People needed a wake-up call, and I’d just given it to them.
“I’m not sorry for what I did tonight.”
I gritted my teeth, thinking about all the summers in peewee I’d committed to football instead of camp—all these years in varsity I’d overworked my body to the point that I got full-body cramps. I remained as committed as ever. I wasn’t throwing away anything. This country was throwing away boys like me and Marion—discarding us like garbage.
“Excuse me?”
“I’d do it again.” My stance was more calcified than hours ago when I’d stood in front of Darrell. I squared my shoulders, raising my chin higher. “My only question is why no one supported me. Why can’t you be on my side?”
“Don’t take that tone with me. Not in my house,” Pops boomed. “If you can’t respect me, I swear to God—”
“Enough!” Mama yelled from behind me. She brushed me aside and stepped into the shed. “Ain’t no need to wake the neighbors over something we can fix. They’re an acre over, but I bet they can hear all this fussing.”
“And how’s that, Cheryl?” Pops dropped his hammer on the table and folded his arms.
“First thing Monday, Rus can apologize to the league. Isn’t that right, baby?” She grabbed my hands, her worried eyes searching for agreement in mine. “Then we can appeal their decision to allow Marion to play.”
“Mama, we tried that!”
“Well, we gotta try again. We’ve got no power here.” She blew a breath through her tight lips, sending her bangs into a flutter. “Ain’t nothing but prayer and perseverance gonna work.”
My stomach curdled at the sound of her suggestion. I was doubtful that prayer and perseverance would save us. Those words sounded so familiar—exactly like the speeches local officials gave after Dante Maynard’s shooting, like what Coach had told me after Marion’s unfair suspension.
Our thoughts and prayers are with them.
I grabbed my stuff, turning to look at the front door of my house—a house I was no longer welcome in. Darting around the shed, I headed to the darkness beyond—to a refuge tucked deeper into the woods.
* * *
I stormed across the backyard and dipped behind the tree line. My arm caught on a thorny bramble, and I winced through the pain as I pushed farther into the night. Under the blanket of darkness, I couldn’t see the blood on my forearm, but I could feel it pooling. It was too dark to see much of anything on the overgrown path, but I knew the way to the old tree house by heart.
An acre behind my house, where the bedrock sloped toward the bayou, the tree house floated twenty feet up in the branches of an old oak tree. It had been years since I’d made my way back there, a forgotten part of childhood. But it was the only escape I could think of.
I leaned against the tree, stopping to collect my thoughts. Silence swallowed my breaths, and then the cicadas and crickets resumed their nightly calls. I stood frozen, allowing the night to swallow me whole. It was the closest to disappearing I could get—a way to escape my upside-down life.
I pawed in the dark, feeling for the rope ladder, but I couldn’t find it. I slammed my fist against the tree. I should have known the tree house wouldn’t be intact. It had literally been years since I’d been out here, but this was the only escape I could think of. But of course, nothing was going my way tonight. Nothing.
Shuffling sounds came from above, and I stumbled backward, startled.
“Hello?” I called up, unsure if it was an animal or a squatter. No one had been here for years. It would be the perfect place for someone in hiding to claim.
“Rus?” a familiar voice whispered through the night. “Is that you?”
“Marion?” I frowned and looked above me, blinking rapidly so that my eyes could focus on the entrance above. I couldn’t see anything past my nose, but I knew it was him—the voice of a ghost who had disappeared for the last few days. “Throw the ladder down, will ya?”
The mangy rope ladder spilled from the bottom of the tree house and grazed the forest floor. I slung my bag across my shoulder, tightening the strap to secure it. Grabbing the ladder, I set a tentative step against the weathered rope. Would it hold my weight? It’d been a while since I’d used it, and I was probably eighty pounds heavier. The last thing I needed was to end my football career by hurting myself falling out of a tree. I wasn’t sure the ladder could take the strain, but if it had held Marion, it would hold me.
Please don’t break.
I repeated that prayer over and over as I clung to the ladder, taking the rungs slowly and methodically. A dozen unwieldly steps later, my head popped through the opening. There, in the corner of the tree house, an eerie glow came from Marion’s phone on the floor. I pushed my bag over my head, then grabbed the wooden ledge to steady myself. My broad shoulders grazed the sides of the opening, but I managed to squeeze through.
“I do not remember that climb being so wobbly. Remember how we used to zip in and out of here like it was nothing?”
“I don’t know. I guess.” He shrugged. And for a split second I wondered if I was intruding on him.
Maybe I should go back.
But I looked out the tree house door, down the twentysomething-foot drop to the ground, and I thought about Pops’s anger that awaited me at home. If this was Marion’s last option, it was mine too. I didn’t have anywhere else to go either.
I sat with my legs dangling over the edge, catching my breath as I took stock of the childhood fort we’d built so long ago. The tan paint we’d so lovingly applied was now flaking in several large spots, revealing old, mealy wood underneath. And the roof sloped to one slide, creating a sizable gap between the high beams and the sideboards. It was a lifetime ago when we’d holed ourselves up here, convinced we’d be safe from the world in our fortress. Now it didn’t look so sturdy. From what I could see through the dim light, our stronghold was ramshackle—just as that dream of safety was.
Marion clicked a yellow flashlight on and set it against a corner so that the light reflected off the walls. He brushed crumbs off his sleeping bag, I guessed in an attempt to tidy up. He grabbed a plastic bag from the top of a pile of snacks.
“Want some jerky?” Marion held it out to me.
It was such a normal thing for him to do. I sputtered a laugh but then buried my head in my shoulder, gulping down tears I’d been holding back all night.
“Long day?” He set the bag down at his side and sighed.
“Long week.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve, thinking back to when this all started—back to the point when life seemed to get harder. “Actually, it’s been a long month.”
“I know what you mean.” He leaned forward and grabbed his phone. The hushed voices of the local news channel were barely audible over the sounds of the cicadas outdoors. “I’ll turn this off.”
“No. I wanna hear it.”
The news showed angry fans still congregating in the parking lot, angry about Mr. Boudreaux’s disrespect of the flag and our troops.
Earlier tonight, he refused to stand for the national anthem. Now there are calls for the league to pursue disciplinary action against the player. The Jackson Jackals are no strangers to controversy. Just last week, quarterback Marion LaSalle was arrested for brawling on the field with Bradley Simmons and Lawrence Perkins. This comes on the heels of the police department’s manhunt for a masked vandal who has been defacing property with protest flyers demanding police accountability. Clearly a town in the grips of turmoil—
“Disrespect to the troops?” A string of obscenities escaped my lips as I listened to reporters and angry fans hijack my protest, just like they had with Colin Kaepernick. I remembered reading that he’d even met with veterans while planning his protest. But that still hadn’t stopped the president and other powerful people from framing his protest as an act of aggression. “Why do they even report this stuff? This isn�
�t news. They know full well I wasn’t kneeling against the troops. Man, turn that shit off.”
In the absence of the news, we heard music from Pops’s workshop drifting through the air, making its way to our perch in the trees. Marion pursed his lips, looking at his lap.
“He’s been out there for hours.” He looked up and studied my face. “He came home before the end of the game, so I knew something was going down.”
“You heard?” It was a stupid question to ask. If we could hear Pops’s music all the way out here, then Marion had definitely overheard our argument.
“I’ve never heard him pop off like that. But I kinda get where he’s coming from.” He nodded, then sighed deeply. “Dang, Rus. You took a knee?”
I clenched my jaw, prepared for another scolding. “And I guess you have something to say?”
“I’m sure you got enough from the guys. I can see it on your face. And shit, dude. I know you got it from Pops too.”
I sat back, relaxing from my defensive hunch. Marion’s opinion was what meant the most to me. But his response—although comforting and nonjudgmental—wasn’t supportive either. A part of me wanted to know whether or not he approved. Ambivalence wasn’t enough. Between Darrell and Pops, I needed someone firmly on my side. But I didn’t want to draw a hard line. Not tonight. I focused my attention on a discarded fast-food wrapper.
“How can you live out here?” I looked around the rickety fort. It wasn’t a full house with all of the things a person needed to get by. “Where are you charging your phone?”
“There’s an outlet behind the shed. No one goes back there, especially when y’all are gone for the day.” Marion shrugged and looked at his lap, a tinge of embarrassment on his quivering lip. “Pops don’t ever lock the shed, and there’s a bathroom in there. Some snacks in the minifridge. It’s enough for now.”
“Enough?” I asked, my voice small. I didn’t want Marion to hear the worry behind the words, but this base level of subsistence was not enough. I thought of the bathroom in the shed, which had no lights and was a tight squeeze, of the sink that ran only cold water. And the junk food my dad kept in the fridge and on the countertop—it wasn’t enough to live on. With the weather turning cooler, Marion couldn’t have been comfortable out here. “Have you been up here the whole week?”
“Nah, I went home for a few days.” His voice hitched on the word home. Because that wasn’t his real home. It hadn’t been for years. “Came up here last night, because...”
“Ed.” I knew it before he said it. Ed was dangerous on a good day, but seeing Marion brought low by being kicked off the team—Marion must have taken a beating. “Why not just come to our house instead of hiding up here?”
“Same reason you ain’t in the house right now. I can’t face them.” He waved his arms toward the house, where the lights were still on. Mama was probably worried sick about both of us. “I can’t face anyone. I’m so...embarrassed.”
“You have nothing to be ashamed of. They do.” I pointed to the phone, to the newscasters and angry white people calling for young boys to be locked up.
“Jail? Three-thousand-dollar bail? Getting suspended from playing?” Marion’s voice shook, his lips smacking as he struggled to find the words. “I can’t even think straight.”
“Me neither.” I shrank into the opposite corner, tucking my knees to my chest. “Coach didn’t let me play tonight. After I took a knee, he lost his shit.”
“Rus...” He hid his face in his hands, swinging his head back and forth.
“Pops thinks I jeopardized my spot.” I said it quietly, not wanting to breathe life into those words.
It was a real danger. Coach had discretion to play whomever he wanted during any game. If he was still angry, he could bench me again. Then there was the league—they could slap me with disciplinary action, pull me from play for the next few games for violating their code of conduct. That’s if they believed all the bullshit about me publicly disrespecting the troops by taking a knee. I gulped. As ridiculous as that sounded, a lot of people on the news saw it that way. Maybe the league did too.
“Shit.” I clenched my jaw, feeling my stomach churn.
“You think they’ll really take you off the team?” Marion’s eyebrows turned upward.
“I don’t know.” I shrugged and let out a deep sigh. “All I know is that I gotta do what I gotta do.”
“You heard the news. The league’s been talking about sanctions and disciplinary actions, about making standing for the national anthem mandatory.” Marion shifted his weight so that he sat on his knees. His dreads grazed the roof of the tree house. “So, we’re both gonna be out the game? Our senior year? Man, this is a mess.”
“Have you called that pro bono lawyer Gabby found for you? What’s his name—Mr. Samuels?” I waited for a while for Marion to respond, but he finally nodded. “What did he say?”
“Same as the other lawyer. That my case will take time. And time is the one thing I don’t have.”
The crickets filled the silence, so loud I almost couldn’t hear Marion continue.
“What happened to me, man. It was fucked up. Not as fucked up as what happened to Dante. But, Rus.” He shifted in his sleeping bag. “Pops and Coach and the guys—they’re right. Ain’t nothing you can do about my situation. And the kneeling thing—I get what you’re trying to do, but that ain’t gonna change anything.”
I clenched my jaw and snatched one of Marion’s pillows from the middle of the floor. He tossed me a throw blanket, and I recognized it as one of Mama’s—the one she always set out for him when he came to stay.
Propping my head against the far wall, I reached for the flashlight and clicked it off, feeling shutdown and defeated. Once my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could see the stars through the gap in the roof. The sheer vastness of the night sky was overwhelming—maybe we were helpless in the enormity of what we were up against.
It was easy to lose myself in the thousands of tiny lights in the sky, and I began to drift, thinking about Marion’s assertion that nothing we did could change our fate.
No. No, I don’t believe that.
The thought comforted me long enough to release me from wakefulness.
13
The crinkling of leaves woke me up shortly after first light—small careful footsteps. I propped myself up with the wall and scooted toward the window, rubbing my neck as it pinched with pain. I’d slept restlessly, waking up periodically throughout the night to reposition myself or just lie on my back and listen to the crickets chirp as I blinked into the darkness. Deep thought came easily. Sleep did not. And comfort was hard to hold on to.
I poked my head out the window. Mama cautiously dipped her toes in the thick leaf litter, her foam rollers bobbing as she hopped from spot to spot, no doubt thinking of all the bugs that hid below the rotted rug of leaves.
When she looked up, she caught my sleepy gaze. With a shake of her head, she put her hands on her hips. Her eyebrows tightened, and I thought she might scold me for not answering her calls. Instead, she waved for me to come down.
“Time for y’all to come home,” she said. “I got work aplenty for you.”
* * *
Pops leaned forward in his recliner, sending biscuit crumbs flying as he watched the Dallas Cowboys line up for a field goal in New Orleans Saints territory. A superstitious sports fan to the core, he wiggled his fingers in front of the flat screen as if he could affect the outcome of the game.
“Booga-looga-wooga!” He rocked back and forth in his recliner, mumbling hexes of his own making. “Get outta there!”
I frowned as I surveyed the mess of crumbs on the carpet—a carpet that I’d just vacuumed. I wondered if Mama would make me do it again, which seemed unfair given that I hadn’t made the mess. But I was grounded.
Fairness didn’t matter.
I leaned over the kitchen i
sland, displacing some of Marion’s homework papers as I craned my neck to catch a glimpse of the game. The Cowboys versus the Saints was one of the biggest matchups of the season, a game I wouldn’t dream of missing on a normal day. But as part of my punishment, I was not allowed to watch any TV.
Until I say otherwise.
That’s what Pops had said when I asked him how long I was to be punished. And he hadn’t spoken to me since.
How could my parents expect me to miss one of the biggest rivalry games in the NFL?
Pops howled in frustration as the Cowboys’ ball soared through the goalposts, dead center. It was a solid field goal, a predictable outcome. It was rare for a professional team to miss a kick. Their error rate was definitely far less than that of a high school football team like the Jackson Jackals. From our unreliable kicker to the second-string freshman quarterback we’d played last night, my team was in tatters.
Then there was me and my silent protest. I hadn’t helped the situation. I shook my head, trying not to think about it.
Pops straightened in his chair and turned slightly, catching Marion’s eye. He gave a curt nod in commiseration, then caught my gaze. He blinked furiously away, pretending like he didn’t see me—like I wasn’t until recently the center of his pride and dreams. But I knew he’d seen me. In that fleeting moment, as his eyes tightened and watered, I could see worry and fear, a carryover from his anger last night.
I wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t know what to say. Striking up a probing conversation on the merits of peaceful protest seemed impossible. So the tension remained intact, and avoidance was the best strategy.
I bent my head, escaping his scrutiny. I didn’t want to betray my hurt feelings either. The silence between us stretched further.
“Quick, your mama’s coming.” Marion looked over his shoulder, then snapped his head back toward his English book as the shuffling sounds of Mama’s slippers drew nearer.
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