Response (10 page)

“Noah, you've every right to be angry. But don't let it consume you. A life is measured by the impact it has on others. I pray that one day you'll find a way to take what happened to you and shine a light on it for people to see,” Grandma said. “I hate lots of things I've seen and fought against them all my life. And I wouldn't want to be standing in some folks' shoes on the Judgment Day. But it's not up to you or me to do the judging. That's for God to do. I suppose when there's no hope left for any of us, there won't be the grace of another flood. He'll send his
fire
next time to burn this world clean.”

“I guess,” I said, frustrated.

“All I got at your school was an answering machine. I left a message, but I know those things have a way of getting lost in a busy building like that,” Grandma said, handing me a sealed envelope. “I want you to deliver this letter to Mr. Hendricks for me. Just to make sure he knows my feelings.”

That night, and on the way to school the next morning, I thought about opening that envelope and reading Grandma's letter. I was worried that she was going to give Hendricks the kind of props he didn't deserve, and let him off the hook for looking down on anybody who wasn't white. Then that smug grin on his face would be set in stone forever.

Grandma had always been hard as nails against his kind. So I couldn't figure it.

I wasn't sold on everything she'd said straight off, either. I wasn't happy about leaving the judging to anybody else. I'd already seen too many big-time haters on the news get off with a puny slap on the wrist.

So maybe God wasn't watching all the time.

I didn't know if Grandma had gone soft from being so close to dying. I just knew that growing up she'd seen racist things go down a hundred times worse than I ever did.

Deep down, I had too much respect for Grandma to read her private feelings.

But I couldn't bring myself to put that letter into Hendricks's hand. So I shoved it into his mailbox inside the main office and walked as far away from it as I could.

That same day, there was a fight in the cafeteria maybe two minutes before I got there. I stepped inside and half the kids were standing in a wide circle watching security get whoever was fighting pinned down and under control.

The circle was mostly white on one side and black on the other.

It reminded me of that Chinese symbol—the yin and yang—I'd seen in martial-arts movies.

Suddenly I heard Asa's angry voice hollering, “He's a racist! Ain't nobody can tell me different, and I'd slap his ass again for what he said!”

It was Asa who'd been fighting, and I watched as security led him through the crowd with his hands cuffed behind him.

But I did a double take when I saw that the other dude in cuffs, the one Asa had been scrapping with, was black, too.

“He's a black-on-black racist!” Asa kept on. “That's worse, because he's against his own kind! A damn traitor!”

Then Bonds found me. He said that Asa had fought some dude on the debate team because he'd done a project with a white kid, arguing that by law Charlie Scat and Spenelli should have got bail. Somehow Asa heard about it. So he snaked his way through the lunch line and jumped in that dude's face, insulting the shit out of him. But when the dude didn't back down, it was on.

I listened to that story, and after hearing it, I couldn't stomach eating a thing.

Chapter
TEN

THE NIGHT BEFORE THE TRIAL STARTED I left my job at Mickey D's around nine o'clock. The wind was biting cold and the streets were nearly deserted. Suddenly sleet began blowing sideways and I pulled my hoodie up, knotting the string. Then I ducked my head down low to keep my face from getting slapped at.

I thought I heard something behind me.

But when I turned around it was just my own footprints swirling through that white sleet on the sidewalk, till the wind made them disappear, like I'd never been there.

That's when I decided to keep my feet facing in the opposite direction, and I started walking back through no-man's-land towards Spaghetti Park.

I guess I'd been through too much to be afraid anymore.

But I kept a sharp eye for every crack in the cement in front of me.

When I got there, the park was dark and totally empty.

I walked along the outside fence, past the swings and monkey bars to the big athletic field that connects to it.

I looked up at the telephone wire over the street to find my sneakers from that football game we'd won freshman year.

There they were, still hanging in the Crackers' Hall of Fame. And in that fierce wind, every pair of shoes up there looked like they were running.

For a while, I just watched them all going nowhere.

I knew that wasn't how I wanted my life to be—just kicking in the wind, never getting ahead to someplace worth being.

I'd made it to that goal line for a touchdown once before, with all those Armstrong High racists trying to stop me. Now I had to do it again. Only instead of holding a football, I'd be carrying something much bigger. Something for every brother and sister in East Franklin, and probably everywhere else. And especially for my baby daughter who was going to grow up around here.

So I pulled my hoodie back down and started home with my head held high, deciding I could take whatever that wind had to dish out.

The next morning, the city sent two cars to take my family and me to the courthouse. I rode in one black sedan, sandwiched in the backseat between a pair of lawyers who went over last-minute questions and answers with me.

In the car right behind us rode Dad, Mom, Grandma, Deshawna, and Destiny Love.

“Men aren't born. They're made. Remember that,” my father told me before we left the house.

“Yeah? How long does it take?” I asked him.

“I'll let you know, son,” he answered. “When I find out, I'll let you know.”

Those were the words ringing in my ears, not anything those lawyers were saying.

Standing on the highway overpass was an old man covered from head to toe in American flags. He had his jacket collar turned up, gloves on his hands, and huge oversize sunglasses that nearly blocked out his face, making it hard to tell what color his skin was.

He just kept waving those flags for everybody stuck in traffic.

It was funny to see him, but it wasn't like a joke.

He looked serious about it.

It made me think of the times in the first grade when I stressed over getting the words to the Pledge of Allegiance right. How I was about to put my hand on a Bible in court now, swearing to tell the truth. And how I would probably hear Scat do the same.

Both of those lawyers were still talking at me, looking at long yellow notepads in their laps. So I don't think either one of them even noticed that old man up there, as we inched our way underneath him.

In the courtroom, I sat with the city lawyers at a big oak table. My family was in the first row of seats, right behind us. Farther back, my social-studies teacher, Mr. Dowling, was there, too.

There were mostly black folks in the rows of seats on our side, with white people from Hillsboro, including Scat's mother and his cousin Spanky, on the other. And it reminded me of how the cafeteria tables at Carver usually filled up.

Most of the white people there in court had the same look on their faces—like they'd just spit at us when nobody was watching and were mad as hell that we even thought they might have done it.

Only I didn't want to turn the other cheek. I wanted to spit back on all of
them
, with their eyes right on me.

“Garbage. That's all this is. A setup by the politicians,” I could hear Scat's mother telling the people around her, and all of them agreeing.

Then I saw her try to eyeball Mom.

“Our sons all bleed the same blood,” Mom said, loud enough for her to hear.

“Lord, you know that's true,” echoed Grandma.

That's when two court officers brought Charlie Scat in through a side door. And even with his hands cuffed behind him, my heart jumped, like he was coming at me swinging that bat all over again.

The officers undid his cuffs, and Scat kissed his mother on the cheek.

“Let's hope we get justice today,” he told her.

That was the first time I'd heard his voice since he'd screamed “Nigger” at me.

Then he tugged at his shirt collar and tie, and sat down staring straight ahead, like I wasn't even there.

His lawyer, Aaron Chapman, unbuckled his briefcase and the
pop
echoed through the courtroom.

“All rise!” shouted a court officer.

The sound of my heart beating got covered up for a second by shuffling feet and chairs sliding back.

The judge was white and wore a long black robe that touched the floor.

“The People versus Charles Scaturro,” another officer announced.

I wondered exactly who those “people” were. I wanted to know how many of them were from East Franklin and how many were from Hillsboro.

The jury came inside. Seven of them were black and five were white, with three alternate jurors behind them in case anybody got sick or something.

My lawyer was the first one to speak.

“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, the facts here are simple and undeniable,” he started out. “On the night of August ninth, Noah Jackson, Asa Jenkins, and Robert Bonds entered the community of Hillsboro, on foot, with the idea of stealing a car. But they never actually did. The defendant, Charles Scaturro, and two accomplices, Thomas Rao and Joseph Spenelli, saw the trio of African Americans in their neighborhood, with absolutely no knowledge of their plan. Then, solely because their race, Scaturro and his two accomplices, including Thomas Rao, who will later his testify to this, chased down these three men while hurling epithets at them. And when Noah Jackson tripped to the ground, Scaturro slammed him in the head with an aluminum baseball bat, fracturing Mr. Jackson's skull. That
hate crime
, that racially motivated attack, severely jeopardized the life of this student, son, and young father to an infant girl.”

Most of the juror's eyes turned towards Destiny Love, who was sitting on Deshawna's lap.

My eyes went to her, too.

But I didn't bring my baby daughter for the jury to peep.

In my mind, she wasn't anybody's prop.

I'd talked it over with Deshawna. I'd brought Destiny Love there for one reason—I wanted to be able to tell her one day that she was sitting in that courtroom watching when her father finally stood up for himself in front of everybody.