The Shooting (30 page)

Two more hours pass. Burns starts moaning, —
Man, I didn't even do nothin'. My baby, man. Where my little girl, man? Where my momma, man...?
and then Burns goes quiet and then Lee can smell urine.

Joseph in back complains, —Yo, you did not just piss yourself. You did not just piss yourself. He calls to the CO up front, —Yo, this nigga pissed himself.

The CO ignores him. They all sit in the hot stink of Burns's piss, the hotter stink of Burns's humiliation, until, for no apparent reason,
the driver puts the bus into gear. Lee Fisher is taken across town—the free people outside in the streets glancing briefly at the bus as it passes and seeing nothing, seeing no one, and then forgetting it altogether—then up FDR Drive to the Queensborough Bridge, then up to another bridge, this one long, gray, and solitary, on the other end of which is Rikers Island.

Spends his first night on Rikers listening to a lunatic compelled by the Spirit of Jesus Christ, hollering: —NO FAITH, NO LIFE! NO FAITH, NO LIFE! People screaming at him to shut the fuck up, their screaming only adding to the noise, so other people screaming at
them
to shut the fuck up.

His father's voice says,
Potter is incompetent, a vacuous celebrity. What difference does it make to him what becomes of you?

And Lee says back to him,
And what about you? What difference does it make to
you?
Where are you and where have you ever been?

The bitterness he feels makes the claustrophobia even more nauseating than it already is. Inmates steal his shower flip-flops, they steal his replacement shower flip-flops. They steal the socks off his feet as he sleeps, or, rather, as he tries to sleep, for the tube lights remain on twenty-four hours a day, buzzing and flickering like the inside of his head. Yet again he has no idea what he is waiting for. Or how long he will be here. No indication of what is going to happen to him. No one will tell him anything. Not Potter, not the COs.

—Yo, Pills, Joseph calls to him from the TV area as he passes through. —Come see who's on TV.

Lee ignores him, continues walking.

—No, come here. You wanna see this.

Warily, Lee goes over, sees who is on TV. Lee Fisher is who is on TV. His home too. And the kid. And the parents. And her.
Her.
—Oh no, he says out loud. How can she be allowed to sashay into this situation she knows nothing about and make pawns of them all to capitalize on a kid's tragic death?

She shouldn't be,
his father says.
She shouldn't be allowed. She is laying waste to our way of life. She's asking for it. She's pushing us and pushing us and we will only be pushed so far.

And she is calling Lee Fisher an enemy of the peace, a polluter of the public health. —
A dangerous, radical conservative gun nut, a wannabe cop, a domestic terrorist, who for no reason other than he was white and male felt he was entitled to take the law into his own hands and kill with impunity. This is gun culture,
she says. —
This is the so-called tradition we bend over backward to protect. In fact it's all a myth. This is the reality: Lee Fisher was influenced by an inborn sense of white supremacy and cowboy fantasies that were inflamed by the irresponsible, fear-mongering rhetoric and lobbying of the NRA, whose loyalties lie not with the American people but with the gun industry. And this is what you get as a result of that: a society saturated, absolutely saturated, with guns and gun worship. You get death. You get dead kids. You get more dead Americans each decade than all the terror attacks, all our wars combined.

And now they are playing audio of someone speaking on a telephone. Takes Lee several moments to recognize the voice as his own, on the night of the shooting. They have edited out all the 911 dispatcher's questions, leaving only Lee's out-of-context responses.
—I shot him,
America hears Lee Fisher say. —
Of course I shot him. He's black.
There are subtitles to make sure no one misses the shocking, blatant racism. All the prisoners watching TV are looking at Lee now. Black faces, black muscles.

—They edited it, Lee says.

It sounds like a lie. Even he does not believe himself. Now his mug shot appears. It is not him. It is the Face, the one representing everything: slavery, lynching, Jim Crow, economic disparity, mass incarceration, Rodney King, Ferguson, Eric Garner. Here is who we can blame for it all: Lee Fisher. Now go forth and avenge. The news goes to a commercial for Dulcolax and no one speaks. No one is looking at him anymore. That is worse than when they were. Then Joseph says, —Better be careful, Pills. His father agrees,
Be careful.
Fisher staggers to his cell, now feeling every eye in Rikers on his back.

He wraps his towel and his little thin pillow and some magazines around his torso and around his wrists and throat beneath his jumpsuit and goes to the phones. Calls his father again and again, he does not answer. Calls Potter, who is aware of the situation, has
already been in contact with Rikers authorities about getting Lee out of general population and into protective custody, but they are saying there is no space.

—That's bullshit, Lee says, —I'm in
real, imminent danger,
don't they see that? What do I do?

—Stay safe, Potter says.

—Brilliant advice, man, thank you.

—Your case is with the grand jury. If they don't indict you in five days, they have to release you.

—I won't last five days, I won't last five hours.
Please.

Guard comes by, makes him hang up, gives no reason. Lee starts to argue, guard pulls out his baton and more guards show up also with their batons, so Lee hangs up the phone. Joseph is there in line behind him. There's a menacing twinkle in his eye. Lee keeps his head down and walks off, feeling Joseph's eyes picking the spot in Lee's kidneys to stick the homemade knife into.

In the cafeteria he cannot eat. Too nervous. Throat dry and constricted. He can hear every utensil sink into every small mound of wet, mushy food. Every time someone stands he flinches. After dinner he returns to his cell. On his bed, folded neatly and somehow not yet stolen, is a blanket. Lee was given one when he first arrived, but a guy with shoulders the size of a bull's walked up to his bed and helped himself to it. Lee hears his father explain,
If you are an idiot, you'll use it. Someone's done something to it. And you'll get sick and they'll send you to the infirmary, where you will get an infection from the unsanitary conditions and the inept doctors there will misdiagnose you and you will die. If you are an idiot, that's what will happen. But you aren't an idiot, are you? You know what to do.
Feeling like his father is watching him somehow, from somewhere, wherever that is, Lee uses a cardboard toilet paper roll to poke the blanket off his bed onto the floor, then drag it into the hall and leave it there. The inmates all see, stare at him blankly.
Underestimated you, didn't they?
Starts to feel better about himself again and who he is and where he comes from.

Calls his father, no answer, leaves a message babbling semi-coherently about the toilet paper roll, hangs up. That night he does
not allow himself to sleep. Blanketless, he shivers all night long and wakes up even sicker than before. Out in the yard he stands in the shade watching others run laps and lift weights and shoot hoops. He is coughing, mucus streaming from his nose, feeling much worse now, utterly terrible.
Doesn't matter. Small price for safety. Almost over.
His back is against the wall to prevent a sneak attack from the rear.
How will they do it? Belt around my throat? Cardboard blade forged from a box of Cracker Jacks bought in the canteen? My skull bashed in with a weight?

Joseph jogs by on the dirt track, dreadlocks flapping behind him. —Get that thing I left you? Lee ignores him. Joseph comes around the track again and stops before Lee, running in place, eyes sparkling. He asks again, —Get that thing I left you?

—Don't know what you're talking about.

—Aw, someone stole it? Don't worry, lady CO in charge of blankets here knows my momma. I'll get you another one.

—No, thank you, Lee says, playing it cool.

—You have a thing against blankets, don't you?

—I like the cold. It's invigorating.

—Yeah, okay. You look like hell.

—I'm fine. I'm great.

—You sick as hell. Or maybe it's just guilt eating away at you?

Lee shakes his head, says nothing.

—You don't feel guilty?

—Of course I do.

—But you don't think you did anything wrong, right? You think it's unfair you being here with us, right?

Lee does not answer. He is afraid to.

—Well, don't worry too much. You gonna get off. You'll be out of here before you know it.

—I'm facing life in prison.

—Right. Rich dude with big-time lawyers. Yeah, you in real trouble. They're gonna
nail you.
If there's one thing they don't tolerate it's a dead black teenager. Joseph shakes his head. —Walking around looking like the damned Michelin man. You look insane, you understand that, right?

Lee does not answer. He is afraid to. His eyes scan the vicinity, in case Joseph is trying to distract him while an accomplice strikes.

—You gotta try running or exercising or something. Better than standing around going crazy.

—I'm not.

—Bruh, you even starting to smell crazy.

Encouraging news to Lee. He has not showered once since he has been here. In the shower line he lets criminal after criminal go ahead of him, delaying long enough for the COs to think he must have gone already and to tell him to get back to his bunk. Thinks if he can manage to avoid showering long enough he will reek so badly that no one will be able to tolerate being near him long enough to hurt him. —Just stay the fuck away from me, okay?

Joseph just laughs in response.

Lee goes back inside to lie down on his cot and relish a rare moment or two of solitude and privacy. He collapses onto the cot and, despite his efforts not to, falls into his first real sleep since the shooting. He dreams of it, sees the boy's dead body, wakes later that afternoon soaked in sweat, his fever broken and his illness cured. Goes to dinner. Appetite comes roaring back. Cannot resist, takes his chances to stand in line for food. His jaw juices at the sight of the rehydrated meatloaf and instant mashed potatoes and shriveled frozen baby carrots. He flashes back to his boyhood, the little hard potatoes. He can taste them again. They were horrible, weren't they?
They were delicious, they were pure.
No, they tasted like filth because that's exactly what they were growing in.
You're ungrateful. You're letting them get to you, bully you into changing. This is how they do it. Don't feel guilty. You did nothing wrong. It was your house. He came into your house. Don't let them bully you into changing...

The skinny guy scooping the meatloaf says, —Hed da buh bumduhuh, and Lee makes the guy repeat himself but he only says the exact same nonsense. Lee says, —I don't understand you, but look, I'm watching you, so don't even try to spit in my meatloaf or anything.

—I
said,
the guy enunciates absurdly, nearly shouting, the guy beside him on the carrots cracking up, —
I... got... some... thing... for... you.

He puts down his meatloaf spatula and is bending down for something stashed on the floor by his feet. A weapon. Lee drops his tray to the floor, his food spilling across the tile. Prisoners jump to their feet—something happening, something to see—all hell breaking loose as Lee pushes through the line behind him and shoves aside prisoners and tables, running for his life to the door. Covers his head and stays low, bracing himself for gunfire. How did they get a gun in here? Does not matter. The COs, not understanding he is the victim, or, more likely, involved in the plot themselves, tackle him, punch him in the ribs and head, kick him in the stomach, cuff him, drag him away, the prisoners behind him cheering and heckling, stomping their feet.

Lee spends the night and next day in punitive isolation. Even colder here. Feels like a walk-in freezer. They even take his underwear. He sleeps. Wakes a short time later shivering and sweating and hurting deeply. Sickest he has been yet. Sicker than he has been in his life. When they come for him, he begs them not to return him to general population. They ignore him, put him back in his cell to be butchered. Folded atop his bed is yet another blanket. He vomits into the toilet, then sits on it, simultaneously weeping and shitting a fiery liquid stream, sweat rushing down his face like he has come up from underwater.

—Awwwwww, man! his cellmates cry, springing up from their cots to bolt from the cell, waving their hands before their faces, covering their mouths and noses with the crooks of their elbows.

—Get it out of here, Lee cries, pointing to the blanket, —get it out!

They don't know what he is talking about and don't care, they're running. Uses the remainder of his toilet paper to more or less wipe himself down, washes his hands in the sink, splashes cold water on his face—it seems to hiss when it hits his burning flesh. Again and again he fills the little plastic cup with water and empties it into his mouth, which sucks it up like dry summer dirt. Weak and losing consciousness and clutching his beaten ribs, he staggers to the bed, falls atop it, blanket and all. Cannot muster the strength to even lift himself off the blanket and throw it to the floor. He killed that kid. Killed him. His young body, the
blood. Dead eyes staring into his. The black skin, the hoodie. He murdered him.

He does not hear his father. His father says nothing. He is not here.

Wakes up later clutching the blanket, body clinging to it. It is morning. He is very hungry, eats gratefully, his body fighting off the disease and injuries. Steps out into the yard, the sun, watches Joseph run around the track. When Joseph can't see, Lee swings his arms back and forth. It is difficult to do with all his body armor. Maybe he will remove it. Maybe he will begin exercising. Maybe he will begin right now. Hops a third of an inch off the ground. Coughs, cannot stop coughing. It is the most exercise he has done since he was training for the NYPD Academy twenty-five years ago.
Twenty-five years.
Jesus, where did his life go?