A New Way

For me it wasn’t five, or six, or seven. I didn’t understand what James Baldwin spoke of until I was in my late 20s. The cowboys, in general, were the strong men, often, but not always white, and completely fearless. They did not fear the bad guys, or the authority that sat above them. They were strong, respect-less, driven, self assured. These were the cowboys, in general.

The cowboys, specifically, were the members of the strike force led by Vic Mackey (played by Michael Chiklis) in the FX series The Shield (March 2002 to November 2008). I started watching half-way through season three, because some friends (who were white) raved over it. I watched an episode or two with them and got drawn into the madness. I was in my early twenties and incredibly immature, spiritually and intellectually. I was generally comfortable in life. I was not employed in any endeavor focused on impacting the world for the better. I was idle. I had the first world, peacetime luxury of addiction to televised drama.

I tuned in every week until the series’ finale at the end of season seven, to see Vic and co. kick butt, take names, spit in the face of ethics, and brazenly, unapologetically, float above decency and the law.

I thought these guys were cool, like every play-by-your-own-rules-bad-boy protagonist. They took crap from no one, took whatever they wanted. They were as wild and as free and as dangerous as America itself.

I didn’t really think too much about the Indians in the show, even though most of them were black like me. I was a slow learner. Zero Tolerance in Baltimore hadn’t directly impacted me. The drug war was virtually nonexistent on my block. We were not a big market. We were not a contested territory. Users were not a menace to society. Lines were drawn and not crossed. Police force was minimal. The Indian experience was still distant to me.

It wasn’t until Trayvon Martin and Freddie Gray that I realized the Indians were my people. Art was imitating life and life imitated art. I began to despise the cowboys. I heard the story of Tyrone West, and others abused by police in Baltimore. Nationally, I learned the names and abuses suffered by Oscar Grant, Walter Scott, Tamir Rice, Sandra Bland and others. I watched 13th and Walking While Black, read The New Jim Crow (Michelle Alexander) and Tales From The Beastside (D. Watkins), listened to songs including “Dark Matters” (Alex Faith featuring Ada Bean), “Hood Cries 2” (Bizzle), and “Free” (Derek Minor). It came to me, as a great and sudden shock, in my late twenties that the Indians of Vic Mackey and co. and their abuses were me.

I suffered a spiteful paranoia of all law enforcement. I despised and feared them. I profiled them. This was more than the healthy, logical fear that a black man in America should have of police. This was pure prejudice.

And prejudice like that may be acceptable for regular people, but I was trying to mature as a Christ-like during this whole time. I learned that the one overarching prejudice I should have for all people is “Christ and Christ crucified” (1 Corinthians 2:2). I asked God to help me see police through that light. And then He went above and beyond.

I’ve spoken about Chief Melvin Russell before. God has definitely used him to redefine what a police officer can be. My pastor told me some of his story probably a year or two ago. It was very supernatural sounding, the thing of legend. I heard about him on First Edition.

Then I saw him speak at Central Presbyterian in Towson. And I saw him engage the community. I saw him serving.
During the unrest following the death of Freddie Gray, Chief Russell and some of his men, without riot gear, went into the communities and faced the anger of many of the young black people in Baltimore. Law enforcement came as protecting servants, not soldiers behind shields and helmets. They listened to, and spoke life over them. Some officers even prayed with them.

He showed me that there are officers who will fight harder to refrain from using violence, because they don’t see the community as suspects, villains, Indians, and themselves as good guys, heroes, cowboys in the likeness of Gary Cooper and Vic Mackey. This gives me hope. Hope, in the midst of the exposure of more corruption.

I won’t get into it here, but the Baltimore Sun and The Real News Network and other media outlets have recently reported on the now infamous Baltimore Gun Trace Task Force revealing more corruption, more darkness.

My prayer for the city, when it comes to the police is two fold. I pray that light would shine into the darkness and expose the evil that exists within the system, that creates a divide between the law and the people. And I pray for more Christ centered police officers. I pray for more police officers who will pray for citizens instead of preying on them.

I don’t pretend to understand how to justly and righteously police a society. I do know that God gave the sword to some to be wielded, but not abusively, and not in vain. Just because God gave us free will doesn’t mean we are justified in using it to abuse others who are made in His image. Whenever God uses corrective force, discipline or chastening, it is to restore right relationship. And He has given us the ministry of reconciliation. We no longer regard one another as cowboys or Indians, but image bearers Christ died for.

Below I have posted a short story about law and punishment on one hand, and grace on the other. It’s sci-fi/fantasy. Working title is “A New Way.”

A New Way

One

When she agreed to see him, I knew I had made a mistake. I should have killed him, or at least took him, bound in his chains, to the edge of order, and left him there to die.
I obey, reluctantly, and march him up the cold, black, basalt slope to the tower. Gusts of wind, one instant cold and the next warm, sweep over us in our climb, catching and rippling the fabric of the faded black sleeveless hoodie and the dingy white now gray long sleeved t-shirt and khaki pants the prisoner wears. The hood is up, his arms are bound in front by chains. Bare feet slap on the cold stone in front of me.
The wind also pulls at my blue cloak. It whistles over the blue and white weaving of my armored vest. The wind makes the hair on my bare brown arms and shoulders stand up. Once in a while something comes on the wind that makes that hair, and my tongue, tingle. I keep my right palm on the burnished pommel of my sword. Its weight is familiar and comforting, patting the side of my thigh through dark blue pants. The wind runs over my face too, visor for my helmet raised at the moment. Beads of moisture form on the metal with one gust, then evaporate with the next. The wind smells of vanilla, or sulfur, or ozone, or sugar, or ash, or a distinct and conspicuous nothingness in random turns.
The wind comes from the edge. Where I should have left him to die.
No…. to leave him to die would have been to leave him a chance to escape judgement. To live.
I should have just killed him.
We reach the opening to the room where she wants to see him. I think, for a just a moment, that I could grab him here, still, and snuff him out. Say that he tried to escape, to attack me. But this close, she will have eyes on. No, that chance has passed.
I take him in. The room is black, basalt and slate, a table two chairs.
He complies, sits, and does not move as I secure his chains to the table and we wait.
I turn my head away from him, while keeping my focus there, and wait at attention.

Two

“I am trying to show you another way.” She is saying to him now. And to me I am sure.
I keep my eyes on the prisoner. His skin is the color of darkening milk. He is mixed, one parent with brown skin, like ours and one with skin a color like cream. He is decorated with tattoos of affiliation. And guilt. His affiliations are wretched. He wears his iniquity in scrawls of black ink on his pale skin.
It is apparent and clear.
She says again, “I am trying to show you another way.”
She is talking to me. We have danced around this before. I do not look at her. I do not need to. I do not look at her skin, brown and warm. Her hair is thick and full and smells of coconut and cocoa butter and is wrapped with a purple and yellow wrap, and draped with dangling beads. Her eyes are a golden flecked amber, and are lined faintly with age. Her lips round and pronounced and sage. She is older than she seems. I call her Mother and Magistrate as I should.
I do not look at her, at attention, aware.
“What way that go?” his lips sneer.
The tattoos cover so much of his body, even to the neck and cheekbones, beneath the short, thin, black beard. They twist and snake in curls and swirls of black ink. They are patterns and icons and words I do not fully understand. But I do not need to understand them to know what they mean.
I want to slap him for his disrespect to the Magistrate. But she is trying to make a point. And my point, which would be made by slapping him would be undercut. Because she would have me apologize for it.
And I will not apologize to the prisoner.
“I hope, it goes a long way,” she says back. “I hope it goes into the future.”
The criminal sneers again. I want to punch him now. “Future? Ain’t no thing ‘bout the future ‘round me. Ain’t you see me?” He moves his hands and the chains murmur. I do not move. I am already tense. I am looking for a reason.
“He see me. He know what I mean. What I am, what I be.” He points at me, but he doesn’t look at me either. His eyes are steady on her. “Ain’t no future for me. Not here. Not witch you, yo’ kind.”
“I am trying to show you another way.”
His finger stays on me. “Ain’t no other way.”
I nod on the inside.
“Would you see another way? If I showed it to you?”
The finger curls. He quotes with attitude and certainty: “Section 3 point 7 point 3 of Law. Any man found guilty of association with the lord of that air has forfeited his life. He is a violator of the law.”
I want to smile. Truth from the traitor.
“And a violator, gotta get violated back, by law. That’s what it say mamma.”
She nods once, slowly.
He speaks a little too cavalierly to her. My eyes are on him now. My fists tighten.
“That is what it says, yes.” Her eyes are on him, on that curled, rictus-like finger. “Is that what you are, a violator? Is that who you are?”
He pulls back his forearm, chains murmuring again. The finger is still curled, hand still on the table.
“What you mean? What you mean ‘that who I am’? That what it say. I ain’t make it up.”
“That’s what you say? That’s who you say you are, a violator?”
His face contorts. They sit in silence. I stand, eyes steady on him. Looking for a reason.
She places a hand on the table across from his, and begins tapping a finger. Dangerously close to his. Her skin is warm and brown and alive. The tattoos scrawled on him run all the way up to the very edge of that curled pointer finger. Dangerously close to hers.
She leans in. “I am trying to show you another way,” she repeats.
His face is frozen in that contorted confusion.
“I am trying to tell you something.”
He pulls his hand back a little.
“I…” he shakes his head slightly. His other hand comes up, rattling chains, to the side of his head, to his ear. “Well…” he leans in now too, “you gone have to speak up cause… cause I ain’t hearin’ you mama.”
I blink a bead of sweat from my eye. I do not move. I want to beat him.
“What if…” and she puts her other hand on the table, leaning further in, “what if you are not that thing, that the law says you must be.”
I turn my head to her. His head jerks back. This… this… is becoming…
“I am trying to show you another way. I am trying to tell you who you may not be.”
His head jerks a half shake away, and comes back to her.
Silence for a long time. He and I are both calculating her words, their implications… impossible implications.
“You…. You cain’t,” he tells her.
I look at him.
“Maybe, I declare, a new way, a new sentence over you.”
“You… nah… you cain’t… I…”
She reaches across the table and touches his hand. He reels back, topples himself and the chair over onto the floor. I step forward, loom over him, between them.
“Hell wrong with you!” he exclaims in his scramble. He tries to pull away more but his chains go taut through the rung on the table which does not budge. The table is bolted to the floor. The prisoner moves as if her touch has electrocuted him. He continues to flail like a fish, shoves the chair away from him and the table and keeps pulling away from her.
I step down on the chains linking his shackles to the table and he is yanked forward.
Suddenly she is at my side, her hand out. “Hold!” she commands. She is half a head shorter than me, but built strong. She isn’t even looking at me. She is still focused on him. I am hating him more. “Off.”
I step off of the chain.
“Back.”
I take a step back. Return to my place. I turn my head away from them, at attention.
She stands over him. He looks at her feet, then slowly pulls back away until the chains are taut again.
“I am trying to tell you something. I am trying to show you something. The questions are, can you hear, and can you see?”
He is still pulling, steady tension on the chains. His wrists and hands are going pink, red, from the pulling of the chains. The scrawl on his fingers and his hands is being to change tone too, going from black to a sheened purple. There is a smell—no, not a smell, but a sensation in my nostrils—like sudden lightning on the wind. My tongue tingles. I start to move again and she puts out a hand. I obey and stop.
“Look at me,” she says. He keeps his eyes down, his head is shaking. She puts a hand on the chain. She slowly slides her hand along the chain, over each link between, and takes a step closer to him. He freezes. Her hands reach his. He does not flail this time. He freezes.
“I can not force this on you. And, even if I could… I would not. But, can you hear, can you see?”
A croak and then a groan crawl up from his throat.
“What… what you want from me?” he growls. “I got nothing else. I… I’m caught. I’m a violator. I’m done mamma. I can’t give you nothin’ else, I ‘on’t got nothin’ else.”
“Maybe there is a different word to be spoken over you. A different word? Not ‘violator’.”
We both look at her.
“Can you hear? Can you see? I am showing you another way.”
He just looks at her. His face is no longer that contorted confused sneer. It is a blank stare, his mouth open, quiet.
She puts a hand under the short beard on his face and closes his mouth.
“Can you hear ‘not guilty’? Can you see freedom?”
His eyes twitch, a tear runs from each. She kneels next to him, puts both hands on his face, wipes his tears with her thumbs. His tattoos go back to black.
She whispers to him. “But I can not, and I would not force your ears or your eyes, or your will. It is for you to decide. Would you hear? Would you see? Would you be something else?”
He nods into her hands.
“Then claim it.” She urges, “declare your freedom.”
He swallows hard, coughs, choking on the cry in him. He shakes his head, eyes closed.
“Magistrate,” I growl, moving forward, I put a hand on his shoulder with pressure. I have had enough.
“Hey!” he pulls back, I put my hand on his head, forcing it out of her hands. The chains clatter. He pulls further back, moving. He crawls back, back past the downed chair.
“You!” I say moving closer after him.
“Hey! You cain’t!” He puts his hand up, “you cain’t!”
“I can’t what?” I loom over, ready to slap him, to punch him, to beat him, to kill him.
“You cain’t man! I’m free!” He exclaims. He spreads his hands wide. Chains gone. He waves his hands, there are tears on his face. I am struck. He is. I can not.
I do not care. Move quickly. I continue to close in on him.
Her voice calls behind me, “I will not force you,” she starts. “I will not. Though I could.” I halt. I twist around to see her face. Its beauty strikes me. She is not my mother by blood, but I see my mother in her eyes. And I see both the wisdom of age and the power and fervor of newness there as well. There is a softness beneath her strength. It disquiets and confuses me.
She is right. She is right.
I… I want to revolt against this aspect, against this rightness.
“Can you hear? Can you see? Can you declare?” She asks. I look down at him. “You know what I want,” she says. I shake my head. “I am trying to show you another way,” she repeats. I look between the two of them again. I hurry over him, and kick the chair on my way out. There is anger in my eyes. My teeth grind. My fists shake. The sound of blood beating in my ears. I almost walk into the door post, I can not see, angry tears blurring my vision.

Three

At the edge, I look out. The air is hot one instant and then freezing. There is that sensation in the nostrils of sudden lightning on the wind. The veil before me. It dilutes the effects of the chaos beyond. It distorts the chaos beyond, enough that one may look out into it without being lost to it.
I should have pushed him through and been done with it. She would have understood. Understood. It is so written, I would be in my rights to do so. For the clear violations, the clear affiliations with the lord of that air.
I would scream. My breath stirs, heating in my chest. If I do not do something soon…
I decide. We will patrol. I will gather a party and we will go to work and we will deal with them in the way that I see fit. The fire in my chest is in my arms, my fists. I shake my hands out, bring my arms in and out, clench fists again. I am compiling, selecting the team now, ones who have the same fire.
Ones who will break things with me. Ones who prefer the old way.
I turn from the edge ready. She is there.
With him.
I go to walk past them.
“It is my right,” she begins, “to show them another way. I am paying their way.”
I can not dispute that truth.
“If you will not bear witness to it, I will send one who will.”
I look at them both, side by side. I shake my head. “This is not right.”
“This is the only thing that is right,” she replies.
“This is not the law.”
Silence.
She puts a hand on my shoulder. It is warm, not with the fire that is inside of my breath now, but with something else that I… can not…
She moves her hand to my face, her knuckles brush my forehead.
“This is better.”
I shake my head again. “Not for me,” I say.
She puts her hand on my vest, “for everyone who would hear it and see it and believe it.”
I lower my head. I move to put my hand on hers, but I can not. I peel away.
“I have given this free man authority.”
I stop. I shake my head. I knew it.
“Resources. Command.”
I walk away. I have to hurry.
I can feel their eyes on me. I can not hear this new way. I will not see it. I will not declare it. I must hurry, before this new way spreads to others.

end