Small Great Things(33)

But the last thing I was going to do was let anyone think going to jail had dulled my edges. So that night, I went to the pizza place that used to be the unofficial headquarters of my crew, and waited until I heard the growl of a dozen bikes pull up. I threw down my jacket, cracked my knuckles, and walked out to the alley behind the restaurant.

Yorkey, the son of a bitch, was hiding behind a wall of muscle. Seriously, the smallest Pagan was about six-five and three hundred pounds.

I may have been smaller, but I was fast. And none of those guys had grown up ducking from my grandfather’s fists.

I wish I could tell you what happened that night, but all I have to go on is what I’ve heard from others. How I ran like a freaking berserker at the biggest guy, and revved up my arm so that my punch caught him square in the mouth and knocked out his entire front row of teeth. How I lifted one dude off his feet and sent him like a cannonball into the others. How I kicked a biker so hard in his kidney he allegedly pissed red for a month. How blood ran in the alley like rain on pavement.

All I know is I had nothing left to lose but my reputation, and that’s enough ammunition to power a war. I don’t remember any of it, except waking up the next morning in the pizza joint, with a bag of ice on my broken hand and one eye swollen shut.

I don’t remember any of it, but word spread. I don’t remember any of it, but once again, I was the stuff of legend.

—

ON THE DAY I bury my son, the sun is shining. The wind’s coming from the west, and it has teeth. I stand in front of the tiny hole in the ground.

I don’t know who organized this whole funeral. Someone had to call to get a plot, to let people know there would be a service. I assume it was Francis, who now stands at the front of the casket, reading a verse from Scripture: “?‘For this child I prayed, and the Lord hath given me my petition which I asked of him,’?” Francis recites. “?‘Therefore also I have lent him to the Lord; as long as he liveth he shall be lent to the Lord. And he worshiped the Lord there.’?”

There are guys from the drywall crew here, and some of Brit’s friends in the Movement. But there are also people I don’t know, who have come to pay their respects to Francis. One of them is Tom Metzger, the man who founded the White Aryan Resistance. He’s seventy-eight now, a loner like Francis.

When Brit starts sobbing during the reading of the psalm, I reach out to her, but she pulls away. Instead, she turns to Metzger, who she called Uncle Tommy when she was growing up. He puts an arm around her, and I try not to feel the absence of her as a slap.

I’ve heard plenty of platitudes today: He’s in a better place; he’s a fallen soldier; time heals all wounds. What no one told me about grief is how lonely it is. No matter who else is mourning, you’re in your own little cell. Even when people try to comfort you, you’re aware that now there is a barrier between you and them, made of the horrible thing that happened, that keeps you isolated. I had thought that, at the very least, Brit and I would hurt together, but she can barely stand to look at me. I wonder if it’s for the same reason I have avoided her: because I look at her eyes and I see them in Davis’s face; because I notice the dimple in her chin and think that my son had it, too. She—who used to be everything I ever wanted—is a constant memory now of everything I’ve lost.

I focus my attention on the casket being lowered into the ground. I keep my eyes extra wide, because if I do that, the tears won’t spill over, and I won’t look like a *.

I start making a list in my head, of all the things I will never get to do with my son: see him smile for the first time. Celebrate his first Christmas. Get him a BB gun. Give him advice to ask a girl out. Milestones. But the road of parenthood, for me, has been wiped clean of landmarks.

Suddenly Francis is standing in front of me with the shovel. I swallow hard, take it, and become the first person to start to bury my child. After pushing a scoop of dirt into the rip in the ground, I jam the shovel into the earth again. Tom Metzger helps Brit lift it, her hands shaking, and do her part.

I know I’m supposed to stand vigil while everyone else here helps to put Davis underground. But I’m too busy fighting the urge to dive into that tiny pit. To shovel the dirt out with my bare hands. To lift the casket, to pry it open, to save my baby. I’m holding myself in check so hard that my body is vibrating with the effort.

And then, something happens that diffuses all that tension, that twists the escape valve so that the steam inside me disappears. Brit’s hand slips into mine. Her eyes are still vacant with drugs and pain; her body is angled away from me, but she definitely reached out. She definitely needed me.

For the first time in a week, I start to think that, maybe, we will survive.

—

WHEN FRANCIS MITCHUM summons you, you go.

In the aftermath of my rout of the Pagans, I received a handwritten note from Francis, telling me that he’d heard the rumors, and wanted to see if they were true. He invited me to meet him the following Saturday in New Haven, and included an address. I was a little surprised to drive there and find it smack in the middle of a subdivision, but I assumed it was a gathering of his squad when I saw all the cars parked out front. When I rang the doorbell, no one answered, but I could hear activity in the backyard, so I edged around the side of the house and let myself in through the unlocked fence.

Almost immediately, I was run down by a swarm of kids. They were probably about five years old, not that I had too much experience with humans of that size. They were racing toward a woman who was holding a baseball bat, trying to direct the unruly group into some form of a line. “It’s my birthday,” one little boy said. “So I get to go first!” He grabbed for the bat and began to swing it at a pi?ata: a papier-maché nigger hanging from a noose.