Mark Gimenez - The Color of Law

Pajamae was frantic. “Let’s run, Boo!”

Boo took Pajamae firmly by the arms. “No. Act normal. He can’t grab both of us, not here. He’s just trying to scare us.”

“Honey, it’s working!”

Boo started patting around her pockets.

“What are you doing?” Pajamae asked.

“I’m pretending I’m looking for something.” She threw up her hands and pointed inside the store. “Now I’m acting like I left something inside. Come on, we’ll go back in and I’ll call A. Scott. He’ll come for us.”

“He better get here fast.”

“He drives a Ferrari.”

They walked back inside and Boo went directly over to the same saleslady. “Ma’am, may I use a phone? It’s an emergency. I need to call my handsome father.”

Scott had always enjoyed the ride home at the end of each day, jumping into a $200,000 automobile, exiting the parking garage, saluting Osvaldo like the president saluting the Air Force One attendants, and pointing the Ferrari north toward Highland Park…Driving leisurely through the Uptown area just north of downtown where the singles commingled, young men and gorgeous girls, their heads swiveling his way as he passed by, envy written all over their faces, wondering what it must be like to be living a perfect life like the handsome man in the Ferrari…And finally entering the Town of Highland Park, where the kids are smart, their parents are successful, and everyone is safe and secure.

But today was different.

He wasn’t enjoying the ride home. Because at the end of the ride, he would have to tell his wife and daughter that he had been fired, that he was no longer a partner at Ford Stevens, that he would no longer be bringing home money each night, that he had lost the family fortune. That Scott Fenney was now a loser.

How could he face his wife as a loser? His daughter? His neighbors in Highland Park? Scott hit the right turn signal and braked to turn onto Beverly Drive…but at the last second he changed his mind and accelerated straight through the intersection and continued north past Highland Park Village. He couldn’t go home. Not yet. A few blocks later he turned left and pulled over in front of the Highland Park High School football stadium, where life as he knew it had begun the first day of fall football practice his freshman year.

Inside a stadium that shamed many college stadiums, this year’s team was practicing on the artificial turf. Scott cut the engine and got out of the Ferrari. He walked over to the fence and watched the boys working out on the field while the cheerleaders went through their routines on the sideline, white boys dreaming of being another Highland Park football legend like Doak Walker or Bobby Layne or Scotty Fenney and white girls dreaming of being another Hollywood starlet from Highland Park like Jayne Mansfield or Angie Harmon, but knowing that if their dreams were not realized they could always fall back on their daddies’ money, fortunes that assured them futures as bright and certain as the blue sky above. And he wondered if he had fooled himself all these years, thinking he belonged here, that his football heroics were enough to make him one of them. Maybe the son of a construction worker is always the son of a construction worker. Maybe a renter is always a renter. Maybe the poor kid on the block is always the poor kid on the block, even if he lives in a mansion. Maybe you are what you’ve always been.

His dream had begun right out there, on that very field, twenty-one years ago when he was fifteen. And that dream had ended today. And he found himself wondering, for the first time since that day so long ago, what he would do with the rest of his life.

He walked back to the Ferrari. Now he would drive home and tell his wife and daughter that he had lost everything, his only consolation being that there was nothing more for Mack McCall and Dan Ford to take, nothing more for Scott Fenney to lose.

When he opened the car door, his cell phone was ringing.

A. Scott said he’d be there in less than a minute. He didn’t lie. They were standing on the sidewalk outside the store again when Boo heard the familiar roar of the Ferrari’s engine. She turned and saw the bright red vehicle veer sharply into the Village and accelerate through the parking lot. She held her arms above her head and waved wildly and jumped up and down. And then she pointed directly at the bald man in the black car. He sat up quickly when he saw her pointing; then he saw the Ferrari coming toward him. He started his car and drove out of his parking place and turned left, but another car was backing out of one of the slanted spots by the sidewalk.

His car was blocked.

The red Ferrari screeched to a stop behind the bald man’s black car. A. Scott jumped out. He didn’t even shut his door. He ran up to the black car with a golf club in his hand.

Why did A. Scott have a golf club in the Ferrari?

Boo’s lawyer-father, wearing one of his starched white shirts and a silk tie flapping over his shoulder, reared back and swung the club at the driver’s window.

WHACK!

The glass cracking sounded like an explosion and froze everyone within earshot. A few old people ducked. Ladies from inside the store rushed outside. Now it was the bald man’s turn to be scared. A. Scott yanked on the man’s door, but it was locked. So he stepped forward and swung the golf club again and again at the windshield of the car and screamed words Boo had never heard him say:

“You’re following my girls, you sonofabitch!”

WHACK!

“McCall sent you, didn’t he!”

WHACK!

“You come around my girls again, I swear to God I’ll fuckin’ kill you!”

WHACK!

The car in front drove off. The bald man gunned the black car and sped away and around the corner. A. Scott stood there in the middle of the Village parking lot, red-faced, breathing hard and sweating, and holding the golf club over his shoulder like an ax. He looked like an action figure. Shoppers were staring, shocked at such a commotion in Highland Park. Boo was grinning: it was great! The same saleslady was standing next to her.

“God, he’s handsome,” she said.

Boo Fenney had never been so proud of her father. She ran to him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and clutched him tightly. Pajamae joined them.

“You girls okay?”

“We are now. Who was that man?”

“Delroy Lund.”

Pajamae said, “Mr. Fenney, you’re the man!”

Boo said, “A. Scott, you said the F-word.”

“Yeah.” His breathing was calming. “I’m sorry.”

The adrenaline rush had receded by the time Scott turned the Ferrari into the driveway at 4000 Beverly Drive and drove into the back motor court. The girls were doubled up in the passenger seat.

Pajamae said, “That’s why Louis walks with me and Mama. No one messes with him, not even in the projects.”

Scott cut the engine, grabbed his cell phone, and hit a number he had recently added to the speed dial. When a familiar voice answered, he said, “Louis, this is Scott Fenney. I need your help.”

He hung up and they climbed out of the car. There was still his wife. He still had to tell Rebecca the bad news. They entered the house through the back door. It was quiet.

“Rebecca?”

Boo said, “Oh, I forgot. She’s gone.”

“Gone? Gone where?”

“On a trip.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know. She just said she had to leave.”

Scott took the stairs two steps at a time and ran down the hall to their bedroom. He found Rebecca’s letter on the bed, a handwritten good-bye. He had lost her home, her cars, and her chair of the Cattle Barons’ Ball. In short, he had ruined her life, she said, so they were through, just as she had promised. And since she could no longer hold her head high in Highland Park, she was leaving with the assistant golf pro at the country club. He was going on the PGA tour. She would be a golfer’s groupie.