My Life as a Rat. Joyce Carol Oates

       “Accident”

      IN NOVEMBER 1991 WHEN HADRIAN JOHNSON WAS BEATEN UNCONSCIOUS and left to die on the shoulder of Delahunt Road, and the lawyer who’d defended Jerome Jr. and Lionel Kerrigan at the time of Liza Deaver pleaded their case to prosecutors, the defense of boys will be boys didn’t work so well for them, or for my cousin Walt Lemire and a neighborhood friend named Don Brinkhaus who was also involved in the beating.

      At this time Jerome Jr. was nineteen and no longer living at home. He’d managed to graduate from South Niagara High with a vocational arts major and, through Daddy’s intervention, was an apprentice plumber with the contractor for whom Daddy also worked, the largest and best-known plumbing contractor in the city; he had not yet been accepted into the plumbers’ union but there was no doubt that he would be as soon as he completed his probationary period. (No African Americans belonged to the local plumbers’ union. This would be emphasized, unfairly some thought, in the media coverage of the case; unfairly because there were no African Americans in the local police officers’ union, the firefighters’ union, the electricians’ and the carpenters’ unions, among others. The only local union in which black men were welcomed was the sanitation workers’ union which was predominantly black and Latino.) Lionel was sixteen, a sophomore at the high school, big for his age, coarse-skinned, easily bored. Even in vocational arts Lionel’s grades were poor, he cut classes often, our mother didn’t dare report him to our father for fear of a terrible scene. But Lionel was in awe of his independent older brother who lived by himself now in a place near the railroad yard and owned a car, Daddy’s old 1984 Chevrolet he’d passed on to Jerr since it was all but worthless as a trade-in. Weekends the two hung out together drinking beer with Jerr’s friends, cruising in Jerr’s car. Jerr had hated school but now he was hating full-time employment even more, being overseen, assessed and judged. Worse, he hated being a plumber’s assistant, actually having to clear toilets of shit, every kind of crap, came close to puking every time he went out.

      What their father called fucking real-life. Didn’t know how the hell long he could take this fucking real-life.

      At the house Jerr had grown sick of Mom snooping into his life. Overhearing him on the phone. Giving him unwanted advice. Stripping his bed of soiled sheets, picking up his filth-stiffened socks and underwear from the floor to be laundered. Preparing food he was bored with, he’d grown out of eating years ago, had come to hate. Fast-food restaurants were good enough for him, greasy cheeseburgers, heavily salted french fries. Anything that came in a cellophane wrapper strung up in colorful displays at the 7-Eleven, he’d tear open with his teeth in a pretense of rapacity.

      When he’d broken up with his girlfriend boasting how he’d left her stranded at a tavern, exactly what the bitch deserved for disrespecting him, there was Mom shocked and demanding to know why he’d do such a thing, she had met Abbie and Abbie seemed like a nice girl, and Jerr came back at her, “Fuck ‘Abbie is a nice girl.’ You don’t know shit about ‘Abbie,’ Mom. So mind your own fucking business. There’s no ‘nice girls’ just different kinds of pigs.”

      Mom was so shocked by Jerr speaking to her in such a way, not just the disrespect, the insolence, but also the meaning of his words, the loathing for her, she could not reply but stumbled away to another room.

       No nice girls just different kinds of pigs.

      AGAIN AND AGAIN, WHY.

      But it was like nice girls, pigs—there was no why.

      You would say, the Kerrigan boys had not been brought up that way, and that would be true. And yet.

      Going back to a time when our father had attended South Niagara High there’d been incidents involving white boys and darker-skinned boys, especially following Friday night sports events, but these were usually squabbles or altercations between sports teams, rival schools. Rivalry with Niagara Falls High, Tonawanda High, South Buffalo. Some of these teams were predominantly white, and others were predominantly black. South Niagara had integrated teams, our coaches liked to boast. Boys’ teams, girls’ teams. Football, basketball, softball. Swim team.

      Cheerleaders? That was another story.

      No incident had involved Hadrian Johnson, who was on both the varsity basketball and softball teams in his junior year.

      The previous year, when Jerome Kerrigan Jr. had been a senior, he’d known Hadrian Johnson slightly, as he’d known a scattering of African American boys at the school, but there’d been no animosity between them—none at all. So Jerome Jr. insisted, and so it seemed to be true.

      Lionel would deny “animosity” too. Any “race prejudice”—not him.

      They would insist, they admired black athletes—Mike Tyson, Magic Johnson, Michael Jordan. Jerry Rice, Barry Sanders. And many others.

      They’d been aware of Hadrian Johnson on the high school sports teams for who had not been aware of Hadrian Johnson? Not that Hadrian was a brilliant player, usually he was just very good, very reliable, the kind coaches can depend upon.

      Yes it was true, the better black athletes at South Niagara were generally showy, spectacular. They modeled themselves after the great national black athletes whom Americans watched avidly on TV. These were the insolent blacks whom white boys feared, disliked, envied. If these black athletes were not demonstrably superior to the very best white players they were likely not to be chosen for varsity teams for there was much pressure from (white) fathers, that their sons be chosen for teams, and there was (as coaches tried to explain) limited space on the teams; but, granted this fact, in the face of such competition still Hadrian Johnson was chosen for two varsity teams, a favorite of coaches and of teammates.

      A black kid, yes. But not, you know—one of them.

      South Niagara wasn’t a large school: fewer than five hundred students distributed among three grades. In some way everyone knew everyone else.

      But white students and darker-skinned students didn’t mix much. On sports teams and in the school band and chorus, service clubs, but not socially.

      Nor was there “mixed” dating. Just about never.

      It was ironic, Hadrian Johnson had been an outstanding player on the South Niagara Jaycee boys’ softball team, which was comprised of boys from several city schools. Photographs of Hadrian in his Jaycee uniform, to be published in newspapers and on TV, had been taken at Kerrigan Field.

      Questioned by South Niagara prosecutors whether they’d had any special reason to stalk and harass Hadrian Johnson, the boys insisted no.

      They had not “stalked” him—that was wrong. They’d meant just to scare him. And they had not known it was him—they hadn’t seen his face, not at first.

      But had they forced Hadrian Johnson off the road, because he was black?

      Vehemently they denied this. Repeatedly, they denied this.

      Four white boys driving a vehicle, a solitary black boy on a bicycle, late Saturday night—but no, they were not racists.

      It would be bitterly debated, whether the attack had been a hate crime, or an assault that had gotten out of control in which race wasn’t an issue. If a hate crime the assailants were likely to be sentenced to longer prison sentences, if they were found guilty; but there was the possibility, if they insisted upon a jury trial, that they might be acquitted by a sympathetic (i.e., white) jury. If he could devise a way in which such a defense would not backfire and make things worse, in the media for instance, their lawyer was considering the boys might claim self-defense.

      The boys had been drinking for most of the evening. Two of them were underage which involved the others, for having supplied them with alcohol; the 7-Eleven storekeeper who’d sold them the six-packs was in trouble as well. They’d been driving around, at the mall, returned from the mall, drinking and tossing