Knucklehead, page 22
You Must Acquit.
Tuesday, October 3, 1995
Where were you when O.J. got acquitted?
I was at home—not a shocker; I hadn’t had a job in forever. The puppies and I were in the bedroom, watching the verdict on the big TV, lest we miss some detail.
I had watched most every day of the trial, even though the sight of lawyers working that hard triggered flashbacks. I needed to see how that complex equation worked out: Dead white woman + black male defendant + probably did it + money + fame + world’s greatest living defense attorney + incompetent prosecution + perjurious police witnesses = ?. Even if it wasn’t really the trial of the century, it was at least the social experiment of the decade. White girls were pleading guilty to murder and being sentenced to time served. Obviously, equal protection wasn’t possible in America but, surely, all our centuries of struggle amounted to something.
We’ll see, the puppies said.
CNN was bugging the shit out of me. They kept cutting back and forth between that LA courtroom and the student lounge at Howard University. Lanky young black people in sportswear sat in front of a TV three times larger than mine. CNN’s panel of pundits never stopped chattering. At one point, it seemed like they forgot to switch back to the courtroom feed, and we watched the young, gifted, and black chillax for five minutes straight.
“The fuck,” I asked Zoe.
Finally, the verdict. O.J. was standing, swaying like he might pass out. Johnnie was at his side. I couldn’t imagine what it felt like to be either one of them.
Off camera, a lady with a blaccent read the verdict aloud, rapidly and without inflection: “. . . We the jury in the above-entitled action find the defendant Orenthal James Simpson not guilty of the crime of murder . . .”
Now O.J. really looked like he might fall out, but he was smiling.
The camera cut away to the Howard break room again.
“God fucking dammit!” I howled. Zoe barked.
A very tall youngster wearing a loose-fitting tank top and large shorts jumped out of his seat and started pumping his fist in the air as if O.J. just caught a Hail Mary in the middle of the courtroom. Not that I didn’t understand the youngster’s reaction, but he was an idiot. He had a fucking news camera in his face.
“You see that?” Sarah was standing behind me, by the door. Five seconds earlier she had not been there. Even the dogs were startled. “They’re celebrating over there. They’re celebrating.”
“Yeah.” Now two young sisters were holding hands and jumping up and down. “That’s kind of messed up.”
“Kind of?” Sarah took a step back and put her hands on her hips. “Kind of messed up?”
“Yeah. There’s nothing to celebrate here. Maybe the system worked, but this whole thing—”
“What the hell do you mean, ‘the system worked.’” She should’ve looked hot to me with her eyes narrowed like that, but she didn’t. This woman—she is in my house, and she’s no better than the pundits.
“The system,” I repeated. “Presumed innocent. Burden of proof. Shit like that.” I stood and gestured at the TV. “Reasonable doubt. Johnnie caught at least two of those cops in lies. On the stand. That’s doubt.”
Which only seemed to make her hate me more. I was getting tired of trying. “You know, the jury got an instruction that if they didn’t believe something a witness said, they didn’t have to believe anything that witness said. All juries get that instruction. It’s just common sense. If someone lies to your face under oath, that person is a liar, and you don’t have to believe liars. They chose not to believe liars. That’s all.”
The malice shot from her eyes unabated. She doesn’t care about the law. You knew that. She just wants her lynching.
“I’m not saying he didn’t do it,” I went on. “The husband always did it.” I took a step toward her. She did not budge. “But, here, in America, you still have to prove it. In court. That’s a good thing.” I jerked my head toward the TV. “Maybe those kids are celebrating because they just found out that the Constitution actually applies to them. You know, it didn’t always.”
“Are we talking about slavery? Again?” And she laughed. “You are obsessed with slavery. Racism. You all are. That was 200 years ago!” She laughed some more and then, just like that, turned grim again. “It still doesn’t apply to me,” she said, very low. “Your Constitution. Men kill us. Nobody cares.”
“Nobody cares? Are you fucking . . . are you kidding me?” I risked taking my eyes off of her to glance at the television, where George Will and Pat Buchanan were taking turns announcing the end of the universe. “Obviously, this is the exception that proves the rule. My people are celebrating a fluke.”
I took another step. “And, ‘men kill us’—who’s ‘us’? Who is ‘us’ supposed to be?”
One last step and I had closed the distance between us. “O.J. could have cut off a sister’s head on video.” The words oozed out of my mouth and rolled down her mad little face. “And it would have never gone to trial. And you wouldn’t even remember.”
Her expression changed, and she turned away and quickly scanned all around the room, at the floor and the other surfaces nearby. Looking for a weapon? Please. Oh, please. I’ll give you one free hit with whatever you find. Let you get in a good wound. To show the cops. After.
Her face shot back up at me again and she became very still. There was a slight chance that I had said all of that out loud. Just in case, I decided to deescalate. I moved backward, away from her, more, more, then turned slightly away. She stared at me for a long time. Then she stormed out of the bedroom.
When I heard a huge crash somewhere in the house, I wasn’t surprised.
I sat back down on the bed and faced the bedroom door and waited. I surrounded myself with dogs, so that if she came back in waving a gun, she might hesitate. She did love our puppies. But after five minutes she still had not appeared.
Sarah’s silence emboldened me. I crept out of the bedroom. The lights were on in the kitchen, at the end of the hall. I assumed that was where she was. “Hey,” I called. “You ever ask yourself why CNN sent a news crew to Howard in the first place? If I am the only one who sees it that way?” No response, which for some reason emboldened me further. I eased up closer to the entrance. I couldn’t see inside; most of the kitchen was around a corner. “Yeah,” I called out. “International news networks sent camera crews to an all-black university on the biggest news day ever. Trial of the century. And I’m the one who’s obsessed? We are? That’s what that tells you? You didn’t think about that?” I was riling myself up. “You didn’t think?”
I burst around the corner into the kitchen with no idea where she would be waiting for me or what she would be holding.
But she wasn’t in the kitchen.
Fuck. She’s behind me.
I spun around. But she wasn’t behind me. She wasn’t anywhere.
I ran to the living room and peered out the bay windows over our driveway. Her truck was gone. And there was now a sizable dent in Claire’s passenger-side front door.
Ninja.
I searched the whole house anyway, just to make sure she hadn’t moved her truck around the corner and snuck back in and hidden somewhere, waiting for me to go to sleep.
Some time later, the dogs found me lying on the floor in the downstairs hallway and settled on top of me in a pile. And then, one by one, the cats came and lay down on top of the dogs.
It felt good in that pile. I kind of wished that Sarah were there. Also, not.
But Thanks for Calling.
Thursday, October 5, 1995
The telephone is a little bell that rings when I am sitting on the toilet.
Fuck the phone. I never, ever would have invented an alarm in my house that you can activate from your house. People ask if they’ve called at a good time. What are the odds that it’s a good time? I’m just sitting around, waiting for phone calls? Why wouldn’t I be in the middle of something when you randomly decide to bother me?
Mother fuck the phone. I want to go back in time and kill the parents of the guy who invented the phone. I doubt it was Bell. Bell and Edison and those hacks lost more infringement suits than Led Zeppelin. The brilliant, robbed, died-penniless-and-insane brother who really invented the phone? Fuck that dude. I’m glad he died.
Funny thing was that I hadn’t even known that I hated the phone until recently. Some months ago I realized that I have always resented those bullshit fire drills. I had also realized that I don’t like eggs. Because of what they are. Eggs have always grossed me out, yet I’d eaten them anyway. Until recently. I was discovering all kinds of things about myself lately.
I had our answering machine set to eight rings, after which it played the entire introduction to “More Bounce to the Ounce.” Then a beep. No words (other than Mooore boooooounce!). If I had chosen to say anything, it would have been, “Hang up. Hang up without leaving a message.” But eight rings and 60 seconds of Mooore boouuunce said that just as well.
But whoever it was didn’t hang up, and was still talking on the machine when I strolled out of the bathroom.
“Marcus.” It was Rachel. “Marcus. Pick up. Pick up.” She waited. “Marcus.” We hadn’t seen each other since she turned my suicide watch over to Mom and went back to LA. I don’t think we’d even spoken. I’d been kind of busy.
I stood there a moment and stared down at the machine, the way people are positive you are doing even when you are not. I was giving her one more chance to hang up. But instead she said, “Marcus. Pick up. The phone.”
“Rachel! Baby!” As it often did, my dope-ass answering machine message prompted me to go play “More Bounce to the Ounce” on our boom box. “How you doin’?”
“I’m fine. How are you. Really.”
“Whaddya mean?”
“I mean, how are you,” she barked over the music. “I had a bad feeling. About you. Are you OK. What’s wrong.” Her questions lacked the usual question inflection; everything she said sounded like an order. I figured she must be halfway to partner at—wherever she was—and no longer needed to ask things.
It was touching as fuck. Rachel was one of those people in my life I could go for years without seeing or talking to, but when we finally did talk we would click like no time had passed. It was a friendship that did not expire or grow stale no matter how long you neglected it. That’s what I told myself.
I settled into a beanbag chair and told her some of what I’d been up to lately. She did not interrupt. She let me talk a long time.
“Do you need me to go out there.”
“Why?” I laughed. “Dude, I just told you! We’re fine.”
Silence.
“Have you talked to Alejandro lately.”
“Um . . . well . . . lately . . .”
“I am going to call him. I’ll give him your new number. I had to get your new number from your mother.” New number? Oh, yeah.
“It’s great to hear from you . . .” I tried.
More silence, which was worse than the scolding.
“Marcus. You say you’re fine. Fine. I’m calling Alejandro. And I am going to say something to you now. Maybe it isn’t a good time, but it’s always a good time and a bad time to speak the truth. OK.”
“Did you just make that up? About the truth? ’Cause it was awesome.”
“Are you listening, Marcus.”
“Yeah?”
“I do not like to pursue people. I am not in the habit of pursuing people. I live my life in such a way that I don’t have to. I left the firm because being there required chasing after partners and I do not do that. I pursued Judah, but only until he started pursuing me, and then I married him, and that was that. Tracking you down like this is not how I do things. I require a two-way street. A two-way street. Do you hear me.”
I did. “Yes.”
“Listen to me. I share a toilet. With a man. So that I do not have to pursue anyone. That is how serious I am.”
I knew better than to laugh. “I do understand, Rachel. And I’m sorry.”
“Fine.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You said that.”
“I promise I will call you more.”
“Or at all would be fine. Do you still have my number. I did not change it without telling you. I left it with your mother but do you have it.”
“Actually, you’d better give it to me again.”
I started rummaging for a pen. Then the dogs began barking downstairs, and under that I heard an engine outside. “Oh! Sarah’s home!” I said. First I was happy, then I remembered how things had been lately. Then I remembered how jealous she was. I tried to imagine still being on the phone when she walked into the house and telling her, “Hi, baby! My smart sexy friend that has known me longer than you called!” and I just couldn’t see it. So I hung up.
Missed.
Friday, October 6, 1995
We’d argued about something. I don’t remember what. We were fighting almost every day now, and the fights were getting worse. Things would get serious very quickly. Grave, even. So, when some mundane discussion about housework or politics or whatever it was went suddenly sideways and, just like that, murder was in the air, I left. I grabbed my keys and I walked out. No plan. No jacket. I was lucky I was wearing pants.
I drove to the Fillmore District and parked. It was Friday night. I wandered streets full of couples on dates and young men up to no good. When it got chilly I ducked into the Kabuki Theater and caught a new movie called Seven. It helped a lot.
I got home around midnight. Sarah ran into the garage one second after I stepped out of Claire and when I saw her streaking toward me my first thought was that she had a knife. But her hands were empty. She got up on her tippy toes, threw her arms around my neck, and whined into my ear while she sucked it. “Oh, my love! *slurp* I was so worried! I just knew that you were dead somewhere! *lick* I called the police *chomp* but they wouldn’t take a report yet. *slurp* Oh, baby! I’m so sorry. *lick* I’m sorry, baby!”
“I’m sorry too,” I said, horny.
We almost did it in the garage but there was sawdust and metal shavings on the floor, and she was too little for us to do it standing up unless I held her the whole time, which I didn’t feel like doing. So we crashed through the back door of the garage and did it in the hammock in the yard. It wasn’t exhibitionistic so much as lazy, and stairs just aren’t happening when your pants are down around your ankles. Nevertheless, at one point I opened my eyes and pretty much everybody I’d ever seen going into the houses on either side were lined up in their respective yards, staring over fences at us from the dark. Rita’s old inmates were smoking, of course; mostly all I could see of them was the glow of their butts. I tried to tell myself that the two thin shadows at the other fence were somehow not the teenagers who lived there, but when Sarah hauled off and smacked me dead in my face just as I was about to come, I hoped that might scare them straight, as it were. And a minute later I grunted out, “And don’t . . . do . . . drugs!” for good measure. They might have just been grunting noises, though. Then I fell asleep, and for all I know she fucked me again.
* * *
The next day started out normally. We were rearranging the furniture for no reason. Soon, things were tense. We were trying to get a dresser through a narrow doorway we’d been lucky to get the thing through once, and Sarah was insisting that we carry it without first removing the large mirror that was screwed onto the back. Whenever I moved, Sarah wasn’t strong enough to match the action, and the mirror bowed and sagged, promising to mutilate us both.
The phone rang.
“Gah!” I had no intention of answering the thing. But Sarah stopped moving.
From the living room: Click. Mooore bounce. Best song ever? I say, Maybe.
We waited.
“Much more bieeeee-younce!” Roger eventually concluded. Beep.
“Yeah this is Sergeant Eric Tucker, SFPD. I am trying to return your call. I don’t have time to listen to your music. I am trying to follow up on your call of yesterday evening . . .”
“You gonna pick that up?” Sarah asked. I note in hindsight that she didn’t tell me to pick it up. She always liked to give people a choice. Satan does that. I do too.
“Alright,” I said.
The phone was a cordless, and was still sitting on top of the dresser. We set down the furniture and I picked up the phone.
“Yellow!” I sang. I didn’t give a fuck about Sergeant Tucker. If he didn’t like my answering machine message he could come over here and change it. If he had a warrant. If he didn’t have a warrant, Sergeant Tucker would have a problem.
“Yeah, I’m calling about a report we got last night, about a missing person? Are you that person?” He sounded so bored. This must happen a lot.
“Yup, that was me,” I said. Maybe Sergeant Fucker wasn’t so bad. It was nice of him to follow up, even if it was his job. “Thanks for—”
The most shocking scream I have ever heard in my life. I won’t bother trying to spell it.
When you hear a scream, from a man or a woman or a baby, it’s mostly voice. Air moving through vocal cords. That’s almost all of it. It sounds different coming out of different people. But what all screams have in common, all real screams, is an undertone. You know this undertone. Everybody does. It’s primal. A scream is a sound, but underneath the sound is a vibration that says to the brain stem of every living thing, Oh shit! This scream was mostly that. It was, by far, the best scream I have ever heard, before or since. Janet Leigh in Psycho comes in second.
I freaked out from the scream and when I was done freaking out she was still screaming. She was staring at me, mouth open, arms at her sides, and this horrible electrifying horror-movie scream was pouring out. And her face was empty. She ran out of air, took a deep breath, and screamed some more. She never took her eyes off mine.
“Everything good over there?” Sergeant Tucker asked. Now he sounded amused.
I tried to think of a lie but I couldn’t. There was no lie for this. “I don’t know why she’s screaming,” I told him. “She’s just standing there, screaming. We had a fight last night . . . uh, an argument. I guess she’s still mad . . . ?”
