Memento

By: Emma

© 2001

Disclaimer: I don’t know NSYNC, and my knowledge of their pasts is rather limited. I don’t proclaim to be a leading expert in the history of one Justin Randall Timberlake, and given what I do know about him, there’s no way I would ever make a claim that this is what his childhood is like. This story is a work of FICTION. I don’t want emails berating me for what I’ve written. It’s all fake. If you can’t handle the concept, don’t read the story.

The past haunts me; follows me like the shadows of night follow dusk. There’s nothing I can do to avoid it. It’s always there, lurking, and when I reach out to grab it by the throat and throttle it from my mind, it steps just out of my grasp, laughing the evil laugh of the devil that knows he owns your soul.

It’s worse when the nightmares come.

During the day, when a memory begins to implant itself in the front of my mind, it’s easy to find a distraction in my friends. But, at night, in the restless vulnerability of my sleep, my memories become full-fledged reenactments of the past I can’t escape. I awake, more often than not when I have these dreams, to the sound of someone calling my name and my whimpered response. And as I claw my way to the surface of lucidity I lash out at whoever is closest, fearing from them some retribution for an act they don’t even know about. An act committed when I was just barely into my teen years.

Each one of my friends has been on the receiving end of my blows, as they have taken to watching over me while I sleep, too afraid to leave me alone, fearing whatever it is I fear. None of them are aware that the increasing occurrences of my nightmares stem from the fast-approaching anniversary of the night that turned me into something my grandfather had been preparing me for since my birth. They wake me when my nightmares become a threat to more than just the demon I battle in my mind. Always there are the concerned questions, spoken softly in a dim light that casts my shadows of fear on their confusion-lined, sleep-deprived faces. They ask me what’s going on and is there anything they can do to make these night terrors go away.

Can they reverse the clock? Take me back to the moment right before my whole life flashed before my eyes in the explosion of light and smoke that I can still see and smell in the rare moments that I allow my mind to drift that deep into the memory. No, they can’t. And so I just smile sadly and lead them to the nearest sink where I carefully clean and disinfect and bandage any wounds I have inflicted on them in that instant between dreaming and reality. Then I send them on their way with a pat on the back or a tight hug and my promise to get some more sleep before we reach our destination or have to leave the hotel.

After waking from a nightmare, though, I find the task of returning to sleep impossible. My mind is too busy reliving every moment of the dream because I always remember them. And the real nightmare of it all is that they aren’t just dreams created by my subconscious to terrorize me and raise questions about my character. The act I commit in my dreamed happened not too many years ago, and it split apart family ties held together by tremulous beliefs. Perhaps the worst part of it all, the part I may never be able to reconcile within myself, is that the family I tore apart was mine.

The beliefs I speak of are the real reasons behind my parents’ divorce. The certificate issued by the courts in Tennessee states ‘irreconcilable differences’ as the cause for the dissolution of their vows and promises. The truth of the matter is that my father turned out to be the exact opposite of the man my mother thought he was. The beliefs and morals he presented to her throughout their engagement were nothing more than a very good cover for what his mind truly gave credence to.

He believed in the superiority of one race.

He believed that God recognized one race as human and that all others were a sub-species put on earth only to serve us.

Words like ‘nigger’ and ‘kike’ were commonplace in my house, falling easily from my father’s lips like water from a spigot. He seemed to have a particular hatred for the blacks and people of the Jewish faith. Dinner table conversation usually consisted of him denouncing integration and coming up with farfetched ideas about putting those ‘cotton-pickin’ jigaboos’ and ‘tight-fisted Jews’ in their places. My mother tried to shield me from his hate-filled rhetoric but my father wasn’t having his boy ‘grow up to be some nigger-lovin’ pansy.’

For my sixth birthday he gave me a rifle.

By my seventh I was a crack shot, hitting the soda can targets he’d line up in a row from a hundred feet away.

By my eighth birthday my parents were divorced and my mother had moved me out of my father’s house. But not out of reach of the tenets of his faith. I spent every summer with my father on his parent’s farm. Even during my tenure at Disney I was still there every summer, shooting my rifle at mock targets. No longer was I shooting cans, though. I had graduated to strung-up, human-shaped scarecrows, my marks clearly defined with bulls-eyes in the middle of the forehead and over the heart. Dinner table conversation had turned from the impossible ideas of my childhood to more concrete, well thought out, completely feasible plans that could be put into action at a moments notice. Every other night or so, my father would leave the house in the dead of night, returning by daybreak, exhausted from whatever activity he had participated in. The noon news the day of his return would usually have a report of a prominent black man beaten to within an inch of his life and left in a public place as a message to the community. My grandfather would place his hand on my father’s shoulder during the report, patting it and saying, “good job, son” before returning to his chores.

The summer I was twelve, my father started taking longer trips to ‘put the niggers in their place,’ disappearing for two or three days at a time. My grandfather took over my education that summer and I began to have second thoughts about what they were doing. About what I was being trained for. I don’t know why I had never questioned it before, but suddenly what had seemed like child’s play to me wasn’t fun anymore. Maybe it was because it had always been a part of my life and I had never heard anyone tell me it was wrong except my mother. But how can one voice be heard when there are ten others speaking louder?

Or maybe it was because before that summer, my father had never killed anyone before.

But he did that summer, and I remember something breaking inside me as I listened to the news anchor report that a prominent local lawyer had been killed in a late night blast in his house. There were cheers in the kitchen that lunch time; all I could do was stare at them in wonder, not sure if I knew who these people really were. Didn’t they know that it was wrong to kill? When I left the farm that summer I vowed not to return.

I had no choice in the matter.

My father went straight to my mother to ask if he could have me for the weekend of my birthday. My mother agreed and made plans to go away with friends before she told me. I refused to go. I fought tooth and nail to get her to change her mind or at least make other arrangements. I begged. I pleaded. I cried.

I went.

The air was tense at the farm when we arrived and my grandfather sat me down and told me what I had been dreading hearing, that I was ready to be a part of their operation, ready to participate in the next plan to be set into action. I didn’t have to do anything, he explained. My job was to guard the house in case anything went wrong. Then he handed me a .38 and gave me a quick lesson on how to use it, reminding me to hold it with both hands and to keep my arms straight so that when it kicked back it didn’t hit me in the face. I carefully placed the safety back on, pointed the barrel at the floor and handed it back to him.

Then I told him I couldn’t do it.

He pinned me his cold, blue eyes and told me I didn’t have a choice.

Dinner was a subdued affair that night. What talk there was revolved around that night’s target. I almost lost the contents of my stomach when I heard their plan. They were going to kidnap the Sheriff of a nearby county, the first black man elected to the position in Tennessee, and bring him back to the farm where they would take care of him before disposing of his body elsewhere. They went into detail about what they had planned and I closed my eyes against the wave of nausea that rose from the pit of my stomach.

A real man didn’t lose his dinner over talk like this.

The plan was to be set in motion after midnight and my father sent me to my room to get some sleep before it all went down. How was I supposed to sleep with this looming ahead? My father’s job was to get the Sheriff and bring him to the farm where he and my grandfather would set to work on him, making him an example to all black people who thought they were above the station that God had planned for them.

But something went wrong, as it’s apt to do when someone forgets something crucial.

It was my father’s fault. He got the sheriff to the farm and used the muzzle of his rifle to shove him into the barn where my grandfather was waiting. They began with a verbal assault and my father fired a warning shot at the man that grazed his ear. That’s when things went downhill. See, my father forgot to disarm the sheriff and when he fired at the man, the cop’s training kicked in and he pulled his own gun and shot my father point blank in the forehead. My grandfather stared at his fallen son in shock before cocking his own gun and shooting the sheriff in the chest, kicking the man’s state issued pistol aside as it fell from his brown hand.

My grandfather bellowed my name and that was my cue to come running to help them. But I was supposed to come running from the house and I was already hidden in the barn, having decided earlier that I was going to try and stop them somehow. He yelled for me again before stepping over to the fallen cop and aiming again. The man was still-miraculously-alive and he started pleading for his life. MY grandfather lowered his gun and listened to him beg, amusement bright in his eyes. I scrambled down from my hiding place in the hayloft and moved to stand behind my grandfather just as he raised his gun again.

“PawPaw,” I said softly, my own gun cocked and ready to be fired. I focused my gaze on the back of his face, unable to look at the corpse that had once been my father. I couldn’t look at him yet; I would lose my courage if I did.

He swung around, his gun still trained on the cop. “Where’ve you been, boy?” I shrugged and he waved his free hand dismissively. “Doesn’t matter. Help me string this nigger up.” He moved towards his victim and the sheriff whimpered in terror, wetness spreading slowly across the front of his khaki pants.

“I can’t do that.” I said, my steady voice belying my fear. And when he turned to look at me my gun was aimed at his forehead.

“What are you doing?” He barked, taking a step towards me.

My hands began to shake with fear and a light sheen of perspiration dotted my upper lip. “I can’t let you do this, PawPaw.” I said softly and his eyes narrowed. He took another step towards me and I took one back. “Don’t come closer.” I ordered, thrusting my gun in front of me and he paused. “You can’t do this anymore. It’s not right.”

“Son, you don’t understand,” he began, moving again towards me.

“I do understand, and don’t call me son.” I said darkly.

“Have you lost your mind?” He shouted, the sudden explosion of noise almost causing me to drop the gun.

“No, but you have!” I shouted back, raising my gun again until it was aimed at his head. “You can’t just kill innocent people.” I stared at him with flared nostrils, trying to hold back tears. “You’re nothing but a hate-filled man who can’t stand anyone doing better than you ever did. And look what it’s got you. Your son is dead. My father is dead and you might as well have killed him yourself.”

My grandfather’s face darkened and my knees started to quake. “There’s a whole lot more to this that you understand,” he said. “Let me explain—“

“I don’t want to hear anymore of your lies, PawPaw.” I said. “And I understand all I need to. Like the fact that you won’t stop until you’re dead.”

He laughed, his familiar, dry, smoker’s laugh. “You sure you’re only thirteen?” He began moving towards me again and my fear came back.

“I said, don’t come closer.” I raised my gun again. “I’ll shoot you if you do.”

“No, you won’t,” he said confidently.

That angered me and bolstered what little courage I had left. “Try me,” I said defiantly.

And damn him, he did.

He stepped towards me again and I did the only thing I could. I fired my gun with shaking hands and watched as the bullet entered his throat and exited through the back of his neck, lodging in the wall behind him. His eyes registered shock as he brought one hand to his throat and covered the hole before falling to his knees and sprawling on the hay-littered floor, his blood pooling around his head.

The whole thing was over in less than a minute and a half.

I have a vague recollection of the slowly dying sheriff pleading with me to call for help and me staring at him blankly, my young mind trying to make sense of the senseless. I remember making several attempts to move before finally being able to make the run from the barn to the house where I dialed 911 with bumbling fingers, unable to find the numbers the first time. My grandmother stood there, her sweater pulled tightly around her slim frame, shaking as I told the operator what had happened. I couldn’t look at her as I told my story; I couldn’t bear to see the hatred in her eyes as she looked at me, the boy who had just killed her husband. And I was saved from speaking to her by the dispatcher who insisted on keeping me on the phone until the police units arrived. My feet couldn’t carry me out of the kitchen fast enough as I ran down the hall and out the front door, into the arms of the first police officer I saw, finally finding safety from the horrors of the night. I don’t remember how many times I had to tell what happened that night; each time I told it, I relived it and I finally broke down sometime in the early morning hours, unable to tell it again. Unable to speak at all.

It was almost two months before I would speak again.

So, that is the past that haunts me, and that is how I tore my family apart. My mother and I never saw my father’s relatives again, and I agreed when she suggested that I let her second husband adopt me so I could take his name. I wanted nothing to do with my father and that included having his name. The man every NSYNC fan knows as my dad is really my stepfather, and my little brothers are really of no blood relation. My father and grandfather are buried in the family plot in Tennessee and my grandmother moved out of the farm soon after the funerals, unable to handle living there alone after so much had happened. I don’t know where she is now…

***

The sun is shining by the time our bus winds its way into the state of Tennessee. On the way to Memphis we pass the road that would have taken me to the farm. And as we drive by and I stare up the road as far as I can, I feel something stir inside and a painful tug near my heart and I know that the time has come to face my past. It’s time to put to rest the demons inside and I ask our bus driver to turn around and take me to the only place I can do that.

“Where are we going?” Lance mumbles sleepily, having woken when the bus made its attempt at a three-point turn on the narrow state road. He peers through the window at the road ahead and looks at me curiously, knowing that we are going somewhere familiar to me. Joey and Chris and, finally, JC make their way to the front lounge area and we sit in silence for the several miles of the trip before I tell the driver to make the next left.

I tense visibly as the house comes into view and the hand Chris means to be calming only causes me to jump and swing around with raised fists. The fear is in my eyes as I look at them and I know they want to know what’s going on but don’t know if they should ask. When the bus slows to a stop and I rise to leave, they rise too and I make no attempt to stop them because today…today I need them and they sense that as they follow me through the chilly morning air to the barn. My breath catches in my throat as I round the corner of the house and catch my first glimpse of the building where so much happened. And I want to cry because the building has fallen into such disrepair and looks ready to tumble to the ground with the first strong gust of wind. Then I am crying because no matter what happened in there, this is still the place I grew up and the barn will forever be the first place I dared to make a whispered wish to the stars for all I have now.

JC wraps an arm around my shoulders and I don’t jump in surprise this time or pull away either. His touch gives me the courage I need and I straighten and began the walk into the barn. My friends stop just inside the door, letting me walk through my memories alone, and I move step by step through my nightmare. I make the climb up to the hayloft, empty now save for a few pieces of hay here and there, and I lie on my stomach and survey the room below just as I did that night. From this view I can see the bloodstains no one bothered to cover with a new layer of dirt. There’s my father’s, and I have an instant memory of the look of surprise on his face just before he fell. Next to his are the stains of the sheriff, who died of his wounds anyway. If he had lived I might have felt justified in killing my grandfather. But he died and I was a murderer.

I climbed down from the hayloft and walked over to the spot where my grandfather died. The peace I need can’t be found at a distance. I kneel just beyond where his blood had stopped flowing from his throat and bowed my head, allowing my tears to flow freely. There was movement behind me and when I pushed myself off the ground I found myself surrounded by the others, their faces drawn in solemn curiosity as they looked from me to the bloodstains and back to me. But they wouldn’t ask me for details, and I would tell them when I was ready.

I turned to leave and the sunlight streaming through the windows glinted off something metallic buried in the wood right behind where my grandfather had stood. Before I even went to see what it was I knew, and my hand was already digging out my pocketknife. With shaking hands I dug the bullet that had killed my grandfather out of the wood and I stared at it, wondering how the police had overlooked this when conducting their investigation.

Then I smiled.

I clenched my fist around the metal and returned to my friends, leading them out of the barn and back to the bus. And as we pulled away from my past I looked at the bullet and knew that no matter what they had tried to turn me into, I was not like them. And I never would be.

And this bullet, the one I always carry with me, will serve as a permanent reminder of that.