The Nickel Boys

In some ways Turner had been telling Elwood’s story ever since his friend died, through years and years of revisions, of getting it right, as he stopped being the desperate alley cat of his youth and turned into a man he thought Elwood would have been proud of. It was not enough to survive, you have to live—he heard Elwood’s voice as he walked down Broadway in the sunlight or at the end of a long night hunched over the books. Turner walked into Nickel with strategies and hard-won dodges and a knack for keeping out of scrapes. He jumped over the fence on the other side of the pasture and into the woods and then both boys were gone. In Elwood’s name, he tried to find another way. Now here he was. Where had it taken him?

The sun came up. Elwood was heading home. He knew he couldn’t stay but it would calm him to be in his city again after these white streets. He’d go wherever Turner instructed and when it was safe, put it all down on paper again. Try the Defender again, and The New York Times. They were the paper of record, which meant they were in the business of protecting the system, but they had come a long way in their coverage of the rights struggle. He could reach out to Mr. Hill again. Elwood hadn’t tried to contact his former teacher after he got to Nickel—his lawyer had promised to track him down—but the man knew people. People in SNCC and those in the Reverend King’s circle. Elwood had failed, but he had no choice but to take up the challenge again. If he wanted things to change, what else was there to do but stand up?

The world had whispered its rules to him for his whole life and he refused to listen, hearing instead a higher order. The world continued to instruct: Do not love for they will disappear, do not trust for you will be betrayed, do not stand up for you will be swatted down. Still he heard those higher imperatives: Love and that love will be returned, trust in the righteous path and it will lead you to deliverance, fight and things will change. He never listened, never saw what was plainly in front of him, and now he had been plucked from the world altogether.