The Battle for Jericho (3 page)

“W
HAT
happened?” Mac asked.

We had not dared go to either of our homes. We ran instead to Confederate Park, which was four blocks over from the high school at the edge of town. In the center of the park stood a red and blue pavilion commemorating the life of Nathan Bedford Forrest, a Confederate army hero who was a member and, many believed, Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.

Originally, the park was named Poplar Grove. Last year, a resident, offended at the notion of honoring a slave-owning secessionist, started a petition to rename the pavilion. The town’s conservatives countered with a petition of their own. In the end, they collected enough signatures to keep Forrest Pavilion and give us Confederate Park as well. They were freedom-loving American citizens, by God, and the Constitution granted them the right to honor their southern heritage. What better display of good old American ideals could there possibly be than a public celebration of racial terrorism and mass treason?

There were only a few people in the park, joggers and dog walkers. Mac and I had the pavilion to ourselves. I was so amped up on adrenaline that I couldn’t stop moving. My legs kept me briskly circling, feet thudding against the wooden planks of the floor.

Mac had removed his hockey mask, and his face showed equal parts rage and fear. “Jerry, what happened back there?” he repeated.

“What do you think happened?” I yelled. I slid the backpack off my shoulders and dropped it on the floor. “That fool grabbed me, tried to choke me to death! I had to fight him off!” I realized my voice was carrying across the park, and the last thing we needed was to draw attention to ourselves, but I couldn’t dial back the volume. “He’s dead, man. He’s dead.” Those gays weren’t supposed to be home. No one was meant to get hurt. That wasn’t part of Mac’s plan.

Mac came forward and tried getting me to sit. I shoved him away. “Get off me!”

“Man, you need to calm down,” he said firmly.

“Shut up! Shut up, and leave me alone!”

He did. He sat on the rail that edged the pavilion and waited. I kept circling until the fight-or-flight chemicals burned out of my system. Sinking onto the wooden steps, I slumped against one of the posts that supported the roof.

“You okay, man?” asked Mac.

“I killed him,” I said quietly.

“He’s not dead, Jerry. He was still breathing. I saw it. He was just… knocked out or something.”

I sighed, momentarily relieved. “Where did he come from? Those fags are never home that time of day.”

“He must’ve been in the living room or something. I walked right down the hall and didn’t see him. Then I heard you yelling.” Mac began to squeeze the hockey mask in his hands.

I looked around for my mask. It must have been lost somewhere in Dylan’s kitchen during the struggle. My fingerprints were all over the cabinets and fridge. (As I’d never been arrested, my prints weren’t on file with any law enforcement agencies, so there was nothing to match against the prints I’d left behind. Unfortunately for me, I didn’t realize that at the time.) Dylan had seen my face. Up close. He had no doubt called the sheriff by now. “Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it, damn it….”

We sat in the pavilion for quite some time, silently trapped in the bubble of anxiety that had cut us off from ordinary life. Finally, Mac stood up and said, “Let’s go.”

I looked at him as if he were a lunatic. “Where?”

“Home.”

“We can’t, Mac.”

“Look. We have to go home eventually. Whatever’s gonna happen is just gonna happen. Might as well get it over with.” He tossed his mask aside and stepped off the pavilion.

I grabbed his arm. “Don’t leave me, man.”

Mac pulled his arm free. “Come on.” He stood there for a few seconds, waiting, but I couldn’t make myself move. He gave me a gentle swat across the back of my head. “Go home, Jerry.” He walked out of the park and disappeared down the street without looking back.

I
T
WAS
well after dark when I finally rounded the corner onto my street. There was no patrol car with lights flashing in front of my house. The sheriff must have come and gone, leaving my parents with the task of bringing me in. My body began to tremble as I made my way down the block. By the time I reached my porch, my hands were shaking so badly I couldn’t get the key into the lock. I gave up and rang the bell.

Beyond the door’s stained glass panel, a figure approached. The porch light went on, and I knew I was being observed through the peephole. The lock clicked, and the door was snatched open.

My dad stood in the doorway. He’s tall and slender, his hair and beard sprinkled with gray. He’s an accounting professor at the State University of Nashville, and he hates the daily two-hour-plus commute so much that he constantly swears he’s going to put a sofa in his office and just sleep there until the weekend. His eyes blazed with anger tonight. “Where the hell have you been?” he demanded. “And what the hell are you ringing the doorbell for? Did you lose your key again?”

I raised my hand slowly, showing him my key. He looked at the key, and then looked at me again, perplexed. “What the hell is wrong with you, boy? Get in here.”

Dad stepped to one side, and I walked in to what I figured was inevitable doom. Mom, alerted by all the loud talking on Dad’s part, came rushing into the living room. She’s a year older than Dad, but she’s petite, and her shoulder-length hair doesn’t have any gray, so she actually looks a lot younger. There was worry in her eyes as she approached, but I could see anger just beneath it.

“Jericho, thank God. We were worried to death,” Mom said, taking me by the shoulders. She looked me over, as if to make sure my body wasn’t missing any parts. “Why didn’t you call? Why didn’t you answer your cell phone?”

My cell? Damn it. I patted down my pockets. Nothing. “Oh. I guess I lost it.”

“You guess you lost it? You
guess
you lost it?” Dad’s voice cracked with incredulity. “What the hell is wrong with you? You know how much that thing cost me?”

I knew exactly. He paid all of nine bucks for my cell when he finally consented to add me to the family plan. But that was hardly the time to point out how cheap he was. I immediately dropped my chin to my chest in a show of regret, hoping that would get me a little mercy.

“Where were you, honey?” Mom asked. “This isn’t like you, staying out so late and not telling us anything. Where were you?”

Okay. Something was seriously wrong here. The world had been off-center since I walked out of school six hours ago, and it now seemed to take a further drastic lurch away from reality. My eyes went blank. I couldn’t think.

Dad rapped on my forehead with his knuckles. He was not gentle about it. “Did… you… hear… your… mother… boy?” he intoned, fingers working as if signing to the deaf.

“London, stop,” Mom said, irritated. She steered me away from him. “Jericho, this is serious. You know the rules. You’re supposed to let us know where you’re going. And you have a curfew. I called Maclin, and he said he hadn’t seen you since you left school. Now I want you to tell me where you were and what you were doing.”

My heart started thumping in my throat. The extra blood didn’t help my brain at all. “Uh….”

“Okay, that’s it.” Dad took me by the ear and strode off down the hall. Bent at the waist, I had to trot in his wake to keep from losing the side of my head. Dad pushed open the door to my room and dragged me inside. He pulled me slowly around, forcing me to sit on the bed before freeing my ear.

“You are grounded, boy, until I say otherwise.” Dad disconnected my Xbox and snatched it up. He unplugged my DVD player and confiscated that. He spotted my MP3 player and nabbed it. Then he looked around for anything else that might entertain me. The place was now pretty barren. He and Mom had taken my computer out two months ago when they discovered I had bypassed the parental locks and made several downloads from the Playboy website. On my desk was a spread of cards where I had started a round of Solitaire. Dad gathered up the cards and stuffed them into his pocket.

“You go to school, you go to church. Other than that, you’re in this room.” Dad waved the DVD player enticingly in my direction. “When you decide to answer your mother and apologize, we’ll talk about taking you off punishment.” He departed with my electronics, slamming the door.

I waited until I figured Dad had moved out of earshot, and then I lunged across the bed for the telephone.

Mac answered his cell on the first ring. “Jerry?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I whispered. “Where are you, man?”

“Where do ya think? I’m home.”

“Me too. Uh. Did the sheriff show up?”

“No. And my folks haven’t gotten any calls, either. They don’t know, man. They don’t know about any of it.”

“How—”

The line clicked, and my dad’s voice broke in. “Jericho, get the hell off the phone! Go to bed!”

“Yes, sir.”

The line clicked again, violently, as Dad hung up.

“I gotta go,” I said.

“Yeah,” Mac replied. “Just be cool. Okay?”

I hung up the receiver and sat there, more puzzled than ever. What in the world was going on?

F
OR
the next three days, Mac and I took the long way to school, avoiding Juniper Street and any mention of our criminal acts there. I watched the local news and checked the newspaper—things I’d never done before—but there was no report of the incident. By Friday afternoon, I had cooked up a plausible lie for my folks to explain my disappearance. They bought my story that I’d been hanging out at a friend’s house, playing video games and losing track of time. Because it had taken me so long to confess, Dad said I’d be grounded for another week. The remorse I expressed was heartfelt. I was wracked with guilt every waking moment, and my dreams were filled with shattered dishes and broken bodies.

Mac and I had dodged the proverbial bullet. As soon as it became clear we weren’t going to be hauled off to the county jail, Mac was back to life as usual. He tried out for the football team and made it. He started pursuing Gina Marie Silva, a girl whose body had morphed over the summer into a figure that made guys want to genuflect and thank God for creating eyesight. He played pickup games of basketball, went to the movies, talked his parents into getting him a gym membership. It was as if he’d had no part in the events at Dylan’s house. I should have followed his example and let things be. But I didn’t.

The Saturday after my punishment ended, I made my way over to Juniper Street. The picketers were still there, marching in their endless circular parade. Dylan’s car, a red Camaro convertible, was parked in his driveway. Aside from a group of kids coasting the sidewalks on skateboards and a woman washing her minivan in her driveway, the street was quiet. It was just the kind of postcard serenity that drew people to the suburbs. My heart started racing, and I got so lightheaded I had to sit on the curb with my head between my knees. It took three minutes of deep breathing to get myself together, after which I got up and went home.

Sunday afternoon, once church and lunch were done, I was back on Juniper. The picketers were gone, apparently taking a break for their own worship-day services. I had decided to own up to what I’d done. I had injured a man, and my soul wouldn’t let me rest until I made amends. Dylan was unconscious by the time Mac made it back to the kitchen and was thus unaware of my friend’s presence. I could confess without implicating Mac. This time, I didn’t allow myself any chance of losing my resolve. I marched headlong down the street and up to Dylan’s door, where I quickly rang the bell.

I waited, rubbing my hands—which were suddenly real clammy—against the sides of my jeans. Movement at the window caught my eye, and I saw Dylan’s face peering at me through the curtain. The face disappeared, the curtain closed, and there went my heart jumping up and down in my throat again. “Oh Jesus…,” I muttered through my teeth. That was a prayer, by the way, not an expletive. The man was going to kill me. He was going to open his door, punch me flat in the face, and kill me for what I’d done to him

I was so convinced of this that when the door opened, I actually flinched, my whole body tightening to accept my fate. Dylan stood in front of me. He wore only a pair of yellow sweatpants, and he had almost two weeks’ worth of beard growth on his face. A wide patch had been shaved in the top of his head and covered with a white bandage the size of my palm. Obviously, he was still convalescing. As I mentioned, I was expecting a punch in the mouth, or at the very least a good, solid cussing out, before he summoned the authorities. Instead he just stared at me, his expression cold but otherwise flat.

Okay. The first move was on me. “Uh….” Brilliant start there. Unfortunately, my brain locked tightly after that, and I got no further.

Dylan sighed wearily. “What do you want?”

Did this guy have amnesia or something? “Uh… it’s me.” I leaned forward, patting at my chest with my hand to jog his memory.

“I remember you, kid,” Dylan said, his voice rising with impatience. “What do you want?”

He wasn’t going to make this easy, not that I deserved it. I forced myself to look him in the eye. “I came to turn myself in.”

Dylan’s eyes widened. For a moment, it seemed he was at a complete loss. Then his face tightened with suspicion. “Enough with the games, okay. Just get outta here. Go, before I call the sheriff.” He stepped back inside and started to close the door.

The dam in my head broke, and all the pent-up emotion came spilling out. “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry! I didn’t want to hurt you, I swear. I’m so sorry, and that’s why I’m here, so you can call the sheriff. Please!”

Dylan froze, the door half-closed. There was still doubt in his face. Before he could make another move, I started bawling, my chest heaving with tremulous, gasping sobs. Surprisingly, Dylan’s face softened with sympathy, which just made me cry harder.

He reached out as if to put his arm around my shoulders but stopped himself before he could touch me. Then he pulled the door open and waved for me to come in.