Ready to Run

Warning: This story contains strong content and controversial topics, including racism, rape trauma, and human trafficking.

I have done my best to portray these subjects realistically and compassionately, but I am sure to offend some (probably many). If you look no further than the stereotypical, then you may miss the point.

Tim O’Brien said: That’s what fiction is for. It’s for getting at the truth when the truth isn’t sufficient for the truth.

The purpose of these stories is certainly NOT to justify or glorify any of those things. Its purpose is to do what fiction should – to open minds and hearts, encourage self-reflection, and begin debate/conversation that can lead to change.

A bit of background – this story is a part of my ongoing series called Trouble Texas Style (Night Walker’s Woman, Tight Fittin’ Jeans, One Night Stand, and soon to include Goodbye Earl). These are complex and interwoven tales that cross genres, including erotica, romance, and suspense.

I have kept them separate as opposed to hopping from character to character chronologically, as George R R Martin does with Game of Thrones. But I am keeping things sequential in the overall story arch. So, while it might theoretically be possible to read this as a standalone story, it is best appreciated in the overall context of the stories.

One final word, I have disabled voting and comments on this story, because I realize that I am courting controversy by placing this story in this category. For the record, I understand the complexities of interracial relationships better than most. I began my writing here under another pen name and wrote almost exclusively in this category. I was married to a black man. I am the mother of a mixed-race child. And for a decade, the primary qualification for being my lover was the color of your skin.

Yet, I have not written in it for a long time. I have abandoned stories here as I came to realize that those stereotypes I was perpetuating reinforce prejudices. I came to see that the whole point was that the color of someone’s skin ought to be the least important qualification in a lover.

This is truly an interracial love story of a wounded man and woman who discover new purpose and strength in one another. He just so happens to be black, and she mixed white and Latina.

***

Caleb Jefferson King Williams sat waiting under the hot lights. He had not been on this side of the table in almost two decades. Not since the new ‘mall cop’ had decided that any thirteen-year-old black male was suspicious. He would give anything to see Etta Mae Williams with her pillbox hat and white satin gloves march through that door, straighten her spine, look the white officers in the eye, and demand to know what the evidence was against her grandson.

But this time, there was evidence. For the simple reason that he had done what they accused him of. Yes, it was a breach of his oath. Yes, it was a crime. But being a black man in America had taught Will that the law and right were not always the same thing. If he had it to do all over again, he would. Even knowing the price, he was going to pay — dead man walking – one way or another.

The door opened; Will did not allow the shock he felt to register on his face. So, the man himself, James Travis Tyler, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District, thought this was important. Will dropped his head and clenched his fists on the table, the light glistening off the cuffs. At least they were not his own.

He felt the man’s gaze rest on him. But he knew this game too well. And if they wanted to play, it was going to be on his terms. Caleb Jefferson King Williams had spent over three decades on this earth playing their game by their rules. Waiting for ‘that day,’ the promised land.

Hell, his grandparents had chosen his name because Caleb had left Egypt and wandered in the desert for forty years alongside Moses. Of all the generation that exodus Egypt, only Joshua and Caleb had been allowed by god to enter the promised land.

How many times had his Grandfather Walt read him that story from the old family bible that was almost as old as this country, and just about as stained with the blood of his family? His throat tightened, he could practically hear his grandparents now. “We might not make it. But you’ll get there, son. You will see that Promise Land.”

But it had been more than forty years of wandering in this desert of prejudice and racism that they had fought against. But nothing had changed. Perhaps it had even gotten worse.

Will was past the point of caring. He lifted his eyes to meet those of the man he had had only cursory dealings with before. He knew this game of chicken. And he was going to win, just this once. Before he lost everything, even his life, and he did best the man.

After staring for a minute or so, Tyler turned to the agent standing by the door. “Take those off him.”

The agent showed his dislike of that order by delaying it, as long as he could, and by the stare that he gave Will as the now heated metal clicked open. Will was not going to provide them with the satisfaction of rubbing his wrists the way that most people did.

“Take a seat, counselor,” he addressed the U.S. Attorney in the same tone that his Grandmother Etta would some young new preacher or politician who had come to visit the grand dame of a lost era. He even mimicked her graceful motioning towards the chair across the table.

Tyler’s brow furrowed as if trying to reconcile the angry black man across the table from him with the decorated former police officer and federal agent. His look said that he came up short.

Will smiled as the man shook his head and laid the clear plastic bag beside him on the table. He opened the file and pretended to study it before he cleared his throat and began, “I don’t understand, Williams. You’re one of the most highly decorated officers in this district. Why? Why would you just let McBride drive away like that?”

Will performed his best Jack Nicolson impression, “You want the truth? You can’t handle the truth.”

Tyler sat a bit straighter. Those pale lips, that rarely smiled anyway, turned down at the corners. “This isn’t funny. Not only is your career with the agency over, but you are very likely facing prison time. How much is determined by what is said in this room today. So, I suggest that you cut the theatrics and answer my questions. Why did you let McBride escape?”

“I didn’t.”

“You were one of two agents on duty today. Neither of you reported that the McBrides were missing. That was not discovered until your replacements came.” Tyler paused, “I have spoken to Chandler already. I know that McBride paid him ten thousand dollars to look the other way.”

Will started laughing. He could not help it. This was too funny. Too fucking funny. Tyler stared at him like he had lost his mind. Maybe he had. He had certainly lost his soul. That died twelve days ago in a dilapidated old wooden house in the Fifth Ward.

“I don’t see what is funny about accepting a bribe, dereliction of duty, and half a dozen other charges, Williams.”

Will stopped laughing. He looked the other man directly in the eye, “Then I will tell you, counselor. Even when it comes to bribery, white men are still paid more than black in this great country of ours.”

Tyler looked down at the table. Will saw the man’s throat constrict. Yeah, racism always tasted funny to people like him. Rich, white men of privilege. Especially the illustrious James Travis Tyler, son of Henry Stafford Tyler and Marianne Buford Walker, a true son of the Alamo on both side of his family tree and not just one of the Old Three Hundred but the blood of half a dozen or so of them probably ran through his blue veins.

But the Tylers weren’t the only ones with this nation’s history coursing through their veins. “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is its natural manure.”

Tyler shook his head, “I don’t understand. You can’t believe that McBride was a patriot?”

“No. McBride was a tyrant.” Will stared at his hands and flexed his fingers. He was silent for a long moment.

Then he looked up and met Tyler’s gaze directly, “Those were the words of my great-great-great-fuck-all-knows-how-many-greats grandfather. He wrote them to his son-in-law almost twenty years before my grandfather was born. To his black salve. The half-sister of his dead wife.”

Will enjoyed watching Tyler squirm in that chair. “That is the history of this country as much as your family’s glorious Alamo.”

He held out his arm, his palm facing upwards. Beneath his darker skin, you could see the lines, “You see these veins? Through them course the blood of the man who wrote the Declaration of Independence. The man who wrote ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal.’”

“He was forty-four-years-old. She was fucking sixteen. He owned her black ass. This ain’t some damned Harlequin romance. This makes #MeToo and all those white women claiming they were coerced look like jack shit.”

“My great-what-the-fuck-ever-grandfather was born while that man was President of these great United States of America. And folks today are worried about one privileged small-dicked shit?”

Tyler shifted in his seat, “So, you’re angry that McBride paid Chandler more to sell out his oath, this country, and the Constitution that your supposed great-great-whatever grandfather helped to craft. The same Constitution that you swore to uphold and defend from all enemies, foreign and domestic. That’s what this about?”

“BeBe LaToya Mae Jefferson. That’s what this is about.”

He watched Tyler’s frown crease deeper, “I’m sorry if that is supposed to mean anything. I don’t know who that is. I’ve never heard the name before.”

Will sat back in his chair and smiled, “You would have if my cousin had been white. If it had been your little sister who had gone missing from the bus stop on the way to school, this whole fucking country would have been on some kind of Amber Alert. But they aint’ got no Shaunita or LaToya alerts.”

“Shit, your little sister probably don’t know what a fucking bus stop looks like. Let alone get her ass up before dawn to take one across town so she could get a better education. At the mostly white school. So much for fucking desegregation?”

“Do you know it is estimated that there are sixty-four thousand missing black women and girls in this country? Not that America is only one. Do you know that Scotland Yard spent almost twelve million pounds looking for one cute, blond-haired little girl whose parents left her alone in a hotel room with two younger siblings while their rich, posh white asses went out partying and drinking with friends? Do you know what would have happened if they had been poor and black? They would have gone to jail, and that would have been the end of it.”

Tyler shook his head and sighed, “Williams, I’m not arguing any of that with you. This country isn’t perfect. The world is not fair. I’m just trying to figure out why one of the best-damned agents we have threw his career away for some rich, white man that he supposedly hates?”

“I didn’t. And for the record, I did not accept his bribe, either. I pushed the envelope with five grand – half of what Chandler received – back at McBride. I told him to give it to his wife so she could take care of her and that little girl.”

“Even if I believe that, it just raises more questions. And it comes back to the same one – why? Why did you throw away your career and life over a man like McBride?”

“I didn’t. I did the right thing for another cute little white girl. Because ‘one day right here in Piney Point, Texas little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers.’ Do you know that my grandfather and grandmother were there that day? Not in the crowd on the mall, but on those steps with that great man.”

“My Grandmother Etta Mae Williams was there too when they told his wife that he had been shot. My Grandfather accompanied her and their children to Memphis. And they both walked in that great patriot’s funeral procession. Hell, they even quoted Jefferson about the blood of patriots. Do you see a statue on the mall for that man?”

Will felt the fight drain from him for the moment as tears that he had not allowed himself to shed threatened to burst their dams. “Do you know what happened to my Grandfather? That African Methodist Episcopal preacher was gunned down by a white supremacist on the altar of the church where he had preached reconciliation for over fifty years.”

Tyler had the dignity to look him in the eye as he said, “I’m sorry, Will.”

He should feel some sense of victory. He knew that. In all the time they worked together, it was the first time that the man had used anything other than his last name. Though everyone else called him Will, he had not thought that this man even knew that.

But he was just too numb now. “My Grandmother died twelve days ago,” his voice was so quiet he was not certain that the man had even heard.

“My condolences.”

Will’s eyes, now filled with those tears, met the other man’s. Man to man. Not white man to black man or attorney to agent. And especially not interrogator to suspect. One human being to another. And a single tear slid down his cheek.

“A heart attack. She was eighty-four. She died in my arms while waiting for an ambulance. We waited for forty-six minutes, Tyler. I held her body for almost another two hours as it got cold and stiff before they finally came.”

“Do you know why? Because they were afraid to send an ambulance to the Fifth Ward. Because of the protests.”

He heard the scoff from by the door. His dark eyes filled with anger again as the man who he had worked with for almost five years sneered, “And whose fault is that?”

Will clenched his fists. It took everything he had inside of him to stay in that chair. He wanted nothing more than to launch himself across the room. Tyler might spend some time in the gym, but he was no match for Will. He could easily push the man aside to get to the other agent. He wanted nothing more than to wrap his hands around the man’s throat and squeeze until he was as dead as his grandmother.

As dead as the great man who had stood on those steps and decreed, “that day when all of God's children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, "Free at last, Free at last, Great God almighty, We are free at last."

Though it had been more than half a century since those words and that man, his grandparents had drilled them into his brain from even before he was born. He had never seen his Grandpa Walt prouder than the day his fourth grade self stood in front of the school assembly for Black History Month. He had recited that whole speech, over sixteen minutes' worth, from memory.

And now, in perhaps the most crucial moment of his life, he could almost feel them in this shitty room, standing behind him. His grandparents. Maybe even some of those great-greats too. Perhaps that frightened young black slave girl. It was for their sakes’ that Will remained in his chair. One old, white agent like that was not worth it. He had more to say, perhaps even more to do - before they got him.

“Thank you for your sentiment.” He motioned with his head to the plastic bag on the table next to Tyler. He could see his shield, his gun, his cuffs, his keys, his wallet, some loose change, and the folded scrap of paper they had taken from his back pocket.

“Open it. Open the bag and take out the paper.”

Tyler looked confused, but he did as Will asked. He unfolded the plain piece of paper that had been folded into eights to fit inside Will’s pants pocket that morning. Will had known that he would need it to give him the courage to do what he had decided was the right thing. No matter the cost.

Tyler frowned, “She was the only other person, outside of my grandparents’ church who offered me any compassion.”

“You asked why, Tyler. Why I threw away my career, and we both know my life, cause I am a dead man walking now. They’ll get me too. Just like they did Stephen McBride. Like they have Gerald. Yeah, I heard. Overheard, I suppose, would be more accurate. I know that they found the SUV with Gerald McBride in it in a ditch outside Sebida.”

“But his little girl and wife weren’t in that car. That’s why I did it. For Callie. Because in those innocent green eyes of hers as she handed me that card, I saw my cousin. She made it herself, alone in that fancy house. Part of her homeschooling, she said. Cause that posh school of hers didn’t want her anymore. Now that her daddy got caught doing what rich white men have done throughout history. But in Callie McBride’s eyes, I saw Bebe. I saw the very last remanent of that great man’s dream.”

“Do whatever the fuck you want to me now. It won’t matter. It’s just a matter of time. Minutes. Hours. Days. But I’m good with that. Because somewhere out there, my grandparents’ dream lives on in that girl.”

“And before you ask, no, I don’t know where. I never asked. McBride only told me that it was somewhere ya’ll would never think to look.”

Will felt a bit of that anger surge back through him. He could see that for the moment he had scored one on the man. And he wanted to push that. If there was any chance, there was one last thing he wanted to do on this earth.

He wasn’t sure if he’d be allowed in his grandparents’ heaven. He had never really believed that the place existed. But he hoped like hell, that just for a moment, he would see them one more time as he died.

But before that, he had one more promise to fulfill. His grandmother’s dying wish, “Don’t forget.” He had not forgotten that man’s dream. And now he wanted to show her that he would never forget Bebe either.

And there was just one clue in the paltry three-page police file on her disappearance. Three pages were the sum total of nine-hundred-ninety-eight days of investigation. But there was one thing, an anonymous tip called into the police line. It could not be a coincidence.

“So, Tyler. Charge me.” He held out his arms, almost expecting the clink of those cuffs again. “Or let me go pending further investigation. I’ve told you every fucking thing I know.”

The other man stared at him. The thing was James Travis Tyler was not a bad person. Will knew that. He knew that the man bought all that crap — the American Dream bullshit. The guy had a reputation as a bit of a stickler, in fact. Will was beating his life, short though it would be, on that fact. Tyler was not corrupt, as so many others were.

But he was white and privileged. He could never understand the things that Will had seen. He had never been pulled over for ‘driving while black.’ Despite a federal badge, this man never had to fear for his life when facing some hyped-up cop. He did not sit in his vehicle, knowing that if the ultimate went down, his whole life and death would be pulled to shreds. And you could damn well bet that something would be found. Hell, if they had to plant evidence. He would become dirty.

Looking at the older, white, self-righteous man by the door, Will knew that some would consider him dirty now. “Keep my shield, cuffs, and gun. I wouldn’t want them now if you gave them to me. But can I have Callie’s card, please?” He held out his hand.

The paper shook as Tyler passed it and his wallet, keys, and that loose change across the table. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Will chuckled as he pocketed the piece of paper, his key, and wallet. He noticed a nickel among that change. Will picked it up separately. He stared at that face. He had many times before. He stared in the mirror almost every morning as he shaved, looking for hints of it there too.