had noticed thus far. They wore masks over their faces, and carried sticks and other makeshift weapons.
Wilson and the other BLM leaders reacted immediately, rushing forwards to try to stop these newcomers surging forward. They didn’t move fast enough. Instead the police saw a few armed demonstrators rushing them, backed by dozens more potential assailants.
The response was immediate. Police rushed forwards to engage the masked men. Tear gas canisters landed at the feet of the protestors, causing panic and mayhem. Officers with bullhorns shouted warning. They beat down any and all opposition.
Melissa stood in the middle of it all, unsure where to run or what to do. An officer brutally attacked a young black man to her right, and she looked on in horror as his blood ran in the street. She didn’t know what to do. She was utterly powerless.
Her eyes streamed with tears. The gas was taking hold of her. She coughed, then wretched, doubling over. Her whole face and throat burned with an intensity she had never felt before, like she’d eaten the hottest chili pepper on Earth and then rubbed it in her eyes for good measure. She couldn’t breathe, she could barely stand. She couldn’t see what was going on through the clouds of gas and the tears in her eyes. She screwed her eyes shut and rubbed at them to try to stop the burning, all the while coughing up her lungs onto the asphalt.
She crashed into someone and sprawled to the ground. Her exposed skin prickled in the poisonous air, but this was nothing compared to her throat, nose, lungs and eyes. Mucus, tears and sweat poured from her, more fluids than she thought she could possibly produce. And the coughing was so intense she couldn’t stand up. She rubbed her face but this seemed to make it worse, though it was hard to tell if the rubbing was the cause or prolonged exposure. She couldn’t see and she couldn’t escape the gas. She crawled on her hands and knees, bumping into other people despite trying to avoid them by the sounds of their coughing. Her own retching made it almost impossible to hear where others were located, and of course she couldn’t see anything at all. The pain was beyond anything she could cope with and she started screaming, except that no sound issued from her searing throat. She couldn’t breathe. Was she dying? Could tear gas kill?
She was aware of hands beneath her armpits, scooping her up and dragging her away. Were they arresting her? She didn’t care. Anything was better than this. They lowered her to the ground, sitting up with her back against a wall. She wanted to die, for it to end. Instead there was suddenly a bottle of water in her hands and a cool breeze on her face. It was like seeing sunlight after years of living underground. She fumbled with the lid of the bottle, desperate to get to the water. Her rescuer – she assumed – helped her remove the lid and she drank greedily. Meanwhile, her rescuer poured more water over her face and into her eyes. The pain and the burning didn’t go away, but they abated slightly. She finished the bottle and let it drop from her fingers. Someone was speaking to her. Saying something about moving further away, not being safe yet.
She allowed her rescuer to pull her to her feet. Shakily, she half-stumbled, half-lurched along beside her rescuer, leaning heavily on him or her. Screams and crying and coughing surrounded her, assaulting her ears and disorienting her more, if that was possible.
She felt far from normal, but the pain had subsided enough for her to croak some words and open her eyes. She tried to speak but the blurry face before her made shushing noises and handed her another bottle of water. She removed the lid of this one without a struggle and drank more. Her breathing was improving now, and she no longer felt like she wanted to die.
Slowly, through the haze of tears, a concerned face swam into view. He alternated between examining Melissa and looking up and down the street.
He turned back to her and took off the scarf he had wrapped around his face to lessen the effects of the gas. His eyes were swollen and tears covered his cheeks, but he seemed to have avoided the worst of the gas attack.
Melissa had never been gladder to see a friendly face.
Senator Tim Barns coughed twice and smiled at her.
Tim helped Melissa through his front door and took her straight to the kitchen sink. He took a clean dishcloth and ran it under water, then used it to wipe her eyes, returning the cloth to the water several times. She was still coughing, but had recovered sufficiently to breathe normally and speak to him in one word answers.
When she confirmed her eyesight was more or less restored, he guided her to the sofa and they sat down together.
“Thank you,” she said, for what must have been the hundredth time.
“Once again, it’s nothing. I saw you in the cloud of gas unable to get out, so I came in to get you.”
“You always bring a…” She coughed several times, holding the wet towel to her face for a moment before recovering. “Do you always bring a mask and bottles of water to a protest?”
Tim smiled. “It’s not my first rodeo. Every time there’s a BLM march I join it – even before I became a senator – and sometimes things can go south real quickly.”
“Well aren’t you Mr. Socially Responsible.”
“It’s important, right? I think it’s just as important for white guys like me to stand up and say, this isn’t okay. If people see a few white faces in the mix, they might think, well hey, this isn’t just black folks bitching again, there may be more to this. It’s sad to have to think that way but there it is.”
“How many marches you been on?”
Tim stood up and grabbed a bottle of red wine, a corkscrew and two glasses from a side table.
“I’ve lost count, to be honest.”
“Have there been that many?”
“Too many.” He opened the bottle and proffered it to her.
“I’m usually a white wine drinker, but I sure could use something. So yeah, why not?”
“I can get white if you like.”
“No, no, this is fine.”
“It’s what inspired me to get into politics,” Tim continued, pouring her drink. “I saw this same shit happening over and over, saw cops get off for shooting people, saw the effect it was having on communities in my own city, saw the mistrust of the police boiling over again and again… Something had to change.”
“So you’re going to change it all?”
“Ha, no.” He took a drink from his own glass. The fruity red helped soothe his own burning throat. “But if I can start a conversation at the right levels, it helps right? I got elected on police reform, prison reform and busting the school to prison pipeline.”
“The what now?”
“Police in schools disciplining kids, so they leave school with a record or possibly a jail sentence instead of a couple of detentions and a high school diploma.”
“That’s terrible!”
“Yeah and black kids are three times more likely than white kids to end up with a juvenile record. So anyway, I ran on those issues and they elected me. Yay!”
