At the courthouse are about twenty friends I didn’t know I had.
They are loyal followers of LONEWOLF, frequent posters on my site, men and women who read about Davis and wanted to do more than just type their sympathy. Like me, they don’t look the way most people would expect a skinhead to look. No one is bald, except me. They’re all wearing ordinary clothing. Some have tiny sun-wheel pins on their collars. Many wear a baby-blue ribbon for Davis. Some pat my shoulder or call me by name. Others just nod, the tiniest inclination of their heads, to let me know they are here for me as I pass down the aisle.
Just then a nigger comes up to me. I nearly shove her away when she starts talking—a knee-jerk reaction—and then I realize I know her voice, and that she’s the prosecutor.
I have talked to Odette Lawton on the phone, but she didn’t sound black. This feels like a slap, like some kind of conspiracy.
Maybe this is a good thing. It’s no surprise that the liberals who run the court system have it out for Anglos, and there’s no way we could ever get a fair trial because of it. They’ll make this about me instead of that nurse. But if the lawyer who’s on my side is black, well, then I can’t possibly be prejudiced, can I?
They’ll never have to know what I’m really thinking.
Someone reads the judge’s name—DuPont—which doesn’t sound like some Jew name, which is a good start. Then I sit through four other defendants before they call the name Ruth Jefferson.
The courtroom sizzles like a griddle. People start booing, and raising up signs with my son’s face on them—a picture I uploaded to the website, the only one I have of him. Then the nurse is brought in, wearing a nightgown and shackles on her wrists. She is looking around the gallery. I wonder if she’s trying to find me.
I decide to make it easy for her.
In one swift movement, I’m on my feet and leaning over the low railing that separates us from the lawyers and the stenographer. I take a deep breath and hurl a gob of spit that smacks the bitch on the side of the face.
I can tell the second she recognizes me.
Instantly I am flanked by bailiffs who drag me out of the courtroom, but that’s okay, too. Because even as I’m pulled away, the nurse will see the swastika snaking down the back of my scalp.
It’s okay to lose a battle, when you are in it to win the war.
—
THE TWO MEATHEAD bailiffs dump me outside the heavy doors of the courthouse. “Don’t think about coming back in,” one warns, and then they disappear inside.
I rest my hands on my knees, catching my breath. I may not have access to the courtroom, but this is a free country, as far as I know. They can’t keep me from staying here and watching Ruth Jefferson get carted to jail.
Resolved, I look up, and that’s when I see them: the vans, with satellite dishes. The reporters smoothing their skinny skirts and testing their microphones. The media that has come to report on this case.
The lawyer said they needed a grieving parent, not an angry parent? I can give them that.
But first, I pull out my cellphone and call Francis at home. “Get Brit out of bed, and park her in front of the television.” I glance at the news vans. “Channel Four.”
Then I take a cap out of my pocket, the one I wore into the courthouse this morning so I wouldn’t draw attention to my tattoo until I wanted to. I center it on my head.
I think about Davis, because that’s all I need to make tears come to my eyes.
“You saw that, right?” I approach a slant reporter I’ve seen on NBC. “You saw me get thrown out of that building?”
She glances at me. “Uh, yeah. Sorry, but we’re here to cover a different story.”
“I know,” I say. “But I’m the father of the dead baby.”
I tell the reporter that Brit and I had been so excited about our first baby. I say I’d never seen anything as perfect as his tiny hands, his nose, which looked just like Brit’s. I say that my wife is still so upset over what happened to Davis that she can’t get out of bed, can’t even be here today at court.
I say it is a tragedy for someone who has taken a vow to heal to intentionally kill a helpless infant, just because she is upset at being removed from a patient’s care. “I understand that we didn’t see eye to eye,” I say, looking at the reporter. “But that doesn’t mean my son deserved to die.”
“What do you hope the outcome will be, Mr. Bauer?” she asks.
“I want my son back,” I tell her. “But that isn’t going to happen.”
Then I excuse myself. Truth is, I’m starting to choke up, thinking about Davis. And I’m not going to be broadcast blubbering like a girl.