He sits there as long as he can, until people start filing out of the cafeteria to head to class, and then he packs his bag back up, goes to his locker, grabs Earl’s jacket, walks out of the school. He doesn’t sign out, doesn’t do anything other than go to his mom’s car, get in, and turn the key.
He’s already at the gate to the compound before he understands what he’s doing. Driving on autopilot. There’s police tape fluttering in the breeze, strange tentacles of history. The gate’s closed. He sits for a few minutes, looking, but there’s nothing to see. No blood, no bodies. No men standing guard with AR-15s, the White America Militia in hiding.
The protester who was killed was a woman. Francine Nicholson. A sociology professor at Cortaca University. Unmarried. Thirty-three. She’d driven two of her graduate students with her to the protest. He’s heard that the counterrally tonight is supposed to be in her honor. A memorial rally. A peace rally.
It’s going to be a disaster. The Women’s March on the pedestrian mall the weekend of President Trump’s inauguration drew close to ten thousand people. Cortaca is that kind of town. And he knows Wyatt, knows the crowd of white supremacists that is going to come in response to Brandon’s call, in response to TakeBack. They are going to be ugly. Brandon’s people aren’t coming for a peace rally. At least it’s New York, he thinks. No open carry laws, concealed carry tough to come by in the county, too, maybe that will keep things under control. Or just the sheer number of counterprotesters. No matter how many people Wyatt thinks are coming—three hundred, four hundred, a thousand—no matter how much Brandon Rogers is pushing this, it’s happening too quickly. It’s a Monday and there isn’t time for the white power groups to get here from all over the country; they will be outnumbered ten to one by counterprotesters.
Jessup closes his eyes, prays. He doesn’t ask for forgiveness. He doesn’t ask for anything for himself, just asks for the safety of his family, for Jesus to keep Jewel safe, to let Christ’s love be a beacon to guide her, for his mother and David John to find some sort of peace together away from all of this. But most of all, he prays that tonight, on the pedestrian mall, there is not another woman left lying on the ground like Francine Nicholson.