by S. F. Henson
Mom’s curtains pop into my mind. With that half a bloody handprint on the bottom where I’d tried to pull myself upright.
I was almost up when his boot came down on the side of my shinbone. Snapped it in two. There was blinding white heat, and then nothing. For days.
Mom must’ve taken me to a hospital because I remember being unable to move my leg, and seeing the white cast. We found another hospital a couple months later and they cut the cast off.
The reporter points to the paragraph. “Is this when Jefferson claimed your mother kidnapped you?”
My eyes snap to hers. The beast stirs in my blood at the thought of all the lies he told about Mom. The lies people believe. I grip the edge of the table so hard bits of particleboard fleck off. “Yes,” I say through gritted teeth. “She rescued me from Hell and he turned it on her. It’s bullshit. The abuser made her out to be the bad guy.”
A piece of table breaks off in my fist. The reporter jumps a little, but recovers quickly.
“What a monster,” she whispers.
For a second, I’m not sure if she means him or me. I release the table, but hang on to the chunk in my hand. “We would’ve been fine if she hadn’t …” I take another breath. “She died, and no one spoke for me. Except him.”
“You didn’t speak for yourself?”
“Like they’re going to believe an eight-year-old kid? And I was terrified of him. I was always terrified.” I jab a finger at the letter. “It’s all in there.”
Thomas Mayes, the mantra, the fights, the hate, the ignorance. Kelsey and our stolen, secret books. How he quoted Mein Kampf while he beat me. How he made me salute. Taught me to goose step. And punished me when I didn’t do it right.
All before I was old enough to figure out girls don’t actually carry cooties.
The reporter flips through page after page, scribbling notes in her pad as she goes.
She stops scribbling and looks at me suddenly. “What are red laces?”
The goose bumps return. This was one of the hardest parts to write.
“A prize,” I say. “A reward for spilling blood for the cause. See, until then, you wear white laces in your combat boots. That shows you’re a member of the Nazi Socialist Party. White for White Power. But red, that means you’ve fought. Most kids get theirs when they’re fourteen or older. But I was eleven.”
I pause and let it sink in. Her hand goes to her mouth. “That’s horrible,” she says through her fingers. I drink in her reaction, soak it up while I can. She’ll feel differently after she reads what he made me do. Her eyes drift back to the paper and I read along to judge her reaction.
It was early spring, warm, but not hot. The kind of day that makes you want to play outside forever. But I couldn’t. I had to go into the city for fencing supplies with him and two of his buddies. We got what we needed and headed back late that afternoon, when it’s not dark enough for businesses to turn on their lights, but too dark to see well.
As we passed an ice cream shop, a Middle Eastern boy came out. He looked like a normal kid, wearing shorts and a band T-shirt. Nothing strange or threatening about him. He tied a plastic bag to the handlebars of a bike in front of the shop. I remember being jealous of this kid who could go and get ice cream and ride his bike and be normal.
It pleased me that I could be jealous of a minority. It meant The Fort hadn’t completely infected me.
I wasn’t jealous for long.
He parked the truck at the curb and told me to get out.
His voice rattles in my ears.
“This is your time, Son. Make that terrorist regret infecting our country.”
The words didn’t register until he dragged me out of the truck bed. I’d been too busy craning my neck to see the different flavors inside the ice cream parlor. When he shoved me toward the boy, though, I realized what he wanted me to do.
The kid straddled his bike and I hesitated, thinking if I waited long enough they’d give up and take me home. At first, I thought it worked. The kid started pedaling and he made me get back in the truck. We pulled away and I thought it was over.
But we followed the kid.
He didn’t seem to notice at first. Not until we’d stuck with him for a couple blocks without passing. He kept glancing over his shoulder, then pedaled faster. The truck sped up to match. They herded him onto a dead-end street and down an alley.
The kid was like a cornered animal. He cowered behind his bicycle, trying to make himself small, as though the thin, metal tubes could actually protect him. I hid, too. Curled up in the truck bed, afraid to watch. Then my shirt collar pulled tight and he yanked me out of the truck.
“Take care of that towelhead,” he said.
I stood there, numb as the boy. We were both afraid to move. The men were jeering and shouting. It was full dark by this point. The truck’s headlights were spotlights on the kid, illuminating the puddle at his feet where he’d wet himself.
The reporter isn’t writing anymore. She’s staring at the letter with her mouth slightly open.
I hate myself all over again. I want to bury it. Dump it down in the hole with the tree and throw thick, claylike dirt on top of it. It will all be over soon, though. Once the reporter’s article comes out, I can leave the past in the past where it belongs.
Once the article is out.
These stories are going to be out there for everyone to see.
I can barely stomach the reporter reading my letter. Will I really be able to handle other people reading it? Other people.
That means The Fort.
The reporter turns the page. “Oh my God.”
I know which part she’s at without looking. The memory of his voice shakes my skull, almost as loud as it was that night in the woods: “Do I need to show you how it’s done?”
He grabbed one of the metal fence poles we’d just bought, stalked up to the boy, and slammed the pipe into his kneecap. The kid howled and dropped to the asphalt. He threw the pipe at me and got in my face. “Don’t embarrass me, boy. Pick it up and show that sand n—”
I couldn’t write the word. There’s an ugly slash in the paper where I marked out what I’d started and rewrote it.
“—which race is supreme. Or I’m coming after you next.” The sound of the pipe crushing the boy’s knee rang in my ears. I didn’t want to hear it breaking my own bones. So I did it. I hit the boy until the pipe was slick with his blood.
The bike fell over at some point. The plastic bag thumped to the ground, reminding me of the loaf of bread Mom dropped in that grocery store when I was four. Not long after I’d gotten the cast off. Except, this time, I was the bald guy with the swastika, doing the Devil’s work to an innocent kid.
They threw a party for me when we got back to The Fort. He awarded me my red laces himself. All I could think about was hiding in the bathroom to scrub the boy’s blood off my shoes.
That was only the first time. There were other boys, other blood splatters on my black boots, other nights of scrubbing until my hands blistered.
He broke me. Groomed me.
Because he wanted me to take over for him. “Otherwise, what’s the point in having a son?”
But I didn’t want it.
I wanted out.
Just like now. I want out of here. I don’t want to do this anymore. I start to say so, when the reporter looks up suddenly. “What about the police? Did they find the boy you attacked? They definitely press charges for something like that.”
I laugh dryly. “They’re just as racist as The Fort. Hell, a lot of them are members, and almost all of them are paid off. These cases either go unsolved or The Fort puts up one of their fall guys.”
Her eyebrows crease. “You can’t tell me these men are sacrificial enough to take the fall for crimes they didn’t commit.”
“Of course they are. The fall guys are respected for putting the cause above themselves. A lot of them served so much time they don’t function well in society. They’d probably do someth
ing to go back anyway. They recruit in there. Jail is what they’re good at.”
“If you wanted out so badly, why didn’t you become a fall guy?”
“He never would’ve allowed that. Besides, prison is a nightmare. As bad as The Fort. At least, at The Fort I had Kelsey.”
The reporter flips through her notes and taps a line with her pen. “Yes, Kelsey Sawyer. Let’s talk about her.”
Let’s not. My throat closes up, making it hard to swallow. Let’s forget I called the reporter, let’s go on about our lives.
The reporter is already flipping through the pages. “Ah, here we go.”
I want to rip the paper from her hands and disappear. She picks up her coffee and leans back, out of reach.
Kelsey and I were going to run. Anywhere but Kentucky. As far as possible. Soon as we turned sixteen, so we could get jobs. We’d grab our supplies from the woods, steal a truck in town, and be miles away by morning.
We didn’t make it to our sixteenth birthdays.
The reporter turns the page and reads about that night in the forest. I shred the piece of particleboard and think of my woods. Of Kelsey’s battered body.
After Thomas Mayes knocked me out, they dragged me back to the meeting hall. He had called a freaking gathering to determine how to deal with us.
He pulled us on stage. Kelsey on one side of him, and me on the other. Then he delivered our sentences. I had to Indoctrinate Kelsey.
The reporter stops again. “What does ‘Indoctrinate’ mean?”
I stare at the pile of shredded wood on the table to keep from looking at her. “It’s a beating that happens until the guilty person repents of straying from the beliefs of the Nazi Socialist Party, swears to never stray again, and gives a heartfelt recitation of the mantra. The beating continues until the leader is satisfied the person means it.”
The reporter’s face turns green, but it could just be the light. “And Jefferson Fuller wanted you to do it? To attack your girlfriend.”
I can’t sit any longer. I shove off the table and pace in front of the windows, feeling like the crumbly edged newspapers that are taped to the glass. If this woman picks at me much more I’m going to fall apart. “If I Indoctrinated her, he would forgive me of my sin and let me off with a boot party. That’s when a bunch of them gather around and kick you with their steel-toed boots. It sounds bad, but it’s better than Indoctrination. With a boot party, you can curl into a ball and protect your face and organs. During Indoctrination, they stretch you out and tie you down. You’re completely exposed. Completely vulnerable.” My voice hitches and I avoid her gaze. “It’s all in the letter.”
I know this part by heart—it’s seared there for eternity.
Kelsey begged me to do it. She knew what he would do to me if I refused him in front of the entire Fort. I approached her with the rope, squeezed her hand, and whispered for her to run. As we bolted, I hurled the swastika flagpole at him, hoping the huge metal nazi eagle on top would hit him and distract him long enough.
It didn’t.
I thought Kelsey was behind me. She was fast and strong. I’d never had to worry about her holding her own before. I didn’t realize how badly she was hurt. I’d gotten ahead of her and when I turned around, they had her. She screamed for me to go.
I’d hung, frozen, on a tightrope of time. I could’ve gone for her and fought them, knowing I was outnumbered and she was injured and slow. Or I could run and come back for her later, slip back in and rescue her.
Her face floats in my memory, hair stuck to her bruised cheeks, the Connor brothers and two of his thugs pinning her arms behind her back, Kelsey kicking and thrashing.
Then one of them hit her over the head with the butt of his gun. Her scream cut off and she slumped to the snow, and my choice was made. There was no way I could get us both out. She was thin, but muscular, and deadweight. The tightrope snapped and I did the only thing I could.
“You left her?” the reporter asks. Her tone is so even she could be asking my favorite color, but disgust is written across her face as plainly as the horrible confession on the page. It twists a knife inside me. All the guilt rushes to the surface, surging so violently that, for a horrible second, I’m afraid I’m going to vomit on her.
“There were too many of them. I planned to go back. I wanted to save her, but I …”
The reporter takes a deep breath and regains her composure, wiping the emotion off her face. “You couldn’t save her,” she says.
“I was in jail!” I crush the remaining chip of particleboard in my fist and something inside me snaps with it. “I couldn’t help her if I was dead! He would’ve killed me!”
I’m standing over her, and now there’s real fear on her face. She grips the arms of her chair. All the color washes out of her like chalk in the rain.
“O-okay,” she whispers. “I get it. I get it.”
I shove the table and the pages scatter. This is the wrong person to lose control with. If I hurt her … I take deep breaths, searching for the light that seems to have turned its back on me now that my crimes are out in the open.
“I did what I had to do,” I say. The say shirks away from me as I grab my backpack. This is too much. All the unease I’ve been feeling since I called her erupts from me. My secrets are a land mine and my foot is on the trigger—one step away and they’ll explode. And take me with them.
Once The Fort finds out about the article—once they’re incriminated—they’ll come after me, and they won’t hold back. They’ll kill me.
“This was a mistake.” I scramble for my pages. “No story. No article. I take it back. All of it.”
“Nate, wait!” the reporter cries. “Your story needs to be told. It—”
I whirl on her. “You can’t run this. The Fort … they’ll go batshit. Promise you won’t run the article.”
“But, think of all—”
I slam my fist into the table, breaking it along the seam. Her coffee cup falls to the floor, splattering its contents across the dirty tile. “Promise!”
She throws up her arms, part in surrender, part in protection. “Okay! Okay, I promise. But you have to promise me something, too.”
I’m breathing heavy, sweating, emotionally raw. What more does this woman want from me?
“I’m the one you come to when you’re ready. You owe me that.”
I’ll never be ready, so I say, “Okay, fine. You’re the one I call.” I crumple the letter and shoulder my backpack. My shoes kick up dust as I cross the room and slam the door behind me.
Memories I’d long buried scramble to the surface, like fast-moving zombies piling up as I stalk away from the abandoned restaurant. Split lips and broken noses and sliced guts and gashed foreheads. Image after image of things I’ve done, people I’ve hurt. Pressing down on me until I can’t breathe.
I’m pissed and overwhelmed and disgusted with myself. I cling to my button so tight I’m afraid I’ll snap the string. The desire to punch something spurts up with the zombie memories.
Not something. Punch someone.
To feel his bones crack beneath my fist until his face feels like a bag of broken chips.
But I can’t. Because the person I want to hurt is already dead. I killed him.
Why did I let him off the hook? He should be the one talking to reporters. The one being overrun with ghosts of all the evil he committed. The one on trial, the one in jail, the one who can never have a freaking normal life.
My lungs burn and my legs ache. I don’t know when I started running, but when I look up, the lights from Traitor’s cabin wink across the darkening sky. Sweat pastes my T-shirt to my skin and the notebook paper in my fist is damp. I peel off my backpack, drop the letter, and place my hands on my knees to catch my breath.
I killed him because I had to.
Because it was him or me.
If I hadn’t, he’d be walking around free right now, terrorizing the world while I rotted in an unmarked grave in the woods behind The
Fort. With all the others. In the same makeshift cemetery where he’d started making me drag bodies back when I was ten. All the people he made me bury … all the battered corpses …
Gravel digs in my knees and I notice I’m on the side of the road. Guilt and grief stab my gut and I’m retching. The remnants of the stale bologna sandwich I had for lunch splatter into the long grass beside me.
I’d blocked out that damn body farm out in the hills. Not even Ms. Erica or Dr. Sterling know about it. No one on the right side of the law knows. But almost everyone at The Fort is aware of what goes on in those hills. They don’t discuss it, but they know. And no one has ever done a damn thing to stop it.
Not even me.
I focus on the blotch of yellow light on Traitor’s porch until my eyes glaze over. The light pulls me away from the darkness of the body farm and all the things I did in my past. My anger fades, replaced by the steady light ahead. I take slow breaths, calming myself down.
When I’m breathing normally again, I wipe my mouth with my shirttail. The pages I’d dropped flutter across the road, each word on them a piece of me I want to rip apart and leave behind. Since I can’t, I do the next best thing. I shred each page until the entire thing is nothing more than gruesome confetti. Then I pick up my backpack and start walking toward the house, leaving those purged memories on the side of the road with my lunch.
653
When I open my eyes, I’m shocked to see my bedroom. I slept so well, I thought I was back in the woods. I can’t remember the last time I slept like that, inside or out.
So maybe meeting with the reporter wasn’t as terrible an idea as I thought. Even if she’s not going to print the letter to the world, letting one person read it, one stranger who doesn’t owe me anything, might have been enough to ease my burden.
Not that the shadow is completely gone. It’s still there, but faded. Like a cheap black shirt that’s been washed a gazillion times.