American Heart

by Laura Moriarty

  “And you’re wearing it for real, not as sacrilege,” she added, hitching the child higher on her hip. “The neighbor said this son-of-a-b puts the American flag out by his front door every morning. Takes it down at sunset.”

  “The nerve,” somebody else said. “Using that as a cover.”

  I kept my eyes on the back of Sophie’s head.

  “Do they think he’s in there now?” It was Sophie, asking Jayden.

  “They’re all in there. People were already watching the back of the house and all around the sides when I got here. And the lights went out about ten minutes ago.”

  “Except for the Christmas lights,” somebody said. “On a timer in January. Tacky.”

  Someone tapped on my shoulder. I turned around to see a tall, bird-necked woman wearing a lot of makeup and holding a microphone. She smiled, but her eyes stayed big.

  “Hello,” she said, her voice friendly and sort of musical, like my kindergarten teacher that I’d loved. “I’m Ava Montgomery with Channel 4 News. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions about how you’re feeling right now?”

  I shook my head and turned away so my hair covered my cheek. I didn’t want Aunt Jenny seeing me on television. I didn’t want anyone seeing me here.

  “Honey? Honey? We’re over here.” A woman in a puffy green coat, her moussed-up hair the same red as Sophie’s, was sitting in a straight-backed lawn chair in the yellowed grass at the far edge of the driveway. A man wearing earmuffs sat next to her, also in a lawn chair, a pair of binoculars resting on his belly. They both had flashlights held between their knees, and even though they were both smiling, their underlit faces looked kind of horror movie.

  “Oh God, Mom. Lawn chairs? Are you kidding me?”

  “Well, excuse me if I want to be comfortable.” The mom glanced at her phone. “We’ve been out here for almost forty-five minutes.” She looked at her husband and rolled her eyes. “To protect and to serve, my foot.”

  “It doesn’t look like a safe place to sit,” Sophie said. “What if the police drive right over you when they come?”

  “Then I’ll sue.”

  The dad laughed, blowing on his hands. “They aren’t gonna drive up on the grass, Soph. They’ll probably just walk up so they don’t get blocked in.” He smiled at me. “Who’s your friend?”

  “This is Amy.”

  Her mom gave me a worried look. “You want to sit, honey? We’ve got an extra chair in the car. You look like you’re not feeling well.”

  “I’m okay,” I said. “Thanks.”

  She didn’t seem convinced, and I couldn’t blame her. Even I can’t make every lie smooth. I was thinking I didn’t want her smiling at me and asking if I needed a chair when she was the kind of person who’d bring a lawn chair to something like this, like she was watching fireworks in a city park. Maybe she was being nice to me, even though she didn’t know me, because I looked and talked the way she did. But what she was doing right now was no good. And the standing people weren’t any better. I could understand being scared and mad about Detroit. But nobody I’d just walked past looked especially scared, and they didn’t seem mad so much as pumped up, like fans at a football game. Fans of the team about to win.

  “At least you’re dressed appropriately.” The mom clicked her tongue. “Jayden, I’m getting cold just looking at you. You need an actual coat on a night like this. Not just that jacket.”

  Jayden smiled, though he had his arms crossed tight in front of his chest. “I didn’t think we’d be out here this long.”

  “No joke,” somebody said. “Where the hell are they?”

  “I don’t know if they’re even coming.” It was another voice behind me, a man’s, and he sounded a little madder than everyone else. I didn’t turn around.

  “They better. And they better get here soon. I’ll go in there myself. I’ve got a sister in Detroit. Or more the suburbs. But I’ll go in there myself.”

  I lowered my head in the darkness. These people around me must have known what they were saying didn’t make any sense. If whoever was inside had anything to do with what happened in Detroit, there wouldn’t be just a bunch of random people standing around, or sitting in lawn chairs, and waiting on the local police. There’d be a freaking SWAT team here. Helicopters. Serious military. And I didn’t think Sophie would have beaten them here from the diner, even if her manager let her off early.

  “I’m tired of waiting,” the man behind me said. “Are you tired of waiting, people? Who’s with me? Who’s with me?”

  Plenty of them were, it turned out, judging from all the clapping and hooting. So I don’t know if he was the one who threw the rock. I don’t even know if it was a rock. I just heard the shatter of glass, and the louder whooping and clapping that came after. Jayden aimed his flashlight at the shards of glass in the front window. A white curtain fluttered behind it. “Somebody’s got good aim,” he said.

  “Thank you,” a woman’s voice said, and people laughed and clapped some more.

  The light behind the front door switched on, and everyone went quiet. It was one of those old-fashioned doors with the three little rectangles of glass for decoration. But the glass was glazed so you couldn’t see in.

  “Open the door, traitor! You coward!”

  The door opened, as if the person behind it had just been waiting for the command. A big, wide-shouldered man with a white buzz cut stood in the doorway, squinting into the floodlight, and because of the way the light made a circle around the door, he looked like he was in a spotlight, up on an old-fashioned stage. He was clean shaven, with a bit of a wattle under his chin and a paunch under his sweatshirt. He definitely didn’t look Muslim. He looked like one of those old guys who used to hang out in front of the doughnut shop in Joplin, always looking grouchy and chewing tobacco and yelling at the high school kids not to smoke. He held the door wide with his left arm, and he kept his right hand tucked in the front pocket of his sweatshirt like he couldn’t be bothered to take it out.

  “What’s wrong with you people?” He leaned out of the doorway, the red and green Christmas lights reflecting off his forehead. “I’m a veteran! I fought for this country, which is more than I can say for you idiots. Get off my property! You’re vultures! Cowards in a mob! You make me sick! You want a piece of me, you come get it!”

  I don’t know if there was any right thing he could have said just then, but that was definitely the wrong one, as more people started yelling back at him, and some of them moved closer, like they were all saying yes, they certainly did want a piece of him, and they’d be glad to come get it, thank you very much. I could hear sirens in the distance, still faint, and I wished they would come faster. I knew the police weren’t exactly going to give the old man, or anybody inside, flowers when they showed up. But it would be better for everyone if they got here soon.

  “Who you got in there with you?” somebody yelled. “Who you hiding?”

  The old man shook his head and made a face like he was going to spit. “Innocent people,” he said. “Including women and children. One of them has a condition, and needs to be where he can get medicine. Have some decency, people.”

  “That’s a laugh,” somebody said. “You talking about decency.”

  I heard another shatter of glass, but before I could see where it came from, the man started yelling again. “I said get off my property! You don’t want to mess with me tonight.” When he took his hand out from his pocket, he had a pistol in it. He held it out in front of him, pointed straight up.

  I took a step back, my eyes on the gun, the shiny silver of it glinting in the floodlight. But almost everyone else moved forward, and all around me I heard clack, clack, clack, a chorus of clacks, some quiet, some loud. My eyeballs moved to the right. Just a few inches from my shoulder was the kind of gun that didn’t look like it shot bullets so much as sprayed them, and it was held steady and aimed at the old man by hands wearing red fingernail polish. On my left, somebody else had just a regular gu
n. Sophie’s mom had stood up from her chair, her face all business now. She had a green gun, the exact same color as her jacket, pointed at him as well. I could still hear more clacking behind me.

  I dropped to my knees and crouched forward, my hands on the back of my head. The asphalt of the driveway was hard and cold, but I pressed my forehead against it, wishing I could burrow right into it. I thought of the little boy on his mother’s hip, but I was too scared to turn around. My lips moved without me meaning them to. I love you, Caleb. I love you, Tess. It’s okay, Mom. I’m sorry, Chloe.

  “Freeze!” New voices. Running footsteps. “Drop your weapons! Drop your weapons!” More shouting. “Drop it! Drop it!”

  I didn’t think my body could tense up any more, but when the shot fired, it did. The boom of it shuddered through me. I tried to make myself take up negative space, to pull my head down into my neck and my feet up under my butt, so I was crouched up the way Caleb used to sleep when he was a baby in his crib. My hands went to my ears, then back to my head. I heard a thud, and then another.

  “Suspect down. I repeat, suspect down. Weapons down, people. Weapons down.”

  A woman behind me yelled, “Way to go!” And then there was more clapping, more hooting.

  “Bull’s-eye.” It was the guy from before, the one who said he hadn’t been kidding.

  I lifted my forehead, my chin scraping against the asphalt. I was eye level with the backs of someone’s tennis shoes, but when I tilted my head just a little to the side, I could see the old man was lying in his doorway now, the thick sole of one of his shoes facing me. Bright blood was smeared on his white door in the shape of a sloppy number seven.

  A police officer crouched over the man while four more officers, weapons raised, moved past him into the house. Six more officers stood in the yard, facing the crowd. They held long black shields in front of their bodies, though I could see the tips of their guns over the tops of the shields. They wore dark glasses, maybe because of the floodlight, so you couldn’t see their faces. But some of them must have been scared, facing all those people with guns.

  “Step back, people. We’re your police force. Let us do our job. Please keep all weapons down.”

  The tennis shoes in front of me started to move backward, and I had to sit up fast so the person who owned them wouldn’t trip over me and maybe accidentally shoot somebody’s head off. But when I tried to stand, my knees didn’t work. It was like they didn’t have bones in them, nothing to hold them upright. I might as well have tried to stand on my hair.

  “You okay, honey?” It was Sophie’s mom. She was sitting in her lawn chair again, leaning forward, her flashlight shining on her own face. She’d put away her gun. “Scared you, didn’t it? Jayden, help Sophie’s friend up, would you?”

  “Oh, no, I’m okay,” I said. My knees would have to go solid again. They would have to. I didn’t want Jayden touching me. I didn’t want any of them touching me. I imagined my knees solidifying, the jelly of them turning hard and strong. I raised one knee, put my weight on it, and willed myself up to my feet. I wouldn’t look at the old man sprawled out in his doorway, the Christmas lights still blinking over him. I didn’t need to. The man behind me had said “bull’s-eye.” That meant he was dead.

  And I didn’t want to see the Muslims come out. I didn’t want to see their faces and think of Chloe, and I didn’t want to hear what people would yell at them. If I did, my knees might give out again, and I needed them to stay strong, strong enough for me to move out of the crowd slowly and politely, saying “excuse me” without sounding particularly upset, so I could get away from the news van’s light and slip into the darkness, away from all of them, as far as I could run.

  I don’t know if I’ve ever run that fast, that far. I ignored the cold air, sharp in my lungs, and the hardness of the pavement beneath my boots. Sweat cooled and itched under my coat, but I didn’t stop. I could only hear my own breath, moving fast and strong in and out of me. I almost didn’t hear the phone when it buzzed. At first, I thought it was a car or a motorcycle coming up from behind. But then I knew. I took the phone out of my pocket and looked at the screen, as if I needed to check the number, as if anyone else in the world would be calling this disposable phone. My heart was still pounding, and I felt sweaty and cold at the same time, but seeing the number, so familiar, made me smile while I gasped for breath.

  I didn’t answer it, though. I knew I couldn’t. As Sophie had said, people were motivated, and now I understood what that meant. This wasn’t a game. That man was dead, partly because he’d gotten out a gun, but mostly because he’d been hiding people. I couldn’t bring Tess into this kind of mess. Once I told her where I was, and what I was doing, if she didn’t turn me in, she’d be in trouble too.

  She was a good friend, calling me back like I knew she would. So I’d be a good friend to her.

  I touched the phone against my forehead, letting it buzz just one more time before I set it down on the pavement in front of me. I looked up at a streetlight as I brought the heel of my boot down hard on it once, and then again, and again, until the ringing went dead.

  Chloe met me at the door, her hand in her hair.

  “Where have you been?” She locked the door behind me. “Why is your face red? You’ve been running? You were gone so long. I was worried.” She turned to the side, pointing at the television. “There was a raid on a house, right in this town. Sarah-Mary, they killed the man who was hiding them. They shot him in his doorway!”

  “I heard,” I said, shaking out of my coat, which had turned clammy against my skin. I didn’t want to tell her I meant I’d actually heard the shot, and then the thud of his body against the door, and then another thud when he hit the ground. She was wearing the white sweatshirt and wide-legged pants again, dressed for bed. Her eyes were wide behind her glasses, and she crossed her arms like she was cold.

  “They took everyone else away.” She went over to the edge of one of the beds, nodding at the television. “He had two families in his house, three children. They were crying when they came out, the younger two holding their mother’s coat. Someone threw something at her. At a mother, with crying children!”

  She was sort of yelling and whispering at the same time, which was good, as the hotel walls were so thin. I had to pee, pretty badly in fact, but I could tell she wanted me to see what she meant, and she wanted me to see it now. I went over to the edge of the bed and sat next to her, wiping sweat from my forehead. The news van must have pulled back the floodlight, or switched to a different one, because the spotlight shining on just the doorway was gone, and now you could see the whole front of the house, and the man lying dead in his doorway, though now there was a blue sheet pulled over him. The Christmas lights were still blinking, and the garage door was open now, showing the back end of a pickup truck. A younger man with his head lowered was walking out on one side of the truck, his hands behind his back, an officer close behind him. The crowd, which you couldn’t see, clapped and whistled. The bottom of the screen read CHANNEL 4 EXCLUSIVE: ONE DEAD, SEVEN APPREHENDED IN SHERBURN RAID.

  “They’re just bringing them out now?”

  She shook her head. “They keep replaying it.” She held a palm in front of the screen and squinted like she was trying to block the sun.

  “Maybe stop watching,” I said. I said it in a nice way, but when she didn’t move, I reached up to the bureau for the remote and turned off the power. She couldn’t do those people any good, no matter how many times she watched. And I didn’t want to see the kids coming out and holding their mother’s coat.

  Even with the TV off, she stayed still and quiet, staring at the black screen. I swallowed. The back of my throat felt raw from running.

  “I’m going to Canada too,” I said. “For good.” I didn’t know if she’d be surprised or not, or if she wouldn’t believe me. I didn’t care if she believed me or not. I believed me. I’d decided when I was running, and I hadn’t changed my mind. Even the caption on the ne
ws was like a scoreboard. A win for the home team.

  She turned to me and shook her head.

  “No,” she said, like I was a little kid. “No, you’re not going to Canada.”

  That was irritating. I know some people say they’re going to move to Canada every time they get mad at the government, like it’s some big threat that’s supposed to impress you. But nobody ever really does it. At least I’ve never known anyone who has. People start saying it after every election, no matter which way it goes, and then four years later, what do you know, all those would-be emigrants are still down here complaining about everything. I knew that was irritating too.

  But I meant what I’d said. I wanted to get out. I kept hearing the clack, clack, clack of those guns coming out all around me. And I kept picturing the old man, and the bottom of one of his shoes as he was lying there, and the bloody seven on the door. He was a veteran, he’d said. He’d said they didn’t want to mess with him. But they did. And they’d won.

  “Uh, yes I am,” I said. I didn’t know much about Canada. It was supposed to be cleaner. It was definitely colder. There weren’t nearly as many guns. I was sure they had their problems. But if that’s where people were trying to escape to, it must be a gentler place.

  “You can’t go to Canada,” she said.

  I didn’t like her tone, like she knew something or even everything that I didn’t.

  “If they let you stay, they’ll let me stay,” I said, though I didn’t know that was true. I wasn’t Muslim, and that was a big plus on this side of the border. But the Canadians had a whole different way of thinking about it. They might be more okay with letting in a Muslim who could teach electrical engineers than somebody like me, who hadn’t finished high school, who only knew how to fry onion rings and make change and clean bathrooms. “I can do whatever I want,” I added, because that was really the point I wanted to make.

  “You won’t go, then.” She looked back over her shoulder at me. “Because of your brother.”