Jared Yates Sexton - The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore

The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore

Copyright 2017 by Jared Yates Sexton

All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.

eISBN 978-1-61902-963-7

Jacket design by Matt Dorfman

Book design by Sabrina Plomitallo-Gonzlez

COUNTERPOINT

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Printed in the United States of America

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The town had changed. main street was still there, but the shops Id gotten used to years ago had closed since Id left, their hollowed-out fronts winking like sad, beleaguered eyes. The house Id rented in graduate school, a two-story thatd once upon a time been a doll shop, its walls and stairs lined with porcelain figurines, looked deserted now. Murphysboro, Illinois, had seemed like a logical stopping point in mapping out my drive from Georgia to Iowa in the summer of 2015, a chance to take a stroll down memory lane, but now it just felt abandoned and devastated, a shell of what I could remember.

Luckily the barbeque joint where Id taken my meals a minimum of three days a week was still open, the clientele lining the bar mostly unbothered. After a day on the road I wanted friendly conversation but didnt find any takers. The TVs over the bar, usually tuned to a Cardinals game, were glowing with Fox News and the story it had been running for the past week.

In McKinney, Texas, a suburb of Dallas, nearly a hundred teenagers had descended on a pool party and police had been called after some of them hopped a fence. The reporting officers were captured on video racing through the gated community like mad men, one of them rolling unnecessarily across the grass before screaming and tossing black teenagers to the ground. One of the teenagers, a girl in a peach and yellow swimsuit, had earned his ire, resulting in him manhandling her. Having dragged her back into the frame, he threw her down, grabbed the back of her head, and pushed while her friends tried to intervene. The officer drew his gun and chased them away before returning to the girl and shoving her into the dirt, commanding, On your face!

The video started and stopped and started again on a continual loop. Sometimes beginning with the roll, sometimes the girl in the swimsuit. The host and guests spoke over it, all of them in agreement that things mightve gotten a little out of hand in McKinney, but the officer was just doing his job.

Peoples too sensitive, said a man at the bar. Seven years before, wed bought each other beers on a few occasions, usually whenever I wore my faded Cubs hat and he felt like pining over the glory years of Ryne Sandberg and Harry Caray. The guys name was Bob or Brad or Billy, something with a B, and when he talked about the 1984 team his face would light up like he was bragging about his kids. I mean, for fucks sake.

Sentiment in the restaurant seemed in agreement. Another fella Id drank with and argued with about the best fishing spots in Southern Illinois was nodding at his pint of Bud Light. Lookit her. Lookit how shes talkin.

In silence, I polished off my ribs and listened to the men and the tables around them commenting on the girl and how shed been egging on the officer. Times had changed, was the sentiment. Kids today talk back in a way they never wouldve even considered in the good ol days. Especially the black ones.

A few blocks down, the liquor store where Id spent a few of my graduate assistant checks was still chugging along. Stepping inside was like strolling through years gone by as everything was as I had left it, including the cooler where a six-pack of Miller Lite still held its same position on the same rack. Theres something about old haunts that makes a person go on and on like an idiot, an appeal to be recognized, I guess, and I couldnt help but tell the cashier Id once lived just down the street for three years.

Huh, he said, unimpressed. I asked how town had been and he handed me my beer in a sack. Whend you leave?

2008.

Things werent great, he said. Recession and all.

I bet.

Bunch of folks addicted to a bunch of shit.

Sure, I said, unsure what else there was to say. Id graduated from Southern Illinois in August of 08 and moved back to Indiana right before the bottom fell out of the economy. A terrifying time to enter the workforce, Id made it just fine after a few shaky years. Murphysboro, I could tell, was still reeling from the punch.

My motel for the night was a place Id stayed only one other time after an ex-girlfriend and I had had a knockdown-dragout and I needed a place to sleep. First Id driven to the parking lot of the nearby Wal-Mart and tried to rest there, but a homeless man had knocked on my window just seconds after Id drifted off and I thought better of it. This motel wasnt much of an improvement, truth be told, and had I known what I was getting into beforehand I mightve taken my chances at the Wal-Mart.

Parked outside my room was a trio of beat-up pickup trucks, the frames rusting and nicked from years of hard use. Men sat on the ground, some resting in the planters and others popping a squat right in front of my door. Workers, their skin permanently tanned and giving off the kind of hot glow only years of toiling in the sun could earn. Right then, they were only working on pounding silver tallboys of Coors Light and bullshitting to no one in particular. When I got out of the car with my bags, the guy by my door nonchalantly handed me one, and after throwing my luggage inside I came back and lingered in the doorway.

It felt good to drink that beer with a complete stranger. In all honesty, Im always looking to toss a few back with people I dont know, especially if theyre working folk. I grew up in a family of factory people who cursed like they were on the line and didnt have much time for talk that extended far past the weather or who was pregnant with whose kid. The truth is, theres still a part of me more at home in their company, and thats how I felt right then, drinking shit beer and just nodding as the men would say things out of nowhere that had nothing to do with anything.

The guy who handed me the beer seemed in the mood to chat a little, and so I asked what kind of work they were doing. A little of this, a little of that, he told me and said theyd been working construction that morning and would be landscaping the next day. After that? Who knows?

Done with the beer, I retired to my room to get started on the six-pack Id bought and flip through the TV. More and more I was finding myself suffering through hours of cable news in an effort to discern just how the presidential field was taking shape. It was June 2015 and there were seventeen months left in the race. Donald Trump was still flirting with throwing his name in the ring and already the circus had begun. Everyone was expecting Hillary Clinton and Jeb Bush, a snooze we all shouldve known wouldnt come to bear considering it didnt even come anywhere near matching the countrys level of crazy.