Insurrections (24 page)

Let me get this straight, demanded the host, a man with puffed-out cheeks that slowly turned pink and then red. You're defending a cop killer? I don't understand why you people al—

Who is this
you people
you're talking about? Chairman R barked back.

The commentators shouted over each other, their words becoming unintelligible. The noise was almost an entity.

The talk was interspersed with clips of L'Ouverture speaking to the cameras; of his recent interviews; of his latest music video.

As I flipped through the pages of the magazine, there he was scowling in an advertisement for his latest CD. I set that issue down on the table and grabbed another, and halfway through, as if he had followed me, there was a picture of him—this time smiling—spread over two pages and accompanied by an interview. And while I waited, I read. All I could think, though, was that he had a nice haircut. A very nice haircut.

Q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.
Yeah, well see, it's a name Black [Terror] gave me. This was way back before the Personality Kliq when I was running with his little brother [Shorty Cool]. I used to call myself Revolutionary Raymond the Versifier. Then I was Ignorance Killah. But I had to switch that up because niggas started calling me Ignorant Killer. I couldn't really rap back then, but I was passionate. I guess he saw something in me
.

Q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.
Naw, you couldn't tell me I wasn't the greatest rapper of all time. I thought I was Chuck D and a half. Every time I thought I had the most tripiotic rhyme, Black used to knock me down and send me home to write more shit. Ten
years of just working on my flow, another five on lyrics. Niggas ain't got that type of patience these days. Shit, I ain't have that type of patience, but I trusted big brother. No matter what type of a dick I think he is now (and he is a dick). Black is gonna be big brother for life
.

Q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.
Who, Black? Naw, he ain't know nothing about that revolutionary shit before he met me. You heard his early stuff back when he was Little Terror (stupid-ass name). That nigga was dancing around with a hightop fade like Kid 'n Play or some shit. I must have blown his mind, coming through talking about the Black Panthers and Mumia Abu-Jamal and Leonard Peltier, shit like that. I was giving him books to read like
Die Nigger Die!
and
The Spook Who Sat by the Door.
When he was starting the Personality Kliq he told me: Your name is L'Ouverture. This was after I gave him
The Black Jacobins
to read. It was as if I'd found my true name, like it wasn't Black that was renaming me, but God. Like God was working through him. I know that's bullshit, but whatever
.

Q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.
Now, D'Arby, why'd you have to go and ask that? You know that's a sore point. I'm not sure I want to address that. I'm not here to talk about no cop killers, and for that matter I'm not here to talk about Black and the Personality Kliq. We're supposed to be talking about my new group Problem With Authority
 . . .

Q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.
D'Arby, D'Arby . . . You ain't even ask me no questions about that shit . . . Look, I'm in an awkward situation. People looking for me to defend rap music. I'm trying to promote this project . . . Problem With Authority ain't even rap music, the media's got it all wrong. It's Riverbeat. I thought Cross River would be happy that I was pumping our homegrown shit for the whole world to hear, but all I keep hearing is:
you killed a cop, you killed a cop.
I never killed a cop or told anyone to kill a cop. I just told a story about a nigga that couldn't take it no more. I got a band behind me. I'm singing and scatting like I'm Phoenix Starr. I got backup singers and a dude I'm training to be a great lyricist the way Black trained me—shoutout to my little sidekick, H. Rap Black (I gave him that name. It's a cool name, right?)—but don't no one talk about the music and my music's the most tripiotic shit out there. This album is just as good as any Kliq album. Fuck that, it's better. Much better
.

Q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.
Look, if the world were nice, I'd sing about flowers and trees, but this is
the world we got. The world where an unarmed black kid can get shot 37 times on his way home by some trigger-happy pigs. Don't no one even speak about that no more since that one cop got killed. Didn't Nietzsche say that he knew his name would be associated with some great horror? Same way I feel, my nigga. I can't control what people do with my music. Some people jam to it. Some people fuck to it. People will even lead marches to it. And a very small portion will kill cops to it. It's the soundtrack to the lives we livin' right here, right now
.

Q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.
Don't even call me L'Ouverture no more. My new name is the Black Nietzsche
.

Q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.
I ain't answering that question until you call me by my real name
.

Q. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

A.
Yeah, I'd call a cop if I had to. Call him a motherfucking pig
.

Sitting in The Barber's chair, my heart thumped like a mad drummer sat in there thrashing about. My breathing turned shallow when I heard the clippers buzz.

How you want it, chief?

He said this as if he didn't know who I was, as if he hadn't been cutting my hair for the past twelve years or so. A sure sign of barber slippage. It's not as if I ever once deviated from the usual: a close trim, even all around, except for the back, which was always faded out.

Uh–uh–umm, I stammered, just a shape-up today.

You sure? You looking like Buckwheat. Nah, I'm just playing. You letting it grow out, huh?

I nodded. There was no way, I thought, he could botch a simple shape-up. Even the most otherwise sublime and exquisite haircut is ruined if it's not crisp around the edges. The shape-up is the most important part; nail that and you can probably fake the rest.

Your brother was in here earlier, The Barber said.

Oh yeah?

We became silent, and the silence terrified me as I sat there perfectly still, giving up my power to a man who had proved his ineptitude over and over.

I heard a click and the buzzing of the clippers as he crouched before me and stared at my hairline. His face was so close to my cheek I felt he
was about to kiss me. What really broke my heart was that he was not apathetic. He took just as much care as he did when he was the most excellent barber around. No, he wasn't apathetic, just pathetic.

I broke the silence to calm my nerves. Yeah, I said, my brother's about to have his first kid. I'm gonna be an uncle.

The Barber stepped back and snapped off the clippers. I turned my head slightly, looking up at him. His brow was bunched as if in a rage; his face moved in anguish.

Man, he was up in here today and didn't share that with me. He didn't share that with me at all.

Uh . . . I'm sure he meant to.

Yeah, probably, he said as he started cutting into my hairline once more. I'll just wait for him to bring it up.

He drifted into another silence, and I could hardly stand it. He looked, at moments, like his father, Sonny, Cross River's other legendary barber. By the time my own father herded my brother and me into that downtown barbershop, Sonny was already on his downslide. Still, my brother and I went to Sonny's—that was the name of the shop—well into our teens. It was a warm and inviting place with orange walls and mirrors all around. On the wall, the one across from the barbers' chairs, there was a row of seats where customers read magazines and waited. Above us hung a painting of dogs playing poker, the one with the sneaky dog holding some extra cards under the table in one of his back paws.

Sonny's chair was the one all the way in the rear of the shop next to a wall that he decorated with dirty postcards from places such as Mexico and Barbados and pictures ripped from nasty magazines: naked and smiling women in inviting poses. I wonder if my father ever thought twice about bringing me into Sonny's. I'd hate, for instance, if my brother brought my nephew into a place adorned with pornographic images, but it was a different time and no one ever talked about the pictures on Sonny's wall. I used to discreetly glance over at them every chance I could get away with, but my favorite part of the haircut was always when he spun the chair toward the wall to work on the back of my head and I could stare at the pictures without hiding, storing them in my mind so I could access them later.

Our father took us to Sonny's after our mother became tired of Dad cutting potholes in our heads. Maybe it wasn't so warm and inviting, as all
my memories involve not wanting to be there. Such as the time, shortly after Marvin Gaye was killed, when I sat next to a fat man who overflowed from his chair. The fat man started speaking, unprompted, of discipline, which was a recurrent theme in the shop. My children, he said, ain't never gon' to be too old to get it.

It was a crowded shop that day, and everybody met his sentiment with nods of approval. I was seven, maybe eight.

My daughter's twenty, the fat man said, and she tried to talk back the other day, I knocked her ass down. Man, I tell you, if I can't get 'em, the nine millimeter's gonna get 'em. Like Marvin Gaye.

I flinched and eased from him, just slightly, involuntarily. This time the fat man was met with a silence that carried throughout his haircut.

Sonny gave the fat man the most exquisite cut, one that seemed far beyond his range at the time, one that allowed everyone to glimpse his greatness. And as the man left, Sonny wished him a good day. He pointed to me and I climbed into his barber's chair. Sonny leaned into my ear and in a voice just above a whisper he grumbled, That guy's a fool.

An eruption of conversation and mockery overflowed all around the shop.

Sure is a fool, ain't he?

When that dumb nigga get arrested for killing his kids, I'm testifying like shit.

I'll buck 'em down like Marvin Gaye's dad, 'cause I'm a tough guy.

I settled into the seat with the calming din of laughter and conversation all around and let Sonny cut my hair. If I remember correctly, it was a mediocre haircut. The fat man, I imagine, was the last time Sonny unleashed the full power of his artistry.

Sometime in my teenage years, Sonny brought his son into the shop to cut heads. I had seen him before, sweeping and taking out trash. This time, though, he was a barber, occupying the chair right next to his dad. Sonny had a look of pure satisfaction on his face watching his son cut. People tended to compliment Sonny on his son's work, saying things like, Man, you taught that boy well, and Sonny would nod and hide a smile, but even he was astonished at times by the things his son did with a pair of clippers. You could tell by the brief widening of his eyes.

All the young customers flocked to Sonny Jr., and as word of the young barber spread throughout Cross River, the wait became longer and
longer. Once I remember a man with a West African accent sitting in the shop. He talked excitedly and smiled broadly. Said he came all the way from Nigeria to be cut by the finest barber in the world. I swore he was bullshitting, but the way this man cut . . .

His name was Sonny Beaumont Jr., though in those years we all started to refer to him as The Barber, and when you said it, everyone knew immediately who you were talking about. To call him anything else was absurd.

Sonny always looked on in pride until, one day in my late teens, his son left to open his own shop on the Southside. Cross River Cutz he called it, and Sonny would look grave and shake his head the few times I heard him mention it. Sonny didn't smile much or laugh after that, but truthfully I don't know that for sure, because it wasn't long before my brother and I left Sonny's for Cross River Cutz.

Sonny died during his son's golden period. This is the time people talk about when they speak of The Barber's genius. The son's response to his loss was to chase greatness in each cut so that his dead father could look on in pride. He'd stare at a head for several minutes before starting. Then he'd pace back and forth like a lion sizing up his prey. Soon he'd be moving his clippers over the contours of a head like God moving across the formless void to make a world. Around that time he brought in a guy to sharpen his clippers after every fifth cut. Those things hurt, but that was the price of a perfect haircut and I got a few of those before his decline. In the height of his artistry The Barber renamed his shop Sonny's II.

Young apprentices swept the floor for free. Several, it was said, even saved some of the fallen hair to study. His fellow barbers, those who rented neighboring chairs from him and competed for his meager overflow, would watch and discuss The Barber's technique when they weren't cutting.

All those barbers eventually deserted him for other shops, or the most disillusioned left haircutting for good. The chairs next to him now sat empty.

While he shaped up my hairline that day, The Barber stopped to take a phone call and started back on a different side. I wondered if he'd lost his place.

Maybe it was our silence or the clipper's buzzing or the television's
droning, but I spoke: Man, people are saying you lost your touch.

As soon as I said it, I heard the click of the clippers switching off. The television still droned, but The Barber said nothing. I remained frozen.

After a moment he switched the clippers back on and started cutting, and then he stopped again, spun the chair next to me, and with a sigh collapsed into the seat.

My man, he said, I'm tired as shit. If you wasn't a regular customer, I would have told you we was closed when you came in that door.

Sorry, man.

No need to apologize. I ain't just talking about today. I'm talking in general. I'm tired, jackson, tired as shit. I know what people be saying about me. You ain't the first dude that said it straight up. I am slipping. It happens to every barber. You start slipping, slipping, and then one day new kids come and take your place. I told myself it wouldn't happen to me, but I was fooling myself.