The Sacrifice

by Robert Whitlow

  “Me?”

  “Yes. I’d like to look over his schoolwork and see if there is anything helpful in it.”

  “I doubt you’ll find anything. Lester is a fair student who could do a lot better. Do I need to ask his permission?”

  “No, I’m his lawyer.”

  “He’s not here today anyway. I didn’t check with the office to see if he called in sick.”

  “I hope he’s sick,” Scott replied. “One of the conditions of his release pending trial is that he attend class. No exceptions except illness or death. If he lays out of school, the judge will throw him back in the youth detention center.”

  “Do you want me to find out?”

  Scott thought for a second. “I’m sure Dr. Lassiter received a copy of the judge’s order, so I’d rather not stir it up. We only have a few days until we find out what’s going to happen with the whole situation.”

  “Of course, I’ll have to report him absent from class.”

  “I understand. Is six o’clock this evening okay?”

  “I guess, but I won’t have a chance to eat supper.”

  Scott was ready. “Do you like Chinese?”

  “Yes.”

  “Supper will be delivered to modular unit three.”

  Scott hung up, then realized he hadn’t asked what she wanted him to order. It didn’t matter. After ten minutes in one of those little white cardboard boxes, all Chinese food tasted the same.

  The Tuesday group sat at their usual table. Tao came into the cafeteria as soon as he finished cleaning the boys’ locker room in the gym. The lunch hour was in full swing. Five young people were seated at the table. One of them was the dark-skinned girl whose picture he had carried in his pocket for the past week. The angels were nowhere in sight.

  “I’ve got to make a decision, and I don’t know what to do,” Alisha said.

  “What about?” Janie asked.

  Alisha looked over her shoulder. There was a long line at the food service area. She couldn’t tell if there was a threatening face in the room or not.

  “I know we’re not supposed to talk about things mentioned at the table to other people, but this is so serious I’m not sure I want to risk it.”

  “Then don’t,” Janie said matter-of-factly. “We can pray without knowing any details.”

  They sat quietly for a few seconds, then Kenny Bost prayed. “Father, you know even more about this situation than Alisha. Show her what you want her to do. Protect her and take away all fear.”

  Another student continued, “Give her the strength to do the right thing no matter what others might tell her. Show her what you want her to do in a way that is so clear she won’t worry anymore.”

  Janie had her Bible on the table. She opened it and turned several pages. “Isaiah 30:21 says, ‘ Whether you turn to the right or to the left, your ears will hear a voice behind you, saying, “This is the way; walk in it.”’ Lord, please do this for Alisha. Let her know which way to turn and what to do.”

  Tao’s heart began beating faster. Something was happening at the table. He moved closer. He was using a broom to sweep up food that had dropped on the floor. He could hear the students’ voices. Tao could understand more and more simple English words beyond what he needed to perform his job, and if he was listening to one person in a quiet place, he could often get the gist of a conversation. But the roar of sounds in the cafeteria made distinguishing a specific voice as difficult as identifying a single drop of water in a rainstorm. The girl with dark skin was speaking. She closed her eyes, and he knew it was a prayer.

  Tao leaned on the broom, bowed his head, and began praying softly in his local dialect. Two girls walked by, overheard him, and gave him a strange look. He kept his head lowered for almost a minute until the burden lifted. He looked up. The dark-skinned girl opened her eyes and nodded to the other students.

  “I know what I need to do,” she said. “Thanks.”

  Tao couldn’t hear what she said, but he knew what she meant. “Va tsang—thank you,” he said.

  The bomber didn’t want a metal pipe filled with nails. A few people cut or maimed or killed was inconsistent with his vision of fire engulfing the main hallway. However, the practical preparation of a bomb with the capacity to damage or destroy a large building presented a challenge. There weren’t any books in the school library by nineteenth-century anarchists. No chemistry textbooks contained an appendix explaining how to build an explosive device.

  His salvation came through the Internet. The information available at the click of a mouse would have amazed Lenin and the Bolsheviks. Ultimately, the student could have dedicated his project to Timothy McVeigh. The Oklahoma City bomber used a truck filled with fertilizer. The student had a different goal. He wanted a bomb within the school, not parked outside. But the Internet links to McVeigh’s name led him into the dark places where information was available and resources could be located.

  He had begun purchasing supplies as soon as he had conceived the idea. Innocent items standing alone could become deadly in the right combinations. He learned that the major expense of demolition related to safety. If he was willing to sacrifice personal protection, the price of mass destruction was surprisingly cheap.

  26

  He wished that he, too, had a wound, a red badge of courage.

  STEPHEN CRANE

  Scott stopped at the Chinese restaurant and looked at the takeout menu. The last time he’d eaten Chinese food with a date, she’d ordered Mongolian beef. He decided to add a chicken dish in case the beef didn’t hit the mark. Scott would eat whichever meal Kay rejected. He stepped up to the counter. “Mongolian beef, Hunan chicken, three egg rolls, fried rice, and duck sauce.”

  “How many egg rolls?” asked the young, oriental girl behind the cash register.

  Scott hesitated. He loved egg rolls. “Make that four.”

  Kay wouldn’t want more than one. That would leave three for him. He drove quickly to the high school. The parking lot was deserted except for Kay’s car beside her trailer. He carried the food up the wooden steps to the classroom. Kay was at her desk grading papers.

  “Dinner is served,” he announced, setting the bag on her desk. “Let’s eat first. The smell of the food was torturing my stomach all the way over from the restaurant.”

  “What did you get?” Kay asked.

  Scott took out the containers and opened them. “Fried rice, Hunan chicken, Mongolian beef, and egg rolls.”

  “Mongolian beef is my favorite,” she said.

  That made Scott’s choice easy. “I prefer the chicken.”

  Kay cleaned off one end of her desk.

  “Chopsticks?” he asked, holding up a pair that was in the bag.

  “Of course.”

  They both used chopsticks. Kay was more adept than Scott. She could capture a single grain of rice and transport it safely to her mouth. Scott’s technique was more of a crab approach. He chased the rice and chicken around his plate while opening and closing the sticks until some of the food could be scooped up.

  He quickly ate two egg rolls. Kay finished one, then asked, “Are there any more egg rolls? I always order two or three if they’re not too big.”

  Scott looked in the box where the remaining egg roll waited. It looked smaller and smaller.

  “These were fairly large,” he said. “Are you sure you want another one?”

  Kay picked up the container. “You’ve already eaten two, so we can split the last one.”

  “Okay,” Scott agreed reluctantly.

  Toward the end of the meal, Scott used a plastic fork to finish eating. More than five minutes with chopsticks raised the possibility of a muscle spasm in his right hand.

  “What do you have to show me about Lester?” he asked.

  Kay pulled open the lower drawer of her desk and took out a manila folder. “Everything he’s turned in is here. He’s been in the literature and creative-writing track this semester, so there are several short papers and one longe
r one. They’re not in order.”

  She opened the folder. The first page was a short essay on To Kill a Mockingbird. Scott immediately suspected Lester wouldn’t like the book because of Atticus Finch’s racial tolerance. He was right. Lester’s biting critique reflected their conversations at the youth detention center.

  “He didn’t like the book,” Scott said simply.

  “No. He thought I was trying to brainwash him.”

  “A good idea,” Scott replied.

  Next came Lester’s two-paragraph analysis on the excerpt from Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel. In the margin beside his small handwriting was a pair of carefully drawn and shaded lightning bolts. Underneath he’d added a dark swastika that had been colored in so completely that it shone.

  “Voluntary artwork,” Scott noted.

  “I see it all the time, but I prefer a smiling face with a caption that says, ‘Have a nice day.’ I don’t know why Lester did that. I guess it’s his way of proving that he can do whatever he wants in the margins of his paper.”

  “Did you say anything to him about it?”

  “No. If he’d written a message or threat, I would have notified the office, but drawing a symbol is not something to report. I usually try to ignore them.”

  Scott rubbed his finger across the swastika. The paper was slightly wrinkled because of the concentration of black ink.

  “If the D.A. saw this, she’d try to find a way to blow it up on a poster board and hang it on the wall of the jury room.”

  Several nondescript pages followed. No artwork, but there were small blocked areas of black ink that could have been words or drawings in the margins of several pages. Nothing unusual about Lester’s attempts to answer the questions. His grades fluctuated wildly. He made a ninety-eight on one test, followed by a sixty-seven the following week. One of the first papers of the year was on The Red Badge of Courage. Lester had written a two-page report and received a B+ for the paper.

  “He liked this one,” Scott commented when he saw the grade on the top of the first page.

  Kay looked over his shoulder. “Yes. When I graded that paper, I thought he might be a diamond in the rough.”

  Scott leaned back in his chair. Lester knew the story, and he’d thought about it. His sentences were short and choppy. Scott could almost hear Lester’s voice spitting out his opinion.

  A bloody bandage is a red badge of courage. Most people don’t know anything about courage. They haven’t been in danger. You can’t know what you will do until you have to do it. The boy in the book ran away. He came back. That is what counts. In a war people die. True courage is to come back and kill your enemies.

  The paper continued, but Scott stopped. He slid the paper over to Kay with his finger on the paragraph. “What did you think when you read this?” She read the paragraph again while Scott watched. “Especially the last sentence.”

  Kay paused. “I didn’t think about it. I was grading twenty-eight papers and probably thought it was Lester’s opinion about one of Stephen Crane’s themes. I don’t penalize a student who is trying to analyze literature.”

  Scott put the paper back in the folder. Lester’s words weren’t literary analysis. It was his personal creed. He slid the folder across the desk to Kay.

  “I don’t think there is anything in there that helps me.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  Scott continued, “Mr. Humphrey says that most cases are determined by the facts, not the lawyer’s skill, and the public perception that a brilliant lawyer is always the difference between winning and losing is wrong. I’m a rookie, but the facts against Lester are totally circumstantial. Unless a jury believes strolling down the creekbank on a Sunday afternoon is a crime, he should be around for the rest of the school year to write reports and draw pictures in the margins of his tests.”

  “What do you believe about Lester?” she asked.

  Scott shrugged. “My opinion didn’t go up after looking at his papers and artwork. There’s no doubt he’s a racist, but my opinion is not the issue. My role is to defend my client. He says he’s not guilty, and I don’t have any direct evidence otherwise.”

  “That’s why I’m not a lawyer,” Kay said bluntly.

  Surprised, Scott asked, “Did you think about going to law school?”

  “No, but listening to you is a good reason not to consider it in the future.”

  “I understand, but due process of law has to apply to everyone to protect all of us. It sounds theoretical until you meet someone like Lester. Then you have to decide if you really believe in the Constitution.”

  “So, your involvement in the case is about high ideals.”

  Scott smiled. “Well, defending the Constitution isn’t all that’s motivating me to work hard. There is also the small matter of my competitive ego and desire to beat the arrogant assistant district attorney who is prosecuting the case.”

  Kay banged a chopstick on her desk like a gavel. “Mr. Ellis, thank you for your honesty.”

  The door of the classroom opened and Janie Collins walked through the door.

  “I smell Chinese food,” she said.

  “You just missed the last bite of rice,” Kay said.

  When the mock trial session started, Scott focused his attention on the four students who would be lawyers. The more Scott was around Dustin Rawlings, the more he liked him. The young man was confident without being cocky, and it was obvious that with his positive people skills he would succeed in the future. Yvette Fisher was a bit scatterbrained and had an argumentative streak that raised its head if a witness refused to cooperate. Janie was developing nicely, and Frank was the source of both admiration and frustration.

  The evening’s session began with Yvette cross-examining a young man playing the Billy Bob Beerbelly role. The witness stubbornly refused to agree with Yvette’s characterization of his past drinking history. It quickly became obvious that someone had been coaching Billy in an effort to protect him from a damaging cross-examination. Yvette was the first lawyer to try to crack the code.

  “You must have me mixed up with my twin brother, Bob,” the witness said. “He’s had a bunch of speeding tickets and a couple of DUIs.”

  “I think you’re the one who is confused,” Yvette shot back, shuffling through the papers on her desk and looking for the documents that proved prior convictions.

  “If you’re looking for papers from the court, it won’t do you any good. The police are always confusing me and Bob.”

  “Really?”

  “Yep. Happens all the time. Even our mama can’t keep us straight. She gets us confused.”

  Yvette had found the papers she’d been looking for. Holding up a conviction for DUI, she said, “There’s nothing confusing about this DUI conviction in March. Your blood alcohol level was at 1.8.”

  “Can I see that paper?”

  Yvette handed it to him. “Your name is on the top of the ticket.”

  The witness squinted at the paper for several seconds before answering. “It says here William Robert Beerbelly. Billy is short for William, and Bob is short for Robert. That could be either me or Bob.”

  Yvette sputtered. Scott had seen this coming about halfway through the questioning and interrupted, “Billy Bob, that’s clever, but the judges may not let you get away with creating a new character. Whose idea was it to do this?”

  The witness pointed at Frank who had been watching the exchange without comment.

  “We were talking at lunch the other day, and Frank suggested it. Otherwise, Billy has to admit to being a big drunk who could have caused the accident.”

  Scott turned to Frank. “Your theory works if you’re on one side of the case. What if you have to argue the other way? How would you cross-examine Billy?”

  Frank smiled. “I’m going to use another witness to blow Billy out of the water. It won’t matter if he has five brothers who drink and drive.”

  Scott mentally ran through the testimony of the other witnes
ses. He didn’t see the angle. But then, he hadn’t thought about Billy Bob either.

  “I’ll consider it, but you need to make sure you don’t violate the rules against going outside the scope of the facts. The judges won’t allow chaos.”

  “It won’t be chaotic,” Frank responded. “I understand the rules; I’m just using them to my advantage.”

  When it was time to break up for the evening, Scott picked up the white sack from the Chinese restaurant. “I’ll dispose of the trash properly,” he said.

  Kay took out her wallet. “How much was my part?”

  “No, it’s on me.”

  “Thanks. Next time I’ll buy my own egg rolls.”

  Scott left, wondering if his reluctance to share had been so transparent. He followed Frank and Janie down the steps. The two young people got in Frank’s car and sped off into the night.

  Alisha Mason lingered near Kay’s desk until everyone else was gone.

  “Mrs. Wilson,” she said, “I know it’s late, but can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Kay put down her brown satchel. “Sure. What is it?”

  Alisha glanced back toward the door. “It’s about Lester Garrison. I know one reason you and Mr. Ellis came to the church on Sunday was so he could talk to people about the shooting. He asked my cousin some questions. Is he Lester’s lawyer?”

  “Yes.”

  “Has he talked to you about what happened?”

  “No, I guess a lot of his information is confidential.”

  Alisha paused. “I saw something, but I’d rather not get involved.”

  “Didn’t the police talk to you on the day it happened?”

  “Yes, but I’ve realized something since then and need advice from someone I trust. If I tell you something, will you repeat it to Mr. Ellis?”

  Kay was Alisha’s teacher, not Scott’s private investigator.

  “Not if you don’t want me to.”

  Ten minutes later, Alisha finished.

  “You’re positive one of the two people you saw was Lester Garrison?”

  Kay asked.

  “I am, now.” Alisha nodded. “When I saw Lester in the hall yesterday, he was wearing the same shirt, and it clicked.”