Drowning of Stephan Jones (22 page)

“The only thing I care about is justice,” Frank answered grimly. “I must see those animals given some kind of punishment—there’s got to be something that, at the very least, acknowledges that a crime has been committed.”

“From your lips to God’s ears,” answered Ben, trying for a slightly lighter note. “I guess that’s what we’d all like to—”

Frank gestured dramatically with his right hand while his left arm squeezed the bulging newspaper even closer to his body. “You didn’t hear me, Ben! I didn’t say that the punishment of Andrew Harris and company would be nice or desirable or something pleasant to contemplate. What I said was I
must
see punishment. MUST! Must see punishment!”

“And he
will
be punished, too,” Ben said soothingly, dropping a fraternal arm over Frank’s shoulder. “That’s what the sentencing is all about. Believe me, I know what you’re feeling.”

Frank halted in mid-stride. “You haven’t a clue,” he lambasted the gay rights organizer. “Not unless you happen to know what it feels like to walk around without skin. I feel as though I’ve had all my skin peeled away. Ever since I saw what those people did to Stevie, I’ve felt skinless and without protective covering, everything about me is exposed. And everything hurts like hell.”

“Seeing the Rachetville Five punished,” Ben started, “will go some distance in helping you heal I suppose?”

“Yes, yes ... that and ...”

“And what?”

Frank looked down. “It sounds so selfish. What with Stevie’s life finished before he could finish living it ...

“But Stevie’s not in pain anymore,” Ben interjected with exquisite understanding. “You are. I’d honestly like to know if there’s anything—anything at all we can do to help you?”

“What I’d like more than anything else,” Frank said, finally allowing his eyes to connect with Ben’s, “is for somebody in the straight community to express sympathy.” He shook his head as though he, of all people, were at an absolute loss to understand this need of his, much less explain it. “Why is it ... I mean why can’t they realize that there’s no such thing as gay
grief or straight grief? Why can’t they understand that grief comes completely without gender, without affectional preference? It offers an absolutely nonracist, nonsexist, nonbigoted, nonhomophobic equal opportunity employment to all!”

Ben smiled wanly. “Some straight people here and there already understand that. Maybe someday they all will.”

Frank Montgomery looked off into the faraway distance. “Until then I’ll probably keep on fantasizing that somebody—my landlord, mechanic, neighbor—somebody will drop an arm around my shoulder or maybe just touch my hand and say, ‘Frank, I was real sorry to learn that you lost your friend.’ What makes it so impossibly difficult for one human being to reach out to another? To say something as simple and as wonderful as that. Isn’t it strange,” he asked, pausing long enough to mentally frame the question, “that not one person can even bring themselves to say that?”

Ben’s response was totally drowned out by the wild cheering of young people’s voices, mostly female. They were loudly screaming:

Andy ... Andy ... He’s our man!

Andy ... Andy ... He’s our man!

Andy ... Andy ... He’s our man!

He can do what nobody can!

Hooray Andy! Hooray Harris!

Hooray ANDY HARRIS!! HOORAY!!!

As the young man who was the center of all the attention and admiration stepped from his father’s Oldsmobile, he flashed his cheerleaders a confident grin as well as ironically the exact same “V for Victory” sign that the victorious American general once flashed to a grateful world at the very moment that Nazi Germany begged for peace. Following their young hero out of the car was his fashionably dressed mother, his grim-faced father, his thin-lipped lawyer, and their freshly coiffed minister, Reverend Roland B. Wheelwright.

The media pressed tight around Andy’s group shooting questions: “Are you nervous? Andy, are you confident? Any regrets that you’d like to express to Stephan Jones’s survivors. Loretta and Lloyd Jones or Frank Montgomery? Any guilt over what happened? In your opinion did the jury last month treat the Rachetville Five fairly when they found you guilty of manslaughter?”

Attorney Chip Burwick shepherded his young client through the maze, all the time repeating: “Andrew Harris will have absolutely no comment at this time. I’m sorry, ladies and gentlemen, but Andrew Harris will have no comment to make at this time.”

As the others skipped up the courthouse steps, the Reverend Wheelwright lingered behind to answer a question put to him by a pretty television reporter whose face as well as name was well known to viewers of the ABC affiliate station in Fayetteville. Her question to the preacher was lost in the din, but in a live feed to the local station, the clergyman’s face as well as his response was heard by thousands: “... After all, it was Jones’s aggressive homosexual behavior that precipitated his death.” He smiled a smile that would do credit to a saint. “Why, if only Stephan Jones hadn’t made sexual advances toward a red-blooded,
real
boy like Andrew Harris, then he’d be walking the streets of Parson Springs today. No doubt about it!”

Back at the station in the living room setting of the morning show, the silver-haired cohost, Billy Barnard, raised his eyebrows before turning to his TV partner, Sherry Lee West. “If you did in every man who made a pass at you, Sherry Lee, I bet the male population of Fayetteville would be a heck of a lot thinner. Right?”

Chapter 24

P
EG
P
ACKARD PULLED
her fading blue Toyota directly in front of the courthouse square so that Carla, Judith, and Debby could make a quick entrance into the building before the media knew what was what. But before they made it inside the dignified old edifice, the cry went up, “There’s Carla!” One or two alert photographers were able to capture a picture.

As the women raced inside the protective doors, the photographers and reporters turned to recording the two distinct groups of demonstrators that were springing into action. Women, mostly thick-set and middle-aged, were waving high the banner of the Christian Decency League. Across the lawn the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force was out waving their signs. The task force crowd was about half the age of the CDL.

If there was, however, any single attribute that was shared by both the league and the task force, besides the not-so-obvious fact that they all belonged to the human race, it was that both groups were convinced beyond any quibble or question that God, honor, beauty, and all things noble resided totally and solely within the confines of their own position.

Ben Brewster had given out preprinted placards as well as black balloons with pink triangles. “Now whatever happens remember this: No matter what the provocation, you must exert, at all times, Gandhi-like self-discipline.”

“What if they call us faggots?” shot back a college-age fellow. “Can’t we, at least, call them breeders?”

“You certainly cannot!” retorted Ben, scorching the questioner with a searing look. “That’s sexist ... offensive to
all
women! Offensive to everybody! For God sakes, Warren, responding to hate
with
hate brings us down to
their
level. We must never do that—we don’t have to—we have morality on our side.”

As the members of the task force began their orderly albeit enthusiastic trek around the courthouse square, Ben initiated a chant: “Hay-Hay ... Ho-Ho ... Homophobia has got to go! Hay-Hay ... Ho-Ho ... Homophobia has got to go! Hay-Hay ... Ho-Ho ... Homophobia has got to go!” And as they marched and chanted, they bobbed their helium balloons skyward and waved their placards:

THE RELIGIOUS RIGHT IS NEITHER!

HOMOPHOBIA IS A SOCIAL DISEASE

I BELIEVE IN FAIRIES

DIGNITY/LITTLE ROCK

THOU SHALT NOT KILL

WE ARE AN ANGRY GENTLE PEOPLE

FREEDOM AND JUSTICE FOR ALL

HETEROSEXUAL ALLY

STEPHAN JONES DIED FOR YOUR SINS

WE ARE YOUR CHILDREN

MOTHER OF A PROUD GAY SON

IS ANDREW HARRIS A HERO FOR KILLING A MAN?

IS STEPHAN JONES A VILLAIN FOR LOVING A MAN?

And trotting alongside the ankles of one of the lead marchers were two miniature dachshunds sporting pink bow ties, and dangling just beneath each of the well-cared-for pets’ necks was a neatly penned sign proclaiming I’M ONE, TOO.

As the colorful, chanting, waving members of the task force marched past the sedate members of the CDL, even the air molecules between the two sides felt as though they had become hypercharged with electricity. On signal from their leader, Virginia Foley, the entire contingent from the Christian Decency League placed their hands over their hearts and began to proudly sing, “God Bless America.” But as soon as the last note had finished resonating in the morning air, Virginia
boomed out, “Everybody ready? Raise your banners!” With a restrained cheer, a profusion of CDL placards were proudly hoisted high:

GOD LOVES THE SINNER BUT HATES THE SIN

PRAY FOR THE RACHETVILLE FIVE

IF HOMOSEXUALS POPULATED THE EARTH,

THERE WOULD BE NO POPULATION

YOU CAN CHANGE

GOD MADE ADAM AND EVE. NOT ADAM AND STEVE!

DO AWAY WITH AIDS. STAMP OUT HOMOSEXUALITY

HOMOSEXUALITY ... CAN BE OVERCOME!

REPENT

EXODUS INTERNATIONAL

HOMOSEXUALITY IS AN ABOMINATION

READ YOUR BIBLE

THE WAGES OF SIN IS DEATH

Although court had not yet been called to order, the standing-room-only assembly bustled and buzzed with intense energy. Carla, sitting rigidly between her mother and Debby, struggled to control her nervousness. Would the sentencing of her five former friends at long last settle things? At least in her own mind?

Although sentencing was not scheduled until ten o’clock, the courtroom had been packed to capacity since nine. Carla glanced at her watch for the fifth time in the last four minutes and wondered if the minute hand would ever advance beyond six.

Closing her eyes, she listened as outdoors on the village green, the voices of the Christian Decency League sang with haunting harmony. “Onward Christian soldiers ... Marching as to war ... with the cross of Jesus ... going on before...”

When she opened her eyes next, she caught sight of Andy
seating himself next to his lawyer at the defendants’ table, and she thought: Yes, he did look good, as good as he had ever looked. But the big difference now was that she no longer felt physically drawn to those looks, no matter how objectively handsome. Oh sure, he was still a very pretty package all right with nothing but hate and hollowness inside.

Her first sweet sweep of emotion over Andy Harris and over belonging to his perfect family seemed so very long ago and far away. Back then, she would have sworn on the graves of her ancestors that what she felt was love. Love, pure and simple. Love sweet love, love forever, love. The next time she called herself “in love,” she would make completely sure that she loved not just the surface stuff she could see, but the deeper, more real qualities, those qualities which the eyes alone could never penetrate.

Rising majestically above the crowded room’s din was a single voice of commanding authority. “Hear ye ... Hear ye ... All rise and give your attention and draw nigh,” intoned the blue uniformed bailiff. His voice snapped Carla out of her reveries and back to the present. “The honorable Morris Bernhardt, presiding Judge.”

Following Andy in a neat, somber line before the bar of justice were Mike, Doug, Lisa, and Donna. Judge Bernhardt strode to the bench without seeming to take any particular notice of his jammed-to-capacity courtroom. Papers were passed to the judge for signing. Finally he cleared his throat, peered over a pair of half-glasses, and asked the defendants to face the bench for sentencing. As soon as he made that statement, the whole room became quieter and stiller than a mausoleum at midnight.

For what felt like a long period of time, the judge stared at the scrubbed and shiny young people who forty-two days earlier had been convicted of involuntary manslaughter. He put his hands deep into the folds of his black robe as he made
tsk-tsk-tsking
sounds with the tip of his tongue. “Now, boys—and young ladies, too—what you all have done is something you ought not be proud of. Since this jury has found you guilty of involuntary manslaughter in the death of Stephan Jones, it becomes my grave duty as the judge to pronounce sentence.

“I believe what you all did was more of a result of your young age than of any ill will or maliciousness. Furthermore, I do not for an instant believe that your young lives, or our society, for that matter, will be improved one iota by sentencing you five young people to Tucker Prison Farm. I could surely do so, and you could spend the next five years learning how to be
real
criminals.”

The very fabric of Andy’s trousers was trembling as he stood pale and wan before the judge who looked as though he had, at least momentarily, run out of things to say. But just as Carla and the other spectators began wondering if that was all, Judge Bernhardt started speaking again. “I have decided to sentence you all—each and every one of you—to one year in prison.”

A group gasp of disbelief was echoed throughout the courtroom. “But ...” continued the magistrate, holding one stern finger aloft, even as the sound of that anguished gasp continued to resonate, “I will suspend that sentence on the condition that you all properly participate in our parole program, and that individually you do at least one hundred hours of community service.”

Judge Bernhardt lifted his black-robed arm to give a mighty whack of his mahogany gavel “This court stands adjourned,” he declared as he stood up. From somewhere toward the back of the room, a single “Yippee!!” erupted. People jumped to their feet stomping, shouting, and applauding, loudly applauding. Then from nowhere and everywhere there were people, people rushing to touch, hold, hug, and sometimes kiss all the members of the Rachetville Five.