All American Boys (17 page)

Thank God Coach didn't try to get us all together in a rallying cry, because I sure as hell wasn't up for it, but neither was anyone else, probably. Instead he broke us into two teams of five and put the others on the bench, ready to sub in. I was on the same team as English, and before we began I pulled him aside.

“Look,” I said. “I'm sorry, man. I sounded like an idiot.” He didn't say anything back. “No, seriously. I'm sorry. I don't want to be a dick. I'm just trying to figure this all out. Rashad's your friend. But I get what else you're saying too. So—I'm sorry.”

“Man, you have no idea how many times you've sounded like a dick. You think it was just today? Look,” he said, passing me the ball hard. “Just don't miss when I give you the ball.”

But I did. When we got into the scrimmage, I popped free and missed the first open shot. I got another chance on a fast break, and I could have passed, but I forced a difficult shot because I'd missed the last one. I missed that one too. Coach called me over. “Where's your head?”

“Up my ass,” I blurted.

“What?” He grabbed my arm. “What did you say?”

“My head,” I said. “It's up my ass. I don't know what the hell I'm doing.”

“Maybe a couple suicides will wipe the shit off your face. Do them. Two. Along the sideline. Now. Go.”

I didn't have to look at Guzzo to know he was smiling all smug, watching me out of the corner of his eye while he continued playing. I think English was maybe smiling too.

And for the first time since I could remember, as I sprinted up and down the court, I didn't have my father's voice in my head. I heard my own. I wasn't telling myself to
PUSH
, or to go
FASTER
. Instead I thought about the guy who'd just said all those things to English. The guy who hadn't meant to sound hurtful. The guy who was just trying to walk down the middle and not disturb anybody, basically give some meaning to what I'd seen in the street outside Jerry's. And here's what I realized I was saying beneath it all: I didn't want my life to change from the way it was before I'd seen that.

When I finished the suicides, I had to hold my hand against the wall to catch my breath. English was frigging right. The problem was that my life
didn't
have to change. If I wanted to, I could just keep my head down and focus on the team, like Coach wanted, and that could be that. Isn't that what I wanted?

Then why did it feel so shitty?

I had to squat down and touch the floor, feeling suddenly
nauseous, nauseous at the idea that I could just walk away from everything that was happening to Rashad, everything that was happening to Paul, everything that was happening to everyone at school, everything that was happening to me, too. I could just walk away from it all like a ghost. What kind of a person did that make me, if I did?

Those were Ma's words, and when I got home, I found myself, for the first time in a long time, also admitting that I wished she was home and not working. Of course, that made me feel like a goddamn kid, so I made myself feel like I was worth something by helping Willy with his homework. He was glad for it, but probably not as much as I was that he needed me and I could actually help him figure out his fractions.

Later, though, my mind drifted back to Rashad, and I totally blew dinner. It should have been simple. I'd made mac and cheese with tuna, peas, and hot sauce more times than I could count, but I overcooked the pasta and there was way too much hot sauce. Willy fanned his mouth after the first bite.

“Ahhh,” he said. “Are you trying to kill me?”

I improvised by shredding some extra cheddar cheese into our bowls, and guiltily, I felt glad that he had his headphones on—though Ma would have killed him for that stunt at the dinner table—because my thoughts would not let up.
Now I was thinking about how, if I wanted to, I could walk away and not think about Rashad, in a way that English or Shannon or Tooms or any of the guys at school who were not white could not. Even if they didn't know Rashad, even if, for some reason, they hated Rashad, they couldn't just ignore what happened to him; they couldn't walk away. They were probably afraid, too. Afraid of people like Paul. Afraid of cops in general. Hell, they were probably afraid of people like me. I didn't blame them. I'd be afraid too, even if I was a frigging house like Tooms. But I didn't have to be because my shield was that I was white. It didn't matter that I knew Paul. I could be all the way across the country in California and I'd still be white, cops and everyone else would still see me as just a “regular kid,” an “All-American” boy. “Regular.” “All American.” White. Fuck.

But then, after dinner, as I was helping Willy with the last of his math homework, I realized something worse: It wasn't only that I could walk away—I already
had
walked away. Well, I was sick of it. I was sick of being a dick. Not watching the damn video was walking away too, and I needed to watch it.

I borrowed Willy's headphones, plugged them into my phone, loaded up YouTube, and I watched it right there at the kitchen table. It was the shaky video taken from across the street at Jerry's and I was immediately back at Friday night, watching it happen all over again. There were two other
videos too. I watched Rashad's body twisting on the concrete sidewalk. The video was taken from too far away. I couldn't hear what he was saying, I couldn't hear Paul. I heard the noise of the street just as I'd heard it that night, and I felt a zip line of fear rip right into the pit of my stomach. On Friday I'd been down the street, watching. But there, at the Formica table, I had a front-row seat. Close to Rashad and Paul. I could almost see myself hovering just beyond the frame of the shot. I texted Jill and told her how bizarre it was to see it.

TUESDAY 9:43 p.m. from Jill

FINALLY. NOW EVRYBDYS SEEN IT

We went back and forth a few times, and then I just got fed up.

TUESDAY 9:55 p.m. to Jill

HEY. CAN YOU TALK?

TUESDAY 9:56 p.m. from Jill

WHA?

TUESDAY 9:56 p.m. to Jill

NO. I MEAN IT. ON THE PHONE. TALK?

TUESDAY 9:57 p.m. from Jill

WHATEVER

TUESDAY 9:57 p.m. to Jill

LIKE, I NEED TO TALK.

She buzzed a second later, and I got up, slid the headphones across the table to Willy, and left the kitchen. We said our hellos and all that as I walked into the living room.

“I feel so gross,” I said. “I keep telling myself it isn't my problem. But it is. It is my problem. I just don't know what to do.”

“Yeah, but it isn't only your problem. It's everyone's problem.”

“But I still don't know what to do. Like, tell the police?”

She paused, and I heard her breathe. “Maybe.”

“Jesus.” Telling the police meant telling Paul's friends. Meant Paul's friends telling
him
what I was doing.

“But everyone's seen it, Quinn. It's
all our
problem. But what
is
that problem?” Then it was my turn to be quiet, and I shuffled over to the couch and sat down. “What is it?” Her voice rose. “Excessive violence?”

“I don't know. Unnecessary beating. Uh . . . shit, police brutality?”

“Yeah.”

“And, you know. The way it's all working out. It's more.”

“Like who was sitting where at lunch?”

I looked at the carpet between my feet. “Yeah.”

“And whose lockers they looked in first for spray paint cans?”

“Yeah. Shit, really? That happened?”

“That's what I saw. Three black students, boys, in a row. Then Martinez. They skipped me!”

“Fuck!” I let the air in my cheeks fill and then slowly blow out. “So yeah. Like all that.”

“Like Paul's white and Rashad's black.”

I just sat there staring at the door to the kitchen like a dumbass zombie trying to find some words.

“Paul says he did what he did because he was protecting some white lady in the store,” Jill added.

“What?”

“Yeah. That's what my mom says. But, uh, really?”

“Seriously.”

“You think it would have been the same if the lady wasn't white, or if Rashad wasn't black?”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously, what?”

“Why is it taking me five minutes to say the word racism?”

“Maybe you're racist?”

“Don't joke. This is serious.”

“I'm not.”

“I'm not racist!”

She hesitated, and I sat there, stinking in my own sweat, needing her to say something. Eventually she did.

“Not like KKK racist,” she said. “I don't think most people think they're racist. But every time something like this happens, you could, like you said, say, ‘Not my problem.' You could say, ‘It's a one-time thing.'
Every time
it happened.”

I wanted to say something, but it was like my head just pounded and every word that came to mind just shook and fell back into my throat.

“I think it's all racism,” Jill said for me.

“And if I don't do something,” I finally mustered, “if I just stay silent, it's just like saying it's not my problem.”

“Mr. Fisher spent our whole history class talking about it. If anybody wanted to talk about it more after school, he would. Me and Tiffany talked about it all day, so we went. There were a bunch of us there, and Fisher's helping us figure out what to do.”

“I wish I could have gone. But I had basketball. But I have to do something!”

“Let's see what other people are doing tomorrow.”

We said our good-byes, and I sat there on the couch, staring into the kitchen looking at Willy. His head bent down so
close to the paper he was scribbling his answers on, the red headphones like beacons on either side of his head—it was like he was buried deep within his own little world. I felt like I'd been doing the same damn thing the last couple days—trying to stare so hard at my own two feet so I wouldn't have to look up and see what was really going on. And while I'd been doing that, I'd been walking in the wrong direction.

I didn't want to walk away anymore.

A
s the story of sixteen-year-old West Springfield native Rashad Butler develops, the city seems to be split in terms of which side of the argument they fall on in this case. Was it about race? The abuse of power? Or was it just another case of a teenage criminal, caught red-handed? For those who are just joining us, we've been covering this story for a few days now. Last Friday, Butler was accused of shoplifting, public nuisance, and resisting arrest. The officer involved, Paul Galluzzo, is shown here forcibly removing Butler from Jerry's Corner Mart. Butler seems to be cooperating with the officer, but as you can see, he is taken to the ground. Warning: The rest of the scene is a bit graphic. We were able to catch up with Claudia James, the person who actually shot this footage from her phone.”

“It was just like y'all saw it. That boy was being manhandled, and he kept saying that he didn't do nothing. He kept trying to explain. But the officer was just yelling, ‘Shut up! Shut up!' And then slammed him. Then once he had him on the ground he started, like, punching and kneeing him in the back. He shoved his forearm on the back of the boy's neck. It was crazy.”

“But had he been handcuffed?”

“Once he was on the ground, he was. I mean, how could he have been resisting?”

“But not everyone shares Ms. James's view. Some people feel that whatever it takes to clean up the community, so be it. Like Roger Stuckey.”

“We don't know what happened in that store, so I'm not gonna sit here and just say this kid is innocent. He might not be. I'm a cabdriver, and I work nights, and the truth is, if that kid was trying to hail me down, and it was dark outside, I would keep on going.”

“And why is that? Because of the way he looks?”

“I mean, listen, I've been robbed before. Right around here. And I just . . . I don't ever want to be robbed again. And he looks like the guy who robbed me. He was dressed just like him. These kids are crazy these days, and whatever it's gonna take to make the people who live around here feel safe, I'm all for it.”