Courageous: A Novel

  The big bass of a .45 reverberated. Derrick heard another shotgun. The enemy scattered like starlings. Terrified, he fired his .22 in the general direction of Crips without aiming. Then he retreated and hid behind TJ’s car.

  TJ fired the shotgun again, and the buckshot hit two Rollin’ Crips, both with their backs turned. One fell; the other kept running but pulled up limp.

  “Move in,” Antoine said.

  While the others moved forward, Derrick stooped down and got in the back door, then slumped low in the seat. After a few minutes of gunfire and shouting, all four doors were yanked open, and the car filled. In the rush everyone assumed Derrick had ducked in the car from the other side. Tires screeched as cars pulled away.

  Antoine still stood by a telephone pole, his 9mm pointed at the house.

  The Rollin’ Crips, thinking the Nation gone, moved outside the house. Two Crips got up just in time to be targeted by Antoine. He shot three times and knocked them both down.

  When the GN got back to their turf, less than two miles away, the set retreated into an abandoned church to tell war stories, which got grander as time went on. Derrick ran to the back of the room and threw up on the floor. Some of the boys laughed at him.

  “You hurled, honor student, but at least you didn’t bail!”

  It was TJ. He slapped Derrick on the shoulder.

  “Let’s drink some forties and get chewed! Time for chillaxin’!”

  After the crowd dispersed, TJ took Derrick aside.

  “Bend the corner here, cuz.” He seemed almost tender. “Bangin’ ain’t no part-time thing. It yo life now, hear me? Homeboys is yo family. We yo daddy and yo brothers. Gangster Nation women yo mama and sisters, and they more than that too. Know what I’m sayin’?”

  Derrick nodded, though for the most part he didn’t.

  Derrick went to TJ’s crib to clean up and spend the night. He’d told his gramma he would spend the night at Robert’s, studying for a math test.

  It was almost three o’clock before TJ stopped talking, nearly four before Derrick fell asleep on a spare mattress. He really did have a math test. This time he’d wing it. That was okay. Being an honor student wasn’t important to him anymore.

  This was Derrick’s family now. Why should he even show up at school? His gramma had it all wrong. Why should he want out of his life here now that he had such a great opportunity to be in?

  Images flashed through Derrick’s mind as he slept, feeding his dreams. Flashes of light, tumultuous sounds, and grotesque body shapes rolled past.

  He trembled uncontrollably, trying in vain to stop. His mind replayed those Crips who’d fallen, one boy in particular who had looked about fourteen. Derrick hoped he wasn’t dead. He knew as Gangster Nation he was supposed to hope he was. But weren’t they just other kids like Derrick? Had Derrick grown up in their neighborhood, wouldn’t he be a Rollin’ Crip too?

  Derrick Freeman felt a lump in his throat. He lay there feeling proud, exhilarated, ashamed, and terrified.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Emily Mitchell, wearing a white dress, ran toward her father. She looked up at him and extended her arms. Adam lifted her up into a warm embrace. She hugged him tightly, then let go and beamed. Adam lowered her to the floor, and she began spinning and dancing.

  Suddenly the little girl disappeared, and Adam found himself looking at Emily, age twenty-two, wearing a wedding dress. Her bridesmaids surrounded her, arranging her dress, her hair, her veil.

  Adam wore a tuxedo. Emily looked up, smiled, and reached out her hand. He stepped forward to take it, but his hand passed through her as if she weren’t there.

  Adam’s eyes popped open. It was the black of night. His T-shirt was drenched in sweat. Tears streamed down his face. He sat up in bed, then swung his feet to the side, trying to silence his sobs.

  “Adam?”

  “We’ll never get to see her graduate. I’ll never get to walk her down the aisle. How am I supposed to let her go?”

  Victoria sat up and rubbed his back.

  “I should have danced with her. Why didn’t I dance with her?”

  He went to the medicine cabinet and took a couple sleeping pills.

  Unable to bear more sadness, his heart turned to anger. For the next hour he lay in the darkness, imagining scenarios in which he confronted his daughter’s killer. Face-to-face, he would invite the drunk to take one swing at him; then he would beat him into the ground and make him pay for what he’d done.

  Of course, how would it help Victoria and Dylan if he went to prison? Adam believed he would never actually hurt the man. But apart from the misery it would bring his family, right now he couldn’t think of a compelling reason not to.

  He felt the sleeping pills trying to take effect, but his eyes resisted, remaining wide open.

  Adam walked alone through Riverside Cemetery. Victoria wouldn’t come. She couldn’t bear to think of Emily in the cold, dark ground.

  A hard wind the night before had strewn new leaves, half-opened blossoms, and small twigs across the lawn. The huge moss-covered oaks, with their long, reaching arms, had governed these grounds for centuries.

  He walked past the hundred or so numbered graves, unidentified. Caskets had been washed out, separated from their tombstones, in the Albany flood of 1994.

  What would it be like to not know where your loved one was buried? Yet was it really any better to think of Emily in the grave that bore her name?

  Adam walked to the graveyard’s edge.

  Some areas were ordered and symmetrical, like a military cemetery. But this particular section seemed to have no rhyme or reason, with tombstones as varied, random, and tilted as life itself.

  Adam noted the loveliness of the graveside flowers. Stooping over a purple chrysanthemum, he saw a droplet of water reflect the last gleam of sunlight, turning it into a miniature rainbow.

  How could death and life exist in such close proximity? Why did such a living, vibrant world languish under the sentence of death? It’s all wrong. This is not the way the world is supposed to be.

  Adam pondered that if the gospel he’d long believed was true, if the Bible wasn’t lying, if Jesus was right, then God had not made the world like this. In the beginning, He had made a perfect world.

  Adam thought about the novels he’d read, the movies he’d watched. Beginnings were often positive, endings triumphant, but in the middle of the greatest stories came death and loss and despair, followed by redemption. Was he living in the middle of the story? If so, he longed for the ending.

  God, You don’t know what it’s like to have Your child die.

  Ten seconds later the truth dawned on him. The center of the faith he professed to believe was that God’s Son had indeed died. And that He had chosen to do so.

  Then if You know how much it hurts, why did You take Emily away?

  Adam walked to Emily’s section of the graveyard. He looked down at a small marker along the way.

  Eleanor Marie Davidson

  Born April 3, 1873, died June 12, 1876

  Like Enoch, taken before his time, our daughter is now in the Redeemer’s hands.

  Jesus said unto her, “I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

  Adam wondered what his own tombstone would say. Victoria would be kind. But what if she were honest? Would she write, “Adam Mitchell, he was a decent cop but not much of a husband”? What if Dylan were forced to write something? “Adam Mitchell, my father who loved his daughter and his job more than he loved me”?

  Finally Adam arrived at Emily’s grave. He had come intending to visit her. But as he stood, he became profoundly aware that Emily wasn’t here. It was a memorial to her, not a resting place for her. If his faith were false, she had ceased to exist. If it were true, she’d gone to live in another place. Either way, she was not here.

  He had never felt it more important to believe that the Christian faith was true. But other than attending chu
rch, something he could do in his sleep and sometimes had, he’d invested little time and energy to cultivate the faith he now tried to draw strength from. He’d always been surrounded by the Christian faith but never immersed in it, never filled with it.

  Perhaps that was why he felt unable to find more comfort in it now.

  Adam often cleaned his gun in the bedroom, away from family. Today, as he ran a cloth over it, he thought about how much better off Victoria and Dylan would be without him. How much better off he would be without him. He could make it look like an accident.

  “He was cleaning his gun, and it went off.”

  Do it now, a voice seemed to say. The pain will be gone.

  He decided to load the gun with a round. Just one.

  In his mind’s eye, he saw himself raise it to his head. He seemed to actually feel the muzzle against his right temple.

  “Adam! What are you doing?”

  Startled, he looked up at Victoria. He hadn’t actually pointed the Glock at himself, but somehow she sensed his thoughts.

  “Just cleaning my gun.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “No.”

  Victoria didn’t leave the room until she watched him put away the gun, packing it high in the closet.

  That voice in his head troubled him. He’d never had such thoughts before. But then, his daughter had never died before.

  He thought about his old partner Jeff with more empathy now.

  Adam wandered into the living room, tried the TV, found nothing, then aimlessly flipped through hunting magazines. Maggie whined and scratched on the door.

  “Could somebody shut that dog up?” he said, louder than intended.

  Victoria called, “I’ve tried.”

  Maggie was inconsolable. She’d hardly eaten anything. Now she whined incessantly. Sometimes she’d let out a mournful howl, as she did that very moment.

  Adam strode heavily to the back door and opened it. “Shut up!”

  Maggie squealed as if in pain.

  Adam saw in her eyes what he felt in his heart: Where is Emily? The poor creature didn’t understand.

  Welcome to the club.

  Adam sat on the back porch steps. Immediately Maggie buried her face in his shoulder.

  “No, get down, Maggie! Get down.”

  She backed away, cringing.

  “Sorry, Maggie. It’s okay.” This time he let her come. She pressed her nose into his ear and licked the side of his face.

  Soon Adam was lost in reflection, Maggie a safe conduit of his thoughts. Finally he got up to go inside.

  He turned and watched Maggie’s eyes as he closed the door. Silence lingered for only a moment before the dog let out a small whimper. Adam looked around; not seeing Victoria, he opened the door. Maggie dashed in before he could change his mind. She ran down the hallway to Emily’s room and turned quickly into it, bumping off the doorjamb like a billiard ball.

  Victoria heard the commotion and strode quickly into the hallway. “Maggie . . . outside!”

  “No, it’s all right,” Adam said. By the time he arrived, Maggie lay on Emily’s bed, her head on the bedspread covering the pillow. Adam sat down by Emily’s bed, as he’d often done since the accident. Maggie settled in close to him. The first time she licked his face, he fought it. Then he tolerated it. Then he enjoyed it.

  Her rhythmic breathing and occasional contented sigh soothed him. She looked at him with soulful eyes. It occurred to Adam that she didn’t just want him to console her. She wanted to console him.

  Victoria came to the door and saw Adam with Maggie’s head resting on top of his, both of them looking more at peace than Victoria could remember in this hellish string of days.

  “It’s okay, Maggie,” Victoria heard Adam say. “It’s okay, little girl.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “Everybody knows this isn’t a date! All we’re doin’ is sittin’ in the school parking lot, listenin’ to music on this fine stereo, eatin’ Taco Bell. I drove to get it; you didn’t even leave the school! All you did is walk to the parking lot. If that’s a date, then I’m LeBron James!”

  Jade laughed. Derrick was in a better mood today, not so preoccupied and stressed out. She pushed away her guilty feelings. What’s wrong with listening to music in broad daylight on a beautiful spring day?

  Derrick stared at her, wanting a response.

  “I just want to be able to tell my parents I’m not dating. I’m glad you’re not mad about that.”

  “I’m not mad. I’m just sayin’, you respect your parents’ right to live their lives, they oughta respect your right to live yours.”

  Jade finished her chicken chalupa and looked at her watch.

  “We got twenty minutes,” Derrick said. “What you wanna do?”

  “We can study for the economics test.”

  “I don’t care about tests.”

  “But you’re the one who beat me on that first econ test! Then you got a C on your last test, and you didn’t even turn in your paper.”

  “That was then. This is now. I’m into some new things now, important things.”

  “What things?”

  “We can talk about that later. Right now, let’s mellow, huh?”

  He asked her questions about Atlanta, why she’d moved, who her friends were there. She vented about having to leave them behind. It didn’t seem fair for her parents to drag her away. Derrick asked about Atlanta gangs, which she knew little about. She wondered why he asked.

  As they talked, Derrick reached over and held her hand. She seemed tentative at first but adjusted. He squeezed and she squeezed back. Nice. He leaned over and kissed her on the cheek.

  “Derrick!” she said, but she could have turned away. And she wasn’t mad.

  “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

  She glanced down. “I guess not.”

  “You guess not? Come on, give this guy a little respect, huh?”

  Jade looked at him. “No, it wasn’t bad.” She opened her door.

  He opened his, and they headed to their classes.

  As they walked, he put his arm around her briefly. When they came to the hallway where they had to part, she waved good-bye. He glanced over his shoulder, and she was still looking at him.

  Now we’re cookin’.

  David spent ninety minutes on his computer on Google Earth, seeing the overhead view, then looking at the drive-by photos of the less-familiar parts of Albany, street by street. He did this most days, determined not to humiliate himself again by failing his partner.

  As the evening went on, David felt increasingly lonely. All lights were off. As his grandfather would have said, it was dark as the inside of a cow. David lay back in his beanbag chair, self-medicating with a bottle of cheap wine. At first he enjoyed the taste, but he finished numb. His baseline unhappiness persisted, as it always did. The wine never kept its promises.

  A vague dread haunted David Thomson. He told himself he had nothing to fear, but when he looked out at the world and in at himself, he knew otherwise. Subconsciously, he realized that facing life would mean facing his failures. So he spent his days at a job that would make up for his failures and his nights perpetuating them.

  Drinking didn’t make him happy; it just helped him momentarily forget his unhappiness. Then, when he was sober, it gave him one more thing to be unhappy about and one more reason to drink again.

  At Valdosta State he’d lived in the dorm—there was always something to do and someone to do it with. Playing college football, he had his teammates, even in the off-season, and lots of girls who hung around the players. But here he didn’t know many people. And he wasn’t the type to get to know them.

  Instead of going to bed, he decided to throw cold water on his face, gargle, and catch a movie at Carmike Cinemas on Nottingham Way. With sixteen theaters and a full parking lot, he figured there must be something interesting. There wasn’t. But that didn’t stop him from watching another forgettable movie. So forgettable th
at when the big, bald guy waddled in ten minutes late and sat in front of him blocking his view, David hadn’t budged.

  Near midnight, David meandered out of the theater toward his beat-up old Chevy Cavalier parked by itself, a hundred feet away, by the dumpster of an adjoining business.

  When he got five feet from his car, he heard a deep voice from behind the dumpster.

  “Hey, little 5-0. Whassup?”

  The voice came out of the darkness, and David reached into the front right pocket of his cargo pants.

  TJ never flinched. This cracker thought he could pull a piece on the Gangster Nation? Before the cop could touch his gun, Antoine grabbed his wrist from behind and pulled the gun out of his pocket.

  “Nice. Looks like we got a 19C. The 5-0 love their Glocks.”

  David couldn’t recall any off-duty ambush in the safe part of town being addressed at the academy.

  The gangbangers wore black bandannas covering their noses and mouths.

  “You think you somethin’, doncha, college boy?”

  While Antoine held him still, TJ was mad doggin’, looking the guy over from head to toe, assaulting him with his eyes.

  “Me and my road dog here, we gonna bust yo grill, Wonder bread!” TJ pushed David. “We gonna open up a can on you; whatchu think about that?” He pushed him again, harder. With the third push, David fell back. His head hit the dumpster with a dull thud. While he was down, TJ kicked him twice in the stomach.

  TJ pulled David to his feet, looked him in the eyes. “Might let you live so you can deliver this message to yo black sellout partner who messed with my 211. You took my homeboys Clyde and Jamar from me, so maybe I take the two of you from the sheriff. Might use yo 19C, huh? Or maybe I just start off warmin’ up my fists and my feet.”

  He let loose with a left jab that jarred David’s teeth. David hit the ground again, dazed and in pain.