Small Great Things(54)
“The defense will make you out to be a gold digger with a grudge,” Matthews says bluntly.
I sit back, my hands on my knees. “So that’s it? I don’t have a case?”
“I never said that,” the lawyer replies. “I just think you’ve chosen the wrong target. Unlike Ms. Jefferson, the hospital does have deep pockets. Moreover, they have an obligation to supervise their staff, and they are responsible for the nurse’s actions or inactions. That’s who I would recommend filing the lawsuit against. Now, we’d still name Ruth Jefferson—you never know, right now she has nothing, but tomorrow she could win the lottery or receive an inheritance.” He raises a brow. “And then, Mr. Bauer, you might not just get justice—you might get a very handsome payout.”
I nod, imagining this. I think about being able to tell Brit how I’m going to do right by Davis. “So what do we do to get started?”
“Now?” Matthews says. “Nothing. Not until the criminal lawsuit is over. The civil suit will still be viable when it’s done, and that way, it can’t be used to incriminate your character.” He leans back, spreading his hands. “Come back to me when the trial’s over,” Matthews says. “I’m not going anywhere.”
—
AT FIRST I didn’t believe Francis when he said that the new wave of Anglo supremacy would be a war fought not with fists but with ideas, spread subversively and anonymously through the Internet. But all the same, I was smart enough not to tell him he was a crazy old coot. For one thing, he was still one of the legends of the Movement. And more importantly, he was the father of the girl I couldn’t get my mind off.
Brit Mitchum was beautiful, but in a way that knocked me off my feet. She had the softest skin I’d ever touched, and pale blue eyes that she ringed with dark eyeliner. Unlike other skinchicks, she didn’t buzz her hair at the crown and let wispy bangs frame her face and the back of her neck. Instead, Brit had thick hair that spilled down to the middle of her back. Sometimes she braided it, and the braid was as thick as my wrist. I thought a lot about what it would feel like to have those curls hanging over my face like a curtain as she kissed me.
But the last thing I was going to do was make a move on a girl whose father could have my spine snapped by making a single phone call. So instead, I went to visit, often. I pretended to have a question for Francis, who liked seeing me because it gave him a chance to talk up his idea for an Anglo website. I helped him change the oil in his truck and fixed a leaky garbage disposal for him. I made myself useful, but when it came to Brit, I worshiped from afar.
So I was pretty blown away when one day she came out to a chopping block where I was splitting wood for Francis. “So,” she says, “are the rumors true?”
“What rumors?” I asked.
“They say you took down a whole motorcycle gang and that you killed your own father.”
“In that case, no,” I said.
“Then you’re just a little * like the other guys who like to pretend they’re big bad Anglos so they can bask in my daddy’s glow?”
Shocked, I looked up at her, and saw her mouth twitch. I raised the ax over my head, flexed my muscles, and sent the ax hurtling into the piece of wood, which cleaved neatly. “I like to think I fall somewhere between the two extremes,” I said.
“Maybe I want to see for myself.” She took a step closer. “Next time your crew goes on the hunt.”
I laughed. “There is no way I’m taking Francis Mitchum’s daughter out with my guys.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re Francis Mitchum’s daughter.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Hell, yes, it was, even if she couldn’t see it.
“My father’s been taking me out with his crew my whole life.”
Somehow I found that hard to believe. (Later I found out it was true, but he left Brit buckled into her car seat, sound asleep, in the back of his truck.) “You’re not tough enough to run with my crew,” I said, just to get her off my back.
When she didn’t reply, I figured that was that. I lifted the ax again, and started the downswing, only to have Brit dart, lightning-fast, into the path of the blade. Immediately I let go of the shaft, feeling the ax spin out of my hands to wedge itself deeply in the ground about six inches away from her. “Jesus f*cking Christ,” I shouted. “What is wrong with you?”
“Not tough enough?” she replied.
“Thursday,” I told her. “After dark.”
—
EVERY NIGHT, I hear my son cry.
The sound wakes me up, which is how I know he’s a ghost. Brit never hears him, but then she is still floating in a haze of sleeping pills and Oxy left over from when I busted my knee. I get out of bed and take a piss and follow the noise, which gets louder and louder and louder, and then disappears when I reach the living room. There’s no one there, just the computer screen, green and glaring at me.
I sit down on the couch and I drink a six-pack and still I can hear my boy crying.
My father-in-law gives me almost two weeks of grieving, and then starts dumping out all the beer in the house. One night, Francis comes to find me when I’m sitting on the living room couch, my head in my hands, trying to drown out the baby’s sobs. I think for a minute he’s going to deck me—he may be an old dude, but he could still take me—but instead, he yanks the laptop from its power cord and throws it at me. “Get even,” he says simply, and he walks back into his side of the duplex.