All-American Justice, or, Requiem for Yet Another American Dream

she wakes up early under the cover of darkness.

She wakes up early under the cover of darkness. She tiptoes down the carpeted stairway, careful not to make a sound, and leaves a note for her father on the kitchen counter:

don’t worry dad. I’ll be back in a few days.

photo by Augusta Sagnelli

She’s lying, but she has to lie to keep them both safe.

She creeps into the cool air of the cement garage where her dad’s beat-up self-driving car has been charging through the night. Her best friend, Sara, told her to fill the old-school jerry can of synthetic fuel and put it in the back-seat, just in case.

She enters the autonomous vehicle, inputs her destination in the GPS, and tells the vehicle’s AI system to reverse down the driveway.

She checks her text messages as the car manoeuvres itself into the street. The sun will be up in a less than an hour, the dead heat of summer by noon, the car’s purring AC a reminder of the deep south’s humid, insectan air.

Her friend Sara has been through this before. Melissa and Tanya, too, but Sara is the only one who was willing to tell her how to get up north without being tracked.

SARA: i love u. dont use the automated drive setting. you have to manually turn off GPS in the car settings. drive slow and safe. only use cash and keep your phone off until your north

She curses herself for being so naïve and follows Sara’s instructions, calibrates the car’s manual-drive settings with a shaking finger on the blue LED screen.

As she takes the wheel and drives away from the only home she’s ever known, she checks her rearview mirrors for a follow and remembers to double-check her blind spots before merging onto the interstate.

Soon enough, she’s speeding past the bowling alley where her mother used to play in a league. She decides to stop at a drive-in convenience store to honor her mother’s memory by stocking up on protein bars and energy drinks; during road trips her mother was always prepared. Back before all of the local businesses closed, she used to come to this strip mall with her dad while they waited for her mother’s treatment to finish. She remembers the vanilla ice cream parfaits they used to eat at TCBY … she never cared to learn what the acronym stood for, and as she picks up speed along the freeway in this peculiarly American darkness, she remembers sitting with her dad in those cheap white plastic booths, making up names beneath the fluorescent lighting: Ted’s Cow Breast Yogurt, This Country Belongs to Yuppies, and the very last time they came here, Turner Classic Bloated Youth.

At mile marker 93, she asks the car how many miles left until the northern border. She already knows precisely how long it will take—her mother always taught her to count the exact mileage before starting a road trip—but something about the robotic car confirming what she already knows makes this journey a bit more bearable. She takes the long way around Washington D.C., which affords her a picturesque view of sunrise on the Chesapeake Bay. The sunlight shimmers off the depths and glimmers along the shallows, black and green like the military gear and camouflage her father keeps locked away in the garage.

Once across the Mason-Dixon line, she decides to turn on her phone for the first time:  

Dad: MISSED CALL (12)

Dad: PLEASE ANSWER ME!! WHERE ARE YOU?!

She pulls over and swallows hard. She fights back tears. She can’t call or text. She knows she needs to reassure him—you’re still his little girl, after all—but it isn’t safe. Not yet.

He almost didn’t let her go to Nick’s graduation party.

Nick is the son of Senator Douglas Pritchard, who came to fame as the state’s renegade governor. During his tenure, Pritchard banned drag shows for anyone under eighteen, and was also the first governor to sign the First Hour Law, championing the belief that human existence begins the moment after ejaculation. Senator Pritchard also gained notoriety when the outsized police presence at his annual fundraiser prevented police from responding to the massacre at the Rainbow Lounge, where one of Pritchard’s most radicalized constituents killed fourteen teenagers and twenty-two others in the name of “preserving the All-American Family” before surrendering to the local police, unharmed. The “mentally troubled soul with the devil inside of him,” as Sen. Pritchard later called him, pleaded insanity and is now being represented by one of the state’s most prominent lawyers. Senator Pritchard insisted this was a time for “healing, not politics.” The automatic weapon used in the Rainbow Lounge Shooting can still be bought alongside Kleenex and packaged fruit at local department stores.

“And,” her father had finished lecturing her just a few weeks ago, “by the time Governor Pritchard became a senator, he’d already privately settled fourteen separate sexual misconduct cases … over three separate decades!”

“Dad … can I speak?”

“He’s a piece of shit, sweetie. You’re not going to that man’s house.”

“I told you I don’t like it when you call me sweetie anymore.”

“Until you’re out of this house, you’re still my little girl.”

“No, I’m not. I’m about to be seventeen. Anyway, Senator Pritchard won’t be there, dad.”

“And that’s supposed to make me feel better? What about his son?”

“Jesus, dad. Nick’s going to Yale. He’s dating someone else anyway. We’re just friends. Please let me go. Don’t ruin this for me, dad. Everyone’s going to be there …”

She held back tears, and her dad’s face softened. “I’m sorry,” he hugged her. “You’re right. I know you’ll be fine. It’s not you I’m worried about. It’s just … never mind. You’re right.” She remembers him kissing her on the forehead and her squirming bashfully away.

They laughed together. He always knew how to right a wrong. “Well, if my daughter’s going to an epic graduation party, she needs an epic outfit, right?” he smirked at her. “Let’s go shopping.”

She remembers him tapping the tablet on the kitchen counter and speaking to the automated assistant within, “Cassandra, can you help me find my daughter a cool outfit?” and within minutes they’d found the perfect pair of upcycled vintage Levis and an old school Winnie the Pooh tee-shirt, which were delivered by drone delivered the next morning. The faded white tee-shirt was authentic and soft, with an image of piglet and Christopher Robin holding hands as they waltzed into the forest. It was her favorite story as a kid. Nothing bad ever seemed to happen in the Hundred Acre Wood.

On the night of Nick’s party, her dad did his best to help her straighten her hair in the back. He even helped her pick out the right color lipstick, and when she got a text from Sara that Nick and his girlfriend had gotten into a fight, she slipped a condom into her back pocket, just to be safe. There were fewer people at the house than she thought there’d be—ten, fifteen, maybe—and Sara ended up not coming because her parents wouldn’t let her.

She remembers Nick opening a rare bottle of his dad’s Japanese whiskey, and she remembers swimming in the pool with the other girls. She texted her dad around midnight and told him everything was fine. She remembers treading water in the pool and seeing Nick whisper to one of the last single guys at the party , who made up an excuse about having to go home. There were two couples still at the party, but they both went upstairs to the bedrooms. She remembers Nick giving her a towel and serving her a drink on the couch, and she remembers him joking with her about the perks of being a senator’s son. She also remembers him serving her another drink before her legs started to feel like Jell-O, and then the room started to spin and she started to feel sick, and she only remembers the wet feeling of Nick’s tongue sliding up her neck and into her ear before the room went black.  

Once she crosses into Pennsylvania, she feels safe enough to sit at a roadside diner and have a hot meal. Her mother loved diners, especially diner coffee, said it was the lifeblood of American culture. She uses most of the rest of her cash for the $32 steak and eggs, plus coffee, taxes and tip. Two men with big beards and beer bellies enter the diner, clinging the bell above door. They immediately begin leering at her from their perches at the bar. She eats quickly, foregoes the coffee refill, and forgets to soak up the blood from the steak with her untoasted bread. She scrambles into the passenger's seat and tells the car to go, jumps into the driver’s seat when she remembers. She doesn’t see the two men exit the diner in her rear-view mirror, but she keeps checking well until she’s driving up the winding roads leading to the Catskills.

She remembers what Sara told her. Drive slow and safe. She breathes deeply and slows down, takes the corners as they come. She used to get sick on these kinds of roads, remembers her mother climbing into the back seat and stroking her forehead, singing her songs. She drinks the last of her energy drinks to keep driving through the night. Somewhere in upstate New York, she stops at a charging station to top up her battery and buy a coffee. On the wall above the row of self-checkout machines are half-a-dozen portraits of southern women who have active bounties on their heads. She keeps her eyes lowered so that the cameras can’t scan her retinas, pays with cash, and continues north.

Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear all way to the northern border. She watches another sunrise behind the dark green silhouette of snow-capped mountains. Her appointment is at 9 a.m. She still has a few hours. She decides to call her father and tell him everything.

He wishes he’d told her sooner.

She wishes for a lot of things.

It’s taken her 1,953 miles to regain control of her womb.

photo by Augusta Sagnelli

When it’s over, two local policemen in olive green garb escort her out of the clinic, just in case. “Never can be too sure these days,” one of them says. “Not after what happened in Wisconsin. Do you have somewhere to go, miss? At least to to stay the night?”

“I’m meeting a contact at a coffee shop. The Green Mountain …”

“Green Mountain Coffee and Creamery. We’ll show you the way.”

The cop smiles at her, and she wants to trust him. The patrol carl leads the way through a low-hanging fog which has floated down from the north. They keep the sirens off but the police lights on; the swirling reds and blues battle each other in the mist until they arrive at the coffee shop.

She orders a vanilla ice cream and takes a seat with a view of the entrance. She wonders what the bounty hunters might look like, and if they’re far behind. She wonders if they have daughters, too.

“Your contact running late?” one of the policemen says grumpily.

“Yeah … I’m sorry,” she says. What is she apologizing for?

She is sixteen years old. She is alone but brave. She is privileged. She is lucky. She is waiting for a nameless woman from the non-profit to come. The organization has hundreds of allies throughout the country to provide funds, transport, and lodging for women living down south. The bell above the door jingles. It isn’t her contact, just a group of beanie-wearing college boys. She pushes around the melted ice cream in her cup and keeps her eyes lowered. The policemen watch through the window as the college boys sit down next to her. Could this be them? The bounty hunters? Could they be this young? She takes a deep breath and tries to stay calm. One of the college boys says something about her eyes, but she isn’t listening.

One of the cops enters the coffee shop and tells the college boys to scram. She wonders when the men of this world will stop thinking of women as bodies, as objects to be gawked at, pointed at, assaulted and controlled. She wonders if it’s possible for men like them to believe she’s a human being when an American senator’s son can rape an unconscious sixteen-year-old girl and get away with it because the-mid-term-elections-are-coming-up-and-we-strongly-advise-you-to-take-the-cash-and-do-what-is-necessary-if-you-don’t-want-this-to-get-messy. She thinks about justice and catharsis and wonders what these words mean to her anymore. She thinks about what they ever meant.

One of the college boys is filming the police officers now, telling them to stay back, telling them that this is a free country, man. His friend pulls him away to watch the breaking news on his phone. The others huddle around the smartphone, sipping their whipped-cream coffees. She doesn’t look over until she hears her father’s name mentioned: “Three officers arrived on the scene immediately and were able neutralize the shooter,” a police officer says. “No, he was not previously known to the authorities … yes, Senator Pritchard’s son is in critical but stable condition. Unfortunately, Senator Pritchard succumbed to his wounds. He died serving his country, an American hero. This department’s thoughts and prayers are with the Pritchard family. Yes, we intend to carry out a full investigation. And no, we do not yet have a motive for the shooter.”