Scott Pratt - Injustice for all

Katie had thought a lot about God when she was lying in the hospital, after Aunt Mary told her that everyone in her family was dead. She was angry with Him. Katie and her mother and brothers and sister had gone to church every Sunday morning, and every night since she could remember, Katie knelt down next to her bed and prayed before she went to sleep. Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die before I wake,

I pray the Lord my soul to take.

At the end of the prayer, she always asked God to bless Mother and Father, her sister, and her brothers. If there was anyone she knew who was sick or having problems, she’d ask God to bless them, too. She never asked Him to bless her; she thought it would be selfish. She never asked Him for a thing. Maybe she should have asked Him to keep her family safe.

When they finally arrived in Tennessee in the middle of the night, Aunt Mary and Katie carried their things inside. The house was dark except for a lamp near the front door. The hardwood floors creaked under Katie’s feet with every step, and the wind was rattling the shutters outside the windows. The house smelled odd, like a doctor’s office.

A light came on down a short hallway to Katie’s right, and a door opened. A black woman stepped into the hall and walked toward them. The woman stopped and looked down at Katie. She smiled. She had the darkest eyes and the whitest teeth Katie had ever seen, and her face was as shiny and round as a ceramic dinner plate. She was much bigger than Aunt Mary. Her hair was wrapped in a blue bandanna, and she was wearing a faded blue flannel robe.

Katie heard a muffled sound coming from the other side of the door. It sounded almost like a sheep bawling.

“Welcome home, Mary,” the black woman said to Aunt Mary. They embraced.

“It’s good to be here,” Aunt Mary said.

Aunt Mary put her hand on Katie’s shoulder. “This is Katie,” she said. “Katie, this is Lottie, my good friend.”

“Nice to meet you, Miss Katie,” Lottie said in a soft, smooth, Southern way. She knelt down and hugged her. “You’re gonna be real happy here. Real happy.”

Katie heard the sound coming from behind the door again-“ nnggghhaaaaah ”-and looked nervously up at Aunt Mary.

“He knows you’re here,” Lottie said to Aunt Mary. “He’s missed you something terrible.”

“Why don’t you take Katie upstairs and get her settled?” Aunt Mary said. “I’ll look in on him.”

Lottie picked up Katie’s suitcase with one hand, wrapped the other around Katie’s hand, and led her toward the stairs. Katie looked back over her shoulder and saw Aunt Mary disappear into the same room from which Lottie had emerged. She heard the bawling sound again, this time much louder.

“That’s Luke,” Lottie said as they made their way slowly up the stairs. “He’s a special boy. I expect you’ll meet him tomorrow.”

“I gave these damned things up a long time ago,” Ray Miller says as he blows a smoke ring toward the night sky and leans against the rail on the deck. “Now look at me.”

Dinner was awkward. Caroline fixed lasagna and salad, and she and Toni chatted while we all downed a couple of glasses of wine. After dessert, Ray stepped outside to smoke, and I tagged along to keep him company. I don’t know how much he had to drink before he came over, but he seems lethargic and distracted. He hasn’t uttered a complete sentence since he walked in the door.

I, too, lean against the rail, not knowing what to say. I know all about the turmoil surrounding his life, but I don’t know whether he wants to talk about it. I finally decide to breach the line.

“So, how are you holding up?” I try to be nonchalant as I search out the Big Dipper to the north. I hear him take a short breath, as though I’ve startled him.

“You don’t want to know,” Ray says. He’s a substantial man, and his voice is a deep baritone.

“Sure I do, Ray. I’m your friend, remember?”

Ray takes a long drag off the cigarette. The smoke rises slowly around his tired face, framing it eerily for a brief moment before disappearing into the darkness.

“We got a foreclosure notice in the mail this afternoon,” he says. “We’re three months behind on the mortgage.”

“Why didn’t you say something? I’ll loan you some money.”

“I appreciate it, but I don’t borrow money from my friends.”

“You’ll pay it back.”

“You don’t understand, Joe. I’m three months behind now. It’s going to be at least another six months before I can get a hearing in front of the board. If I get my license back, which isn’t guaranteed by any means, it’ll take me another six months to get back on my feet. The mortgage is twenty-five hundred a month. You want to loan me thirty grand that I won’t be able to pay back for a year or two?”

“Sure. Caroline has taken good care of our money. I can handle thirty grand.”

“Thanks, buddy,” he says, “but I can’t accept. I just can’t. I wish I’d had your foresight. Saved a bunch of money, you know? God knows I’ve made a lot of it in the past fifteen years. But I grew up with nothing, and I’ve always wanted Toni and Tommy to have the best of everything. Nice home, nice cars, nice clothes, good food. And Christmas? I’m a damned fool at Christmastime. Toni calls me Santa.”

“I know,” I say, smiling at the thought. Ray spends thousands on food and gifts for underprivileged families every year. He donates to churches and welfare organizations. “I’ve seen what you do at Christmas.”

“I’m not that far in debt except for the mortgage, but Tommy’s college expenses ate up almost all of our savings.”

Duke University’s baseball program gave Tommy a scholarship that paid for half of his tuition and his books. But Ray pays the rest: the other half of the tuition, Tommy’s food and clothing, his car and insurance and gasoline, the rent for his apartment, his walking-around money. Ray has told me that it costs him nearly forty thousand dollars a year to keep Tommy in school at Duke.

“If it weren’t for Toni’s job, we’d starve,” Ray says.

I shake my head and sigh. “Amazing, isn’t it? The power that one man can have over another just because he wears an ugly black dress.”

“I can’t tell you how many times I’ve dreamed about killing him. I’d like to kill him slowly.”

His tone is ominous. I decide to change the subject.

“Isn’t there anything else you can do for a while? For money?”

“Like what? I’ve been on the front page of the newspaper four times already. Green’s got everybody thinking I’m some kind of criminal, a whack job lurking in the shadows, just waiting for my opportunity to take down the entire system. Nobody around here is going to hire me. Besides, the only thing I know how to do is practice law.”

“I heard about Tommy having to leave Duke.” I look over at Ray. “I’m sorry, Ray, truly sorry.”

Ray’s shoulders slump forward and his head drops. I can hear him breathing slowly in the stillness.

“That’s the worst part of all this,” he says. “The effect it’s having on my wife and son. Tommy acts like it’s no problem. He hasn’t complained, hasn’t said a word about it other than to tell me he knows I didn’t do anything wrong.”

“And Toni? Everything good with her?”

“I think it’s beginning to wear on her. I’m not exactly a joy to live with these days, and she loves the house. Losing the house will tear her up. And the thought of her being torn up tears me up.”

I look at him and see a tear glistening on his cheek. He wipes it away with the back of his hand.

“Jesus,” he says. “I’m acting like a child.”