Jodi Picoult - Small Great Things

“Bro,” I say, glancing at his fingers. “Nice fashion statement.”

“You should see how good I am at tea parties. Come in! Man, it’s good to see you.”

I walk inside, and the little girl ducks behind Raine’s legs. “Mira,” he says, crouching down, “this is Turk, Daddy’s friend.”

She sticks her thumb into her mouth, like she’s sizing me up.

“She’s not great with strangers,” Raine says. He juggles the baby in his arms. “This bruiser here is Isaac.”

I follow him inside, past toys that are littered like confetti, and into the living room. Raine gets me a cold one, but he doesn’t take a beer for himself. “I’m drinking alone?”

He shrugs. “Sal doesn’t like when I drink in front of the kids. Doesn’t think it sets a great example, and some crap like that.”

“Where is Sally?” I ask.

“At work! She does radiology at the VA. I’m kind of in between jobs, so I’m home with the hobbits.”

“Cool,” I say, taking a long pull from the bottle.

Raine sets Isaac on the floor. He starts stumbling around like a very tiny drunk. Mira runs down the hallway into her bedroom, her feet pounding like a round of artillery. “So what’s up with you, man?” Raine asks. “You good?”

I rest my elbows on my knees. “I could be better. It’s kind of what brought me here.”

“Trouble in paradise?”

I realize that Raine has no idea Brit and I had a baby. That we lost that baby. I start to tell him the whole story-from that nigger nurse to the moment Davis stopped breathing. “I’m calling on all the squads. From the Vermont NADS all the way down to the Maryland State Skinheads. I want a day of vengeance to honor my son.”

When Raine doesn’t respond, I lean forward. “I’m talking vandalism. Good old-fashioned fights. Firebombs. Anything short of a casualty, I figure. It’s up to the individual squads and their leaders. But something visible that gets us noticed. And I know it goes against what we’ve been working toward by blending in, but maybe it’s time for a little reminder of our power, you know? There’s strength in numbers. If we make a statement that’s big enough, they can’t arrest us all. ” I look him in the eye. “We deserve this. Davis deserves this.”

Just then Mira dances down the hallway and drops a crown on her father’s head. He pulls it off, looking soberly at the cheap foil circle. “Baby, can you go draw me a picture? That’s a good girl.” He follows her with his eyes as she goes back to her room. “I’m guessing you didn’t hear,” Raine says to me.

“Hear what?”

“I’m out, man. I’m not with the Movement anymore.”

I stare at him, shocked. Raine was the one who had gotten me into White Power in the first place. Once I had joined NADS, we were brothers for life. It wasn’t like this was a job you could just walk away from. It was a calling.

Suddenly I remember the line of swastika tattoos Raine had up and down his arm. I look at his shoulders, his biceps. The swastikas have been repurposed into a sleeve of vines. You can’t even tell the symbols were there in the first place.

“It happened a couple years ago. Sal and I had gone to a rally that summer, like you and me and the boys used to, and everything was great except there were guys waiting in line to screw a skinchick in her tent. It freaked Sal out, taking our baby to a place where that was happening. So I started going to the rallies by myself, leaving Sal with the baby. Then we got called into preschool because Mira tried to bury some Chinese kid in the sandbox, because she said she was playing kitty and that’s what cats do with their shit. I acted like I was shocked, but as soon as we got out of the building I told Mira what a good girl she was. Then one day I was in the grocery store with Mira. She was, oh, maybe turning three. We were waiting to check out, with a full cart. People were staring at me, you know, because of my tats and all, and I was used to that. Anyway, standing behind us in line, was a black man. And Mira, sweet as could be, said, Daddy, look at the nigger. ” Raine looks up. “I didn’t think nothing of it. But then the woman in front of us in line said to me, Shame on you . And the checkout clerk said, How dare you teach that to an innocent baby? Before I knew it the whole store was yelling and Mira started to cry. So I grabbed her and left the whole cart of food behind and I ran out to our truck. That was the moment I started thinking maybe I wasn’t doing the right thing. I mean, I thought it was my duty to raise my kids to be race warriors-but maybe I wasn’t doing Mira any favors. Maybe all I was doing was setting her up for a life where everyone would hate her.”

I stare at him. “What else are you going to tell me? You volunteer at the local temple? Your best friend’s a gook?”

“Maybe the shit we’ve been saying all these years isn’t legit. It’s the ultimate bait and switch, man. They promised us we’d be part of something bigger than us. That we’d be proud of our heritage and our race. And maybe that’s, like, ten percent of the whole deal. The rest is just hating everyone else for existing. Once I started thinking that, I couldn’t stop. Maybe that’s why I felt like shit all the time, like I wanted to fucking bust someone’s face in constantly, just to remind myself that I could. That’s okay for me. But it’s not how I want my kid to grow up.” He shrugs. “Once word got around that I wanted out, I knew it was a matter of time. One of my own guys jumped me in a parking lot after Sal and I went to a movie. He messed me up bad enough that I had to get stitches. But then, that was that.”

I look at Raine, who used to be my best friend, and it’s like the light shifts and I realize I’m looking at something completely different. A coward. A loser.

“It doesn’t change anything,” Raine says. “We’re still brothers, right?”

“Sure,” I say. “Always.”

“Maybe you and Brit can come up here and go skiing this winter,” he suggests.

“That would be awesome.” I finish my beer and stand up, make an excuse about having to get back before dark. As I drive away, Raine is waving, and so is baby Isaac.

I know I’ll never see them again.

–

TWO DAYS LATER I have met with former squad leaders up and down the Eastern Seaboard. With the exception of Raine, they are all active posters on Lonewolf.org, and they all knew about Davis before I even started to relay the story. They all have histories with Francis-they heard him speak at a rally once; they knew a guy he killed; they were personally tapped by him to lead a crew.

Exhausted and hungry, I park on the street in front of our place. When I see the flicker of the television in the living room-even though it’s nearly 2:00 A.M.-I suck in my breath. I’d been hoping to just slide into the house unnoticed, but now I’m going to have to come up with some fake excuse for Francis about why I’ve been running around behind his back.

To my surprise, though, it’s not Francis who’s got insomnia. Brit is sitting on the couch, wrapped in one of my sweatshirts, which reaches her thighs like a dress. I cross the room, lean down, and drop a kiss on the crown of her head. “Hey, baby,” I say. “Can’t sleep?”

She shakes her head. I glance at the television, where the Wicked Witch of the West is leaning close to Dorothy, making a threat. “Did you ever watch this?”

“Yeah. You want me to tell you how it ends?” I joke.

“No, I mean really watch it. It’s like a whole fairy tale about White Power. The wizard who’s pulling everyone’s strings is a little Jew. The villain is a weird color and works with monkeys.”

I kneel down in front of her, drawing her attention. “I did what I promised. I met with all the guys who used to run squads. But no one wants to take a risk. Your dad did too good a job drumming into them that our new approach is to infiltrate, I guess. They just don’t want to run the risk of going to prison.”