Page 14 of Soul on Fire
“Black, sir. I’m not white.”
Kline’s eyeballs nearly popped out of his head. His lips went thin. “We have a mission, Lieutenant, and the clock is ticking. You are here as a courtesy to your men, and if you’re done wasting time, we can return to planning this mission. Or you may leave the CDC.”
They’d plan the NEO without him, and leave him and his men to suck it up and execute whatever brown-shoe limp-dick plan they thought was adequate. “Yes sir.”
Kline stared at him for a long moment. There would be a reckoning for this later. He and Kline had history, and with that history came respect, but there wasn’t enough between them for that. But, damn it, was this what it felt like watching the first moments of Rwanda in ninety-four? Get the whites out, get all the Americans and the Westerners out, and leave the locals to be damned?
He tried to breathe through his nose, slow down his heart. He was a SEAL, God damnit. He could maintain a steady heart rate on a HAHO jump into enemy territory or swimming through mined hostile waters. He didn’t sweat boarding pirate ships on the task force, zeroing on a hostile and sending two to the chest and one to the head. He’d trained the tension, the nerves, out of his body. Nothing got to him, not anymore.
Butthismade his fists clench, made his skin go tight as he tried to hold something in that wanted to burst free. Something slithered low in his belly, snaked up his arms, sluiced down his spine and sat, red hot, in his guts. It took him a moment to recognize the feeling.
Rage. Bitter, bitter rage.
Suddenly he was nine, and his teacher was passing him by when he asked for help as if he hadn’t spoken. He was fourteen, and his English teacher rolled her eyes when his hand was the first one up. She expected sass, sarcasm, garbage, and told him she didn’t have time for his nonsense in class. He’d shut his mouth and kept it shut the rest of the year, never speaking to her again, never mind he’d just wanted to answer her stupid literary analysis question. He was sixteen, driving with his brand-new license, radio dropping beats as he hugged the highway, just feeling free and happy, and a cop pulled in behind him, trailed him for six miles while sweat bulleted down his neck. He’d stayed one mile under the speed limit, clenched the steering wheel, and hated, absolutely hated, the sick wash of fear that ran through him. If he was pulled over—
He was nineteen, and community college wasn’t working. He wanted more, but his mom and dad didn’t have the money for college, and his grades were good but not good enough. No one at his high school expected much of him anyway. No one there told him to chase his dreams, imagine what he could do with his life and all of his hopes. He’d never even built a dream for his life. He didn’t know how to dream, not in a world that told him a thousand different ways, a thousand different days, that he wasn’t wanted. The hard glares from people passing him in the mall mixed with the averted eyes from others cut into his skin, sliced into his tissues with the combined confrontation and denial of his existence. He was a threat and invisible, all at once. Cars locked their doors when he walked by, theschwickan open-handed slap to his heart. The teachers who expected less from him, who didn’t want to help him, who thought he was just wasting time. The hesitation in people’s voices before they spoke to him. The up and down glares no one even tried to hide. The police cars who followed him when he drove. He was nineteen, why did he fear for his life and wonder if he’d ever see his fortieth birthday?
The whole world looked at him with narrowed eyes as it took in the color of his skin, the way he walked, the way he talked, the way he dressed, itemizing everything about him and discarding him an in instant. He looked different—he wasblack—and so hewasdifferent. He wasn’t what anyone wanted. He was dangerous, he was lazy, he was a going-nowhere black teenager who listened to his music too loudly and was headed to the same place all those other black boys went. He was nothing but trouble.
He was a teenager who craved a world that didn’t discard him at a single glance. He wanted a dream, but the world wouldn’t let him have one. He wanted a future in a world that looked deeper and saw who he really was, and that didn’t just stop at the color of his skin.
But for centuries, black skin had definedwhata person was far more thanwhothey were in their heart and soul: a slave. A second-class citizen. A threat, someone dangerous, someone to be avoided. A criminal. He waslessthan. He was less deserving of life. He was less vital to the racist world.
Living a black teenager’s life was to barricade his heart and soul from the world, build walls upon walls until he was nothing but a lonely boy in a hardened fortress. Insults came every day in every way. He hid inside his fortress and felt the world pull further away from him as he recoiled further from the world.You can’t hurt me if I reject you first. You don’t want me? Fine. I never wanted your life anyway.
He was achingly lonely. He wanted to connect with people without someone deciding, at first glance, that he wasn’t worth their time. Frustration grew alongside his bones, until he had the skeleton of a man made of rage living inside his skin, closer than his own shadow. Hewanted, but he didn’t know how to get what he wanted out of a world that pushed him away.
It was a spur of the moment decision one afternoon, ducking into the Navy recruiter’s office in the strip mall. He’d pulled his hoodie down when he walked in, a wary shuffle step he’d learned. His shoulders slumped, and he gazed at the posters on the walls and the pictures of aircraft carriers and jet fighters and men and women of all different colors doing amazing things.
And behind the desk, a black man rose like a Nelson Mandela Tupac, his black Moses, his burning bush.
His khaki uniform was crisp with rows of medals gleaming on his chest. He stood like he owned the world, his shoulders back, chest out, voice strong, eyes sharp. There was nothing, not a single damn thing, anyone could take away from him, not the pride that steeled his spine, not the confidence that spread his shoulders.
Instantly, he wanted to be that man. He wanted that certainty, that pride in his own existence. He wanted to feel like he was worth something to the world.
The night before he shipped to basic training with a contract to try out for the SEALs in his pocket, he’d met with a few friends to say goodbye. They played some hoops, joked and laughed and had the stereo pumping courtside. He was ready, God, he was ready, to take the next step. Push himself until the world recognized he was a man they wouldn’t push around.
Someone called the cops—they were guilty of Living While Black—and three squad cars showed up, the cops yelling about their stereo, what they were up to, who they were. Were they doing drugs, smoking pot, getting high? No, they were probably dealing drugs, weren’t they? Why didn’t they just get lost, didn’t they know they were disturbing the peace?
The night before he shipped to basic to try out for the SEALs, three cops threw him to the ground and handcuffed him, frisked him, and demanded to know where his drugs were. During the search, one of the cops found his enlistment papers. “Shipping out tomorrow, huh? Get a girl pregnant? Or are you trying to run from something you’ve done? It was this or jail, wasn’t it?”
He’d kept his mouth shut. Felt the throb over his eye, the bruise on his face from when he went down. Tasted blood in his mouth.Let me live to see tomorrow. Just get me out of this place.
He arrived at basic with his black eye swollen shut and a split lip, and he’d gotten hell for it.
He kept his mouth shut.
Until his Recruit Division Commander pulled him into his office, alone. He was black, too, and he stared into Elliot’s one good eye for a long moment. “You tell me the truth about what happened to you. You tell it once to me, right now.”
He did. And his RDC put his hand on his shoulder and said, “You will never wear these stripes on your skin like a slave because of your blackness again.” A squeeze on his shoulder, like a vow, a sacred promise passed from him to Elliot, and in that moment, he’dbelievedhim, he’d believed him sofuckinghard it hurt. He almost cried, shuddered, fought to keep his mouth shut.
His RDC stepped back and quirked a tiny grin. He’d tried to lighten the moment. “I can’t promise you won’t have any more black eyes though, son. Not with where you’re going. Come find me when you graduate BUD/S. I’ll buy you a beer.”
They’d had that beer two years later, and Petty Officer Jefferson became his mentor. He guided him, advised him, showed him there were no limits pushing back on him in the Navy, not if he was the best man he could be. There was nothing to stop him, not anymore, except for himself. He pushed Elliot to take college classes until he’d had enough credits to drop a packet for Officer Candidate School. “You are one of the good ones, Elliot. You’d make a hell of an officer. Sailors would be lucky to have you leading them. If you don’t do it, that’s one less great officer for the teams.”
A year later, Petty Officer Jefferson saluted Ensign Elliot Davis for the first time and bought him another beer.
Elliot had almost forgotten it, the taste of bitter rage, the slide of something like shame, but no, not shame, ‘cause he wasn’t fucking ashamed. No, this slither was darker, running through his veins like tar coating his insides. This was defiance, and fury, and a cold wrath sparked by all of his memories slamming into him in one moment, reminding him again that he wasblackand this was a white world and he’d betterneverforget it.
