She wasn’t coming right out and saying she’d never loved Keisha. She couldn’t betray everything. But at the same time, she was giving both of them an out—a way out of this mess and into a new beginning.
Finally, she looked at Mira. “I started it,” Sara said. “I bullied her into it. I took advantage of my position. I said all the right things because I knew they were the right things. She never intended to leave you. She was confused. She always loved you. The whole time, she loved you.”
This was where Keisha could have denied it. This was where she could’ve told us all about being in love with two people at the same time.
But instead she stayed quiet. Said nothing. Let the story stand. Because she had always loved Mira. And now Sara was saying that Mira was the one for Keisha.
Sara turned to Clive and said, “I need the keys. I need to get my stuff. I’ll get another ride back.”
“I’ll go with you,” he said.
Sara shook her head. “No, I can do it alone. I’ll call you when I’m back and I’ll hand over the keys. I won’t come back here.”
When someone is hurting enough inside, you can see it on the outside—they hunch like a heart attack or grimace like a knife has just gone into their side. With Sara, it was as if her legs had become sticks—each step was its own effort, a teeter rather than a flow. But still she walked on, without looking back.
Keisha watched her go, then turned to Mira and said, “I guess we have to talk.”
“Well, guess again,” Mira said. Then she, too, walked away. Not so far, but far enough for the distance to be known.
“What do I do now?” Keisha asked us all.
No one had an answer.
On stage, Alice Martinez quoted Martin Luther King, Jr.:
“‘Cowardice asks the question: Is it safe? Expediency asks the question: Is it politic? Vanity asks the question: Is it popular? But conscience asks the question: Is it right? And there comes a time when one must take a position that is neither safe, nor politic, nor popular—but one must take it because it is right.’”
It was colder today than it was yesterday. We began to feel it. And we began to feel hungry, and unwashed, and tired.
“I didn’t think this would be easy,” Gus said, “but I didn’t think it would be so uncomfortable.”
Jimmy’s parents called, wishing him a happy birthday and telling him they were “holding down the fort” in Trenton, by the capitol building. They were there with dozens of their friends, and they were rotating their shifts so that some people got to drive home and sleep.
“I’m jealous,” Jimmy admitted once he’d hung up.
I tried to comfort him with a back rub, but it only made him tense to have my cold hands against his back. Tense, until he got used to it.
We were listening to the news, waiting for some change. But it was the same news over and over, just as it was the same speech over and over from the stage.
“It’s cool to be here,” I reminded him.
“No, it’s cold to be here,” he corrected. “Damn Kansas.”
I knew the trap we were about to fall into—Jimmy was becoming testy, which would make me anxious, which would make him even more testy, which would make me even more anxious…until our exasperation would boil over into outright annoyance. I didn’t want that to happen. So I told him I was going to walk around with Elwood for a little bit. He didn’t invite himself along.
All of this time, I’d thought that the true test of our relationship would be if we were torn apart, if somehow I lost him and couldn’t get him back. But now I understood the truer test is actually in staying together, in following hour of us with hour of us with hour of us.
I hoped we would make it.
twenty-five
“Tell me about Passover,” Elwood asked. We were just walking—no real destination in sight. I had one eye out for Sue; I was hoping he’d found his father but was sure that if he hadn’t he’d still be around, searching.
“Passover? That’s not until April.”
“I know,” Elwood said. “But I’ve never celebrated it. I can’t wait to.”
It’s not that I hadn’t given Passover much thought; the whole point of Passover was to give it thought. But I’d never tried to explain it before, especially to an aspiring Jew.
“Well, my whole family gathers for a seder. It’s basically a big family meal, only you have a Haggadah to read from—it’s basically the story of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt, and you retell it every year to remember what happened, like the fact that God parted the Red Sea and we escaped from the pharaoh.”
“I know that part,” Elwood said solemnly.
“Yup. But it’s more than that. On Passover, we remember that no matter where we are in our lives and in the world, we were once slaves and we were once strangers. And because of that—because we were the victims of injustice—we must dedicate ourselves to fighting injustice, to fighting slavery, and to being kind to all strangers, for we ourselves were once strangers in a strange land. You end by saying, ‘Next year in Jerusalem; next year may all be free!’ And that means everyone, Jews and non-Jews. It reminds us that our goal is to make the world an ideal place.”
“And you eat matzoh.”
“Yes, we eat matzoh. Unleavened bread. Because the bread in the desert didn’t have enough time to rise.”
“I love matzoh.”
I looked at Elwood. “When have you had matzoh?”
He blushed. “I snuck some. Is that okay?”
I smiled and told him I was sure it was okay.
I felt bad for Elwood, because I knew that when this was all over, he’d have to go back home and deal with whatever limitations lived there. But I also felt that clearly there was no way to keep the outside world away from him. Soon enough, when he was old enough to leave, he would get to live in that outside world and be whoever he wanted to be. It was no doubt frustrating to wait. But the wait would be worth it. We in the outside world would welcome him.
I wondered how long it would take the governor of Kansas to recount the votes. I wondered if he could really swing the election the other way. I wondered if the country could survive that, or if we’d go back to being brainwashed by products and false wars and individual conflicts.
I was impatient. If it was all going to go wrong, I wanted it to go wrong now. I wanted to know whether staying here would be worth it. Only the outcome would decide that.
“Maybe next year I’ll go to Jerusalem,” Elwood said.
We say: Anything is possible. But what we mean is: I hope that good is possible.
When Elwood and I returned, Jimmy’s spirits seemed to have thawed a little.
“Wanna go on a supply run to the bus?” he asked me. “Sara met up with Clive and returned the keys. We’re going to go and get the rest of the Everything Bars.”
“Whatever you want, Birthday Boy,” I answered.
“I suppose a Holy Ghostwriter encore is out of the question?”
“You mean you want me to put out again?”
“Only if it wouldn’t put U out.”
I swatted at him, and he swatted at me.
“Bickering!” Gus called out.
“It’s not bickering!” we shouted back.
Janna, Mandy, Elwood, and Virgil were going to come along with us.
“We’re leaving Mira and Keisha in the same place at the same time?” I asked Jimmy. “Was there any troop movement while I was gone?”
Jimmy shook his head. “Nope. But do you really think there should be?”
The rest of our group was ahead of us. It was just the two of us talking.
“You don’t?” I asked.
He paused. We were approaching the counterprotesters. They were looking bedraggled—as hungry, cold, and unwashed as we were. Their shouting wasn’t as loud now, but the edge in it was sharper.
We tried to ignore it.
“Don’t you want them to get back together?” I pressed.
Jimmy shr
ugged. “Honestly, I don’t know. I mean, what Keisha did was pretty rotten, no matter what Sara says. How can Mira ever trust her again?”
“But if she’s sorry, doesn’t that matter?”
We weren’t talking about us, but with any couple, whenever you talk about another couple it becomes at least partly a conversation about your own relationship.
“If Keisha’s so sorry, she shouldn’t have been making out with Sara,” Jimmy said. I wasn’t crazy about the judgment in his voice…but then I thought, If it had been Jimmy with Sara, wouldn’t I be saying the same thing?
It was so complicated. I wanted forgiveness from Jimmy, even though it wasn’t for me.
Once we were closer to the bus, Janna ducked back to us.
“Did you see those Decents protesting?” she asked. “They weren’t in good shape.”
“Maybe that means they’ll leave,” Jimmy said. “Or at least we can hope.”
I didn’t disagree with that. It would have been satisfying to outlast them.
We looked ahead to Virgil, Mandy, and Elwood. They seemed to be studying something on the bus. When we caught up with them, we saw what they were looking at—eggs that had been hurled at the bus’s windows and sides.
“Waste of good food,” Virgil said.
“Do you think it was Sara?” Mandy joked.
Janna stuck her finger in one of the egg spots.
“Nope. This is a fresh assault. We could still make an omelet if we hurry.”
We took a look at the other side of the bus, but apparently this side—the one with Gus’s words on it—had been the only object of attack. I felt a little strange—what if the eggsailants were still close by? What if they chose another food group to attack us with?
I think my uneasiness was shared, since we moved with much more efficiency and much less talk than we had the day before. We unloaded the last boxes of Everything Bars and a few extra blankets we’d taken. Then we locked up and started heading back—although not before each of us had used the bus’s restroom. It wasn’t spacious, but it was still a sight cleaner than the toilet cubes that had been set up around Topeka.
“All right,” Virgil said when the last of us was finished. “Let’s beat it.”
As we started back toward downtown, I said to Jimmy, “I bet this isn’t how you pictured your seventeeth birthday.”
“Yeah, I can’t say this is what I thought it would be. I mean, I knew I’d be in Kansas, but I had no idea I’d still be with you.”
He was joking, but somewhere it hurt.
Janna shot me a look. She understood.
Mandy asked Virgil what his weirdest birthday ever was, and he told us a story involving a surprise party, a mental hospital, a Buick, and Flora with a nest of cherries in her hair.
It was good to be laughing, as all of us were. All of us except Janna, who seemed to have something else on her mind.
It was only when we got to the counterprotesters that we found out what it was.
twenty-six
“We need to help them,” Janna said.
I knew exactly who she meant, but even Mandy was a little confused.
“Who?” she asked.
“Them.” Janna pointed to the ragged bunch of screamers that we were approaching, their posters a little worn but still full of poisoned words. “Look at those kids on the side. I wonder if they’ve had anything to eat the past two days. We should offer them some of the Everything Bars. We have plenty, especially with the triplets and Sue gone. We should share. It’s what Jesus would want us to do.”
I was in no position to argue what Jesus would or wouldn’t do.
“Really, Janna,” Jimmy said, “I think that’s too much. We can share with the people around us at the rally. I’m sure they’d be happy to have some Everything Bars.”
“No. Look at them.” Sure enough, there were a bunch of kids at the edge of the counterprotest, looking like they missed home in a big way. A camera crew was nearby, asking an adult to spew some vitriol for the news.
But Janna wouldn’t relent. “Luke, chapter six, verses thirty-five and thirty-six,” she said. “‘Love your opponents, do good to them, and give to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High, because God is kind to the ungrateful and cruel. Be merciful, just as God is merciful.’ That’s what ‘U R 4 Me and I M 4 U’ is all about.”
“‘U R 4 Me and I M 4 U’?” This time Jimmy didn’t hold back his laugh. “How about, ‘They R Not 4 Us, So We Should Give Our Food 2 People Who R’?”
“Why don’t we vote?” Janna asked. “All in favor?”
Janna and Mandy raised their hands. And Virgil. And Elwood. And me.
“Against?”
Jimmy didn’t bother to raise his hand.
“Fine. Be that way.” He looked at me. “Sometimes I don’t understand you at all.”
“C’mon…,” Mandy said.
“No—you go ahead.” Jimmy held up his hands in surrender. “I’m just not going to do it with you. I’m going to walk past them and have them tell me I’m going to hell and that I’m a dirty black fag. You can go eat with them.”
I saw his point. Really, I did. It’s just that I saw Janna’s point more.
“Jimmy,” I said. I wanted him to stay. I desperately wanted him to stay. Partly because that would mean he didn’t think I was wrong.
“Do what you want, Dunc,” he replied, shutting me down. “I’ll be sure to send over my birthday cake for them when they’re done with the Everything Bars.”
Virgil started to say something then, but Jimmy was already leaving. I started to follow, but Virgil told me, “Let him go.”
And I did.
I don’t think they saw us. Not the adults, at least. But the kids knew something was up. There were about ten of them, and none of them was over eight. Janna got to them first. “Here,” she said, handing a little girl an Everything Bar. “It’s the chocolate kind.”
The bar hadn’t even gotten into the girl’s hand when a voice suddenly shouted out, “What do you think you’re doing?”
It happened so quickly.
Virgil trying to explain.
Janna and Mandy handing out the food. Me and Elwood holding the boxes.
Then all this shouting. Adults storming over. Yelling.
The kids taking the bars. Then the adults knocking them out of their hands. Reaching for Janna. Grabbing them out of her hands. Throwing them back at her.
Shouting. Spitting.
Virgil stepping in. Getting shoved.
And the light. Suddenly there was more light than the declining afternoon deserved.
The camera lights. As soon as they were lit, the shouting became screaming, the shoves became harder.
I didn’t know what to do. I clutched at the box.
I told Elwood to run.
Janna and Mandy were screaming now. A different kind of screaming. Not an attack. The opposite.
“Let me go. Let her go!”
I dropped my box. Other people were coming now. Passersby.
We stepped into the crowd as they broke their lines.
Police coming now.
Virgil was being hit. Hit in the chest and hit with the most vile words.
I got to Janna. Mandy. Put my arms around them and pulled them back into me.
Then the police were pushing us. Pushing us away. Trampling over the boxes, the food.
Kids crying. Adults throwing posters in our faces.
Other people—not just police—running in now to push them back.
Fights breaking out.
Fists. Blood.
“Lord!”
Virgil.
I watched as he came stumbling out.
Hurt. Not bleeding.
I thought it might be a heart attack.
“Are you okay? Are you okay?” I kept asking.
He nodded. He didn’t look okay.
“Just shaken,” he said.
&nb
sp; There were people from the other side trying to hold the attackers back. Trying to comfort the children. Yelling at the ones who had gotten to Janna and Mandy.
They’re not all bad, I had to remind myself.
I only half believed it.
The fighting continued until the police had pulled both sides apart. Separated us again.
It was Elwood who brought us back. He hadn’t run far. He returned, his box still intact.
“Well,” he said to Janna, “nobody ever said that Jesus had it easy.”
The cameras kept rolling.
Was Ludlow Rogers watching his screen, and did he see the girl being attacked on her mission of kindness? Had he been watching the crowds all day, knowing they were voting to stay, putting themselves on the line? Or was it simpler than that? Did he pray? Did he have to answer one of his children’s questions about what was going on? Was it something that secretly he’d always known he’d have to do?
What was it about that moment that made him decide?
Whatever the case, some hours later, Ludlow Rogers made a phone call and pressed a button.
twenty-seven
Before I saw him, I heard Jimmy calling my name.
He had seen it. Later, we’d learn that everybody had seen it.
Janna reaching out with food.
And then.
And then.
One of the pug lovers had been watching an open channel. She said, “Something’s happening,” and everyone gathered around. Saw it as it happened. Saw it replayed. And replayed again.
Except for Jimmy. He didn’t wait for the replay. He was already running.
“Duncan! Duncan!”
And then I saw him. There was a look on his face I had never seen before.
That fear.
That fear that comes from love.
When he saw me, it was as if his body released angels. He was so relieved. So afraid—because the fear doesn’t wear off in an instant—and so relieved.
I have never been happier to see anybody.