American by Day

by Derek B. Miller

  The last protest that required Irv’s attention was a peaceful demonstration that started at the university campus when Jeffrey was shot. It proceeded through the city on a five-mile walk. That was a family crowd and the message was unity and a call for social justice. There were speeches at the halfway point and demands for greater protections against police violence and greater accountability for police action, and an explicit appeal to recognize and reduce racism.

  Cory was put in charge of directing traffic and did a stellar job.

  After six hours, the only drama had involved one case of heat exhaustion in a sixty-four-year-old who overexerted herself and the arrests of three teenagers who’d been zipping through crowds on skateboards and stealing iPhones.

  These people who are gathered here together to face the Inferno did not come with their families. They are not interested in unity. They are not protesting at a government building or exploiting a teachable moment at a place of higher learning or community worship. This is a crowd of bitter, misinformed people who want to extract the cold hearts of white supremacists who decorate their Harleys with Confederate flags.

  No one is holding a placard.

  Irv estimates the crowd at thirty to forty and judges the general mood as dour. There are no children and few women. They form a line, three deep, a hundred feet from the bar. They would probably be closer, Irv figures, were it not for his emergency response team, who are lined up between the crowd and the Inferno.

  The bikers hang around by their Harleys pointing at the protesters and shouting well-practiced obscenities and the usual racist epithets from behind the protective barrier of fifteen white and heavily armed police officers.

  Irv is surprised to see the SERT in full riot gear with the men carrying military-grade submachine guns as though they’re preparing to go door-to-door in Bogotá. Irv authorized none of this, but there are standard operating procedures he still hasn’t memorized because of how much there actually is to learn as a sheriff and because, well, this doesn’t come up much.

  Unless it isn’t standard procedure and all this paramilitary shit is Pinkerton’s idea.

  Pinkerton: the macho weenie who’s in charge of the local SERT.

  Irv has always been suspicious of Joe Pinkerton. He grew up in a tough part of Brooklyn, was sent to the navy to get straight, turned himself into a SEAL, and didn’t so much get straight as master the skills to be a grade-A asshole. He retired from the SEALs earlier than most of them do, but Irv doesn’t have full access to his service record so doesn’t know the reason. He has always assumed it was because everyone hated him and either didn’t want Joe backing them up in a dangerous situation, or because they didn’t want to back him up because—well—Joe is an asshole.

  In the six years Irv has known him, Joe has always been training for something: a marathon, a triathlon, one of those Iron Man things. He doesn’t do it quietly; everyone needs to know about it. For each completed event he’s had his finishing time tattooed on his arm—someplace visible so people can ask about it. Like most narcissists he has an insatiable appetite for something that comes from crowds. Irv would fire him, but the guy is part of the union; he’s going to have to wait until Pinkerton seriously fucks up before he can get rid of him, and Irv’s worry is that by then it’ll be too late.

  Irv swings his arm over the passenger seat and again whacks his elbow on the glass.

  “God damn it.”

  The reverend doesn’t blink.

  “Here’s what you need to know, Fred. The Nazi biker dicks over there didn’t do it. Whatever happened to Lydia had nothing to do with them. That woman on the news—the mug shot—she’s a Norwegian cop. And she doesn’t look like that. She’s actually quite . . . Anyway. I’ve seen her credentials, I know her, and I trust her. Mostly. The point is, this whole circus here . . .” says Irv, nodding toward the standoff by the motorcycles, “is media created. It’s not real. I mean, it is now, but it didn’t need to be, because the new reality is built on sand. What I can’t figure out is how things built on sand never seem to sink anymore. Sign of the times I guess. So here. You and I need to make sure nothing really bad happens as a result.”

  “You really have no idea what’s happening here, do you,” Fred Green says. It is not a question.

  “I think I just described it perfectly. I need your help to calm things down. A little teamwork. Church and state, hand in hand.”

  “You think those people are angry because of one news report?”

  “I think flammable things burn when you light them on fire, so yeah.”

  “You murdered a black child because he was black. Try and think back, Sheriff. Miami after Arthur McDuffie. L.A. after Rodney King. St. Petersburg after TyRon Lewis. Cincinnati after Timothy Thomas. And now little Jeffrey Simmons. Right here. How much more of this can reasonable people take? If black cops were killing white people—beating them to death, strangling them, shooting them when they’re unarmed—how long would it take before other white people reacted? Would you have described that as a castle built on sand? A reality anchored on lies? I doubt it.”

  “I didn’t murder anyone,” Irv says, “and I’m not here to hurt people, Fred. On the contrary. I’m looking to keep us off the list of federal disaster areas like the ones you just mentioned. And you’re going to help me.”

  “I’m supposed to tell people—black people, and black people only—that violence isn’t the way. How long can that message remain credible, do you think?”

  “Reverend, we’re looking at an imminent problem, right over there—”

  Fred Green raises a hand and interrupts: “The police murdered Jeffrey Simmons. I don’t know and I don’t care if those bikers were involved. What I do know is that there’s a line of cops over there with rifles facing black people and protecting those . . .” Green does not choose a word. “Those black people, Sheriff, are American citizens. Their taxes bought the bullets in those guns. Some of those people elected you, Sheriff. Why do you think that is?”

  “This isn’t a damn game, Fred. Now let’s go mingle.”

  The reverend doesn’t move.

  Irv holds his temper but his voice is not steady enough to conceal his anger. “Please, Fred. Those people are not gathered to protest police violence. They are there to extract justice from those bikers because Roger Mandel reported that Sigrid is a white supremacist and her brother might have killed Lydia. The facts are, she’s a Norwegian cop here to find her broken-hearted brother who probably didn’t kill Lydia and definitely has no connection to that gang over there. I take your point about the meta-politics here, Fred, but we don’t decide right and wrong at the level of national dysfunction. It’s right down here where the people are. So let’s go calm people down. Get their attention, say a terrible mistake has been made, and then we can introduce Roger Mandel and throw him right under the bus and let the crowd have at him. Once they’re fed and digesting they’ll probably calm down.”

  “And then what?” asks Fred Green.

  “Then Melinda is going to go stand up there to try and disperse the crowd.”

  “Whoa. How’s that?” Melinda says, suddenly engaged.

  “I think they are less likely to be violent against a woman.”

  “So why am I wearing a bulletproof vest?”

  “I might be wrong. OK, folks, showtime.”

  Irv opens the car door, but before he is able to slide out, Fred manages to grip Irv’s shirt at the shoulder. This surprises him, and he looks at the hand and the arm attached to it. Reverend Fred Green has reached out so far that his face is pressed against the glass, distorting his cheek and muffling his message. “After Jeffrey, and Lydia . . .” he says.

  “I know,” says Irv, shaking Fred off.

  “After Jeffrey and Lydia,” repeats Green, gripping him even tighter, “if the police shoot one black person in defense of a white gang—no matter the circumstances . . .”

  “I get it, Reverend. And now that you know about Marcus being a
suspect too—though an unlikely one—I assume you want me to find him. Get this solved. I know. I’m working on that, too.”

  “No, Sheriff. I do not want you to find him. Or arrest him.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Why not?”

  “Because justice lost is better than justice denied.”

  Melinda opens the back door of the car and leads the reverend toward the crowd.

  Irving does not follow them. Instead he makes a beeline for Pinkerton, who is on the phone looking very pleased with himself, and who clearly wants a chance to demonstrate his skills with leadership and a baton. Pinkerton gives Irv the upward dude-nod. Irv, scowling, is now between the gathering and the SERT, and everyone’s eyes are on him.

  Someone shouts “No justice, no peace.” It sounds less like an analysis than a promise.

  “Joe,” says Irv to Pinkerton.

  “Sheriff. Howard wants a word.”

  “Don’t shoot anybody while I’m on the phone. And turn some of your people around. Face the upstate biker-Nazis.”

  “I don’t think they’re Nazis, Sheriff,” says Pinkerton. “They’re just white supremacists.”

  “That’s what we call a distinction without a difference, Pinkerton. Now: Point some of the guns at the white people. Confederate flags have always made nice targets. That’s an order.”

  Irv looks up into the sky, which glows a celestial green. The mist doesn’t cool his skin, and he imagines the acid rain eating him alive like a solvent. Eyes closed, he takes the phone from Pinkerton and presses it to his ear.

  “Howard, Howard, Howard. Why are you always in my face?”

  “How does it look?”

  “Manageable,” says Irv, lying.

  “You ran your campaign on being hard on crime.”

  “I ran my campaign on being smart on crime, which everyone took to mean whatever they wanted, which is how I won. You’re wasting my time, Howard, and I’m going to hang up.”

  “I know—the commissioner knows—that you’re sympathetic to the Simmons family and don’t agree with the Carman verdict. Well . . . too bad. That’s the law and you’re the lawman. If anyone in that crowd breaks the law, you make the arrest and get control. The law is colorblind. No exceptions.”

  Irv hangs up to keep from saying something he’d enjoy but regret.

  Taking a breath, Irv turns to face forty irate people who—against expectations—turn out not to be facing him or the line of cops. Instead, their attention is directed toward Reverend Fred Green, who is now gathering people toward him with slight gestures, the way a guide might draw a tour group tighter to discuss a ruin. His face is passive and relaxed under that massive umbrella, and once a circle forms he starts shaking hands and introducing himself to those he doesn’t know.

  Irv is too far away to hear him. What Irv can see, though, is that Fred Green is not doing most of the talking. He is not politicking or working the crowd. He is, primarily, listening. And with someone attentive and interested to speak to, they are speaking. One by one: gesturing, explaining, wondering.

  Irv turns to Pinkerton. “Shoulder all the rifles, take off the helmets, and tell your men to clean their fingernails. We’re deescalating.”

  “That’s not wise.”

  “That’s an order. And I want you to personally go into that clubhouse over there and arrest somebody.”

  “For what?”

  “Something illegal, preferably. But anything will do. Catch and release is fine. Just . . . go catch. I want bearded faces shouting obscenities on the evening news.”

  “Something like what?”

  “Like what?”

  No imagination in this guy. Nothing.

  “Put your Popeye Doyle hat on,” Irv explains, “and find me illegal possession of a firearm, drugs, drunk and disorderly conduct, wearing plaid and fatigues at the same time, or simply picking their feet in Poughkeepsie. I couldn’t care less. I mean, shit, Joe, maybe you can get one to hit you and we’ll have a win-win. Either way, I want to see a white man in handcuffs in five minutes.”

  “I thought we were the law, Sheriff.”

  “That’s where the country has forgotten its roots, Pinkerton, but luckily I remember. We’re not just the law, Joe. We’re the peacemakers. Like the old Colts. We are here to be more than meter maids, Joe. We’re here to be the actual instruments of God. Because it was the Lord above who said, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers for they will be called children of God.’ Matthew Five, verse nine. Now go walk in the way of the Lord, Pinkerton. Make peace. Right the fuck now.”

  The News

  Two months ago, Marcus invited Lydia to Montreal for a long weekend with the intention of exploring as much of her mind and body as he possibly could. It was only an hour and a half away by car, but Montreal could have been Paris compared to upstate’s rural walks and the muddy rills lining the interstate between here and there.

  A whole weekend in Montreal? At a hotel? With a bed?

  “Yes,” she had said.

  Marcus had his one and only suit dry-cleaned, his shirts laundered and ironed, his hair cut, and he shaved. He spent sixty dollars on a cologne he would never have considered buying before. Friday morning he dressed in front of the mirror that was steamed at the edges. His skin was shaved and smooth, his clothing crisp, and he smelled like the sea.

  “Yes,” she had said.

  “OK,” he said to himself, smiling at the thought.

  He drove his Saab 900 with a rip in the driver’s seat. They passed northbound rigs with screaming tires. They listened to NPR until the nation was behind them. They crossed the border north of Brasher Falls State Forest, across the St. Lawrence River, and over Cornwall Island in Canada. The border guard told them to enjoy their stay.

  Marcus turned right onto the 401 going east, and from there it was a straight ride into Montreal. That right turn had made everything feel very close, as though the city itself had them in a tractor beam.

  Lydia popped in a cassette tape she’d found in the glove compartment. “So,” Lydia had said, as Modern English played “I Melt with You” on Marcus’s cassette.

  Marcus raised his eyebrows. “Yup.”

  “What’s the big plan?” she asked.

  “Check in. Clean up. Go out.”

  “So quickly?”

  He had made reservations at a restaurant with excellent reviews. The pictures on the website showed a stylish, modern, cosmopolitan space with beautiful people having lively conversations about fascinating topics that entertained themselves and everyone around them. He couldn’t imagine himself at one of the tables and almost didn’t book it. But he could picture her there. He could visualize that room reflecting off her eyes. That he wanted to see.

  He called from his house in New York. They answered in French. He spoke English. He spelled his family name for the man on the phone. Of seven letters, two don’t exist in English. Twenty-eight percent of himself was erased in translation.

  Ødegård.

  His name is derived from a Norwegian term given to the farms emptied by the Black Death of 1349–50. It is a name that still whispers of absolute despair seven centuries later. It is a name that has no place in a restaurant in Montreal with someone as vivacious and present as Lydia Jones.

  Momentarily panicked by this thought while driving, he didn’t answer her question and instead asked, “What did you bring to wear?”

  Lydia smiled at that. Apparently she had been thinking about something other than the Black Death of 1349–50, because she said: “Do you remember that cat suit Halle Berry was wearing in Catwoman?”

  The car followed Marcus’s thoughts into the neighboring lane. Lydia coughed and Marcus returned, though begrudgingly.

  Lydia shook her head at him. “You white boys and that cat suit.”

  Marcus looked at her forearms and, after, her cheeks. There was copper to her skin. It held sunlight. He tried to open his mouth to answer but had nothing to say.

  Lydia ejected the tape and
adjusted the radio to a French station playing American music.

  After ten minutes of silence, Lydia’s bare feet on the dashboard, Marcus said, “I’ve never been a white boy before.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “I’ve never really thought of myself as white. I’ve just been me.”

  “That’s the essence of white privilege right there.”

  “I’m not so sure. I’m not American. I’m Norwegian. We don’t have the same history. We never had anyone else there to define ourselves against, other than the Swedes and Danes who occupied us. I mean . . . I see we’re different. But I didn’t grow up thinking about it the way people do here.”

  Lydia smiled at him. “That might be why this works.” And then she tilted her head to the side. “We’ll see.”

  The hotel was stylish and glowed lavender by the reception desk, where a perfectly quaffed Moroccan man in his late twenties smiled and took their passports as he clacked away at the keys with the lightness of Art Tatum.

  Lydia wore jeans, a powder-blue button-down, and a faded corduroy jacket snatched from a secondhand store, giving her the look of an off-duty model from 1978. In his memory of the day the world seemed to wrap itself around her so that everywhere she went was a perfect fit.

  They were issued two plastic cards for keys. A green light, a downward push, and they were in.

  Lydia’s suitcase was a rolling garment bag small enough to use as a carry-on. He had packed a leather gym bag. Behind him, Lydia slipped wordlessly into the bathroom while he opened the folding suitcase rack and placed his own bag there, only to find that it drooped between the two nylon straps. He removed the bag, folded the rack, and studied the room for a new plan.

  That is when Lydia walked out of the bathroom smelling like Ivory soap and wearing nothing but satin blue panties. She slithered between the bleach-white sheets like a princess, rolled onto her belly, and gave him a look.

  Canada was not Mars. It was not an alternative dimension or the far side of the universe. The prevalence of French notwithstanding, Montreal was firmly North American and not the Europe many pretended it to be. And yet, to cross an international border was still a statement—even an achievement of a sort. It was to stand in another history. A place unlike the one on the other side. A life apart. Here, the rules of order, the experience of cause and effect, the very memory of continuity and change were different. Not all the differences were better. But the awareness that the difference existed—that difference was possible—was a kind of freedom. It was a freedom that empowered him. That aroused him. That gave him confidence to put away the fears he’d been building up in himself over the previous month.