Dice Man

by Luke Rhinehart

  A tremendous explosion from the rear of the studio interrupts Arturo.Screams. A single “bang.”

  “Fire!!”

  [More screams, and several voices pick up the cry of fire.]

  Arturo is staring off to his right and he yells:

  “Where’s Eric?”

  “Let’s get out of here!” someone shouts.

  Arturo turns nervously back to the camera and begins speaking of the difficulties of being a black person in a white society and the difficulties of being able to communicate his grievances to the white oppressors. Smoke drifts across in front of him and coughs, which had come at isolated intervals, now come from offscreen with machine-gun regularity.

  “Tear gas,” yells a voice.

  “Oh no,” screams a woman and begins crying.

  [Bang. Bangbang.]

  [More screams.]

  “Let’s go!”

  Arturo, glancing continually to his right and occasionally pausing, struggles on with his speech, staring, whenever he finds the time, sincerely into the camera.

  “… Oppression so pervasive that no black man alive can breathe without seeming to have ten white men standing on his —— chest. No more shall we lie down before white pigs! No more shall we obey the laws of white injustice! No more shall we simper and fawn to—watch out over there, Ray!—There!—to … ah … white men anywhere. We have abjected ourselves for the last time. No white, no white—Ray! There! [Shots are being exchanged offscreen; Arturo is crouching, his face a tangle of terror and hatred, but he struggles on with his speech.]

  “… No white can deny us again our right to be heard, our right to say that WE STILL EXIST, that your efforts to enslave us continue, and WE WILL NOT LIE DOWN FOR YOU ANY MORE! Ahhhh.”

  The “Ah” at the end of his speech was a gentle sound, and as he fell forward onto the floor the last glimpse the Sunday afternoon television audience had of his face showed a look not of fear or hatred but of bewildered surprise.

  The shouts and groans and shots continued sporadically, smoke or tear gas floating across in front of the TV image of Dr. Rhinehart sitting at his little table, his pipe emerging still in its permanent erection from his mouth and tears appearing in his eyes. The sounds seemed sedate and repetitious compared to the earlier action and hundreds of viewers were about to switch channels when a boy appeared in front of the man with the pipe, long-haired, handsome, blue eyes glittering with tears, dressed in blue jeans and a black shirt open at the neck.

  He looked into the camera with steady and serene hatred for about five seconds and then said quietly with only one partial choking spasm:

  “I’ll be back. Perhaps not next Sunday, but I’ll be back. There’s a rottenness to the way men are forced to live their lives that poisons us all; there’s a worldwide war on between those who build and work with the machine that twists and tortures us and those who seek to destroy it. There is a worldwide war on; whose side are you on?”

  He evaporates from the screen, leaving only a smoke-smudged image of Dr. Rhinehart, crying. He arises now and moves three paces closer to the camera. His head is cut off so that all the viewer sees is the black sweater and suit. His voice is heard, after a brief burst of coughing, quiet and firm:

  “This program has been brought to you by normal, earnest human beings, without whose efforts it would not have been.”

  And the black body disappears, leaving on the screen only the image of an empty chair and a small table with a cup of undrunk liquid and beside the cup a blurred white speck, like the compressed feather of an angel.

  85

  In the beginning was Chance, and Chance was with God and Chance was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Chance and without him not anything made that was made. In Chance was life and the life was the light of men.

  There was a man sent by Chance, whose name was Luke. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of Whim, that all men through him might believe. He was not Chance, but was sent to bear witness of Chance. That was the true Accident, that randomizes every man that cometh into the world. He was in the world and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not. But as many as received him, to them gave he power to become the sons of Chance, even to them that believe accidentally, they which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of Chance. And Chance was made flesh (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Great Fickle Father), and he dwelt among us, full of chaos and falsehood and whim.

  86

  It had been an interesting program, with significant talk, action and audience participation: a thoughtful dramatization of some of the key issues of our time. The sponsor would be pleased.

  Such were not my thoughts as I choked and gasped and staggered out the door opposite the control room, through which I’d seen Eric pull the body of Arturo. In the hallway I tried breathing again for the first time in fifteen minutes, but my eyes, nose and throat still felt as if they were supporting carefully tended bonfires. Eric was crouched over Arturo, but when I knelt beside him to examine the wound, I saw that Arturo was dead.

  “To the roof,” Eric said quietly, standing. His dark eyes were streaming tears and seemed not to see me. I hesitated, glanced at a die and saw I couldn’t follow him but was to seek my own way. We could hear sirens wailing outside in the street.

  “I’m going down,” I said.

  He was trembling and seemed to be trying to focus his eyes on me.

  “Well, go ahead and play your games,” he said. “Too bad you don’t care about winning.” He shivered again. “If you want to find me, call Peter Thomas, Brooklyn Heights.”

  “All right,” I said.

  “No good-bye kiss?” he asked, and turned away to trot down the hall toward a fire exit.

  As he began opening the window at the end of the hall, I knelt beside Arturo to check a last time for a pulse. The door opened beside me and a policeman with twisted face hopped grotesquely into the hallway and fired three shots down the hall; Eric disappeared out the window and up the fire escape.

  “Thou shalt not kill!” I shouted, rising stiffly. Another policeman came through the door; the two of them stared at me and the first one edged cautiously down the hall after Eric.

  “Who are you?” the man beside me asked.

  “I am Father Forms of the Holy Roaming Catholic Church.” I pulled out my canceled PANY card and flashed it briefly at him.

  “Where’s your collar?” he asked.

  “In my pocket,” I answered, and with dignity removed the white clerical collar I’d brought with me to wear on the interview show but which the Die had vetoed at the last moment. I began to attach it around my black turtleneck sweater.

  “Well, get outa here, Father,” he said.

  “Bless you, I suppose.” I moved nervously past him back into the smoke-filled studio and with a lumbering gallop made it without breathing to the main exit in back. I stumbled to a stairwell and began staggering downward. At the foot of the first flight two other policemen were squatting on either side with guns drawn; another was holding three giant police dogs who barked viciously as I neared. I made the sign of the cross and went past them to the next flight downward.

  And downward I went, blessing the sweating policemen who surged past me after the villains, blessing the sweating reporters who surged past me after the heroes, blessing the freezing crowds which surged around outside the building, and generally blessing everyone within finger-shot of blessing, especially myself, who I felt needed it most.

  It was snowing outside: the sun shining brightly out of the west and snow swirling down at blizzard pace out of the southeast, stinging the forehead and cheeks to give my head a uniform system of bonfires. The sidewalks were clogged with immobile people staring dumbly up at the smoke billowing out of the ninth-floor windows, blinking into the snow, using their sunglasses against the glare of the sun, turning off the
ir ears to the din of horns coming from the immobile cars clogging the streets, and finally pointing and ahh-ing as a helicopter swept away from the roof far above accompanied by a fusillade of gunshots. Just another typical mid-April day in Manhattan.

  I looked above the heads of the masses of people packed in on all sides of me and decided it was time to consult a die about moving on. Uptown or downtown? I am

  EPILOGUE

  One day when Luke was being chased by two FBI men with ’45s he came to a cliff and leapt off, just catching the root of a wild vine twenty yards below the ridge and dangling there. Looking down, he saw fifty feet below, six policemen with machine-guns, mace, tear gas canisters and two armored cars. Just above him he saw two mice, one white and one black, beginning to gnaw away at the vine to which he clung. Suddenly he saw just in front of him a cluster of luscious ripe strawberries.

  “Ah,” he said. “A new option.”