“Would you talk to them if they did?”
“I don’t even know. I shoulda called my mentor—shit. I was wildin’, li’l bruh. It is what it is. Look, if you really ’bout this whole protest march song and dance, that’s cool, but it ain’t gonna change shit. *8:46 ain’t change shit. You gotta be willing to move like the po-lice move, na’mean?” He looked at me in the total dark of the apartment. With his granny still snoring over his words, he whispered to me, “Cope, I came back—last night, after the shooting, while the cops and the ambulance was still there, I came back. You just ain’t seen me cuz I went out the back gate and walked the long way around. I had on my winter coat and had my rifle inside it. You remember that rifle, right?” He reached behind him, reached beside the ’frigerator behind him, and tapped the long gun. “It’s easier’n you would think to hide this bitch. Last night, while the cops was still out there cleanin’ up they mess, I walked right behind them, right over to Ravenscourt, and I posted up right there where it’s hella scrap to hide behind. I thought about shootin’ right then and there. I was right there, I had a clean shot and aye’thing. I couldn’t do that shit, though, not last night. I started lookin’ around and I seen that if my big ass could hide like that, I for damn sure could hide a rifle, right? I didn’t do that neither, not last night. But I’m still thinkin’ about it. Y’all gonna have hella cops out there tomorrow and won’t none of them be thinkin’ about a ditch on the other side of the street. Know what I mean?”
He picked the rifle up and showed me its empty mouth. He passed it to me and on reflex I reached for it. Then I pulled back.
“It’s not loaded. Why you pull away?”
“DeMichael.”
“One of us gots to hold it, Cope.” He placed the gun carefully on the ground. It sat there like dried shit in the dark.
“We don’t need to take it there, bruh-bruh,” I said. “I need to get back to the church.” I started up from my chair.
“You sure about that, Cope?” he pressed deeper.
I didn’t leave. I wadn’t about to pick that thing up and go and bury it like a dead body in the Ravenscourt ruins, but I understood that one of us was gonna have to hold that part of our pain, the deep, real part of it that don’t wanna pray or love or do nothin’ but what’s been done to us. I looked at the gun on the ground and sat back down. “DeMichael, I don’t know what to do.”
“Neither do I, Cope. Neither do I. Shit, I need to talk to somebody.”
“Am I not somebody?”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I don’t know what he meant. I let it lie. “I need to get back to the church,” I said. This time I started for the door, making sure to sidestep the rifle.
“You know where it’a be at, though,” DeMichael called after me, loud enough to wake somebody. I looked back. He nodded at me.
I nodded back.
*
My phone was all full of texts asking the same question: “Cope, where are you???” Running the half mile back to the church, I didn’t know what I wanted, but I didn’t wanna plan shit. I had no intentions on digging around in the dirt and finding DeMichael’s rifle, though, I can tell you that. It was a plant, not a plan, that gun. And like any plant, I could choose not to mess with it, just leave it in the soil. But that plant made me not wanna even think about planning. I opened the church doors anyway.
Inside that piece, I could see that everybody had either peaced out and promised to come back by morning or was fully focused, sitting like clenched fists as they debated tomorrow’s plans. Along with Keisha and Free and several folks I had never seen before, the planning circle that I came back to included Ms. MacDonald. It still caught me some kinda way to see that many folks who ain’t really know each other collabing that close.
Shit went late. The church emptied out except for those who fell asleep in the pews and the seven of us up in the pulpit. Like a C student, I stayed up just enough to catch the basics. The plan was actually simple when you peeled away all the personalities and focused on the fundamentals. Redwood Homes is designed in a simple four-dimensional box with the three buildings that stand there now, plus the one they’ll build when they tear ours down, set off into four quadrants. An electronically controlled gate rings the buildings. The west quadrant faces downtown. The east quadrant faces a side street and, beyond it, the rest of deep East Oakland. The south quadrant faces the water and the airport and whatnot, while the north quadrant gates open onto the boulevard and the ruins of Ravenscourt. Miguel was murdered on the sidewalk outside those Ravenscourt-facing gates. Already a ghetto altar of rosary beads, a statue of the Virgin of Guadalupe, several skeleton Santa Muertes, a few empty liquor bottles, and a couple baby pictures of Miguel stood there. This memorial would be the center of the protest, it was decided, because it was highly visible but set off from the road, not impeding no traffic, legal as a law book. For those folks who didn’t fear arrest, though, a second action was planned that would block traffic at the entry/ exit points for the east, west, and south quadrants. This was where most drivers entered and exited the complex because it was off the boulevard.
“Drums,” Keisha said.
“Drums?” the whole circle asked.
“Yeah, drums. We need to make some noise, let the Redwoods know.”
“Let them know what?” a man in a Habitat for Humanity jacket asked.
“That y’all cain’t hide in the buildings y’all done built on top of our bones and not hear about it.”
I nudged Keisha but she ain’t budge. It was clear she wadn’t gettin’ sleepy, not one bit. But my brain was worn out by everything that was happening. I tried Free, whispering, “Peace, loved one, I gotta get some sleep.”
“You cain’t sleep,” she hissed back. She grabbed and held me down.
“The drum reaches everybody,” Keisha said. “Slaves used the drum to communicate and plan escapes and revolts. The slaveholders never understood what the rhythms meant.”
The name-branded organizers from Habitat for Humanity and Black Excellence and other organizations I ain’t heard of didn’t say anything to that history lesson.
I looked at Keish, who looked at Free, who looked at me.
“Oh, hell nah. Y’all not about to have me playin’ no damn bongos at this rally,” I said.
“Nah, you ain’t got na’n rhythm, my nigga. But we can put you in charge of finding whoever’s gonna play the drums,” Free explained.
I was too tired to debate it. I pushed away from the circle and found my way to an empty closet. I curled up inside it and shut the door and set my cell phone alarm to ring in two hours, and I closed my eyes and tried to let myself fly away for a little while.
But I was only walking along the street where Miguel fell. Toward the ghetto altar. I bent down to give my offering, an unspent shotgun shell. That was when I felt the weight of DeMichael’s rifle strapped over my shoulder. The sky was that hard metallic blue that if you could taste it it would be like cold steel on your tongue. The air was crisp with morning. The marine layer was hours from fading. My feet knew where I was headed even if my head didn’t have the slightest understanding. This rabbit-ass mind of mines. I came to the gate that led to the front entrance to Redwood Homes. This was where I had always entered Rockwood, except that back in the day, way back in the day, there wadn’t no gate separating the Rock from the world. Things was different now.
I tried to open the gate, but it was locked with a code that I didn’t know. I tried squeezing between its bars, but they was spaced so close penniless Jesus hisself couldn’t slip past. I thought to climb it, but it rose too high. Since the gate barred me out, I set my sights on the clock that rose from the center of the complex on a high pillar. REDWOOD HOMES, its etched insignia read. I took DeMichael’s rifle from my shoulder and sighted that mug. It was time. I aimed and fired and the recoil threw me to the ground like Vista backhanding me back in the day. Meanwhile, the bullet flew for what felt like no time and forever. An explosi
on broke open the clockface and giant shards of glass flew every which way. In the clear of day I could see that the shards was the picture of the world: the sky, the sun, the oceans, love and betrayal and murder and the license to commit murder, and the power of the state and the power of the people, all imaged. I seen people, the people in the church that night, and other people, too, Momma, of course, and the women from Daddy’s porch stoop salon, and you, Jacq, I seen you, too, brighter and beautiful as the morning sun. I seen Miguel, his braids catching the air perfect as anything and flying past the sky, just like in the song. I sat there in wonder, marveling at how one shot could scatter the whole world. And then one shard, big as a truck tire and sharp as a knife blade, came flying for me. I wanted to look at the image it held. My instinct was that it had to be the old man coming toward me, finally ready to reveal hisself. I went to stand up to see him better. I watched it fly toward me and waited for the spinning shard to turn sideways so I could see him, but I realized the shard was flying too fast, it was too close to me, and it would never turn. Wadn’t no time to dodge out the way. I didn’t see Daddy. I seen my death instead. I seen my own image, the rabbit, and then the hunt was over and I knew that death was coming for me, and I thought of a book about the power of myths that I had read in the Youth Control and later in a high school class. Every people has an origin story, the author proposed, and in each story it’s a hero at the center who is born in the womb and dies as he’s borne wailing from that womb into the world. Then later on he dies from his childhood to his manhood, and then he dies from his manhood to his sacrifice for his people. I thought of that literature and I knew that my death had arrived. The only thing left to do was embrace it.
I came back to life sweaty and nervous as a crackhead, and boom-bapped my head against the side wall of that damn church storage closet. That woke me the fuck up and brought me out my dream and back to basics. I checked the time on my janky phone: four in the A.M., hopefully accurate for Oakland, not the Caribbean.
I wanted to think about the dream, what it might mean, but I knew Keish would slap the sleep out my eyes if I didn’t figure out this drum situation. I dipped between church pews till I came upon Mr. America and his crew. Good money: these were some real performers. They were all bangled up in the old red, white, and blue costumes like they just came off the train, which maybe they had. They lay in layers upon each other, all arms and legs and torsos crisscrossed like old railroad tracks drove deep into the street. Mr. America’s face was jammed what looked hella uncomfortable into the back of the pew, which stuffed up his nose and made him snore. When he snored, his bangles jangled in rhythm—everything about these boys stayed on beat.
I shook them awake, and the whole crew tumbled like dominoes to the floor. Mr. America landed on his bad shoulder and grunted in pain. The whole crew came to pulling theyselves apart, cussin’ up a storm and promising vengeance. Then they looked up at me.
“What up, family? Why you wake us up? What hour is it? I thought y’all said eight? Sun ain’t even out.”
“Y’all can drum, right?”
“Yeah, sho nuff.”
“Where can we find some drums?”
“Basement,” Mr. America said. “What church don’t got a basement?”
We used our cell phones to navigate the church’s underworld, eventually coming to a locked door marked MUSIC.
“Ca-gotdamn-ching.”
“Called it like a mug.”
*
Everyone in the church was awake by 6:30. We proceeded out to the Redwood Homes under a cold-ass orange-red sky. It didn’t look like morning, that’s for sure. It looked like afternoon and midnight shuffled together, like a dream that I was dreaming while awake.
I looked across the crowd as we moved toward the Redwoods and the Rock. Hella folks from the Rock and other parts of East Oakland headed up the procession. Keisha and Free walked together. Vista and Ms. MacDonald marched arm in arm, waving flags that read INVESTIGATE THE COPS and SHOW BODY CAM FOOTAGE, respectively. I peeped a few people from Pied-montay in expensive school gear and wondered if they was there for well or for ill. Guzzo and Deadrich and some other businesspeople was there for PR purposes, bringing up the back, they own little briefcase-and-bankroll squad.
Chants went up from the Rockwood folks in the front, filling the air. I heard Keisha and Free close to me. They was talking, not chanting, about the sky above, and a fire, and the way the whole world seemed to be falling in on us.
I didn’t talk to nobody, didn’t chant nothin’. Again, that feeling had came over me like I was watching the whole movement of people and our message, our mission, and the signs held high that said it all in so few words from outside and somewhere above my body. Even amidst all the marchers, I was alone, alone with my actual dream and the rifle and the clockface breaking away and my mind wandering back again and again to DeMichael and his rifle. Big man was right, somebody had to hold it. My hands was empty and I felt how heavy emptiness always is, the worst weight in the world.
I looked across the heads of the people. Amongst the African wraps, dreads, bald heads, and signs reading JUSTICE 4 MIGUEL, JUSTICE 4 MIGUEL, JUSTICE 4 MIGUEL, I didn’t see his face. I knew better’n to expect him to be out here marching. Brother man had told me exactly what he thought of our protest—that it wouldn’t do nothin’. I took note of my fellow marchers and felt the same: How could all these people, so different in so many ways, really all be on the same page? Of course they was here together to stand against a boy being shot down like a bird out the sky, but what else did they have in common? What else could they come together over but to mourn Miguel? What strategies would they agree upon to stop the same from happening in the future? How many of them in the back was paying for they own private po-lice, putting these trigger-happy fools in the streets all over Pied-montay and now even guarding compounds and gated apartment complexes in East Oakland? How many might call the cops on some boys dancing, like Deadrich’s friend did, and jump out the window when the cops roughed him up and folks got angry about it? Was that man in our march? I didn’t know his face from Adam, so I cain’t tell you if he was there, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was. People’s sympathies wadn’t the same as they priorities. How many of these people was gettin’ evicted in the same month they got they diploma? How many of them was forced into the priorities that me and Keisha and Free and DeMichael faced? And even if all the marchers did somehow agree on enough things to protest injustice with a solid purpose, what was our little, half-created crew gonna do head up against a Hercules organization like the po-lice, especially the private po-lice, who was fully suited and booted, trained and organized to a military level? How could we do anything to change or overcome them when they had all the power?
DeMichael wadn’t wrong. That rifle of his wadn’t wrong. But it wadn’t right either.
*
We blocked the housing complex from all four di-rections. Partitions. Picket signs. And bodies, peoples upon peoples upon peoples. The Escalades and Teslas that was set to drive thru the open gates got blocked in. Redwoods residents lay on they horns and cussed us out. But we held our line.
I stood on the sidewalk before the boulevard, arm in arm with two Mexican women I cain’t say I seen before that day and definitely ain’t seen since. The sky painted both of they brown faces the colors of fire. It painted the whole human wall of us somethin’ both magical and nightmarish. I heard a voice behind me say somethin’ about social distancing like we was still living in ’20 and it caught me how deep some fears run amongst us. Fearing the virus. Fearing the po-lice. Fearing ourselves and each other.
Redwoods security rolled up in little two-car teams that couldn’t tear open wet bread. They parked right in front of our line, which was right in front of the gates that led to the Redwoods buildings. I felt my biceps pressed backward as our line fell back a little. Maybe the arrival of the cops had people shook. Me, personally, I didn’t give a goddamn about being arrested that day. Miguel wa
s gone and so was just about everyone and everything else. I had spent two years ten toes down, avoiding anything that might violate a law, and this was where it had got me, standing in front of a home that wouldn’t be mines much longer, head up against a bunch of armed, armored, masked-up police. Private company po-lice. The sky had repainted them as well, in the same radiation-red reflection as everyone else. Maybe it was just me, but in that same glow, they looked so different, so crazy, when I compared them to the people that I linked arms with. Here we were, holding back all these vehicles that cost more’n most folks make in a year, and we looked like folks, just hella people, with no armor, no guns, no corporation insignia from Soclear, no nothin’ but the clothes we went to bed wearing. It was a certain menace to these men who stood across from us, hidden from us by all that armor. It was only but so many options with these private security forces—they would either rush us, shoot us, or stand there and take notes on us.
They didn’t look like they was fittin’ to rush us or pull triggers. For the moment, at least, they was just holding they side of the line, forming a perimeter to the protest. I didn’t fear them, Jacq, but I confess that I felt closer to death, to my own murder, than ever before. I thought about that rifle once more ’gin—I didn’t need to defend my life yet, but it was no tellin’ what the next moments might hold.
Meanwhile, Mr. America couldn’t care about no violence, no officers, no masks. I heard his drums calling from the boulevard. On impulse, I broke out from the line and went lookin’ for the sound. His drums sounded from the core of the crowd at Miguel’s altar. I pushed thru the people, which was easier cuz it wadn’t a picket line up there but an audience instead. Trust, my brother had them joints going, singing, hollering, crying, testifying. His bad shoulder was all good all of a sudden, or he had just caught the spirit and was playing past the pain, cuz the polyrhythms he beat into those animal hides sang out like beaucoup gods, beaucoup saints. His crew started singing, which surprised me. In all our train travels, I hadn’t heard them bust out with not a single bar. But now they went in singing for real, with voices wild and haunting. Several of the protestors who I had never seen, never met, people who had came from who knows where, some white, some black, and others brown and beige and butter pe-can, they all surrounded the boys and these people sang, too, voices flying to the cold fire and the dark sun above us. I was visited by somethin’ I cain’t call by name, and I walked up in that mix and the only words I heard was love and death, and I started to sing in time, in rhythm and on beat for the first time in forever. And there we all were together in that moment, at that memorial, one wild voice, one haunted heart, one human being. And from deep inside that oneness I held it all suddenly and tragically, the whole protest, the people, the po-lice, the Redwoods, Rockwood, my momma and daddy and every mother and father and child, my city and my country. I remembered the rifle and I thought about DeMichael sitting in the dark, thinking how he could hide it and find it and take retribution, and then I thought about Miguel’s face tore off in the street, and my heart broke across all of it and I cried out with the last of my voice.
The Confession of Copeland Cane Page 30