The World Doesn't Require You Page 9

  2.

  Last year, 1918, ended bad for me and Amber, and to think it began with so much promise. My mother got me a job driving Amber around town in February and I expected to be collecting numbers slips for him by May. But then Amber Hawkins fell in love with Joyce Little and became something like a lovesick pit bull puppy. So Joyce’s brother Josephus got the moneymaking position I had my eye on, and I was stuck being yelled at from the backseat as I swerved about the road.

  Amber was a killer, as was everybody I worked with. They were all, Amber included, minions of Mr. Washington, subjects of the Washington Family—I was now, as well, though I hadn’t yet killed anyone. I tried to forget that my new job rendered me a criminal, but sometimes it made me nervous, especially when I drove. My job, I told myself, as a member of Amber’s crew was to help make the operation as efficient as possible so we could make as much money as possible. If we earned more for Mr. Washington than other crews, Amber rises and with him, I rise too. At least that was my theory.

  I hoped Joyce would turn Amber into something akin to a decent human being. Most married people I knew became boring soon as they put on the ring; they lost some of their humor and spontaneity, but I had to admit they grew a little more humanity.

  September 15, 1918: that was supposed to be the day. He booked the Civic Center for the wedding, displacing a couple who had reserved the place months before, but it was Amber Hawkins, nothing anyone could do. He ordered up nearly a hundred pastries. So many roses arrived on the eve of the wedding that I joked a garden somewhere had suffered a sudden baldness. Hundreds of people swarmed the Civic Center that Sunday. Everything was to begin at noon. Those of us who worked under Mr. Washington, and even people who worked for Mr. Johnson and Mr. Jackson, put aside our differences to show up for Amber. Joyce’s family sat in the front. Mostly, I remember her cute little sister and the short socks resting against her tan skin. Her tall skinny father sat stoically holding the little girl’s hand. Joyce’s jellyrolled mother wiped at her wet eyes every few minutes.

  And then nothing.

  No word from Joyce. Amber made us get all dolled up and festive-like for his big humiliation.

  Josephus, Amber’s best man, stood near the altar next to Philemon and Frank and Tommy wearing a twisted guilty smile. The guys in the wedding party all sported big, ugly purple flowers pinned to their lapels. The way Josephus kept running his fingers over his flower’s discolored and crumpled the petals. He was an arrogant fucking shitstain, but I hated seeing him squirm.

  At about five in the evening it became clear all was lost. Amber’s father ambled to the front where bride and groom should have been standing. He was flanked by his assistant, Todd, ever at his side, and a huge simian-looking white man who glowered down at us. For the first time, Elder Mr. Hawkins, the ruthless killer and Mr. Washington’s right hand, looked as frail and as wispy as the old man he was. There were rumors that his lifestyle—the women he kept around town—had left him so syphilitic that his once-sharp mind had rotted and his body was beginning to twist and fail too. I didn’t believe or engage in the talk. He’d been nothing but good to me.

  Thank you for coming, people of Cross River, Elder Mr. Hawkins said to the wedding crowd. You have been more than generous to my family and all connected with us. I’m sorry, but there will be no celebration today. Again, I thank you for spending your time with us.

  We all slowly dispersed that night, and the next day Amber came back to work, mumbling the day’s numbers from the backseat. Never mentioned Joyce or showed any signs of sorrow or pain.

  Amber waited a month. He waited two more. Then he had Joyce’s whole family killed.

  A single bullet to each of their foreheads and their bodies dumped in the Cross River. It was deep in December, near Christmas, and thin white sheets of ice skimmed along the river’s face.

  Three days after their disappearance, the family came bubbling to the surface, just as Amber wanted. The coldhearted bastard didn’t spare even the ten-year-old girl. Amber’s own best man paid the ultimate price for his sister’s desertion.

  With Josephus dead, I expected a promotion, but Amber gave that to Doc Travis Griffin’s son. I let it pass without complaint; at least Amber hadn’t tasked me with taking the lives of four innocent people. Frank and Tommy did the hit, I’d heard, and when I saw them I watched their muddy boots and thanked the Lord I didn’t have to walk in them. But who am I kidding, though? I stood among the killers and the dirt was all over me just as it was all over them. I would have done the job with sadness and emptiness; with revulsion and cold rage toward Amber, but still I’d have done it.

  Loretta, my love at the time, and I used to stand at river’s edge and watch the sky reflecting on the water. Did it through all types of weather, but a pleasant March day was definitely a reason to be out. Felt I was safe from the river when I was with her, like it wouldn’t dare open up and devour me whole.

  What if you die? she asked. Amber had missed a payment to Mr. Washington and this sort of financial mismanagement was becoming a habit. His carelessness put all of us who worked for him in danger. What if they kill me? she asked, and I was unsure how to answer.

  I didn’t look up from the river. Amber’s falling apart, I said.

  And he should fall apart, she replied. Baby, this is not your problem. He made this happen. Brought it all down on himself. So you gotta fall on his sword? My cousin, he in St. Louis, we could go up there. I could work for him and you could find a job—

  Shining white people’s shoes again? The type of job I got is the only way a Negro can live decently. At least Negroes who came up poor like us anyway.

  On her face I could see the passing hellfire that she—an angry god—was condemning me to for all my mistakes. I suppose I have to take some credit or some blame, as it were, for how things happened. I’ve blamed Loretta for eventually leaving me, and I’ve blamed Miss Susan—it was her Little Book of Love Numbers that got all those thoughts of water-women cranking through my head. I’ve blamed Mr. Washington for his harshness, and even the whole society of water-women and their wicked nature. But really, if I had left the whole business behind like Loretta wanted, how could things have been any worse? Truth was, I couldn’t leave Amber, the one who was destined to sit on the throne. If only he could overcome something as simple as heartbreak. His face sweating constantly now. His limbs shaking. This damn compassion. This damn empathy.

  A breeze passed over Loretta and me. It was filled with heat and something that made me feel like a lover, like I could take Loretta into the river and after we finished she’d trust my word forever. Loretta kicked at the water with her bare feet.

  Still cold, she said.

  St. Louis, huh? I said, pitching a rock. Can’t put your feet into the Cross River in St. Louis.

  It’s fine, she replied. I’ll put my feet in the Mississippi.

  The Mississippi ain’t the Cross River, though. Look at that. No ugly parts. Ripple upon ripple of boundless beauty.

  When’d you become a poet?

  Girl, you know Elder Mr. Hawkins called me a poet when me and Amber met with him. He say that ’cause I like to daydream. I’m not Roland Hudson. I never rubbed two words together and made them rhyme, but he right, you know. I wonder how he know I’m a poet at making love, though.

  We’re talking about our future and you want to make jokes? Even if Amber gets himself together and you do move up in the organization, you want to end up a dirty old mobster like his father?

  She was right, but I could never give Loretta her due. Instead I said what had been on my mind in the last several months:

  I ain’t never been nothing and nobody never expected nothing from me at all. Not you. Not even my mother. You all think I’m not that smart, and that’s okay. I’m the underdog. I stick with Amber I could be up there in the organization in the number two spot like Elder Mr. Hawkins. Shit, I could be the next Mr. Washington if Amber don’t make it. Don’t doubt me. You could be the Washingt
on Family First Lady. How about that, Loretta?

  If that’s what matters to you, love—

  In my memories, Loretta turns to white dust midsentence and blows away, leaving behind the sweet scent of gardenias in bloom. And that’s how she left me. Or maybe she just walked out after an argument. I can’t figure it. My mind is so damaged I can’t tell memories from hallucinations; daydreams from nightmares.

  3.

  Mr. Washington was so furious over the Little Family killing that he carved up our territory and threatened to give over our remaining operations to Philemon if we couldn’t pay a $5,000 fine and restitution to the Littles. On top of the fines, Mr. Washington stripped us of half our territory and reassigned much of Amber’s personnel. And still we were responsible for kicking the same amount to Mr. Washington every month.

  Elder Mr. Hawkins delivered the news calmly and sternly in January—the very top of 1919—at the funeral for Frank and Tommy, Amber’s best shooters.

  Who the fuck am I supposed to pay restitution to? Amber asked, in a loud whisper. Funeral-goers glanced back at us and then averted their eyes. The Little Family is dead! And Mr. Washington didn’t have to kill Frank and Tommy—

  I canceled Frank and Tommy, Elder Mr. Hawkins said, so coldly that I felt grains of his frost sprinkle against my cheek as he spoke. I laid their bodies out by the river myself. They were stupid enough to follow your order to cancel Joyce’s peoples, they had to— Trust me Amber, it was best for you that they go.

  The debt became a millstone dragging Amber’s operations to the bottom of the Cross River. I wondered why Mr. Washington didn’t just put a bullet in him. Would have been more merciful than this slow usurious homicide.

  Amber sent a fleet of prostitutes into the juke joints and commissioned truck hijackings, but it was never enough. With each day he looked less and less like the heir to the throne. When all seemed lost, Carmen shot into our lives, a little brown-skinned bolt from a cannon. Woke us up when we didn’t even know we were sleeping. I was never clear on where he found her. It seemed as if she had always been there on his arm.

  Carmen was a pretty number. From a certain angle her head appeared perfectly round. Her hair—shiny, black, and smooth—stopped at the nape of her long neck. She stayed draped in a green dress. Said it was the color of spring. And the spring of Carmen indeed felt like a rebirth.

  Three sets of ledger books sat before me one April afternoon—Amber asked me to make the numbers work, but there was no making sense of these numbers. Carmen’s green dress had been on my mind for several hours. I daydreamed, and when I got tired of that I leafed through Miss Susan’s Little Book of Love Numbers. When I got to the chapter titled “Can a Woman Make a Man Lose His Mind?” I was damn sure for a few minutes that Loretta and Joyce were water-women. They made you fall so deep you never wanted to ever gasp for air again and then they disappeared, leaving your mind buzzing with madness until the end of your days, and that’s if you’re lucky. Loretta and Joyce hid their gills well. I thought of the creased skin beneath Loretta’s breasts. Where was Carmen hiding her gills? They could shift shapes, you know. Maybe Carmen was Joyce returned. No.

  Amber walked into the office holding tight to Carmen’s hand. Her sweet smell deranged every thought I had of the water-women, until the images slid from my brain into my throat and felt like the smoothest ice cream.

  You got time to be reading that witchcraft? he asked, nodding toward my Miss Susan book. Amber moved as if he had no control over his body and fell into the chair across from me, breathing heavy. What my numbers looking like?

  I couldn’t immediately answer him. I noticed Carmen’s slant smile. Amber too had grinned when he walked through the door, but talk of business had twisted his lips into a grimace.

  I’m not sure how we’re gonna make Mr. Washington’s payments again this month, I said.

  With the reduced territory there were fewer businesses to intimidate, fewer lottery customers, and fewer workers to bring in revenue.

  Carmen rested her soft hands on the back of Amber’s neck.

  You need to get yourself a woman, Amber said.

  I’m sorry I can’t get these numbers to make sense, I replied. I’ll keep try—

  I’m talking about what’s really important in this life, and you stuck on business. I don’t remember you being this stiff. Didn’t my father call you a poet or something?

  Amber was telling me about Loretta, Carmen said. You been out with anyone since then?

  I shook my head.

  Amber’s a good guy, Carmen continued. He asked about my friends for you. I got a whole army of nice girls. You don’t like one, the next one will be better. They all could use a guy like you.

  See what I’m talking about? Amber said. This is a firecracker of a woman. What you think of my woman?

  I looked up at the sweep of her hair resting on her cheeks. The black, breathing lines beneath her eyes.

  She hides her gills well, I said.

  Amber and Carmen laughed. I’m glad they took it in the spirit of a joke. Sometimes it was hard to tell what was going to make Amber lose it.

  You know there’s no such thing as water-women, right? Carmen asked with her slant-smile lingering and hanging over me.

  Loretta wasn’t no water-woman, Amber said. She just ain’t like your ass no more. Same thing with Joyce. We got to live with that. It takes a special woman to be with guys in this life. Loretta and Joyce wasn’t special enough, but my baby Carmen—he grasped her by the waist and pulled her tight—my baby Carmen ain’t going nowhere.

  Mean-fucking-while, I said, Philemon is the toast of the family.

  Outrageous! Amber slapped the desk. What would happen if I walked up to him and shot him in his face right in front of Mr. Washington?

  You know something? Carmen said, looking to the ceiling, her voice all distant and spinning with childlike innocence. There hasn’t been a good firebombing since your dad ran the streets, has there?

  In a different world, Carmen could have run this organization, I’m sure. I feared her and I wanted to devour her.

  Our action against Philemon was to be nothing serious; just a prank like streaming lines of toilet paper through his trees. We didn’t mean for it to happen, but Philemon’s house burned. Perhaps I daydreamed too intensely about Carmen’s green dress and put too much gasoline into the Molotov cocktails. No one was hurt, but Amber yelled at the old-faced teenagers we hired to do the job: What was in that shit, sunfire?

  He never gave them the second $10 he promised, but they kept their mouths shut, and everyone assumed the Johnson Family did it as retaliation for Philemon moving into their Northside strongholds.

  Mr. Washington took Philemon’s advice and ordered all guns turned on the Johnson Family in a sort of unbalanced warfare. When they largely retreated, most of our crew leaders were left with bigger territories, except for us. Somehow our territory shrank and we found ourselves scrounging for every dollar we could come across.

  Amber shrugged it all off and I still have this vision of him with his feet up on a table in the office holding a copy of the Days or the Times, staring at the air above the ledger books as if the numbers were twirling before him. He nodded. He grimace-smiled, saying, Carmen got this all figured out. Every damn piece to the puzzle. Every piece.

  4.

  Shortly after I began working for Amber, before he became translucent to me—the way Josephus appears in my dreams—my mother sent me to see Miss Susan. She had seen Miss Susan before she married my father (and probably before she started seeing Elder Mr. Hawkins behind my father’s back) and said everyone should see her when they think they’re in deep with a lover. I hadn’t even been paid yet and was still living off shoeshining bread, so my mother gave me money for that old witch. Miss Susan told me to go into the Wildlands and bring her three roots. My mother went down to the market and bought three roots and ground them into the dirt so they looked fresh from the earth. She said: That witch crazy if she think I�
�m sending my only boy into that old spooknigger forest.

  Miss Susan stared at me. She fingered my naps. Squeezed my face and then turned my roots in her hand. I had heard rumors that she made you drop your pants and stared right into the eye of your penis. I silently prayed she would let me keep my pants on, and thankfully she did, but, God, the power of this woman! She looked nothing like the grinning old crone they had pictured on her books. Miss Susan looked smooth-skinned and serious. I would have done anything she asked just because of the forcefulness of her voice. So, I said, is Loretta the one? She looked up from my roots with her glowing gold eyes and said, You’re in danger.

  You know who I work for, I said. You not telling me nothing I don’t know.

  That’s not why you’re in danger. It’s your heart. If you know what’s good for you, you’re gonna stay the hell away from that river.

  I left with a bunch of her books and walked straight to the river to sit and read. And that’s when I heard them calling me. A wispy sound rustled in my ears and I felt drunk, pleasant drunk without the anger or the bitter taste on my tongue or the burn of liquor corroding my insides as it passed through.

  The world looked wavy, but I saw it—that diamond island rising from the Cross River like a ghost ship out the fog.

  And those water-women dove from land and swam to me. They rose out of the waves, brown and nude, their skin shining with the life-giving waters.