A Good Neighborhood

by Therese Anne Fowler

  Though now and then he was thwarted, sure. That was the nature of risk. For example, Tony had set him back and made him look bad to his own attorney and Valerie Alston-Holt’s and the boy’s, too; they must all now figure him for some kind of fool. The game wasn’t over yet, though. He was still looking for another angle. He’d form a new strategy. He always did.

  As for Julia’s being pissed at him—well, that was collateral fallout. In truth, he was surprised she’d gone along with his story as easily and for as long as she had. She would calm down once Juniper got home. The misadventure would be good for their mother-daughter bonding, and before long the whole thing would blow over. Julia knew not to bite too hard the hand that fed her.

  This was surely what Brad was thinking about while he backed into his spot at Whitman HVAC and got out of his car. He was ever all about the game he was playing. How to get his way this time. How to have his way always.

  He didn’t notice the young man parked across the street.

  * * *

  Imagine Xavier standing there, sighting the rifle over the roof of his old Honda, using the roof to help him keep the gun steady. His splinted left hand is screaming at him. His right index finger is on the trigger. His eye is at the sight. He’s watching Brad open the Maserati’s glossy door, sees him begin to climb out.

  He’s not happy about being here. There is no joy in this. He’s in a corner, though, and Brad Whitman is the guy who pushed him there, who set him up against a system that has its mind made up and only pretends to presume innocence.

  Young men who are innocent of the crime for which they’re sent to prison are an especially cursed subset. They’re too young to be jaded and toughened by life. They have no skills for survival inside, where their prison mates are actual criminals. They lose their faith in authority figures. They lose their faith. They have been bludgeoned by unfairness and are left cowed by the beating. They get no respect from the hardened men, who want them to stop whining about their innocence, who disrespect them for not being man enough to have done the thing they didn’t do. So, then, if you’re going to go to prison, go for a reason.

  Xavier isn’t going to go to prison, though. He’s thought this through—of course he has, or he wouldn’t be standing here, finger poised on the cold steel trigger, with the terrified confidence of a new soldier. Even guilty, he wouldn’t survive incarceration. The small, shared cell where there’s no privacy for anything, not even thought. The inability to play music—this as much as anything would kill him, is already killing him, in spirit if not in fact.

  The absence of true darkness in which to have restful sleep. The absence of silence. The constant barrage of coarse conversation. The body odors. The cleanser odors. The inability to eat when you feel like it, to prepare your own food, to have a snack, to go out for tacos. The inability to go anywhere, to hang out with friends, to watch the sun rise or set. The sameness of it all. The pointless labor of laundering clothes or mopping floors or washing dishes for years and years and years on end—pointless not because it doesn’t need to be done, but because there is nothing to be gained in doing it the way there would be if that was his work on the outside, if after doing the work he got to go home to a girl he loves.

  He has no hope of that. As far as he can see, Juniper has cut her losses. The situation for her is ugly, he knows that. He doesn’t expect her to stick her neck out for him beyond what she’s already done. There are consequences she might not feel capable of facing.

  Though he wishes she would, even if it wouldn’t change anything.

  But even if she does still love him, what good would he ever be to her? He’s no good to anybody now, not even himself.

  Xavier aims the rifle.

  The first shot hits the Maserati, shattering the windshield. The second hits the hood. The third hits Brad Whitman in the shoulder and spins him hard sideways. The fourth—a lucky shot, since the shooter has no training and is merely eyeing the scope and pulling the trigger hopefully—goes into Brad’s back and straight through his aorta, piercing it precisely on its way through and out of his body.

  At this time of morning in the industrial park, no one else is around. Various people who are some distance away hear the gunshots. None is close enough to fear for his or her safety. They hear the shots and wait. When there’s no more noise, they go on with their morning activities, confident that whatever it was—even if gunshots—someone closer by will be managing the problem. No need to get involved.

  Xavier watches Brad for several minutes to make sure he’s done what he set out to do. His heartbeat thunders in his ears. There is the planning to do, and then there is the doing, and they are not so alike as he’d thought. The doing is so incredibly satisfying. So horribly wonderful. The noise in his ears is the rhythm of an orchestra performing the accompaniment to a beautiful, tragic aria, the song a lament on how it didn’t have to happen this way and yet it had to happen this way.

  When his success seems assured, Xavier puts the rifle in his trunk and gets into his car. He drives away at the prescribed speed limit while Brad lies beside the $160,000 sports car bleeding—but not as copiously as one might think, because when the heart’s primary “out” line is punctured, the blood that the heart forces into that line in its last futile contractions pools in the chest cavity, where there’s lots of space to hold it.

  Is Brad Whitman dead at this point? Most likely, and if not, he certainly will be by the time his employee Brenda arrives at seven and finds him.

  He may have a full minute, maybe more, of excruciating pain, along with the terrible realization that he’s been outflanked somehow and this is his ignominious end. Xavier hopes so.

  * * *

  But no, this was not what happened. As Xavier sat in his car watching Brad, he thought the whole plan through further, thought it all the way through, saw himself the way the news media would see him if he’d done it: just one more black rapist murderous thug doing what all those thugs do, right?

  They wouldn’t say, Here was a young man who was pushed to the wall, a product of our institutional and cultural injustice who sought only to enact real justice where otherwise there would never be any.

  That was the fantasy he’d been nurturing, and if he executed Brad Whitman, all he’d be doing was creating the version of himself they all so badly wanted to believe was real. It wouldn’t matter what his reasons were. It wouldn’t matter that their actions had created him. All anyone would say, all anyone would hear, was murderer.

  Which was what he would be.

  He started the car and drove toward his other destination, while at the industrial park Brad continued into the building.

  As Xavier pulled to a stop at an empty crossroads, an object at the base of his windshield caught his eye. A plastic bag stuffed into the top of his car hood, almost hidden by fallen pine straw. He got out, retrieved the bag, extracted a folded note.

  Zay: I finally got home after the park and now my parents are making me leave for my grandparents’ house in Tennessee. I don’t have my phone or computer, so this note is all I can do. They’re trying to convince me you manipulated me into everything and today was basically date rape. I just can’t believe that’s true. I don’t want to believe it. I want to believe you love me even though you never actually said it. If you do, then just know that I love you too and somehow all this will just be a bad dream we’ll put behind us. A story we’ll tell each other while we drive our food truck to San Francisco, right? I love the Zay I saw, and I guess that’s all I can say until I see you again.

  Juniper

  Well, now. This explained a lot.

  Juniper’s words warmed Xavier while he drove at the prescribed speed limit the rest of the way to the state park, as planned. Those words gave him peace of mind, and strength. A measure of happiness, even. She loved him. She hadn’t done him wrong.

  * * *

  The state park in early morning was alive with deer and birds and raccoons and fox, some of the creatures w
aking, some ending their watchful nights by climbing into dens or nests or by perching in shaded groves and tucking beak and eyes under- wing. Leaves dripped with the night’s humidity, the droplets becoming falling diamonds where the sunlight caught them. It was a place of peace and beauty. There, now, was serenity.

  Xavier drove in and parked in the same spot as he had the last time he’d been here. He swallowed a Vicodin, then took the rifle, his phone, and a notebook with him into the cabin and sat down on the floor where he and Juniper had spread the blanket that day.

  Where had the blanket ended up? In Juniper’s Land Rover? In the police evidence locker, with his knife and the wine bottle?

  Evidence.

  There had been a crime, all right.

  The wooden floor was cool and worn smooth by so many years of visiting picnickers and campers. Xavier ran his hands over the wood and thought of how he and Juniper had sat here eating and laughing, both of them a little dazed by wine and anticipation.

  He thought of how they’d believed they had all the answers to their future, that they’d needed only to let time pass and then they could access it.

  He thought of how Juniper had pulled him down beside her. How nervous he’d been about making the experience a good one for her. How awkward but also sort of beautiful it had been as they’d fitted themselves together. How he’d looked into her eyes and felt … everything.

  That moment. That was the one he was cementing in his mind.

  50

  The police officers found Xavier’s note inside the cabin, along with directions on where they might look for his body. With the note was his phone. He’d turned off the phone’s security to make it easy for Valerie to watch the video message he’d recorded, along with a short song he’d composed and recorded especially for her a month or so earlier, intending it for a montage he’d planned to give her right before leaving for San Francisco.

  In his video message, recorded inside the cabin with sunlight from a window painting him in full color, he faced the camera and said, “All your heroes and mine, too, are people who one way or another sacrificed themselves for something important—some gave their lives, and not because they wanted to die, right? But because they couldn’t live with things the way they were. That’s me. There is no way out for me, Mama. No future that’s worth living. Alive, I’m useless to everybody, including myself. Nothing to offer anybody. You get that, don’t you?

  “I know you’ll be angry and upset and sad and freaked out, all of that. But after that, be proud of me for not giving in. Share this so that everyone knows how fucked up things are and how the wrong people have too much power and that’s why this happened and it shouldn’t happen to anyone ever again.

  “Anyway, I love you so much.” His eyes were teary here, and his voice cracked a little. “You are a great mom. I think—well, I hope, anyway—that we’ll meet again up there in heaven. Not for a really long time, though, okay?

  “Also: I’m not scared. It’ll be a relief.” He looked away for a moment.

  “Dad’s waiting for me, and I bet he’ll be like, ‘Hey, finally I get some time with my boy!’” Here Xavier smiled.

  Then he said, “Last thing: Tell Juniper I love her, too. See you later,” and ended the recording.

  Also for Juniper was a haiku in a sealed envelope for Valerie to deliver whenever it could be put directly into Juniper’s hands.

  The rifle had gotten wedged between two boulders at the river’s edge. His body was downstream a ways, thanks to the swift current. The coroner told Valerie they’d made a positive ID by his fingerprints, and recommended strongly that she not view his remains. She took that advice.

  51

  The day of the funeral came with summer’s aggressive heat. A clear sky to start (Carolina blue). Humidity in the 70 percent range at one o’clock, when the graveside service was scheduled to begin. Clouds forming, as they are wont to do. Thunder later? Maybe. As we all got ready to go pay our respects, we knew we would perspire heavily in our black dresses and pants and suits. A small sacrifice. Tiny. You should be uncomfortable at a funeral like this one, that’s what some of us were saying.

  In one car en route to the cemetery, a debate got under way: Was Valerie some kind of bad-luck charm? She’d lost her husband, and now she’d lost her son. Should Chris Johnson be worried? (We might assert here that in this country only white men have even a shot at worry-free lives, and thus are the ones likely to say such a thing.)

  In another car, no one said a word.

  The public cemetery was vast. Rolling hills. Great huge oaks. At the grave site, a cerulean canopy offered shade for several rows of folding chairs. We all came out, driving slowly through the grounds, following one another and the signage. ALSTON-HOLT, and an arrow pointing the way toward where Tom, too, had been laid to rest. All, that is, except for Brad Whitman. Julia, chagrined by her own failures and missteps, disgusted by Brad, had stood in their living room with the girls looking on and told Brad that he didn’t deserve to be a part of their lives and that they deserved better than him. She told him to pack his necessities and leave. Someone said they’d heard he went golfing while the funeral was under way; we hope that’s not true but we don’t doubt the possibility.

  Having seen Pepper’s viral video about what the DA and Brad had done to her friends (made before the horrible news got out), reporters with their cameramen were present, keeping a respectful distance for now.

  Valerie and Chris sat underneath the canopy, along with the various members of their families. Tom’s mother had made the trip. Her pale face stood out, there beneath the canopy, reminded us and those reporters, too, that Xavier hadn’t been all one thing.

  The murmuring started, alerting folks who hadn’t noticed yet that Juniper and Julia Whitman were walking up now, and what would Valerie think of that? By this time everyone knew that Juniper was the girl involved, the one who’d allegedly been raped. We didn’t know yet the ins and outs of her involvement.

  Juniper walked over to Valerie and Valerie stood. Had they spoken before now? Juniper’s eyes were on the ground. Her shoulders shook. Valerie put one hand on Juniper and wiped her own eyes with the other. They spoke briefly, and then Juniper went to stand with Julia.

  When the crowd was more or less as large as it would become (several hundred, white, black, strangers, friends, activists, everything), the minister, a stately woman with gray dreadlocks and wrinkled deep-brown skin, stepped up onto a painted wooden platform and faced the assembled crowd.

  She called out, “Welcome, everyone. We’ll start here.”

  * * *

  We’ll start here.

  They were just words, the same way this story is just words. Words, though, are how we humans have been communicating with one another almost since time before time. What has more meaning to humankind than words? Without a call to action, change rarely occurs.

  Start here, please, in communion with one another despite our differences, recognizing that without start there is no end.

  Epilogue

  One of Julia Whitman’s first actions upon hearing Juniper’s account of the uninvited kiss was to put the portrait from the Purity Ball into the trash. Stuffed it in, frame and all. Their wedding pictures went next.

  Julia had always liked the idea of living in Colorado, someplace in the mountains or with a mountain view. Lottie said it’d be easier to breathe without so much humidity, so after Julia’s attorney had tended to the marital separation and custody agreement, Julia hired a mover and took a house in Lakewood, a Denver suburb, for Lottie, Lily, and herself. There in Lakewood, she signed up for yoga-teacher training, hoping she would learn both to access and guide others’ connection to inner peace and confidence. Strength. Balance. Flexibility. Atonement, too, was something she would work on. It was a process.

  Brad had to give her more than half of his net worth—and in order to do so, was forced to borrow against his assets, a loan he had difficulty repaying after word got out. A lot fewer
people wanted to do business with Whitman HVAC, no surprise. He’d have to sell pretty much everything. Bankruptcy and a change of venue would wipe his slate clean, he figured. As with weeds, it’s hard to keep men like him down for long.

  * * *

  After some very dark days in which Juniper considered following Xavier’s example, she realized that no, she needed to follow his intentions, and elected to finish school at Westover in Connecticut, a boarding school that she thought would give her the jumping-off point she needed for the new plans she’d made for her future. Come fall, she’ll begin her college program to study sociology and poli sci at Columbia.

  Her eight months of being removed from her former life have almost made it seem as if none of last year’s events could possibly have happened. As if Xavier was a figment from a dream. As if Brad was a figure from some Aeschylus tale they’d read in English class.

  She attends church now and then, more as a seeker than a believer. Skepticism is, she feels, appropriate. She calls home—that is, the new Colorado home—once a week. Lily has begun telling knock-knock jokes again. That’s progress.

  Xavier is a figment from her dreams. She’s sees him often. They talk. He plays songs for her. His haiku is taped to her dorm room mirror.

  Juniper is thinking of Valerie today. Maybe, soon, she’ll call her and tell her about the program, about the courses she’ll be taking, about her ultimate goal of becoming a defense attorney and then a DA. Maybe she’ll tell Valerie the story Xavier told her, about the time he and Valerie went to visit her mother, how it was a best day. Maybe she’ll tell her about the dreams.

  Maybe Valerie will take the call.

  * * *