Page 89 of Savagely Yours
Emilio took my wrist and lightly squeezed. “Look, let’s just go. And don’t let anyone else hear you talking like that. They might think you did this, and I like you. I don’t want anythingbad to happen to you. I know I give you a hard time, but I like the fact that you have your Class One blowing your back out on the regular.”
We continued down the path.
For now, I would let the matter drop.
As we neared Eden’s Square, where we would separate because I refused to pass through it, a Class One stepped onto the grass with a megaphone near his mouth. People had gathered into a crowd, and I scanned every face I could, searching for any clues that my efforts wouldn’t be in vain.
“It’s all lies!” the Class One yelled. “And, it’s offensive. Back when society functioned as it should, some of the most important people were our trash collectors, our janitors. This,” he raised a flyer, “is prejudice. Just because Sanitation Services is the unit keeping Totten clean and beautiful, we’re being accused of abusing them? Who made the people who created these flyers the judges of who’s important to society? No one made it through The Fall unscathed, and we are doing an exceptional job here at Totten, aren’t we?”
The crowd roared their agreement.
Someone yelled, “One flyer said they sleep four people to a room, at a minimum. Is that true?”
The Class One gestured in an arbitrary direction. “Some of our Class Fours share rooms. It’s just the way it is. As Totten grows, we’ll expand. We’re even negotiating trade deals with communities as far south as South Carolina. Sometimes, a bit of hardship is necessary in order to grow.”
Another person asked, “Is it true that they have to enter a lottery to get medicine?”
The Class One didn’t miss a beat, as if they were both reciting from the same script. “Of course not. That’s a fundamental misunderstanding of the way our system is set up. Since we have to ration medicine, we try alternative treatments first. Forinstance, we won’t waste antibiotics on a virus, as society did in the past, but we don’t withhold medication. That would be inhumane.”
My right hand folded into a fist.
It reminded me of standing in front of a defendant, knowing they were lying their ass off because I’d seen the damning evidence. However, a judge had decided to throw out that evidence. Therefore, I’d had to restrain myself as they pretended they weren’t the piece of shit human responsible for kidnapping and exploiting children.
“And the people who died?” a third person asked.
“They died of the infection that you’re safe from here in Totten,” the Class One answered. “Whoever these people are,” he waved the flyer, “they’re lying to you.”
Emilio gestured to the gathering, which was quickly increasing in size. “Does that clear things up for you?” he asked. “If not, look at it like this: do you think you’d be allowed to do all the nasty shit I’m sure you’re doing with your little soldier, if you were out there in the muck?”
I wasn’t an idealist, nor did I wear rose-colored glasses. Any glasses I might have owned cracked the day I found out that my sister wouldn’t be coming home. The day I understood why, they shattered.
I didn’t go into law expecting daisies and rainbows. Still, my ethics pointed in a specific direction, and I’d held onto a sort of moral optimism about humankind, despite knowing what we’d done to one another, over and over, throughout history. Those ethics were the driving force behind my conviction that, ultimately, people would choose people. That they would choose dignity.
I’d believed that all people needed was tosee, and that would stir them, rile them up. Once they learned the truth, in my mind,they would come to the same conclusions and want the same things.
But people didn’t need to see.
They needed to experience.
They needed to suffer until their suffering outweighed their ignorance. Yet, for some, even that wouldn’t be enough to remove the blindfold.
It was like LaSalle had said: he’d lived his life entirely dependent upon the existence of an “other.” Nothing changed for him until the moment he learned that he was part of the whole, part of the “us.”
“I’m gonna go,” I said.
Emilio grabbed my hand. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” I pulled out of his hold. “I’m fine. I’m just tired and ready to go home.”
I walked away from the crowd.
Rather than stop at Juniper, I continued past the brick building, needing to put space between myself and the weight of my realizations.
When Raven was abducted, it wasn’t only family and friends who stepped in. People from different counties in Louisiana all joined the search. Eventually, so did people from neighboring states. Volunteers took leave from their jobs to hang flyers and walk through tall grass and mud, their dogs hoping to catch a scent of my sister. People I’d never met made us meals, changed Wren’s Pull-Ups, and read me bedtime stories in funny voices to attempt to drown out my parents’ wails in the other rooms.
They came together to try to rectify a wrong.
Although the outcome wasn’t what we’d hoped, I’d seen what the collective efforts of good hearts could accomplish. It was primarily what had sparked my interest in law.
