Sacrifices

Federico Dixon
666 words
Sacrifices

Under the summer sun, Justin sat on the cold, cement bench, his right foot hovering over the grass and his left balancing on his Spalding basketball. He refused to blink, reluctant to miss the frantic crowd, the whining ambulance truck, and the police cars rushing to the basketball court. He had never seen a real-life murder before, and surprisingly, it didn’t scare him the way it scared everyone else here. Even David, his visiting cousin, sped away screaming, escaping this horror into Justin’s grungy apartment building.

“Wh—oa,” Justin dragged with a smile. Sirens closed in around the park. Police roped off the scene with yellow tape. Officers scribbled notes from spectators. Justin was going to be questioned, too. He adjusted his glasses and brushed off his Nikes. He would describe the silver car: four thug-looking guys with black caps; long and small guns loud like firecrackers. The officer with spiked white hair approached and knelt before him, but Justin’s eyes and the officer’s eyes jerked to the worn brown Cutlass wailing around the corner and into the STOP sign.

“Justin! Justin!” The woman in the food-stained apron kicked the driver’s door open and pushed through officers. “Let go of me!” She dove under the yellow tape. “JUSTIN!”

“That’s my mom, officer.”

The officer turned to Justin before rising back upright. Justin looked at his basketball, now in the officer’s hand. He hadn’t felt the ball come from under his foot, but he did feel his shirt tighten around his arms: a familiar embrace. He looked around the officer and at his mother; studied her on the basketball court as she clutched the body in the white sheet under her arms. “Justin! Open your eyes.” His curls swayed back from his forehead as her hand rubbed the corpse’s head. “Justin, open your eyes, baby. Please.”

David hurried back out of the apartment building. “Auntie Crystal!”

With a confused heaviness above his brow, Justin watched his cousin run to his mother. “I’m okay,” Justin uttered. “I’m right here.”

The officer turned and stared down. “I can see you.” The officer sat next to the boy and gently placed the ball back into the little hands. “It’s hard for me to say this, son; but…you’re no longer…well you’re…

The ball rolled to the grass. Justin searched the officer’s eyes until the man became foggy. Tears rushed down Justin’s face as his hands dug into the officer’s arm. His face hid in the man’s leather jacket, a shelter from the neighborhood, and from all that was familiar to him.

Water welled in Commissioner Elton Russel’s eyes. His left hand pulled in the boy as his right slid through the silver hairs on the back of his own head. The gunshot was still fresh; the memory still strong. The American government had taken everything from him: held his wife hostage until he had taken his own life. “To direct the living, you must also direct the dead,” was the croaking voice that replayed on his answer machine, and now, four years later in his head. Even his wisdom, exceeding other officers in New Jersey, wasn’t enough to keep him from firing his gun into his mouth. Now, as if to make this look like some random gang shooting, they had killed this nine-year-old boy; the same boy he had watched competing and winning against most opponents at this court day after day.

The streams of sorrow found their way down to his beard, then flowed more for the man on the sidewalk in the Civil War uniform, arm missing; then further for the teenager standing beside David, body and backpack completely charred from the school that had burned down months ago. How many more souls were out there, Elton thought. How many more would reach neither heaven nor hell? How many more of these “sacrifices” would continue from the puppeteers of America, the demons who devised the deaths of those destined to be Presidents of the United States of America?