As soon as the car hit Interstate 64 East, about ninety minutes from Norfolk, Jesse Jessup, Don Anthony and Venita Daniels broke open the cooler that rested on the backseat.
It had been there, untouched, since Jesse departed Philadelphia almost four hours earlier. He stopped in Fredericksburg, Virginia to pick up Venita and then they rode down to scoop up Don in Richmond. This was how they’d traveled to homecoming for the previous six years—Jesse driving down and picking up his two close friends along the way.
Don’s seat was in the back, next to the cooler, and he passed Jesse a Heineken and poured Grey Goose and cranberry juice with a twist of lime for he and Venita in see-through plastic cups. They had stopped at a Burger King drive-thru and devoured the food. It was more a coating for their stomachs than a hearty meal.
They had not seen each other in about a year—or last home-coming. But they were used to road trips together; they took countless weekend excursions home during their college days.
Each of them was from Richmond but they did not meet until they were sophomores at Norfolk State. During a party at Spartan Village, the townhouse development across from campus on Corprew Avenue, the deejay named The Controller yelled, “Where Richmond at?” into the microphone.
Venita, Don and Jesse, dancing near each other, thrust their hands in the air and yelled. They were proud to be from the state capital, and they noticed each other’s enthusiasm. They stopped dancing, introduced themselves and were surprised they were from the same city but had not met. They became nearly inseparable friends from that night on.
And so here they were again headed back to Norfolk, starting their traditional pre-homecoming drinking.
“This never gets old,” Venita said. “But every year we talk about getting together other than homecoming. And it never happens. We’ve got to do better. Y’all are my boys. This is crazy.”
“I know,” Don said. “But life keeps getting in the way. Plus, I’m not sure your husband wants us hanging out so much.”
“What about your wife?” Venita said. “She told me she was suspect of our friendship.”
“What? When?” Don asked.
“Last year when we picked you up,” she answered. “I told her, ‘I hope you’re joking because we’ve been friends for years.’ But I didn’t say anything to you about it because I was hoping that was it.”
“Plus, Don can’t beat his wife,” Jesse said. “If he said something to her, she’d kick his ass.”
Don nearly choked on his drink, laughing. “Whatever, Jesse,” he said. “Just keep the car between the white lines.”
They cruised along the highway, reminiscing and joking and generally leaving behind the trials of their everyday lives. Venita’s cousin died of kidney failure at forty-eight. Jesse was recently divorced and troubled by his sister’s recent marriage to a drug dealer. Don had financial concerns about the survival of his business.
None of that mattered homecoming weekend; well, not as much, anyway. This was the escape of all escapes.
“You know, my little niece, Diamond, is a junior at Norfolk State; she transferred from William & Mary,” Venita said. “I really want to see her. It was her uncle who was sick and passed away, as if she’s not already dealing with enough family drama.”
“Diamond?” Don said.
“Don’t you start, Don,” Venita jumped in.
“Okay,” he said, smiling. “But I’m just saying. Diamond? What’s she majoring in? Pole-dancing?”
Venita could not hold back her laughter. Neither could Jesse. “I was wondering when it would start—I guess it’s now,” Jesse said. “Okay. Cool. It’s on.”
“Man, I couldn’t help it,” Don said. “My bad. My bad.”
“Too late now,” Venita said. “It’s been put in motion.”
“Well, you knew it was going to start at some point. I’m surprised it took ten minutes,” Jesse said.
“It’s okay,” Venita said. “Diamond is an honor student, thank you very much. As I said, she transferred from William & Mary. But she’s enjoying being a Spartan.”
“Lily-white William & Mary? I bet NSU is a shock to her system,” Jesse said. “She probably doesn’t know how to act with all those black folks. She’s probably the most popular girl on campus.”
“Hey, wait,” Venita said. “So now you saying my little niece is a whore? I know you don’t want to start fighting in this car.”
“Like cousin, like cousin,” Jesse chimed in and even Venita laughed and slapped him on the arm.
“Excuse me,” she added, pushing aside the bangs that covered her oval-shaped face, “but ain’t nobody get this at Norfolk State, thank you very much.”
“’Cause ain’t nobody want it,” Don said, laughing.
“Oh, so the hate is everywhere; that’s fine,” Venita said. “You know I was fine back in school. And I ain’t bad now, either.”
“I’m just messing with you,” Jesse said, glancing over at her. “You know you were cute. You still are cute. You just weigh a pound or two more.”
“Yeah,” Don said, “a pound or two more in ten different places on your body.”
Venita laughed with her friends. She could take a joke—and deliver one, too. “That’s okay. Wait until next Homecoming. This weight will be gone,” she said. “I already started my program. Cutting back on carbs and sweets and drinking more water—and I’m walking every night. And I don’t eat after seven anymore. Nothing. You probably can’t tell a difference, but I can.
“And it’s not like I’m the only one in this car who needs to drop a few . . . am I, Don? You look like the Pillsbury Doughboy’s overweight brother.”
Don had a thick frame in college and he gradually added on weight over the years after school. He looked like an out-of-shape football player—relatively short and round, bald-headed with a thick goatee.
“At least you don’t wear clothes that are too tight,” Don said, after laughing at Venita’s crack about him. “I feel like throwing up every time I see a big woman in tight clothes, accentuating their rolls and rolls of fat.
“Now, don’t get me wrong—I know I’m big and need to lose some weight. A lot of people have weight issues. I’m not criticizing us for that. But to be big and put on super-tight leggings and tops that hug the body and have their blubber spilling all over the place . . . I don’t get that.”
“Wait,” Venita said. “Are you saying I’m a big girl?”
“Nothing wrong with big girls,” Jesse said, smiling. “They are warm and cuddly.”
“No, I’m not saying that, Venita,” Don answered. “Relax and eat a doughnut.”
“Kiss my big ass,” Venita said, laughing.
“Pull those big pants down; I’ll smack it and kiss it,” Don said.
Their laughter was broken by the sound of state trooper sirens.
“Oh, shit,” Jesse said. “Was I speeding?”
“No, you weren’t speeding,” Venita said. “You know I was monitoring it. But we’re in New Kent County.”
“Oh, hell. We got stopped in this stupid-ass county before,” Don said. “They’re notorious.”
“Put those empty bottles in the bottom of the cooler, under the ice,” Jesse said, pulling over.
Venita slipped everyone a few mints.
“Okay, everybody be quiet. Let me handle this shit,” Jesse said.
He depressed the button to lower the driver side window. He placed both hands on the steering wheel to make it clear to the trooper he was not a threat.
“How you doing, sir?” the trooper said.
“Fine. How can I help you?” Jesse said.
“You can give me your license, registration and insurance card,” he said.
“Can you tell me why you stopped us?” Jesse asked as delicately as he could.
“I can tell you again to give me the information I asked for,” he said, as he looked over Venita and Don. He then fixated on the cooler.
“What’s in there?” he said.
“Drinks,” Don said from the back.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” the trooper said with attitude. “You—what’s in there?”
“Drinks,” Jesse answered.
“Oh, so you’re a smart guy, huh?” the trooper said. His pale complexion turned pink. He was angry.
“Everyone out of the car,” he said.
“Officer, hold on,” Jesse said, handing over the information he requested. “I wasn’t getting smart with you. I was just answering you.”
“Wait right here,” he said and retreated to his car to check Jesse’s credentials.
“This is some bullshit,” Don said.
“I know,” Venita added. “I was checking your speed. He had no reason to stop us.”
“Don,” Jesse said, looking in the rearview mirror, “make sure those beers and liquor tops are on secure.”
“I buried the vodka at the bottom of the ice and the empty beer bottles. We’re good.”
“This Robocop has nothing better to do than mess with us?” Venita said. “This is why no one likes cops these days.”
“He ain’t a cop; he’s a trooper,” Don said.
“Same difference,” Jesse interjected. “He has a badge and a gun and thinks he can fuck with us anytime he pleases. I mean, why was he trying to get us out of the car? This shit is dumb.”
After a few minutes of back-and-forth, the trooper came back to the car.
“Mr. Hill, your license is suspended in Virginia,” he said.
“What?” Jesse said. “Sir, that’s not true. As you can see by my license, I live in Philadelphia.”
“Have you ever lived at 1564 Gabriel Drive in Norfolk?”
“No, I haven’t. I went to college in Norfolk, but I lived on campus and then on Monticello.”
“That’s not what’s in the system and that’s what I have to go by,” the trooper said. “I’m going to have to ticket you. And you must step out of the car; in fact, everyone out.”
Jesse was angry and confused. “If you’re giving me a ticket, why do we need to get out of the car?” he asked.
“Just do what I say or this will be even worse for you,” he snapped back.
Venita placed her hand on Jesse’s shoulder. “It’s okay. It’s okay,” she said. “Come on.” She knew Jesse had an explosive temper when wronged. She was there when, as a junior in college, he initiated a brawl on the basketball courts with some locals on Brambleton Avenue, near campus, after a guy he didn’t like fouled him into the fence. The police came but even that did not temper his rage. Luckily, the police were more interested in controlling the situation than arresting him.
This trooper seemed to have a different objective. So Venita tried to make sure Jesse remained poised. One by one, the trooper had them lean against the car and patted them down, a humiliating act that they had seen happen to other people but were dismayed it was happening to them.
He talked into the microphone on his shoulder as he had them stand back a certain distance away from the car, in the grass beyond the gravel on which the car was parked.
“Stay right here,” he ordered them through his dark sunglasses. “Don’t move.”
Within a minute, another trooper pulled up with his lights flashing. The two of them whispered to each other before they began searching Jesse’s car.
“Don’t you need a search warrant for that?” Jesse asked.
“You’re driving with a suspended license in my state; that gives me reason to wonder why—and to search your vehicle,” he said, his nose a few inches from Jesse’s. “You got a problem with that?”
“I do have a problem with that,” Jesse said. “I’m an attorney and I know we have done nothing for us to be standing on the side of the highway or for you to be searching my car.”
“You’re gonna need a lawyer to get you out of jail if you keep talking,” the trooper said.
“Jesse,” Venita said.
“You’d better listen to her,” the trooper said before turning away.
Jesse was seething. When he was fifteen, he had the scare of his life. While standing in line for a cheesesteak one day, he was approached by two Philadelphia cops. They pulled him out of line and slapped handcuffs on him.
In the police car, they explained that he fit the description of someone accused of robbing a woman at gunpoint several blocks away as she exited her car.
“What? I didn’t do anything,” he said.
“We will see,” one cop told him. “If this women identifies you, you’re going to jail.”
Jesse’s heart pounded. He had heard of men being mistakenly identified, yet jailed nonetheless. “Oh, God. Please help this woman see I’m not the person that robbed her,” he prayed to himself. He had plans for the future that included college and law school, and even that young, he knew going to jail could derail his ambitions.
When they arrived to the woman’s house, she was standing in front of her brownstone on Bainbridge. The Philadelphia skyline was in the not too distant background.
One officer pulled Jesse out of the car. The other officer brought the woman over. He stood there, shaking, understanding that his fate rested in the word of a woman he had never before seen.
She was old, he quickly surmised; in her seventies, meaning her vision had to be suspect. That made him even more scared.
The woman looked him over, pulled down the glasses that hung near the tip of her nose and made a face that Jesse could not read.
“So, is this the boy that snatched your purse, ma’am?” one officer asked.
She didn’t answer. She looked him up and down and focused on his eyes.
“No,” she said finally. “This is not the young man.”
“You sure,” one cop said.
“That is not him,” she said. Then she turned and slowly made her way toward her home.
Jesse was placed in the rear of the police car, where he wept. His tears were from relief that the woman was honest but also because he had no control over his life. It was then he knew for sure he would become a lawyer to defend the rights of the unprotected, the vulnerable. His parents moved to Richmond that summer.
Those troopers reminded him of the officers that randomly pulled him out of line when he was a teenager. And it made him angry. He and his friends watched one trooper pull the cooler out of the back and go through it, tossing aside items as if they were debris. Finally, he pulled out a few empty beer bottles.
“Who drank these?” the trooper said.
“They were in there from the last time I used the cooler,” Don offered. “I put ice over them.”
“Why wouldn’t you throw the bottles away if they were old?” he asked.
“Because I bought the ice and put it in the car. I opened the cooler to put the ice in it as we were driving and saw the empty bottles in there. So, I just left them at the bottom and poured the ice over them.”
The trooper was not buying it, but he couldn’t prove him wrong, either. And he was so aggravated that he did not notice the vodka in the cooler. “I think we should test them,” one trooper said to the other.
“Let’s see what’s in the trunk,” he answered.
They then went into the rear of Jesse’s BMW and pulled out their luggage.
“I can’t even believe this,” Venita said.
They searched the sides of the trunk and underneath, where the spare tire was kept, apparently searched for drugs or weapons.
Several minutes later, they came over to them.
“You,” he said, pointing at Jesse, “cannot operate a vehicle in my state. So, unless one of you two have a valid driver’s license, I’m impounding the car.”
“What?” Jesse said.
“It’s okay” Don said. “I can drive.”
The first trooper took his license and went to the car to run it through DMV. The second trooper stood with them.
“Where you all going?” he asked.
“What difference does it make?” Venita said. “We can go wherever we want, right? We’re free, you know?”
“Hey, don’t be a wise-ass with me,” he said sharply.
“Nobody’s being a wise-ass,” Jesse said. “What if you were riding with your friends and get pulled over for no reason. You wouldn’t be happy, either.”
“But we know it wouldn’t happen to you, would it?” Don said.
The trooper approached Don. “I don’t know what you’re insinuating, but I don’t like it,” he said. “Now, you should get out of here with just a ticket—if you keep your mouth shut.”
“Excuse me, but why can’t we talk?” Jesse said. “And I should be happy to get a ticket I don’t deserve after being stopped for no reason and now standing on the side of the highway as I watch you go through our private property? I should be happy to receive a ticket?”
The other trooper came up. “You should be happy this man has a valid Virginia driver’s license,” he said.
He went over to Jesse. “This is your citation. And here’s your court date,” he said, circling the piece of paper. “I look forward to seeing you then. In the meantime, if I catch you driving in my state, I’m going to haul your ass off to jail. You got that?”
Jesse did not answer. They stared at each other.
The second trooper interceded. “Now you all go on and have a nice day,” he said.
Jesse stepped around the trooper and opened the door for Venita. He and Don put their belongings back in the trunk and Don took over the driving duties.
In the car, the anger was palpable; no one said a word for a few miles.
Finally, Don broke the silence. “It was my time to drive, anyway,” he said. “And give me a beer, Jesse. To hell with those guys. We’re going to homecoming.”
“For a minute,” Jesse said, “I thought we weren’t going to make it. I was a half-second from jumping on that dude’s neck and strangling him.”
“I could tell,” Venita said. “And you know what? I would have helped you.”
“How can I have a suspended license in Virginia from an address I never lived? That’s crazy,” Jesse said.
“You know they mess that stuff up all the time,” Don said, reaching for the beer Jesse handed him. “The best thing to do is pay the ticket and be done with it—but also call the motor vehicles office to figure out how they have you at an address you never lived.”
“Uh, bartender,” Venita said. She had turned in her seat to face Don. “Can I have a Cosmopolitan, please? And not too heavy on the cranberry juice.”
“Coming right up,” Jesse said. “But how about a shot of Grey Goose to take the edge off. On the house.”
“Well, since they’re complimentary, I say pour them,” Don said, smiling into the rearview mirror. Venita high-fived Jesse.
And just like that, they were back on track. Their roadside experience flustered and angered them. But it did not diminish the purpose of their journey. They were almost at homecoming, and soon that little incident would be a small but memorable part of their fascinating 2012 experience.