Bruce and Danny Chapter 10: The Second Worst News of My Life

By: Ash Cinder

            The next few months were pretty uneventful. Danny had Josh over more times after the first day and now they were both entering their last week of kindergarten and preparing to transition into first grade. Me and Emma were really happy that Danny didn’t let the bullying that he suffered the first few weeks scare him away from school.

I didn’t know that today would be the start of an extremely long emotional rollercoaster. I was just about to leave to go pick Danny up from school when Howard came running over and stopped me.

“Bruce,” Howard called, “I need to tell you something, it can’t wait!”

            “What is it?” I asked.

            “It’s about the adoption bill I told you about a while back, it’s bad…really bad.”

            “It’s already bad, what else are they trying to cram in it?”

            “I just found out yesterday, the bill isn’t just going to affect families that haven’t adopted yet, it’s worded in a way where it’ll include families like yours too.”

            “What are you saying?” I asked, not wanting to believe where I thought he was going.

            “Children who have been adopted by parents of another species will have their adoptions nulled. If this bill passes…you, and a lot of other parents like you, are going to lose custody of your kids.”

            “T-They can’t do that!” I said in disbelief. “What’s their justification for this?”

            “They haven’t really given any yet, I think they figured people wouldn’t pay attention.”

            “Oh my god…”

            “Look, it hasn’t passed yet, there’s still time.” Howard said. “A hearing against the bill is being scheduled. A group of parents whose families will be affected by this are going to speak out against the bill in front of Congress. I think you should join them.”

            “Me?” I asked in disbelief.

            “Yeah, you.” He said. “You love your son, you write about him all the time in your column, you’d be a great choice to speak out against this.”

            “Fuck…” I said under my breath. “I mean… me and Emma figured we’d encounter prejudice, but the worst we thought we’d have to deal with was Danny getting picked on at school. I never imagined something this big would come up.”

            “I know,” Howard said, “But like I said, we can still fight this…”

            “So, where do I find this group you mentioned?”

            “I did an interview with them about this and I can put you in touch with Roger Lindberg, the spokesperson of the group.” He gave me a piece of paper with an email address and phone number on it. “Shoot him a message later.”

            “Thanks for letting me know about this Howard.” I said, patting his shoulder. “This is scary to think about, but I’d rather know about it than it taking me by surprise.

            I walked out to my car and felt sick to my stomach. I couldn’t believe this news, I didn’t think we’d have to deal with something like this!

            “It can’t pass…” I said, driving to Danny’s school. “We can’t let it.”

            I parked in front of Danny’s school, I could see him on the playground with his back pack on, playing with Josh and some of his other friends, waiting for me to pick him up. I had to fight for him, me and Emma had been raising him this long, no bullshit bill was going to take him from us!

            As I made my way over to the playground I could see some boys walk up to Danny and Josh, my blood began to boil as I say one of them push Danny, who staggered backwards before stepping forward again and standing up to him. I smirked a little as I started walking over, getting an idea to give these jerks a little scare.

            As I walked over I could see that Danny noticed and smiled but gave no other indication I was coming up behind them.

            “Leave him alone already Mark.” I heard Josh say.

            “Yeah, I never did anything to you.” Danny defended.

            “Shut up, pet!” Mark said. “Or better yet,” He picked up a stick on the ground and threw it across the playground. “Go fetch.”

            “No, you’re not the boss of me.” Danny kicked dirt on Mark’s shoes.

            “Oh right, that would be your owners.” He teased.

            “You mean my parents.” Danny glared at him.

            “Gee, Mark, what would happen if Danny’s ‘owners’ were right behind you?” Josh said, giving me a grin.

            “Oh, I’m sorry are they here right now? I don’t think so—” Mark said, cockily, before turning around and freezing when he saw I was looming behind him.

            For once I was actually glad to see someone intimidated by me, they both backed away.

            “That’s right, both of you get out of here, before I show you what happens when you mess with a bear’s cub.” I warned as they turned and walked to another part of the playground, pretending like they weren’t just picking on Danny.

            I patted his shoulder

            “You alright?” I asked.

            “Yeah, I’m okay dad.”

            “Good job standing up for yourself. Don’t let those jerks push you around.” I hugged him close against my leg.

            “I won’t dad.”

            “Well, we should be getting home now.” I said, lifting him up on my shoulders, like I knew he liked. “Bye Josh.” I said.

            “Bye.” Danny waved back.

            Josh waved goodbye to us before going back to playing on the playground.

            “Aside from what happened back there, you have a good day at school today?” I asked him.

            “Yup!” I felt him rub the top of my head.

            “Good.

 I shook him around on my shoulders while holding onto his legs, making him giggle as we approached the car. I buckled him up and headed home, still thinking about what Howard told me on the way. I knew I couldn’t just take this lying down and hope that the bill wouldn’t pass. I had to actively fight this. I needed to be like Danny back on the playground and stand up to the people trying to take him, and all the other kids like him away from their parents.

Once we got home I let Danny go up to his room and went to the kitchen to talk with Emma about what I heard.

“So, Howard caught me on my way out the door today and told me more about that proposed anti-adoption bill that I wrote a column on a while back.”

“Yeah?”

“It’s worse than we thought, it’s worded in a way where it will apply to kids like Danny too. If it passes he could be taken away from us.”

“It won’t pass…” She said, somewhat confidently. “It can’t.” She clenched her fists.

“Howard gave me some information about a group that’s planning on testifying against the bill. I’m going to try and contact them, we’re going to fight this Em.” I said, lifting up the slip of paper with the email address and number that Howard gave me.

“Damn right we are!”

“Just don’t mention any of this to Danny.” I said. “We don’t need him worrying about this.”

“Of course.” She said. “So, you plan on going with this group to testify?”

“Maybe.” I said. “I’ll see what they say when I contact them.”

“Good luck, anyway, I have to finish getting dinner ready.” Emma kissed me.

I headed to my office and opened my email, taking out the slip of paper and sending a message explaining who I was to this Lindberg guy and that I wanted to help. He got back to me surprisingly fast, within about 15 minutes.

“Hello, Bruce.” The email read. “I’m glad to have your support. I read your columns, I think you’re a great public face for why families like ours are perfectly normal. If you’d like to attend one of our meetings about this bill, we have one coming up tomorrow.” He went on about the location and time and said that he hoped I’d be able to make it. That worked perfectly, I was off tomorrow, and I definitely wanted to meet up with them. I sent him an email confirming I’d go and he wrote back;

“Great to hear, would you mind if I introduced you to the group? I think you’d be a valuable resource in getting the word out about all this with your column.”

“Sure!” I wrote back. I was excited that they wanted my help. “I’ll see you then!”

The next day I drove over to the location around 2:00 in the afternoon. It was over at a small assembly hall downtown. I had some trouble finding parking but made it there okay. I entered the assembly hall and saw a few rows of chairs with dozens of different people sitting in them. A variety of species, from hyenas, leopards, rabbits, and humans, so many packed together in one room. I found an empty seat and sat down in between a rhino and a buck.

“Hey there.” The buck greeted me. “Haven’t seen you at these meetings before. You new?”

“Yeah, a friend of mine told me about this cause, and I thought I’d check it out.” I said.

“That’s good, we need all the support we can get.” The rhino said. “I’m Mateo.”

“Troy.” The buck said.

“I’m Bruce. So, how long has this been going on?” I asked.

“About 5 months I think.” Mateo said. “Was originally just an interspecies adoption advocacy group, but once news of this bill came out, Roger changed the group’s focus to stop this thing from happening.”

“And speak of the devil, here he is.” The buck said, pointing towards the front of the room with a microphone.

A human with short brown hair and glasses, wearing a t-shirt with the organization’s name on it stepped up to the mic.

“I want to thank you all for taking the time out of your Saturday to come here to this meeting.”

“Hm, I don’t know why but I sort of expected him to be an anthro like us.” I whispered to the two I was sitting between.

“Nah, he’s got an anthro daughter, snow leopard I think.” Troy said.

“And I think I see some new faces here today, I’m happy word is getting out about our cause. Hopefully we can get a bit more attention with the help of one of our new faces, Bruce Bjorn.” He said. “Were you able to make it, Bruce?” He looked around the room for me.

“Sure was!” I said, standing up.

“Perfect!” He said. “Why don’t you come up here and introduce yourself to everyone?”

I walked up to where he was and he handed me the mic.

“Hello everyone, my name is Bruce Bjorn, and I’m a columnist for the San Antonio Express News, I don’t know how many people have read my column.” I noticed a few heads nod in response. “I usually write about my son, Danny, he’s human. I’m glad I was told about this group, the news of this proposed bill targeting our families took me by surprise, but I think we can stop this thing.”

“I’m glad you agree Bruce.” Roger said. “We’re planning on taking some of us to Austin in a month to testify against this bill. We’re glad you could join us Bruce.” He patted me on the back and I walked back over to my seat.

“Didn’t realize you were the columnist from the paper.” Mateo whispered. “I read your stuff from time to time.”

“Me too.” Troy said.

“Wow, heh I didn’t realize people liked my stuff.”

“Yeah, I think you do a good job showing just how normal families like ours are, we don’t see enough positive coverage of us in news outlets or other media.”

Roger spent more time talking about the group’s plans for the future and more explanation about the proposed bill to new people like me. Apparently it would indeed make interspecies adoption illegal in Texas, but would also remove parental rights of parents or guardians with children of a different species than they were.

“What could they possibly be hoping to accomplish by doing this?” I whispered to Troy next to me.

“I’ve seen some of the representatives arguing in favor of it on TV. They bring out these bullshit studies saying that kids raised by parents of a different species are more ‘at risk’ for various psychological disorders and bullying and stuff.”

“That’s pathetic.” I said back.

Once the meeting was over and we were allowed to mingle a bit before we left, I decided to track down Roger and ask him something. It didn’t take me long to find him talking with some of the other people from the meeting.

“Oh, hey Bruce.” He said, spying me as I walked over to him.

“Hey there, I just wanted to ask you more about that trip to Austin you mentioned.”

“Yeah? Did you want to try and go with us?”

“Actually yeah.” I said. “I want to do everything I can to fight this with you guys, and I’d love to be there in person and make my case in favor of families like ours, especially since I kind of used to be against interspecies adoption before me and my wife got our son.”

“Really? Interesting.” Roger said.

“Yeah, I used to think it just caused unnecessary problems for both the parents and cub.”

“Yeah, we’d love to have you on board. Keep coming to these meetings and I’ll keep you in the loop. Don’t be afraid to bring your wife here sometime if she has time to come, we like involving both parents with this if we can.”

“Sure thing, I’ll check with Emma and see if she can make one sometime.” I said, before looking at my watch to see that I’d been there for about three hours now. “Well, I should really get home, see you at the next one, keep me updated.”

“Will do!”

As I got in my car and started the drive home, I actually felt really good. It was nice meeting all these people that had this important cause. I had never really met that many people with a family like mine, other than one that my wife worked with, and maybe if we raised our voices loud enough we could prevent this thing from passing.

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