“But when the police came, they took him into custody with the Taus.” Her voice had a tinge of madness to it. “I told them that we had nothing to do with the shooting, but they took him anyway. All they saw was a bunch of black people surrounding a shot white guy. They were going to take me, too. But you called out my name and made the ambulance guys come get me before you passed out.”
“What happened? Why did they...how could they have...tell me!” He was hysterical.
“They beat him to death! Beat him for being black. Beat him for hating cops. Beat him for being your friend...they...”
Felice broke off as she put her head back down on Kevin’s chest, her sobs filling the room. Kevin made no sound, however. He simply put his head back and closed his twenty-two year old eyes, as tears began their course down his suddenly ancient face.
The memorial service was held a week later at Tiger stadium. The 25,000-seat facility had been jam-packed, with thousands standing vigil in the parking lot.
It seemed as if the entire city and half of the state came out to mourn the death of Malik Hayes. It also seemed as though the other half of the state were picketing police stations all around Albuquerque. The sense of grief, shock, and anger had nearly overwhelmed the small city.
Kevin was still in the hospital and Felice was nearly constantly by his bedside. The hospital staff had wheeled a big-screen TV into the private room so they could see the tribute being paid to their friend.
They stared mutely at the screen as the camera lingered over a pale, red-eyed Amanda Bain, holding white roses in her hands.
They also hadn’t been able to attend Malik’s funeral, which had been held in Detroit.
A broken Elijah Hayes, with his plane fare having been paid for by the city, had come to collect his son’s body a few days after the murder. The adult LeCroixs, Herbert Hart, NMU’s president, the mayor of Albuquerque, and the governor of New Mexico had met him at the airport. The president approached him.
“Mr. Hayes, I would like to present you with your son’s Bachelor of Science degree in Mathematics. He graduated magna cum laude and has been added to our list of alumni.”
“Thank you, sir,” whispered Elijah.
“And on behalf of the staff and faculty of NMU, the city and, indeed, the entire state...we can’t know what you’re feeling...” said the president, uncertainly and with a breaking voice. The man paused. “But, we share in your grief. Your son was greatly loved.”
Elijah glared at the man, seeming to be ready to explode.
“You’re right. You can’t possibly know what I’m feeling,” he said, full-voiced and matter-of-factly. Then the blinding rage seemed to subside. “But thank you for my son’s degree.”
Elijah turned to the other part of his greeting party, as if he were going to speak to them. But he merely nodded his head in Herbert Hart’s direction and, in a few minutes, re-boarded the plane.
The New Mexico University chapter of the Tau Sigma Pi fraternity, along with its sister sorority, was banned from the NMU campus. All the members of the fraternity who had been involved in the incident were expelled.
The African American Student Union launched a protest against the banning, but they received little support from anyone, even many of its own members.
Andre Carter received twenty years to life in the notoriously brutal New Mexico State Penitentiary in Santa Fe for attempted murder. The jury barely deliberated. The four other men involved in the incident had also been charged with conspiracy to commit murder, but the charges were dismissed, mostly due to Kevin Hart, who, true to his word, had testified that only Andre Carter had known about the gun.
None of the four had been from New Mexico and within a day of the dismissal, in anticipation of being ridden out of the state on a rail, all of them were on airplanes back to their various hometowns.
McDuffy and Walters, the two police officers involved in the murder of Malik Hayes, were convicted of aggravated second-degree murder. They would be keeping company with Andre Carter.
“You can go now. You’ve done your part.”
“What? What are you talking about? Is this because the therapy session didn’t go so well? It’s only the first one. You’ll get stronger as you go along.”
After six weeks, the well written-on cast had been removed. Kevin looked at his once powerfully-muscled left leg that the surgeons had worked so feverishly to save. It was now nearly as white as the cast had been and the muscles had begun to atrophy. Right above the knee, there was a thick surgical scar that almost encircled his entire leg, along with an entry wound on the front and the multiple scars of an exit wound on the back.
“Fuck therapy! Is therapy going to bring back my career? I do not give a damn about therapy!”
Felice had expected this, but was shocked, nonetheless. He hardly ever cursed in front of her and never at her.
“I said you can leave now. I’m not the big time athlete anymore. I’m not going to be rolling in millions anymore. So get gone and find another cash man. Now!
Now Felice understood. She stood up, folded her arms, and looked at him.
“Did you hear what I said? Go!” he shouted.
“What are you going to do? Get up and make me leave?”
Kevin tried to get up from the wheelchair but the leg wouldn’t cooperate. He slumped back, turning his head away from her.
“If you want me to go, you’re going to have to get your big ass up out of that chair, pick me up, put me out of the door and drop me flat on my ass.”
“Felice, please just go...”
“You are a moron!” She was shouting at him now. Kevin’s eyes widened as Felice hotly continued.
“You thought that I was only with you because you were a big time athlete? I never liked athletes, never! All of you fuckers are idiots! And here you are with all those ugly scars on your shriveled-up leg, talking nonsense and proving my point! It’s you I love, you big, stupid jock, not your status. God!” She beseeched God with her hands.
“You called me a moron,” he said wonderingly.
“So. You going to get up and put me out for that, too? Try it!” She stood with her arms crossed.
“Malik told me that origin of that word once.” He smiled in the wake of unexpected nostalgia. “He used it on me once when I kept throwing the ball at his knees.”
Felice started at Kevin’s uttering of their friend’s name. Kevin hadn’t mentioned Malik at all since Felice had told him that Malik was dead, not even obliquely.
“He said that it referred to an adult with a mental age of between eight and twelve who was capable of doing routine work. He said that he had memorized the definition from Webster’s when he was eight.” Kevin chuckled at the irony.
Felice’s bravado was suddenly gone. “Kevin, you know I didn’t mean it that way, so don’t try to use it to get me out of here.”
“No. I was just startled by the thought of how brilliant he was, how much he knew.” He looked at Felice. “You, too. So much for black inferiority.”
Kevin stopped talking. He seemed a world away. Suddenly he snapped back to reality.
“Did you know he had an IQ of 160? He showed me his records from an IQ test he took when he was in high school.”
“Kevin...,” she said gently. “I’ll help you get on the table.”
“He didn’t like too many people to know how much he knew,” he continued as Felice partially supported him.
He had lost a lot of weight, she noticed, about twenty-five pounds. “Said it made him feel like the N who knew too much. He actually said the word out.”
She was breathing harder than normal as she sat down next to him. He was still heavy.
“Said it made him feel like a freak. He even wondered about this. Why is it that a smart black person feels so all alone?”
“Well if his IQ was 160, he was smarter than a whole lot of white people, too,” she said nonchalantly.
“Definitely smarter than this moron,” he said with
a sad smile.
“Baby, I’m sorry.”
“No, no! I’m sorry. I am a moron because I don’t know jack shit! It was me that was supposed to die that night, not him! Me!”
His smile was gone and he began to dissolve into tears.
“I’m too dumb to know why an idiot like me lives and a smart guy like Malik dies. I don’t know a damned thing! If I were smarter, maybe I’d be able to figure out why....”
“Shhh...I love you....shhh...”
She put one hand up to wipe his face and that was the last of his self-control. He put his head down on her lap and cried himself to sleep.
In the campus chapel, Felice was alone; courtesy of several of the NMU football and basketball Tigers who had taken it upon themselves to be her bodyguards since the incident. They had even come to the house, met Joseph and Vetra, and of their own volition had sworn an oath to the two to keep their daughter safe.
She found herself praying yet again. Praying to It--praying to the God whose nature she had once believed that she could not know.
She had brought along her mother’s Bible, which Vetra had urged her to take when she said where she was going. Somehow, it didn’t seem like such an imposition anymore to inform her parents of her whereabouts.
Alone in the chapel, she found herself prayingaloud. She didn’t know what to pray for so she looked at the large cross in the sanctuary.
“God, what do you want me to know and what do you want me to do?”
Suddenly, she had the urge to open the Bible and it fell open to Matthew 5. She looked down at the page direct at the beginning of the fourth verse at Jesus’ words.
“Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted.”
Felice found herself in tears again and felt a surge of gratitude—of love—for Him, for God. She looked up to the ceiling.
“My God. Thank you, God, for keeping my Kevin alive.”
Detroit…
On some level, he knew it wouldn’t work.
Cheap piece of shit.
Elijah Hayes allowed the object to drop to the floor; the sound of it hitting the hardwood floor echoed in the stillness of the old house.
He thought about trying again but the nerve he had gathered had passed on and the words of an old book had taken its place. He looked up, scowled at an invisible presence, then surveyed the room.
Cynthia will kill me, he thought briefly before he remembered that his wife was gone.
Clothes, shoes and empty bottles were now the décor that accompanied the 80s-era furnishings of his living room. It had been three weeks since…
His eyes continued to light upon singular objects in the mess. Why hadn’t the telephone rung? Oh yes; he had shut it off. Even with the chaos that had become his home—his life—he had meticulously turned the telephone off in spite of the urge to yank it out of the wall. That was days ago. Maybe it had been last week. He was easily able to ignore the rattle it would still make when someone called. Drunkenness helped.
But, as if some dark thing was beginning to uncoil from his spirit, he seemed to again care, just a little. He got up and turned the telephone on.
Had the gun not malfunctioned, it would have been a long time before someone would have come to clean up the mess, assuming that anyone would have noticed the rapport. And, in this neighborhood, it was highly doubtful that anyone would notice the sound of an old, defeated man trying to blow the back of his own head off with a .38 while sitting in the comfort of his own living room.
His daughter was stationed in the Far East. If he had been successful, it would have been up to her to clean up the mess he tried to make. Suddenly, he was remorseful.
Hasn’t your girl already been through enough already? They all had.
Was there something to reach for, to hold onto in this life? There was. He knew what he had to do.
Elijah’s bathroom mirror reflected what he had become. The salt-and-pepper on his scalp and face was wild, dirty and matted—but these were mere frame to the disaster that had become his entire head. His beige skin was mildly yellow, matching his un-brushed teeth. And the crown jewels of his head were the eyes: more than just bloodshot, they looked like the eyes of a man living in Hell, even to their owner.
He brushed his teeth, gargled, and even flossed.
Before he began to wash his face, he realized that something foul was in the air.
The shower gave him a more normal appearance, but the hair was still wild. Something had to be done about that.
Even in a city as full of ne’er-do-wells as Detroit had become, passers-by fled before Elijah as he made his way to the barbershop.
Tieless, he wore the lone clean suit and shirt that had been in his closet. They did little, however, to mitigate the wildness of his hair or the anger and grief that were still embedded in his eyes.
He was used to shaving his own hair and face with a strait razor, but steadiness of his hands was gone. Besides, he didn’t trust himself not to use the razor to finish the job that he had failed at so miserably that morning. The irony was that his shaky hands would have made him even more unsuccessful.
Could he do this? He wasn’t sure. But he had to try.
Elijah put his hand into his jacket pocket and gripped the papers there like a talisman. Then, he stopped, took them out, and opened them up one more time.
As before, his youngest son’s slanted, left-handed writing seemed to jump off the page and encircle him. The letter had arrived two days before he found out that Malik was dead. He stopped on the sidewalk and read it again.
Dear Dad,
I pray that this letter finds you well.
Everything is fine. School is fine, football is fine. Actually, my life is great all around. I can’t wait to see you in June when I graduate. I hope Regina can get leave to come too and I sent her a letter asking her to be here.
I want to tell you something, so let me get right to it: I found a nice girl. She is the opposite of the things you warned me against. She has brains, passion and compassion—all the things you told me to look for in a woman. She accepts me for who I am and, of course, she’s beautiful.
She didn’t come at me looking for a future meal ticket; as a matter of fact, we didn’t even like each other at first! She said I was an asshole. (Laughing)
Well maybe I am one, but she likes me now. Maybe she even loves me. I hope so, because I think, maybe, I love her. Her name is Amanda.
What you should know: she’s white. No ‘buts.’ You told me that life was short and we both know that from experience. You told me that most people will not understand me and won’t care enough about me to even try. You taught me that I was responsible for my own life and for going after my own happiness. Well, Amanda makes me happy. I hope that I do the same for her. With almost everyone else, it’s like I have to wear a helmet and pads on my soul. Not with Amanda.
The thought of the young Amanda now sitting alone and broken-hearted almost made Elijah give up on his appointed task.
Would he have accepted her? He honestly did not know. But the thought of her pain made him want to fly back to New Mexico just to sit and hold the child’s hand. He had a more primary task, however.
I’ve been thinking a lot of Alex and Randy lately. Alex is gone, but Randy is still alive out theresomewhere, maybe. Wouldn’t it be great if we could find him?
When I’m making enough money and have some resources, let’s you and I get together and go look for him. He’s probably in some places that are dangerous, but we could hire protection.
I guess that I’m feeling blessed by God and I want my whole family to be blessed too and that includes Randy. Even though I didn’t get to bless Mom and Alex on this earth, I hope Alex got to go to Heaven and can see me now. I know Mom can.
“My boy,” Elijah murmured as the first-ever tears leaked from his eyes.
“God, please let me walk in Your strength in the name of Jesus. Tell my boy—both my boys and their mother that I will do everything I
can to find Randall and bring him home.”
The tears seemed to steady his gait. He put the letter back in his pocket, wiped his eyes, and kept walking.
“Thank you for that wonderful introduction. I’ll pay you later for that, Strazinski. My dad,the lawyer, says, ‘never underestimate the power of a good bribe.’”
Light laughter came from the seated crowd.
It was May 1996 and the sun was high, but not as oppressive as it would be in a month. Kevin looked out on the crowd of dignitaries in front of him. Alumni mostly, like his father, his wife, and himself; some of them great athletes who now played in the NFL, the NBA, and even the NHL.
He focused his eyes on an enormously pregnant black woman in the front row. She smiled at him. He smiled back.
“My wife says I have a tendency to not know when to shut up, so I’ll try not to bore you all into throwing something at me.
“We’ve all come here to dedicate New Mexico University’s new football practice facility to a guy who made Jerry Rice look like a Pop Warner player, Malik Shabazz Hayes.
“I guess the reason they asked me to give this speech was because Malik was my best friend. If they hadn’t asked, I would have volunteered. Actually, besides my wife, he was my only friend.
“I suppose that when a good and talented guy dies young and senselessly, it’s customary to rail against the injustice that took him away and, yes, it was injustice that took him away: racism from black people and from white people. It’s God’s grace that we haven’t murdered each other off.”
He looked at Felice again. She smiled sadly at him and nodded her head encouragingly. You can get through this, Honey.
Tale of the Tigers: Love is Not a Game Page 19