When I look at David Westwood, I don’t see fear in his eyes. I see rage. A symbol of what some teenagers have come to represent. An angry generation. Raised by parents of that selfish ilk that led to defeat in Vietnam. This is the inheritance of parents who, when they were younger, decided to skip out on their patriotic chores.
But he wasn’t a generation, David thought. If he was, he would have blended in. He would have done the things that generations do. Not something that caused everyone to flee from him, like a monster. He wasn’t a symbol. A symbol stood in for others, but David never met any others. He thought he had, with Julia, but he was wrong. He read the closing words with a tight throat.
By the time David Westwood leaves prison he will be a man. Hopefully he will emerge into a peaceful world. And given his violent tendencies, hopefully he won’t feel like the world has outgrown him, or rejects him the way they must for committing this crime.
David was led out in leg irons and handcuffs and placed in his seat by an expressionless bailiff who towered over him and clasped his hands in front to show his biceps. Barry was at the prosecutor’s table going over some papers. The judge had not yet arrived, but the courtroom was completely packed. David turned around and looked at the people sitting behind him. His eyes rested on Mr. Hopkins when a grown man’s voice boomed from the back row.
“Turn around, son. None of us want to see your murdering face!”
David obeyed quickly and stared at the table in front of him. He heard a woman whisper, “Murdering bastard,” and he squeezed his eyes shut.
Moments later, a familiar laugh rang out from the back of the room. David watched Elijah Fennecker take his usual seat in the courtroom. David stared at him, and waited for the guy to make eye contact. After he shook a few hands, he finally gazed across the room. His face dropped; he sat down. David smiled at him. It was forced, but he wanted to smile. Elijah looked sideways at him. So much like a turtle. Recoiling into the loose flesh of his neck. Unable to stare directly into the horror of David’s smile.
There was a strange buzz in the room, almost separate from the business of the day. David could hear the people murmuring about something excitedly. The sound of newspapers flipping wildly.
Barry had the day’s New York Times on top of his briefcase. David imagined his lawyer would go out to the park afterward, have a sandwich, check out the paper. He read the top of the paper and was surprised. He’d lost track of events outside. October 26, 1983. 1,900 US Troops with Carribbean Allies Invade Grenada . . .
David looked over his shoulder again at the packed benches behind him. The parents of Dallas, James, and Felix were all sitting in the row behind Elijah. David looked at James. A faint scar glistened on his forehead, the sight of which burned a pit in David’s stomach. James’s parents sat beside him, and on the other side of them sat Felix with his perpetual scowl. David took notice that James and Felix didn’t seem to be speaking to each other.
Dallas’s parents were sitting behind the Cassidys. David stared at Mr. Darwin. A stern expression made his pale face look like a mask, the muscles in his jaws clenched tightly. David couldn’t peel his eyes away, not even when the man’s wife glared back.
Something nudged David forward in his mind. This was important: the look on Mr. Darwin’s face. It was the face of a father without answers. Seeing that look, David could only think of the horror movies—a man petrified at the sight of a monster. And in this case, David was the monster. He knew that now. It wasn’t time, or coincidence. It wasn’t rage, or humiliation. Neither was it absurdity—the incalculable cruelty of heaven’s random summoning of souls. It had been his decision to choke the life out of a boy. To rob him of the luck of falling in love, because he himself had been turned away by it. He thought of those tragic candy bars lying melted in the sand, and it couldn’t have been clearer to David. He was an executioner. He was a monster, just like they’d said. A monster now standing before his own wreckage and watching Mr. Darwin’s face, scrubbed expressionless by a love he’d never get to feel again.
But he wouldn’t stay a monster forever. They needed to know that. It suddenly occurred to David that these people would be gone from his life in a matter of moments, and it became important that they realize he saw what they saw. He knew Barry wanted his silence, but he was bursting with a desire to speak.
The judge entered the room, banged his gavel, and told David to rise. He obeyed, getting to his feet with Barry’s help. His knees were shaking, and his head swirled as if he’d stood up too fast.
“Counsel, the people have understood that your client wishes to change his plea to guilty, is that correct?”
“Yes, Your Honor,” Barry answered.
“Mr. Westwood, you are hereby entering your plea of guilty. Is this correct, young man?”
“Yes sir,” answered David, shaking all over, body and voice. He turned his head to look at Michael Darwin again and heard the crowd collectively gasp.
“Turn around!” a man shouted from the back of the room.
“Counselor, please advise your client,” the judge said as he smacked his gavel.
But David wouldn’t turn around. He gazed upon Mr. Darwin as if he wanted to speak directly to him, and another shout erupted from the back of the courtroom. Barry yanked on his arm.
“Focus on the judge, David, I’m right here,” he said.
David turned his attention back to the front of the room. “I won’t stay a monster,” he whispered to Barry.
“Shhh.” Barry patted David on the shoulder.
“I’m a monster, but I won’t be like this forever,” David whispered.
The judge was rifling through a file, calmly licking his fingertips. “Counselor, your client is how old?”
“Sixteen, Your Honor,” said Barry, clearing his throat. “He just turned sixteen a few weeks ago.”
The judge crossed something out. Shook his head. “Very well,” he said. “Mr. Westwood, under the terms of your plea to voluntary manslaughter, I hereby sentence you to serve no less than eight years, and no more than fifteen years in a juvenile penitentiary until your eighteenth birthday, whereby you shall be remitted to a maximum-security prison to complete the term of your sentence.”
Eight years for a life, David thought. He turned to look at Mr. Darwin again. The man’s face hadn’t changed, and David wanted him to know that he could see himself now. Clearly. Mr. Darwin didn’t need to be afraid of him.
“Knock it off and turn the hell around!” a woman screamed as the judge lifted his gavel.
“Counselor, is there some fascination your client has with these families?”
Barry pulled on David’s arm again. “No, Your Honor, please proceed.”
“I mean, is there something your client wishes to say?”
Barry leaned over to David’s ear. “I’m right here. You’re not alone,” he whispered, and straightened. Then: “We’d like to proceed, Your Honor.”
“Mr. Westwood,” the judge glared at him from the desk, “I hope I’m only imagining it when I say that I have observed your behavior in this courtroom and can only characterize it as the same callous indifference you likely used during the commitment of your heinous crime. It is my sincere hope that in eight years, I won’t just be unleashing another criminal out into the unsuspecting public. When I look in your eyes, and observe your demeanor, I am very skeptical. I’m not sure there’s anything left redeemable in your body, but I do hope you prove me wrong.
“It deeply saddens me to see this today. At this very moment, young men only slightly older than you are landing on foreign shores to defend the very freedoms of this great nation that you seem to despise. It pains me to see you, and think what could have been a more heroic fate. I want to make something perfectly clear, Mr. Westwood: I do not want to see you back in my courtroom again. You, for that matter, do not want to see me ever again, for if you do, rest assured I will do whatever is in my legal capabilities to ensure you never return to society. God be with you.
And may He provide the forgiveness that this court is not so anxious to provide. You’ll be taken away to begin your sentence immediately. This court is adjourned.”
With that he banged his gavel.
The bailiff grabbed David by his arm. David looked over at Barry. The finality of it glued his feet to the ground. He scanned the courtroom for his parents. People were crying and holding one another.
Suddenly a voice on the far end of the courtroom screamed: “Eight years is an outrage!” The judge banged his gavel again.
David was led to an open door beside the bench, Barry trailing behind him. David turned one last time to the restless audience. They were on their feet. He noticed a face, bloodred with anger, lean forward. It was an old man, pudgy, with a thin comb-over and a mustache. He pointed a finger at David.
“I hope they get you in there, scumbag!” he screamed. The judge demanded order. “Better watch it,” the man continued. “I hope you get it right in the ass, you little punk.” His finger was shaking.
The door closed behind David, as more people began to shout at him. He could only hear the muffled sounds of rage and hissing in the courtroom.
“Well, that didn’t go exactly as I’d hoped,” Barry said, exhaling.
But David’s mind could only hold a picture of Mr. Darwin’s face, sitting humbly in his seat. His grief, pointing the way to David’s redemption. With Barry’s hand resting on his back, so much like a father, David readied himself for the locked doors to open.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
BENEATH A BLANKET OF BURNING STARS, James lay on his back and watched the faintest puff of steam rise from his exhale. Alone, but not lonely. Spybot’s chin rested loyally upon the floor of their fort, his eyes turned up toward the opening in the roof, brow and forehead wrinkled. In rest he didn’t look so worried. His body was warm under the soft pats of his new master. James made Leonardo’s Vitruvian Man with his arms and legs. A steady breeze blew a handful of leaves from a tree. Some dropped noiselessly into the forest. Others, James imagined, must be settling on his newly constructed roof. It was October. The smell of cut grass and chlorine had gone, replaced by woodsmoke from the scattered chimneys around the neighborhood. He was still wearing his shorts, but he had on Kevin’s jean jacket.
It was part boredom, part need to escape the heat in his living room, that had driven him out to the fort—with his father endlessly stoking the fireplace and stacking logs atop the flame like he was building a pyramid.
Sheltered from the October wind by the fort’s walls, James could hear the structure groaning in the swaying trees. He wasn’t afraid. His father had done a thorough inspection, pulling with all his weight on the support beams and driving in some fencing spikes to make sure it was stable. Instead of worry, James enjoyed the sensation of movement; it kept him from having to lie still and remember. He could stare up at the sky. Rub the silky underside of Spybot’s ear. Watch the blinking strobes of red lights from airplanes without feeling sad.
His only melancholy came when he’d hear the report of Felix’s bat hitting a baseball into the net Mr. Cassidy had tied into the canopy of trees above him. Moments before, the light in Felix’s backyard had turned on and James lay perfectly still to listen, as Felix began to gather his baseballs strewn about the yard. The first crack had startled James; the ball ricocheted off Felix’s fence, making it rattle. Spybot’s ears flickered like raised thumbs. They were only yards apart, but James was determined not to sit up in the window and try to talk to him.
His school psychologist, Mrs. S, had told him that Felix was trying to get better on his own. And when James said that Felix wasn’t cut when the fight happened, she told him he needed to heal in other ways.
James heard another crack of the bat and watched the shadow of a ball darken in and out of view, rolling along the net into the air and then back to earth.
Thinking of Mrs. S caused James to remember the itch he used to feel around his scar, and he reached up to touch it. He was well enough away from his mother to poke at it freely. At home, when he’d press on the purple tube of raw flesh that ran from his forehead down to his cheekbone, his mother would yank his hand away. Tell him it would never heal if he kept touching it.
But it was his wound. His head. His itching. Besides, his father had assured him it would heal. The day after they watched David Westwood get pulled across the courtroom to prison, his father had caught him pressing on it at the kitchen table. He’d asked him if it still hurt. James said no.
“It’s just ugly now.”
His father rubbed his shoulder and mussed his hair. “Don’t worry,” he said. “A thing doesn’t stay ugly forever.”
It would heal. Or it wouldn’t. Either way, James felt a sense of satisfaction when he pressed on it. Then it just became a habit after the itching stopped. In the mirror he’d watch the deep purple turn white under his fingers, and when he let go, the color would flood back urgently. He’d play a game of “way back” from time to time, pressing down and saying: “Last year.” Letting go and saying: “This year.” Last year. This year. When I was seven. When I was eight. When I didn’t grow nervous at the sound of curse words . . .
A dull thud resounded from Felix’s backyard, and James could tell that Felix hadn’t hit the ball squarely. He didn’t need to watch for the flight of it through the opening he’d left in the roof, but he did anyway.
It’s been said that openings—doors and windows—are opportunities to invite the spirits to enter. Beseech them to depart. Perhaps this was partly why James left the roof open. Having brought the piece of plywood up and dropped it into place—he had then looked at the sky and thought better of it. A hole in the roof would remain, and James would suffer the labor of sweeping out the snow that dropped inside.
He had done the hard things. He hadn’t used any shortcuts. A beastly sort of courage was full-grown inside him and he could sense that others noticed. Kevin. His father, who would recite Bible stories to him with a fearful kind of reluctance, continually interrupting his own narration to remind him that men should be careful of their own strength. James didn’t understand. Why his father suddenly believed these stories hadn’t escaped him. It was probably how the Bible got written in the first place. Terrible things happened and then guys got together to try to explain it and to make a rule so it wouldn’t happen again. A bunch of things written to fix things after the mistake was already made.
What James now possessed wasn’t exactly fearlessness, for much of his calculations when building the fort were born out of fear. It was more genuine than bravery, which is what Kevin had called it once, on the car ride to the courts. It frightened his mother too, for lately she’d been telling him it was okay to feel like things were unfair. That he didn’t deserve what happened to him. But fair’s got nothing to do with it. Deserve is nothing more than whoever flips the coin.
James heard his father’s sniffle well before he watched his head emerge through the hole in the floor. In the moonlight Ivan’s white hair at the temples appeared to be forced outward from the weight of his tweed cap. Spybot rose to his feet, crossed the fort, and licked Ivan’s hand.
“Why does he always have to lick everything?” Ivan asked as he hoisted himself into the fort and sat, Indian style, against the western wall. He pulled off his cap and James saw that he was staring up at the square hole in the roof. Ivan nodded. Told James he thought he could use some company. He slid down to his back and inched closer to his son. “I can see the draw of being able to stargaze,” Ivan said. In the dark, James could only hear his voice, and make out the blackened outline of his nose.
Spybot came back to James’s side and dropped down. James put his hand back on top of the dog’s head, but kept his eyes focused on the sky.
It would take a long time, perfecting the fort. He would be working, fixing. Building something larger than himself. He was lucky. He’d figured out that the world was made of builders and wreckers, and Turnbull was full of wreckers. David Westwood and
his friends were wreckers. Felix’s brother wanted to be a wrecker. But builders made things possible.
He probably would never truly stop building the fort. He’d paint. He’d gather more wood, and start a second floor. This time with more windows, and places to hang bird feeders, a room for Spybot. Another floor for his parents and one for Kevin. The top floor would house the wire man that Dallas had twisted for him, and a bin for more collected friendship wire. A couch for Felix when he eventually came around.
Yes, he thought, reaching over to draw Spybot closer, he’d build and build and reach the top of Turnbull, where no one could touch him. He’d gaze out over the town and see over the rooftops, the smoke rising from the chimneys. The Long Island Sound stretched before him. The Atlantic Ocean, a blue carpet beyond.
His dream must have masked the sensation, for James suddenly realized his father had reached over and placed his hand on top of his sneaker. Then he felt the hand tighten its grip and soon his father was gently rocking the foot side to side. When he stopped, he left his hand there. James let it rest. The hand felt warm in the increasing chill.
Another thump, followed by the loud smack of the ball hitting the slats of Felix’s fence. James heard someone clapping shortly after, and then Mrs. Cassidy called out something in her singsong voice. James wanted to know what she was telling her son, but she was speaking too softly.
The wind was beginning to pick up. Spybot swung his head over and rested his chin back on James’s leg. The Big Dipper bowed to James from behind the opening curtain of clouds. He heard the bat again. The ball seemed to disappear into the swirling branches.
The wind was the only thing you could see, hear, smell, taste, and touch, James thought as he inhaled and took in the faint scent of cinnamon and pumpkin pie. He remembered Dallas’s father saying that this was why man never loses faith in basic things.
Little Beasts Page 24