All American Boys (27 page)

English, Shannon, and Carlos got to my house around eight. My mother ordered Mother's Pizza for us and had Spoony pick it up on his way in. We sat at the kitchen table waiting as patiently as possible for Ma to pick her slices before we dove in, tearing the cheesy triangles from the pie as if we had never eaten pizza before.

“So what's been going on?” I said, picking off the pepperonis and eating them like chips. Seemed like a stupid question to ask, but up until that point we'd all been sitting there listening to Carlos ramble on about how he thought Silky Wilkes really liked him. “I know y'all didn't come over here just to let this dude talk about Latrice.”

“Naw, it was for the free pizza,” Shannon said with a smirk.

“Oh really?” from my mother, who was using a fork and knife to cut hers.

“Kiddin', Mrs. Butler.”

“Man, seriously, we just wanted to catch you up,” English cut in. “People have been on edge. Even me. A few days ago I got into it with that dude Quinn I was telling you about. He
was kickin' all that ‘Paul was doing his job' crap, while you were laid up in the hospital with your ribs busted. I mean, it's wild. But then today, that same dude got into it with Guzzo at practice. Then afterward the dude, Quinn, came up to me to say that we should just call this one play we have, it's like an isolation play for me”—I had no idea what he was talking about—“he agreed that we should just call it ‘Rashad.' ”

“What?”

“Yep. Coach Carney named it ‘Fist,' but I called it ‘Rashad' in practice, and I'm gonna call it that in the game, too. Quinn was with me.”

“Are you sure that's a good idea?” I asked, feeling really weird. Plus, I didn't want English to get benched for something like renaming a play after me.

“Dude, at this point, I don't care. It ain't like people ain't thinkin' 'bout it anyway. It's on everybody's mind.”

“Plus, ‘Rashad Is Absent Again Today' caught on like wildfire,” Shannon said.

I looked at Carlos, who was trying to shove a whole slice in his mouth.

“Wha?” he grunted.

“I know it was you,” I said. “And for the record, you should've did it in a way where the paint dripped. Almost like vampire blood style.”

Carlos chewed and chewed, then finally swallowed. “I don't
know what you're talkin' 'bout.” He smiled. “But that's a good idea!”

Spoony shook his head. But not in the
my little brother and his annoying friends
way. In the proud way. “So this protest,” he said, getting down to business.

“It's tomorrow at five thirty,” English said. “We're starting at Jerry's and working our way down to the police station.”

“Y'all are gonna miss practice?” I asked, concerned.

“Who cares?” Shannon said, nodding to me. My boys. My brothers. “You should know, 'Shad, that Tiffany has been working with Jill and they've been planning the crap out of this thing. Her and Jill have been the main students organizing it from our school.”

“But it ain't just our school,” English explained, quick. “It's all kinds of people. Other schools. Folks in the neighborhood. Different businesses.”

“I called Pastor Johnson, and he said he'd round up some folks too,” Ma added. I was cool with the pastor coming, but my mother being on board, that really got me. My father, well, I wasn't sure. He wasn't out there with us, was he? Nope. He was in his room, hiding.

Spoony leaned forward. “Fellas, can I make a suggestion? When we get to the station, we should have a die-in.”

“A what?” My mother went bug-eyed, probably at the word “die.”

“A die-in. It's basically when you lie on the ground as a form of protest. Sorta like how the sit-ins were back in the day. But when you lie down, they can't push you over, they can't do anything to you, really, because you are already on the ground.”

“They could kick you!” My mother wasn't a fan of this idea.

“But they won't. Too many cameras.” Spoony looked at Ma. “I promise. It'll be fine.” She nodded, nervously.

“But once we lie down, then what?” I asked, because the way I saw it, putting my body back on the sidewalk wasn't my idea of a protest. It was my idea of a nightmare.

“Then we make the most powerful statement we can make.” Spoony dug in his bag and pulled out a stack of papers. “We read every name on this list. Out loud.”

O
kay, look. If I thought my sudden allegiance to honesty would make me feel confident, I was wrong. If I was an honest dumbass the day before, I was a freaking piss-scared dumbass on Friday. I'd talked my game, but now I had to follow through with it.

First things first. I called the police. I had to start from the beginning. I was there.

I looked up the right number and extension and I made the call in the kitchen, shaking, holding the window frame with one hand and staring out into the sliver of street I could see from there. The phone on the other end rang and rang, as if the damn thing was testing me, trying to get me to hang up. But I didn't.

“I'd like to make a statement,” I said when someone finally picked up.

There was a loud sigh. “Okay. About what?”

“The Rashad Butler incident. I saw what happened, and I'd like to make a statement.”

There was a long silence on the other end. It seemed as if he'd muffled the phone with his hand.

When he came back on, he was quick and curt and aggressive, and rattled off a litany of questions. “Look. Were you in the store? Were you inside when it happened? Did you witness what happened inside Jerry's?”

“No. I was outside.”

The officer sighed again. “Okay,” he said. “Look, we have so many statements.”

“I was there. I need to report what I saw.”

“Fine. I'll take it over the phone, and someone will call you back if we need more. Name and address, please.”

I couldn't see the Galluzzo house from the kitchen window, but it was hovering nearby, as if it, or everyone in it, was waiting for me just beyond my view.

He took my statement but didn't ask any questions, and he hustled me off the phone. No, I hadn't been inside. No, I didn't know
exactly
what happened. But that wasn't the goddamn point. I didn't believe Paul's story, but even if I did, it didn't matter.

I know what I saw after that, and that was all that mattered.

Plans for the march were all over the news, and so were discussions about how to deal with it. Would they cordon off the sidewalks? Would they try to stop the march altogether?

Like usual, I walked Willy to school first, and as I doubled back around to Central High, I turned the corner onto Main Street, but then I stopped and nearly ran back around the other way. About four blocks ahead, slowly making its way up the street, was an enormous black vehicle—not a tank exactly, but it had six giant wheels, and its triangular metal nose looked designed to crash through concrete walls. One cop in all-black paramilitary gear stood in the lookout turret on top, and he surveyed the street as if he were looking for snipers.

“Holy shit!” I said out loud, as it dawned on me that it was heading straight for the high school! Was this the city's response to the protest? A tank? What the hell would come next?

I zipped my coat up to the neck, worried now that going to the march was more dumbass than I'd thought. It got closer—the only frigging thing in the road!—and I realized I was shaking. I couldn't move. As it rumbled by, the concrete seemed to quake, and I stupidly ducked my head, as if that
would keep me from being noticed, and steadied my hands by grabbing the straps of my backpack.
Oh my God! I can't do this. I can't do this! Tanks? Freaking tanks are coming down the street. What the hell, are they sending in the army?
It chugged by in all the thunder of its machinery, but then there was something even louder, a jeering boo rising up out of the crowd of students gathered around the front steps of the school.

The police tank continued on, and if it had meant to scare the students, it did the opposite. By the time I snapped out of it and got up to the steps, kids were yelling after the police tank.

“This is what a police state looks like!”

“Serving and protecting who?”

“Don't shoot!”

I found Jill, who was still at it, passing out flyers with info about the protest. “Hey, Quinn,” she said, handing me one.

“What the hell was that?” I said, thumbing to the street.

She kind of bounced in place, all excited. “They're going crazy. I hear they're gearing up for major riots. We're not rioting. We're protesting! We have a permit to march!”

I looked back to the street and shook my head. “I don't know—now that I saw that.” I mean, it was one thing to have a conviction, but to be beaten up or killed for it—was it worth it? “But is it really the right thing to do if the police
are bringing in tanks? That's frigging scary shit!”

But even as I was saying this, another part of my brain was shouting at me. Tanks? What about Dad? Talk about a man who died for his convictions. How many times did he re-up after 9/11? Three. I was old enough now to know he wasn't fearless. He'd probably been scared shitless every time he went back. He wasn't strong because he wasn't afraid. No, he was strong because he kept doing it even though he
was
afraid.

Jill looked to the corner where the tank had disappeared down Spring Street—the route we were supposed to march to get to Fourth Street and Jerry's. “I hear you,” she said. “But I was talking to Tiffany, and she was telling me about the speech her parents give her younger brother all the time—the speech, she said, all boys of color get from their parents. Did you ever get that speech from your mother? Did you ever get a list of ways you had to behave if the cops stop you?”

“But this is different, isn't it?”

Jill waved out over the crowd. “And it isn't just guys who fear the cops, and families with boys. There's a whole movement for the girls too. Hashtag SayHerName. It's big. This is about
everyone
who fears cops.”

I adjusted my backpack, pulled the straps tighter against me. “Jesus,” I moaned. Jill gave me a look. “No,” I said. “I mean, that's real. I'm saying it sucks that there even has to
be
that hashtag, you know?”

“Look, if there are people who are scared of the police every day of their lives,” Jill said, determined, “I'm going to live in fear of them for at least one day to say that I don't think that's right.”

I grunted.

“Quinn, come on.” She pushed my shoulder. “You said you want to do something. This is the something. Join the march. Look, Paulie, Guzzo, my mom—they all hate me now. But it's like it says on the flyer—” She pointed down to the paper in my hands. A block quote from Desmond Tutu covered the top half of the sheet:

IF YOU ARE NEUTRAL IN SITUATIONS OF INJUSTICE, YOU HAVE CHOSEN THE SIDE OF THE OPPRESSOR.

Jill curled a soft smile and glanced at the crowd, and then back up at me. “This is like a real moment in history, Quinn,” she said, not yelling, not shouting out over the crowd, but almost shyly, like she was sharing something that meant the whole world to her. “I want to make sure I'm on the right side of it.”

I gazed out over the crowd of students around us. There were other white kids like me and Jill, and black kids like Tiffany and Tooms, and Latino kids and Vietnamese kids, and multiracial kids, and kids I didn't know at all and didn't
know how they identified, and I thought about what English had said to me and how many times I'd been a dick without knowing it, and it made me wonder how many times I'd remained neutral in the past too, and what that meant. What did Dad do? He ran right into the face of history. I couldn't duck now, just because I was scared.