by C. L. Donley
“…Are you… talking about Martin Luther King Jr. right now?”
“You mean fuckin’ Michael Imposter King? Fuckin’ plagiarizin’ commie traitor?”
“…M’kay, I think that’s enough nazi time today,” he said, like I was a four year old. But only one of us was backing down. I win, cunt.
“Suit yourself,” I shrugged with a little grin, just as Jo was coming out from Judah’s room.
“He said he doesn’t need my help,” she announced with her arms raised at the elbows, trying to ignore the tense ass environment in her living room. “He’ll be out in a sec.”
“Independent like his mom,” Chris said, smiling. I guess he was trying to flatter her in front of me? Jesus, what a fag.
“What were the two of you talking about?”
“Politics, what else?” he said. It seemed like he was trying to cover for me, but it didn’t make sense. Yet. Hm. Tricky motherfucker.
“Chris can have a conversation with anyone. And I do mean anyone,” Jo bragged.
“Just part of the job,” he said.
I couldn’t open my mouth, because I couldn’t be responsible for what came out. The two of them were both doing some kind of weird-ass dance in front of the other, so there wasn’t much to say. Besides, I wasn’t gonna do Judah like that in front of his dad. A boy loves his dad, no matter what. I could see Chris was trying to grow an inch taller as if he somehow knew he could convince Jo he was the better man after all that. He didn’t give a shit about her, just wanted to look like a fuckin’ man in front of someone. Probably got very few opportunities. Probably wasn’t even the smartest motherfucker in his little faggot-ass school. Probably didn’t have a single skill, probably had never excelled at a damn thing.
But he’d knocked up a black chick, and he was damned happy about that little ego boost. Couldn’t wait to open up his little faggy wallet and show people how great he was with his little light brown kid. Probably throwing Jo under the bus to make excuses why he can’t be there for them. And since he had no skills, he had no money in that wallet. So he stayed perpetually in school, and just pretended like that was a fuckin’ skill. Since he was too good for just fuckin’ picking up trash, or collecting cans so Jo could stay home. Good thing she was a fuckin’ drywall hanging boss. He might have to actually confront the truth that he was a failure as a human.
Anyway, while I was thinking all this, Judah came running to this guy like he’s the best damn thing in the world and I felt like I was gonna be sick. I didn’t know why. The whole scene just went straight to my guts. I walked into the kitchen and got myself some water and drank that son of a bitch. I was just drinkin’ and drinkin’ and I’ve never been that fuckin’ thirsty in my damn life. I could hear Chris and Jo talking quietly, so I knew it was about me. They didn’t want me to hear.
“Ready, Judah?”
“Daddy, can we go on an adventure?”
“I don’t know, Meemaw might have something fun planned.”
“Can we go to the movie theater??”
Chris gave Jo a puzzled look. She just shrugged like she had no idea where he got that.
“I’ll have him back Sunday evening.”
“I’ll be here.”
“Bye Adam!” Judah threw me a bone. The kid knows I’m alright.
“Later bud.”
“Bye mom,” Judah said casually. I could tell he was trying to sound like a grown-up, always out on the go, gettin’ picked up. Jo could tell too, and she beamed.
“Bye guys,” Jo said as the door closed. She turned and looked at me.
“What?”
She shook her head like she’s just exasperated with me.
“I take it he knew about me already?” I said.
“You can’t breathe unless you’re rilin’ some shit up, can you?”
“Sorry, I haven’t learned to just let every damn thing roll off my back. Like a…. damn rug.”
“Whatever. Let’s just get out of here.”
Sorta like that.
“I’m ready when you are,” I said.
We got outside and Jo stopped short of my truck as if she forgot it was there and what it looked like.
“Jo, you look like I’m about to take you to the second location.”
“So… you want me to ride in that thing?”
The glare from the sun made me squint.
“'Fraid you’ll get in the front seat and get lynched?”
“No, I’m afraid I’ll be seen in it and get lynched.”
“By whom?” I furrowed my brow. She raised hers.
“Did you just say ‘whom’?”
“Yep. I’m damn articulate for a hillbilly. So? You in or out Abrams?”
She sighed. “Fuck it. Let’s go.”
8
Chapter 8
Bethesda’s an hour away, and my radio’s busted, so we had plenty of time to kill. To my surprise, Jo’s still chatting me up and down about the same hot button issue of race, probably the only one between us. First, I thought she was trying to convert me to see things her way. But now I think she’s tryin’ to keep us from fucking. And so far, my dumb ass is helping. But I guess if we’re talking about my life, it’s sort of hard not to.
“So tell me more about this… diverse upbringing of yours,” she began.
“Lived in the projects until I was about twelve,” I said.
“No shit. Where?”
“Memphis.”
“Holy shit, Adam,” she marveled.
“Yeah, you know exactly what that means. But for some reason, I’m not allowed to say it.”
“What the hell were you doing there?”
“My mom moved us there. We were in Charlotte until I was three, but I don’t remember any of that, of course. In fact, I have a hard time remembering a lot of my childhood. I just remember the Cellar. That’s what we called it,” I summarized.
“Why would your mom move you there?”
“Your guess is as good as mine. My mom is a reeaal special kind of crazy, you know,” I explained. “Trying to save money, I guess. She was young when she had me and Gus. She got on every government program there was. Worked all the time. Sometimes she liked bein’ a mom, sometimes she didn’t. She’d get a boyfriend, they’d break up, she’d steal everything he had and then we would move. I didn’t find any of that out until I was older and I moved back home to Littleton. I just thought she was crazy. She’d stolen a bunch of money from Uncle Charlie’s business after Corey was born and he found out about it. Then she ran. She moved us away from everybody that could help us.”
“What happened when you were twelve?”
“Uh…” I went back through my memories, realizing that I couldn’t have been twelve because I was in high school when we came back to live with Ganny. “Maybe I was fourteen… Corey and I went to a group home for a little while and then we came back to North Carolina to live with Ganny. Gus was already here because he was eighteen, and he got the hell out as soon as the gettin’ was good. He went to live with my dad.”
“In Littleton?” she asked.
“Yep.”
“Still in the klan?”
“Oh yeah,” I replied.
“You gonna tell me he’s not a racist either?”
“No, he’s racist as all hell.”
“Gus doesn’t seem that racist to me,” she seemed to say out of nowhere. Not sure why she’s bringing up that son of a bitch.
“Nah, he isn’t. He’s real attached to dad, though.
“Corey, maybe a little,” she said. That made me laugh.
“Corey’s not even his. No one knows who that booger’s dad is,” I shat on him, “I’m basically Corey’s dad. Well, I was, now it’s Gus.”
“Corey definitely looks up to you the most,” she said, probably because she has eyes.
“We grew up together. It was just me and Gus for a while, then when Corey came, Gus started goin’ out on his own, finding friends, girlfriends, jobs, whatever got him away from the Ce
llar. I took care of Corey a lot.”
“You and Gus seem a lot closer,” she volunteered, and I wondered how she gleaned all this while up in the attic for two weeks.
“We were, once,” I admitted. “We have the same dad, so it makes a difference. When I left, it was no real skin off dad’s nose. He barely knew me. Gus is caught between the two of us, as usual. Dad’s a fucked-up dude. Used to beat the shit out of him, but Gus loves him.”
“He never beat you?” she asked.
“I don’t remember, but Gus tells me how he would get in the way of dad beatin’ me.”
“So… how the hell do you end up in the klan with him?”
Was she serious? All these other things she seemed to notice, but the obvious thing was as plain as the nose on her face.
“I got back here when I was eighteen, and we just started hangin’ out every weekend. What can I say, every little boy wants to be with their dad. Wants to be like him. I never had him my entire life, never thought I would. Suddenly there he was. Covered in ink, showin’ us how to survive, shoot, takin’ us to klan meetings. It felt like… destiny. Felt like we belonged to something. Something big as hell.”
“What changed?”
“Lot of things. Uncle Charlie was more of a dad to me than my dad was. Obviously. I started to see it as I got older. Uncle Charlie taught me to build. Not just to build, but to build shit right. It blew my mind, finding out there was a right and a wrong way to build. Blew my damn mind. You can build something that’s standing just as high as something else, and it can be built all wrong, did you know that?
“Anyway, I realized that Dad hadn’t really taught me anything. Except to hate. Which would’ve been fine if there was something else to it. But that was it. Just hate and be bitchy about it, is what it boiled down to. I just thought that was faggy as hell. That’s it? We just… shoot and hate? Like, what the fuck? All that big boy talk. I was sayin’, ‘Let’s go conquer the shit then,’ and they would be like, ‘all in due time.’ And I’d say, ‘then what am I here lookin’ at your ugly mugs for’?”
Jo just smiled as I went on and on about my fucked up life. But she was lookin’ at me like she admired me. Or something. Like she could see me.
“There was no life in it, you know? I couldn’t see it at first because I was growin’ in it. I was recruiting, I was goin’ up the ranks. But they were just using me. Like a prop. Usin’ my strengths to get… shit. They sold drugs to black people, Mexicans, sayin’ it was warfare. Fucking people over and justifyin’ it. The exact…same…shit. I couldn’t stand it. My dad did less for me than a perfect stranger. Even after I was a brother.”
“And you still consider yourself a klansman?”
“Well, no. I left. Whatever the klan once was, it’s pretty much gone now. I still believe in white supremacy. I still believe we need to get our country back. I just know now that I’m not a soldier. I can’t follow orders. I gotta do it some other way. Gotta do it the way the forefathers did it. Get land, start a family, teach ‘em what’s right. The family grows and becomes a community. The community becomes the klan. Then you don’t need faggy meetings.”
“So… you still believe in white supremacy, huh?” she said, all judgy.
“I do.”
“You just don’t believe you have to fuck people over to achieve it.”
“Nothin’ to achieve, it just is.”
“What if I believe in black supremacy?” she argued.
“Believe in it all you want.”
“Because you’re not worried about it being true?”
“Anybody who wants to challenge the crown is welcome to it.”
Jo just laughed and laughed. She’s always laughing at shit that’s not meant to be a joke. If she was a man, it’d probably make me punch her in the face. But she’s not a man, and she’s cute. ‘Specially when she’s laughing at me. I can’t stop myself from grinning and I keep lookin’ over at her in the passenger side. I’m about to ask her what’s so damn funny.
“Your facial hair is epic,” she says.
“Thanks,” I reply.
“I got a few controversial beliefs too. I told this to Chris and he just about spiraled.”
“Not surprising.”
“In fact, you might be the only person besides my mom I could talk to about this.”
“Hit me,” I said. I was on the edge of my goddamn seat.
“…I’m a bit of a segregationist myself.”
“Is that so?” I grinned.
“Yeah… I think integration was a terrible idea.”
“Horrible.”
“Honestly, who’s fuckin’ idea was that?”
“LBJ’s,” I replied.
“Yeah, we wanted equal facilities, but… other than public spaces, everyone kept to themselves, and they liked that. Loved it. My family’s lived in Bethesda for over a century. At least. My grandmother used to tell me stories of how it was here before she moved up north to Ohio. How strong of a community they had. I mean, the racism was horrible, but… the racism was horrible in Ohio, too.”
“Right,” I agreed, pretending not to be impressed. Little Jo had a real bonafide brain to go with that body.
“After integration, they made it so everything was just… equally shitty. Black schools and black teachers gone. Some really excellent ones, that were producing amazing pupils. Community businesses didn’t have time to grow and figure things out, they couldn’t compete with long-established ones. And everybody lost freedoms on top of it.”
“Anytime the government makes the decisions, the consequences always hurt the people they say they want to help. Why is that?”
“The government’s evil,” she said.
“Not evil. Just corruptible.”
“There’s some things in the south that I love. And some that fuckin’ make me want to move to another country. A lot of people I know feel the same way, which makes me think society probably would’ve phased those things out naturally. Old south could’ve never survived on its own. Makes me wonder if the government somehow knew they were fighting a dying opponent. I said that in my sociology class and my professor basically laughed at me, that self-righteous, patronizing bitch. But I know I’m right. As soon as they regulated it, it’s like it all became fossilized. Now we’re forced to never move past it.”
“You went to college?” I asked her.
“Does that surprise you?”
“A little.”
“I don’t sound like a college graduate?” she smiled.
“I don’t know. Don’t seem to be using your degree, is all, if you did.”
“Well, that’s because I didn’t graduate.”
“What happened?”
“Judah happened,” she said.
“Ah. You ever gonna go back?”
“I don’t know. Life is so different now. Priorities. I was a psychology major, but I wasn’t so sure about it. Even before Judah came, I was trying to switch majors to this or that. Chris said I should do teaching. That way we could move anywhere in the country and I could get a job.”
“So what happened with this guy?”
“We were gonna get married. He was a poly sci major. Very ambitious. Or at least, he seemed so at the time. Turns out he just liked hearing himself make plans.”
I meant what attracted her in the first damn place, but that told me enough. I knew I didn’t like that guy.
“You know he’s fucking racist right?” I said.
“You glass house livin’ motherfucker.”
“He thinks black people are shitting on America.”
“He said that??”
“More or less.”
“'More or less…’ You’re terrible you know that?” she rolled her eyes. “He’s not a bad dude, just… not right. For me.”
“Who’s the right guy for you?” I dated to ask. She didn’t hesitate.
“For now? Judah.”
Dammit. I really liked that fuckin’ answer. Part of me wanted to throw her a
fuckin’ party for that answer. The other part made me want to be the motherfucker to come along and make her go against it.
Fuckin’ men. We’re fuckin’ awful.
“Hungry?” I asked her.
“I could eat,” she said. Which probably meant she was starving.
“Ever been to the Bethesda Cafe?”
“Once or twice.”
Bethesda Cafe is one of the oldest diners in the town and still pretty famous. A couple of brave food critics still dare to put it on their lists for the best place to get a burger and fries in the country. It’s big and lit up at the edge of the highway, where it narrows and goes through to South Carolina. It’ll be the only place open for miles and the fridge stays bare at my house.
“I’ll wait in the truck,” Jo says once I pull up to the diner across the street from the gas station. And I know it’s because she knows where she is.
“Jo, don’t be dramatic.”
“I’m black, it’s getting dark, and I’m staying in the truck.”
“Nothing’s going to happen to you while you’re with me,” I told her.
“Still. I’m not trying to aggravate these motherfuckers.”
“Jo, it’s 2019. Get outta the damn truck.”
“Not in there, it isn’t.”
“I was kidding.”
“I know.”
“How about if anybody tries to start any shit with you, I’ll sever the connection from their head to their spinal cord?” I said in my most threatening tone.
“What if there’s more than one?”
I sighed. I couldn’t give her too hard of a time. She was acting the exact way people around here wanted blacks to act. She was doin’ her damnedest not to play into her kind’s bad reputation, and I was fuckin’ that all up.
Truth was, I didn’t know how they would react because what I was doin’ was something I’d never done before. I got a lotta respect around here with the tat, and a lotta shit when they talked to me for five minutes and found out I wasn’t on the same page with their hillbilly ass. People were respectful. But then again… I’m not black.
“Look. I’m not gonna act like I know what’s gonna happen. I’m not exactly a superstar around here, as much of a travesty as that is. But everyone knows my truck, and everyone around here is nosy as hell. Believe it or not, the safest person you could be with right now is me.”