The parking lot is emptying rapidly by the time Jessup gets in his mom’s car. Jewel is quiet, but at least she doesn’t seem to be upset anymore. Mostly she’s complaining about being hungry. Not for the first time Jessup is thankful for the resiliency of kids.
Traffic is backed up heading out—there’s a checkpoint they have to go through and the news crews are still set up—but the car is nearly silent. Jewel borrows their mom’s phone to play a game, and Jessup takes his own phone out. He starts with the easy texts, responding to his friends with the same short message that it’s been crazy and he’s okay and he’ll tell them about it later. But even as he sends the texts he’s not sure the conversations will ever happen. It’s one thing to know about Jessup’s history, about Ricky and David John and the Blessed Church of the White America, but it’s another to deal with . . . this. Whatever this is.
Deanne is harder, though. He’s not sure what to text her. Thinks about it while the car slowly creeps forward. He can see cops checking the trunks of cars, asking for driver’s licenses, taking photos of the occupants. For an instant he panics, thinks of Wyatt’s car, but then relaxes. Wyatt isn’t dumb enough to try to sneak out his rifle right now. He’s got to have it hidden somewhere.
He types:
I’m okay. sorry. it’s been crazy. sorry I didn’t text you or call you
don’t know how much you know or what you saw. it’s bad, though. not me. I’m okay. but the whole thing is messed up. I want to see you. please. I need to see you
Sends it, thinks for a second, types:
I love you
THE QUIET
It’s weird to be back home.
David John goes into the kitchen and starts making sandwiches. Jessup’s mom says she’s going to lie down for a bit. Jewel turns on the television. For a second Jessup’s afraid she’s going to turn on the news, but she’s eleven, not thinking about it, and it’s a Sunday afternoon. She puts on the NFL, as if by reflex. The Giants are up two touchdowns.
Jessup goes into the kitchen and pulls down plates. Puts them on the counter next to where David John is making lunch.
David John glances at him. “Thanks.”
“No problem.”
“Want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” Jessup says.
David John nods. “Okay.”
Jessup starts to turn, but David John says, “Hey.”
Jessup isn’t sure what to expect, but all David John adds is “I’m sorry,” and then he hugs Jessup, holds on for a few seconds, and then releases him.
KILLING TIME
He can’t believe it’s only two o’clock. He keeps looking at his phone, unlocking it, waiting, but nothing comes back from Deanne.
He does a bit of homework. He’s mostly ahead of the game, but it never hurts to be prepared—he’s smart and he’s disciplined, but he’s also taking all AP courses—and he doesn’t want to watch football with Jewel and David John. Doesn’t want to do anything, really, but better something than nothing.
Around two thirty he hears a knock on the front door. Looks out his bedroom window and sees David John telling a news crew to get lost. David John doesn’t raise his voice, but he’s firm. The reporter and cameraman trudge back down the driveway to their satellite truck.
A few minutes before three, he gets a group text from Coach Diggins. No film study today. Canceled in light of “recent events.”
He opens his texts. Deanne hasn’t responded. Decides to move from his desk to his bed, starts reading The Merchant of Venice for AP English.
At four fifteen he wakes up, startled. He doesn’t remember falling asleep. Tries to figure out what woke him up. Something familiar. His phone. Dozens of texts, but only one he cares about, from Deanne:
I don’t want to see you
CARRIER PIGEON
He doesn’t do anything for a few minutes. Just keeps rereading the text from Deanne. He’s got other texts, too, but he can’t stomach any of it. He starts to go to the Fox News website and then stops. That’s not where Deanne would be looking. Goes to the New York Times.
It’s the top story. There’s a photo of him standing next to Brandon Rogers, embedded video. Brandon is identified by name—“prominent white nationalist Brandon Rogers”—but Jessup isn’t. He reads the story, watches the video of Brandon going down and taking Jessup with him, a short clip, thirty seconds long, pandemonium. It makes him feel sick
He goes to CNN’s website, MSNBC’s. The news sites aren’t interested in him—the story is Brandon Rogers and the violence—but he’s afraid to look anywhere else. Already knows what will happen if he looks at people he’s connected to from school, his friends, doesn’t want to see himself tagged over and over again, indelibly linked to what happened today.
There’s no running from it. No pretending that people who know him aren’t going to think he’s at the center of this story.
That doesn’t stop him from texting her.
please. can I just talk to you?
don’t bother
please
please
Deanne, please
please
just give me a chance
please
please, Deanne. I love you
don’t, Jessup. please don’t
SUNDAY DINNER
Jewel comes to his room around five o’clock. She’s got earbuds in and she doesn’t say anything. Just curls up at the foot of his bed for a while. She closes her eyes, but Jessup doesn’t think she’s sleeping. He tries reading The Merchant of Venice again but can’t concentrate.
Around six, their mom knocks on the door and calls them to dinner.
They leave the television on so they don’t have to talk. The Arizona Cardinals at the San Francisco 49ers. Jessup thinks of Coach Diggins in a 49ers uniform. The chicken tastes mealy to him, green beans stringy. He’s choking down the food, not really eating it. They are finishing up when the front door opens and Earl comes in. Snowflakes are on his coat and his hair like dandruff, already melting, the woodstove keeping the trailer warm. Earl looks tired. Jessup wants to hit him.
“Got anything left for me?” he says. Jessup’s mom, obedient, jumps to her feet and makes him a plate.
Jessup excuses himself—homework, he says—goes back to his room. Twenty minutes after that, he hears the murmur of voices outside the trailer. Looks out his window and in the shadows he can make out Earl and David John.
It’s still snowing, a light, drifting snow, steady but slight through the afternoon, an inch or two on the ground, enough to give a sense of freshness but not enough to be an inconvenience. The roads will be clear, Cortaca sending out the snowplows in full force, salt spread in even layers, blacktop gleaming through, the temperature only a couple of degrees below freezing. His stepfather and Earl are standing next to Earl’s truck, the porch light sputtering out around them, just enough for Jessup to tell the two men apart. Earl is energetic, almost bouncing, left hand in the pocket of his coat, gesturing with his right hand.
David John is still. A statue. Jessup can imagine his stepfather standing like that all night, standing like that for the rest of Jessup’s life. The snow piling on his shoulders, sloughing off his back, his arms, sun and moon rotating through, ice and rain, the trees budding and branching, the summer baking the ground, leaves drifting through the air, the snow coming again, an endless cycle of seasons and years, David John unmoving, constant. In some ways, that’s what it’s been like Jessup’s entire life, as far back as he can remember—those first five years before his mom met David John a blank spot, nothing there—David John has been steady. Even for the four years he’s been gone, he’s been a constant, Jessup’s mother cleaning houses and then working shifts at Target, Jessup cooking dinner, making sure Jewel did her homework, doing the laundry, cleaning their own house, splitting wood, whatever his mother couldn’t do, and Jewel, sitting at the table,
writing him letters, asking when he’ll be home, his presence—and his absence—woven through their lives, discipline, rules, and yes, hope, hope and love and family, hard work can lift us up, believe in God, do what is asked of you and we’ll be okay, we stick together, family above all.
Except David John does not stay still.
Earl punctuates whatever he is saying by shaking his finger and, so quick that Jessup at first thinks he’s imagining it, David John lashes out.
It’s a quick hook, snakebite fast, David John’s right fist into the side of Earl’s face. Earl takes a step back and then drops to the ground, rolls onto his back, lies there, holding his face.
David John steps forward, over his brother, and from where Jessup watches in his bedroom through the window, with the way the porch light casts shadows and the snow swirls down like sorcery, David John looms despite his size, smaller than Jessup, smaller than Earl, but ground down into something elemental, fierce, and Jessup is sure that if he were on the ground, in Earl’s position, he would not dare to stand up.
And yet, after David John finishes speaking, Earl nods, and then David John reaches down, extends a hand, helps his brother to his feet. When Earl is standing, the two embrace, hold each other for several seconds, and when Earl gets into his truck, David John shuts the door for him, a sort of tenderness in saying good-bye.
KINDLING
Jessup thinks about trying to go back to his homework. Thinks about joining Jewel in the living room—it sounds like she has a sitcom on the television now—or even calling Wyatt and seeing if he wants to do . . . something. Jessup doesn’t know what. Doesn’t know if he can face Wyatt again. But he hears the sound of David John working the woodpile, the heavy thud of the maul.
He goes out and pulls Earl’s borrowed coat off the hook, slips on his sneakers. He doesn’t see his mom, and Jewel doesn’t bother looking up from the television, just grunts when he says “hey” to her.
The cold air feels good. The ground is slippery with new snow, and he wishes he had his boots, but he can feel some of his anxiety lifting simply from exiting the trailer. He follows David John’s footprints around the side of the trailer. His stepfather has the floodlight on, a glare across the cleared ground in the backyard. There’re two cords of wood stacked up here, wood that Jessup bought from Kaylee Owen’s parents—her dad and brother cut wood during the winter, when the farm is quiet, hard work but good money—at a discount and hauled himself last spring. Enough to get them through the winter, the next, too, if they are careful, so much cheaper than the electric baseboards, turned on only as a last resort, the thermostat kept at fifty degrees so the pipes don’t burst if it gets too cold during the day when he and Jewel are at school, his mom at work, the fire in the stove burned down.
David John lifts another log onto the stump, hefts the maul, slams it down. It hits true, splitting the log. He takes the larger of the two pieces, lines it up, hesitates, turns.
“We’re good for kindling,” Jessup says. “I split a bunch in the spring, when I stacked it.”
“I know,” David John says. “But I needed to get outside. Feels good, you know?”
“The exercise?”
David John is breathing hard. Jessup’s not surprised. Splitting wood isn’t easy. He drops the head of the maul to the ground, holds onto the handle with one hand, coughs, and then spits in the snow. “No. Yeah, sure, the exercise is good. That’s pretty much all I did in prison. Worked out in my cell, worked out in the yard when I could, wrote you guys letters, read. I’m in the best shape of my life. I haven’t done anything since I’ve gotten home, and I’m itchy, but no, I don’t mean the exercise. I mean being outside. No fences. Nothing. I can go anywhere. Hard to believe I’m free.”
Jessup blurts out, “I saw you hit Earl.”
David John nods. “Yep.”
“He okay?”
“Probably. He’ll have a heck of a bruise.” He holds up his right hand, flexes it theatrically. “I should know better than to punch him in the face. My hand’s pretty sore.”
“Why’d you punch him?” Jessup asks.
“You could have been killed today,” he says. “Your mom. Jewel. I don’t know. I punched him because I was angry. He told me he knew what he was doing, convinced me he and Brandon could take care of things, keep you safe. I shouldn’t have done it, though. It was unchristian of me.”
“But you helped him up. You hugged him after,” Jessup says. David John looks at him keenly and Jessup blushes. “I was watching through the window.”
“Yeah, well, I also told him to tell Brandon that if he ever comes to my house again I’ll gut him.”
“But you hugged him.”
“He’s my brother,” David John says. “Look, you could have been killed. And Jewel. And your mom. That church has been . . . It doesn’t matter. I—no, we—need some distance. You’d think that being in prison would have given me time to figure that out. That I wouldn’t need to learn a lesson. But that’s beside the point. What matters is that Earl’s family.”
David John looks miserable. “You know I’d do anything for you, right?”
Jessup nods.
“And your mom and your sister?”
Jessup nods again.
“Earl’s my brother,” David John says. “That don’t change. But I told him that we’re done with the church. We’re not going back there.”
JESUS
Jesus,” Jessup says.
It’s sacrilegious and instantly funny—David John laughs and Jessup does as well, despite himself—but it’s all he can think to say.
“You know how a coyote will gnaw its own leg off to get out of a trap?” David John says. He moves the handle of the maul into his left hand and, with his right hand, taps his heart. “‘For God, Race, and Nation.’ FGRN. What a stupid fucking tattoo.”
If Jessup was shocked to hear David John say he was willing to walk away from the Blessed Church of the White America, that’s nothing compared to hearing David John swear. What a stupid fucking tattoo. The humor from just a few seconds ago melted into the night.
David John keeps speaking. “I had him put it right over my heart. ‘For God, Race, and Nation’? If I could do it again, do you know what I’d get?”
He doesn’t wait for Jessup to respond. Isn’t even looking at Jessup now. Is just looking at the ground, at the head of the maul. “I’d get your mom’s name inked right there. And Jewel’s name and your name. That’s what I should have had tattooed on my heart. My family. Close to my heart.”
Jessup asks it softly: “And Ricky?”
It sounds like a hiccup. David John crying.
Jessup doesn’t know what to do.
Thinks of David John carrying him off the field in his arms.
WEPT
Sounds: snow laying itself down like tissue paper unfolded; the wind rolling lightly against the tops of the trees; regret.
OWNERSHIP
David John wipes his eyes with the back of his free hand. He lifts the handle a few inches, lets the head of the maul thunk against the ground. Does it again.
“I’ll own it,” he says. “I’ve made some mistakes. And they’ve hurt you and your mom and your brother and your sister. But I’ll own it, and we’ll move forward. I don’t know that there’s anything I can do about Ricky. . . .”
Jessup thinks David John might start crying again, but his stepfather goes on: “I’m going to have to live with that. And don’t forget that I have to live with what Ricky did as well. Two lives gone.” He doesn’t name them: Jermane Holmes and Blake Liveson. “No,” he says. “Three lives gone. The men he killed, and your brother’s. And I think of their parents sitting around their kitchen tables the same way we sit around the kitchen table. There’s always an empty chair. You don’t think that weighs me down? I have to own all of it. I might not be able to fix it, but I can try not to make it
worse. That’s all you can do, right? Try to make amends? Isn’t that what I taught you your whole life? When you make a mistake, a real man stands up and takes responsibility, fixes what he can, tries to learn and be a better person, moves forward with his head held high. This church, it’s . . . I can’t undo what’s happened, but I can help us figure out what comes next. I—”
David John stops speaking, looks out over Jessup’s shoulder. Jessup turns, too, sees the sparkle of flashing lights.
PROTECTION
David John’s face flashes dark. He hands Jessup the maul. “Put this away. I’m going to go see what’s going on.” He hesitates. “Once that’s stowed, you come around front. Walk slow. Keep your hands empty, out of your pockets, where they can see them. Stay in the light. Can’t be too careful, okay?”
Jessup hangs the maul up in the shed. He takes his time. He feels shaky. They’ve come for him, he thinks. It’s over. But when he walks in front of the trailer, the lights on the cruiser are off and the two cops talking to David John don’t seem too concerned with him. David John sees Jessup, motions him over.
“They’re here to protect us,” David John says.
“What?” He turns to look at the two cops, realizes they are the same two cops he saw outside of Kirby’s on Friday night: the fat guy and the woman with the short hair. Both of them are white. They don’t look friendly, but they don’t look menacing, either.
The woman says, “You Jessup?” Jessup nods. She says, “Bomb threat for the high school got called in to Principal Stewart. Mentioned you specifically by name. Probably nothing. I expect there will be school in the morning. But in the meantime, Chief Harris wanted us to make sure there are no problems. Particularly after what happened today. We’ll be parked out here all night.”
Copperhead Page 26