A Conversation with the Mann (21 page)

That was the plan.

But the warm night, the post-show booze I'd put down that lightened my step, applause still hot, still rippling through my
memory and the good feeling the sound brought with—it all got together to make my head swim and my judgment poor. As I walked,
I didn't mind walking. Enjoyed the stroll. I figured, since I had my leave-this-darkie-alone card from the police, why not
just hoof it back to the Madison? I could probably make it in the same time it would take to find a phone and get a cab—a
black cab—to pick me up. Yeah. Walking seemed like the right idea.

Shortly I was lost. Not completely. The combo of liquor and euphoria had distracted me and I'd wandered along a couple of
wrong turns. I could see the glow of the beach hotels beyond some trees and make out the low skyline of Miami, but somehow
I'd gotten on a road that took me away from one without exactly heading toward the other.

A dark road.

Okay.

Okay, I thought. I'll just head back the way I came. Head back, find that phone, and call that cab.

So I did that, started heading back, not much concerned, figuring I could untwist myself. If I thought of anything, I thought
of the laugh Sid and I would have over me getting all fouled up trying to play Charlie Trailblazer.

And I wasn't much concerned when a pair of headlights came up over a rise behind me, caught me, swept over me as a car rode
past.

A car. Just a car.

The car kept on for thirty, forty yards … then its taillights went from dull to bright.

It was braking.

I got concerned. Just a little. Just a …

The car sat, didn't drive on and didn't roll back. I didn't move, either. The only exchange between us was the idle of the
motor and my shallow breathing. Beyond that there were no other sounds I can recall. Just myself and that car.

The little white lights above the bumper blinked on. The car crept back toward me.

The warm night went hot.

I got real concerned.

Real concerned, but I remained still. My mind active—lickety-splitting through a dozen things I should maybe do instead of
standing around—but my body able to accomplish nothing.

It was just a car. It was just…

The car—a cream-colored thing. Make and model hidden beneath dents and rust—came parallel to me. Inside: three men. In the
dark I couldn't well make them out except they were three white men. Two up front, one in back.

The one behind the wheel drawled at me: “Boy, watcha doin'?”

“Going home.” I had to work the words out, and when they came they came nervous.

“Say he goin' home.” That didn't sit too well with the guy next to the driver, who repeated my words for the others.

The driver stated: “Ain't no niggrahs live roun' heyah.”

“I don't live—”

“What that, boy?”

“I don't live here. I'm from out of town.”

“Say he ain't from roun' heyah.” That was the guy next to the driver again doing a cracker translation of what I'd just said.
The third one, the one in back, kept quiet, did nothing more than slouch where the seat met the door and chew at something
that seemed to be permanently lodged in his mouth.

“Nahh, he ain't no local niggrah.” They talked past me to each other. They talked like I didn't exist. “Ain't no local niggrah
stupid 'nough tah be walkin' roun' at night when he ain't supposedta.”

I started to show them my police card, tell them how it was “okay” for me to be out after dark.

“Ah don't give uh damn 'bout no card.” The driver shut me down.

The one next to the driver darted an arm out the window, snatched the card from my hand.

I offered no resistance. Fear stupefied my reactions.

Looking over the card casually, without regard: “Say he can stay out past curfew.”

“Why yew sucha special niggrah? Yew tha Jesus niggrah?”

Nigger came out of their mouths with as much ease as anger. And just as that word was easy for them, there was a word that,
in that moment, was becoming untroublesome for me: “Sir? No, sir. Nothing special about me, sir. I work at one of the—”

“Get in tha car.”

Miles and miles away a train sounded. I remember that. I remember very clearly the sound of that train.

“I… I think I can just walk back to—”

“Boy, git yer ass in tha car. We all take yew where yew need tah go.”

The third one, the one in the back, pushed open the door. It stood gaping, waiting to swallow me whole.

I was not stupid.

I was not so stupid as to think there was any good to come from getting into that car.

I was not stupid.

I was not so stupid as to think running was any better an idea. To run was to be chased. To be chased was to be caught. To
be caught was to be … Three of them. I was alone.

I was not stupid.

I got in the car.

And as I did, for lack of anything better, I held out a little hope these three might actually take me where I needed to go—to
Miami, to the Madison, to a room with vermin that dodged leaking pipes of cold water that would be the most beautiful room
I'd ever been in.

Sure. Maybe they'd take me there.

“Close it, boy. Close tha door.”

I closed the car door. I closed in the smell of alcohol and sweat. The alcohol came from them; their every breath exhaled
the stink of cheap beer downed in large amounts that got the drinker good and high. The sweat came courtesy of all of us.
The rednecks sweaty with anticipation. Me, fear.

For a while we drove. Didn't know where we were going, except I knew we weren't going toward the city or the beach. Beyond
the car was darkness, peeled some by the headlights to reveal only desolation ahead, and some by the occasional flash from
a rural street post. In those flashes I caught glimpses of my companions. All had buzzed hair, the driver's blondish. On the
back of his neck, acne scars that disappeared down under the collar of his shirt. And there was something wrong with his ear;
a hunk of it had been chewed and torn off same as a mutt that's lost a dogfight.

The passenger was red. Red in hair. Red in flesh.

Man number three, the one in back with me, was thin. Nearly rail-thin. Except for a pot of a stomach that sloshed itself out
from under a plaid shirt he wore unbuttoned for better viewing of the miracle of his thin/fat self.

This one, the thin/fat one, eyed my threads, guzzled from a Schlitz can, then got around to asking: “Whuh yew all fined up
for?”

“I told you.”

“Yew ain't said shit, niggrah.”

It was coming to seem like nigger was the standard close to every sentence.

The car rode rough. There was a sound coming from the engine. An unhealthy one. I had never owned a car, but I figured, probably,
the oil had gone unchanged for longer than it should have and whatever it was that oil lubricated was going dry and grinding.
I let out a little hysterical laugh that was disguised as a hiccup. I was thinking about the redneck's car. That was quite
funny to me. I hiccupped again.

I said: “I work in town.”

More beer. “What tha hell yew do with that git-up?”

“… I'm an entertainer.”

Laughs and cat calls in redneck stereophonics.

“Entahtainah? Yew some big stah, boy?” one of them asked. Couldn't tell which. Their mumbled ignorances stretched out in a
slow drawl were selfsame.

“Like that niggrah Jew, ain't yew, boy?” The thin/fat redneck sucked more beer. Got a little higher on the booze. Got a little
higher on his hate. “Bet yew jus like that niggrah Jew. Think yer sumthin' special. Think yer so goddamn …” He drowned the
last of that beneath a swallow of beer and gave me instead an angry stare.

From the front of the car: “Maybe he oughtta entahtain us.”

“… I could try to get you tickets to the show.…”

“Yeauh. He oughtta entahtain us,” the thin/fat one said. He said it quiet, said it soft. Said it like a guy who was saving
his energy for things besides talking. He said it again: “Yeauh, he wanna entahtain us, don't yew, boy?”

The car tire hit soft shoulder.

Gravel pinged off the fender.

I jumped.

The redneck next to me smiled.

The driver was angling for a gas station. Closed, dark. The car stopped. Rednecks one, two, and three got out. I stayed, a
death-house inmate who didn't want to leave his cell, the cell being better than what was waiting.

One of the rednecks, I think the driver: “Well, le's go, boy.” He clapped his hands the way a master calls his dog. “Le's
get tah entahtainin'.”

I inched along the seat. I inched out of the car. That was all I did.

“Gowon over in tha spotlight.” The red redneck pointed to where the car's headlights bounced off the wall of the garage. “Gowon.”

Reluctant steps took me into the light. It filled my eyes, made the rednecks silhouettes.

One of the outlines: “Le's see yew dance, boy.”

Their shadow arms bobbed up to their mouths and back down. More beer to fuel their fire.

“I don't … I'm a comedian. I don't dance, I tell—”

“Ah ain't tryin' tah heyah no niggrah joke-talkin' shit. Now, Ie's see yew dance.”

I danced.

There was no pause, no inactive moment that I tried to pass off as defiance. I lifted a leg, then the other. Did a little
shuffle step. Small motions. Tiny movements. My father's belt, whipping me to the floor, never delivered such total degradation.
I didn't care. I didn't care if the three rednecks stood and laughed and pointed all the while I was humiliating myself. The
only thing I cared about was ending the night alive. So I danced.

But all my halfhearted self-shaming did was stoke them. Where's the sport in beating down something that is so willing to
be beaten?

“What is that shit?” one of the outlines demanded. “What tha hell kinduh coon shit is that suppostuh—”

“Niggrah's too goddamn good tah dance,” from another of them.

“No, sir, I'm … I'm not too goo—”

“Thank's he's so goddamn good. All these niggrah Jews gettin' tah thank they so goddamn …”

Their rants, if ever, no longer even bordered on a kind of logic. They were just an excuse to hate out loud, dirty talk and
foreplay before an orgasm of violence.

A beer can got tossed away. There was business to be gotten to.

One of the rednecks stepped from the dark to the light. The thin/fat one. He stood there. He looked at me, barely able to
stand my sight, his face twitching with little jolts of scorn. A hand into his pant pocket. It came out, fingers shiny, kicking
brass moonlight. Brass and slightly reddish. Rust. Rust or dried blood.

Terror racked the whole of me with a fierce nausea, made every part of me fail simultaneously. My heart labored. My muscles
went loose and weak. My stomach and bowels demanded to empty themselves.

Thought useless, instinct stepped in and drove me back. I stumbled—toolbox among my feet—fell against the wall of the garage.

The redneck sneered at that: Look at the nigger, too stupid to even run away good.

The other two rednecks stayed back. The other two were going to let the thin/fat one have his fun.

Me, against the wall, crouching tighter, trying to will myself through it. Trying to wish myself out of backwoods Florida,
north to New York, to the arms of my Tommy.

“Tommy,” I screamed, my mind and voice spasming along with my physical self. “Tommy!” Hands frenzied, flailing, clawing at
the wood I was pressed against. Pain. Hot, sharp pain. Palms warm, wet. Blood from splinters. Kept clawing. I kept—

Cold. In my hand: something smooth and cold and heavy.

The redneck: standing over me. Like my father, liquor-sick, standing over me. Racist bile drooled at me, broiling and incoherent.
Didn't matter. Words didn't matter. Words had become non-satisfying. Hate is what mattered. The hate was real and ready to
go to work. Thin/fat redneck's arm jerked back, the brass knuckles bouncing car light, flashing a warning: Here we come.

He swung down.

I swung up. The cold and heavy thing I gripped moved by terror, not courage. I swung. It whistled, chopped air. I swung. I
swung until something interrupted my arch, the connection vibrating up my arm from hand to shoulder. Simultaneously there
was a squooshy crunch—a soft melon getting hammered. The follow-up sound: dead weight hitting ground.

No sound after that. Nothing from the redneck I'd just pounded. Nothing from the other two.

From me, movement. My weapon tossed aside, used, now useless. A delirious scramble forward, eventually up to my feet, my body
drove itself for the road, away from the gas station and the remaining rednecks.

The remaining rednecks right behind, not smart enough to chase me down with the car but closing just the same. As quick as
fear moved me, rage moved them. Them. Two of them. One to hold me while the other strung me up—the minimum number required
to perform a lynching.

My brain, useless up to that point, a slave to my instincts, got off the bench and back into the game. My brain told me sticking
to the road, keeping with a straight-ahead run, was only good for getting me caught and killed. My brain told me to veer for
the brush, to lose my hunters in a thicket of trees.

My brain fucked me up.

Just off the shoulder—a fence, the wire barbed. I hit it, hit it at speed and got thrown back and down, the fence keeping
a good slice of my cheek.

From the ground I opened my eyes. Looking straight up, I saw dark sky and stars. I turned my head. I saw angry, huffing rednecks.

One of them, the one who'd been driving the car: in his hand a board. In the board nails. Dull, dirty, and bent. Useless nails.
Good for nothing. Nothing but killing.

The sight of it—the redneck, the board he held, the seething drunken fury that held him—the sight of it all made my body thrash,
marking my grave with a dirt angel. It made me want to puke, piss, and cry.

I started in on all three as the redneck started for me.

I just didn't want it to hurt. That's what I prayed for. Painless-ness. Other than that, on the ground, basting in my own
filth, I was resigned to things ending.
Please be quick. Please be painless.