Chapter 9: 11 Days Earlier

Tammy:

She wasn’t betraying anyone’s trust, Tammy told herself for the sixth time that morning. It was colder now. The gray skies that had, just yesterday, dared her to imagine the silver of spring were now black and ponderous. She pulled her coat across her chest and pressed through the wind towards the Church of Holy Gethsemane. 

Something wasn’t sitting well with Tammy. She’d been up half the night worrying about it. Lying first one way on the bed and then the other. It wasn’t what Hope had said about keeping the baby. Tammy got that - boy did she get that: it was the one thing she knew she couldn’t do – had been told by Hope she couldn’t do! She didn’t like to think what choices she’d make in Hope’s place; if she would have the same strength to see things through. But she was 14. And she had no uterus. And decisions like that seemed a long way off.

This wasn’t a betrayal, she reminded herself, watching the congregation trickle into church for Sunday worship. Each one of them was dressed in their best, covered from head to foot in concealing blacks and blues and grays; hiding their shapes and their sins before they came to wash themselves proverbially clean. There was one shape in particular she was looking for, one worshipper worse than all the others. 

There was no reason for anyone to feel betrayed, Tammy repeated to herself. After all, Hope hadn’t expressly forbidden her from talking to JC McMillan.

“Come to repent your sins?” JC asked, sternly as Tammy drew up on him to the side of the church. 

He was sucking on the last drags of a cigarette. Captain of the swim team. Didn’t even try to hide it. 

“Maybe you should repent yours,” Tammy shot back. “Oh wait — I forgot. You think getting on your knees is just for people like me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” JC protested, a little too loudly — a little too eagerly. 

“Uh-huh,” Tammy replied. “You know. And I know. And you carry on like that and in a quick minute about everybody in the congregation’s gonna know.”

JC grabbed her elbow, yanking her toward the rain spout. She wriggled, but his grip was cast iron. She’d forgotten how strong he was.

“What do you think you’re doing?” JC asked, fighting to regain his calm. “You think anyone in there is gonna believe your sordid little fantasies?”

“You know what you did!” Tammy challenged, finally wresting herself free from his grip. 

“Oh yeah,” JC hit back. “You got any proof? Of what we ‘allegedly’ did? Of what you did? On your knees? Again and again?”

Tammy’s stomach churned. Confronting JC in her head had been easy — safe. But now, up close, he was large, confident, and reeking of coffee and control. Whereas she was grown small with shame. JC knew how to build people up. But he knew how to knock them down as well. Tammy decided to channel her fear into something useful. 

“You’re just gonna keep ducking your responsibility aren’t you?!” Tammy pivoted, letting her anger rise. 

“Responsibility?!” JC exclaimed. Then, when he could see his outburst was drawing looks from the other church-goers, slid into a more oily tone. “Responsibility? To what? To you? You know what you were to me, like, the five or six times we made it?” JC spat. 

“I can pretty much guess,” Tammy replied. 

“You were a whore,” JC expostulated. “And I’m not going to waste any of my respect on a whore!”

“Jesus’ best friend was a whore,” Tammy pointed out. She’d actually read the Bible. Unlike JC, she suspected. 

“And anyway,” she went on. “This isn’t about me. And for once this isn’t about you, either.”

“So who’s it about?” JC asked, stepping back and running his hand through his hair. 

“Do you know that removing a condom during sex without telling someone is a crime?” Tammy pressed. “It’s pretty much treated like rape. Which means you’ll be going away for a long time.”

JC looked confused. At first, Tammy thought it might be because he’d never thought that something like that could possibly be considered a crime. 

But then he said, “Wha—? Which time?”

“Excuse me?!” Tammy came back. 

Of course he’d done it more than once. This was JC McMillan. 

“I’m talking about Hope Davidson,” she informed him. “At the Christmas party?”

A wave of relaxation spread across JC’s face and he began to smile again. 

“There’s no proof of any of that,” he said. “It’s just her word against mine.”

“Oh but there is proof,” Tammy informed him. “You left your DNA behind.”

“My DNA?” JC derided. “Listen to you. Junior CSI. We had sex, Tammy. Yeah my DNA was on her. And hers was on me. And besides, that was over six weeks ago. Ain’t no rape kit in the world finding evidence of a crime, six weeks after consent.”

Of course he knew about rape kits. Probably knew about other things to do with that word too. 

“I’d be worried about the next six months,” Tammy replied, saving the best of her attack on him for last. “The next seven and a half months, to be precise…”

More confusion. Then a clearing. The slow injection of tension back into his jaw. She could see him figuring it out, watch it dawn on him what this had all been and what it all meant. 

“Hope is pregnant?” he asked, quietly. 

“That’s right, you motherfucker,” Tammy proclaimed. “And when that baby comes swimming out of her with your nose on its face, the whole goddam world is going to know what a lying piece of shit JC McMillan is!”

Hope:

Why did she have to be late? Why did she have to come at all? As if it wasn’t bad enough that everyone already thought she was a slut — now she had to sit in a crowded church and face His judgment too.

Nobody knew for sure what had happened between JC and Hope, but everyone had heard the rumors. Students. Their parents. Her parents. When he’d heard, her dad had wanted to march right down to JC McMillan’s house and have it out right then with JC’s dad. Or JC himself. It took Hope’s mom reminding him gently that JC’s father was a cop to soothe him enough to roll it back. That and another beer. Or two.

But nobody knew about Hope’s attempt on her own life. Nobody but Tammy. And God. Now she had to step into His house, sit beneath His judgment — while the other parents cast their own from behind silent pews and empty Bibles

And now, on top of everything, she was late. Which meant she had to take the only seats left — right at the front. Closest to God. Closest to His all-seeing eye. No wonder they were vacant. All the other church-goers sat further back, their black and Sunday best uniforms painting them indistinct. 

When the minister began, Hope flinched under the crackle of the loudspeaker. She could feel the eyes upon her, behind her, whispering in silent rumor a gossip of innuendo. 

“When Jesus arrived at the Garden of Gethsemane,” the minister began, “he didn’t know if he’d have the strength to see it through. The betrayal that was coming. The kiss from Judas—-”

Hope let him drone on, certain every word was for her, every intonation weighing her sin. She wanted to run. She wanted to bolt out of the back door like some boot-kicked cur, reeling from its master’s rejection. She wanted to—-

Was that JC McMillan? In the front row? On the other side of the church from her? Why did he look so pale? So pasty and sweat-soaked? Maybe he’d been late too. Maybe he was rushing back from some late-night tryst with another unsuspecting junior. Another notch on the whittled-down stick that was JC’s bedpost. 

But no. This was different. This wasn’t the sweat of someone running for a bus — this was something else. His eyes. They were stymied in distance. Their usual mischievous glimmer frozen like in amber. His gaze was fixed on the cross suspended from the church ceiling. A modern metallic monstrosity that some local artist had donated in return for their sins being washed clean; coin in the collection plate; a sin-forgiving transaction. His eyes moved over it, up and down. His hands clenched together, his lips seemed to be moving. Was he praying? 

Hope wondered how long JC had been like that. Fixated in prayer. She tried to force away all feelings of shameful joy. Something wasn’t going his way. Something had him worried. Good. He deserved this pain. He ought to feel at least a fraction of her discomfort. She listened some more to the sermon and tried to remind herself that the house of God was a place of forgiveness. 

“When Jesus faced his accuser,” the minister droned on, “he had a choice. He could turn from him, stir up the crowd and fight against the Roman soldiers. Or he could quietly accept what they were there to do. Let them take him. Trusting in the power of God to deliver him.”

Hope thought about that phrase. All her life, she had trusted in the Almighty’s love and power to protect her. And where had that gotten her? A baby before eighteen. Just another statistic. Sure, they’d help her through. Help her have the baby, in their Christian way. And then — when it was born — they’d deny it free childcare and free school meals and force her way from it to earn enough money to support it. All under the guise of Christian Love. The black-and-Sunday-best crowd loved life almost as much as they loved telling people how to live it. 

She shouldn’t have come. These thoughts were wicked. She tried to find her own absolution in the eyes of her parents, but her mother just looked reverently at the minister, while her father looked anywhere but at his daughter. For a moment, Hope caught herself between the two evils of wishing pain on JC McMillan and thinking ill of the congregation. She wasn’t ready for this. She wasn’t close to ready. 

“I want to go,” she whispered to her mother. 

Her mother stared blankly ahead. 

“I want to go!” she pleaded with her father, more urgently this time. 

“Babygirl, be quiet,” her father hissed back. Then added under his breath, “We’re in the front row. Everyone will see us!”

“I don’t care!” Hope cried, her voice breaking out of the hush of whispers. 

Then it happened — clear as day. A touch, soft as rain, staining her cheek. Her mother, breaking off from the rapture in which she’d held the minister, turned to her daughter and decreed, “We’ll go when the sermon is done!” Then she kissed her on the cheek and called for her surrender. 

Hope sat alone in the crowded Church of Holy Gethsemane, drowning in silent pews and empty Bibles.

Aust:

Aust adjusted his uncomfortable tie and dusted down his favorite Mitt Romney shirt. Sundays weren’t for dressing up—unless you were one of those Bible-thumping zealots from Holy Geth. But today was a special day. They’d even opened up the offices of the Young Republican Party early, so everyone could get there. Get a good seat, or perch on the railings at the back. Sebastian Strong was coming. And hell was coming with him. 

Aust had been to his rallies when he was running for governor. Listened to him talk about protecting men’s rights. The right to bear arms; the right wake up in a world where men were men instead of this sissy, leftist bullshit; the right for every able-bodied man to have a job. He’d applauded the guy that day. Cheered and got others to cheer. That was before the Dems smeared him. 

So they said he had ties with far right groups? So what? Aust knew more than he said about the tattoos of some of them shooters up at the range yesterday. Would they come for him next? Say he had ties to far right groups just because he hung out with guys who had ‘18’ tattooed on their arms? 

And that stuff they’d spread about Seb Strong in his college days. With the badly Photoshopped picture of him kissing that T-girl. Nobody believed that. Still, it’d brought his campaign to a halt. But you can’t keep a good man down. That was what he said. You can’t keep a good man down. There were people wearing it on tee shirts. Goddam trailer trash. The least they could do was dress up for the guy. This was Sebastian Strong. 

Aust hung out at the front. Cheered when Seb came on. Tried to outshout the others, to smile wider, to clap louder (or maybe earlier). The man had such a strong stage presence. All 6’4” of him. Aust wondered if the man’s size meant that the others there hadn’t noticed how he availed himself of the state’s open-carry laws. A desert eagle pistol, if Aust wasn’t mistaken. On a holster. On the belt of his pants. There was a real man. Aust was waiting for the libtard who tried to take a shot at this guy. He didn’t need no secret service goons. He’d put you down cold. Himself. 

Aust clapped at all the right parts of the speech. Fiery and impassioned. Praising the people at Flagstaff Construction for the quick way they’d built those detention centers. And he promised more. Was gonna unlock federal funding. Was gonna make this town the jewel of the state for locking up illegals. Just as soon as he became mayor. 

Aust cheered at that. Everyone had expected some kind of announcement. Dem Clem Williams had been on the back foot ever since he was caught at Tomasantos Farms in the middle of an ICE raid. Everyone knew there was an election in November; everyone expected Sebastian Strong to run, but nobody expected what came next. 

“And I say why wait until November?” Seb Strong cried. “Clem Williams is a lame-duck mayor and we’re gonna force him out of office before the spring!”

More cheering. Aust found himself leading it. Someone threw a hand up in the air. Was that a Roman salute? Aust didn’t quite catch it. 

“But I can’t do it alone,” Seb Strong announced. “I need each and every one of you fighting with me. I need each and every one of going door to door. Calling on your support. Calling out those illegals—”

More cheering. More arms thrown in the air. Aust turned his head slightly so it made them disappear into the corner of his eye. It was just movement there. Indistinguishable from the static of the cheering. White noise. 

“Are you with me?” Seb Strong asked, clenching his fists and flexing his powerful muscles. 

The crowd surged. 

“Are you with me?!” the politician asked again. 

“Hail Truth!” one guy to Aust’s left shouted out. The cry was taken up by the crowd as more people began shouting their fervent support. 

“Hail Truth!”

“Hail Truth!” 

Aust allowed himself to be carried on the wave of it, almost unaware that his own arms were moving in time with the crowd. 

*

Aust caught up with Sebastian Strong after the rally. He was shaking hands and kissing babies in one of the back rooms. 

“That was some speech, Mr Strong,” Aust said, throwing his own hand into the ring to be shaken. 

“That’ll be Mr Mayor soon enough,” Seb Strong replied, gripping Aust’s hand firmly. 

He liked that. A tight grip. A man’s grip. 

“Then we can really make this country great again,” Aust shot back. 

“Why wait til then?” Seb Strong replied, looking Aust squarely in the eyes. “Greatness begins at home. In the workplace. At school even?” He leant in and inspected Aust closely; he still had hold of his hand.

“Yeah, I’m in my senior year,” Aust admitted, suddenly aware that he was grinning bashfully. 

“Oh?” Seb Strong replied. “Where do you go?” 

“I’m at Sherman High,” Aust replied. The politician finally let go of his hand. 

“Great name that place,” Seb Strong confirmed. “Powerful. Like the tank.”

The mayoral hopeful smiled for a few photos taken by some guy in a checked shirt and and MAGA cap, then drew Aust aside. 

“You know, our schools and our universities are a hotbed of liberal double-think,” he informed Aust. 

The guy’s voice was gruff. And deep. It reminded Aust of the heroes in those old cowboy pictures. The kind of voice conditioned by cigarette smoke and whiskey. 

“Well we gotta root ‘em out, sir,” Aust returned.

“Oh we will, we will,” Seb Strong replied. “Say, what’s your name, son?” he added after another moment of sizing him up and down. 

“Austin. Austin Freeman.”

“Good name,” Seb Strong affirmed. “This country was founded on freedom. Freedom from tyranny. Freedom to do what we wanna do. Don’t you agree?”

Aust nodded. He’d never been this close to any politician before. 

“And sometimes that freedom requires action,” Seb Strong informed him. 

“I’m ready to do my part,” Aust confirmed. 

“I’ll bet you are, son,” the older man replied. Then he paused. He was sizing Aust up again. If he didn’t know better, he’d think the guy was into him. Aust didn’t know whether to be flattered or repelled. But no! This was Seb Strong. He didn’t go in for that back door stuff. 

“You ever worked on a political campaign?” the politician asked suddenly and boldly. 

“No, sir,” Aust replied, trying not to jump ahead of his moment. Then he left a little pause of his own before adding, “But I always wanted to.”

Dammit Aust! Why’d you have to be so eager? The guy was working up to something. Stop interrupting him. 

“They got many Mexican students at your school?” Seb Strong asked, switch up. 

“Yeah, probably half, maybe more,” Aust replied. 

“Do you believe in destiny, son?” the politician asked him, jumping just as quickly to a new topic. 

“I believe in a power higher than myself,” Aust replied as noncommittally as he could. 

“See, I believe you were meant to shake my hand today. And I was meant to offer you a job in my campaign staff. And I wanna talk about all those things with you. But before I do: let’s talk about what can be done with these Mexicans in Sherman High School.”

Rue:

Rue was trapped. Not in his room, but in a maze of dead-end websites and bureaucratic bullshit. Homeland Security led him to U.S. Borders and Customs. Useless. Click. ICE — useless. Click. Homeland Security — nothing. No answers. No way to get his papi out. Nobody was on his side. 

He was deep into the third close reading of the ICE Tipline form when the knock at the door came. Were people actually ratting on their neighbors? Of course they were. This was The Land of the Free in 2025. 

His fingers hovered over the keyboard. The cursor blinked, mocking him. His jaw clenched. Then he started typing.

‘I want to report this guy called Austin Freeman. He is a—’

Another knock. Louder. Insistent. He gritted his teeth. His fingers curled into fists on the keyboard.

“Mama?!” Rue cried out. 

But that was right. She’d gone out with Tio Este. Something about ‘court clothes’. Like his papi would be seen dead in a suit. 

The knock demanded for a third time. 

Goddammit! 

Fine. 

He’d go himself. 

Rue wrenched the door open so hard that it nearly came off its hinges. There was a guy there. Hispanic. Early twenties. Holding a stack of flyers.

“Oh, I’m sorry, is your father in?” the guy asked in an American accent. 

“No,” Rue replied, catching his temper just in time. “He’s not.” 

He looked to see if the man in his doorway could speak body language; Rue doubted he could even speak Spanish. 

“Well never mind,” the guy continued. “Maybe you can help.”

He stuck out his hand with one of the flyers in it. Rue took it automatically, without thinking. 

“I’m calling on behalf of the Young Republican Party,” the guy explained, dropping into a badly-rehearsed script. 

Rue looked at him sardonically. 

“I wanted to ask if you’d seen any—-”

The guy stopped. So he did speak body-language. 

“No, no. Go on,” Rue invited, folding his arms across his chest. “If I’d seen any…?”

The man took a step back. 

“Suspicious characters?” Rue offered. “Illegal immigrants? Mexicans?”

“Easy hermano,” the guy petitioned, again in his American accent. “We’re just asking people to stay vigilant.”

On any other day, switching to ‘we’ would have been a smart move on the part of the guy. It took the personal out of the encounter. He wasn’t one guy. He was part of a group. But that was the problem. 

“Lemmie tell you what I see,” Rue began, cornering the guy on his doorstep. “I see another turkey voting for Christmas.”

“Christmas was last month,” the guy replied genuinely confused. 

Rue decided to simplify things for him. 

“I see one Latino telling another Latino to watch out for Latinos. I see someone who is either so stupidly ignorant or so blindly trusting that they don’t see what’s going on around them.”

“What do you—?” 

But Rue cut him off. 

“They’re rounding up Mexicans!” he cried, his voice raising to a shout for the first time. 

“I’m an American,” the guy replied. “My parents were Gutamalan. They came here legally.”

“So what?” Rue asked. “So they’re not gonna come for you? You think they give a shit which country you were born in? Or whether your parents were here legally or illegally. This isn’t about what color flag you hang on your bedroom wall, it’s about what color your skin is!”

Rue was trying the rein himself in, but now that he was in full swing, he wasn’t about to put down the bat. 

“You think when they’re rounding people up and putting them into camps they’re gonna stop to check your fucking passport? They’re gonna go, ‘White guys over here, brown guys over there, now get on the train or we’ll shoot you!’ And this—” Rue grabbed the flyers from the man’s hand and threw them up in the air. “—This bullshit display. This hat you’re wearing — the accent you talk with — the fact that you voted Republican — none of that is going to save you when music stops and you’re the last brown face looking for a chair.”

The man stood there, open-mouthed. There were words fermenting in his throat, Rue could tell, but they hadn’t quite fined up yet. He looked across the street to where window blinds twitched inquisitively. Then down the road to where another, whiter door-knocker was delivering the same stump-speech to one of his whiter neighbors. 

“You’re a racist, man,” the guy managed eventually. “That’s your problem. You’re a fucking racist.”

“Were the same fucking race, you pig-headed moron!” Rue screamed at him. “And I’ve never been so ashamed to say those words in my life. You might not see it, but those guys you’re with — the ones you’re trying so hard to impress with your little dress-up act — they will sell you down the river the first chance they get, cos you’re not really one of them.”

“You’re wrong,” the guy countered. “I may look like you, but I sound like them. Dress like them. Act like them. This isn’t about race — it’s about class, hombre. Something you clearly don’t have. I’ll pray for you when they start rounding up the illegals on this street. I’ll pray that you talk to them the way you just talked to me. You see what happens.”

Rue felt his fist clench by his side. His blood was up and he might have hit the guy already, despite his belief in nonviolence. But something the guy said had stuck with him. 

“When they what?” he asked, as calmly as he dared. 

The guy stared blankly at him. 

“You said when they start rounding people up. Not if. When.”

The guy’s eyes darted around and he took another step back. 

“Look, I don’t want any trouble, man,” the guy conceded. 

“Then I suggest you walk back off my lawn,” Rue growled through gritted teeth. “While you still can.”

The man didn’t wait to be asked a second time. He didn’t even stop to pick up the flyers. He quick-walked back down the path, looking behind him two or three times at Rue, who stood impassively in the doorway to his casa. 

So they were coming then, Rue reasoned. Not a matter of if, now. It was when. The first shots had been fired. And if there was one thing Rue knew for certain, it was that you didn’t bring a knife to a goddamn gunfight.