2666 (42 page)

"That's right, I did hear something like that," said the
old man at the bar.

"I'll
wait for him awhile," said Fate, and he finished his beer.

The
bartender settled across from him and told him that in his day he'd been a
fighter.

"My last fight was in
Athens
,
in
South Carolina
.
I fought a white boy. Who do you think won?" he asked.

Fate looked him in the eye, frowned noncommittally, and ordered
another beer.

"It was four months since I saw my manager. I just went
around with my trainer, this old man called Johnny Bird, we went from one town
to another in
South Carolina
,
North Carolina
, sleeping
in these shitty-ass motels. He was wobbly and so was I, you know what I'm
saying, me because I'd got hit so much and old Bird because by then he was
eighty at least. That's right, eighty, maybe he was eighty-three. We used to
argue about that before we went to sleep, with the lights out. Bird said he'd
just hit eighty. I said he was eighty-three. They fixed the fight. The promoter
told me to go down in the fifth. And to let myself get knocked around some in
the fourth. For that, they'd give me double what they'd promised, which wasn't
much. I told Bird about it that night, eating supper. It don't matter none to
me, he said. I don't give a damn. The problem is, most times these people don't
pay their bills. So it's up to you. That's what he said."

On the way back to Seaman's house Fate felt a little dizzy.
An enormous moon was rising over the roofs. Near the entrance to a building a
man came up to him and said something that either he didn't understand or that
struck him as unacceptable. I'm Barry Seaman's friend, motherfucker, said Fate
as he tried to grab the man by the lapels of his leather jacket.

"Relax,"
said the man. "Easy, brother."

Inside
the doorway he saw four pairs of yellow eyes shining in the dark, and in the
dangling hand of the man he was gripping he saw the fleeting reflection of the
moon.

"Get out of
here or I'll kill you," he said.

"Relax,
brother, let me go first," said the man.

Fate
let go of him and looked for the moon over the roofs ahead. He followed it. As
he walked he heard noises on the side streets, steps, running, as if part of
the neighborhood had just woken up. Next to Seaman's building he made out his
rental car. He examined it. Nothing had happened to it. Then he rang the buzzer
and an irritated voice asked what he wanted. Fate identified himself and said
he'd been sent from
Black Dawn.
Over the intercom he heard a little laugh
of satisfaction. Come in, said the voice. Fate crawled up the stairs. At some
point he understood he wasn't well. Seaman was waiting for him on the landing.

"I need to use
the bathroom," said Fate.

"Jesus,"
said Seaman.

The
living room was small and modest and he saw books strewn everywhere and also
posters taped to the walls and little photographs scattered along the shelves
and the table and on top of the TV.

"The second
door," said Seaman.

Fate went in and
began to vomit.

When
he woke up he saw Seaman writing with a pen. Next to him were four thick books
and several folders full of papers. Seaman wore glasses when he wrote. Fate
noticed that three of the four books were dictionaries and the fourth was a
huge tome called
The Abridged French Encyclopedia,
which he'd never
heard of, in college or ever. The sun was coming in the window. He threw off
the blanket and sat up on the couch. He asked Seaman what had happened. The old
man looked at him over his glasses and offered him a cup of coffee. Seaman was
six feet tall, at least, but he stood slightly stooped, which made him seem
smaller. He made a living giving lectures, which tended to be badly paid, since
he was hired most often by educational organizations operating in the ghetto
and sometimes by small progressive colleges with tiny budgets. Years ago he had
published a book called
Eating Ribs with Barry Seaman,
in which he
collected all the recipes he knew for ribs, mostly grilled or barbecued, adding
strange or notable facts about the places where he'd learned each recipe, who
had taught it to him, and under what circumstances. The best part of the book
had to do with the ribs and mashed potatoes or applesauce he'd made in prison:
how he'd got hold of the ingredients and how he'd cooked them in a place where
cooking, like so many other things, was forbidden. The book wasn't a
bestseller, but it put Seaman back in circulation and he appeared on a few
morning shows, cooking some of his famous recipes live. Now he had fallen into
obscurity again, but he kept giving lectures and traveling the country,
sometimes in exchange for a return ticket and three hundred dollars.

Next
to the table where he wrote and where the two of them sat to have coffee, there
was a black-and-white poster of two young men in black jackets and black berets
and dark glasses. Fate shivered, not because of the poster but because he felt
so sick, and after the first swallow of coffee he asked whether one of the boys
was Seaman. That's right, said Seaman. Fate asked which one. Seaman smiled. He
didn't have a single tooth.

"Hard to tell,
isn't it?"

"I
don't know, I don't feel very well, if I felt better I'm sure I could figure it
out," said Fate.

"The one on
the right, the shorter one," said Seaman.

"Who's the
other one?" asked Fate.

"Are you sure
you don't know?"

Fate
looked at the poster again for a while. "It's Marius Newell," he
said. "That's right," said Seaman.

Seaman put on a jacket. Then he went into the bedroom and
when he came out he was wearing a narrow-brimmed dark green hat. He picked his
dentures out of a glass in the dark bathroom and fit them in carefully. Fate
watched him from the living room. He rinsed his mouth with a red liquid, spat
in the sink, rinsed again, and said he was ready.

They
left in the rental car for
Rebecca
Holmes
Park
,
some twenty blocks away. Since they had time to kill, they stopped the car on
the edge of the park and spent a while talking as they stretched their legs.
Rebecca
Holmes
Park
was big and in the middle, surrounded by a half-collapsed fence, was a
playground called Temple A. Hoffman Memorial Playground, where they didn't see
any children playing. In fact, the playground was completely empty, except for
a couple of rats that took off when they saw Seaman and Fate. Next to a cluster
of oaks stood a vaguely Oriental-looking gazebo, like a miniature Russian
Orthodox church. Hip-hop sounded from the other side of the gazebo.

"I
hate this shit," said Seaman, "make sure you get that in your
article."

"Why?"
asked Fate.

They
headed toward the gazebo and next to it they saw the dried-up bed of a pond. A
pair of Nike sneakers had left frozen tracks in the dry mud. Fate thought about
dinosaurs and felt sick again. They walked around the gazebo. On the other
side, on the ground next to some shrubs, they saw a boom box, the source of the
music. There was no one nearby. Seaman said he didn't like rap because the only
out it offered was suicide. But not even meaningful suicide. I know, I know, he
said. It's hard to imagine meaningful suicide. It isn't a common thing.
Although I've seen or been near two meaningful suicides. At least I think I
have. I could be wrong, he said.

"How does rap
lead to suicide?" asked Fate.

Seaman
didn't answer and led him on a shortcut through the trees, which brought them
out into an open space. On the pavement three girls were jumping rope. The song
they were singing seemed highly unusual. There was something about a woman
whose legs and arms and tongue had been amputated. There was something about
the
Chicago
sewers and the sanitation boss or a city worker called Sebastian D'Onofrio, and
then came a refrain, repeating Chi-Chi-Chi-Chicago. There was something about
the pull of the moon. Then the woman grew wooden legs and wire arms and a
tongue made of braided grasses and plants. Completely disoriented, Fate asked
where his car was, and the old man said it was on the other side of the park.
They crossed the street, talking about sports. They walked one hundred yards
and went into a church.

There, from the pulpit, Seaman spoke about his life. The
Reverend Ronald K. Foster introduced him, in a way that made it clear Seaman
had been there before. I'm going to address five subjects, said Seaman, no more
and no less. The first subject is DANGER. The second, MONEY. The third, FOOD.
The fourth, STARS. The fifth and last, USEFULNESS. People smiled and some
nodded their heads in approval, as if to say all right, as if to inform the
speaker they had nothing better to do than listen to him. In a corner Fate saw
five boys in black jackets and black berets and dark glasses, none of them
older than twenty. They were watching Seaman with impassive faces, ready to
applaud him or jeer. On the stage the old man paced back and forth, his back
hunched, as if he had suddenly forgotten his speech. Unexpectedly, at a sign
from the preacher, the choir sang a gospel hymn. The hymn was about Moses and
the captivity of the people of
Israel
in
Egypt
.
The preacher himself accompanied them on the piano. Then Seaman returned to
center stage and raised a hand (he had his eyes closed), and in a few seconds
the choir's singing ceased and the church was silent.

DANGER. Despite what the congregation (or most of it)
expected, Seaman began by talking about his childhood in
California
. He said that for those who
hadn't been to
California
,
what it was most like was an enchanted island. The spitting image. Just like in
the movies, but better. People live in houses, not apartment buildings, he
said, and then he embarked on a comparison of houses (one-story, at most
two-story), and four- or five-story buildings where the elevator is broken one
day and out of order the next. The only way buildings compared favorably to
houses was in terms of proximity. A neighborhood of buildings makes distances
shorter, he said. Everything is closer. You can go walking to buy groceries or
you can walk to your local tavern (here he winked at Reverend Foster), or the
local church you belong to, or a museum. In other words, you don't need to
drive. You don't even need a car. And here he recited a list of statistics on
fatal car accidents in a
county
of
Detroit
and a
county
of
Los Angeles
.
And that's even considering that cars are made in
Detroit
,
he said, not
Los Angeles
.
He raised a finger, felt for something in the pocket of his jacket, and brought
out an inhaler. Everyone waited in silence. The two spurts of the inhaler could
be heard all the way to the farthest corner of the church. Pardon me, he said.
Then he said he had learned to drive at thirteen. I don't drive anymore, he
said, but I learned at thirteen and it's not something I am proud of. At that
point he stared out into the room, at a vague spot in the middle of the
sanctuary, and said he had been one of the founders of the Black Panthers.
Marius Newell and I, he said, to be precise. After that, the speech subtly
drifted from its course. It was as if the doors of the church had opened, wrote
Fate in his notebook, and the ghost of Newell had come in. But just then, as if
to avoid a certain awkwardness, Seaman began to talk not about Newell but about
Newell's mother, Anne Jordan Newell. He described her appearance (pleasing),
her work (she had a job at a factory that made irrigation systems), her faith
(she went to church every Sunday), her industriousness (she kept the house as
neat as a pin), her kindness (she always had a smile for everyone), her common
sense (she gave good advice, wise advice, without forcing it on anyone). A
mother is a precious thing, concluded Seaman. Marius and I founded the
Panthers. We worked whatever jobs we could get and we bought shotguns and
handguns for the people's self-defense. But a mother is worth more than the
Black Revolution. That I can promise you. In my long and eventful life, I've
seen many things. I was in
Algeria
and I was in
China
and in
several prisons in the
United
States
. A mother is a precious thing. This I
say here and I'll say anywhere, anytime, he said in a hoarse voice. He excused
himself again and turned toward the altar, then he turned back to face the
audience. As you all know, he said, Marius Newell was killed. A black man like
you and like me killed him one night in
Santa
Cruz
,
California
. I
told him, Marius, don't go back to
California
,
there are too many cops there, cops out to get us. But he didn't listen. He
liked
California
.
He liked to go to the rocky beaches on a Sunday and breathe the smell of the
Pacific. When we were both in prison, I got postcards from him in which he told
me he'd dreamed he was breathing that air. Which is strange, because I haven't
met many black folks who took to the sea the way he did. Maybe none, definitely
none in
California
.
But I know what he was talking about, I know what he meant. As it happens, I
have a theory about this, about why we don't like the sea. We do like it. Just
not as much as other folks. But that's for another occasion. Marius told me
things had changed in
California
.
There were many more black police now, for example. It was true. It had changed
in that way. But in other ways it was still the same. And yet there was no
denying that some things had changed. And Marius recognized that and he knew we
deserved part of the credit. The Panthers had helped bring the change. With our
grain of sand or our dump truck. We had contributed. So had his mother and all
the other black mothers who wept at night and saw visions of the gates of hell
when they should have been asleep. So he decided he'd go back to
California
and live the
rest of his life there, in peace, out of harm's way, and maybe he'd start a
family. He always said he would call his first son Frank, after a friend who
lost his life in Soledad Prison. Truth is, he would've had to have at least
thirty children to pay tribute to all the friends who'd been taken from him. Or
ten, and give each of them three names. Or five, and give them each six. But as
it happened he didn't have any children because one night, as he was walking
down the street in
Santa Cruz
,
a black man killed him. They say it was for money. They say Marius owed him
money and that was why he was killed, but I find that hard to believe. I think
someone hired that man to kill him. At the time, Marius was fighting the drug
trade in town and someone didn't like that. Maybe. I was still in prison so I
don't really know. I have my theories, too many of them. All I know is that
Marius died in
Santa Cruz
,
where he had gone to spend a few days. He didn't live there and it's hard to
imagine the killer lived there. The killer followed Marius, is what I'm saying.
And the only reason I can think of why Marius was in
Santa Cruz
is the ocean. Marius went to see
the
Pacific Ocean
, went to smell it. And the
killer tracked him down to
Santa Cruz
.
And you all know what happened next. Oftentimes I think about Marius. More than
I want to, to tell you the truth. I see him on the beach in
California
. A beach in Big Sur, maybe, or in
Monterey
north
of Fisherman's Wharf, up Highway 1. He's standing at a lookout point, looking
away. It's winter, off-season. The Panthers are young, none of us even
twenty-five. We're all armed, but we've left our weapons in the car, and you
can see the deep dissatisfaction on our faces. The sea roars. Then I go up to
Marius and I say let's get out of here now. And at that moment Marius turns and
he looks at me. He's smiling. He's beyond it all. And he waves his hand toward
the sea, because he's incapable of expressing what he feels in words. And then
I'm afraid, even though it's my brother there beside me, and I think: the
danger is the sea.