Crossing the street to avoid the young black men. Had to be five, six of them. Not that he was afraid of them. Walking fast. Not too fast. A car double-parked nearby, door open. Rap music from the car loud, grating. Punk music, you couldn’t understand the words. Had to be cursing whitey. Mocking whitey. He had the car key in his fingers that had gone cold as ice. There came a shout—Hey mister!

Black gangs had targeted him before. It was deliberate, premeditated. They’d targeted his sons Les and Rick who’d had nothing to do with whatever had happened to Hadrian Johnson but who gave a fuck about that, nobody gave a fuck about actual justice.

Had to be, these punks knew who he was. Not a day of his life in South Niagara after all that publicity, KERRIGAN in headlines for weeks, that half the black population in the city didn’t know who he was. Whose father he was.

Soon after Jerome Jr. and Lionel had pleaded guilty to manslaughter and were sentenced to prison the vandalism began. Windows broken in Jerome’s car parked in the driveway, tires slashed. Rocks thrown at the front of the house, garbage dumped on the lawn. Vehicles speeding past the house at night, shouts and threats. Jerome had had to guard the property with a (borrowed) rifle. Him, Les and Rick, some of their friends. Armed and ready with guns. Black Rock Street vigilantes, they called themselves. (White) guys from other neighborhoods, some of them total strangers to the Kerrigans, volunteered to help protect the Kerrigans from their enemies. If one of them sets foot on my property I have the right to kill him—Jerome Kerrigan had been quoted, actually misquoted in the papers for what he’d said had been different, he was sure—If anybody sets foot on my property to attack my family or me I have the right to kill him. That’s the law.

There’d been a South Niagara PD cruiser parked out front of the house, two weeks or so. Two cops. Still the kids had to go to school, Les and Rick, poor Katie so anxious she’d started pulling hairs out of her scalp.

Lula had been terrified to sleep in the house. Terrified it would be set on fire, they’d die in their sleep. Took Katie and stayed for a while with relatives in another neighborhood till things quieted down after a few weeks.