He was born on Nine-Eleven. That is, on September 11, 1967. And his parents named him Theodore Webster Jackson. As a boy, he played football with his dad and his friends, watched the A-Team, and wanted to grow up to be a soldier of fortune, get married, and have an “old-style” family.
Instead, he graduated college in 1989, went to law school, and by 2001 was a partner at Hart, Zimmer, and Browne.
Somewhere in-between, he met Clydene Patrice Hobbes. Both young, both energetic, both enthusiastic, both idealistic and unashamed, both volunteers for the same political campaign, stuffing envelopes, and both lonely. They fell in love, but they needed to build their careers, or at least that’s what they told each other. Years later, they finally got back together on Ted’s birthday, the year he made partner. That was also the year Ted decided he was too young to play it safe and too old to be counting birthdays, but that’s another story.
A year later, the two were husband and wife, not “old-style,” but that didn’t matter. Clyde kept him on his toes, and at the same time, he could open up to her—and she knew him—in a way no one else ever did.
They bought a house in the town of Abe’s Turn and began a life together, became active in local politics, especially with controversial issues they both believed in. Each a busy professional, together they found time to stuff envelopes and deliver signs for Suzie Smith in her successful campaign for town selectman, or to collect signatures for a ballot question to eliminate the state income tax. Ted remembered introducing his best and longest friend Michael to Harrison Scout, a PR man who had previously worked for a noisy, minor-party senate campaign that (much to the disgust of the incumbent candidate) successfully re-framed the election debate. Michael was an expert PR and ad man himself. He was duly impressed.
But their most significant work as political activists happened in their own living room, literally. It began over coffee and cake on election day, November 7, 2006. Ted had invited Michael, and Clyde had invited her friend and confidant, one Mira Jayson. After voting, as was their custom, they would get together and opine on the certainty of politics. That is, whether or not your candidate gets elected, you can be sure that nothing will ever change, at least not for the better.
It was the first year, however, that Mira joined them, as she and Clyde had only just met some months prior. Michael had never formally met her, and his first order of business was to make a pass at her.
Her response: “How do you know I’m not a lesbian?”
“Well, are you?” Michael asked, a twinkle in his eye.
“No, but you wouldn’t know that as fast as you move.”
“You want me to slow down? I can go slow,” seductively.
“Maybe,” Mira peered under her dark eyebrows at him, a slight sneer on her lips, “I just want someone I can talk to.”
That seemed to attract Michael even more than if she had proposed finding a back room to get naked in. But it attracted him in a way that he couldn’t act on. And it was better that they kept their relationship professional. One reason was that Michael was Ted’s friend, and Mira was Clyde’s, and if something happened between them, it could make friendly social gatherings very uncomfortable. Besides, it was no skin off of Michael’s nose. He went through women like he went through paper towels, avoiding long-term commitments with both. And it turned out that Mira was definitely the long-term kind of gal. They were clearly not made for each other. And if this weren’t reason enough for them to keep their relationship professional, another reason revealed itself that night.
As the four sat recounting tales of their deals with the devil that is government, a new thread emerged that night. Surely, it had been there all the time, even if they had not noticed. Ted, as a criminal defense lawyer, frequently ran headlong into the two-faced nature of the criminal justice system. On the one hand, it releases the guilty in order to protect the rights of the innocent. On the other hand, it tramples over the rights of the innocent in order to get at the guilty, usually with the full blessing of the innocent it purports to protect. Clydene, too, had read enough horror stories online, ever since the Cyber-porn scare of 1995, stories of cops busting into the homes and businesses of average citizens, on circumstantial evidence, on anonymous tips, wrecking computers, stealing data. And usually, the enforcers had a personal bias to hate the accused, motivations that have nothing to do with the law. Sometimes, it all seemed too Orwellian to be true. But Ted confirmed that, yes, the law is at the beck and call of those who enforce it. If the cops really want to persecute someone, they can usually find a way to make it legal, even if they never prevail in court. Most people assume, incorrectly, that it actually works the other way around. And Michael backed up all these observations with his own file of personal accounts, collected from various people he had met, stories that hit just a bit too close to home, events that had transpired in Abe’s Turn.
Mira was the one who pulled all these pieces together into a coherent thread. Something no one had considered before. Yes, it was bad all over the country. Yes, you could go online and find reason to fear the feds. But the feds have an entire country to patrol. What’s the chance they’d end up in this town? When was the last time you heard of Mulder and Scully coming to Abe’s Turn? Never? That’s to be expected, because all the atrocities in Abe’s Turn, they all happened at the hands of the local enforcers, and they were championed by the chief enforcer, Sam Baedes.
“Oh, Beady-eyes,” Michael retorted. “Boy, have I got stories I could tell you about him!” And he would have gone on for several hours if Ted hadn’t interrupted him.
And then there was Lando Benitez. He was Mira’s own personal horror story. Lando had been visiting his sister and her family. He had come from Spain for an American vacation. His crime was being a Latino in the White section of town. He stopped his car to listen to music and enjoy the scenery, apparently suspiciously, because the cops “questioned” him.
Now, Mira, then as now a certified counselor, frequently volunteered for various organizations, to talk to victims of physical, mental, and sexual abuse. She did this for the same reason she became a counselor in the first place, because she cared. Through her training, she knew all the psychological symptoms of abuse, all the challenges the victim faces. She knew that victims tend to blame themselves, usually with the full blessing of their friends and family. Part of what she did was to help the victim hold the abuser accountable for his own actions, and to find the courage to take steps to stop the abuse. Through her experience, she had seen the physical marks, physically disfigured victims, but she also knew that the psychological disfigurement reaches much more deeply, is much harder to see. But she could see it, as clearly as anyone else could see the nose on a person’s face. And she thought she had seen it all. But by the time she got to Lando Benitez, it was clear she hadn’t.
She met him almost by accident. She was at the hospital talking to another patient when one of the nurses who knew her asked if she could take a few minutes to talk with him. Lando decidedly did not blame himself for his predicament. Far from being his fault, it was hers. Mira ended up spending hours talking with him. Most of his initial comments were sarcastic, passive-aggressive, intended to strike out at her for what had happened to him. Eventually, she convinced him that she had no association with the authorities, and in fact, if they found her talking to him, she would likely become a target of their ire.
But that wasn’t the end of his travails, for he had apparently been identified as a target. Mira knew, because she kept in touch with him. Eventually, he cut his vacation short, because of official harassment and because he wanted to save his sister’s family grief. That was Lando’s official explanation. But Mira suspected that his brother-in-law may have all but thrown him out. By that time, he had amassed thousands of dollars in debt: fines, bail, hospital bills, repairs to the car after the cops “searched” it. Lando’s brother-in-law picked up the tab, because he was family. But as far as Mira knew, he never forgave his sister’s brother.
Mira told this story, still fresh in her mind, with such sentiment and passion that even Ted found himself being moved, and becoming angry at the villains of the story.
“The Chief even held a press conference,” Mira concluded, “and talked about how ‘our neighborhoods’ were under attack and how he was fighting gang violence.” Mira’s voice started to waver.
Michael retorted, “We should just get rid of Beady-eyes and save at least one salary.”
That was the beginning of the Committee for a Fairer Future, and the campaign against Chief Sam Baedes, and the events that led to the birth of the Conscience of Abe’s Turn.
