The Shooting (36 page)

After days of not seeing her, Jenny shows up at their door. He tells her, —Please leave us alone. She says she has something for them, a contact at the coroner's office, a positive result from the pressure, from the RSA ad that has begun airing.

He and his wife read the autopsy report alone, on Clayton's bed. The first shot struck Clayton in the shoulder. He was standing facing Fisher right inside Fisher's door. The bullet broke his left shoulder and severed the muscle, tendons, and nerves there but missed the major veins and arteries. The force of the bullet knocked him back against the door. It would have woken him up as well, his father thinks, reading the report. He must have been so scared. He must have screamed from fear and pain. So he was screaming when Fisher fired the next shot, which missed, the bullet hitting the door beside Clayton's head, and he was still screaming as Fisher fired a third time, striking Clayton this time in the groin. The fourth bullet was to his stomach, opening it up. The force of the bullet's entry also ruptured his liver and intestine and bowel. His abdomen would have instantly filled with blood and waste, including his mother's
fit-fit
and
fatira
he had eaten for breakfast earlier that day. This entry wound would have been intensely painful and extremely traumatic, and he would have died slowly over the course of an hour if not for the next gunshot wound. This entered him through the back,
just beside the left shoulder blade, suggesting he had curled up on the floor into a fetal position to protect himself. It continued past his fourth vertebra and shattered his left clavicle, which in turn severed his left subclavian artery and, mercifully, finally killed him. It is reasonable to conclude, according to the autopsy report, that when Fisher fired the sixth and final bullet, which struck Clayton at the back of his neck and severed his brain stem, he was no longer screaming and no longer feeling pain.

—I could not have saved him, his father says. —There was nothing I could have done. He was gone. He is gone. He is never coming back.

They come out from Clayton's room. Jenny is still there. She says, —See? Now do you believe in me? Now can we be friends again? Because now that I've done something for you, I hope you will do something for me. The grand jury is expected to announce their decision any day. And any day the New York State Assembly is going to vote on the ammo tax. You are at the center of this very,
very
important time. Your responsibility to your culture is you must do
60 Minutes
and you must do it
now.

—It is exploitation.

—Would you rather nothing at all changes in this country after what happened to Clayton?

—No, he says, —of course not.

—Because that's what's going to happen if you do not do this. I wish there was another way. I really do. I've done so much to help you. I really think it's time for you to pay me back a little and help yourself a bit.

It is remarkable how quickly
60 Minutes
can be there at the hotel suite once Jenny makes the call. A crew of four arrive in the suite, including the reporter who will be conducting the interview, a white woman named Lesley Stahl who is kind and pleasant but carries herself with the insincere remove of some of the residents of his building. He looks into the sly, fleshy angles of her face caked with makeup as she wets her throat with Fiji water and peers over her reading glasses at notes while the camera operator sets up klieg lights and white umbrellas to reflect the light, and he cannot shake
the vision of Lesley Stahl reaching into a snack bowl set there for her on the side table and taking a pinch of the human flesh it is filled with and idly munching it while she prepares.

Jenny is knelt down between him and his wife as they sit on the sofa and wait. —Remember, she is saying very intensely, —we need rage. We need tears. We need
j'accuse!
Understand? Sweetie, she says, touching his wife's knee, —you are the mother who has lost your baby, your world ripped away by white male gun culture. We need you to bleed, baby, bleed! Bleed for Momma! You'll do the talking, right? The mother is more compelling than the father. But, Dad, you'll look quietly grieved, yeah? Remember, you came all this way to America to have its so-called
freedom
destroy your son. And remember, most of all: the ammo tax. Always bring it back to the ammo tax! Stress the science, the data. Here are the numbers, this sheet of paper. A little cheat sheet. Keep it down out of the camera's view. Refer to it. Ammo tax, ammo tax, ammo tax, right? Don't do the usual shit, the
one day at a time, tragedy, blah, blah, blah,
right? And whatever you do, don't fucking
forgive him.

He is wearing a suit. He has a suit but this is not his suit. This suit is one somebody from RSA brought him. It is in his size. How did they know his size? They seemed to have it at the ready. He prefers his own suit. Jenny does not like his own suit. She saw it at the memorial service. It is not the newest suit and it is too small, he bought it fifteen years ago when he first arrived here. He needed a suit to wear to job interviews and government offices. The suit was all he could afford but it is a very good suit, it says Ralph Lauren inside it, but if it is in fact Ralph Lauren or if someone just sewed the label in something from Kmart, he does not know. But he paid zero dollars and zero cents for it. And it is good also because of how he bought it. It was a dry cleaner selling clothes out of his van parked on a curb in the Bowery. Things customers had never picked up. He took the suit off the rack, first one he tried, and it fit perfectly. He admired himself in the reflection of the storefront window there.
You're an American,
he told himself.

The dry cleaner selling it, some kind of Hispanic, was leaning against the van, watching.
Looks good on you, bro.

How much?

For you? Hundred bucks.

The handyman laughed, started taking off the jacket. He did not have a hundred anything.

The man said,
Well, now
,
hold on, I might be able to do eighty.

The handyman was supposed to be buying groceries. He pulled the money he was supposed to use from his pocket. Twenty dollars. It was all the money they had. Showed it to the man. The man stuck his tongue between his lips and made a fart noise. The handyman saw something on the tongue. Stepped toward him, scowling intently at the man's mouth. The man was scared. Backed away.

What are you doing, bro?

Show,
the handyman said. The man tried to climb inside his van, but the handyman took him by the shoulder and spun him back around, pinned him to the vehicle.
Show me,
he said, prying at the man's mouth.

Leave me alone! Help!

The handyman ignored all the people stopping to look and pried the man's jaws apart, reached inside for his tongue. The man bit him but he did not care. He pinched the tongue between his thumb and finger and pulled it out so he could see it. The man was shrieking. People were hurrying by, pretending not to see.

The handyman studied the tongue and said,
How long?
He let go of the man's tongue, the man turned and spat, cowering against his van.
How long?
he said again.

Shit, I don't know, bro, it's just a normal average-sized tongue!

Not how long tongue, how long tongue look like this?

How long it look like what?

You disease. You die. You hospital.

Fuck up outta here, bro,
the man said.
Gimme my goddamn suit and fuck up outta here!

The handyman ignored him, stepped out into the street where by chance an FDNY ambulance was passing. Stopped it. Made the paramedics look at the man's tongue and they understood at once. They hurried the man into the ambulance, despite his protests, and tore off with sirens ablaze. Stayed with the dry cleaner's van and
merchandise, selling clothes for whatever amount was written on the price tags.

Late into the night, a young man who looked like the dry cleaner showed up.
Bro
, he said,
you saved my dad's life.
Gave the young man all the money he had made.
Nah, keep it, bro.
The handyman removed the suit to give it back but the son stopped him.
Keep it. Take it, take anything else you want, man, on us. Dad wants your name too and where you live. He says you and him are friends for life. You ain't never paying for dry cleaning in this town again, bro.

Manuel and his son, Julio, still do the family's dry cleaning free of charge. The two of them were over after Clayton died, that first day. Brought soup every day after from the good soup place. That is his suit. Jenny says it does not fit. Jenny says it makes him look like he just got out of prison. She says to wear this suit instead. This one, this is not his suit. He feels like a different man in this suit. He does not want to be a different man.

It is very hot under the lights. They position the cameras farther away and Lesley Stahl much closer than he expected, Lesley Stahl's knees touch his and his wife's, he can smell coffee on her breath and see red lines in the whites of her eyes. He feels cornered in a broken elevator. He feels buried in light. Rescued and attacked—it feels like both. Off camera stands Jenny, a shadow he can hardly see but he feels her. Lesley Stahl asks: —What kind of boy was Clayton? He realizes the interview has begun, the cameras are recording. —What happened that night? Do you feel race played a part? What did you teach Clayton about guns? What is it about us, why do we shoot each other at such alarming rates compared to other first world nations? What can be done about it?

His wife does the talking. —We are just taking it one day at a time, she says. A current of electricity goes through him from the feet up. He smiles. His woman. He puts his hand over his mouth to cover his smile. Behind the camera he can see Jenny putting her hands to her head in frustration. Then Lesley Stahl asks about the ammo tax vote and the New York State Legislature. His wife, his beautiful goddamn brilliant wife, says gently, —What do we care about tax?

Jenny steps out of the shadows to where they can see her and her furious, bug-eyed face.

His wife ignores her, says, —Tax have nothing to do with us. Tax doesn't stop Clayton death. Law doesn't stop Clayton death. Only thing that stop Clayton death? Faith.
Faith.
If there was faith in Fisher's heart? Clayton alive. If there was trust in Fisher's heart? Clayton alive. If there was bravery in Fisher's heart? Clayton alive.

Lesley Stahl kind of smiles and says, —But we can't pass laws putting faith into people's hearts.

His wife says, —So law cannot help us, so we do not care about law. We care about life. We have faith in life, we trust in people, this is how we live, we live armed with nothing but faith and trust, we think if more people live armed with nothing but faith and trust, and without fear, then this country we give everything to, this country we love, will stop killing its children.

Off camera Jenny is pantomiming tearing her hair out of her head, is cupping her hands around her lips and screaming silently,
What the fuck?

He ignores her and leans forward to say to Lesley Stahl, —Law? Government? Politics?
60 Minutes
? Just part of a myth. A myth put a gun in Fisher hand and a myth put us on TV now—it is all the same myth. The same myth. Myth is no solution because myth is the problem. The only solution is life. A gun takes no courage. Political movement, political protest? It takes no courage. To live open and unarmed, always
—that
takes courage. That is the only treatment for this disease.

His wife squeezes his hand, a secret between them.

—One more thing? he says. —We forgive Mr. Fisher. We forgive hims.

After the interview, Jenny leaves without speaking to them. The mood is very tense. None of the other RSA people will even look at them except for Becky, who says only, —You shouldn't have done that. You set her back. You wasted her time.

They walk home through their city, finished with Jenny and her cause. No more. Now to move forward. They go home, put on Clayton's music, his shoes, lie in his bed, pray, not knowing what
they are praying to but that it is the only thing they can pray to. They beg it for stronger faith in it, whatever it is. Then they hold their breath and wait for what will come.

The interview airs that Sunday night, following the NFL. Their friends gather in the common room on the second floor to watch, but he and she do not care about the interview, they do not watch.

Nor do they hear from Jenny. It is a relief. What peace, being alone, away from her and her followers and her meetings and her
actions.
They go through Clayton's things. —We will be able to give some of this away, he says.

She says, —I did not think it would ever be possible but now it does.

—Not now though.

—Not now, no. But soon.

There is a knock on the door. He answers it. Lucien the doorman. He is very upset. —Are you watching? he says. He comes in, goes to their television, turns it on.

Fox News. A blond woman with tanned flesh and white shiny teeth and money-green eyes shouts at them, —Breaking news just in to our studio at this hour: Department of Homeland Security officials are investigating reports that the parents of Clayton Kabede, that African American teenager shot to death in New York City last week while breaking into his neighbor's house? They have been living in the US
illegally on forged documentation
for over
FIF-TEEN YEARS.

He laughs, makes a dismissive gesture at it with his hand. —It's not true. They lie.

Calls Jenny. —Welcome to the war, honey, she says in the midst of what sounds like a protest. She says to sit tight and she will be right over.

She never comes.

Later that day Howard arrives, alone. Says Jenny is busy. Howard sits in the straight-backed chair given them a few weeks ago by a tenant who was redecorating. Clayton helped bring it downstairs.
Damn
, Clayton had said,
this is a nice-ass chair. Can't imagine what it's like to have so much money you can just give away chairs like this
,
like it's nothing.