Long Hidden: Speculative Fiction from the Margins of History (11 page)

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

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

You know something, Carmen said, looking up 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.

To us this was 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 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 and still 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 came across.

Amber shrugged it all off. I still have this vision of him with his feet up on a table in the office, staring at the air above the ledger as if the numbers were twirling before him, nodding, grimace-smiling, saying, Carmen got this all figured out. Every damn piece to the puzzle. Every piece.

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) 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 shoe-shining 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 said, That witch crazy if she think I’m sending my only boy into that old spooknigger forest. She went down to the market and bought three roots and ground them into the dirt so they looked fresh.

Ms. Susan stared at me. She fingered my naps. Squeezed my face and then she turned my roots in her hand. I had heard rumors that she made you drop your pants and she stared right into the eye of your penis. I silently prayed she 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 young and serious. Smooth-skinned. 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 the 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 physical 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 the water, brown and nude, their skin shining with the life-giving water of the river.

Numbers-boy, the water-woman in the front said. Hey, Numbers-boy. You got a number for me?

All those women turned into one. She reached for me and caressed my face. You’re beautiful, she said. Anyone ever tell you you’re beautiful?

She grabbed my hand and placed it on her naked hip.

Don’t be afraid, she said. When I looked into her eyes, we lived a whole life, from awkward first steps together to deep deep commitment. I could never look at another.

Loretta, a voice called from the island.

Your name is Loretta? I asked. Like my Loretta?

No, she said. I’m better than your Loretta.

Without another word, she turned and dived back into the river. Perhaps she didn’t have all of me. Some of me was back with my Loretta because I realized this was a trap. This was exactly how Miss Susan described water-woman seduction in her books. So many lovers, like the poet Roland Hudson, dived to their ends after these deadly tricksters. I took a step toward the water. Then I stopped. Self-preservation kicked in and I remembered they weren’t even women or human, but evil-intentioned beings with secret gills tucked away somewhere.

The island descended from mid-air into a thick fog, sinking slowly into the black water. And even though it nearly caused my death, the feeling I had there by the Cross River was the greatest feeling any man could ever experience. I cried hot tears that night waiting for the water-woman’s return.

I knew nothing in life would ever feel like staring into her brown eyes, touching the warmth of the flesh at her hip. Nothing. I would chase women, try to experience bliss in all things, but no experience I ever had could fill my soul this way. But if I ever returned to the river and that island decided to rise up, I knew I would die.

Not a bad way to go, huh? Drowning in a water-woman’s light.

Carmen disappeared, not by train, but by wind. To hear Amber tell it, they had spent the afternoon downtown on the way to purchase a ring when she walked out ahead of him. She smiled, not the slant-smile, but a broad true one and then she stretched out her arms like a bird preparing for flight. Oh, Amber were her last words before the soft brown of her flesh turned into a fragrant white powder. When the breeze came, scattering pieces of Carmen throughout the town, Amber grabbed clumps of her powder and tried to put her together, but the grains of Carmen slipped between his fingers, leaving traces of her in the creases of his hands, embedded between the threads of his clothes and curled always in the coils of his hair.

It’s like my dream, I said the night of her disappearance. Water-women. A plague of them.

I need to smoke, he said, walking to the door. Come and get me in ten minutes so we can finish the ledger. Business first, right. I’ll be OK by then.

It only took two minutes to figure out that he was going out into the pitch of the night to find Carmen by the river. He had left the car, so I figured he was walking briskly south toward the bridge. Their voices would soon be screaming through his head, crowding his lonely thoughts.

Turns out there couldn’t have been a worse time for Carmen to blow in the wind. I took two steps into the street and felt a hand grab my arm: it was Fathead Leroy, a guy who took numbers for Amber over on the Southside.

Man, he said. I got rolled for my numbers slips. I don’t know that shit by heart like Amber.

Who got you? Somebody with the Jacksons?

Naw, look, you know Todd who work for Elder Mr. Hawkins? Him and a guy I never seen before. A white guy. I think he from Port Yooga. They looking for you and they looking for Amber. Told me to tell you not to burn nothing you can’t pay for. Cracker punched me and threw my betting slips into the river. I don’t got the standing to do nothing against someone as high up as Todd. You and Amber gotta get this right for us out on the streets.

I looked over Leroy’s shoulder. It started to play as a setup. Not too far in the distance I saw Todd with a big white man who stomped toward us like a gorilla. How could I leave the office without my piece? Loveblind Amber probably hadn’t spent two thoughts on packing. I dipped my head and turned from Leroy before breaking into a jog. Perhaps they ran behind me, but I wasn’t willing to spare a glance. The shadows of the Wildlands called. When I entered them, the dark grew heavy and I swore as I dashed through the stream that pieces of the dark flaked off and covered me. I came out into a clearing and could see the gleam of the moon casting down on me. This was a circuitous route to get to the Hail Mary Bridge, but it would keep me alive long enough to find Amber. I imagined him standing above the waters, waiting for Carmen to beckon him beneath the choppy surface.

The closer I got to the river, the louder the buzzing vibrating in my head. I felt as if something kept lifting me into the air with every step. It was a beautiful tone shooting from the depths. My skin grew warm, suddenly flush with blood. Part of my mind called me to turn around to save myself. Who would I be if I bowed to the gods of self-preservation when Amber was in danger? But Amber could already be a bloated corpse, the beasts of the river tearing at his dead limbs. What a liar I am. This death march felt good, that was the truth. That’s why I plowed deeper into the forest. It felt just like floating on my back beneath the sun in an ocean that rocked with a loping rhythm. All that remained was for me to dip my head under.

While I indulged this daydream as one of the last I’d ever have, I came out of a long blink and before me stood Amber with his ankles steeped in the river.

That’s when the whispers began. Images of Loretta. My Loretta. Then the water-woman Loretta.

I wanted to call out to Amber, but what if I missed my Loretta speaking to me?

A burst. A loud popping, like fireworks. I looked to the cloudy black of the sky, now hiding the stars and obscuring the moon. Another pop, or rather this time it was a bang, closer to me now. I wasn’t shot, but for a second I thought I was as the rhythm of the bang vibrated first at my feet and then in my chest.

Amber didn’t move. Didn’t react at all as if he hadn’t heard the sound. He just stared down at the river, trying to see the whole world in the water.

Another shot burst toward us, this time from a different angle and there was Todd on a hill looking down upon us.

Amber, I called. Amber! Run! Save yourself!

The whispering in my head grew louder. I saw the white man approach, an albino gorilla burning with murderous intent. There was nowhere we could run; Todd and the White Gorilla were tactical geniuses, cutting off our paths of flight.

I wondered if Mr. Washington would give us a twin homegoing full of lavish food and celebration.

My skin warmed and I figured since my death was upon me, I’d shut off my mind and give in to the creeping pleasures of the world around me.

Just as I decided my time lay at an end, the water parted and up in the sky rose that diamond island, the land of the water-women. Scores of them – brown and nude and river-slicked – floated down to us. Two of them caressed Amber. I locked eyes with a woe and she whispered my name. Tall and skinny with a sharp, gaunt face. She bounce-walked and after a few steps her movements nearly resembled floating. The woe put her arm around me, softly touching my chest. With my eyes, I searched her naked body for gills, but soon I gave in and began softly kissing her neck and kneading her soft wet flesh, growing more aggressive with the increasing intensity of her breaths and her moans. Together they sounded like a new language.

There was that pop again. Another pop, itself a language I no longer cared to understand. I placed my tongue gently into my water-woman’s mouth. We were melting into one being. Pop. She shuddered and I felt a hot wetness at the side of my lover’s body. I gasped. My heart felt as if it had shifted and now beat in the center of my body, somewhere near the back. My water-woman went limp in my arms, her head flopping to the side, her skin turning cold and scaly and silvery and blue beneath the crack of moonlight that spilled from behind the cloud cover.

I looked at the blood and chunks of flesh that covered my skin and my clothes. Some of the water-women ran and dove back into the river. I scanned the water’s edge for Amber. He held a water-woman in his arms and another stood behind him rubbing his back. The one in front took hold of his hand and led him deeper into the water.

I ducked from the flurry of bullets I expected to buzz by our ears like mosquitoes. Todd and the White Gorilla stalked toward me. I crouched to the ground with my hands covering my head. When they were upon me, they stopped and hovered. I watched their work boots, afraid to look into their faces.

Todd and the White Gorilla stepped over me, mumbling apologies. They stumbled toward the river and its bounty of naked women.

As grateful as I was for their mesmerism, it also saddened me. That was to be my fate, my thoughtless death march to a land under the water.

I rose to my feet and ran to water’s edge where Amber stood. I snatched at him and held him down. He screamed and cried, cursing and threatening me with great violence. I knew it was just a matter of endurance. When the island sank back into the depths of the river, he’d regain a certain sanity. His water-women didn’t fight – that is not how they did things. They blew kisses and walked out into the river until their heads were fully submerged.

As for Todd and the White Gorilla, water-women gazed into their eyes, laughing playful laughs and twisting their naked hips. It was a beautiful invitation to a drowning and they accepted, holding tight to the women as they led them to the bottom of the river.

For Amber, the sinking of the island was the worst part; he twisted, thrashed, and screamed. But when it was over, when that island was again tucked beneath gentle currents, Amber grew calm and docile. He lay on his back atop the wet soil with his hands on his face.

Take me home, he said. I need to go home.

I looked off into the distance at the glowing town and I realized that Amber and I would never again be allowed there. He moved his hands from his face and it was as blank and innocent as a newborn baby’s. His voice sounded simple and soft. He was my responsibility now and I had no idea where we would go. All I could be certain of was that part of him was now submerged somewhere within his depths and would never surface again.