“Kevin,” Carissa sobbed, “I did something horrible. I can’t face you. If you knew what I did, you would hate me forever and I wouldn’t blame you. I hate myself. I can’t bear to see you, Kevin. Just go away and pretend I don’t even exist!”
Kevin closed his cell phone. He walked to the apartment and went up the stairs to Apartment 2B, which he saw Carissa enter last week. He hit the doorbell and waited. In a few seconds a very pretty woman in her thirties, dressed like a teenager, opened up. She looked like a slightly older version of Carissa, so Kevin figured it was her mother. “Hi,” he said. “I’m Kevin Walker. I need to see Carissa. She’s a friend of mine from school.”
“Come on in Kevin. Carissa has told me all about you. You’re that amazing Twister! Poor Carissa is all upset right now and it’s my bad. It’s all my fault I’m afraid,” Mrs. Polson said.
“What are you talking about? What happened?” Kevin asked.
“Well, Carissa and I are very close,” Mrs. Polson explained. We talk about everything. She doesn’t hide anything from me. Some kids don’t tell their parents anything. Not Carissa. She’s like my best girlfriend and vice versa. Anyway, Kevin, she really cares about you. She’s never felt that way about a boy before. Well, she told me about your father.”
“What?” Kevin asked, his mouth going dry. Carissa shared his secret with her mother?
“Oh Kevin,” Carissa’s mother went on, “she admires you so much, and all the more when she learned of your tragic background. To think you’ve made so much of your life overcoming all that. She said your father was in prison for killing a man and then he died there in a riot, but she didn’t want any of the kids at school to know, because they might make it hard for you. Of course, I understood that. Kids can be so cruel about such things. Carissa feels so awful that somehow the story leaked out . . . she thinks she betrayed you and she’s heartbroken. She is sure you can never forgive her.”
“How could the story have leaked out?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t know, but Carissa is sure it has. She said this nasty creature—Marko Lane—he knows about it and he’s already taunting you. Carissa is just sure that it’s all over Tubman and she feels so guilty.” Mrs. Polson curled up in a leather chair and began applying fingernail polish as she talked.
“I want to see Carissa,” Kevin said grimly.
“Well, that’s her bedroom door at the end of the hall. Just go down there and knock. Good luck to you Kevin. You seem like such a wonderful boy. Poor Carissa is just devastated that she has hurt you,” Mrs. Polson said.
Kevin rapped on Carissa’s door. “Carissa, listen. I need to talk to you. Open the door,” he urged.
“Kevin, I can’t look at you!” Carissa almost screamed.
“Come on, just open the door. We’ll talk. Don’t be afraid. Carissa . . . just open the door. Your mom told me that you told her about my father. It’s okay, Carissa. I’m not angry. Honest I’m not,” Kevin said.
There was a moment’s silence. Kevin heard her coming to the door. She drew the latch across. When she opened the door, Kevin reached out and took her in his arms. “It’s okay, Carissa. You told me you and your mom are real tight. I shouldn’t have told you something I didn’t want to share with your mom. It’s my fault,” he said.
Carissa drew back, her eyes red from crying. “Don’t you hate me, Kevin?” she asked in a shaky voice.
“No, I don’t hate you girl. I could never hate you, Carissa. Don’t be silly,” Kevin said.
“But the story leaked out because of me,” Carissa protested, beginning to cry again.
Kevin felt a little numb. He didn’t have the whole story yet. “How could that have happened, Carissa?” he asked gently.
Carissa turned away from Kevin. She looked out the window. She saw her mother talking to the next-door neighbor. She was waving her hand in the air to hasten the drying of her red polish. “She’s a gossip, Kevin,” Carissa said in a tiny voice.
“Who is?” Kevin asked. He thought he probably knew the answer.
“Mom. She reads movie magazines all day and she gossips. She gossips about the people on TV and all the people she knows,” Carissa explained.
“Carissa, if you know that, why did you tell her?” Kevin asked.
“I don’t blame you for hating me. I hate myself. I could just die. I wish I would die right now,” Carissa sobbed.
“I don’t hate you. I just feel a little disappointed. I mean, if you knew your mom might spread the story, then why tell her?” Kevin asked.
“We were talking. I was telling her how wonderful you were, and one thing led to another, and I blurted it all out. I told her how you helped with the food drive and organizing the dance, and how you reached out to Matson. I mean you do so many good things, and then I let it out how much you’ve overcome,” Carissa wailed. “I wouldn’t have told her everything, but when I mentioned your dad died in prison, she just wheedled all the rest out of me. . . . I am so ashamed Kevin. You trusted me and I let you down. You’re the last person in the world I’d want to hurt. . .”
“Carissa, I know you say your mom is a gossip, but are you sure she told anybody about my father?” Kevin asked.
“I’m not one hundred percent sure, but Marko seems to know something and how else could he find out?” Carissa said.
“Did you ask your mom if she told anybody?” Kevin asked. “Because Marko could be just faking it.”
“She’d never admit it, Kevin. She’d just lie. She tells her friends all kinds of personal stuff about Dad, and, when he calls her on it, she lies and lies.”
“Well, let’s hope she didn’t tell anybody,” Kevin said.
“Kevin, I’m so sorry,” Clarissa wept. “I wouldn’t blame you if you never spoke to me again.”
Kevin briefly hugged Carissa and said, “We’ll work it out. It’s not the end of the world.”
As Kevin was leaving the apartment, he saw Carissa’s mother leaning over a porch railing and talking to a woman on the sidewalk. Kevin recognized the woman right away, and she recognized Kevin.
“Hello Kevin,” Nattie Harvey greeted him.
“Hi Mrs. Harvey,” Kevin answered, a chill going through his body.
“Wasn’t that a lovely school dance, Kevin?” Mrs. Harvey asked sweetly.
“Yeah,” Kevin said, hurrying on. When he was out of earshot, Mrs. Harvey began talking in an animated way as both women looked after Kevin.
One time Kevin’s grandmother cautioned him about gossip. “Gossip is like you take a pillow full of feathers up atop a windy hill and you let them all fly, and then you want to get them back, but no way can you ever get them back. Those feathers go every which way, and that’s like gossip and gossip hurts people and causes pain and you can’t take it back,” she advised.
Depression swept Kevin. He knew now he should have never opened up to Carissa. He felt so close to her that he wanted her to know everything about him. She should not have told her mother, but Kevin knew his was the first mistake. Now Nattie Harvey was sending her feathers all over, and eventually everybody at Tubman would know. In the meantime, Marko knew and he was trying to take Kevin down, bit by bit. He had already cost Kevin the 100-meter dash.
Kevin turned the problem over and over in his mind. He could always deny everything. Nobody had any solid evidence. Kevin could say Carissa got the story mixed up. By now, the story Carissa told her mother was probably changed anyway. Probably Kevin’s father had been turned into Public Enemy Number One who had died in a hail of police bullets.
Kevin could just laugh it off, but he swore to himself a long time ago that he would not lie about his father. He would tell the plain, honest truth that his mother had told him.
At school on Monday, Kevin felt as if everybody was looking at him and snickering behind his back or, even worse, pitying him. He was afraid to look back for fear of seeing shock on somebody’s face. After American History I, Jaris Spain called out to him. “Hey Kevin, you got a minute?” Jaris was a nice guy. Kevin liked him.
“Yeah,” Kevin said cautiously. Was Jaris going to ask him now? “Is it really true? Surely it can’t be true.”
“Kevin, you ever hang at Pastor Bromley’s church?” Jaris asked.
“My grandparents go there,” Kevin answered. What was this leading up to? As the son of a murderer, should Kevin perhaps look for Pastor Bromley’s guidance so that he doesn’t follow a similar path in life.
“Well, they got a thing going, a bunch of boys from foster homes—ten-, eleven-year-olds. We’re giving them sort of a fun day Saturday. Hotcakes and breakfast sausage in the church parking lot, a day at the zoo, burgers in the afternoon. Each kid needs an older guy to kind of be his buddy. You interested?” Jaris asked.
Kevin breathed a sigh of relief. “Yeah sure. You can sign me up,” he agreed.
“Matson Malloy came up with the idea. It’s no big deal. Just provides some fun and companionship to the little guys,” Jaris explained. “Thanks Kevin. I knew we could count on you.”
Marko Lane came walking up. “What are you guys up to?” he asked.
Jaris gave Kevin a look. Then he told Marko about the program. “These younger kids are like troublemakers already, huh?” Marko mocked. “And Pastor Bromley is trying to get them back on the straight and narrow. Hallelujah!”
“No, the kids are from foster homes,” Jaris said.
Marko glanced at Kevin. “You ever been in trouble with the law, Walker? Ever been in juvie? You seem like the kind of guy who’d—”
“We’re kinda busy,” Jaris said, cutting Marko off.
“Yeah, don’t you have anything better to do?” Kevin snapped. “Like sticking your head in a trash bin or something.”
“Oooooo, he’s touchy. You don’t want to get him mad, Jaris. It’s in his blood. I’ll tell you about that sometime.” Marko walked off whistling.
Jaris looked after Marko, a puzzled look on his face. “Well, anyway, see you Saturday about seven. The girls are going to help with the breakfast. It should be fun,” he said.
Late in the day, as Kevin went to his locker to put away his English book, he noticed four students already there staring at a note pinned to the locker. One of them was Sami Archer.
The note was written in large, bright red marker letters. It was a crude limerick.
“There once was a killer’s son,
Ashamed of the deed Daddy done,
The truth he did hide, he lied and he lied,
But you cannot forever run.”
Kevin turned numb. The four students were looking at him, as if waiting for an explanation.
“Twister, what’s this?” Sami asked. “Somebody’s idea of a joke? It sure ain’t funny.”
“Marko Lane,” Kevin explained. “He’s got a sick sense of humor. He wants to shake me up so he can beat me in the meets.” Kevin tore the note down and bunched it up. He stuffed it in his pocket. He walked down the hall, his heart pounding.
He had to teach Marko Lane a lesson he would never forget. He had to. There was no more getting around it. Marko usually went across the street for a burger after school. Then he walked home through a field. Sometimes Tyron walked with him, but not on Mondays.
Today was Monday.
Kevin was stronger than Marko. He weighed about ten pounds more, and he was a little taller. Kevin had no doubt he could take Marko down if they went at it hand to hand. He could get Marko down in the dirt and make him understand that he had to stop—or else. It was now the only way Kevin saw to stop the harassment.
Kevin’s heart was beating hard as he waited for Marko to emerge from the burger stand and start his walk home. Kevin planned to shake Marko up good. He would not take it as far as he’d gone with Buck Sanders. Kevin could control his temper better now than he did then.
Kevin waited, growing impatient. He thought about his father. He recalled the photographs of the muscled young man in the boxing ring. Kevin wondered again what had driven his father to that fateful fight. It must have been some terrible provocation. His father must have felt like Kevin did now. There was no way to avoid it. No way.
Kevin thought of all the times since he came to Tubman High when Marko had harassed him. It was as if Marko knew from the beginning that he had the power to harm Kevin. Marko seemed to know there was something vulnerable about the boy from Texas . . . and poor old Mr. Pippin . . . and shy, clumsy Matson . . . and all the overweight, the strange looking, the different ones.
Marko needed a lesson. He needed to go down, with his sneering, brutal face in the dust. He needed to ache in every bone in his body from the beating Kevin would give him. He needed to be afraid.
Kevin had to be the one to do it. And the field was the place. If Kevin did it at school he’d be suspended. Out in the field, he could do what needed to be done, and only Kevin and Marko would know what happened. And Marko would be too ashamed to admit how badly he’d been beaten, how he’d been forced to plead for mercy on his knees.
Kevin was growing excited. When he ran, his hands were open, but now they closed into fists, as if getting ready for the task ahead. He felt the adrenalin rising in his body. He would come up behind Marko and say, “You piece of trash. You have got to be stopped and I’m the one to do it. I’m going to teach you a lesson you’ll never forget.” Kevin wouldn’t jump Marko from behind. No, he would face him and demand that they fight. “You coward, you come on now and show me what you got, and I’ll show you what I got,” he would dare. If Marko tried to run, Kevin planned to overtake him and force the fight on him.
Marko would not get away this time.
The years seemed to vanish in Kevin’s mind, and he was not only Kevin Walker, a sixteen-year-old junior at Tubman High School. He was Charlie Walker, twenty something, big and strong, father of a three-year-old boy, full of anger and righteous rage. He had been wronged and this was the showdown.
He was Charlie Walker, not a brutal man, but a decent man under most circumstances, a gentle man who carried his child on his shoulders and patiently described the names of the colorful flowers they came across. But he was a man who was done with being pushed around. He would be less than a man now if he did not fight, and so he would.
And he took the other man on, and they fought hand to hand until the other man fell into the curb and lay there with his blood spilling into the street. His head was broken open, and he never got up again.
But it wasn’t Charlie Walker’s fault. The man he killed by accident had driven him too far, and he had no choice but to fight. He just meant to teach the man a little respect. Sometimes a man has to fight. You can’t just keep taking it, or you are not a man at all.
Marko Lane finally came out of the burger joint. The sun was going down. It had been a cloudy day, and there would be a red sunset, with streaks of red and gold in the sky.
Kevin watched Marko swagger down the street, heading for his usual trip home through the field. He had hurt and insulted a fair share of his fellow human beings today. He had once again ruined Mr. Pippin’s English class. He had pasted that hideous limerick on Kevin’s locker. He had laughed at Derrick Shaw for being stupid and at Sami Archer for being overweight.
And now it would end in the field. That’s where it would happen. That’s where Kevin would put a stop to all the harassment, all the bullying. Kevin remembered the first time Marko Lane had almost tripped him. They didn’t even know each other’s names. That was the beginning. Today would be the end.