Fanon (2 page)

When the doorbell rings it catches Thomas imagining how a head, bloody and real, might arrive at his door. Just a coincidence, he tells himself on his way from his desk to the apartment door, the bell
ringing in the midst of his daydreaming about the delivery of a head. A coincidence, he repeats, smiling at the gullible part of himself who believes he sees a delivery person in the hall holding a head-sized box squeezed under one arm. Strictly a coincidence Thomas assures himself, like when you think about someone you haven't run into for a long while and in the next instant the imagined someone appears. A coincidence, never mind the fact that it feels like the opposite of coincidence. Like timing's off. Like two different worlds have gotten tangled up, squeezed together. A traffic jam. Or traffic accident. Everything coincidental, Thomas thinks, impatient with the impatient pounding on his door. Everything happens at once, once and only once. No stops. No starts. No chance to escape like the unexpected grains of rice yesterday spilling, skittering helter-skelter across the kitchen floor when he lifted from the cupboard shelf a bag of Uncle Ben's with a hole he didn't see in the bottom.

Thomas opens his door, and before he can speak—while he's concluding faster than the speed of light that time's timing can't be off and that he doesn't understand even a little bit what the word
coincidence
means and furthermore that trying to conceive how his life passes through time is like imagining a solid brick wall and stepping through before realizing that he can't step through a brick wall though he might very well have arrived on the far, unimaginable side—before Thomas can utter a word, a brown guy in a brown UPS suit apologizes for not phoning the apartment from the lobby to alert Thomas and confirm that Thomas exists and is indeed the person who inhabits #M901 or confirm #M901 as indeed the apartment where a package addressed to Thomas should be conveyed and someone will sign for it in the event Thomas is not present or does not exist, working out to the same thing from the delivery person's perspective, and today being a busy day, he's would you believe it behind schedule already at 10
A.M.
so once past the security desk he jumped into an elevator just as its door began to slide shut and rode
express to the ninth floor without calling on his cell phone (brown matching his brown uniform) to ascertain if anybody home.

Sign here, please, sir.

Sign right here.
No mention of a head inside the hatbox-sized box, way too heavy for a hat when he passes it to Thomas.

You sure it's not ticking, ha-ha, Thomas says occasionally to delivery people to be funny, ha-ha. Delivery people usually don't get it or ignore it or don't like it or hold Thomas in contempt these days of terror,
Not funny, asshole,
scolding him with their magistrate's eyes. Would this delivery person have a sense of humor or at least extend to Thomas the benefit of the doubt, a slight I'm-the-friendly-delivery-person-with-a-smile-for-whatever-stupid-shit-the-customer-says smile. No joking around with today's brown person at the door. Thomas has delayed him long enough. Is he supposed to notice the brown head above the brown uniform. Only thing matters supposed to be the outfit, not who's in it. Outfit trumps infit, right. Or the reverse, maybe. Confusing is what Thomas thinks. Like skin color doesn't matter these days they say, grinning and squinting colorblind like you're welcome on their doorstep no matter what your color, gender, creed, delivering a pizza or an opportunity
surprise surprise
to open a package today from the Big World that just might save their lives.
Sign here, please.

Without comment Thomas signs and looks a pleasant look to cover up his unease, his uncertainty about tipping protocol, whether a tip is expected or optional in these situations, how large or small, should he offer a tip whether it's required or not, and if he doesn't, will he be sent to hell as a cheap bastard in the brown uniformed messenger's brown thoughts. Is brown-on-brown tipping a special case requiring a huge tip or maybe only a brother-to-brother wink, a deeply satisfying exchange worth more than money can buy with the delivery person standing there holding an electronic tablet Thomas must mark with an electronic pen which agitates neurons and
electrons, the first letter of Thomas's name spinning away to register in Hong Kong before he finishes scratching the second letter on the miniscreen whose bluish gray glow reminds him of those magic slates when he was a kid. Remember. With a plastic stylus you wrote on a plasticky transparent cover sheet and the marks appeared on the gray-blue page beneath. Lifting the top sheet erased the nasty drawings and swear words Thomas liked to practice back then anywhere anonymous, like fences or walls of abandoned buildings or like on the carbon-backed magic page where he wouldn't be caught, except one day, raising both sheets with thumb and finger, he noticed the stiff purple slab retained a copy of his evil scribble-scrabble, not only the latest production but layer upon layer accumulated over days and weeks, of sinful ideas and dirty pictures and curses good boy Thomas knew he wasn't supposed to know, let alone express, preserved there to expose him to punishment or worse, ridicule. Thomas's tender secrets unveiled, betraying him like the credit card bill his ex-wife, apoplectic, once waved in his face as unimpeachable evidence of Thomas rendezvousing in a fancy restaurant with some female not her.

You never learn, do you, Thomas. Busted again the instant you signed the tiny window of the UPS guy's gadget. Now it's your head, forever. If there is a head in the box. Never trust technology's toys. No more than you trust the novels you toy with, the novels toying with you. One thing always connected to other things, endless chains of words and messages looping backward, forward, sideways, rope around your neck. Remember the exhibit of sepia photos, the droopy-headed brown victims of lynching, crackers leering at the victim's limp private parts. Keep your business to yourself, Thomas, or your business everybody's business, nobody's business. If you're not careful, your business displayed word by word, scratch by scratch, and you're dead. No magic sheet to lift. The evidence of your guilt indelible everywhere you believed, foolish boy, you could safely spray your tag.

Your signature now belongs to the ages. One small step for you, Thomas, a giant leap for mankind. Like Michael's moonwalk. Like this thing. This head (if there is one) in a box belongs to you for eternity once the delivery person, after a proper credentializing, passes it to you and
Sayonara
backpedals into the hallway, pushing the door shut behind his Japanese-sampling brown self.

The narrative forges ahead. And doesn't. Giving Thomas a headache either way. A bad head. Stop, Thomas. Nothing funny here. One more atrocious head pun and it's off with yours.

Wordplay a common symptom of aftershock. Nothing to be ashamed of, Thomas responds. Could happen to anybody. A natural reaction, the studies say. The mind dividing to protect itself while performing unbearably grim duties. A means of buying time, creating a little distance, you know. Yaketty-yak. Entire nations and epochs have employed the stratagem. How else are people supposed to cope with horror beyond comprehension. Wordplay better than completely numbing out. You know, like that numb look Igbo slaves got in their eyes before they hanged themselves.

Words, however, don't help much, do they. Neither does time. Minute by minute passing, none of them altering the unalterable truth that Thomas may have received, accepted, and signed for a package containing a human head and it's his head now on the desk, daring him to look. He's run out of words, excuses, patience with himself, and the box still sits. Patient. Beyond words. Not speaking. Unspeakable. He must deal with it. Where's his magic slate. Each day dawning a new page to scribble on. A new Thomas. No questions asked. Now only one question: what's in the box. Why not return the package unopened to UPS. Let them deal with it. Well, if you don't open the box, Thomas, no story. Nothing. Zero. No Thomas. Who
would want to hear your story without a bloody head in it. Without terrorists, torture, sizzling sex. Without an intricate plot linking Thomas to a secret brotherhood with a plan to destroy civilization as we know it, a diabolical plan linking the brotherhood to Frantz Fanon, linking the devil Fanon to you, Thomas. Who would pay to read what Thomas thinks about Thomas. Thomas knows the answer to that one. Hears the crinkle of the plastic sheet the reader's raising to expose him, erase him.

No more dodging. No more reprieves. Get busy, Thomas. Innocent people are being slaughtered and mutilated daily. If not in your neighborhood, if not next door, the horror's much closer than you think. This head in a box somebody's crude way of announcing the fact to you. In your face, Thomas. Somebody powerful and ruthless has gone to an awful lot of trouble and not inconsiderable expense to deliver awful news to your door. Remember the guy in
The Godfather
screaming when he wakes up next to a severed head on his pillow. But that was just a movie, wasn't it, and this isn't. Not yet anyway. Somebody sent you a head in a box, and it doesn't belong to an Arabian racehorse. It's your head. You're sure now, aren't you. Sure. Sure of what. Do you really want to know, Thomas. The whole truth. Whole story. The perpetrators. The victim. Friend or foe. Colored or not. Could it be you, Thomas. Hurry up. Open the goddamn box...

He spreads last week's
Village Voice
over the metal-topped kitchen table, no incriminating booties or boobs from the personals when he sets down the box containing the head (does it really). On the way from desk to table the box weighs more than when the UPS guy passed it through the door, more than it weighed when Thomas
carried it to his desk. Does blood with no place to drain become darker, heavier, the longer it sits. Though it's morning, the city already somber through the smidgen of kitchen window. Is everybody's dread leaking, leaking with no place to go, piling up, darker, heavier, higher than his building.

How long before the head begins to stink. Did the delivery person smell it. Is Thomas being spared by his chronically clogged sinuses. How long has he been sitting, staring. Talking to himself. A serrated steak knife purchased at K-mart rests on a headline next to the box. What color is the knife. What color is the head. Do you really want to know. Not too late to call the cops. Let the cops unpack the box. You're innocent, Thomas. Nothing to fear but fear itself. Look. Don't look. Flip a coin. Maybe it will come up tails.

With determination and tongue in cheek like the other Michael when a big hoop game winds down, he slices through all four corners of the box. Slowly, carefully sawing so what's inside doesn't roll off the table. He's not ready to touch it. Uses one loose cardboard wing of the box to nudge
it,
steady
it,
while the blade gnaws through the final corner. Why does he believe it's real. Could be a cabbage, a hunk of carved wood, a plaster mannequin's head beneath the plastic shrinkwrap. Whatever it is, he wouldn't actually be touching
it,
would he, if he only touches the wrapping. Thomas doesn't take the risk. The head or whatever it is, outside the box now. Or rather, no box now. Box deader than the head. Except you could tape the sides together again. Box good as new.

With plastic tight as a condom mashing its features the head (what else could it be) looks like it's trying to suck air through its covering. A bank robber wearing a stocking over his face. An Igbo mask to scare away an egwugwu. A face slammed into a windshield at 80 mph. Emmett Till's gnawed, nibbled face when they dragged his body from the Tallahatchie River.

A man's head for sure. A pig-faced man. How can you be sure of
gender, color of anything unless you remove the plastic. Will you be sure if you remove the wrap. And you don't want to remove the wrap, do you, scaredy-cat Thomas. Afraid you'll find yourself staring at yourself many days dead in the East River. You'll never remove the mask, will you.

No. You would rather write about an imaginary head, right. Dream up words for its awfulness and send them hurrying after it, chasing it, chasing yourself so Thomas doesn't get away and never return. Writing it until you get it right. Until its words, a story, not Thomas coming apart, not something words can't grasp. Maybe you only need to tell the story once. If you can write it perfectly once, the horror will be words, the words appearing, the horror disappearing. The ordinary world real again. You real again. Then you'll be able to walk out the door and never come back. Leave the damned thing sitting on the kitchen table. Leave it alone. Forget it. Alone. Alone.

No room in the freezer compartment. If Thomas shifts the red-and-white plastic salad spinner clotted with shreds of rotting arugula, gets rid of the rack the spinner rests on, the head might fit in the fridge. Balled-up paper protects his fingers as he lifts the thing from the table. Tomorrow he'll buy disposable gloves. He'll buy a fridge with a larger freezer. Buy another apartment. Buy another city. Another name. Leave this nasty motherfucker on ice to whine its sorry tale to anybody dumb enough to listen.

Thomas doesn't trust the white envelope enclosed in the box. Why should he trust anything arriving in a package with a severed head. Don't touch that envelope, Thomas. Full of anthrax, I bet. The head a trick to lower your defenses. Some super-slick terrorist
somewhere has anticipated your response to a grisly head. After the shock of a head in a box, why would anybody worry about a little innocent-looking white envelope. Who wouldn't snatch it up and rip it open. Who wouldn't be anxious to read the message. Are human heads so cheap, so easy to obtain, the person or persons unknown sending this one can afford to use it as bait.

Thomas considers pinning down the envelope with a fork, slitting it open with the knife. His hands are too shaky. C'mon. No harder than boning a fish. He'd almost missed the envelope in the mess of packing he'd guided by knife blade off the table's edge into a black plastic garbage bag. Why hadn't the envelope been secured inside or outside the box. With one end of the envelope squeezed in a pot-holder, gingerly, he scissors off the other end and shakes out the contents. No sprinkle of white powder. Just a note, handwritten on a 3-by-5 index card.