The World Doesn't Require You Page 8

  I love that song.

  Seriously, Slim, it can take a lifetime. I wasn’t around, but I hear Dave wasn’t always a Deity. He existed before Riverbeat did, you know. Don’t worry about David fucking Sherman or any of the master teachers. One day you’ll be a master and self-righteous like them. I know things seem bad, but if you work, they’ll come around.

  Yeah . . . I said, but the word meant nothing, it was just a prelude. I touched her shoulder. She smiled. I brushed her blond hair back and pressed my mouth to hers. Her lips felt limp and lifeless between mine.

  She pulled back, spit an orange seed from her mouth, and shoved me so hard I nearly toppled over. I apologized, though I wasn’t sorry. I wanted to rip her dress from her body, tear her underwear away, and have at it. I didn’t, though.

  It was clear to me that everyone’s judgment had been wrecked. The whole Temple and the land beneath it was in crisis. I blamed it on the Kid. His presence clouded people’s thoughts. I walked off the Temple grounds that night, passing the cows and the goats, wondering if I would ever return.

  I found myself in a bar in Port Yooga. I sat there drinking beer after beer. At a certain point in the night, I thought about walking back to the Temple, but my gait was unsteady, the world a shaky place. I drank glasses of water in an attempt to sober up. I heard some guys talking about Dave, the Temple, all the things that had been once holy to me.

  They used to run from them damn plantations and now they want to live on one? a tall man with a dirty Oilers cap said. It don’t make no sense.

  Yeah, a shorter man replied. Them flaky, weird, artsy people at that one broken-down farm. They’re dangerous. They gonna kill themselves. Watch.

  Why don’t no one shut them down?

  Remember when Duggins whooped that nigger’s ass all over the place?

  That old coon-fu stuff. Slapping like girls.

  The men chuckled into their beers.

  It’s nothing but orgies and drugs up in there, I said. That one down near the Wildlands with all the music. Get close enough, you smell the pussy in the air.

  How you know? the shorter man asked.

  I live there, I replied. I’m a damn good guitarist too. Soon gonna be Hendrix. Better than that. I’ll put Phoenix Starr to shame someday.

  Phoenix Starr? the tall man in the Oilers cap said. That Riverbeat stuff is noise. Crazy-ass drums that don’t make no sense. Only crazy niggers in Cross River listen to that shit. Them Cross River niggers are the craziest.

  I took a sip of my water.

  Call me a nigger again.

  What you gonna do, sweetheart, slap me?

  Well, whatever, I said. Look, where that farm hits the Wildlands you can see a little shed. There’s a man in there. A man and a cat. He’s the worst one. Got child wives and shit. Breaks every law there is, man. Every damn one. Some things that go on there break my heart, man. Breaks it right in two. I know no one wants to hang out in the Wildlands, all the crazy shit that live in there, if you believe in all that. But that’s how you can get at him. Take him first.

  The tall man rubbed his chin and nodded. I winked at him and went back to my corner to sober up.

  I returned to the Temple instead of walking away forever as I should have. The Deity’s wife never said anything to me about our kiss. She barely said anything to me at all and never again met me on the porch. I don’t think Dave knew anything went down between us; it was as if I didn’t exist to him.

  Every day, I did my work and retired to my room to fiddle with a sitar, my new thing. I no longer had a band and spoke little to those around me. Oddly enough, the singing chick was the only one from the Whore-uh I kept in contact with. Sometimes she’d stop by my room with two cups of tea and urge me to come out and socialize. You’re going to become a warped old man, she’d say. I mean, I guess you’re already that, but you’ll get worse.

  I’d drink with her and we’d talk and never argue anymore. I always told her I’d leave my room and come amongst everyone again when I was ready, but that was a lie. I knew that I’d never be ready. That there was no place for me among people anymore, even among exiles like us. I wanted to ask her about her music, but I was afraid. I could only imagine the rage it would raise in me if she now sang alongside the Kid. I was afraid for her.

  Alone in my room I fantasized about the Temple burning. I had nightmares of students and teachers being gunned down and my dreams always ended with a twist because I would shoot Master Deity, Master Chillum, Master Moide, Mistress Deity, and Master Long-Headley myself. Right in their foreheads. Each night I would think about the Kid before I went to sleep, hoping he would turn up in my dream to be shot down, but he never did.

  When I did leave my room, I left it looking for trouble. I tell you, there was a spirit growing within me. One I didn’t want to keep hiding, one I didn’t want to tame, man. The spirit was empty and vacant and big. Someone dead within me lumbering around like a zombie, looking to feed only on chaos, on destruction. He cared nothing for the land. The spirit yearned something fierce to get into it with the Kid. So, I saw him by the pond scatting to a crowd, mostly girls. That’s cool, I said. You sound like one of them girls from Port Yooga who just discovered Phoenix Starr. I smiled mischievously. He grimaced and ignored me. I could tell he was sliding into slapsmithing mode. He was using Form X now, the fight of no fight, avoiding physical conflict. A bunch of bullshit. I stood laughing at his scatting until he walked off. I followed him to the dining hall to keep it going. When we got into it, the Kid and I, we got into it over a bowl of rice. I stood behind him in line in the dining hall and complained loudly, Say, bruh, you gonna leave any for the rest of us? He scooped and scooped as if he were never going to stop, ignoring me as he explained an advanced form to the singing chick. I complained again: Nigga just talking. Everyone knows those advanced forms look good, but they just for show. This nigga can’t fight. Kid Stone LeRoi.

  He chuckled. Relax, Slim, he said. And you’re right. I’m no slapsmith, just trying to avoid flabby music coming from this flabby body. In the way he breathed I could tell he was again practicing Form X. All his fake modesty, his patronizing humility. He was bad at the form; his calm served to make my rage only flow and crash. I slapped the bowl from his hand, shattering the porcelain along the floor, scattering rice about the dining hall. Slim! the singing chick cried out. I felt all eyes in the room falling upon us.

  Come, bruh, the Kid said. Let’s go outside. Practice some forms with one another. Release some of this aggression.

  Form XI, the first fighting form, begins with calm, not anger, nor boastfulness.

  I followed him outside, as did just about everyone in the dining hall. We slapped five and curled our hands into a grip that culminated in a half hug, and then we parted to bounce around in preparation for our blows, watching our disdain for each other and the anger we shared fill our weary eyes.

  I bounced and dipped my head, but it was no use. I never saw the slap that blurred my vision, caused my brain to feel as if it shook within my skull. Another one struck the other side of my head and I stumbled about. Another flurry—later I learned it was a form of his own design, Cat’s Paw, reminiscent of Osiris batting about crumpled balls of paper—and I felt my mouth fill with blood. I ducked my head and waved my arms, slapping at air. I heard the Kid expelling controlled breaths with every landed slap—siss, siss, siss. Even when I put up my open palm to block his barrage, it made my own hand strike my face. I must have looked like an undisciplined little girl smacking in the only way she knows how. Every time I fell, I remembered I was a master of only the three most basic forms. Exercise and meditation forms. Each time I fell, I stood on watery legs, ready for another smashing. I had become the overconfident LeRoi Stone up against Stonefists, the true master. I fell again and couldn’t find the legs to rise, no matter how I tried. I couldn’t see much through my blurry and swollen eyes, but I could see the Kid’s bouncing feet and Osiris standing behind him mewing loudly, as if calling the fight.<
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  Kill me! I shouted, spitting blood onto the dirt.

  We’re just sparring, Slim. It’s not that serious.

  Kill me! I slapped myself in the head as if that had the power to end my life.

  He’s slapdrunk, someone called. Get Slim some water! Match done.

  Truth is, though, I wasn’t slapdrunk. In my blurry vision, for the first time I could see clearly the dead malevolent spirit housed within me. It would be a good thing indeed—perhaps the only good I could do for humanity—for that spirit to no longer exist.

  The Kid stayed until his hair napped up and grew again into messy locks and scattered whiskers sprouted on his face. Sometimes I’d go out to the shed, but we never said anything important to each other and eventually I stopped going. I don’t know when he left. Rumor had it that the master teachers expelled him, though the details were unclear. The singing chick told me he had mastered most of the trials and offered a new trial—bringing our music and our techniques into the world we now shunned—but Dave said the world wasn’t ready. Dave the Deity created the Cross River sound, and for a time the world loved him. Then others came and did it better, moved him from the spotlight. For years, Dave made music for the world—only for the people to eventually discard it. The pain of that rejection crusted a festering wound over his heart. The Kid kept arguing, vehement his teachers had grown obtuse with time. He alone, the Kid argued, could bring the Temple into the world. His insolence forced them to expel him on the spot.

  I thought that was selfish of them. Of all the things the Kid could have been expelled for . . . imagine, he got expelled for that.

  Once in a while I would wander into Cross River or Port Yooga and whisper rumors about orgies at the Temple, about child brides at the Temple, about drugs, about devil music, about town code violations, about anything, about anything at all that would make everyone angry and scared. It seemed folks in the towns weren’t taking the bait, so it all felt like harmless fun.

  Then it happened. One day they came from Port Yooga and from Cross River and from federal agencies whose names were just letters smashed together. They wore black helmets with clear masks and screamed into bullhorns, ordering us to come outside. We stayed put, some of us playing music and writing songs or tending to scared children and teenagers, and they shot teargas into the place, burning our eyes and our skin.

  I emerged, my hands in the air, my eyes swollen and seared. What use was slapboxing if it couldn’t protect us from this? No one even got into a battle stance, we just took our roughing at their hands as the price of being alive. The officers forced me to the ground and bound my wrists behind my back with plastic restraints. Not everyone left the Temple. Some stayed inside holding rags wet with raw milk to their faces. Eventually incendiary devices whistled and wailed through the air. Firebombs cracked and boomed, slamming into the house. I heard the sound of broken glass and the pathetic screams of the people. The animals moaned and whined. Many lay dead. Charred chickens. Charred cows. The fleeing goats, I imagine, roamed the woods, becoming easy prey for wolves. I felt sorry for them. The loud pop of rubber bullets exploded in my ears and I choked and coughed from the acrid scent that became the air all around us. Later, I heard ten people died, two children. Some were once friends. Too stupid to come out, they burned. The old wooden house twisted and cracked, blazing bright orange and red, falling to pieces, turning to dust. The flames rippled and popped and soon the place became just a burned-out hulk.

  The panting fallen animals with their tongues laid to the side. The collapsed people with their pale unmoving faces; I didn’t know whether they were alive or dead and I was uninterested in a definitive answer. What interested me was the scale and beauty of the destruction. It was awe-inspiring; lovely; nearly a work of art.

  A Rare and Powerful Employee

  I splash water onto my face and pass my hand over it, gripping the wavy hairs of my beard. Then I stare into the mirror just to see if I can still watch myself for any length of time—and it seems that I can. While I do this, I run through the speech over and over in my head. I don’t know why I do this. I’ve spoken so many times at these conferences. Yes, my friends, then I pause and look out to the mostly female audience, we can win the War on Rape. That’s when the women get to clapping and hollering and I stand there a true fraud and think, I’ve now become one of those idiots who wages war on things: intangibles, concepts, inanimate objects, and forces of nature.

  And a line of women will position themselves to talk to me, saying my speech restored their faith in men or that my writings are so profound, and I nod and say something that seems thoughtful, but is really canned and trite. Something like: Well, it’s about having faith that the male of our species will turn away from the rage and passion that eradicates to instead rise and power everyone. My boss wrote that. He writes just about everything I say or is attributed to me. That’s our slogan: Rise and power everyone.

  Really, I get tired of being trite, but I must admit, as much as I hate this job, the fringe benefits are amazing. My position has allowed me to meet plenty of interested women. Though many of them, I must say, are fragile, cracked, or thoroughly broken.

  Looking into the mirror, I realize that my weariness is showing in the bunches of dark, rough skin beneath my eyes. I wonder if this makes me look more sincere or less.

  A pretty middle-aged woman approached me this morning in the conference hall and said I looked tired. I told her I was and hoped I would be able to remember my speech, which was an empty thing to say, since that speech—like all my speeches—is seared into my thoughts as if it were a great horror. It all starts to come together for her and she says with amazement, You’re Copernicus Reid? I nod and say, That’s what’s on my driver’s license.

  She invites me to breakfast, and as we eat, she starts asking me all these questions. Says the War on Rape is brilliant and asks how I came up with it, and I start talking about the importance of getting lost. I tell her that one day I read the front page of the Days & Times and the inside of me became black and thick with despair. I filled with a seething rage toward my fellow man—not all of humanity, just the men—and I took a walk through the wild, dark woods. When I came out the other end my anger had purpose and the War on Rape was born. That’s what I always tell them. It’s what he tells me to tell them. I wouldn’t set foot in the Wildlands. Not brave enough. The truth is my boss walked out his office and handed me a sheaf of papers—a speech he said would make the money pour in—and on those pages for the first time I saw the words War on Rape. It’s about the money, I want to tell this woman, but don’t.

  Before I can finish my eggs, she’s deep into her story. They all have one. She tenses up and speaks robotically, as if talking about someone else. Says she’s only telling me this because she knows I can understand. I nod, knowing what’s coming next. This has happened to me hundreds of times. She says I have a familiar feeling, like we’ve been friends since we were kids.

  She says it happened to her while she was in college. A friend of her boyfriend’s—well—ex-boyfriend’s. A guy she knew since elementary school. She got sick at work and asked for a ride home, but in the car it became clear that her stomach would never make it, so he suggested his house. He even held her hair while she vomited, and brought her ginger ale.

  I’ve heard this story before. The details change, but it really is always the same. My face gets slack and I nod at times, shake my head at others. Position my hand at my beard. Lean into my empathetic pose. Somewhere during her story I zone out and think about a movie I used to watch on cable when I was a kid. I only remember one scene. It’s the one where this morbidly obese guy, a magician with breasts that run into his stomach, is lying on his back and a beautiful young girl is naked on top of him. She has blond hair and her tits are bobbing up and down. Her eyes are glassy and there is a knock on the door. The magician stands, wraps a sheet around his waist, and goes to answer it. Before he gets to the door, he remembers the woman. He turns to her and
says, When I snap my fingers, you will put on your clothes and remember none of this. And then he snaps his fingers and she shakes her head and gathers her clothes and leaves the room as if nothing had happened.

  As a kid, I used to think that was really funny, but I felt weird too. I kept thinking about that girl having flashbacks she couldn’t explain and piecing it all together and feeling anger and shame and helplessness. But every time it was on I watched and chuckled. That’s how I feel sometimes at these conferences listening to these women. Everything horrible is just a little bit ridiculous, and vice versa.

  And this woman, she’s a bit ridiculous. While I’m zoning out she squeezes my hand and tells me I’m doing God’s work and I know right then that we’re going to have sex and I feel like that magician in that soft porn movie or what my boss calls a rare and powerful employee.

  Numbers

  1.

  Out in the middle of the Cross River there is an island. It appears during storms or when the river’s flooding or even on clear summer days. And sometimes it rises out of the water and floats in the air. The ground turns to diamond and you can hear the women laughing—I call them women, but they are not women. So many names for them: Kazzies. Shauntices. Water-women. The woes. I like that last name myself. The poet Roland Hudson came up with that one in the throes of madness. Dedicated his final volume, The Firewater of Love, to:

  Gertrude, Water-Woman, my Woe, who caused all the woe . . . even though, my dear, you are not real, I cannot accept that and will never stop believing in your existence and beautiful rise from the river into my arms.

  Drowned himself in the Cross River swimming after Gertrude, and there’s something beautiful in that. Dredge the depths of the river and how many bones of the heartsick will you find? So many poisoned by illusion. Don’t tell me there’s no island and no women rising naked from the depths, shifting forms to tantalize and then to crush. I’ve seen their island and I’ve seen them and gangsters love too; gangsters are allowed love, aren’t we? Sometimes there’s a fog and I know the island’s coming and I snap out of sleep all slicked with sweat and filled with the urge to swim out there to catch a water-woman and bring her back to my bed. If you pour sugar on their tails they can’t shift shapes on you and they have to show their true selves and obey you completely. If I had to do it all over again I’d dust her in a whole five-pound bag and spend eternity licking the crystals from her nipples. And Amber, a man lost in delirium. Poor, poor Amber.