“Then get your ass to class.”
He stops by his locker, stuffs the borrowed jacket away, heads to his first-period class, AP Spanish. He sits down and pulls out his phone. He isn’t really doing anything on his phone, but it helps him pretend to be busy so he doesn’t have to make eye contact, doesn’t have to see the way people are looking at him. Señora Jenkins seems like she’s oblivious to all of it, which makes sense, because she usually seems like she’s oblivious to everything. She teaches Spanish by the book, which is fine, because, like most subjects, it comes easily to Jessup. Once the bell rings he’s able to lose himself in the work; they are in the middle of their aesthetics and beauty unit, studying architecture in Barcelona. She runs a slide show for half the class, her notes clearly cribbed from the internet. The second half of the class is spent silently working on a persuasive essay.
In chemistry he sits in the back anyway, his benchmate a quiet kid who is only a junior and who has barely said a word to him all year. His jaw aches and he’s got a soft hum in his ear from where Steve hit him. When it’s time for gym class, he asks for a hall pass and goes to the nurse’s office. The nurse is old—she’s got to be close to retirement—but she’s nice, and she doesn’t take a lot of interest in Jessup. Gives him a bag of ice and lets him lie down on one of the vinyl couches. After a while, she asks him if he wants her to call his parents, and when he says no, she gently sends him on his way.
It’s lunch, and he thinks about just going to the library and trying to hide, but he feels himself hardening, some stiffness in his bones that won’t let him do it, David John’s “stand straight, look people in the eye” echoing in his head, and he goes to the cafeteria.
When he passes through the doors, there’s not a record-scratch of quiet, but there’s a tonal shift, enough conversations shuttering to make Jessup self-conscious. There’s a table with a couple of guys from the team, their girlfriends, and he can feel the tension rippling off them, the relief when he passes them by. There’s an empty table off to the side, and he sits there, pulls out his lunch, pulls out his AP European History textbook. Camouflage.
He doesn’t want to look like he’s rushing, but he also doesn’t think he could eat quickly if he tried; the sandwich sticks in his throat, dry wheat bread and sliced chicken left over from dinner, carrot sticks, an apple. He pretends to read the book, flips a page every minute or so, and soon enough it feels like the cafeteria is back to its normal buzz. But at some point he feels the table shift, someone sitting across from him.
Deanne.
SEVEN
She doesn’t say anything, so he says, “Hey.”
He wants to say so much more than just “Hey.” Wants to get on his knees and bury his head in her lap, beg her for forgiveness, tell her he’ll do anything to redeem himself—would he do anything? Stand on the table and shout his love. He wants to kiss her, wants to hold her against him, wants to taste her skin, wants to slip his hands up her shirt and undo her bra, feel the warmth of her body, the two of them alone in his truck, her car, the two of them alone anywhere, the desperation of being inside of her, of having her on top of him or being on top of her, of the way she looks at him, talks to him, the way she sees him. He wants to read her a poem, write her a poem, a song, an aria, wants to build a city around her, a thousand mirrors to catch the sunlight, to shine on her always.
“What’s so funny?” she asks.
“Sorry. I’m . . . There’s so much I want to say, and, you know, I lead with ‘hey.’ I guess it’s funny. That’s the best I can do.”
She doesn’t laugh, but there’s movement at the corner of her lips. She’s there. She’s present.
“I heard Steve beat you up,” she says.
He can’t stop himself from bristling. “He didn’t beat me up. He sucker-punched me.” Instinctually, he touches the top of his jaw. It feels warm under the skin, the fist marking him invisibly.
“You okay?”
“You mean from this, or in general?”
“Do you want to tell your side of things?”
“Do you want me to?” he asks gently. He’s trying not to be combative. And yet he can see that she’s torn.
“No. Not now. Sorry.”
He starts to reach out to take her hand, stops, pulls his hand back. “I understand,” he says.
“Do you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe?” He tries to smile and she tries to smile back. “I just . . .” He trails off. Tries again. “They aren’t my people,” he says.
“But you were there. Standing on the truck, Jessup. It’s all over the news. It’s everywhere. And you were part of it.”
“I told you, it’s complicated.”
“No,” she snaps. “It’s not.” She takes a deep breath, looks around. Jessup does, too. There are people watching them. Not as many as he would have thought, but enough. They lean in toward each other. Only a few days ago, they might have held hands across the table, and even now, he still wants to, wants to tell her he loves her. He does still love her, he does, but he also knows that if he says it right now, at this very second, he’ll be met with silence.
“It’s not complicated, Jessup. You can dress it up however you like, but there are two groups here. That church, those people”—he thinks how funny it is that she says “those people,” how bad that would sound if he said it about black people, about the protesters, about the Jews, how the things that get thrown in his face can never be shot back—“they all think that white people are better. It doesn’t matter what they call themselves, that they pretend to be some church, that they say they are true Christians. They’re racist. And if you stand with them—no, if you don’t stand against them—then you’re just as bad. It’s not complicated. It’s simple. You’re either with them or you’re against them. There’s no nuance, no middle ground. And you stood with them, Jessup. You stood up there with that awful, awful man. You can tell me that’s not your church all you want, but you were there.”
“My family—”
“You think I give a fuck about your family?” she snaps at him. “What about my family? What about me? You’re up there on a truck with that asshole who says that America is only for white people.”
“Deanne,” he says, his voice nearly a whisper. He can’t talk any louder, can barely talk at all. Thinks of David John hugging Earl. “I can’t,” he says. “I can’t turn my back on my family.”
She stands up, all rush and fury. However much she loved him, she hates him now. Jessup can see it written all over her. Knows that there’s nothing he can do, nothing he can say, no chance for redemption.
“That’s fine, Jessup. You might not be able to turn your back on your family,” she says, “but that means you’ve turned your back on me.”
She’s gone.
SIX
He sits there as long as he can, until people start filing out of the cafeteria to head to class, and then he packs his bag back up, goes to his locker, grabs Earl’s jacket, walks out of the school. He doesn’t sign out, doesn’t do anything other than go to his mom’s car, get in, and turn the key.
He’s already at the gate to the compound before he understands what he’s doing. Driving on autopilot. There’s police tape fluttering in the breeze, strange tentacles of history. The gate’s closed. He sits for a few minutes, looking, but there’s nothing to see. No blood, no bodies. No men standing guard with AR-15s, the White America Militia in hiding.
The protester who was killed was a woman. Francine Nicholson. A sociology professor at Cortaca University. Unmarried. Thirty-three. She’d driven two of her graduate students with her to the protest. He’s heard that the counterrally tonight is supposed to be in her honor. A memorial rally. A peace rally.
It’s going to be a disaster. The Women’s March on the pedestrian mall the weekend of President Trump’s inauguration drew close to ten thousand people. Cortaca is that k
ind of town. And he knows Wyatt, knows the crowd of white supremacists that is going to come in response to Brandon’s call, in response to TakeBack. They are going to be ugly. Brandon’s people aren’t coming for a peace rally. At least it’s New York, he thinks. No open carry laws, concealed carry tough to come by in the county, too, maybe that will keep things under control. Or just the sheer number of counterprotesters. No matter how many people Wyatt thinks are coming—three hundred, four hundred, a thousand—no matter how much Brandon Rogers is pushing this, it’s happening too quickly. It’s a Monday and there isn’t time for the white power groups to get here from all over the country; they will be outnumbered ten to one by counterprotesters.
Jessup closes his eyes, prays. He doesn’t ask for forgiveness. He doesn’t ask for anything for himself, just asks for the safety of his family, for Jesus to keep Jewel safe, to let Christ’s love be a beacon to guide her, for his mother and David John to find some sort of peace together away from all of this. But most of all, he prays that tonight, on the pedestrian mall, there is not another woman left lying on the ground like Francine Nicholson.
FIVE
The van isn’t parked in front of the trailer, so he’s surprised to see David John sitting at the kitchen table when he walks through the front door.
David John has a book in front of him. A Bible. He’s also got on a pair of reading glasses, which Jessup has never seen before. They make him look old.
“Why aren’t you in school?” his stepfather asks, not unkindly, just a question, a solicitation of information.
“Some kid hit me.”
“You hit him back?”
“No,” Jessup says.
David John takes off his glasses, rests them on his Bible. “Good. Turn the other cheek. You hungry?”
“No, sir. I ate lunch.”
“Jessup,” David John says. His voice is soft. “I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
But David John doesn’t answer that question. Instead he asks, “You still with that girlfriend of yours? The coach’s daughter?”
He’s too surprised to try to dissemble. Doesn’t deny it. Can only shake his head. He’s sure he looks as miserable as he feels.
“Because of all of this?” David John asks.
“Yeah.” Jessup is staring at the table. He looks up. “You knew?”
“Word gets around,” he says. “Maybe if she wasn’t a black girl nobody would have thought to say anything to me.” He picks up the glasses again. He’s careful with them, like they are a talisman of some kind, and when he puts them back on, Jessup has a sudden flash of what David John would have been like as a teacher. Gym. Or history. No, he thinks, social studies. David John would have been a good teacher. He’s patient. He can give himself in the service of another.
“Were you in love with her?” he asks. He watches Jessup for a beat and then says, “I remember what it was like to be your age. I’m not that old, you know. Your mom’s young, and I’m only a few years older than her. Being young isn’t so far in my past. Because you look miserable. You look like she broke your heart.”
Jessup tries to control it, but he feels his shoulders start to shake, feels his breathing go away from him. He closes his eyes tight, his face twisting.
David John pulls his chair over, leans in, holds Jessup like a son.
FOUR
David John tells him to go lie down for a bit. Don’t worry about Jewel, he says. He’ll call Jessup’s mom. She’s at Wyatt’s house, visiting with Wyatt’s mom, but she’s got to go to the grocery store anyway; she can grab Jewel on the way home.
He does. He doesn’t expect to fall asleep, but as soon as he closes his eyes he’s waking up, the afternoon gone by. He can hear the television, the gentle electricity of his mother laughing at something, Jewel asking a question, David John responding. It’s light out still, but it’s fading. It’s not snowing anymore, a temporary break in the action, the sky still pregnant with clouds. He checks his phone. The forecast calls for two to four more inches overnight, cold tomorrow, but then warming up Wednesday. The weekend is supposed to be sunny and in the fifties. He’ll go duck hunting.
Football practice.
He’s missing practice. They’re on the field right now. Still warming up, only half an hour in. If he hurries out the door right now, he can get there. He hasn’t missed a single practice in high school, not once, and he thinks, if he just tells Coach Diggins . . . Tells him what?
He sits up, puts his feet on the floor, but he knows he’s not going to practice. Not tonight. Tomorrow. Tomorrow he’ll go. He’ll ask Coach Diggins if he can talk to him before practice. He’ll apologize. He’ll be a man. Look him in the eye and say he wants to address the team, wants to tell them they are his brothers. All of them.
From out of nowhere he’s overcome with thirst. As if he slept in the desert, the sun baking him, sucking the moisture from his body, and he wobbles to his feet. He goes to the bathroom, sticks his mouth to the faucet. The water is cold. Take me to the river, he thinks. Baptism.
When he walks into the kitchen, he sees his family sitting at the table. David John is scrunched in next to Jewel, helping her with her math. He’s got his reading glasses on again and is holding a pencil, working through the problem set with her. His mom is reading another library book. He can’t tell what it is, but he knows her, knows it will be something inspirational. Something about faith and family. There’s a bowl of popcorn on the table, and David John has his free hand in there, rooting around. He glances up and sees Jessup.
“How was your nap?”
“Good,” Jessup says. And it was good. He needed it, he realizes. “I could have slept forever.”
His mom reaches for him, takes his hand. “We need to talk. It’s important. Can you sit down for a minute, honey?”
He does. David John and his mom are staring at him expectantly. It scares him, except Jewel is still working on her math. Whatever this is, she’s heard it already.
“What is it?” He knows he should be afraid that the cops have figured out what happened with Corson, but that feels like it happened so long ago that it never even happened. Instead he’s seized with the sudden fear that they are about to tell him that Ricky is dead.
But that’s not it.
“We’re moving,” David John says.
THREE
It’s so unexpected that Jessup can’t process it. All he can do is smile with relief. It’s not Ricky.
“You’re okay with that?” his mom says.
“Sorry,” Jessup says. “I just . . . I need a second. What do you mean we’re moving?”
“It’s not a new idea. Your mom and I have been talking about it for a year or so,” David John says. “Just talk. A fresh start. But I haven’t been able to get myself to do it. I didn’t like the idea of leaving the church behind. There’s a part of me that feels like I owe them. They were here for you when I wasn’t, and they’ve welcomed me back like the prodigal son or, oh, something like that, something that Earl could probably say better. And the church has been something I could share with you and your mother and Jewel.” He pats his chest with his hand, a twisted smile coming to his lips. “And Ricky, too. The church has been my home for so long that it’s like a family. And that’s the problem. Because the church isn’t family. You are. We are. We’re a family. Simple as that, really. Like I said last night, maybe I put the wrong things close to my heart. I know the idea is . . .”
Jessup’s mom jumps in. “After what happened this weekend, we think it would be good. There’s just . . . Well, it’s all of this. A police car outside our house all night, to keep you safe? And some boy attacked you at school today?” She’s still holding Jessup’s hand, and now David John reaches out and takes his other hand. He should feel weird about it, but it’s a familiar gesture, thousands of meals started with joined hands, bowed heads.
“Jessup,” David John says, “when I say a fresh start, I mean it. I know you don’t care about going to church—”
“That’s not true.”
“It is.” Tender. Insistent. “I think you believe in Jesus—”
“I do.”
“But I understand that the Church of the White America isn’t your church. Not anymore. Hasn’t been for a while. Not since Ricky killed those two boys. And that’s okay. And after what happened this weekend, it’s not our church either. I’m not . . .” He chokes up. Stops. Tries again. “You kids. Your mom. You come first. Family before anything. If I have to choose between the church or between Earl and you and your mom and your sister, that’s the easiest decision of my life.”
“What about Ricky?”
David John starts to speak, but Jessup’s mom holds up her hand, cuts him off. This surprises Jessup as much as what she says: “It’s too late for Ricky.”
Nobody speaks. There’s nothing to say.
It feels like both the worst thing and the best thing that’s ever been said. Jessup feels an immediate sense of relief, and then shame at feeling relief, and he doesn’t know what to do, so he looks closely at his mom, sees the puffiness around her eyes, sees the weight of the last few years on her face.
David John squeezes Jessup’s hand and says, “When I say a fresh start, I mean it. For you. For Jewel. Somewhere away from here. Out west. Boise, Idaho. Guy I met in prison has a brother-in-law who has a plumbing business. He knows who I am, but he’s a good Christian, believes in redemption. Said he’ll hire me on. Give me a chance.”
There is so much unsaid. So many things that Jessup knows he and David John will have to talk through in the coming years, but right now, that’s not on the table. He looks over at his sister. She’s looking back at him. She shrugs. “I don’t care,” she says. “I’ll be fine.”
And he knows it. Knows that she will be fine, but only if they leave, only if the Blessed Church of the White America is buried in their past, knows that the best thing he can do for his sister is to bless this, to make it easy for David John and his mother to follow through, to go to Boise, Idaho, to start a new life, unknown, unencumbered, her family history unshackled from anything that has happened here in a way that his can never be.
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