“Children begin by loving their parents; as they grow older they judge them; sometimes, they forgive them.”
Oscar Wilde – The Picture of Dorian Gray - 1891
Darryl ushered him down the hallway, while Fred held Aunt Lafonda’s hand. The walls were off-white, bare, cracked in some places, and his new shoes squeaked as they shuffled across the industrial carpet. The ceiling was much higher than the one at his house, and the bright lights made him blink.
“Fred, this is Walter. Walter, this is Fred.”
Darryl walked back to his office while Fred put his hands his pockets and looked up at the broadly smiling white face behind the desk.
“Come in Fred, come in! Sit down.” And Walter motioned him in.
Fred climbed up into the wooden chair in front of Walter’s desk as if it were a ladder, turned around, and sat down hard on his rear. He placed his arms up on the armrests, up by his ears and swung his little legs in front of him, looking around.
“I like your shirt, Fred. Who is that on it?”
Fred pulled his shirt out from across his belly, and looked at it upside down.
“Spiderman.”
“Spiderman? Wow! That is so cool! Spiderman was around when I was little.”
“Really?”
“Yep. I used to read about him in comic books. Do you know what those are?”
“No.”
“That’s ok. They were around when I was a kid. I guess you watch him on tv?”
“Yeah. I like watching tv. We have a big tv in our apartment.”
Silence. Fred looked at the pile of papers on Walter’s desk, the out of style ties crumpled across the back of the door, the diploma hung haphazardly right above Walter’s shiny head. Walter fumbled around for something else lighthearted to ease into it.
“What do you like to do other than watch Spiderman?”
“I like to ride my bicycle.”
“Does your Aunt Lafonda take you to the park to ride your bicycle?”
“She says not to go to the park. There are bad people there. I just ride it in front of our apartment?”
“In the parking lot?”
“Yeah….Do you ever go out and play, Mr. Walter?”
“Sure. I was little once like you. And I used to go out and play. But then I got big. And it’s a lot more fun being little than it is being big.”
Fred furrowed his brow for a minute, but didn’t agree with Walter.
“Fred, do you like to color?”
“Yeah.”
“I bought you some coloring books. Would you like to color with me?”
Walter placed a new Dora the Explorer coloring book on his desk. Fred slid down the chair, scooted it forward with a couple uneven tugs, and clambered his pudgy little body back up. He picked up a red crayon and began scratching away. It broke in his hand because he was pressing too hard.
“Do you know what else I like Mr. Walter?”
“What’s that Fred?”
“McDonalds.”
“I like McDonalds too. So do my kids. They love McDonalds here in Clarksdale
“You only have two kids? You look old.”
“Well, it took us a little while to get started on kids.”
“Do you like football?”
“Yes. What is your favorite team?”
“I like baseball.”
“Do you play with a wiffle ball or a real baseball? I don’t like playing with a real baseball because it hurts my hand.”
Fred put down the two pieces of his red crayon and picked up a brown one.
“I’m going to color me and you.”
Fred wrote his name above Dora and began to shade it in with his crayon. Then he paused for a minute, looked at his brown crayon, and put it down.
“What color should I color you?”
“Um, Fred, do you want some peanut butter crackers?”
“Sure.”
“Will you walk to the machine with me to get some?”
“Ok.”
“Do you want to meet the other people I work with on our way?”
And he took Fred by the hand and helped him out of the chair.
“This is Mr. Mike.”
I quickly minimized her autopsy photos on my computer screen and smiled as big as I could manage.
“Hey Little Fred!”
“Mr. Mike works across the hall from me.”
“He’s got more hair than you do, Mr. Walter”
“He sure does.”
I waived and watched them walk down the hall, then shut my door when they returned.
“What are you going to do this afternoon, Fred? Color some more?”
“Yes.”
“That sounds good.” And Fred was quiet.
“Mr. Walter, will you come over to my house?”
“Sure….um, I can’t come today, but I will come over soon.”
“My house is right over there. You just turn this way and that way and then that way and then you are there.” And he motioned with his hand in the air.
“Ok, that sounds good.”
More coloring.
“Mr. Walter, where did Aunt Lafonda go?”
“She went to the store. She’ll be back soon.”
“She sure is taking a long time at the store.”
“Maybe she likes shopping. My wife likes shopping, but I don’t. Do you like shopping little Fred?”
“Yep.”
“What if you go shopping for something you don’t like?”
“I always like going shopping.”
“What’s Diego doing in that picture?”
(inaudible)
“That looks like fun.”
After a few more minutes of coloring, Walter realized he had had too much Diet Coke.
“Fred, I have to go to the bathroom.” Walter got up from his desk. Fred dropped his brown crayon, and followed Walter down the hall to the bathroom. Squeak squeak.
“Um, but you’ve got to wait outside the door, ok Fred?
“Ok.”
Flush.
“Now I’ve got to go to the bathroom. Will you come with me?”
“Um, I’ll wait outside the door. Is that ok?”
“Sure.”
And Fred closed the door. He opened it after a bit.
“Did you flush?”
“Yes.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes.” Fred looked at the floor, and put one new shoe on top of the other.
“Why don’t you try one more time? You just push this lever and it flushes. Here, you do it.”
Back to the office. Fred banged his left knee trying to squeeze between the chair and the desk to get to his Dora picture.
“Can I take these colors home?”
“But if you take them home, how are you going to color here?”
“But I ain’t got no colors at home.”
“Will you bring them back with you the next time you come?
“How old are your kids?”
“They are five and two.”
“Five is just one more than I am….will you ever bring them over to play?”
“Do you want to play with my kids?”
“Sure.”
“Well, they are at the academy right now, but maybe one day after school I will bring them over.”
“Ok, that would be fun. We can ride bicycles at my house.”
Quiet.
“So, little Fred….do you want to go see the courtroom with me?”
“Sure.”
And he took little Fred’s hand, and led him back down the colorless hall, up the winding steps to Courtroom I. The solid oak doors were heavy, and Walter had to pull the polished brass handle with both hands to open it.
The door slapped shut. Fred breathed in the musty smell of oiled wood and dusty drapes.
“They sure have a lot of chairs in here. Looks like when I go to church.”
“You see that big chair up there? That’s where the judge sits. Have you ever seen a judge before, Fred?”
“I saw one on tv before.”
“He wears this big black robe. And he talks into this microphone and he tells people what to do.”
Fred thought that was pretty cool.
“Fred, if the judge ever told you what to do, would you do it?”
“Uh huh.”
“Ok…you see this chair over there next to the big chair? That’s called a witness chair. People sit in that chair, and they tell the judge their stories….do you want to go sit in that chair, Fred?”
“Yeah. That looks big!”
“Come on. Let’s go sit in it! I’ll race you!”
And they ran down the aisle, past the bar, up the steps, and Walter let Fred win.
“Whew! You sure are fast!”
Still breathing heavy, (since it had been a good while since Walter had run, well, anywhere) he picked up Fred, put him in the soft leather chair, latched the gate in front, and took five steps back to sit on the prosecutor’s table.
“I’m just going to stay down here and I’m going to talk to you. Is that ok?”
“Uh huh”
“So, Fred, what are your brother and sister’s names?”
“Jazlyn Young, Shy’Anna Gillespie, Montavius Webb, and Deyonte Young.”
“Sorry Fred, I can’t hear you. You have to speak up really loud.”
And Fred repeated the names best he could remember.
“See, that’s better. Because down here, I could hear you unless you talked really loud.”
Walter then moved to where there were a bunch of chairs on the side of the courtroom, where the choir probably sang, and sat down in the one farthest away from Fred.
“Fred, can you say those names again? I want to see if you can make me hear you when I am sitting over here.”
Fred said the names again at the top of his little voice.
“Good job Fred! Do you think you could do that again another day, maybe when there are other people in here besides me?”
“Uh huh.” And he nodded. He was fidgeting in his seat, thinking about his bicycle.
Walter took a minute to look at Fred sitting there in his Spiderman t-shirt, brown eyes slightly wide looking around at all the different things in this big room, swinging his legs in this much more comfortable chair, and digging in his ear with his left hand at something that itched. He hadn’t asked for it. He hadn’t done anything to deserve it.
Walter reached in his shirt pocket, and unfolded a piece of paper. He walked towards the child slowly, and held it up for Fred to see.
“Can you tell me who is in that picture?”
“Yes.”
“Here, you hold it and tell me who it is.” Fred took it in his little hands, looked at it, and after a moment, set it face down on his lap.
Walter watched intently for any hint of expression.
“That’s me.”
“Is there anybody else in that picture?”
“Aunt Lafondra.”
Walter paused for a minute. It was only Fred’s first day. There would be three or four more visits after this before it was time, before it mattered. But he pushed on.
“Is there a there a third person in this picture, Fred?”
“I don’t want to do this any more. I want to go color.”
“We’ll go color in a minute. Right now, I need you to tell me if you recognize that third person in the picture with you.”
“I don’t know.”
“Try really hard, Fred.” Walter leaned in closer to him.
And Fred was quiet and he looked down in his lap. He thought of the yelling, the smell of her perfume and axel grease, the trunk of his momma’s Cadillac, the sticky stuff on his face and on his momma’s face and on the back of his momma’s head and how her hair was all stuck in it, how the wire hurt his hands and feet, how the mosquitoes bit him on his neck and his belly when he was in the bushes behind the church, how his momma had taught him to find a toilet when he needed to go but he couldn’t find one and couldn’t move and how he just went on himself and how warm it was and that his momma was going to be mad and that he was going to get a spanking…how his momma wouldn’t answer him and she just laid there while he laid there on her and peed on her and how his daddy told his momma that she wasn’t supposed to have other boyfriends and she wouldn’t listen and how she told him to call the men uncle and he had so many uncles and how his daddy was mad that he had so many uncles.
Fred looked up at Mr. Walter.
“I don’t know.”
“That’s fine Fred. That’s fine…..Will you come see me next week?”
“Can we have peanut butter crackers again?”
“Yes.” Walter nodded. “We can have peanut butter crackers.”
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