Rebels
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Rebels by Brian Hampton

I met Anthony eight years ago. I was twenty; he was twenty-four. I needed a job; he had a job to give. Our employer/employee relationship would not last forever. He moved on, and I moved on, but we would not lose contact with one another. We developed a friendship that eventually evolved to one in which he was more of an older brother to me than just some guy I'd worked for. Anthony is my best - sometimes I think my only - true friend.

He was born in the bayou country of Louisiana into a family that was dirt poor but high on motivation. In her search to consistently improve herself and her family's lot in life, Anthony's mother moved often, through different parts of Louisiana, into Mississippi, Alabama, and eventually north to Michigan and then west to California. By the time he was 15, Anthony was living in Oklahoma.

All had not gone well for Anthony. In Detroit his mother had not been able to find steady work despite the fact that she'd just completed a degree in accounting. The family was forced to live in low-income, inner-city housing which exposed Anthony to some of the lesser elements of society. When Anthony came home one day obviously under the influence of an illicit drug, his mother took her cue and decided to move again. However, California proved not much better for her son. Anthony was involved in a shooting incident - although fortunately without anyone being seriously hurt - and was arrested for breaking and entering.

Blaming the poor social structure for her son's fall from grace, Anthony's mother determined to get him away from there. She had managed to find a good job near Los Angeles and felt loathe to give it up at such an uncertain point in her life. Acting on an invitation from her mother, she

sent Anthony to live with her in a little town in Oklahoma where she had just been able to buy a small farm with money she had been saving all her life. Anthony's grandmother said, "We needed to get the boy back home, back down here where family means something." Anthony needed to be back down South.

Through the help of his Cajun grandmother and her strict discipline and demands for order, Anthony got his life back. He started doing well in school. He played football, was on the honor roll, and was listed in "Who's Who of American High School Students." He learned to work the farm, tilling the soil and caring for the animals. He occasionally rode horses in local rodeos and won a couple of awards. By the time he graduated high school he had earned an academic scholarship at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma where he would graduate with a degree in business administration. Six years after he entered college, I would ask him for a job at the store he managed.

I don't know if it is possible to determine a specific point at which Anthony and I became friends. I just know that one day I was saying "yes, sir" to his demands of me at work, and the next I was sitting with him in his living room talking about our families. Over the next few years, Anthony proved to be a difficult person to get to know, a result of his having moved so much as a child I assume, but despite the fact that I sometimes felt he wanted me just to step away, he was always there for me.

When I went through my first divorce and was left penniless, he was there, offering me a place to live. When my grandmother died he was at my side holding me up when I couldn't stand on my own. He took me under his wing and helped me understand that the bad things in life are only preparation for the good. He took a special interest in making sure I "made it."

Two events in our lives changed our relationship forever. I was forced to choose between my principles and my family. He was forced to choose between his principles and his relationship with people he had known longer than me. From this distance I can see that these events made our friendship stronger, but at the time I seriously questioned whether one friendship was worth it.

Not long after my divorce, Anthony and I became roommates. He'd had roommates before, but I had not, and it was a bit of an adjustment to live with someone who was not my family or my wife. The second week we lived in this house, my aunt and uncle came to visit, to give me a housewarming gift and meet Anthony, whom no one besides my mother and grandmother had ever met before. I soon learned that they knew very little about him indeed.

When my uncle walked in the door, Anthony was just walking into the living room to meet my family. He had been wary because I had talked about them and told him that many of their opinions of things were on the fringe. When my uncle first looked at Anthony, his eyes grew wide, as if the most horrific sight he had ever seen was standing before him. He turned to his

wife and whispered as though he were telling some great and awful secret, "He's a nigger."

My heart sank. Anthony's blood boiled. We'd both heard comments like this before, but we'd never expected to hear them in our own home. Anthony turned and left the room, and I flew into a quiet rage, refusing to speak for fear of what might come out of me. I simply handed the package that my aunt had given me back to her, opened the door and pointed towards the

street. Except for my grandmother's funeral, I have not seen them since.

Not long after this incident, Anthony and I decided to go to a party one night being thrown by some of his friends I had never met before. They were old friends of his, people who lived back in his hometown. On the drive up there, he told me that I might not feel very comfortable around them all, but I assured him that I would maintain. The night passed without incident although I never did really feel a part of the festivities, spending most of my time hanging around Anthony and listening to him talk. On the way home the next day he was quiet and reserved, which is unusual for him. I finally asked him what was bothering him.

He asked, "You think you'll ever talk to your uncle and aunt again?"

"I doubt it," I answered.

"Well," he said, "I don't figure I'll be seeing the people at that party again either."

No further comment was required. That night, however, we had a conversation. It was a defining moment in our lives.

"Why are people like that?" he asked. I don't think he was expecting an answer.

"I don't know. I just know that they are. I knew certain people in my family were racists, but I don't guess it is something I've ever thought much about," I told him.

He shook his head. "No, I understand people like your uncle. He was raised like that. He just doesn't know any better. It doesn't excuse him, but that's what it is. I don't understand my friends. Where do they get off?"

"I think you answered your own question," I told him. "They were raised like that. You and me: we're supposed to be enemies for some stupid reason. It's no different for blacks than it is for whites."

"I guess I just didn't expect it. They asked me why I was hanging out with a "cracker." They said I had forgotten 'my people.' Just what the hell does that mean. They even bitch because I'm educated and don't talk right."

"Don't talk right?" I asked, seriously confused.

"Tha's right, man. I don't be sayin' 'battries' and 'samiches' right." He grinned.

"Oh," I laughed. Then I said something that pained me to say, "I guess Southerners, black and white, still have a long way to go."

He shook his head vigorously. "That's a load of crap," he exclaimed. "You know why my mom couldn't get a job in Detroit? Hell, you wanna see racism, go to Watts." He stopped and considered for a moment. I gathered he wasn't finished. "Look, I'm not saying racism is worse other places than it is in places like here and Louisiana, but it sure isn't any better either. And, well, this may sound strange, but at least when I do find these idiots down here, they're honest about it. I'd rather deal with someone who hates me because I'm black then someone who pretends to like me for the same reason."

The conversation paused for a moment as we blankly watched television. I wondered about what he had said, and then I wondered about what had happened to me the previous day. It was just starting to dawn on me that I had been the target of prejudice. I wasn't sure how I felt about it, but it helped me understand the kind of things Anthony dealt with every day.

At some point I began thinking about my family and how I was raised. Except for my mother and to a lesser extent my grandmother, my entire family was made up of prejudiced people, whether it be against race or religion or what have you. I then thought about the fact that I'd never seriously considered Anthony's race before. I mean, it was obvious, but it wasn't something I had thought about more than once the entire time I'd known him. After these two events, I was thinking about it a lot. Could the color of a person's skin erase everything that we'd been through together? Was what we were implicitly taught correct? Were we supposed to be enemies? No, I couldn't accept that.

Then a question hit me, one I couldn't really answer. I voiced it. "How come we're able to get along? I know that's a stupid question, but how did we turn out differently than our friends and family?"

Anthony just looked at me for a moment, and before long it was like he was looking through me, beyond me. I realized at some point he actually was looking past the top of my head into my room, but I wasn't sure why. Suddenly, a grin spread across his face, and his eyes lit up as though some universal truth had just been revealed to him. Wondering, I turned my head to see what he might be looking at, momentarily even forgetting that I'd asked a question. All I saw was my room, my messed up bed, my dresser, clothes on the floor. Then I saw what was on my wall, another of those things I'd never thought about before in relation to Anthony, myself, and

our respective races. It was a Confederate Battle Flag.

I turned back to him, and he was grinning as wide as ever. He looked as if he would burst into laughter at any moment. "What?" I asked.

"You know why we aren't like these other people?" He spoke in such a way that I felt silly for not immediately knowing the answer.

"Why?" I shook my head.

"We're Rebels."

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