer, but Jessup can’t remember who they are supposed to be, just that Brandon is excited for the attention.

  Brandon signs off on everything, stands at the bottom of the steps, and waits.

  He’s got it timed perfectly, because it can’t be more than a minute before three Cortaca PD vehicles turn into the driveway. Two cruisers and an SUV. The SUV is the lead car, and when it stops, Chief Harris gets out of the passenger seat. He’s holding some paper: the search warrant, Jessup realizes. The driver is the black cop from the day before, Cunningham. He turns off the car and steps onto the gravel, his hand resting on his pistol. Two cops get out of the first cruiser: a middle-aged woman who looks Latino and whom Jessup has seen around town occasionally, and a young, light-skinned black man. The black cop steps out of the passenger seat holding a shotgun. The woman was driving, and as soon as her boots hit the gravel, she pulls her pistol, leaves it hanging by her side. The two cops in the second car are white. Both of them built like football players gone to seed. Again, the one in the passenger seat is carrying a shotgun, the driver drawing his pistol and keeping it pointed at the ground.

  Jessup can see Chief Harris realize too late how this is going to look on camera, the panicked look coming over his face about the same time that Brandon steps forward, raises his hands in a mocking gesture, and says, “Really? Is this necessary? You’re coming here with guns drawn? We’re just trying to go to church.”

  ROUND ONE

  Chief Harris tells his cops to put their guns away, which leaves five cops standing behind him awkwardly, unsure what to do while Harris goes to hand David John the papers. Brandon makes a big show of taking the papers instead, reading them all the way through before handing them over to David John.

  “You can search all you want,” Brandon finally says, “but you’re going to have to move your cars.”

  “Excuse me?” Cunningham looks at Brandon like he wishes it were just the two of them in a windowless room, Brandon cuffed to a table, Cunningham holding a sock full of batteries.

  Brandon is playing to the cameras. “Like I said, we’re just going to church. Are we under arrest?”

  “This has nothing to do with you, Mr. Rogers,” Chief Harris says. The woman cop snickers.

  Jessup can tell that it bothers Brandon a bit, imagines him in a cardigan, trying to run a children’s television show instead of wearing an expensive suit and putting himself forward as the new face of the movement.

  He gathers himself nicely. “Well, then, if we’re not under arrest, then why don’t you move your vehicles out of the way so we can head to church. I think out on the road would do nicely.”

  “Where is Mr. Collins’s pickup truck? I understand he has a 1994 Ford Ranger that he was driving Friday night. Our warrant includes Mr. Collins’s truck as well as the premises.”

  Brandon looks genuinely confused. “Collins?”

  David John quietly tells him that Jessup never changed his name. Brandon nods. There’s a flash of irritation, something that he hadn’t counted on, but he’s more interested in Chief Harris and playing to the cameras.

  “Well, as you can see, Jessup’s truck isn’t here. He spent some time doing ministry work at the church yesterday, and wouldn’t you know it? Engine trouble. No, if you’re looking for his truck, you’ll have to come on out to the Blessed Church of the White America.” He feigns a look of concern. “Oh. But then, I’m guessing you don’t have a search warrant for the Blessed Church of the White America, do you? So sorry about the inconvenience, but I’m sure you can find one of your liberal judges—one who doesn’t go to church—who’s free on a Sunday morning. Now. About moving your cars?”

  The cops grumble, but Harris shuts them up. While they are moving their police department vehicles, Brandon steps in front of the cameras, holds an impromptu news conference, which Jessup finds funny. In the movies, there’s always a scrum. Here it’s just three cameras, a slouchy middle-aged guy holding out a tape recorder, and a younger guy holding a notebook, his hair longer on top and buzzed on the side—must be from TakeBack, Jessup thinks—while Brandon acts like he’s in front of a hundred cameras.

  “—jackbooted thugs. We’ve got kids in hoodies selling drugs and carjacking law-abiding citizens, but instead of dealing with the problem of urban crime, the Cortaca Police Department has decided to come after a young man simply because our beliefs don’t fit their liberal, global ideology. Jessup is a good kid. Honor roll, three-sport athlete, a literal choirboy at the church.”

  Jessup has to stifle a laugh. Choirboy. Brandon’s an asshole, and he’d love to make the guy eat a fist, but he’s good with the camera. Jessup stays off to the side, watches the cops coming back down the driveway.

  “Look,” Brandon continues, answering a question from the reporter from CNN, “there’s video of this so-called incident on Friday night. And it shows clearly that Kevin Corson was a troublemaker, a common thug menacing a boy who did nothing wrong. And despite Corson’s foul language and the unchecked animal aggression he displayed, Jessup stayed polite and calm.”

  The cops walk by stoically, making it a point not to look at the cameras. One of the big white cops hesitates, giving Jessup’s mom a nod that seems to acknowledge how intrusive this is, a tacit apology for the fact that he’s going to be pawing through the kitchen and trampling all over the trailer.

  “The only reason—the only reason—the government is here is because we’re white. If those roles had been reversed, if it had been a white boy yelling like that at a black kid, all of it caught on video, do you think the cops would be arresting the kid who got yelled at? Of course not. This is nothing more than a witch hunt, the Cortaca Police Department and the judge cowering behind political correctness.”

  Round one to Brandon.

  CARAVAN

  Brandon is another ten minutes with the reporters. He says a lot of things, even calls for a rally in Cortaca tomorrow night, says tha
t they are going to set up on the pedestrian mall, stand up for the rights of oppressed white people everywhere, but mostly, Jessup thinks, Brandon repeats himself. He’s only got a certain list of talking points. When the reporters start packing up, he comes to get Jessup and his family. “Okay,” he says, “they might shoot a little B-roll, but they’re all going to meet us at the church.”

  Jessup’s family gets in the car and everybody else starts to wander off, leaving Jessup and Brandon alone for a moment. Jessup grabs Brandon’s arm. “What the hell?”

  Brandon immediately shakes him off, his face twisting, feral. “Get your fucking hands off me.” He keeps his voice quiet. “And watch the cameras.”

  Jessup lets go. Takes a quick look. Nobody seems to have noticed. “You’re calling for a rally?”

  “I told you I was thinking of it.” Calm now. Composed. A stone thrown in a pond, the ripples subsided, no telling how deep, how dark it is under the water.

  “I’m not down with this. I don’t want to be part—”

  “Shut your mouth.” He doesn’t raise his voice—Jessup doubts anybody could hear them unless they were standing right next to the two of them—but it’s so firm and so cold that Jessup does shut his mouth. Brandon continues. “I don’t care what you want or don’t want, Jessup. This is the way it’s going to be. Now get in your damn car.”

  Brandon pulls out first, the black car riding low on the gravel, his camera-toting sycophant beside him, Earl’s truck second. Jessup is in the backseat of his mom’s car, sitting next to Jewel, their mom up front with David John, their car the last in line.

  It takes Jessup a few minutes to calm down, to notice how quiet Jewel is. All four of them are quiet, but he’s worried about Jewel. Doesn’t want her here. Doesn’t want any of this.

  His mom keeps glancing at David John. They are nearly at the church when she finally asks. “Why did he say that about the truck?” She turns to look at Jessup, too. “Why did he say that about your truck? It’s like . . . it’s like he was daring them to come out to the church.” She folds her arms, stares out the windshield.

  David John’s voice is quiet and steady. He’s a rock for Jessup’s mom to count on. Jessup knows that whatever happens to him, David John will move heaven and earth for Jewel, for his mother. “Don’t worry about the truck. Earl’s taken care of it. It’s gone. It’s not at the church. Look, Brandon knows what he’s doing,” he says. “Earl and him have something cooked up. I don’t know all the details, but he’s smart. We’ve just got to trust him, okay? And he’s got good lawyers lined up. That’s more than Ricky and I had. Jessup didn’t do anything wrong, but it’s a witch hunt. Brandon and Earl are trying to change the conversation, okay?”

  GATEKEEPERS

  The caravan backs up at the turn into the church. There are two men standing in the bed of a pickup truck parked off to the side behind the gate. Both of the men are wearing bulletproof vests in desert tan, an odd color choice, Jessup thinks, for upstate New York, and both are holding unmodified AR-15s that they must have already owned before the passage of the New York SAFE Act. One of the guns is wrapped in a camouflage skin, but it doesn’t make the silhouette look any less like a military weapon. Wyatt’s dad has an AR-15 and Wyatt and Jessup have taken it out a few times. It looks badass—it’s just a civilian version of an M16—and it’s fun, but Wyatt’s a snob and always goes back to his Remington 700 for shooting from any distance.

  Jessup’s mom looks startled. “What are they doing?”

  David John pats her leg. “Don’t worry about it. Brandon and Earl think we might have some protesters today. They’re just there for security. And to put on a show for the camera crews.”

  “I don’t like the way it looks,” she says. They are talking softly, the way adults talk in a car, as if there is some magic that makes it so the kids in the back won’t listen in. “And I don’t like Brody. I’ve told you that.”

  “Well, you don’t have to like him,” David John says. “The two of them are just there to keep things civil.”

  Jessup doesn’t know the man holding the camouflaged rifle, but the other one is Brody Ellis. He’s old, in his fifties, a huge guy, six foot, with a belly that makes him waddle. He looks ridiculous with his body armor. He’s the kind of guy who tells little girls they’re going to grow up to be lookers. He asked Jessup’s mom out on a date a few months after David John went to jail. Didn’t seem put off by the fact that he was close to twenty years older than her or that she was still married or that they were all part of the same congregation. He’s got his AR-15 on a sling, the rifle pointed down, but he’s got his fingers hovering over the trigger guard in a way that makes Jessup nervous. He doesn’t like any of this. Brody gives a sloppy salute as the other guy hops down from the bed of the truck and opens the gate so their small caravan can drive through.

  HOMECOMING

  Jessup hasn’t been through the gate in more than four years. Not since the day Ricky and David John were arrested. It wasn’t a conscious protest—not at first. He just woke up the first Sunday and told his mom he wasn’t going to church. She didn’t press the issue too hard, and it became a habit.

  If he is honest about it, he has missed going. It’s a community. Every Sunday as long as he could remember. First going to the Bible school—really more of a babysitting service with small helpings of Jesus than anything—and then, as he got older, joining Ricky and David John and his mom in the barn for services. Him and Wyatt sneaking off sometimes after services to go play in the woods or shoot .22s on the firing range in the back acres, once a month sitting down at the long tables in the social hall for potluck dinners, mac and cheese, iceberg lettuce salads, fried chicken, Oriental coleslaw, oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, lemonade and iced tea, let us all bow our heads and pray, dear Jesus, remembers Jewel as a baby, six weeks old, in a white gown, christened in front of the congregation, mewling, her tiny fingers wrapped around Jessup’s thumb.

  The swings are still in front of the preschool building, the wood more weathered than he remembers, the plastic slide-and-fort combo seemingly reduced in size so that Jessup can now look over the top of the contraption. There’s an addition on the preschool building that’s new—Jessup’s mom says it’s been bursting at the seams because of babies and a growing congregation the past couple of years—and behind that, a big pavilion with forty picnic tables on a concrete slab that wasn’t there the last time Jessup came to church.

  Most everything else looks the same to him but also different, smaller, faded or with new paint that looks too fresh to him, neither way quite right. Still, it’s familiar: a homecoming of sorts. The open meadow looks warm, friendly, even with the flat light of this cloudy morning and the threat of snow, a few dollops of leftover white among the green. He wishes it were just a normal Sunday morning, that he were coming to sit in the barn, listen to Uncle Earl preach the gospel, get to his feet and belt out, “Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” his voice rising in joy with three hundred other people.

  The parking area has been expanded, gravel carefully graded, plenty of space for the whole congregation, and even though Brandon and Earl pull behind the house, David John parks right in front of the barn. “Good to be back,” he says. There are a few cars and trucks already in the parking lot. Two likely belonging to the guys with the guns at the front gate, Jessup thinks, but he also recognizes Wyatt’s pickup. Looks around but doesn’t see Wyatt anywhere obvious.

  CREATURE COMFORTS

  Earl’s house is country nice: wide-plank pine floors worn smooth, a wood-fired stove in the sitting room, the rooms small by modern standards, but comfy. He got married when he was twenty, divorced at thirty, but in the dozen or so years that followed, he’s kept his house clean with a fastidiousness that would have caused rumors if he hadn’t worked his way through the single women in the congregation. For the past year, he’s been dating a divorced mother of two about ten years his junior. Je
wel isn’t a fan of Earl’s new girlfriend, says she’s “picky,” whatever that means.

  Earl tells Jewel she can watch television as long as she keeps the volume down. “Have to finish my sermon, sweetheart,” he says. He pats Jewel on the head, hands her the remote. He might set Jessup on edge, but he’s been a good uncle, at least to Jewel. Jessup’s never asked his mom or David John, but it suddenly occurs to him that if anything happened to them, Earl would be Jewel’s guardian. He’s already her godfather, which makes sense since he does have his own church. Earl disappears upstairs to his office, and Brandon excuses himself, says he has to make some phone calls, heads back outside.

  Jessup goes into the kitchen with David John and his mom, who puts up a pot of coffee. The tie feels uncomfortable, and he tugs at it. His mom notices and swats at his hand.

  “You leave that be,” she says, and then looks at David John with a pained look. “You sure this is a good idea, with these reporters? And baiting the cops like that?”

  David John takes out two coffee cups, looks at Jessup until Jessup shakes his head, closes the cabinet. “That’s the plan, honey. Earl and Brandon think the best thing to do is make this a big story. Turn it so that it’s not about Jessup, but so that it’s about the church and how the police and the liberal politicians are always looking for somebody to blame. Brandon’s good at this. He understands how the media works.”

  “But it is about Jessup.”

  “No, it’s not,” Jessup snaps. His voice is sharp enough that his mother is taken aback, and David John raises his eyebrows.

  His stepfather doesn’t raise his voice, though. “Don’t talk to your mother like that.”

 

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