Small Great Things(57)

I decide to make it easy for her.

In one swift movement, I’m on my feet and leaning over the low railing that separates us from the lawyers and the stenographer. I take a deep breath and hurl a gob of spit that smacks the bitch on the side of the face.

I can tell the second she recognizes me.

Instantly I am flanked by bailiffs who drag me out of the courtroom, but that’s okay, too. Because even as I’m pulled away, the nurse will see the swastika snaking down the back of my scalp.

It’s okay to lose a battle, when you are in it to win the war.

—

THE TWO MEATHEAD bailiffs dump me outside the heavy doors of the courthouse. “Don’t think about coming back in,” one warns, and then they disappear inside.

I rest my hands on my knees, catching my breath. I may not have access to the courtroom, but this is a free country, as far as I know. They can’t keep me from staying here and watching Ruth Jefferson get carted to jail.

Resolved, I look up, and that’s when I see them: the vans, with satellite dishes. The reporters smoothing their skinny skirts and testing their microphones. The media that has come to report on this case.

The lawyer said they needed a grieving parent, not an angry parent? I can give them that.

But first, I pull out my cellphone and call Francis at home. “Get Brit out of bed, and park her in front of the television.” I glance at the news vans. “Channel Four.”

Then I take a cap out of my pocket, the one I wore into the courthouse this morning so I wouldn’t draw attention to my tattoo until I wanted to. I center it on my head.

I think about Davis, because that’s all I need to make tears come to my eyes.

“You saw that, right?” I approach a slant reporter I’ve seen on NBC. “You saw me get thrown out of that building?”

She glances at me. “Uh, yeah. Sorry, but we’re here to cover a different story.”

“I know,” I say. “But I’m the father of the dead baby.”

I tell the reporter that Brit and I had been so excited about our first baby. I say I’d never seen anything as perfect as his tiny hands, his nose, which looked just like Brit’s. I say that my wife is still so upset over what happened to Davis that she can’t get out of bed, can’t even be here today at court.

I say it is a tragedy for someone who has taken a vow to heal to intentionally kill a helpless infant, just because she is upset at being removed from a patient’s care. “I understand that we didn’t see eye to eye,” I say, looking at the reporter. “But that doesn’t mean my son deserved to die.”

“What do you hope the outcome will be, Mr. Bauer?” she asks.

“I want my son back,” I tell her. “But that isn’t going to happen.”

Then I excuse myself. Truth is, I’m starting to choke up, thinking about Davis. And I’m not going to be broadcast blubbering like a girl.

I duck away from the other reporters, who are now falling all over each other to speak to me, but they get distracted as the doors to the courthouse open and Odette Lawton exits. She starts talking about how this is a heinous crime, how the State will make sure that justice is done. I slip along the side of the building, past where a janitor is smoking a cigarette, to a loading dock in the back. This, I know, leads to a lower-level door, which leads to the holding cells.

I can’t get inside; there are guards posted. But I stand at a distance, huddled against the wind, until a van pulls out with the words YORK CORRECTIONAL INSTITUTION printed on its side. That’s the only prison for women in the state, in Niantic. It’s where the nurse must be headed.

At the last minute, I step into its path, so that the driver has to swerve.

I know, inside that van, Ruth Jefferson will be jolted by that motion. That she’ll look out the window to see what caused it.

That the last thing she sees before prison will be me.

—

AFTER I TOOK Brit wilding, I became a regular visitor in her home, and I pretty much ran the website from Francis’s living room. On LONEWOLF we hosted discussions: tax forums that pitted Joe Legal, the White worker, against Jose, the Illegal Job Thief; threads about why our economy was being ruined by Obama; an online book club; a section for creative writing and poetry—which included a three-hundred-page alternate ending to the Civil War. There was a section for Anglo women to connect with each other, and another for teens, which helped them navigate situations like what to do when a friend said he was gay (end the friendship immediately, or explain that no one is born that way and the trend will vanish eventually). There were opinion topics (Which is worse: a White gay or a straight black? Which universities are the most anti-White?). Our most popular thread was the one about forming a White Nationalist K–12 school. We had over a million posts there.

But we also had a section of the site where we gave suggestions of what people could do individually or within their cells if they wanted to take action, without promoting outright violence. Mostly, we found ways to get minorities all twisted up believing that there was an army of us in their midst, when in reality, it was just one or two people.

Francis and I practiced what we preached. We adopted a stretch of highway in a mostly black area, and posted a sign that said it was being maintained by the KKK. One night, we drove to the Jewish Community Center in West Hartford. During Friday night services, we slipped a flyer under the windshield wiper of each car in the parking lot: a photo of Adolf Hitler in full sieg heil, and underneath it in bold letters: THE HOLOCAUST WAS A HOAX. On the back were bullets of facts: