by Kate Manning
“Shit,” said Milo. The speedometer was sinking down from 70. A cop car was screaming after us and flashing lights.
“Listen, Charlotte,” he said. “Stay very very cool and calm.” He pulled over, found his wallet. The cop spoke at us through a speaker on top of his cruiser. Milo arranged his hands piously on top of the dashboard. A big torch of light ricocheted off the rearview mirror into our eyes. A policeman stood now behind the driver’s window, shining the beam on Milo. His partner was there, too, on my side, shining one on me.
“Well, well, well, what do we have here in the Jaguar?” the officer said in a jovial voice.
“We got wabbits,” his partner said, as if we were in a cartoon.
“I realize I was speeding, Officers,” Milo said. “I regret it.”
“You regret it,” said Cop One. We couldn’t see his face, only his taut midriff, his porkchop-colored hands.
“Yes sir, I do sir.”
“And do you regret the crime of fraternizing with a prostitute?” he asked. He was clearly the Senior Cop. His partner seemed younger and newer, laughing too much.
“Maybe he just regrets how obvious it is he’s a pimp,” said the young one.
“Oh that’s nice,” I said sarcastically. “Charming.”
“Shh!” Milo said softly.
“Sit tight, campers,” said the senior one. “We be right back.” He took Milo’s wallet with him.
“My work ID is home on the table,” Milo said quietly.
I could see it, the laminated photograph with the raised Network logo on a beaded chain, lying on the hall table with piles of mail, a tin of mints that Milo liked, the picture of the U.S. Ski Team in a frame. But why did it matter? “They’re just jerks,” I said.
“Don’t talk,” he said tightly.
I was scared because he was. It surprised me. Suddenly a sheen of sweat was on him, the smell of it. This was only a ticket. I’ve been stopped for speeding myself but I’d never been scared before. Annoyed but not scared. The car was still. We could hear the creaks of the engine cooling under the hood, behind us the metal groan of the police car trunk opening, shoes crunching on gravel, keys clinking.
Milo looked a warning at me. “Don’t take the bait,” he said. “Don’t take the bait, that’s how the fish ends up on the plate.” There was something like a plea in his eyes. “It’s a little saying in our family, you know?” and I remembered the other one, his father saying Son, don’t ever give anybody any extra reason to give you trouble.
Okay, I nodded at him.
“Get out of the car, please, muthafucka,” said Cop One, when he came back. “Excuse me, I mean, Mr. Muthafucka, get out of the car.”
Milo did. They told him the things they tell criminals. Hands on top of the car. Feet back. Apart. He complied while I sat in the car with my tongue dry, mouth open, some new truth coming in the shocked O of it, like flies.
Milo was not shocked. He was scared but not shocked.
“My name is Milo Robicheaux,” he started quietly.
“Don’t get smart,” the first cop said.
“No chance a that,” said the young one.
He was feeling Milo all over, putting his hands on his legs, sliding up the inseam and down the flank, up to the waistband, brushing the chest. He emptied the pockets. Keys, roll of mints, a dry-cleaning stub.
“It’s only a speeding ticket,” I said.
“Shut up, please, miss,” said the first one.
Now I had to get out, too, put my hands on the roof. “Excuse me, what are you doing?” I said, when he came over and started searching me. “You can’t do this to me!” Warm meat hands on my hips, down, then up the rib cage, feeling, feeling, and I thought, of course, that’s why there is the phrase copping a feel. “Hey!” I said, just indignant. “I can’t believe this. You don’t have the right to do this! It’s only a speeding ticket.” I started to cry. “I know my rights! I know my rights! You can’t do this!”
“I think we will be the judge of what we can and cannot do,” said the older one.
Maybe I thought I knew all about it; had heard how things like this still happened, even in 1981, but only south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the cops with their blunt snouts and small pink eyes, picking on regular innocent people. At that time, you never heard stories like what happened to us. If you heard them you would say Half that stuff is made up and the other half, well, it’s justified based on who does the crime, statistically; or you would rationalize on behalf of the cops: But their jobs are so dangerous, they risk their lives every day; or, maybe if you really thought about it, you would cluck your tongue and say, Isn’t it outrageous?
Well, it is. Outrageous cop hands under my shirt, his calluses on the skin of my ribs, cupping, weighing me like a handful of coins. You can’t do this to me. And it was in there somewhere that I realized with horror that the other half of that idea was: You can do it to them. And then they did.
One cop told Milo to lie his ass down on the ground, on his stomach. Milo lay down. He wilted to his knees, then elbows, then belly. They put handcuffs on him. Over the roof of the car I could see him lying facedown in the gravel, trussed like a rodeo calf. “Stop it!” I shouted at them, so one of them came back to me and said: “Maybe your little party should realize that you are under suspicion of being in a pantload of trouble so you had better do as the officer says, which is: Do not speak unless you are spoken to.”
The first cop stood over Milo and put his foot on the small of his back. I love your small, I said to Milo once, running my hand down his spine, and now the policeman’s foot was on it, in the hollow there. He started sneering questions at Milo while dangling his nightstick by his head. Where you going? New York? Where you been? To see your “parents”? Your quote unquote “parents”? I don’t think so. You meant connection, right? See your connection. Mr. New York Big. Who’s your connection? You got a Bridgeport link? Milo answered, “No sir,” docile and almost pleasant, as if he were halfwitted and perfectly accustomed to lying in his suede jacket with his hands behind him so he had to arch his head up to keep his face off the pavement. They were putting a Breathalyzer in his mouth, a yellow plastic job with tubes and numbers. “Exhale!” said the young one. He read the results.
“Clean,” he said. “Lucky surprise!” But then he put it back between Milo’s lips, pushed it back toward the throat and left it there.
“Listen,” I tried to say, “that’s Milo Robicheaux, he’s an Olympic gold medalist. He’s a famous skier.”
“Oh really now.” They laughed at me.
“Go Speed Racer!” the younger one sang.
“He’s a network sportscaster,” I said.
“Oh, now he be a sports-castuh!”
They said for me to shut up. Milo was craning his neck up, looking at me to do what they said, the plastic contraption still in his mouth. The senior officer went and tapped Milo on the head with his nightstick so it made a little woodpecker sound. “Nuh uh uh,” he said. “Head down.”
Milo gagged on the Breathalyzer and worked it out of his mouth. “Officer?” said Milo. “Sir?” but the word was sucked in by a sound of a bat on bone. I saw Milo’s head sink, heard a moan soft as the lap of waves. He lay there, breathing hard.
“Milo!” I could see he was curled up with his knees to his chest. “What did you do to him!” I was making it worse. Livid and panicked. They can’t do this. They can’t be real cops, maybe they’re thugs disguised as cops. Maybe they’re going to steal our car, they can’t be real cops. I tried to get calm. I tried smiling, looked at them like Just between you and me, you and me, we understand each other. They were leering. The senior cop called over to his partner and said, “Ask her, what’s the matter with white guys?”
“What’s the matter with you?” I shouted.
“Charlotte.” Milo was on the ground warning me through his teeth.
“You want to lie down next to him?” the young one asked me.
“Yes!” I said, “Yes I do!”
“Fine,” he said. “Now I know you’re a pro.” He looked at me as if he had bought tickets for a show, waiting. We were about the same age. He slightly resembled my brother Sean, with elfin eyebrows that arched up, laugh creases at the corners of his eyes, daring me.
I took my hands off the car roof and walked slowly around the front of the car, toward Milo. “C’mon,” the policeman said. “C’mon, c’mon.” They were both laughing. “That be far enough,” said his partner. “Two more baby steps and that be fi-ine right there.”
I lay down on the ground. Knees, all fours, flat down. I was near Milo. Not next to him. I couldn’t see his face, could only hear his breathing, stuttered over clenched muscles. The shoulder of road under me was graveled and smelled of oil.
We had to lie there while the cops worked, searching the car. They kept saying You all got some ‘splainin’ to do, in accents like Ricky Ricardo. They were whistling that Stevie Wonder song, “Ebony and Ivory,” laughing and enjoying themselves. The senior cop opened the trunk and rooted around our bags. He piled my underwear on the hood of the car; he and his partner were opening my lipsticks and pulling up the tongues of my running sneakers, shaking Milo’s shaving cream, unballing his socks. The only other things in the car were a pair of ski poles, bent for racing, and an old press release about the Seattle Mariners, addressed to Milo Robicheaux at the Network Sports Desk.
“Hey,” said the officer who found it. “Look.”
Their tune changed. Right away. They helped Milo up, got me to my feet. They let us go. No harm done, they said. They explained they worked nights, see, so they weren’t too familiar with the weeknight sportscasters. Honest mistake not to recognize him. They didn’t give Milo a ticket. They were practically sweet about it, giving him a good ol’ pat on the shoulder, hey man, brother, no hard feelings. I remember when you won, the younger one said, as if he was about to ask for an autograph. This is a known drug area, said the senior cop, as if that were a perfectly logical explanation for why you would hogtie people, crack them on the head for speeding, cop a few feels while singing little jingles not so far under your breath.
Milo was stony and quiet. He took his wallet and his keys. He walked stiffly. I was crying. We got in the car and he sat behind the wheel for the longest time, pressing his eyes, breathing in. He reached up to the crown of his head, felt it, brought his hand around to the light to check for blood. A swelling the size of a plum was there under his hair.
“Oh,” I said. I touched him but took my hand back fast. He wanted nothing to do with nursing. He turned the key and put the car in gear, got on the highway, without looking back. The traffic was gone now, the road clear. He was silent. Red and white shadows of headlights and brake lights were moving on his face, and I saw his cheek was dented by gravel. At the first exit we pulled over and got a drink in an empty truckers’ bar. Milo put his head back and swallowed, plain scotch.
He would not look at me. He looked up at the ceiling, closed his eyes, exhaled, shook his head. His breathing was too fast. Too loud. He touched his head again, where he’d been hit, looked at his hand and got up and went off toward the vending machines.
I put my head down on my arms. Below my feet I could see a straw wrapper on the dirty linoleum, a dropped crust. I was head down like that, when he came back twenty minutes later. I could feel him standing next to the table.
“C’mon,” he said. He didn’t touch me.
“Are we going to do something about it?” I said, miles down the road.
“For instance?”
“Report them?”
“To whom?”
“To the police.”
“They are the police.”
“Not all police.”
He looked at me. “Let’s just say I do report them and the alleged other police, the nice, good-boy police, are shocked and outraged. Then what?”
“They should be disciplined,” I said passionately. “Fired. Arrested. Anyway, the Network would do a story. You could talk to somebody there. This can’t—You don’t—It was—”
Milo shook his head, small hopeless shakes, as if trying to explain to me was like trying to explain to someone with a head full of feathers. He took several starting breaths before he said, “It was a common little offense. It happens all the time.”
“What?”
“D.W.B.,” he said, three letters hanging out there.
I asked, what did that mean? Was I supposed to know?
“Driving. While. Black,” he said.
Anger and damage were filling up the car now like ashes, gray flakes landing on me from the direction of the driver’s seat. Milo held the wheel as if letting go meant losing control of more than the car. He wouldn’t look at me. He blamed me somehow, I thought. He pressed his lips together to keep words in, breathed through his nose.
After a while, in the tight quiet of the front seat, Milo began telling me a list of stories.
Once in a grocery store in Saratoga where I went to buy some sodas and some chips I was told Sorry, they weren’t hiring.
Once in another grocery store in Burlington where I went to get eggs, I was told that the applications for the stock boy job were in the manager’s office.
Once in Dexter, Colorado, walking to a restaurant, I was stopped and asked if I was lost. When I got to the restaurant, the hostess asked: May I help you? as if she was not in the habit of having people come in expecting to eat.
Once on Madison Avenue I was locked out of a store and no matter how many times I rang the bell or flashed my money the salesgirl would not let me in.
Once at Logan Airport a woman asked me to carry her luggage, pressed a ten in my hand.
Once at the door of my own house at the beach I was asked if the man of the house was at home.
Once in front of my building I was mistaken for the security guard, once for the super, once for the trash collector.
Once the police stopped me walking on Library Walk at Cabot College and asked me for my ID. When I didn’t have it, they took me back to my room to get it.
The only difference in the stop this time, in Bridgeport, Milo said, was the press release in the trunk and the fact that he was, in fact, caught actually speeding.
He stopped his list without ever saying the word white or the word black. As we drove over the Triboro Bridge into Manhattan, he glanced at me sideways. I was resting my head on the window, looking at the blur of road, the red glitter of taillights lined up for the tolls, and I was struggling. I was having real trouble with what to say.
“I’m sorry,” I said, which sounded weak.
He bounced his head angrily, still not looking at me.
“It wasn’t my fault,” I said.
Which made it worse. I thought he might eject from his seat, rocket straight up in fury. He smacked the wheel.
Finally he said: “Why did you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Lie down. Why?”
Well, because, you were lying down, I thought.
“You provoked them,” he said.
“I didn’t. I just—”
“Never—in that situation you just don’t—Insane thing to do! Why did you do that?”
“I—”
“Why?” Milo asked. “Why?”
“It seemed like the right thing to do,” I said. “It was the right thing.”
Milo watched me in the stopped traffic, checking my face and checking the road, gazing off and coming back to check me again. I kept my face open and plain, so he could see whatever it was he needed to see, that I was telling the truth, that I had not been mocking him or provoking the cops. Somewhere in that currency of looks passing between us, in that awkward space between the car’s bucket seats, some trust rose up. We didn’t say anything more for the moment, but it felt as if we had. So much of what we came to believe we had spoken aloud happened like that, promises and meaning taken from the degrees of smile or squint, the slack or trim of the muscles in the face, the uncoiling of silence. W
e came to believe we knew feelings the way one can know facts, as inalienable truth, trusty and loyal as dogs.
“I wanted to be next to you,” I said, “so I lay down.”
Milo opened a window and the car grew cold with night air. He reached a hand across and tucked it under my leg. I was crying but not making any noise.
“It just makes me—I can’t. I’m so angry,” I said. “It makes me so furious and enraged.” Which sounded like nothing. Like insect wings against glass.
He asked me then, a little bit cruelly: Did I know, by the way, that in 1960-something, a fourteen-year-old boy visiting Mississippi from Chicago, just a child really, had had his terrified face beaten in and his genitalia cut off and his eyes gouged out, and then, had a cotton gin tied to his neck, and had gotten his body jettisoned into the Tallahatchie River, just because someone said he whistled once, at a white woman? His father had told Milo that story again, that very weekend in New Hampshire, as if Milo didn’t already know it, hadn’t heard it told at his father’s knee many times before, back in the days when the ponytailed girls from Rugged Mountain High School used to call Milo up. “The phone would ring, and it would be Wendy Morrison or Karen Cook on the phone for me,” Milo said. “And right when she hung up, that boy Emmett would be at the table with us Robicheauxs, eating dinner.”
We Halseys never had a guest like that at our table. What would he have to do with us? We had heard the story, probably, somewhere. Emmett Till, his name was. It was terrible, unspeakable, but what happened to him had nothing to do with us. Now, though, winging along toward home, I had the feeling Emmett was there in the car while Milo told me about him, and come to think of it, he had been that whole weekend, and would be often after that, tagging along wherever we went, terrified for eternity, still just a boy really, a terrified boy ghost.
15.
I don’t know if I can stay with you,” I said to Milo, a couple of weeks later.
I said this on top of a mountain where we had gone for the weekend, to a small resort up in the Berkshires. It was Milo’s idea to go there. He was edgy and needed air, he said. “Let’s go be alone.”