The Book of Rook

Poor people commit crimes because they’re broke. Rich people commit crimes because they’re broken. The rest of us commit crimes because we’re bored.

“Brother Rook!” Spider yelled to her old friend. Melvin was across the street from her favorite corner to work. “You always out here selling your books,” she said. “You need to open your own bookstore.”

“I’m too poor for that,” Melvin said.

“You only poor because you wanna be. Some people ain’t got no choice.” She turned to a slowing car and propositioned the driver. “You want a date?”

“Everybody’s got a choice,” Melvin yelled back as the working girl hopped in the car and it rolled away. Melvin took note of the make, model, and license plate, and then he continued his thought. “It’s just not always a good choice,” he said.

When a poor kid breaks the law, they are often presented to the public as evil, even when what they are is lost in a sea of systemic inequality. What they need is compassion. What they get is villainized.

At the same time, rich kids get portrayed as having made a few mistakes, with words like, “He just slipped up.” Or, “She got in with the wrong crowd.” Quote, “We shouldn’t ruin their lives over one transgression.” Unquote. Even if that transgression is rape or murder.

This economic distinction starts in preschool and follows imperfect people through middle school, high school, college, and well into the pros. Local news producers exacerbate this double standard and run with it. People are portrayed differently depending on race, gender, religion, and most often economic class.

At the top of the leniency list was the young Christian girl with her straight blonde hair and daddy’s lawyer. At the bottom of the list was a dark-skinned boy with dreadlocks and an absentee father who was probably an atheist or a Muslim.

Good versus wicked isn’t always as black and white as The Wizard of Oz. You don’t have to get hit over the head with a house to realize we’re not in Kansas anymore.

Melvin Hawthorne could make other people feel his emotions, and most of the time it was involuntary. The people on the street called him Brother Rook, Mel Rook, or just Rook. He made friends with the beggars, the drug dealers, and the whores. The street people found him refreshingly honest and not all judgey because he treated everyone as if they deserved dignity until they proved otherwise, and he never compared himself to them. To him, life was not a competition.

“I only compare myself to the sky,” he said.

Melvin would look at the weather and ask, “What have I done to live up to this present moment, and how can I make it better?”

It was his life’s goal to always be pleasant to be around, but that was harder than it sounded and required alcohol, drugs, sex, and some form of entertainment.

“Look at the sun,” he said. “The sun is ancient. It’s 4.6 billion years old. And it is temporary. So why should our suffering be any different? What makes a person feel like their problems are more substantial than the sun?”

The officer, in his report, said he gave Melvin a lawful order that he refused to obey. He had ordered Melvin to pick up the books that were on the blanket in front of him and leave.

Every weekend, vendors, addicts, and homeless people lay out their wares, belongings, creations, or found objects on tables or blankets for collectors, artists, and bargain seekers to browse and buy, only to be shut down periodically by police.

However, the order to disperse did not apply to booksellers. They were covered under the First Amendment. Americans were allowed to sell or give away books, newspapers, and pamphlets in public by law, with some caveats, as long as they weren’t pornographic or promoted real-world violence, and as long as they weren’t blocking the way.

Melvin wasn’t doing any of that, but on that particular day, Melvin was being told to pick up his books and leave, and he was complying.

About a dozen officers banged on tables, shouted orders, and made a show of shutting the flea market down. Normally two or three cops handled it. This time they arrived in force.

The rest of the vendors were in violation of multiple statutes and were given tickets or slaps on the wrist. There was nothing they could do to Melvin except ask him to leave.

Officer James Cowardice was the one named in Melvin’s counter-complaint, along with Abigail Weakness. It was James who blocked Melvin’s way.

The officer’s feet were planted firmly on two of Melvin’s most expensive books: an old Bible from before the Second World War and an old unabridged dictionary that had been in his family for generations.

They were the oldest and most important books in Melvin’s collection. If he were going to start a bookstore, they’d be in a glass case under a sign that said, Rare Books.

He was standing on them, making it impossible to pick them up, the books or the blanket underneath.

Melvin wasn’t angry. He was concerned. He carefully picked up all the books except the two under the officer’s feet, put them in a green duffle bag, and prepared to leave.

He was mindful not to bump into the book-hating Officer Cowardice or disrespect him or his book-hating boots in any way. The officer seemed to enjoy having Melvin crawling around at his feet. There was a time in this country when a Black man with a book was a hanging offense, and it really wasn’t that long ago.

Had he grabbed the blanket under the books and pulled it hard, the officer would have tumbled to the ground like a sack of shit. But he didn’t do that.

Instead he said, “Excuse me, officer. You’re standing on my books.”

Melvin swore on his life that he asked him to move in the sweetest, politest, most non-threatening tone he could muster. Honestly, he did. He’d seen wealthy white women curse out police officers and not get arrested. He didn’t have that sort of clout.

Rook found himself face down on the pavement in an instant. Officer Cowardice put his knee in Rook’s back and yanked his right arm behind it.

Almost immediately, another two officers dove on top of him, grabbing his other wrist and one of his legs and also twisting them violently past the manufacturer’s recommendation for the care and maintenance of a human body.

Only one limb remained unclaimed. His right leg was like a quiet girl at a school function, waiting to be asked to dance.

Rook was already on the ground. There was a grown man on one leg. Two more had his arms and a knee in his back. He wasn’t going anywhere. He wasn’t struggling. And more importantly, he had done absolutely nothing wrong.

They pretended to be wrestling with him while shouting, “Stop resisting.” He was not resisting. “Stop fighting.” He was not fighting. They were moving his limbs.

They were trying to make it look like they weren’t physically abusing the man in front of witnesses by claiming he was fighting back. He was not, but this was before the age of cell phones and video evidence. They were in control of the narrative.

That’s when Officer Weakness arrived on the scene. She was Abigail to her mom. Abby to her friends. A period Weakness on official reports. She watched the events unfold.

“She saw it all,” his lawyer would say. “Officer Weakness witnessed the savage beating of a man who offered no resistance and then made it worse.”

If Melvin’s Great-Grandma Lilly had been there, she would have backhanded the girl. “Why was she even wearing that uniform?” she would ask, then try to feed everybody.

Officer James Cowardice addressed his superior officer with disdain reserved for her gender.

“What are you gonna do, Abby?” he prodded. “Just stand there?” His tone was thick with mockery. He nodded toward Brother Rook’s unaccompanied right leg as if to say, ask it to dance.

Abby could have half-heartedly grabbed his ankle and sarcastically yelled, “Stop resisting.” That would have been enough to satisfy her bullies. But she went a step further.

Officer Weakness went above and beyond. She grabbed his leg with both hands and spun it counterclockwise past six, past nine, past the point when most people would have stopped.

The policewoman spun his lower leg at the knee joint until his kneecap cracked and he screamed.

Melvin heard the scream in the distance. It was guttural but high-pitched. Unsettling, unnerving, and inhuman. The scream came from someplace inside of him where African boys ran from dogs and riders, where whips cracked and mothers cried for stolen children.

While Melvin screamed, the other officers cackled in delight. A symphony of cruelty. An opera of pain.

They were awful, but she was the reason he wouldn’t be able to sit without pain. She was the limp in his afternoon gait. She was the reason why he stopped playing pickup basketball at the Y and why he couldn’t play softball in the park on Sunday.

This was not her finest hour.

Over the next several years, as the mayor cracked down on the vendors and the homeless, there were riots downtown. Tompkins Square Park became a war zone. The cops bulldozed squats and public gardens while the lifetime residents, the artists, and bohemians fought cops, overturned cars, and vandalized their own neighborhood.

Melvin knew everything was temporary and tried not to let the bad mood fester, but it was hard.

“We could all be swallowed by the earth tomorrow,” he liked to say. “Everything we feel, want, think, have, or believe can be gone in an instant, even our hatred. It feels as permanent as a mountain. But even a mountain can become a volcano and be gone by the morning.”

Melvin’s anger was spreading like lava. Out of control. Oz was in full revolt. We were definitely not in Kansas anymore.

This wasn’t the first time, or the last time, that police had harassed him, but it was the only time that had left a big nasty scar.