Running in circles

 I had dropped my son at practice and was on my way to the track nearby. While I waited for him, I had planned to run in circles.

The sound in my head wasn't music. Instead, I listed to an accounting of time: specifically, the 12 minutes it took three men to hunt and kill a human being last year in Georgia.

Twelve minutes to snuff out a life and 72 days to convince authorities to make arrests in the case.

I had already heard the news: that a jury had convicted three white men - Travis McMichael, Gregory McMichael, and William Roddy Bryan - of the brutal murder of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who had been jogging through their neighborhood.

Few people call it what the men's act of barbarism was on that February day in 2020: a lynching. But we all know that's what the jarring video, recorded by one of the murderous trio as they cornered their victim, had captured.

The nation learned of Arbery's killing only after pressure from family and the public forced the release of a video, put forward by those who hoped the footage would exonerate the perpetrators. It did just the opposite. Since then I have followed this case as if I knew Arbery personally. 

We had some things in common: He was a runner; his birthday coincided every so often with Mother's Day, and, as the news reported, he was curious about houses under construction. I find myself equally enthralled with the bones of a house and have walked around sites and peered through windows on runs myself.

Just the loose threads of human existence we rarely draw together to their logical conclusion. Such as the unlikelihood a gang of vigilantes would shoot a middle-aged white lady for looking around a construction site or jogging through a neighborhood on a midday afternoon

The true scandal is why this is a privilege not afforded to all.

It's tempting to think that the system worked in the case of Arbery's murderers. But it didn't really. It served the obvious. Anything less would have been a perversion like the legal circus in Wisconsin, which delivered a total acquittal for two homicides by a teenage vigilante. 

We can't keep running around in circles.

I listened to the verdict commentary as I ran in the outermost lane. I told myself I would stop when I got to his number. 

When I had run eight times around the track, I slowed to watch the distance on my watch. As the number ticked past 2:22 I slowed; waiting for 2:23 – the number that has come to memorialize Arbery. 

I have run that distance so many times; in four seasons of weather; carved it into the shape of a heart through my neighborhood. 

Today will be the last time, I think. 

My son will be done with practice soon. Together we will be home safe and sound. 

The wind sliced at me as I ran around in circles. I had forgotten my hat and gloves. 

I think about Ahmaud's mother a lot. I think about how tragic it is to lose a son so tragically; and then to have to watch as his life and death get co-opted by people like me. She didn't give him to the world. A hate crime did that.