There are things that a child sees that change them forever. Violence can never be forgotten, can never be erased. In nineteen twenty-one a young boy, Binkley, takes a hatchet and opens a large box of ammunition. He hears the gunfire coming from all directions. He smells the houses in his neighborhood burning to the ground. He hears planes fly overhead; he sees people cringe in fear as those planes drop homemade bombs on their homes and businesses.
It had all begun hours before when, in a chaotic rush, Binkley was forced out of the Black’s high school year-end celebration and was first told of the ‘race-riot’.
Binkley was unaware that at the same time, across town, a mob of whites was violently protesting the release of a black boy who had allegedly assaulted a white woman. Whether or not the woman had actually been assaulted was beside the point. The white mob was determined that ‘the damn nigger was gunna get himself lynched’. The blacks formed a mob at the same time to save their brother in need. Hatred fed the stream of anger that would soon overflow and flood the whole of the city in violence.
Now, hours later, Binkley was sitting on the cold ground, forcing away the tears. At the beginning of this night he didn’t understand what was happening, but that was before. Now he knew he couldn’t cry. He had to do his part. His father had brought him to fight off the whites and protect the neighborhood of friends. Friends that were now fleeing from the city like rats fleeing the water that threatened to engulf them. Barefoot and scared, they crossed downed power lines as they ran from the whites that burned their houses, destroying their lives.
Binkley was a part of this now. He was going to protect his family, his people. He fumbles with the gun as he loads it. The freezing bullets numb his fingers; the bullets slicing through the air numb his mind. As he hands the gun to an older man who was fighting off the whites, Binkley sees a man fall to the ground clutching his chest; joining the others who had already fallen.
Now, an hour after the National Guard had been dispatched, there are still whites driving through the neighborhood shooting randomly at whatever shadow they could see move. Could handguns and rifles hold them off? If that dispatched Guard wasn’t going to help them, then who would? He is eleven years old and trapped in the cold solitude of a war-zone.
An explosion to his right makes him jump. His hands shake as he tries to open a new box of ammunition to reload the guns protecting his neighborhood. Bullets slip to the ground as he loads a gun with frozen hands. Binkley can see his old life fleeing from this place. This place where children load guns to protect the people they love. He forces in the last bullet of the gun’s clip and his hands stop shaking. The cold he felt and the sounds he heard slowly fade from his mind. He stands undaunted and determined as he passes the gun off to his right.
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