Small Great Things(88)

“Yes, sir,” I managed.

“Brittany,” Francis began, “do you promise to obey Turk and continue the heritage of the White race?”

“I do,” she vowed.

“And Turk, will you honor this woman in war as your Aryan bride?”

“I will,” I said.

We turned toward each other. I looked her in the eye, unwavering, as we recited the Fourteen Words, the mantra David Lane created when he was running the Order: We must secure the existence of our people and a future for White children.

I kissed Brit, while behind us, someone lit a wooden swastika to brand this moment. I swear I felt a shift in me that day. Like I really had handed over half my heart to this woman, and she had given me hers, and the only way we would both continue to survive was with this patchwork.

I was dimly aware of Francis speaking, of people clapping. But I was pulled toward Brit, like we were the last two people on earth.

We might as well have been.





“MY CLIENT HATES ME,” I tell Micah, as we are standing in the kitchen washing dishes.

“I’m sure she doesn’t hate you.”

I glance at him. “She thinks I’m a racist.”

“She has a point,” Micah says mildly, and I turn to him, my eyebrows shooting up to my hairline. “You’re white and she’s not, and you both happen to live in a world where white people have all the power.”

“I’m not saying that her life hasn’t been harder than mine,” I argue. “I’m not one of those people who thinks that just because we elected a black president we’re magically postracial. I work with minority clients every day who’ve been screwed by the healthcare system and the criminal justice system and the educational system. I mean, prisons are run as a business. Someone’s profiting from keeping a steady stream of people going to jail.”

We had hosted some of Micah’s colleagues for dinner. I’d had high hopes of serving a gourmet meal but wound up making a taco bar and offering a store-bought bakery pie that I passed off as being homemade after I broke off the edges of the crust a little to make it slightly less perfect. Throughout the evening, my mind wandered. Granted, when conversation drifted toward rates of retinal nerve fiber layer loss in contralateral eyes of glaucoma patients with unilateral progression, I couldn’t be blamed. But I already was obsessing over my earlier argument with Ruth. If I was in the right, how come I couldn’t stop rehashing what I’d said?

“But you just don’t bring up race in a criminal trial,” I say. “It’s like one of those unspoken rules, you know, like Don’t use your brights in oncoming traffic…or Don’t be the * who brings a full cart to the twelve items or less lane. Even the cases based on stand-your-ground laws steer clear of it, and ninety-nine percent of the time it’s a white guy in Florida who got scared by a black kid and pulled a trigger. I get that Ruth feels singled out by her employer. But none of that has to do with a murder charge.”

Micah passes me a platter to dry. “Don’t take this the wrong way, babe,” he says, “but sometimes when you’re trying to explain something and you think you’re dropping a hint, you’re actually more like a Mack truck.”

I turn to him, waving my dish towel. “What if one of your patients had cancer, and you were trying to treat it, but she also kept telling you she had poison ivy. Wouldn’t you tell her it was more important to focus on getting rid of the cancer, and then you’d take care of the rash?”

Micah considers this. “Well, I’m not an oncologist. But sometimes, when you’ve got an itch, you keep scratching it and you don’t even realize that you’re doing it.”

I am totally lost. “What?”

“It was your metaphor.”

I sigh. “My client hates me,” I say again.

Just then the phone rings. It is nearly 10:30, the time for calls about heart attacks and accidents. I grab the receiver with a damp hand. “Hello?”

“Is this Kennedy McQuarrie?” booms a deep voice, one I know but cannot place.

“It is.”

“Excellent! Ms. McQuarrie, this is Reverend Wallace Mercy.”

The Wallace Mercy?

I don’t even realize I’ve said that aloud until he chuckles. “Rumors of my superstardom have been greatly exaggerated,” he paraphrases. “I am calling about a friend we have in common—Ruth Jefferson.”

Immediately, I go into lockdown mode. “Reverend Mercy, I’m not at liberty to discuss a client.”

“I assure you, you can. Ruth has asked me to serve as an adviser, of sorts…”

I clench my teeth. “My client hasn’t signed anything stating that.”

“The release, yes, of course. I emailed one to her an hour ago. It will be on your desk tomorrow morning.”

What. The. Hell. Why would Ruth go and sign something like that without consulting me? Why wouldn’t she even mention that she’d been talking to someone like Wallace Mercy?

But I already know the answer: because I told Ruth her case had nothing to do with racial discrimination, that’s why. And Wallace Mercy is about nothing but racial discrimination.

“Listen to me,” I say, my heart pounding so hard that I can hear its pulse in every word. “Getting Ruth Jefferson acquitted is my job, not yours. You want to boost your ratings? Don’t think you’re going to do it on my back.”