The 'N' Word, Book 1 (6 page)

W
ARDEN
H
UCKLEBERRY PEERED
at the computer screen from between slightly spread fingers, his right ring one covered in a bandage that barely hung as the cheap adhesive no longer served its purpose. The footage was unnerving, unimaginable, damn near unbelievable.

“I’m still trying to figure out how the hell he did it!” He slapped his desk angrily, causing papers to fly here and there while three guards stood before him. “We keep Aaron away from the general populace. He can only make calls to his attorney. How the hell did he pull this off?!”

“I don’t know, sir,” one of them mumbled, but didn’t make direct eye contact.

“What do you mean you don’t know?! He’s just one man. You only had to watch
one
goddamn man!” He sighed and slowly pivoted in his seat as he ran his hand slowly down his face in utter disbelief. “No one down there is his friend. We made damn sure he was alone. We monitored his calls and letters but he did this even in seclusion!”

He focused on the scene. One hundred and twenty-three inmates stood from their seats, their backs to the camera, straight and stiff like wooden boards dried in the desert sun. Chins up, chests high, their arms at their sides, they refused to budge. A goddamn army, with a leader from afar…

Jason Wilkes, a well known white Nationalist originally from Birmingham, stood in front of the crowd, chanting, “Free Aaron Pike!” over and over, pumping his heavily tattooed fist as his voice carried through the place. The crowd of men began to roar and repeat the same words, charging the place like bulls hyped up on some illegal, hallucinogenic substance. They raged about, tossing things and yelling as the hardly anticipated mutiny soon ensued. It took what felt like a lifetime to get the place under control, wrapped up tight. Several officers had been assaulted in the mayhem, completely blind sighted by such an event.

“I’ve seen enough!” Warden Huckleberry announced, the thick repeat of his warm lunch roiling through his system and settling its thick flavor against the back of his tongue. He beat the keyboard with his fingertips and removed the video from sight. He’d seen the damn thing too many times to count.

“We have to do something about Aaron,” he huffed, leaning back in his seat as he ran his hand along his chest. “He’s a problem. He’s
always
been a problem. I tried to be proactive, give him a few allowances, but it’s not done any good and half of you ingrates are scared of ’im!” he roared, causing one of the guards to look sheepishly down at his shoes. “He
feeds
off it. He feeds off fear, absolutely loves it. I’ve dealt with him for years; I know how his brain works. He’s only served time twice here, both for just four months, but in that timeframe, he turned my entire prison upside down!

“Word has it he now has Bill doing errands for him! I was hoping Bill wouldn’t be swayed by the rumors, but he was broken down like a damn cardboard box in the rain!” He snorted and swiveled in his seat. The split, worn roach brown leather of his chair sighed under his weight as he moved about, trying to get his hands around the barb-wired covered situation.

“He is serving a year this time. If he serves his full sentence, that is a lot of time to do a lot of harm,” Nate, one of the more esteemed guards, stated.

“I’ve dealt with the likes of Aaron, Nate.” He tapped his desk with his engraved ink pen. “It’s like he’s got angels flying over him… No one can touch him, and he knows it. But this last incident, the way he beat that man… well, that set him up good. Only problem is, though he doesn’t show any regret or concern about it, he is still sayin’ it was self-defense, when at other times he has proudly claimed his offenses. So this is dragging things out… He’s going to appeal it. He’s never done that before.”

“That’s only because he got a year and not a slap on the hand this time.” He nodded in agreement.

“Yeah, and he has a lot of people do his handiwork while he’s locked up in here. He keeps his own hands clean and no one dares squeal on him. He has too much power.” He once again tasted the remainder of his lunch as his nerves kicked up again, making him sick to his damn stomach. “Any man that can rot in isolation and command this sort of reaction is a serious threat. Now…” Huckleberry slapped the desk, as if coming to a verdict. “We have to come up with something different this time around. We can’t bide our time; a year is much too long to hope and dream. We can’t ignore it for he will only get worse.”

“Like what? What do you expect us to do?” Nate grimaced, his billy club swaying against the side of his gray pant leg. “He ain’t gonna change, Boss. I’ve known Aaron from the first time he was in here. He is a ruthless motherfucker and when he tells you he is going to do something, he does it. No ifs, ands, or buts. He has absolutely no fear.”

“Everyone is scared of something, Nate.” He narrowed his eyes on the man, refusing to bow down to defeat. “Stop being such goddamn wimps! Aaron might not be afraid to get locked up, get into fights and all this other bullshit he is involved with, but we have to come up with another solution because everything else we’ve tried isn’t working.” He glanced down at his watch. “Look, I have a meeting in less than thirty minutes… we’ll discuss this more later. Don’t any of you say a goddamn word about this, do you hear me? The last thing we need is all the news people crawlin’ around here like ants after sugar and callin’, blowing the phone up, accusing us of not having this shit under control.”

All of the men nodded in understanding.

“Go on, you all can leave now.” He shooed them out of the room, disgusted with himself for lack of a clear plan, and with their obvious dread of the man and Aaron for being such a goddamn, arrogant, worrisome prick. He lowered his head, and remained that way until the door closed and clicked behind them. Slowly, he lifted his head and looked around.

Aaron, I was hoping to never see your face in here after your last stay. Once again, you’ve brought a bunch of shit and mess with you… S.S. are your real initials in my book and they stand for ‘shit starter’. I want you out of this prison, and I want you out, now!

“
Z
ION, LET’S TRY
it again…” Mia Armstrong scooted her chair a bit closer to the eight-year-old, his light golden eyes glossy with confusion and untold pain. His small, slightly tanned hands tightened before he wrung them, shaking the damn things, and snapping his short, skinny fingers as if a strange beat that only he could hear played in the distance.

“I want to use the computer,” the boy repeated, avoiding eye contact as he began to slowly rock back and forth in his plastic baby blue chair.

“I know you do, Zion.” She wrapped her arm around his seat and offered a soft smile. “But right now, I need you to focus on this book.” She pointed down at the glossy page that depicted two children sitting on a playground seesaw with a math equation beneath the illustration.

“Don’t want to…” The boy’s nose wrinkled and he blinked over and over again. His rocking increased as his anxiety mounted. Like a quiet breeze, she brushed her hand along his shoulder blade, then softly cradled his crown, hand covering his ebony hair. Mia gave a gentle squeeze, then one more before sliding her palm away, and pointing back down to the page.

“Zion, can you read this math problem aloud for me?”

“No, no, no, no, no, no! I want to play on the computer, Ms. Armstrong! Right now! Right now!” he yelled, forcing the other children in the room to pause and look in their direction. The teacher’s aide, Mrs. Byrd, lifted her rounded chin a bit higher, her light brown eyes growing with unmentioned concern. Zion was a brilliant little boy, caught in a world of misunderstandings and unspoken perplexity. Mia glanced at Zion’s hands once more; his stimming increased, the finger snapping and shaking mounting to an all time high.

“Zion, I need you to—”

“No!!! Ahhhh!” He began to race around the room, knocking things about. Pausing, he wailed and screamed, crying out as if he’d been physically injured. Mia got to her feet and placed her hands up.

Come on Zion… Let’s not do this…

“Zion, come here please.”

“No!!! No!!! Go away! I hate you!”

“Zion… 3…2…1…” She held her hand up and counted down the numbers on her fingers, triggering him to focus. “That’s it… now come here. Right now, please,” she said a bit more sternly. The boy looked at her hand still in the air, her index finger serving as the numeral ‘one’. With cautious steps, he made his way over towards her. She raised her hand once more, and gently pulled him in a soft hug.

He began to squirm, so she held a bit tighter, restraining his arms.

“Do you need help?” Mrs. Byrd asked.

“No.” She vehemently shook her head as she rested her chin against his crown. “It’s fine…he is going to be okay. Isn’t that right, Zion?”

Like a gush of water turning into a slow drip, the boy winded down. His body fell limp against her as he gripped her hand and squeezed, seemingly craving her affection. She continued to hold him tight, rocking him back and forth, and humming the ‘Five Speckled Frogs’ nursery rhyme. After a few minutes, she slowly released him.

“Zion.” She turned his shoulders so he would face her. “I want you to just sit here, and take some deep breaths. Let’s count to three and take a deep breath, okay? Can you do that for me?”

The boy hesitated, indubitably mulling it over for consideration’s sake, then nodded.

“Okay, good. One…two…three.”

Zion inhaled on cue, held it for a second or two, and then blew out as if trying to usher a tiny paper sailboat across a lake.

“Very good. Let’s do it again, okay?”

He hesitated again then nodded. They repeated the familiar process one more time before sitting quietly while the other children gathered on the rug for a story.

“Now, let’s look at this book, okay?”

“…Okay,” he said softly.

“If John is holding a bag of ten apples while on the seesaw, and loses two, how many are left?”

“Eight.”

“Very good, Zion! If Jane is holding a bag of twelve peaches, and loses six, how many are left?”

“Six.”

“Wonderful! Okay, now this is a tricky one. If John and Jane put their remaining fruit together, how many apples and peaches do they have?”

“Fourteen.”

“Excellent! And lastly, how many apples and peaches are on the ground that they dropped, in total?”

“Eight.”

“High five!” She laughed loudly as she raised her hand in the air, waiting for him to accept the celebration in his honor. The boy smiled wide and placed his hand gently against her own. “Okay, let’s get up and go over and have a seat with the other children, then, right after I read the story of the day, you can play on the computer. Deal?”

Zion Benton gave her an uncertain gaze, then got to his feet. She took the boy by the hand and led him over to the carpeted area, boxed in by neatly placed paperbacks along brightly colored wooden shelves. The boy sat close to her as she took her seat, pulling at her sea green skirt just so as she crossed her legs. She picked up the hardbound book, “When Lions Roar”, by Robbie H. Harris, and cast her sights at all the children sitting there in her classroom. One frantically moved about, as if itching from the inside out. Another kept her eyes pressed firmly closed, vanishing in a world of her very own. Another held himself tightly, pinching the striped cotton fabric of his shirt along the way, as if needing a constant hug.

I love them all…

She didn’t see their disabilities; she saw their potential. She looked down at Zion once more; they met eyes and his cheeks warmed with a peachy glow as he smiled up at her, exposing several missing teeth.

Mia opened the book, and began to read.

“Thunder is booming! A big dog is barking…”

…And I hear all the children, even the ones that have no voice…