Courageous: A Novel

  Emily buried her face in the fur on Maggie’s neck.

  Adam thought this was all too much fuss over a dog. But he did enjoy his little girl’s smile and her contagious giggle.

  Javier Martinez was thirty, short and stocky, strong and boyishly charming. He was working happily at a construction site—double-checking a blueprint—when he was approached by the foreman’s assistant, a friendly giant named Mark Kost. “Hey, Javy,” Mark said, slapping him on the back. “Boss wants to see you.”

  Javier took off his white hard hat and wiped the sweat from his forehead with the sleeve of his old brown T-shirt when he entered the foreman’s office.

  The foreman sat behind a desk in a small trailer lined with wood paneling fresh from 1972.

  “Mr. Simms, you wanted to see me?”

  “Yeah, Martinez, have a seat.”

  Simms, eyes down, shuffled some papers. Finally he stopped, adjusted his glasses, and glanced up. “Look, Javier, the past two weeks you’ve done great work.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But this project is over budget, and I have to let a few guys go.”

  “I don’t understand. Did I do something wrong?”

  “It has nothing to do with your performance. It’s just . . . you were one of the last guys I hired, so you gotta be the first I let go. Sorry. Don’t take it personally.”

  Javier didn’t know how else to take it. “Sir, please. I have a wife and kids. It’s very hard for me to find work.”

  “I really am sorry.” Simms handed him an envelope. “I added a few extra dollars.”

  Javier held the envelope, stunned, then slowly got up. He walked to the door, fighting the desire to plead for his job. He dreaded facing his sweet wife with the discouraging news of her husband’s unemployment . . . again.

  He walked four miles to a small, low-income house. A steel-blue Continental manufactured during the Carter administration sat in the driveway.

  Inside the house, Carmen Martinez attempted to clean while Isabel, five, and Marcos, three, chased each other through the kitchen.

  “I’m going to get you, Marcos!”

  “No, you’re not!”

  “Isabel! Marcos! Dejen de correr! Stop running and clean up your toys! I need to start lunch.”

  She turned to see Javier standing quietly in the doorway. “Javy! What are you doing home? Why aren’t you at work?”

  “They let me go.”

  “What? Why?”

  “I was the last one hired. They went over budget.”

  “Why didn’t you call me? I would have talked to them not to do this. We have two children to feed, and . . .”

  “I tried to tell that to Mr. Simms. It made no difference.”

  “Javy, we owe four hundred dollars in a week. All we have is leftover rice and beans. Marcos needs shoes.”

  “I tried to tell him, Carmen! I tried.” Javy handed her the envelope. “Here’s three hundred dollars. Get what you need for the children. I’m going back out to look for work.”

  Javier moved toward the door. As he walked away, he felt Carmen’s hand on his arm.

  “Javy, wait. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to react that way. Why don’t you take the car? We’ll walk to the store.”

  “I cannot drive while my family walks. I will do the walking. Carmen, God will find me work.”

  Javier paused. “Do you have anything I could take with me to eat?”

  Carmen surveyed the meager options. “A tortilla?”

  Javier smiled weakly, took the tortilla, and walked out. He didn’t have to see Carmen’s tears after he left their home. He’d seen them before.

  Chapter Six

  Adam had watched the late-night comedians, and morning came too early. He groused to himself about having to get up at 6:00 a.m. for the Responder Life breakfast. The chief coffee maker—Victoria—wasn’t up yet. He’d have to survive somehow.

  Whose idea was a 6:30 breakfast?

  Adam showered, stumbled in the dark to dress, then hurried through the living room and out the door without even seeing Steve Bartkowski.

  He entered the rec center ten minutes late. Sure hope the coffee’s good. Grateful it was a legal drug, and in this case a free one, he sipped coffee to pull himself back into the world he’d checked out of only five hours earlier.

  Breakfast was decent, though no threat to Pearly’s, Adam’s favorite restaurant. He focused on the Denver omelets and Danish, while Nathan, sitting across from him, met people right and left.

  After the meal, Chris Williams, Albany’s assistant chief of police, introduced the speaker, Caleb Holt, fire captain at Albany District. Adam had seen Caleb around town and at a couple of crime scenes where there was rescue assistance. Caleb was a local hero for his dramatic rescue of a little girl. He talked about how God saved his soul and saved his marriage and saved him from pornography.

  It sounded to Adam like a little too much saving. He was grateful to be a Christian and be saved from hell. But he’d always been wary of those who tried to make him feel guilty because he wasn’t doing more. He was comfortable with his decent, churchgoing life.

  If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

  After the breakfast wound down, the deputies headed to the sheriff’s office and sat through a routine muster. Before dismissing the troops, Sergeant Murphy said, “Deputy Fuller, I need to talk with you.”

  When Shane and Adam came up together, Murphy said, “Deputy Mitchell, just do some paperwork until we’re done, okay?”

  Sergeant Murphy had called them both deputy. Official titles meant business—or trouble.

  When Adam walked past Sergeant Murphy’s open office door, he saw Diane Koos, the public information officer, inside. Koos was an attractive, quick-witted professional who had been a local news anchor before the sheriff had surprised everyone by offering her the PIO job. She’d surprised everyone by taking it. She was tough, no doubt about it, and meetings with the PIO were rarely good news.

  It was 8:50 a.m. before Shane appeared at the desk where Adam read and signed a few reports.

  “Let’s get out of here,” Shane said through clenched teeth.

  “What happened?”

  “We’ll talk in the car.”

  The moment the doors closed, Shane practically yelled, “Jamar Holloman’s attorney filed a complaint against me.”

  “Brutality? You didn’t do anything but chase and handcuff him, did you? I mean, besides tasing him.”

  “That’s it. But they claim I didn’t warn him before I tased him.”

  “Is that true?”

  “I won’t lie to you, Adam. I did not say the words, ‘I’m about to come around the corner of the shed and point a Taser at you and pull the trigger if you run.’ But I’m there by myself, no partner to tackle the guy when he takes off. And that’s exactly what he would have done. He ran halfway across Albany with us chasing him!”

  “I ran the first leg of that relay, remember?”

  “I’m thinking, obviously the Tasers have cameras in them now; you know what I did, so why are you asking? But Sergeant Murphy gives me a perfect opportunity. He says, ‘The camera comes on just before you tase him. So it’s possible you warned him before it was recording.’ You should have seen the PIO scowl at Sarge.”

  Shane raked his fingers through his already-tussled hair. “So Koos wants to know if I’m aware of how far a Taser will fire. I say, ‘Twenty-one feet.’ She asks how fast can a guy go from a dead stop and reach twenty-one feet, and wasn’t I capable of uttering a warning in that amount of time. Of course she’s got a folder of information from books and procedure manuals. She doesn’t know any of this stuff without researching it.”

  “What happened next?”

  “Stiff as a corpse, but colder, Koos asks me if I’m ‘guilty as charged.’ I say, if you mean, did I shorten the chase by tasing a guy who’d proven he’s a runner and wasn’t going to turn himself in, then ‘yes, I’m guilty as charged.’”

  “
Shouldn’t running from his house, where we came with a warrant, and knocking down a deputy qualify as a clear intent to evade arrest? And shouldn’t the fact that you and I chased him for a mile or more serve as a clear warning that we will do what is necessary to apprehend him?”

  Shane’s neck was splotchy red. Adam had seldom seen him so upset. “Sure wish you’d been there with Sarge and Koos. I could have used you. I had my hand slapped for doing my job! Never mind the risk I took sticking my head up in an attic where two armed felons might have been waiting to blow me away. Never mind the fact that there wouldn’t have been a chase if he hadn’t run and that we confiscated the drugs he was carrying.”

  “Are you getting a reprimand?”

  “Yep. An official written reprimand. Goes in my file. If that file gets thick enough, someday they can dismiss me. That’s great for morale, isn’t it?”

  As they pulled up to a stop sign, Adam said, “You know, Murphy gave you the opportunity. You could have claimed you warned him. It would have been your word against Jamar’s.”

  Shane shrugged. “Well, sometimes the truth hurts; in this case it hurts my record. No good deed goes unpunished, huh?”

  Adam clenched the steering wheel tightly as he drove. “Just because Jamar ran doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been armed. I mean, as you warned him about using nonlethal force, what would have kept him from taking you down with lethal force?”

  “I definitely needed you in that room. The PIO is hopeless. Sergeant Murphy just sits there because Koos answers directly to the sheriff, and I end up being the bad guy. It’s not as fun being a cop as it used to be. It’s not only that the streets are more dangerous. Nowadays, we have to be so worried about what the public thinks. And the criminals and their attorneys. And the PIO. Seems like nobody’s on the side of the guys patrolling the streets.”

  “You’re preachin’ to the choir.”

  “And I wonder if one day me having to think twice before I use reasonable means to subdue someone will give him just enough time to kill me.” He turned to Adam. “Or you.”

  Chapter Seven

  After a long day, Nathan savored the welcome aroma of lasagna and garlic sourdough bread enveloping him as he opened his front door.

  Nathan rounded the corner to the kitchen and saw Kayla, wearing her favorite yellow V-necked tee with black slacks. He grabbed her from behind, one hand on each side of her waist.

  “Nathan Hayes! What’s wrong with you? You’re lucky I didn’t have a meat cleaver.” She turned and embraced him.

  Life hadn’t been easy the last few years, but at least their marriage was doing well. Even though he hadn’t grown up in a house with a great marriage, or any marriage at all, he was determined that he would have one and that his children would experience the benefits.

  Though they’d been in town only three weeks, Kayla made the house more like a home every day. Pictures were already hung on the walls as if they’d been there for years. She was already engaged with church, at the kids’ schools, even volunteering at the Pregnancy Resource Center, where she counseled girls in crisis. Every day was an adventure for five-year-old Jordan, who loved the new house. Baby Jackson seemed unaffected by his carjacking adventure. Every family member seemed content.

  Except one.

  Jade, age fifteen, was the exception. And Nathan didn’t know how to help her make the adjustment.

  About 8 p.m., after dinner, Jade stepped into the hallway in jeans and layered gray and pink tank tops. What registered with Nathan simply as “teen music” pushed its way out of her room to the far reaches of the house. Jade’s iPod had slid to a watery demise in the bathtub, and now the whole family was being subjected to her musical tastes.

  “Turn that down,” Kayla called from the kitchen, where she was clipping Jackson into his high chair.

  Jade returned to her bedroom and lowered the volume approximately one half decibel.

  “I think your mother meant for you to really turn it down,” Nathan said, reaching to the CD player’s dial and lowering it to half volume.

  As he walked out of the room and turned toward the kitchen, Jade gave Nathan her default expression—half-frustrated, half-indignant. For Nathan it was a sad change from how she’d responded to him as a little girl, celebrating his arrival with shouts of “Daddy’s home!” and hugging him long and hard. Nathan had never expected Jade to become so distant. She’d been angry about the move to Albany. She knew her friends in Atlanta had been heading down the wrong roads, but still she resented this “fresh start.”

  Nathan opened the refrigerator and grabbed a cup of yogurt, thinking more about Jade than what he was doing. Sometimes he wondered if he was losing his daughter.

  A minute later, the sounds in the hallway said a fight was brewing. Jade’s voice was shrill: “Mom, tell Jordan to leave me alone! He won’t stay out of my room!”

  Nathan heard Jordan’s high-pitched five-year-old voice. “I’m not bothering her!”

  “Yes, you are!”

  Kayla marched down the hallway, holding a jar of baby food and a spoon. “Jordan, I told you five minutes ago to go brush your teeth and get your pj’s on. Do I need to get Mr. Pow-Pow?”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Then let me see you moving in that direction.”

  Jordan ran across the hallway to the bathroom, stuffed T rex in hand.

  “And, Jade, don’t stay up all night texting that boy. We need to know more about him before you even think about developing feelings for him.”

  “What boy are we talking about?” Nathan asked, stepping down the hallway, eating the last spoonful of yogurt.

  Kayla answered as she opened the baby food jar, “Another saggy pants boy is interested in Jade, but this time he’s seventeen.”

  “Mom! He’s not a sagger. And it’s no big deal!”

  “It is when you’re fifteen.” Turning to Nathan, Kayla took his empty yogurt cup and tucked the jar into his hand. “Hold this; I gotta change Jackson’s diaper.”

  Nathan assumed Kayla’s place outside Jade’s room. “Did you meet him at school?”

  Jade stepped into the hallway and stood across from Nathan. “Yes. He’s nice. His grandmother goes to Mt. Zion.”

  “Good for his grandmother. Does he go to Mt. Zion?”

  “I think so, maybe, when she takes him.”

  Nathan heard the implicit if you really must know.

  I really must, he thought. “It’s not his grandmother who’s texting you, and I don’t expect her to think of taking you out.”

  The phone rang. Nathan absentmindedly stirred his spoon in the baby food.

  “He’s an honor student. He’s the only one in the class who got a higher score than I did on the econ test.”

  “He’s two years older and you’re in the same economics class? Okay, that doesn’t matter. Here’s what matters: Is he a Christian?”

  “I don’t know him that well.”

  “That should come up early. If it hasn’t, it’s not a good sign.”

  “He’s a nice boy.”

  “Does this nice boy have a name?”

  “Derrick Freeman.”

  Jordan ran back into Jade’s room wearing mismatched pajamas.

  “Has Derrick Freeman asked you out?”

  “Uh . . . yes.”

  Nathan sighed and gazed into her eyes. “Jade, baby, we already talked about this. You can’t go on a date with anyone until they come talk to me. And they have no business talking to me until you’re seventeen. Haven’t I been clear about that?”

  “But it’s not a real date. We’re just talking about going to the mall.”

  “If a boy asks you to go anywhere with him, it’s a date. To the library to study? Date. To the park to play Frisbee? Date.”

  Jade folded her arms and pouted. Nathan, without thinking, ate a spoonful from the jar he was holding. Suddenly realizing it wasn’t yogurt, he gagged and spit the baby food in the trash.

  Kayla came up the hall with a di
aper in one hand and a phone in the other.

  “Kayla, what are we feeding him? That stuff is nasty!”

  “That’s broccoli and carrots, and it’s his favorite. Just ’cuz you saved him from a gangbanger doesn’t mean you can steal his food.” She held out the phone. “It’s Adam Mitchell.”

  “You wash your hands?”

  “You’re lucky it’s not my left hand,” Kayla said, pushing the diaper toward his face. He retreated, then took the phone.

  “Sounds like it’s not a good time to talk,” Adam said.

  “No, it’s fine,” Nathan said, disappearing into his bedroom. “You rescued me from the Hayes family circus. Performances nightly.”

  “Just wanted to invite you to join us for a barbecue Saturday at my place. I’m grilling, and Shane and David are coming. Wife and kids are welcome. You in?”

  “I’ll check with Kayla, but I’m 90 percent sure. Sounds like fun.”

  In the hallway, Kayla had picked up where her husband left off in the conversation with Jade. It was a conversation that would probably go on another three years. She didn’t look forward to it.

  Nathan rejoined the discussion just as he heard Jade raise her voice. “It’s not fair!”

  Her mother told her, “Jade, we have your best interests in mind. You’ve got to trust us.”

  “Sweetheart,” Nathan said to his daughter, “don’t let yourself get worked up.”

  Jade tried to be calm with her dad, which he interpreted as an attempt to send the message that her mother was overreacting. “I’m not getting worked up. I just wish you wouldn’t judge people you don’t know.”

  “That’s the point,” Nathan said. “We don’t know him. If I got to know him, maybe I’d judge him to be a fine young Christian man who will guard his purity and yours, a boy who knows he answers to God and to me as your father. If that’s the case, we’re gonna get along great!”