Trial, page 32
The speaker laughed briefly. “Or ever. Maybe we should talk about ways I can help.”
Entering the visiting room, Allie stopped, looking at Malcolm with a tentative expression before sitting beside him.
He felt her studying his face with a mother’s unabashed scrutiny. Only her uncertainty about touching him suggested all that had happened since the moment she and Chase Brevard had appeared here together.
“You look so tired, baby.”
He shook his head, not in denial but at its futility. “I can get you someone to talk to,” she said. “To help support you through all of this.”
Malcolm inhaled. “Whatever.”
“Not ‘whatever.’ I’m sorry we told you like that.” She hesitated. “We both are.”
“You’re both right.”
Her expression became one familiar to Malcolm since childhood, especially in moments of estrangement—a mother resolved to say what she must. “We’re also sorry about the interview. But what we said was true.”
She was careful, Malcolm recognized, not to single out what the man had said about Malcolm. But her meaning was clear. In a tone suspended between curiosity and accusation, he demanded, “Why is he so important to you?”
His mother regarded him with a look of caution. “Do you really want to talk about this?”
“What the fuck do you think, Mom? I’m the product of your great love affair, and now he pops up in our lives.”
“He didn’t just pop up. He came here for both of us…”
“He came here because he loves you,” Malcolm snapped. “Do you still love him?”
She seemed to compose herself. “Yes. It’s complicated, but yes.”
He waited for his own emotions to settle. “All right. Mind telling me why?”
Looking into her son’s face, Allie wondered where to begin.
Certainly not with “Because I’ve always loved him,” or “Because he’s a part of me,” or “Because I still desire him,” or “Because he’s always loved me despite all my faults,” or “Because no matter how much I love being your mother, I’ve been so damn lonely,” or “Because beneath all our differences, he feels like my person.” Though all those things and more, she had rediscovered, were true, they were not for a son to hear.
“There are so many reasons,” she said. “But I’ll start with the one that’s most important to me now. Because he’s part of us—you and me.”
“He never was before.”
“Not for you. But from the beginning I could look at you and see him.” She looked down, trying to find the words to explain. “You knew half of who you are, the part that came from me. But I could see so clearly all that came from him. And it was my doing that you never could.” Her voice became pinched. “I felt so guilty about that. So when he came here, angry as he was at me, he felt like the piece that had been missing for us both.”
After a moment, she looked up at him. “But the biggest things were watching Chase discover that he wanted to be your father, no matter what it cost him, and me discovering that he was the man I’d imagined him becoming at Harvard. Not just a politician on the rise, who’s way better than most, but a fundamentally good and caring person who for some reason—maybe me—never had a family, but then looked at us, amidst all this fear and misery, and saw one. Who looked at you and saw a son.” She paused, feeling her own emotions. “For as long as I live, baby, I will never be able to tell you how much that means to me. But that’s the heart of it. Because he’s part of us, Chase cares about the person I love most.”
So much of this, Malcolm realized, was unfathomable to him. But he remembered well enough the pain of knowing, without anyone saying so, that he was the reason that she and Robert had not worked.
“Not like Robert, you mean.”
He watched her consider dissembling and then realize that this was pointless. “No. Not like Robert.”
“I never liked him.”
“He never gave you much reason.” His mother paused for another moment. “It’s not just a matter of blood, but spirit. Your grandfather was tied to you by blood, but also because he had a loving and generous heart. As different as they are, so does Chase. One of the things that hurts me now—your grandmother, too—is thinking how much, in the end, they would’ve liked each other. I’m sorry that will never happen.”
Malcolm tried to imagine his grandfather with Chase Brevard, and could not. “You want me to see him, don’t you?”
“Only when you want to. You’ve got a lot to take in. Chase understands that.”
Malcolm struggled to understand himself, and then gave up. “No point in putting it off,” he said.
Captive to confusion, Malcolm stared across the table at the man he could not believe was his father. Yet he could see it—in the man’s face, his build, the movements of someone at home in his own body. Except for an almost imperceptible wariness, the congressman seemed to have recovered his composure.
“I don’t need to stay long,” he told Malcolm. “I just wanted to let you know that I’m still here.”
“You mean this is all fine with you,” Malcolm retorted. “And I’m the only one who feels like it’s pretty weird.”
Briefly, the congressman betrayed the trace of a smile. “Absolutely. Every week or so another white congressman from Massachusetts wakes up and finds out he’s got a Black son in Cade County, Georgia, who doesn’t know anything about him. We’ve got a whole support group for that.”
For a moment, Malcolm simply stared at him.
Abruptly, Chase Brevard’s smile vanished. “The other day, I told you ‘sorry’ doesn’t cover how I feel. Weird doesn’t either. The one thing I’m sure about is that I want to work toward being your father. That makes you the only support group that matters.” He paused. “I’ve got a day job. But I’ll be back and forth from Washington to be with you and your mother.”
Hearing this, Malcolm felt a strange kind of relief, and had no way of expressing it. “Fine,” he answered dismissively. “Seems like she needs you.”
53
On a bright Sunday morning, Janie and Allie Hill parked downtown to join Chase for the four-block walk from the Winthrop Hotel to the Friendship Baptist Church.
At the suggestion of Janie, who had spoken with their pastor, Allie had carefully choreographed their familial procession. Chase walked between the two women, security guards conspicuously stationed in front and behind, while television cameras recorded the scene through the open windows of the vans gliding beside them. Nearest the street, Janie Hill walked with her head held high and her eyes straight ahead. “It’s time for us to appear as a family,” Janie had decreed, and Chase understood that she, like her daughter, was a strategist with her own steely pride, and a public face she called on as circumstances demanded.
But this family’s church was far removed from the Episcopal redoubt where the Brevards made obligatory appearances, despite the acidic grousing from his rigorously atheist father about the ceremonial pieties of inbred Anglicans.
The spacious, modern structure had high ceilings, but little architectural complexity and no decor save for stained glass sconces on each side of the church. Rows of recessed lighting from the white ceiling illuminated long rows of leather pews trimmed with burnished wood, bisected by a green-carpeted aisle that stretched to a raised platform, on which stood a black metal pew. Behind it were two large screens on the wall, and an elaborate sound system that pumped modern gospel music as the congregation filed in, noting one conspicuous novelty at the rear of the church—more camera crews from two cable networks that would broadcast the service nationwide.
The celebrants already seated watched Allie, Janie, and Chase as they passed between them toward the front of the church. Many gazed with open curiosity; more than a few nodded and smiled at Chase, conspicuously the only white person there. Most were dressed in Sunday finery, and the celebrants included more women than men—all ages; some stout, some slender, some in between—with everyone responding to the pulse of the music. Mixed in were small children, including pretty girls in cornrows and bright dresses who made him imagine Allie as a child. One boy of perhaps three was stretched out dead asleep in the pew amidst the voices and noise all around him, testament to a tired child’s gift for oblivion.
Chase and the women took their place. As five singers in yellow dresses came forward to render gospel songs with swaying bodies and resonant voices, the congregation stood and began to clap. Standing with the others, Chase clapped as seemed called for. Glancing over, Allie gave him a smile of fondness and amusement. This might be yet another performance, but she seemed glad to have him become part of her world. If only for a time.
Despite everything, so was he.
After perhaps a half hour—a swelling chorus of gratitude for God, Jesus, community, and a release from the cares of the week—Pastor William Moore stepped to the pulpit.
A big man with a round face, steel-gray hair, and a sonorous voice, he scanned the congregation with an air of implacable authority before offering a few words of greeting and fellowship. Pausing, he gazed down at Chase.
“We are honored,” he continued, “to have Congressman Chase Brevard here among us come with the rest of Malcolm Hill’s family. I see Malcolm’s grandmother Janie Hill, who helped build the church in which we celebrate today, and whose husband, Wilson, looks down from above. I see Janie’s daughter, Allie, who has helped change this county, this state, and this country in ways that have made all of us so very proud.”
Chase heard the random humming, murmuring, and clapping of affirmation. “That’s right,” a man called out.
“But until now,” the pastor intoned, “something was missing. Someone was missing. But no more. The congressman has come forward to stand beside Allie, to assume the role of father, and help his son Malcolm as a father should.”
Listening, Chase was at once moved and professionally admiring, as the pastor began striking the notes of passion, challenge, and redemption with a voice that varied from a carefully modulated hush to a rich baritone at once operatic and perfectly clear. “He has come through hatred and gunfire to join us who seek justice, at no little cost to himself. He has come here even though he and Malcolm’s mother are pursued by evil men who hide in the darkness. He has come here because he discovered a son whose very life is in jeopardy. He has come here because that son is wrongly accused. He has come here to ensure that Malcolm regains the freedom he deserves.”
“Yes,” a woman cried out, more voices rising behind her.
The pastor’s voice cut through them. “There have been bullets fired at Malcolm’s mother and father. No one has stepped forward to claim these cowardly actions. But we know what this is—the work of white nationalists, the modern-day Ku Klux Klan, bearing in their stunted souls the same age-old evil…”
Amidst the outcry of disapproval, Moore continued. “But I promise you—I promise you—that evils done in darkness will come to light, and that their authors will stand before us stripped of their disguises. Just as I know that some blessed day, Malcolm will have justice and that America will be able look at this family—this mother, this father, their son—and think about love instead of about race.”
Listening, Chase felt Allie’s fingers interlace his. “I know you will support them,” the pastor concluded, “as Christians and as a congregation. So welcome, Congressman, to your home in Cade County for however long you’re among us.” He looked out at his flock. “Please rise, everyone, and let this man and his family feel our care and our love.”
Chase looked around, Allie’s hand still in his. No one was sitting.
With this, he knew, the pastor had helped rally the Blacks of Cade County, alter the environment in which Malcolm’s trial would occur, and make its outcome a matter of national concern. All that was calculated, part of a strategy to counterbalance the voices of fear and anger calling for Malcolm’s life. But at bottom, Chase understood, this was an expression of what Allie had described to him at Harvard—the awareness of a community that indifference, as well as injustice, was their enemy. The consciousness that had brought her back to this place.
Tonight, when they were alone, he would tell her that.
After the service, Allie, Janie, and Chase stood on the lawn as the parishioners came up to greet them, men shaking his hand, women placing their hands on his arms in a swift embrace, quietly speaking their blessings or good wishes. Standing to the side, their bodyguards watched them as cameramen recorded the scene.
“You’ve got Malcolm’s smile,” a white-haired lady told Chase.
Smiling again, he responded, “I always thought it worked the other way around. But either way, I’m glad I found him.”
Suddenly, he felt a hand clasping his shoulder and saw Jabari Ford’s complex look of irony, compassion and, perhaps, respect. “Truth to tell, Congressman, I did kind of wonder. But really, who knew?”
He walked away to his own family, a pretty wife in a bright red dress with an equally pretty daughter and a younger boy chafing in what might be his first suit—looking, Chase supposed, much like Malcolm once had.
Who knew?
54
For Chase, his return to Washington marked a divide in his career, and in his life.
On the floor, many of his Democratic colleagues made a point of being warm and supportive, and the speaker of the House invited him for coffee. “I’ve been talking to our caucus,” she said. “I think there are things we can do for you.” But Lucy Battle and a few of her ideological allies were notably aloof, and the ostentatious scorn of many Republican House members confirmed something Chase had long believed—that for them, partisan hatred was not merely an act but a way of being. One tweeted a deepfake image of Chase holding a gun to George Bullock’s head; tweeting a photograph of Chase and Allie leaving the courthouse, Dorothy Turner Dark wrote, “I never said that Chase Brevard was in bed with cop killers. Only their mothers.” Death threats began inundating his office.
The greatest salve for Chase was doing what his constituents had sent him here for—working on a bill to fortify rural healthcare, another to aid his state’s troubled fishing industry. But the politics of his job were increasingly rancid: The head of the police union in Boston called his statement that Malcolm was innocent “an abuse of his public platform not excused by his personal concerns,” and a local talk show host said that “protecting cop killers is Chase Brevard’s idea of family values.” His Republican opponent in November put Malcolm’s mug shot on his website with the heading “My dad is your congressman.”
Beneath the initial tide of support from his district, Jack Raskin cautioned Chase, lurked trouble. The Republican Congressional Campaign Committee, which had heretofore considered Chase a lock for reelection, was spending money to cut down his margin of victory—the better to hamstring him should he run for the Senate in 2024 and, if he sustained more damage, to defeat him in November. His constituents had begun receiving a flyer with a photograph of Chase arriving to visit Malcolm in the Cade County jail, accompanied by the caption “This is your absentee congressman on paid family leave.” His internal polling numbers dipped slightly, with independent voters expressing nascent doubts about his commitment to the job.
“I know this is hard,” Raskin told him. “But you can either spend your weekends campaigning in your district and showing your face in the state, or visiting your quasi family in Georgia—including a son more voters than not still think is guilty of killing a cop. Every day in Cade County leaches support.”
This was true, Chase understood. Any voter who saw him as standing up for Allie and Malcolm would have supported him before; in terms of cold political analysis, he had begun tiptoeing on quicksand—certainly with respect to the Senate. So instead of resisting Jack’s advice, he thanked him for his candor.
But the strangest part was his late weeknights in Georgetown, which distilled how completely his life had changed. There was a security guard at his door, and he was otherwise alone. A month before, Kara might have been with him, or at least on the telephone from Iowa. But like any sensible woman who watched the interview, she had no doubt concluded that Chase belonged to Allie Hill and, perhaps, always had.
In any event, when not enmeshed in work, Chase thought continually of Allie and their son. After nineteen years of silence, it was Allie he called now, every night. Her days, she reported, were consumed by visits to Malcolm and the myriad demands of running Blue Georgia: hiring a new field director, targeting key areas for vote-by-mail drives, intensifying her phone calls to ensure that donor support did not flag and—an added expense—augmenting security for her offices. But, aside from seeing her mother, what free time she had at night was suffused with worry for their son.
“I think he’s deteriorating,” she told Chase on a Wednesday night. “Al Garrett has begun scheduling an hour for him in the exercise area, with no other prisoners around. But the other twenty-three hours he’s living with his own despair. You know about Jabari’s co-counsel, right?”
“The white guy from Atlanta? Only that Jabari thinks he’s good.”
“He’s off the case,” Allie said flatly. “Emergency heart surgery, no trial work anymore. I know Jabari’s the one who matters most. But Malcolm is taking it as a sign from God.”
It wasn’t that bad, Chase knew, but it was an unexpected and unwelcome problem. Ford couldn’t carry the load of defending a capital case alone and, as Allie and Malcolm well knew, one key part of his strategy was presenting a racially mixed jury with a white co-counsel. “He’ll find someone else down there,” Chase assured her. “How are you doing?”
