Small Great Things(29)

He could tell, from the expression on my face, that I hadn’t thought about that.

Francis didn’t let me out of his house for the next two weeks, until all you could see was a dark shadow under my buzz cut that sort of looked like mange.

Now, I take a straightedge and some shaving cream and finish the job. I run my hand over my smooth head. It feels lighter. I notice the movement of air behind my ears.

I walk back into the nursery, which isn’t a nursery anymore. The crib is gone, and the rest of the furniture is stacked in the hall. Everything else is in boxes, thanks to Francis. Before Brit is discharged this afternoon, I will haul back in a bed frame and a nightstand, and she will see it as the guest room it was a few months ago.

I stare at Francis, daring him to challenge me. His eyes trace the lines of my tattoo, like he is feeling for a scar. “I get it, boy,” he says softly. “You’re going to war.”

—

THERE’S NOTHING WORSE than leaving a hospital without the baby you went in to have. Brit’s in the wheelchair (hospital protocol) being driven by an orderly (more hospital protocol). I have been relegated to bringing up the rear, a stocking cap pulled low on my forehead. Brit keeps her eyes on her hands, folded in her lap. Is it just me, or is everyone staring at us? Are they wondering what’s the medical issue with the woman who doesn’t have a bald head or a cast or anything else visibly wrong?

Francis has already pulled the SUV up to the horseshoe driveway of the hospital. A security guard opens the back door as I help Brit out of the chair. I’m surprised by how light she feels, and I wonder if she will just float away from me once her hands stop gripping the arms of the wheelchair.

For a moment, pure panic crosses over her face. I realize she’s recoiling from the dark cave of the backseat, as if there might be a monster hiding inside.

Or a car seat.

I slide my arm around her waist. “Baby,” I whisper. “It’s okay.”

Her spine stiffens, and she steels herself before ducking into the car. When she realizes that she is not sitting next to an empty baby carrier, every muscle relaxes, and Brit leans back against the seat with her eyes closed.

I slip into the front seat. Francis catches my eye and raises his brows. “How are you feeling, ladybug?” he asks, using the term of endearment he used to call her as a child.

She doesn’t answer. Just shakes her head, as one fat tear snakes down her cheek.

Francis revs the engine and peels out of the hospital driveway, as if he could outrun everything that happened there.

Somewhere, in a freezer in the basement, is my child. Or maybe by now he’s gone, carved open like a Thanksgiving turkey on the coroner’s table.

I could tell him what happened. I could tell him the Horrible Thing I see every time I close my eyes: that black bitch beating on my son’s chest.

She was alone with Davis. I overheard the other nurses talking about it, in the hallway. She was alone, when she wasn’t supposed to be. Who knows what happened, when no one was looking?

I glance back at Brit. When I look in her eyes, they’re empty.

What if the worst thing isn’t that I’ve lost my child? What if it’s that I’ve also lost my wife?

—

AFTER HIGH SCHOOL, I moved to Hartford and got a job at Colt’s Manufacturing. I took a few classes at the community college there, but the liberal shit those professors dished out made me so sick I quit. I didn’t stop hanging around the college, though. My first recruit was a skateboarder, a skinny kid with long hair who cut in front of a black dude in line at the student café. The nigger shoved him, and Yorkey shoved him back and said, “If you hate it here so much, go back to Africa.” The food fight that ensued was epic, and it ended with me reaching out a hand to Yorkey and pulling him from the fray. “You know,” I told him as we stood outside smoking, “you don’t have to be the victim.”

Then I handed him a copy of The Final Call, the Nation of Islam newsletter that I’d planted on bulletin boards all over the campus. “You see this?” I said, starting to walk, knowing he’d follow. “You want to tell me why no one’s marching into the black student union and arresting them for hate speech? For that matter, how come there’s not a White student union?”

Yorkey snorted. “Because,” he said, “that would be discrimination.”

I looked at him as if he was Einstein. “Exactly.”

After that, it was easy. We’d find the kids who were bullied by jocks and interfere, so that they knew they had protectors. We invited them to hang out with us after classes, and as we drove, I’d plug in a playlist of Skrewdriver, No Remorse, Berzerker, Centurion. White Power bands that sounded like a demon growling, that made you want to mess with the world.

I made them believe they had worth, simply because of the color they were born. When they complained about anything on campus, from the registration process to the food, I reminded them that the president of the school was a Jew, and that it was all part of a bigger plan by the Zionist Occupation Government to suppress us. I taught them “Us” meant “White.”

I took their weed and molly and tossed it in the dumpster, because addicts snitched. I made them over in my image. “I’ve got a great pair of Doc Martens,” I told Yorkey. “They’re just your size. But there’s no way I’m passing them on to a guy with greasy hair in a man bun.” The next day, he showed up with his hair neatly trimmed, his scruff shaved. Before long, I’d created my own wilding squad: the newly minted Hartford division of NADS.