DISCLAIMER: The contents of this short story and the events occurring within are meant as a mechanism to illustrate a point, not a promotion of any belief system, any behavior, or anything else.
No Good Reason
We live in a society that can lead individuals from all backgrounds and of all personalities to caustic ways of thinking based in weak logic and strong emotion; good people can become bigots and bad people can become bigots. There are racists, sexists, thieves, pedophiles, and bullies among us and they became the way they are for some reason or another. It may have been an unjustified reason, but there was a series of events and observations that led the person to that sort of thinking. We can hate them all we want, but something made them change from a non-bigot to a bigot. Criminals were innocent before they were guilty and bigots were unbiased before they weren’t. This is a cautionary tale to help you be mindful and not become a force for evil.
John was a young Caucasian man, recently out of high school and saving up for college with a full-time job at a grocery store. He had saved up enough for the last two years and was going to enroll next semester at the local tech school and then work his way up. He lived in a four-bedroom apartment in a neighborhood in Manchester, New Hampshire that wasn’t so bad that you couldn’t walk around. It wasn’t a high-income area by a longshot, but it could have been worse; that’s how John saw it anyway. He grew up with the thought that racism was wrong, although his family made a few too many racist jokes, especially his older brother; granted, his oldest brother was friends with quite a few Hispanic and African-American people.
It was a brisk fall morning in the inner city area; the trees at the park by his house were colored warmly with red, orange, and yellow. It was about eight in the morning and John had work at nine. He showered quickly, allotting himself ten minutes, so he would have time for breakfast before he had to catch the 8:30 bus. He ate and wished his family goodbye before catching the bus by the convenient store on the corner.
He had slept well and had a positive attitude about the day. His supervisor told him that he was going to be manning the express lane today, fourteen items or less. He preferred this least of his duties at Market Basket, not enjoying the fact that you opened your money till over and over and you said “How are you today?” and “Have a great day!” over and over. He wasn’t a fan of express registers. He also let it slide when people had a few over, because in his mind it would only take longer to turn them away anyway; especially the older ones who don’t move to fast.
He had a six hour shift today and it was going by fairly fast and problem-free until about midway through. It was fairly busy, the store was having a rush of customers, and John chuckled at the thought that everyone wants fourteen items today; no more, no less. Every order was close to the fourteen item limit and so his line was backing up. One older woman, seemingly African, was next in line and she was not able to speak English except for a few key words. She had about eighteen items but John didn’t want to have to try to tell her that she wasn’t allowed in this lane. The man behind her was clearly annoyed. John began ringing the woman’s groceries.
A few items in the angry man looked at him and said loudly “I guess she doesn’t know how to read.” It was directed to her even though he was looking at John. John just shrugged, not wanting to get involved with a dispute between customers, although he didn’t like the man’s tone. He kept ringing groceries but a moment later the man said “Learn how to read Nigger. It’s fourteen items or less.” The woman clearly understood the slur he said to her and looked defeated and scared. John had had it.
“Shut your mouth! You don’t need to be racist. Don’t fucking say it again.” John nearly shouted at the man, and asserted his height and weight.
“Well she should learn to read.” The man said, less angrily, but clearly agitated.
“But there’s no reason for being racist!” John called his manager and told her that he wasn’t going to serve this guy because he was racist and that she could if she wanted but he refused. She sided with him, him being a good kid who never caused problems; she kicked the man out of the store and John calmed down and finished his shift. He was so angry.
He let it go on the way home and didn’t let it bother him anymore. When he returned home, his two brothers, Mike and Matt, and his sister Lena were home and his mother was still at work. They decided to get some pizza and watch some TV. John’s oldest brother Mike didn’t usually partake in these activities; instead, he would hang out with his buddies and play video games and smoke weed. They never made it obvious they were smoking weed, but you could smell it.
While waiting for the pizza John’s younger brother Matt told him that his Xbox 360 had been stolen. His brother had found out a week ago, and had let it go, so he said it like it wasn’t a big deal. John was pissed off; stuff hadn’t been stolen from his house since he was like twelve years old. No one ever came over to his house so his first impression was it must have been someone in the apartment buildings or one of Mike, his oldest brother’s, friends; he knew they weren’t the most honest people. He hoped that it wasn’t one of his brother’s friends because that would be a lot more disappointing.
He asked why Matt hadn’t filed a police report. Matt didn’t want to file one since it might postpone his ship-date for Marines’ Boot camp. John was thinking about filing one himself and saying that the Xbox was a gift from his brother; but they pointed out they didn’t have the box that has the serial number on it so they wouldn’t be able to prove it. John was really angry about this; he hated thieves. He decided there was nothing he could do, but they all decided that people wouldn’t be wandering around the apartment anymore, unescorted. Once Mike’s friends left, John let him know that Matt’s stuff was stolen. His brother tried to brush it off with the implication “Don’t accuse my friends.” However, John saw that his brother didn’t fully believe what he implied.
The night went on uneventfully after that and John went to sleep with a sense of resignation to the day that was filled with events that weren’t the best he’d been part of in his lifetime. He had the day off the next day and was going to go fill out the paperwork to enter into a public housing neighborhood, making the financial burdens that made saving hard a little bit less straining. He slept in then prepared for his walk. It was about a mile and a half away from where he lived. He walked up Merrimack Street, right-hand side of the sidewalk, in the forty degree weather, among the dying grass and the colored leaves of the dying trees. He took a left at Lincoln Street and there were three young guys, two Hispanic and one African-American, one of the Hispanic men holding a baseball bat, standing on the corner about a block away.
He approached them and looked at them and nodded to greet them as he passed. They all just stared at him. They were quiet and were clearly trying to assert their dominance. This annoyed John, and he ended up politely saying “How ya’ doing?” They didn’t answer him as he passed and he heard them chuckle and talk about how he was scared as he walked off. He was so pissed. That kind of thing just made him want to beat the hell out of people like that. He wished everyone was just kind to each other.
He didn’t encounter any other rude people on his way to the government housing office. But he dwelled on it and thought about how much he hated when people did that. He was thinking about hitting anyone who did that to him to teach them a lesson. He went home and he decided to take a nap. His nap was restless for about an hour and then he woke up overhearing, in the kitchen, Mike talking angrily on the phone.
The conversation was already part way in but he got what his brother was talking about. He listened and heard “…but I know Andrew had something to do with it.” There were intermittent pauses, him letting the person on the other end of the line talk. He continued “That’s it. I’m fucking done. I can’t deal with that kind of fucking betrayal. If he shows up here again and doesn’t knock, I’m going to treat it like a home invasion and I’m gonna fucking kill him; that’s the beauty of living in New Hampshire. He’s a lowlife and he’s been stealing since he was a kid. I always put up with it because he didn’t steal from me. He’s a piece of shit.” Another pause and then “I don’t care if he thinks that he had to steal for his son. He didn’t have to steal from our house. He’s a piece of shit and I’m done with it.”
Andrew must have stolen the Xbox. That’s what John thought anyway. Someone must have told Mike. This pissed John off so much and he knew that his little brother was a loose cannon so he was worried that the whole issue would become violent. He was so disappointed because he had trusted Andrew and knew that his older brother trusted him too. Andrew had been on good terms with his brothers and his sisters and even his mother to a degree. They knew he had crappy influences in his life but this was not okay. He was really starting to hate the neighborhood that he lived in. There were a lot of assholes he was beginning to realize. He was beginning to hate the people in his neighborhood.
It was about five o’clock and he finally acted like he had woken up, after pretending to be asleep during the personal phone call. He acted like he hadn’t heard it because he felt bad for his brother losing a friend. This turn of events was sad.
The family was in a grim state, just another thing had happened in their lives to make them trust people less. This went on for quite a few weeks and the transition to the residential housing area went smoothly and bleakly. The new neighborhood was similar to the old one, only a little bit more ethnic, culturally. John noticed that. He felt a little bit more uneasy. He felt like there were more thieves and aggressors in the neighborhood. He felt afraid he was going to be jumped; he felt outnumbered.
John kept working, saving larger amounts now, due to the housing area’s rent being much cheaper to accommodate the low-income families. He was getting closer and closer to his goal savings to enroll in the two-year program at the school he had decided on. The new neighborhood and the realizations he had made about his lack of safety in the world he existed in, exemplified in the theft and the aggressive staring in his community, kept him a little bit on edge. His family kept to themselves, his brothers and sisters going to school and working along with his mother. They no longer let anyone come to the house, not trusting people.
It was now Spring and he was going to enroll for the fall semester of this year. The snow had melted and the weather was warming up. It was mid-April and the trees were blooming. On an uneventful day in someone else’s life, John’s life was changed. He had recently gotten home from work and it was about four in the afternoon when the phone rang and his mother answered. She had tears in her eyes and was asking whoever was on the other end of the phone if her daughter Lena was okay. She said thank you and hung up the phone. His mother let him know “Your sister was attacked coming home from school.” John’s heart began to race with fear and he asked if she was alright. “She’s in the hospital; they said she will be okay but she was sexually assaulted too.” This crushed John’s soul and he was on the verge of tears as he told his two brothers and the four of them headed immediately to the hospital to go see her.
They met Lena in the emergency care center and she greeted them with hugs and tears. A police officer was there and took his mother aside, but not so far that they couldn’t hear. Lena was crying as she hugged John and he tried to console her. He overheard the cop and his mom. It was in their neighborhood that she was attacked and raped. It was in the government housing area that helped John prepare to go to college, the neighborhood that was cheaper than their previous one, that Lena was attacked and raped; it was probably one of his neighbors John thought. He continued to console his broken, violated sister, his heart racing with anger at the people who did it. He wanted them dead. He wished rape on them.
He glanced over at the sketch artist drawing of the Black guy who raped her. It looked a lot like some of the people he saw hanging around the area he lived. He probably had passed the guy by in one of the crowds that hung out on the stoops of the apartments in the area, smoking and drinking, often until police arrived. He wanted this person caught and tortured and killed. His anger about this knew no bounds and he was ready to explode on anyone who looked at him the wrong way. When they went home that night in a taxi, thoughts raced in his mind about why this might have happened and if it could have been prevented. The next morning before work, he bought a knife at the store; he bought a 5.5 in. knife that flipped out. Work was uneventful, he was quiet, and when he got out he began to walk home. It was dark and about fifty-five degrees outside. He walked down Wilson Street, one of the streets in the housing community, on the customary right side of the street.
At the end of Wilson Street was a black man stumbling along the sidewalk, clearly drunk. The guy was like all the rest of them to John; he was staring at John the moment they were ten feet from passing by each other. He was giving him the dominant look. He was trying to make John look away. John stared right back, pissed off at this guy for staring at him; he couldn’t take this neighborhood and all the bullshit anymore. They reached about five feet away from each other and were still staring. John thought about what it would be like to pull out his knife and stab the guy to death for insulting him and trying to assert his status as an alpha male. He reached in his pocket and thought about it. They were right next to each other, silent, but staring, as they passed each other by. John thought about how much he hated the random guy. Nothing happened between the two and he went home, still angry.
He slept but remained angry. He woke up and got ready for work, annoyed about everything, still in this vicious, cyclical state of anger that had begun months before. He took the bus, sitting in the back because he wanted to, but John’s deep-seated reason was a lack of trust and the desire to be in control of his life. The bus ride, as usual, was uneventful.
The parking lot of Market Basket was quite vacant, with only a small amount of cars. It was going to be a slow day. Today he was put on the express lane again. He had few customers and everything was going smoothly during his shift until it was almost over. There was almost no one in the store and there were no customers in his line. His supervisors were counting money at the service desk and doing paperwork. An older guy came to his line, African-looking to John; looked like a thug to John. He was over the limit and he began unloading his carriage anyway.
John looked at him with disdain in his eyes until he met his gaze and he put on a façade of mock politeness. John greeted him, and the way he nodded his head ignorantly to him, he figured the guy didn’t speak English. John smiled his fakest smile at him and said “It clearly says 13 or less items. Why don’t you go back to your country if you don’t know how to read? No one wants you here.” He got a sense of satisfaction and the guy looked at him stupidly and grinned, not having a clue of the horrible, rude thing that John had said to him. When he went home that day, he had the knife in his pocket and he remained angry at the people in his neighborhood; they were all the same to him.
What a p.o.s., amirite?