“I don’t know,” he said. “I’m thinking about it.”
He had to do something, he knew. But he had no idea what.
That’s ’cause you’s a stupid motherfucker.
The English-speaking voice hated him. He had no idea why.
Willie needed a taste. Knock the cobwebs off. Help him think. Most of all, it would silence the voices. He pulled the shortdog from the pocket of his thin, ratty jacket, unscrewed the cap, and took a healthy swallow, draining the bottle.
“Ahhhh,” he said to himself, smacking his lips as he screwed the cap back on. As always, the grape-flavored bite settled him down, made the world something he could deal with.
He tossed the shortdog into the weeds and lifted his head to the open place in the window again. The big boy and the skinny fella were still tapping at the computer, the brother was still making faces at him, glaring hard, trying to get his attention. Willie slid back down and sat there, contemplating.
He was not a brave man. Oh, he had been, once upon a time, he supposed, humping that pig, the M60 machine gun and its heavy-ass ammo, through the swamps of Southeast Asia, gook ears hanging shrunken and black on a length of string around his neck, all his senses alive for the slightest hint of the little bastards who always seemed to materialize out of nowhere, rain all hell down on you, then disappear like morning mist before you could get your licks in.
Too much of that changes a man. Even a brave man. That was the thing no one had ever understood. Not his wife, not his folks. And when he began to hear the voices, when they spoke to him and told him things and called him names, his wife, his folks, they kept trying to convince him none of it was real. But he knew better. It was real, all right. All of it was real.
Forty years ago, it was. Forty years.
And the brave man he had been had curled up and withered away inside this old man he had become. Most days, he was just fine with that. Most days, after all, did not require bravery. Most days only required getting over to the mission on time for meals, dodging the few cops who cared to give you a hard time, and hiking over to Michigan Avenue where you stood, trying to look like conscience to some tourist who just spent $90 on a pair of jeans so that maybe he’d drop a quarter or two, maybe even some folding money, into your hand and go home feeling better about who he was. None of that required any bravery.
But this, doing something about these men who had taken over his home? That would require bravery and he was pretty sure he was no longer up to the task.
Willie sat there in the filth, wondering. What to do, what to do?
Inside the warehouse, Malcolm stifled a groan. The man had to have seen him, had to have seen everything that was going on here. But his eyes had not responded, not even with a simple acknowledgment that Malcolm was there, though they had looked right at each other. A drunk. The guy was some pathetic, homeless drunk who was even now working to convince himself that he had not seen what he had. This was the man upon whom Malcolm’s very life now depended.
It was, he thought, superfluous proof that God has a perverse sense of humor.
“Goddamn it!” This was McLarty, bolting to his feet, smacking the case of the laptop with the flat of his fist.
“Take it easy, Dwayne,” said Pym. “We’ll get it figured out.”
“I don’t know what the problem is. It’s just a fucking upload. I don’t know why we keep getting this fucking error message.”
“We’ll figure it out,” repeated Pym. “Maybe we should reboot again?”
“We tried that twice! You know that.”
“Maybe the USB cable is bad?”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe it’s a problem with the website.”
“Maybe maybe maybe. I’m tired of fucking maybes.” He yanked the gun from his belt. It was, of all things, a vintage Luger. “Ought to just shoot the fucking thing.”
Pym gave him a dry look. “Yeah, that’d help,” he said.
McLarty’s lips kinked themselves into a smirk. “Okay, so I won’t shoot it. But how do we pull off the plan if we can’t even upload the video? What’s the use kidnapping the nigger if nobody knows we have him?”
Pym scratched thoughtfully at a half-hearted goatee sprouting from his chin. “What did they do before they had all this tech shit?” he asked, finally.
“Write a ransom note,” said McLarty. “But that’s no good. How do we prove we actually have him? They have to know that, or they won’t take it seriously.”
“We could take a picture.”
“We got no printer, Sergeant Pym. Besides, if we just give them a picture, they won’t be able to hear your manifesto. Unless we write it out, I guess. But damn it, I had my heart set on seeing the video all over the television.”
Pym snapped his fingers. “Why don’t we just burn a DVD?” he asked. “Deliver it to the media ourselves?”
McLarty pursed his lips. Then he was nodding slowly, thoughtfully. “That could work. But who gets the DVD? You want to take it to those jackoffs at CNN? You think they have an office in town? Maybe we could give it to that little fairy, Anderson Cooper?”
“We could,” said Pym. “But why not take it to the newspaper?”
Malcolm saw disappointment tug McLarty’s face. “Aw, Clarence. Nobody reads newspapers anymore. Besides, what are they going to do with a video? Put a picture in the paper tomorrow? Tomorrow’s too late. Tomorrow we’ll probably be dead. I want to see this before I go.”
Tomorrow we’ll probably be dead.
The offhand words caused Malcolm’s world to swim out of focus for just an instant. They weren’t speaking for his benefit, trying to frighten him. Indeed, they had all but forgotten he was there. No, this was their unvarnished expectation, the thing toward which all of this was pointing.
Tomorrow we’ll probably be dead.
Jesus.
“But think about it,” Pym was saying. “Newspapers have websites. They’ll put it online for us. Plus, they’ll alert the other media. It’ll be like one-stop shopping. Hell, it actually makes more sense than just uploading it to some website and sending out emails to all the media with the link in it. They might not even see the email until it’s too late. Besides, police can do all that CSI shit, trace the emails and the uploads, too. We’d look up and have cops at our door by lunch.”
“Yeah, I think you’re right,” said McLarty.
“Plus, it’s kind of what they call poetic justice,” said Pym, a grin spreading across his fleshy face.
“How do you mean?”
“Well, it was the paper that made this guy famous. They’re the ones who published his garbage every week, including that racist piece of shit on the front page this morning. Who better to get the news that we have him?”
Now the grin spread across McLarty’s face, too. “That does make sense. Hell, this might turn out better than the original plan. Why don’t you burn the DVD, and I’ll take it over to the jewspaper while you guard the prisoner?”
“But how will you get it there? You can’t take the van out in daylight, not with the armor plate on it.”
Armor? Then Malcolm remembered the dark spots he had taken for rust.
McLarty shrugged. “That’s no problem. I’ll borrow some wheels from somebody.”
“Are you sure?”
“Sure I’m sure. If there’s one thing I learned from the old man, it’s how to boost a car. Easy peasy. I tell you, I’ll be out and back before you know it.”
A worry Malcolm didn’t understand crossed Pym’s face, then. “Don’t worry,” McLarty told him. “I won’t use. Don’t need to. Hell, this is the biggest high there ever could be.”
There was relief in Pym’s smile. There was also—Malcolm saw this with some surprise—affection. Who were these people?
McLarty caught him looking. “What are you starin’ at?” Malcolm yanked his eyes away. McLarty took a step. “Hell, we already got the video. Don’t need you anymore. I ought to put one right between your fuckin’ monkey
eyes right now.” He reached for the gun in his waistband.
Pym touched his shoulder and McLarty stopped. “Don’t you think we should hold on to him, Captain? For tonight, I mean?”
A grimace. “Yeah, Sergeant. I suppose you’re right.”
“Come on. Let’s burn that DVD.”
Malcolm sighed as they returned to the computer. Tonight? What did that mean? What was happening tonight?
Then his gaze went to the window. The drunk was back, peering through where the glass brick should have been. Malcolm bared his teeth in frustration and anger.
What are you waiting for? Do something! Find a cop! Get help!
Still, the eyes registered nothing. After a long moment, the face slid down the wall and once again was gone.
So here he was, at 60 years of age, trussed up in chains like Kunta Kinte, at the mercy of two white supremacist lunatics and his salvation—if he was to be saved—rested in the hands of some homeless, hollow-eyed drunk. Malcolm heaved a soft, bitter sigh, marveling anew at the bizarre twists a life can take. His life in particular. There had been so many sharp turns and switchbacks on the road that led from then til now.
But the sharpest—and in hindsight, the most consequential—had been one of the very first. Forty years ago, it was. Forty years.
It started…
five
…on a Friday in February of 1968. He was not yet a nationally renowned journalist, much less a hostage of two white supremacist lunatics. No, he was only a failed college student, coming home.
The Greyhound bus pulled into the bay behind the station with an exhausted sigh of airbrakes, and 19-year-old Malcolm Toussaint unfolded his lanky body gratefully from the cracked and faded seat in the back, finally arrived in Memphis after 18 grueling hours of travel from the white college. Home for good, as far as he was concerned.
His father would give him shit, he knew. His father would say, “I told you so. You ain’t had no business up there with them white folks.” There would be a fight. There was always a fight. But Malcolm was ready. Part of him was even looking forward to it.
Malcolm was the last person off the bus and stood waiting for his bag, watching from behind his shades as older white people grabbed surreptitious eyes full of him—tall, Afroed, goateed, and silent in their midst, his wiry form draped in a brightly colored dashiki over a pair of blue jeans. He was conscious of the vague hostility and, more, the fear in their gaze. Even the brother retrieving the bags from the cargo compartment under the bus—a shuffling, grinning, old-time brother, lifting his cap when the white people dropped their quarters into his palm—watched him warily, the way you might watch a hand grenade.
It was chilly out, and Malcolm could have used a jacket, but that would have meant covering the dashiki, and he liked that wary look in the eyes of white people—and shuffling, grinning, old-time black ones—when they saw it. It gave him a secret, electric thrill to realize that they found him something to fear.
When his bag was pulled out, he reached for it. The old-time brother watched him, that broad, happy-to-see-you-suh smile shrinking away. He didn’t even bother extending his palm for Malcolm to drop a quarter in. But Malcolm gave him a tip, all right. He lifted his right fist across his chest and shook it. Black power.
The old brother’s eyes turned cold. He scowled. It made Malcolm smile as he lifted his bag and strode through the terminal out to the street.
Melvin was waiting where he’d said he would be, his two-toned white and aquamarine 1954 Buick Skylark parked right out front. Malcolm opened the back door of the car and threw his bag in, opened the front, and threw himself in. Melvin Cotter’s wide, dark face opened in a gleaming smile. “Junie,” he said, “welcome back, baby.”
Malcolm grinned. “Done told you about that. Ain’t ‘Junie’ no more. It’s Malcolm. That’s legal now, brother. Been to the courthouse, got the papers and everything.”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Melvin. “OK, ‘Malcolm.’” He pronounced the name with exaggerated deference. “But that’s gon’ take some gettin’ used to.”
Malcolm had been born Mozell Uriah Wilson, Jr. He’d grown up being called “Junior,” then “Junebug,” and finally, just “Junie.” He’d always hated his corny, country-sounding name in all its permutations. At the white college, he’d learned that changing it was just a matter of filling out some papers and paying a fee. He’d thought about it and finally took the plunge just two months ago. His father still didn’t know.
“So,” Melvin was saying, “you want to tell me again what your new name is, Junie?”
Malcolm sighed. “OK, “he said, “but remember it this time, ’cause I ain’t answerin’ to Junie no more.”
“Bet you will if your Pop be callin’ for you,” said Melvin, glancing over his shoulder and wheeling the old Buick out into traffic.
Malcolm ignored the jibe. He ticked his names off on his right hand. “OK,” he said, “my first name is Malcolm, after brother Malcolm, or El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz, if you prefer.”
Melvin nodded sagely. Malcolm X, three years in his grave now, had been Malcolm’s hero.
“My middle name,” said Malcolm, still ticking off his fingers, “is Marcus after Marcus Garvey. Had a big back-to-Africa movement in the twenties til the honkies shut him down.”
Melvin shrugged. “Ain’t never heard of him.”
“You probably ain’t heard of Toussaint L’Ouverture, neither,” said Malcolm, ticking off a third finger, “brother who fought Napoleon in the Haitian revolution, but that’s where the last name comes from.”
“Malcolm Marcus Toussaint.” Melvin tried the name out.
“Three revolutionaries,” said Malcolm.
Melvin cut him a glance. “Yeah,” he said, “I kind of got that. Ain’t went to no college, but I ain’t quite a fool.”
“Nobody said you was, brother,” said Malcolm. “And you could have gone to college if you wanted.”
Melvin made a derisive sound. “Yeah, right,” he said. “Wouldn’t of got my ass out of high school if you hadn’t let me cheat off you. How you think I was going to do in some college? Especially if you wasn’t there to help me? I be at some nigger college, you off at that white school. Don’t shit a shitter, Junie. I mean, Malcolm.”
Malcolm let it ride. After a moment, he reached across and turned on the radio. He caught the tail end of a commercial for Winstons—“Winston tastes good like a cigarette should” trilled the jingle singers—then a station identifier for WDIA, and with the sound of a shotgun blast, Junior Walker’s sax was suddenly everywhere at once, walking and squawking, pushed along by a rhythm section with places to go and people to see. “Shotguuuun,” he squalled in his unlovely voice, “shoot ’em ’fore he run now.”
“So,” said Melvin after a moment, “your pop still ain’t know you comin’ home?”
“No.”
“Should of told him, Junie. Malcolm.”
Malcolm shook his head, watching as Union Avenue flew by. “Nah,” he said. “Why would I do that? What he care? He ain’t want me to go in the first place.”
“Well, we both know Mr. Mozell got his ways.”
Malcolm shot his friend a look. “Hell, he ain’t told me he got hurt. If it hadn’t been for you, I wouldn’t of known nothin’ about it.”
“He a proud man. You know that.”
“Yeah,” said Malcolm. “Well, I got my pride, too.”
“Let’s be honest here,” said Melvin. “Your daddy gettin’ hurt ain’t got shit to do with you comin’ home. Reason you comin’ home is ’cause you done got your ass kicked out of school for rabble rousin’. And when your old man find out ’bout that…” He shook his head, whistled through his teeth. “Whoo, boy, when Mr. Mozell find that out, I can hear him now: ‘Done told you you ain’t had no business takin’ your black ass up to no white folks’ college in the first place, nigger!’”
Melvin laughed at his own impression of Malcolm’s father. Malcolm pursed his lips. Even an impres
sion of his father was enough to tighten his jaw. “Well, in the first place,” he said. “I didn’t get kicked out. It’s called administrative leave. I can apply to go back if I decide I want to.”
“If you decide? What about your deferment? If you ain’t in school, you might get drafted, have your ass over there fightin’ them Viet Cong. Man, I break out in a sweat every time I see that mailman come past my door.”
Malcolm ignored him. “In the second place,” he said, “wasn’t no rabble rousing. It was organizing and protesting, trying to put structures into place to help combat the inequities of a racist, capitalist system that oppresses the black man from the cradle to the grave.”
“Really?” Melvin’s eyebrow sprang up. “’Cause I would of swore you told me you was arrested with a spray can in your hand right after you painted ‘Fuck The System’ on the side of the administration building.”
“They dropped those charges,” said Malcolm.
Melvin went on as if Malcolm had not spoken. “And I would of also swore you told me you was pullin’ a ‘D’ average and your professors told you it was a damn shame, you done got a chance any other Negro give his left nut for—scholarship, full ride—and here you are, pissin’ on it, even though everybody know you could do better if you really want to.”
Malcolm snorted. “Just drive, nigger.”
Melvin regarded him, something that was not quite a smile playing at the edge of his lips. “I’m just sayin’ what you told me in them letters you sent home.”
“Just drive,” said Malcolm again.
With a shrug, Melvin returned his attention to the road. Malcolm allowed himself a moment to be lost in the sights passing by his window, dark-skinned soul brother in a white straw stingy brim walking with that slide foot bounce to a rhythm only he could hear, rhythm of life, Malcolm supposed. And here came a soul sister, color of caramel, going in the opposite direction, head high, topped by a proud Afro billowing slightly in the breeze, fine, big-legged sister, her thoughts held secret behind mirrored shades.
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