by Joe Ide
“Be quiet, will you?” Isaiah said.
There were four women. Isaiah thought their lack of numbers was another sign of women’s superior intelligence. Three of them were wearing mom jeans and oversize sweatshirts. The fourth was the redhead from the firing range; cutoffs, a tank top and cowboy boots. If you can’t get attention in the real world, why not be this year’s Miss California Bigotry?
A dog was meandering around, a bullmastiff. Majestic and hulking with its big square head and floppy black muzzle; a brindle, tawny striping over black, a hundred thirty pounds of get the fuck out of my way.
“Oh, shit,” Dodson said.
Isaiah noticed a kid off by himself, leaning on a car, smoking a cigarette. He was fifteen or sixteen, reclusive face, an absorbent gaze and a seedling soul patch. A junior at Anywhere High School in his white T-shirt and jeans. He was trying to be casual but it came off as self-conscious and awkward, that age when you’re scouting around for an identity but not quite ready to hop on a bandwagon. Isaiah wondered if the kid’s parents were here and whether they’d taught their son to hate the conniving Jews and the fucking blacks and the lazy illegal Mexicans and if they’d instilled in him the belief that the mainstream media were out to destroy the white race. He wondered if the kid had stood respectfully at the Robert E. Lee monument or read about the made-up Holocaust or was handed an AR-15 for the coming race war or whether he had an option to see the world any other way. It was a crime and tragedy but that was freedom for you. A good idea that was never on sale.
The dog worried Isaiah as much as it did Dodson. Bullmastiffs originated in Britain two hundred years ago. The privileged class bred them to attack poachers nabbing a rabbit and trying to feed their families. The dogs’ masters preferred brindles because of their excellent camouflage.
Isaiah and Dodson watched the house for an hour. It was getting dark. Somebody turned on the porch lights. Sidero came out. He shouted something and everyone went inside. Fortunately, the dog did too. The music was turned off. Sidero could be heard ranting, and then the Starks began singing the most off-key, caterwauling, embarrassingly bad version of “Dixie” in the history of the Deep South. “They can’t sing neither,” Dodson said.
Isaiah knew Dodson had a phobia about dogs, and for good reason too. When he was a kid, a pit bull had mauled him, leaving scars all over his back and arms. During the Black the Knife case, Dodson was nearly eaten by a giant pit bull named Goliath.
“It’s a one-man job,” Isaiah said. “Stay here.”
Dodson watched Isaiah dart across the road, through the gate and into a cluster of cars parked haphazardly around the house. The destination was Sidero’s truck, which, of course, was parked right next to the porch. Between the truck and Isaiah was an empty stretch of ground with no cover.
Dodson whispered, “Pick your moment, Isaiah.” The Starks started chanting, “Blood and soil! Blood and soil!” Whatever the fuck that meant. “Go now, Isaiah!”
As if Isaiah had heard him, he dashed across the space and slipped under the truck. Fucking Isaiah was fearless. Dodson couldn’t see him, but he knew Isaiah was attaching a magnetized GPS unit to the frame. He stuck his head out to see if the coast was clear. He started to scramble out but three guys came out of the house.
“Go back, Isaiah! Go back!” Dodson said, trying to keep his voice down. Two of the guys were holding a drunken colleague by the armpits. Without a word, they dropped him on the ground and went back inside. The drunk’s face was turned sideways, his cheek in the dirt. All he had to do was open his eyes and he’d be looking directly at Isaiah.
“Oh, shit,” Dodson said. He swallowed hard and blinked the sweat out of his eyes. He wanted to run over there but didn’t know what he’d do. The drunk got to his hands and knees, silvery drool hanging from his open mouth. A gun fell out of his belt. “Oh, shit,” Dodson said again. He knew what Isaiah was thinking. The shortest way out was the way he’d come in, but he’d have to run right past the drunk, sprint across the yard, over the road and into the trees. Would the drunk see him and have time to shoot?
Isaiah’s other option was longer; get out on the other side of the truck, run across a stretch of weedy field and over the barbed-wire fence. Dodson couldn’t stand it. Make up your mind, Q. Go one way or the other! The chanting had stopped and the meeting was breaking up, chairs moving, talking, loud laughter. Make up your mind, Isaiah. Make your fucking move!
Too late. The group came out, footsteps thumping down the wooden stoop. “Damn, Isaiah,” Dodson said. “Why didn’t you make a fucking move?”
Isaiah was berating himself. Why didn’t you make a fucking move? He was surrounded by a forest of legs and loud babble. He was overwhelmed with fear for the thousandth time in his life. The people were all so close. He could hear their stupid conversations. The drunk was lying flat now, eyes closed. Stay asleep. Stay asleep. The drunk opened his eyes. He stared, wrinkling his brow and squinting as if he wasn’t sure what he was seeing. “Sidero?” he said. “I slee a nigger.”
Sidero snorted. “I’ll bet you do, you drunk son of a bitch.”
“No, no, man, I thwear to God, I slee a nigger.”
“Oh, yeah? Where?”
The drunk vomited, causing an outpouring of disgust. Moving legs blocked Isaiah’s view. The reprieve was momentary. The dog was twenty feet away, sniffing the ground intently. In the miasma of smells, it had no reason to home in on Isaiah but it was coming this way. Sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff. Isaiah had rarely experienced full-on panic, fear so intense it paralyzed your limbs and stomped on your logical mind. He fought the urge to run. The dog was getting closer. Sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff sniff. The fucking thing was relentless. What was it looking for? Isaiah remembered: the barbecue. The dog was looking for scraps! There was a greasy chicken bone a foot and a half away from Isaiah. He’d have to reach out from under the car. Would somebody see his hand? Do it, just do it. One…two…THREE.
He snatched the bone and flung it sideways. The dog sensed it and moved off. Isaiah’s head sunk with relief, his forehead touching the ground. He looked up again. The dog had been blocking the drunk’s view. The guy was slightly more sober now, sitting up, bending at the waist to peer under the car.
“Hey, Sidero. I’m not kibbing. There’s a nigger under your car.”
“You’re hallucinating.”
“No, I’m not. Here, takes a look for yourself.”
Isaiah watched Sidero’s feet move toward the drunk. It’s over. I’m done. Sidero grabbed the drunk by his collar and hauled him to his feet.
“Come on, asshole. We’re gonna hose you off.”
“No, wait, I thwear—”
The drunk was hauled away. Another reprieve. Engines were starting, people were leaving. Sidero would too. The moment he backed out his car, Isaiah would be exposed and these drunk, angry clods would beat him, cripple him or worse. He hoped Dodson wouldn’t do anything foolish.
One by one the cars departed, tires spraying gravel as they sped off, the drivers yodeling rebel yells, Heil Hitlers and fuck the fill-in-the-blanks. Isaiah’s brain was churning but he had nothing. Five cars were left…four…three, the roaring engines fading into quiet. Two left. Sidero’s truck and somebody’s Charger. Were they in the house? Go now, Isaiah! Too late. Sidero and Hugo approached. They stopped next to a bicycle leaning against the porch.
“You ready, bro?” Hugo said.
“Ready as I’m gonna be,” Sidero said, not sounding especially confident. “All I want to do is get this over with and collect our money. Fucking Angus. God, what a prick.”
“I hear you, man, I’ll see you later.”
The two men went to their cars. Sidero wore heavy boots, the thick soles scraping against the ground, dust rising with every footfall. He opened the door, got in and slammed it shut. The engine started, the vibration loosening grit that fell on Isaiah’s head. He stifled the urge to sneeze. Hugo started his Charger but neither of the vehicles moved. They’re on
their phones, Isaiah thought. The first thing you do. Hugo had to leave first or he’d be left in the open. Come on, asshole, go.
Isaiah waited. Another death watch. Another instance where his fate would be decided by someone else’s random behavior. Hugo left first. Hallefuckinglujah! Only Sidero remained. Wouldn’t he just love to shoot a nigger? Tell the guys about it? Get a skull tattoo to commemorate the accomplishment? Put a notch on his gun next to the one for Beaumont?
A quick calculation. The truck was parked head-in. Sidero would back out, arc to the right, and come to a stop before turning left toward the gate. Until he made that turn, Isaiah would be completely in the open and the fucking porch lights were still on. The option. When Sidero backed out, he’d be looking over his right shoulder. That would give Isaiah three, maybe four seconds to get up and scramble over the porch railing. The support posts were thick so he’d be out of view.
He waited. The truck’s huffing idle was like a lion panting, the exhaust fumes nauseating. Sidero put the car in reverse and backed out. Isaiah waited until he was exposed, leaped up, grabbed the porch railing and flung himself over. He landed hard, rolled and slammed into the wall. He waited, listened. Sidero’s car was moving—and then stopped. Was he making a call or had he seen Isaiah?
Sidero drove away.
Isaiah sat up, leaned back against the wall and tried to compose himself. This shit was getting old. He’d been thinking about it a lot these days, how routinely risking his life wasn’t a sustainable career path. Grace made his life worth more. When people heard he’d been in a scary situation, they imagined it was exciting and on some level, fun. It wasn’t. It really wasn’t. Experiences like this were nightmare-inducing and put black holes in your health. They were also a prognosis. Keep this shit up and you will not live a long time.
Isaiah sucked in a deep breath and started to get up. He wondered why the porch lights were still on. Had someone forgotten to turn them off? And that bicycle was still leaning against the stoop. Had someone forgotten that too? Isaiah sucked in a breath. “Oh no,” he breathed. Someone was still in the house.
The Junior from Anywhere High came out on the porch, a mop in one hand, a gun in the other. He looked at Isaiah. He didn’t seem angry or triumphant, more curious and confused. A few minutes ago, he’d been demonizing niggers just like everybody else, and here he was face-to-face with an actual nigger in the flesh. Isaiah’s ethnicity was a crime in itself, and he’d been spying on them. If the kid shot the black bastard, the gang would throw him a party.
Through the railing, Isaiah saw Dodson emerge from the tree line. He was coming to the rescue. Don’t do it, Dodson! Go back! The kid bent his knees and put the mop down on the floor, carefully, as if it might break. He stood, sighed and looked across the field at the barbed-wire fence, seemingly ambivalent, like his mom was calling him home. Dodson was hunched low. He reached the front gate, hid behind a post and peeked around it. He kept coming. Go back, Dodson! For fuck’s sake, pleeease go back! Isaiah didn’t think his heart could stand any more pounding or that his lungs could take another heaving breath. His sweat glands were drowning. He wondered how it was possible for a kid—a fifteen-year-old kid—to even consider shooting another person, as if he were deciding whether to drop out of school or have sex without a condom.
The kid gripped the gun tighter and looked at Isaiah again. Dodson was crouched and moving slowly, halfway across the yard now. He had a rock in his hand the size of a softball. You’re gonna get killed, you idiot. These people train their kids with guns.
The kid was sullen now, like this was a problem he didn’t want, a question he couldn’t answer. He was anxious too, breathing in sighs, his finger moving on and off the trigger; hate versus humanity flickering through his fledgling eyes. He took another deep breath as if preparing himself. Dodson was ten feet away, tiptoeing up behind him, hefting the rock. Isaiah tensed, ready to jump the kid if he aimed at Dodson. The kid looked off again.
“You better go,” he said. Then he turned and went back inside.
Chip looked through the window. The second black guy had joined the first one and they were running into the trees. Chip had seen the second guy in his peripheral vision. Another reason to come inside. Shooting one of them would have been hard. Shooting them both was unthinkable.
Chip still had the gun in his hand. His dad had given it to him on his thirteenth birthday. A Walther PPK because they liked to watch James Bond movies together. The gun was used but it fired just fine and he was a good shot. His dad thought he should join the military. College was for the hoity-toity rich kids, he said, and it filled your head with socialist propaganda. Chip knew what socialists were. He’d studied it in history class. He was pretty sure he knew more than his dad. He seemed to think it was some kind of group dictatorship.
Chip imagined what would have happened if he’d shot the black guy. The gang would have been happy. Overjoyed, in fact. They’d slap him on the back and ruffle his hair and offer him a beer. His dad would have held him up on his shoulders and ran down the middle of the street yelling his head off. His dad seemed to think he had no ideas of his own, that he swallowed the party line whole and that he didn’t consider other opinions or beliefs, that he didn’t read the paper or watch the news.
His dad was always talking about a race war; that it was bound to happen and they should be prepared. Race war, Chip thought. Race war? So the black kids at school would go out and get guns and mow down all the white kids because—because what? They had to protect their privileged position in society and nip this white resurgence thing in the bud? How stupid did his dad think he was?
Chip went back to mopping but his hands were shaking. It was a scary situation, out there holding a gun on somebody while another guy snuck up behind you with a rock. It was okay though, he thought. He could forget about it. He was sure something like that would never happen again.
Isaiah and Dodson hiked back through the trees. Isaiah was exhausted and shaken, stumbling several times and falling down. They crossed the parking lot, went past the kiosk and got in the car. They sat there awhile, Dodson with his head back, Isaiah resting his forehead on the steering wheel. The world was too much for him. If he could have walked off into the dark never to be seen again he would have, if it wasn’t for Grace.
Hugo had said I’ll see you later, which could mean he’d see Sidero whenever or they were meeting again that night. The blue GPS dot settled on an address nearby. It was a small, untidy house, Sidero’s truck under the carport. Isaiah parked and settled in.
“Nothing to do but wait,” he said.
This was a big night in Sidero’s shitty life. Another fantastic opportunity to fuck shit up and piss off Angus again. Him and his millllion-dollar deal, the mean old fuck lording it over you, calling you nimrod and dummy and knocking you down right in front of the crew, always explaining things a thousand times because he thought you were stupid. That asshole scores big and you get the fucking crumbs. Angus was a legend and you’re what you always were. A nobody in a shit pile of nothing.
Jenn, his girlfriend, was a hard-core white nationalist, which was cool, but she was goddamn strict about it. She wouldn’t let him watch basketball games because seventy-five percent of NBA players were black. “Doesn’t that tell you something?” she said. Uh-huh, he thought. It tells me niggers can run fast and jump out of their socks. She could be a bitch too, always saying he should stand up to Angus and tell him to fuck off and that he was a wimp for taking it. She didn’t understand, although he’d tried to explain himself a hundred times.
Sidero had wanted to dump her a long time ago but he had a thing for redheads. That, and she had something on him. They were at Rafters on a Saturday night, standing room only, fuck the fire marshal. Everybody was dancing, drinking, sweating, waving a bottle of booze in the air. It was Sidero’s birthday and he was drunk out of his mind. He didn’t dance but Jenn did, with a bulked-up jarhead, wagging her booty while the guy air-fucked her, his boner nu
dging her cutoffs. Goddamn slut. If the guy hadn’t been so big, Sidero would have broken a beer bottle over his head.
Sidero was standing at the back, leaning against a wall so he wouldn’t fall over. The club was dark to begin with but he was under the loft, people partying up there. You couldn’t see anything except when the disco ball angled the right way and the gleam made you blink. It was coming around again and Sidero turned his head aside.
A black guy was standing at his shoulder, looking at him. Not angry or scared or anything else. Just looking. Though he’d tried many times since, Sidero couldn’t remember the man’s face, only that his eyes were soft and in the instant before the gleam left them and the darkness returned, Sidero leaned over and kissed the man. He didn’t know why. He just did it. And then Jenn was there.
“Let’s go,” she said. Her voice was as flat as sheetrock and she was close enough to touch him—hit him—but there was nothing in her expression. Not shock, surprise, disgust or anything else. She turned around and pushed her way through the crowd. He hurried to catch up and didn’t look back.
They never talked about it, but it was always there. Like a shiv or an ace up her sleeve; something she could hurt you with whenever she wanted. Sometimes when they were arguing, she’d look at him as if to say, I saw you kiss a black man, you nigger-loving homo. He wasn’t either of those things. He was sure of it.
Although he’d never admit it, there was nothing Sidero wanted more than to please Angus. His need pissed him off and made him feel shittier about himself than he already did. What if he messed up again? He wouldn’t. He couldn’t. He’d promised himself. He’d do exactly what Angus said and he’d have Hugo and Dwight to back him up.