Small Great Things(56)
“Yeah, except for the part where my mother up and left me behind when I was a baby, like I was just…trash.”
I knew Francis didn’t have a wife, but I didn’t know what had happened. “Man, that sucks. I’m sorry.”
To my surprise, Brit wasn’t upset. She was furious. “I’m not.” Her eyes burned like coals in a fire. “Daddy said she ran off with a nigger.”
Just then, two men walked up to the hot dog stand to order. They got their dogs, and walked over to a half-broken picnic table.
“You ready?” I asked Brit.
“I was born ready.”
I hid my smile; was I ever that brave? We got out of my car and sauntered across the street, as if we were going to grab a bite, too. But instead, I stopped at the picnic table and smiled pleasantly. “Hey. Either of you limp wrists got a cigarette?”
They exchanged a glance. I love that glance. It’s the same one you see on an animal when it realizes it’s been cornered. “Let’s just go,” the blond one said to the short, skinny dude.
“See, that doesn’t work for me,” I said, stepping closer. “Because I’ll still know you’re out there.” I grabbed Blondie by the throat and punched his lights out.
He went down like a stone. I turned to watch Brit, who had jumped on the skinny guy’s back and was riding him like a nightmare. Her fingernails raked across his cheek, and as he stumbled to the ground she started kicking him in the kidneys, then straddled him, lifted his head, and smashed it back down on the pavement.
I had fought beside women before. There’s a common misconception that skinchicks are subservient, barefoot, and pregnant most of the time. But if you’re going to be a skinhead girl, you have to be a tough bitch. Brit might not have gotten her hands dirty before, but she was a natural.
When she was pounding on a slack, unconscious body, I hauled her upright. “Come on,” I urged, and together we ran to the car.
We drove to a hill that offered a great view of planes taking off and landing at Tweed airport. The runway lights winked at us as we sat on the hood of the car, Brit swimming in adrenaline. “God,” she yelled, tipping her throat to the night sky. “That was unf*ckingbelievable. It felt like…like…”
She couldn’t find the word, but I could. I knew what it was like to have so much bottled up inside that you had to explode. I knew what it was like to cause pain, for a few seconds, instead of feeling it. The source of Brit’s restlessness might be different from mine, but she had been reined in all the same, and she’d just found the breach in the fence. “It feels like freedom,” I said.
“Yes,” she breathed, staring at me. “Do you ever feel like you don’t belong in your own skin? Like you were meant to be someone else?”
All the time, I thought. But instead of saying that, I leaned over and kissed her.
She spun so that she was sitting on me, facing me. She kissed me harder, biting my lip, devouring. Her hands were under the tail of my shirt, fumbling with the buttons of my jeans. “Hey,” I said, trying to grab her wrists. “There’s no rush.”
“Yes there is,” she whispered into my neck.
She was on fire, and if you get too close to a fire, you go up in flames, too. So I let her slip beneath my zipper, I helped her hike up her skirt and rip off her panties. Brit lowered herself onto me, and I moved inside her like the start of something.
—
ON THE MORNING of the arraignment, I get dressed while Brit is still sleeping in the pajamas she’s worn for the past four days. I eat a bowl of cereal and I prepare myself for war.
At the courthouse are about twenty friends I didn’t know I had.
They are loyal followers of LONEWOLF, frequent posters on my site, men and women who read about Davis and wanted to do more than just type their sympathy. Like me, they don’t look the way most people would expect a skinhead to look. No one is bald, except me. They’re all wearing ordinary clothing. Some have tiny sun-wheel pins on their collars. Many wear a baby-blue ribbon for Davis. Some pat my shoulder or call me by name. Others just nod, the tiniest inclination of their heads, to let me know they are here for me as I pass down the aisle.
Just then a nigger comes up to me. I nearly shove her away when she starts talking—a knee-jerk reaction—and then I realize I know her voice, and that she’s the prosecutor.
I have talked to Odette Lawton on the phone, but she didn’t sound black. This feels like a slap, like some kind of conspiracy.
Maybe this is a good thing. It’s no surprise that the liberals who run the court system have it out for Anglos, and there’s no way we could ever get a fair trial because of it. They’ll make this about me instead of that nurse. But if the lawyer who’s on my side is black, well, then I can’t possibly be prejudiced, can I?
They’ll never have to know what I’m really thinking.
Someone reads the judge’s name—DuPont—which doesn’t sound like some Jew name, which is a good start. Then I sit through four other defendants before they call the name Ruth Jefferson.
The courtroom sizzles like a griddle. People start booing, and raising up signs with my son’s face on them—a picture I uploaded to the website, the only one I have of him. Then the nurse is brought in, wearing a nightgown and shackles on her wrists. She is looking around the gallery. I wonder if she’s trying to find me.