The Shooting (33 page)

But fuck him. If he were a black dude who did what he did, you think anyone would feel bad for him or try to help him? Think they'd give him their blanket? Nope—they'd carry him off to the lethal injection chamber fast as they could, saying,
What's wrong with the black community and what should black leaders be doing about it?

Joseph's stepping over the man but then Pillsbury wakes up and looks Joseph right in the eyes. And Pillsbury's eyes remind Joseph of a baby's eyes looking up at you from the crib. And before he knows what he's saying, Joseph goes, —Want a blanket? And he's already regretting it. But Pillsbury says no, he tells Joseph to leave him alone, he looks at Joseph like he thinks Joseph is going to stomp him in the head. So Joseph leaves the man alone. Happy to. And he finds a spot to lay down.

At least,
he thinks,
I am warm under this blanket.
Everyone else in the cell is warm under theirs too—everyone but Pillsbury the Killer. Joseph lies there all night listening to the man's teeth chattering. He gets curious about it, listening to the big man becoming a little animal, crazed with animal fear.
Matter of fact,
Joseph thinks,
maybe I could be like him—I could be scared to death. It's how I got here, isn't it?

From then on, when they get to Rikers, where he and Pillsbury are in the same place, everything Joseph does he does with the intent of being not like Pillsbury. What Would Pillsbury Not Do? Pillsbury would not run in the yard, so Joseph does run in the yard. Pillsbury does not talk to anyone, so Joseph talks to people. You have to talk to people in here, you have to be a little friendly, you might try to keep to yourself, but if you are too closed up they will notice it and take it the wrong way and pick on you. So Joseph tries to talk to people. His father always says you get what you give, so in times of sorrow,
go help another's sorrow. Joseph remembers that and tries it. It's all he's got. In talking to people he learns something: nobody's a monster. Like anyone. Even the meanest, most fucked-up ones just want to be safe. And he tries to help, doesn't know if he does or not, but he tries. And Joseph does okay there. He sees guys go in one of two directions: either they act like him and try to help people, try to find some kind of good to give, or else they go all interior and fall apart, get dark, go crazy.

Pillsbury is one of the second kind—you can tell. He starts smelling real bad, he gets real skinny, he's sick as a dog, because though Joseph can get blankets in Rikers too and does, Pillsbury refuses one because he decides Joseph's trying to poison him with it. And during yard time he just stands against the wall staring into space. And the worst of it is, Joseph talks to him one day and it's clear the man feels no kind of guilt for what he did. Just out of curiosity—call it an experiment—Joseph tries one last time giving him a damned blanket, but Pillsbury throws it away into a trash can. Fascinating—until the next day, when the man walks. He walks after just three or four days inside.

Meanwhile Joseph is in there a year. A year. But the difference between guys like him and guys like Pillsbury is that once Joseph's served his time he gets out, he's not in prison anymore—but guys like Pillsbury never get out, even after they've served their time. They're always in prison. But Joseph gets out. And when he does he goes right to Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, finds his grandfather.

—Who are you? Joseph asks him.

Grandfather tells him: a man who has done bad things he is sorry for.

Joseph says, —Why don't you apologize then?

Grandfather says, —What I did was too bad for apologies.

Joseph takes his grandfather to his father's house, grandfather begs father for forgiveness. Decades of hurt all come out. Father forgives grandfather, mother forgives grandfather, grandfather forgives Joseph, Joseph forgives grandfather. Father and grandfather start talking every day, become very close. Joseph goes to college; it's not Boston University, it's one that advertises on the subway, but
he meets a woman there, to be honest she is one of his professors, but they fall in love, and when the course is over they get married, have a child together, a girl, and the child is beautiful and is born into a beautiful family. Joseph's daughter grows, comes of age in this beautiful family Grows up trusting and unafraid, lives with faith.

9

FAREWELL TO ARMS

They meet Jenny Sanders in her suite at the hotel uptown. She tells them about who she is, what she has lost, and what she now does about it. On the wall above the television she has hung a picture of what she has lost: a little girl with missing teeth in a checkered dress. Says she travels with the picture, puts it up in every hotel room she stays in. All she does, she says, is travel and fight. He looks at the picture and all he sees is Clayton. She orders lunch from room service but they still cannot eat, cannot even think about eating. She expresses sympathy, vows justice. Second Amendment, she says. NRA. Gun culture. Says those are the things that slaughtered Michelle, the girl in the picture, as she sat in her classroom drawing in her journal. The topic was "My Plans for the Weekend." Michelle had just finished drawing the horse she was supposed to ride that Saturday when the young man armed with the assault rifle his lifetime-NRA-member father had taught him to shoot responsibly and safely stepped into her classroom and blew her brains out and tore the fingers off the hands she raised to her face to protect herself and then, in the ensuing fourteen seconds, killed all the other five-year-olds in the classroom and their teacher, Ms. Mary, a twenty-four-year-old girl in her first year of teaching. Then he moved on to the next classroom and the next, killing thirty-two children in just over three minutes. Three minutes. When the cops came he shot
himself. His father was charged with nothing. He was within his rights in giving his deranged son the means of mass murder, we as a society decided. Nobody was ever arrested or charged with anything related to the massacre. And nothing legislative or political came of it either. Nothing. America decided to stay the same. It reaffirmed that the right to bear arms came before the right of children to be alive.

Jenny is saying all of this calmly, almost sweetly, her voice maintaining a low volume. She says, —This has been the story, massacre after massacre: dead babies, politicians in the pocket of the NRA, more power and money for the NRA, no lasting changes, more dead babies. Nobody really cares until it happens to them. And then they say,
Why isn't anyone
doing
something about it?
Well, I'm doing something about it. I'm here. I'm going nowhere. What happened to Clayton is not some tragedy—it is just what happens now, it is who we are. But who we have been is not who we have to be. It will take a war to change us. It's already under way. I'm already fighting it. I'm fighting the war for Clayton.

It is a relief to sit with someone who has clarity and answers. He is nothing he used to be—not the handyman, not the doctor, not the father, not someone who loves people and has faith in them. What he is now is flesh and hair and pain and hate. Pain and hate are holes. They are cold windy spaces inside you. He fills the holes, the spaces, with her.
Here,
he thinks,
is our hero.
He is crying. She puts a hand over his.

His wife says, —Every day we call police, every day we say to police:
What happen, do you know he was sleepwalking? You do not think he criminal, you do not think he rob, he
sleepwalk,
you
know
that, yes? Why did that man shoot him?
We say,
What does he say, how many times he shoot?
We say,
Tell us, did Clayton die quickly, did he suffer, did that man warn him, did he give him a
chance?
What. Happen?
What? And every day police say,
We investigate, we tell you when we tell you, sit down and shut up and go away.
It is not fair. Do you understand?

—I do, Jenny Sanders says.

His wife says, —They take Clayton from us and say,
Clayton ours now. Not yours. Police's. Not son, not boy—police's. He is evidence. Just
evidence. And he is theirs. Theirs.
They say, We
decide what he do to get shot.
We
decide who your son was.
We
decide whether he criminal.
They think we have no right to know. We must sit and wonder and let them decide the truth when we
know
truth. He was sleepwalking. He was a good kid. Not a criminal. Not dangerous. It is not right.

Jenny Sanders says, —I can get them to talk to us. I'll get them to see the truth, that he was a good child, he was an unarmed sleepwalking boy, mowed down in cold blood by a gun nut who thinks his life is worth more than Clayton's. I'll get the world to understand. I have lawyers on it already. We'll find out everything there is to know and get the police to understand the truth so justice is served.

They visit Clayton every day at the city coroner's office. He lies there in a freezer while Lee Fisher relaxes in bed in a cushy private cell, reading and eating food and tasting and showering and meeting visitors and breathing air and chatting and stretching and working with expensive attorneys to build his defense. Jenny goes with them to the city coroner. They will not let them inside beyond the lobby, so they stand in the lobby all day long until the office closes and security makes them leave. When security makes them leave, they stand outside on the sidewalk. In the morning, when the office opens again, there they are, waiting to go inside and stand in the lobby and be as near to Clayton as they can. A small group of reporters begins hovering around them. They bring coffee and bagels and film them for the news. They demand a statement, they demand an exclusive interview. Jenny tells the reporters, —In due time. Please. Privacy for now. They'll talk soon, I promise.

People begin showing up. They are fragile and quiet. Women, mostly, but some men too. They wear T-shirts that say
JUSTICE FOR CLAYTON: REPEAL THE SECOND AMENDMENT
. Stand in grim silence holding signs and candles. They seem like they have done this before, like they were ready for this; they seem to know Jenny. With them come more media.

The concern, Jenny says, is that the story of another black boy killed by a gun in New York City will be turned into a race story, not a gun story, or else buried entirely and they will not have leverage with the authorities for getting information and making sure the
investigation is a priority. —You have to push these people. You have to push them very hard. Embarrass them. Shame them. Cost them money. Make them fear for their jobs.

The Justice for Clayton people chant and march. Cops show up in military gear with heavy artillery vehicles, make some arrests. Jenny captures it on her phone, puts it up. There is a hash. It is a trend. (
Hashtag, Dad
, Clayton would correct him, laughing.
Trending.)
His wife brings Jenny a photo of Clayton in the park. She took it when they picked him up after his last day of freshman year of high school, to take him out to celebrate. They went to the steak house he likes. Growing Clayton ate a steak as big as he was, then he reached over and finished his mom's.

I'm gonna be bigger than LeBron,
he said, his mouth full.

His wife said,
Oh yeah? You take care of us when you're rich basketball star?

Hell yeah,
said Clayton.
I'll buy you a dope house with acres and acres of land.

Your father is a city man, he doesn't want a farm.

He said,
What would I do out there? Who would I talk to?

I don't know,
Clayton said.
Your cows.

I don't want to talk to cows. I want to talk to people.

Why? People can be annoying. Cows just stand there and moo. They gotta listen to you. They don't interrupt or talk back or disagree with you or nothing
.

Disagreeing is okay,
he told Clayton.
Annoying is okay. You must understand. Pain? Inconvenience? Unpleasant? All that is okay. All that is good. Because it is human. With human? You can never know. Animal? You always know. Human? Never ever ever.

I don't even know what you talking about right now, Dad. How much you have to drink?

You don't understand.

Let me try that whiskey and maybe I will.

Sure. Are you twenty-one?

Yeah.

Show me ID. Show me your fake ID.

Clayton smiled and said nothing, ate more of his mom's steak.

Do you understand what I mean? When I say annoying okay and disagree okay?

I think so.

Tell me what I mean.

You mean life ain't about just avoiding pain and surviving. Sometimes good things can come from bad things.

What else?

I don't know. I guess that there ain't nothing to be afraid of really. Life, people—there ain't nothing to be afraid of. Don't try to control it. Because you can't. You just gotta embrace it.

He laughed and said to Clayton,
Nothing to worry about with you.
Put his hand on the boy's shoulder and pulled him toward him, kissed his head.

Jenny's group puts the photo on their signs and T-shirts. Clayton in the park, proud of his good grades and scholarship, handsome, tall. Jenny says he looks just like his father in it. This is how Clayton should be known to the world, she says. Not the images the media has been using. The media has been using pictures Clayton took goofing around. The pictures show Clayton holding up money he made selling his sneakers and making imaginary gang signs and looking tough. Dangerous, in other words. A rabid animal that should have been better controlled. A thug who had it coming.

Almost told him, at that steak house dinner. Almost told him. Clayton said,
Good things come from bad things, right?
and he almost said,
The
best
things. The
best things
come from the worst things.
Clayton would have said,
What you mean, like what?
And he would have looked at her and put his arm around her, and she would have been looking back, wondering if he was really about to say it, and he would have said,
Like you.
And he would have told him. Clayton would have stood up from the table.
What? You ain't my real father?

He would have grabbed his arm.
Sit down,
he would have said, very sternly. Maybe he would have yelled it. Not meanly—passionately. To illustrate how deeply he loved Clayton.
Sit down.
And pulled Clayton down into his seat. And pointed his finger into Clayton's face.
Now understand me: I am your real father and don't you ever question that again. Understand?

Clayton would have understood.
You right, it's just that it was a shock, you know?

And he would have said,
I know. We were waiting for the right time. And this was it. It seems like it might change everything but it does not. You understand that, right?

And Clayton:
Yeah, I understand.

And he:
And you see the bigger lesson, son? With every reason not to, without even knowing you, we let you in. And it was the best thing we have ever done. The best thing came from the worst thing.

And Clayton:
It's the best lesson I have ever had. I love you both so much for that, for having such guts like that, for waiting until you got to know me to decide about me. For giving me a chance.

And they:
We love you.

And Clayton:
I love you too. I'm glad you said it. I'm glad you told me now and not later.
And he would have gone home with them that night and woken with them in the morning and every morning since, including this one. He would be alive if he had told him then.

He does not understand how or why he once believed that: that the best things come from the worst things. He believes in nothing he once believed in. Being brave, having faith, trusting people—he was wrong. The man who believed that is gone with Clayton. Now what is he? Now what does he believe? He believes nothing. For he is nothing.

Others begin showing up at the city coroner as well, white men in black T-shirts and baggy jeans. Sunglasses, black baseball hats. They smoke cigarettes, strut around. They have signs that say
WE ARE LEE FISHER
and signs that say
SHALL NOT INFRINGE
and
FROM MY COLD DEAD HANDS
. —Get! A! Job! they chant at the Justice for Clayton people. —Get! A! Job!

His wife says, —What is
their
job?

Jenny says, —To be assholes. She seems happy the men have come. She looks very intently at them, scrutinizing their waistbands.

—What are you looking for? he asks her.

—Guns.

—Get out of our country! the men shout.

Police in riot gear form a barricade between the two groups.

—Do you think they shoot? he asks Jenny.

She says, —Yeah, of course they will.

He looks at her. She is crazy.

—Don't worry, she says, —it won't be at you. They want me.

She signals to one of her people, an alert young woman named Becky who is wearing a backpack. Becky takes it off, unzips it, pulls out an American flag—it is very large—she unfolds a collapsible pole from the backpack and attaches the flag to it upside down and raises it, waves it back and forth as though signaling to the sky for rescue.

The men boo her and shout, —Fuck you! Respect my country!

Becky does not back down. Cops push one large gun man back and take him to the ground and cuff him. More sirens are arriving in the distance. He watches these men chant
USA.
The man he used to be would have ventured to understand these men. Find the goodness in their hearts. But now he just hates them. He would like to make them have to grow up in his home country, he would like to see them intimidated and threatened by the monsters who intimidated and threatened him. Would they have resisted, like he did? He would like to put those mercenaries on their doorsteps. Would they have survived it, watching their wives attacked? In the morning after, would they have still wanted to live? Would they have still had faith? Could they have kept living? Would their wives have been as brave as his? Would they have had the courage to flee their homes, would they have made it to the USA they think is theirs because they inherited it? Would they be here if they had not been born here? So who deserves to chant
USA
? Whose country is this?