Conviction (36 page)

I’ve thought about this since then, I’ve thought about it a lot, and I think maybe he stopped because he was using me to make himself look good. Because when I got in, he said into
his radio, “Hey, Alicia, I saw this little kid walking home in the sun so I stopped to give him a ride, but do me a favor and tell the guys it was a bank robbery or something, huh?” And
I could tell from his voice, and the way he said the last part like he was teasing, that Alicia was someone he was trying to impress.

When he asked where I lived, I told him one street over from where my house actually is, and when he asked my name, I stuttered for a second and then said it was Scott. The whole ride back, I
sat stiffly in my seat and tried to keep an eye on him without him seeing. He didn’t say anything reassuring like,
Don’t worry, I’m not going to hurt you
, or anything like
that. At the time, I thought he could tell that I was scared of him, and I thought he liked that. Even then he didn’t feel like a normal adult. He wiped his crumby fingers on his seat and on
the side of the car. He sang along to the songs on the radio—he was listening to rap music, which I wasn’t allowed to do—and he got louder and more emphatic every time there was a
swear word.

When we turned onto Liberty, he asked where I was coming from and I said baseball practice. He gave me a weird smile, like he thought I was lying.

“In this heat? They don’t even let the high school football teams practice on days like this.” He asked if I had water, and I told him I drank it and my dad had taken home my
empty bottle along with all my other stuff so I didn’t have to carry it.

He asked why I didn’t take the bus, and I told him we don’t have buses here, and he snorted the way people do when they think you’re stupid and told me he grew up taking the
bus all over. And I figured the fact that I was wrong bothered him, like maybe he didn’t think it was fair that he didn’t get his own car and he had to take the bus or whatever, because
he started telling me stories about how already on the job he’d seen the body of a sixteen-year-old shot to death and how earlier that summer an old grandma had been knifed coming home from
work on the bus.

“In his driveway, that kid. Blew off half his skull,” he told me, like he wanted me to be scared. “You know who shot him? Fourteen-year-old kid. Four
teen.
” I sat
frozen in my seat looking at the gun in his belt. A couple miles later, he said, “Pow. Just like that. Blood everywhere. I don’t know how his family ever got past that one.”

When he pulled up to the intersection before my neighborhood, he ate some more Cheetos, and then without any warning, he stuck the bag right up in my face. But I read the gesture wrong, and I
flinched and put up my arm to block what I thought was a blow. That’s when I realized what he was doing, which was just offering me some, and because he had this weird look on his face, I
tried to play it off like nothing had happened. I forced a smile and said, “Oh, okay, thank you,” and took one. I felt a little bit sick.

I didn’t trust him. I didn’t like him. And to this day I don’t know why he asked me what he did next, because to him I was just a kid walking home from baseball practice, and
I’m always polite to adults and I wasn’t impolite to him. I don’t know if he thought it was his job to ask everyone this, or if he just didn’t trust people, or if maybe
everything’s wrong where he comes from so that’s what he was used to, or what. The best I’ve ever been able to come up with is that he might have been the first person I’d
ever met in my life who didn’t know me as Mart Raynor’s son.

“So,” he said, when we’d pulled onto the street before mine, “Scott.” He crumpled up the rest of his Cheetos and wiped his hands on his seat, and then without
looking at me, he said, “Your parents—are they good people?”

I pretended not to hear him. Normally I’d have never done that, I knew when an adult addressed you, you had to answer them, but he wasn’t doing anything right either and so I
pretended I didn’t hear. But he slowed the car and said, “Are they taking care of you, or what? How come you aren’t in the car with your water bottle and your other stuff and your
dad?”

“My dad’s a better person than anyone.” I could hear that I sounded mad. I was; I didn’t think he had any right to ask me that. “Than
anyone
.”

“Whoa, kid, chill out, okay? I’m just asking.”

I crossed my arms. And the thing is, if it had been anyone else or anytime else, this wouldn’t have happened. But I guess I was feeling weird already from being so hot and scared and mad
that way, and I still have no idea why I said this to him then because I’ve never done anything like it in my life, but all at once I kind of felt the way it does right before you throw up,
and then before I could even think about it, I blurted out, “If your dad’s going to give you away or if you upset him and he’s going to kill himself, how do you know it’s
coming? Do you get some kind of warning first?”

“What?”
Frank Reyes snapped. “What the
hell
, kid.” And then he looked panicked in that way adults do when someone asks a question they aren’t ready
for.

It wasn’t a big moment. In less than sixty seconds, I was going to get out of his car and go home; my dad wouldn’t be there, because he’d changed his mind and gone out looking
for me so I didn’t have to walk. And really, nothing happened. Officer Reyes fiddled with his radio and said something about hotlines or something like that, but I was so shocked at myself
that I didn’t even hear what he said. I said, quickly, “This is my house right here, this one,” even though it wasn’t, and he slowed the car and started to say something
else, but I said, “thank you for the ride,” to cut him off. He didn’t try to stop me when I got out; I think he was probably as relieved to see me go as I was to get out. But
I’d taken a few steps when he called me back.

“Hey,” he said, “Scott, wait up. C’mere.”

He leaned out his window and handed me a card that had his name and
LA ABRA POLICE DEPARTMENT
written on it, and there was a phone number he’d scribbled, too.

“This is how you get ahold of me,” he said. “If anything ever—I don’t know—gets weird or whatever, you call me. Day or night. Okay? Your parents leave you out
to get heatstroke again, you call me and I’ll come talk to them. Anything ever happens where you think,
Fuck this, this isn’t right, no one should treat me this way even if
it’s my mom and dad
, you call me. You got it?”

I said I did just so he’d leave, and that was it. I never called him. For some reason, though, I kept the card. I even went and found it one time a year later when my dad drank too much
and got rough, but after that, when I got scared about what might have happened if I had actually made a call like that, I took a permanent marker and blacked out the number so I couldn’t
read it and tucked the card away in a book. And I know Officer Reyes didn’t recognize me when he showed up at our house that day I came back from LA, so it doesn’t matter. It was
nothing. It was probably something he never thought about again.

A
fter just two hours of deliberation, the jury reaches a verdict at one thirty p.m. on Wednesday, May 7, five days before the La Abra game.
It’s scheduled to be read tomorrow, and the news cycles light up with the information so fast that by the time Mr. Buchwald’s number comes up on my phone, I’ve heard already, and
the knowledge has settled into my lungs like dust.

I don’t pick up his call. He leaves a message and tells me that the jury’s decision was unusually fast, warns me not to speak to the press, and tells me the verdict will be read at
nine a.m. I unplug the home phone. When the morning comes, I stay inside with all the dead bolts latched and the alarm system set on high and all the curtains drawn, like I’ve been doing
since I came back from the trial. I haven’t been to school, haven’t returned any phone calls or messages, and for the first time in my life I’ve skipped two games. I’ve
barely slept. Every time I close my eyes, the demons come; I see myself on the stand over and over, my words on the witness stand branded across my forehead to mark me the rest of my life.

I don’t know how to live with what I did. I don’t know if I can.

Just before nine, I go into the den and sit in front of the TV. It’s raining outside, and the thud of the water against the skylights makes me feel like drowning. Both local news stations
are broadcasting live from the courthouse when I finally turn on the TV. I can’t let myself pray. No matter what the verdict is, it won’t undo what I did. When I see my dad on-screen,
my heart seizes, and I watch as he sits up straighter when the jurors come in and smiles a weak, hopeful smile in their direction. He searches their faces. His lips move without sound; I can read
the words
Please God please God please God
over and over. His chest heaves.

“Good afternoon,” Judge Scherr says, and to the jury, “Please be seated.”

They sit. Judge Scherr says, “Mr. Foreman, has the jury reached a verdict?”

A man sitting in front says yes.

“Please provide the verdict forms to Deputy Rogers.”

An officer in uniform sitting in one of the side rows gets up and makes his way to the foreman, who rises and hands him a manila envelope. The deputy takes it to Judge Scherr and holds it
out.

Judge Scherr slides the paper from the envelope and reads it. He looks up over his glasses. “Mr. Raynor, please stand and face the jury.”

My dad obeys. He swallows so hard you can see his Adam’s apple slide up and down, and he doesn’t look at any of them.

I did what I had to do, I tell myself. In the end it was the only thing, and I had to do it. But I can’t breathe.

Judge Scherr pushes his glasses up his nose. “I have reviewed the verdict form and will now publish the verdict. The people of California, plaintiff, versus Martin Scott Raynor, Jr.,
defendant.” He doesn’t look up. “We, the jury, find the defendant, Martin Scott Raynor, Jr.—”

I slam my hand against the power button just in time to cut him off. My palms are damp. The TV rocks dangerously on the stand.

I can’t bear to hear him say it, for it to be final and real.

And I can’t do this any longer. I can’t live with what I did.

Upstairs, the rain still pounding against the skylights, I clear the history on my browser. I empty everything in my wallet—whatever cash I have, a few gift
cards—and put everything, along with all my vintage baseball stuff, in a Ziploc on my desk and I write Colin’s name in permanent marker on top. For Greg, the 1920
Baseball
Almanac
from my dad. For Maddie, the necklace I never gave her. For Trey and my dad, nothing. When they hear what I’ve done, that will be enough.

I’m moving through a haze. I’m wasting time, I should just get things over with, but there’s one more thing. There’s an index card taped to the underside of my desk where
I copied down a verse I found a long time ago, when I was a little kid, and I peel off the tape and set it on the desk.
Can a mother forget her nursing child? Can she feel no love for the child
she has borne? But even if that were possible, I would not forget you!
I write my mom’s full name across it. Because you can say you forgive yourself, you can tell yourself you’ve
moved on, but the world keeps going on and whatever you did is still part of it forever and you don’t get to take that back. And she should have to know that if she’d done everything
differently then Frank Reyes would still be alive today and I would still be alive tomorrow.

I take something with me: the home run ball I caught at that game all those years ago with my brother and my dad. In my dad’s room, I sink down on the edge of his bed and open his
nightstand drawer. It’s messy, like all his stuff. There’s his Bible and a couple foam earplugs and an eye mask. There’s a note written on creased yellow legal paper; it looks
old, and the knobby handwriting is clearly a young kid’s, not mine:
Dear Dad I am sorry you yelled at me but I don’t know what I did please tell me with out yelling so it isnt
scaring me and then I will not do it again I love you Dad.
There’s a picture of a thirteen-year-old Trey holding me up to a cake with a single candle on it; my face is screwed up like
I’m crying, and I’m trying to turn away, but Trey’s laughing, his eyes on me. And there’s a box of lead, and—shoved to one side and loaded, like I knew it would
be—there’s his gun.

I can’t change what I did. But I hope somehow this is penance enough.

My vision’s tunneled into pinpricks and I feel flushed all over. I clutch the ball with one hand and with the other I pick up the gun and slide the safety off with my thumb. My whole head
is pounding like a drum, swelling so much I can hardly even see. My hands are sweating so much my finger keeps slipping off the trigger. It’ll take just a few seconds and that’s it. I
can’t hear, and my heart is about to burst out of my chest, and I tell myself I should practice first to make sure I remember how to do it right and I aim at the wall above the bed and pull
the trigger and the recoil knocks me back and the sound of the gunshot crackles hot and close in my ears and from the wall, where there’s a hole, dust from the plaster balloons in the air and
drifts down.