This Is My America(66)

A flash of a white shirt catches my attention. My throat tightens with fear, but I don’t slow down, moving so fast my feet barely touch the rough and cracked debris on the ground. My arms pump hard like Jamal taught me.

The crack of a branch breaking in the distance steers my movement. I follow the sound, pushing my fears aside. Allow nostalgia to fill me instead. We pounded across this grass so much as kids it stopped growing and created this trail. I’m at home out here.

Memories of hot summer days flood me. Times we knew our parents were out working and we could spend the day here. We’d break away through the trees, dipping and diving, running to an overgrown section. Make our way through the woods and eventually crash at an old shack with busted-out windows. It was high up on the trail and became our lookout spot to everything below.

I should’ve thought of it sooner.

Jamal.

Of course. The way this person is snaking through the woods, they’re running with precision.

Quincy said Jamal wouldn’t go far, but he never knew about this old place. It’s Jamal’s and my secret.

At the thought of finding Jamal, I run faster until I reach a break in the trees. The shack still stands. Neglected, with paint chipped away from years of rain, sun, and storms. The windows shaded by old, tattered pillowcases and bedsheets.



My breath goes heavy. Feet hollering, hot and burning, but not in as much pain as my aching heart for Jamal.

I look behind me, confirm I didn’t bring trouble for Jamal. All clear, I touch the shack. My fingers crumble the paint, wood splinters digging into my skin.

When I’m certain that I’m completely alone, I go around the back and peek through a side window.

The door handle is kicked in, so I enter.

I’m overwhelmed with stale, dusty air, years of the shack dying inside with no one there. I want to scream out Jamal’s name in victory, like we would as kids playing hide-and-go-seek with Corinne. I wish she were with me now.

My fingers touch along the yellowed, lined walls as I walk across the half-rotten floors that were damaged by a leak from the roof. I pass a kerosene lamp hanging on a rusty hook. The dust swept away, recently used. I notice a small table with newspapers, the dates as recent as a week ago. I steady my breath, heart beating fast, then go to the second door that’s ajar. You can tell the foundation’s cracked and the door can’t stay put. A Texas wind rushing under doors and through windows would be strong enough to open it. But I hope that was Jamal and not some storm.

With the light touch of a hand, I push the door and see the broad shoulders of someone sitting on the floor in a makeshift bed. His back is turned against me. Hands over his head, rubbing it, with his black-and-red headphones he’s taped the cord to stay in place.



Typical Jamal, in his own head—when the whole world is looking for him.

“Jamal.” I muster a whisper. The ache builds in the back of my throat.

I found him.

Since he’s been gone, it’s like he’s been a ghost. Swept up away from us, almost worse than Daddy being gone. Because at least we could see Daddy weekly.

Jamal tips one headphone off his ear and stays real still before he gets up to look out the window.

“Jamal.”

Jamal jumps and whirls, then studies me, and it’s like he sees a ghost, too. He flips his headphones all the way off, the cord dangling around his neck. I wait for his response. Anger. Happiness.

He leans in a bit like he’s had the music on so loud he doesn’t know if he’s missed something I said.

“Anyone follow you?” He looks past me, worried I’m not alone. I grip my fingers on the door handle, tense.

“No,” I say. “I don’t think so. You were so far ahead. I checked. No one else was in sight.”

“Well?” Jamal opens his arms wide, then lets a big old smile out. He looks like Daddy.



I run to his arms, and they wrap around me. The rush from finding him settles inside me. Survival. Always in survival mode, keeping on the move, so the impact of real life doesn’t leave me paralyzed. All so a moment like this can crash into me. It practically knocks me over.

“You been here this whole time?”

“Only this week, since the house detail stopped, and I knew they’d stop checking the woods. I couldn’t stay at Quincy’s, so I kept out in the fields by the highway, got supplies at the convenience store that’s busy off the 55. I got the paper there to see what the cops were saying and see what I needed to do to prove my innocence. When my photo kept hitting the front page, I knew I needed to lay low.”

I study him, his eyes sunken in. He’s been gone fifteen days now, but it feels like so much longer.

“How’d you find me? I was in the woods before you even left the gate.”

Jamal’s shoulders relax as he lets go of me and goes to the window, moving the makeshift curtain slightly open to peek out again.

“I wanted to catch a closer sight of who ran from the house. You scared the hell out of me.”

He gives me a look but must know better than to give me a hard time. He left us.

“You ran in the woods like you were born out there. All I could think about was us racing up here. I knew it had to be you.”



Jamal closes the curtains and takes a seat on an old blanket I recognize from our attic. I move a book out of the way and sit beside him.