The World Doesn't Require You Read online

  THE

  WORLD

  DOESN’T

  REQUIRE

  YOU

  STORIES

  Rion Amilcar Scott

  Liveright Publishing Corporation

  A Division of W. W. Norton & Company

  Independent Publishers Since 1923

  New York London

  To Sufiya

  My World Requires You

  Tony: Me, I want what’s coming to me.

  Manny: Oh, what’s coming to you, Tony?

  Tony: The world, chico.

  —Scarface, 1983

  Contents

  David Sherman, the Last Son of God

  The Nigger Knockers

  The Electric Joy of Service

  The Temple of Practical Arts

  A Rare and Powerful Employee

  Numbers

  A Loudness of Screechers

  Mercury in Retrograde

  On the Occasion of the Death of Freddie Lee

  Slim in Hell

  Rolling in My Six-Fo’—Daa Daa Daa—with All My Niggas Saying: Swing Down Sweet Chariot Stop and Let Me Riiiide. Hell Yeah.

  Special Topics in Loneliness Studies

  I. The Fall

  II. Winter Break

  III. The Spring; or, Special Topics in Loneliness Studies

  IV. An Epilogue

  THE

  WORLD

  DOESN’T

  REQUIRE

  YOU

  David Sherman, the Last Son of God

  Thou shalt have no other God but the Negro.

  —“The Lincoln Catechism”

  God is from Cross River, everyone knows that. He was tall, lanky; wore dirty brown clothes and walked with a limp he tried to disguise as a bop. His chin held a messy salt-and-pepper beard that extended to his Adam’s apple. Always clutching a mango in His hand. Used to live on the Southside, down under the bridge, near the water. Now there is a nice little sidewalk and flowers and a bike trail that leads into Port Yooga. Back then there was just mud and weeds, and He’d sit there barefooted, softly preaching His word. At one time He had one hundred, maybe two hundred—some say up to five hundred or even a thousand—people listening. But the time I’m talking about, He’d sit with only one or two folks. Always with a mango, except during Easter time, when He’d pass out jelly beans to get people to stop and listen.

  He lived on the banks of the Cross River until one day He filled His pockets with stones and walked into the water and sank like a crazy poet. He wasn’t insane. It was all part of God’s plan. Last time He was crucified, this time drowned. Anyway, God can’t drown. He’ll come back, perhaps to oversee the writing of another Testament or to judge the living and the dead, whatever He feels.

  This story, though, isn’t about God. It’s about one of His sons. Not His son in the metaphorical sense—well, he was, as we are all the children of God—but more so he was His son in the physical sense.

  David Sherman was God’s last son. The youngest of thirteen. Five different women had lined up to sire the children of God. They were all boys except for the fifth, a disappointment who, at the age of twenty-five, seduced her fifteen-year-old brother with her shapely behind and left Maryland to build a sinful life with him. God could have had more children, but He got a message from Himself after David was born to stop spilling His seed into His servants. Who was He, or anyone else, to argue?

  David lived with his mother, Violet, in a one-bedroom apartment on Sally Street that teemed with water bugs and mice but rarely any rats. God slept there sometimes, but not very often. He’d rise early, long before the sun, and He’d tell His boy, God Morning to you, son.

  David would reply, And God Morning to you, too.

  He stopped spending the night after David turned twelve.

  To David, God was a disappointment. God told His son things from time to time, things about virtue and the coming Holy Ghost Testament, but never anything David could understand. He wondered if one day he’d lose his mind and be out on the streets speaking an incomprehensible Gospel like his Old Man. And when David was sixteen, God took His own life.

  Even before God’s death, David earned money by turning old pots and plastic barrels into drums and banging out intricate rhythms by the side of the road. After his Father died and he inherited His harmonica, David stole a guitar from the neighborhood nerd. He taught himself how to play them in the privacy of the boxy apartment he shared with his mother, and eventually worked the instruments into the act. It never took David long to learn an instrument. He was always teaching himself a new one, but he was best at the guitar.

  Still, he loved the drums the most. Even if he could only afford old buckets and tin pans. David thought himself a percussionist until Randall, a slightly chubby kid from a few blocks away, challenged him to a battle. They sat before those plastic buckets going back and forth, drumsticks raised high above their heads, the great clopping of plastic-trash-can rhythms, sweat pooling at their armpits in the thick summer heat. Randall’s precision—how he danced and rocked as he drummed—was almost too much for David to take. He slowed to watch his friend, letting the drumsticks slip from his slick hands. Soon he became just another spectator gazing. After his whipping, David mostly played the guitar to Randall’s drumming, and sometimes he’d sing. People from the neighborhood often joined in to jam with dented and tarnished saxophones and trumpets. It was a good time.

  A little after David turned eighteen, his oldest brother, Delante, opened the Church of the Twice Risen Christ on the Southside and asked him to play guitar on Sunday mornings. Delante, who now called himself Jesus Jesuson (everyone, though, referred to him as Jeez), wanted to look out for his little brother. David didn’t believe what his brother preached and wondered if he really believed, but didn’t ask. After all, he didn’t know Jeez well. All that flash and dazzle, all that talk of God coming back as a general, leading an army through the streets and bathing the concrete with the blood of the wicked—who could believe that?

  David played dutifully every Sunday morning beneath a stained-glass window that portrayed his Father as a shepherd in a cream robe, staff in one hand, sword in the other. It was a gig. For his work, Jeez kicked David a hundred dollars from the offering plate, and when the plate came up short, Jeez would reach into his own pocket and make up the difference. God will always provide for you, little bro, Jeez said often.

  Despite his brother’s money, David’s pockets still felt like bottomless wells. God didn’t always provide, and again he felt let down by Him. While taking a walk one day, David spotted a drum set in the window of a downtown music shop off Seventh Street. It was mostly midnight-blue and glossy. Proper bass, cymbals, high hats, and toms. The works. Everything he and Randall had to improvise without. Something stopped him from moving forward. It was a thumping in the center of his chest that wasn’t his heart.

  The drums are the sun, he heard a voice say.

  He decided it was a stray thought, but still the drum set was what he needed to get his band going so he could make some real money.

  I can’t get them drums with the money Delante’s paying me, David told his mother one night over rice and peas. Violet, he said, let me hold something.

  She laughed. I don’t have no money. Go ask the preacher, she said, scraping a metal spoon around a huge cast-iron pot.

  Come on, Ma, he whined. You don’t give me nothing no more.

  I gave you life. You don’t hear me demanding nothing from you for pushing you out and raising your ungrateful ass. As a matter of fact, give me that plate of rice and peas if it ain’t nothing.

  Violet made a playful snatch for her son’s plate. He shielded it with his arm and looked off into the
distance. David didn’t much feel like joking around.

  When David told his brother about the drums that Sunday morning, he too laughed. Save your wages, Jeez said. Then you can buy the drums.

  Man, I can’t hardly save nothing from them few dollars you give me. Between helping Violet with the rent and the electric, I don’t hardly have twenty dollars to my name by Friday, and I got to eat too.

  Get a job.

  Then when am I gonna practice my craft?

  Hit the streets, li’l bro, Jeez said. Find better places to play, like downtown by Riverhall. Go to Port Yooga, hit the crackers up.

  David took his brother’s advice and played one long night in downtown Port Yooga. He went alone, without Randall or anyone else, to avoid splitting the earnings. He would be the percussionist and the guitar player. He carefully set up his buckets as two teenagers heckled. One stood tall with the belly of a middle-aged beer drinker and the red pimples of a pubescent boy. The other sported a thin blond mustache that made David laugh a little. The latter screamed at David over and over. David just watched him, everything about him seemed ridiculous. The man told David his music was noise, and when he played louder, the beer-bellied one spit a thick glob of saliva into his tin cup. David shoved the mustached man. In the ensuing fight, the men smashed David’s guitar and kicked his cup, scattering his change for passersby to snatch.

  The night in jail gave David a lot to think about. Cross River had a rhythm, the river had a beat to it—that much was clear, he didn’t feel it in Port Yooga—and if he presented it right, no one could tell him it was noise. It’d take time to learn to re-create that sound. By himself, it might be difficult, but Randall’s playing opened up possibilities. The drums are the sun, he thought again, and it made sense.

  After Jeez bailed his brother out, they drove to Cross River in silence. When they crossed the bridge, David said, Man, Delante, you got to give me that money, bruh. It’s urgent. If I don’t get them drums, I’m gonna keep getting in trouble.

  You trying to blackmail me? his brother asked.

  Naw, brother. You got a chance to be part of something big.

  I am part of something big. I’m God’s son. So are you. Why doesn’t that satisfy you?

  I’m only me when I’m playing the music I need to play; you know, that Cross River sound.

  Look, I’ll tell you what. You go home and pray real hard to God, and I’ll think about it. And if He softens my heart, I’ll give you the cash.

  That night, David prayed for the first time since he was twelve, when he still believed in his Father’s divinity.

  On Sunday Jeez said nothing of the money. David played with impassioned fingers on a guitar donated to him by a member of the congregation. They were fingers made of flames or of the bluest lightning.

  David sat with his brother in the front row after church let out, making small talk. When the conversation dipped, David said, You gonna do me that solid?

  Well, Jeez said, I listened for God, and He spoke to me like He did when I was a kid and He used to take me to baseball games before you or any of our siblings were born.

  What did He say?

  God answers all prayers, he said. Sometimes God’s answer is no.

  Jeez stood and walked to the door. David, Jeez said, turning toward his brother. The money I paid for bail comes out of your pay.

  David spat on the door of the church when he stepped outside, right in his Father’s face. He snatched a rock and looked up, frowning, at the stained-glass image of his warrior Father. David cocked back his arm until pain filled his joints. He stood like that for a minute, and then dropped the stone.

  The next week, on a chilly spring day, Randall and David stood near Main Street with their buckets and pans. The sound hurt their ears. Randall banged out a rhythm, but stopped mid-jam and told David his palms itched for the drum set.

  Man, Randall said, what we doing ain’t really music. If we get them drums, that’ll be music. Remember what you said about finding the rhythm of this town? How we gonna do that with some fucking trash buckets?

  How much you about to put toward the drum set, Randall, huh?

  David, man, I got less money than you.

  They became quiet. David knew his friend had more to say.

  There’s got to be something we can do, Randall said. Something drastic.

  Several years before David’s birth, God had left a sawed-off lever-action shotgun with Violet, on the bedroom shelf. David had taken it down and played with it many times as a kid. It was something he never got tired of, and something Violet never knew about. Once, when he and Randall were in high school, David trained it on his friend and yelled, Bang! When he stashed the gun, Randall kicked his ass all up and down that tiny apartment.

  Still, though he held the loaded gun toward his friends when he was younger, toward a mirror when he was a bit older, and toward a wall a week previous, he really didn’t know how to use it. He came to think yelling, Bang! Bang! and looking menacing was a substitute for learning to shoot the thing.

  Randall had never even held a gun. Randall just had more heart. That’s why he volunteered to wield the weapon during the job. Besides, it was all his idea.

  It don’t matter if I can’t work it, Randall said, any fool can work a gun. And I won’t need to work it. I ain’t intending to shoot nobody. Seeing the thing is enough to make that punk-ass clerk shit his pants.

  The clerk at the liquor store on Franklin Boulevard eyed them both with little fear when Randall aimed the shotgun at him. David was by the door on lookout, trembling. The clerk stood expressionless while Randall ordered him to empty the register. The fragments of light that sparkled from his eyes—like two steel drums—made David and his friend nervous.

  Perhaps it was the awkward way Randall clasped the weapon. He held most of his body firm, but his shaky hands told the truth. Or perhaps it was that neither he nor David had a killer’s face. Both looked soft and sweet, even when frowning.

  Either way, the man had been robbed before. Randall and David knew this. His nonchalant eyes seemed to say that he had encountered more competent crooks.

  The clerk bent quickly behind the counter and pulled out a slim black handgun of his own, a revolver, much less powerful than the shotgun, had the shotgun been in steady hands. He shot once, striking Randall in the chest, then fired two more times. One bullet hit the wall; the other struck Randall through his hand as he covered his head. Randall lay on the floor, a fine mist of sticky blood, bone, and brain matter covering bags of potato chips, sugar cookies, and donuts.

  David paused—as still as a scarecrow above a cornfield—and then turned to run. The clerk shot once more. For his trouble, David caught a bullet in his backside—a fragment would rest in the meaty flesh of his right butt cheek until he grew old and passed away. The whole affair made page B10 of the Days & Times under the headline “Son of ‘God,’ Brother of ‘Prophet’ Sentenced in Armed Robbery.”

  David received five years for his crime, of which he served three and a half. He spent half a year in prison regretting his decisions. Often, he’d think of his mother bawling at his sentencing hearing—hands up high in the air, eyes crimson, face streaked. He smelled the sweet wood of the courtroom benches. Heard his mother’s guttural yelp. Even felt that sinking heavy feeling at the bottom of his stomach.

  He saw Randall’s face often. Heard his voice too. It never said anything profound or meaningful. Never pointed him toward a path or a way. It sat at his ear, making small talk, occasionally mentioning the Cross River sound.

  One morning after the prisoners had eaten their breakfast, David pushed a broom through the mess hall. He spied a stack of plastic buckets turned upside down in the corner.

  After the lunchtime trays had been stacked and the tables wiped down, he slipped away and returned with some nicked drumsticks he had stolen from his music class and kept hidden in his cell. He was supposed to be cleaning, but instead David lovingly rearranged the buckets how Randall mi
ght have. A smattering of people watched him quizzically. David slammed a drumstick squarely against the flat bottom of a hard bucket. It made a noise that echoed through the mess hall. He was rusty and he knew it, but playing felt so damn good. David played something he knew Randall would love. It didn’t matter much that Randall’s favorite rhythm now sounded like random thumps against plastic barrels.

  A corrections officer slapped a table with his baton and ordered David to stop. David tapped on and on as if he hadn’t heard, or as if the CO’s screams were song and his hard baton slaps accompaniment. A feeling swelled in his chest, something he had never felt before. David decided it was Randall, and he tapped on, closing his eyes and seeing his friend’s face. He only stopped when he opened his eyes and saw the tall, skinny, black-as-licorice CO standing in front of him, ready to strike. David dropped the sticks and threw his hands in the air, and the gesture felt nothing at all like surrender.

  While David was away, Jeez grew his hair long and prayed tearfully during his sermons for God to give his youngest brother some direction. God smiled from the clean stained-glass windows in Jeez’s new church on the Southside as if to say, Maybe I will help, my son. Jeez rarely visited his brother in prison. Rarely sent money. Never wrote.

  Meanwhile, the second eldest son of God left the Church of the Twice Risen Christ to form his own church on the Northside, the Church of the Ever-Loving Christ. That brother became Christopher Christson, or just Christ III, and his church was white like a shining temple on a hill. He favored a short hairstyle and wore sparkling zoot suits made of linen and silk and an assortment of alligator-hide shoes. God, he said, never wanted anyone to be poor. This he argued despite the fact that his Father was homeless for much of His life. God was an entrepreneur, a failed entrepreneur, admittedly. He only failed because He wanted to teach Himself humility and suffering. He failed, in other words, Christ III said, so we could succeed. As time went on, Christ III referred to his Father less and less, and then stopped claiming His divinity. Officially, in the Church of the Ever-Loving Christ, God was no longer God, but simply a prophet. In practice, though, most still referred to David Sherman’s Father as divine.