by John Shannon
Noah takes seven pairs of each type of animal onto the ark. Genesis 7:2-3.
Noah takes one pair of each type onto the ark. Genesis 6:19.
Jacob’s offspring in Egypt totaled 70. Genesis 46:26-27.
Jacob’s offspring in Egypt totaled 75. Acts 7:14.
Aaron dies on Mount Hor. Numbers 33:38.
Aaron dies at Moserah. Deuteronomy 10:6.
He flipped pages. Most of the Bible had been covered, right up through the New Testament. He let his mind gear up and stopped thinking about what he was reading.
“Well, gentlemen, I’m sure there’s a logical explanation to offer you, but I’m not a Biblical scholar. Instead of focusing on these supposed contradictions, however, I think we should ask ourselves where they come from. And the motives of whoever put them together.”
Those fierce eyes came up, and they all saw Dave Cooper shrink a little. Krasny smiled. It might have been the smile of a very large predator that was ready to eat.
“Go get him,” somebody said.
Basically, attacks on Bible literalism worried him a whole lot less than the dangerous multicultural myths that the kids were encouraged to swallow on a daily basis. He had to start where they were. Any sign of rebellion was a worry. And look who’d been the conduit for this doubt and confusion, he thought. Dave (Fast Fred) Cooper was second string linebacker and, like a lot of defensive players, a bit of a troublemaker.
“This list comes out of the same world that gives us presidents who smoke dope and lie about it, a world that offers an epidemic of personal irresponsibility and racial quotas and cheating on welfare and fatherless children and gangbanging in the streets. And the unbearable, unendurable sadness of secular unbelief. On the other side…”
He rested his palm on a Bible on the desk. He didn’t often go this far with them. Usually he saved the angrier stuff for one or two who were more advanced.
“…Is us. People tough enough to face the big questions in our society. Can we agree that this discussion does not leave this room?”
They all nodded, cowed.
“The big myths on one side, the courage to look straight at obvious truths on the other. Let’s set these Bible questions aside for a moment and look at one of the truths that it’s time to face. It’s something we see every day in the lunch room. The Latinos eat with their own kind by the notice board, the African Americans eat with the African Americans down by the busing table and the Orientals sit at the front table there, with the whites out in the middle. There’s nothing wrong with that; every species seeks its own kind. We tried to integrate as a society, but everybody saw how artificial it was and now some of us have to look at the consequences of the failure.
“It isn’t going to be easy, I kid you not. To be fair, we may eventually have to divide the country up. Give some of the Southwest back to Mexico and some of the Old South to the Blacks. Then we can start to get over this terrible mess that’s got out of control, all the unsafe streets and stolen stereos and fatherless kids, and we can begin to build up our own Euro-nation.”
He glanced around.
“Or. We can go on mouthing the liberal mumbo-jumbo about how wonderful secularism and integration are and how well they’re working. And we can let the whole country slide down into the swamp. Which side of that big divide do we want to stand on?”
No one took it as a genuine question, though Dave Cooper felt he had to say something to explain his interest in the dangerous document. “I just wanted to know the truth.”
“Of course.” Perry Krasny smiled his terrible smile. “Where did this come from, by the way?”
“Norm Berquist gave it to me. He’s a social science major. He used to be a goth.”
Krasny knew Berquist from a geography class he subbed in once in a while, a real smart-ass. The boys facing him were all athletes. He was tempted to characterize Berquist as a pussy and a geek, but he thought better of it. “Perhaps we should pray for his soul, this social science major. I don’t think social science will ever answer one one-hundredth of the questions that the Lord answers in this perfect Book. Pledge of Honor, gentlemen. Stay with that and you don’t have to go looking for the truth, it will come to you.”
*
Jack Liffey was disappointed when no one was out front of the Brighton house. He’d enjoyed chatting with Ornetta, and it was really the little girl he needed to talk to. Even the Rolling 60s Gangsta Crips had given up their vigil, and the scorch on the lawn had been doctored up with a patch of sod and some fertilizer.
“Mr. Davis,” he called in through the security screen, after rapping ineffectually. The sound of typing toward the back of the house broke off, and presently the old man hobbled to the door on his cane.
“Ah, Mr. Liffey.” He unlatched the screen and they shook hands gravely.
“Before I talk to the Young Turks at Umoja, I wonder if you could give me some idea of who I’ll be seeing?”
The old man smiled faintly as Jack Liffey came in, and they sat in the sparkling Danish-modern room, watched over by the long-nosed African god. “I’ll try. Kidogo is Amilcar’s age, a fine young man, even if I might disagree with some of his… emphasis. He and Amilcar were friends all through high school, played basketball and went hiking together. He’s smart as a whip, but he decided against college. He’d got it into his head that the point of college was to try to make him white. I think you’ll probably meet Mwalimu wa Weusi, too—he’s the head of Umoja. His name literally means Teacher of Blackness.”
The old man smiled lightly.
“We can all surmise what he meant when he made it up, but I’m told a fluent Swahili speaker would interpret it as a clumsy explanation for something like a witch. So would my wife, undoubtedly, but really he’s not a bad man at all. He has genuine charisma and he helps a lot of kids stay out of gangs. He’s wary of whites, but I doubt if he’ll try to mau-mau you.”
Jack Liffey was a little surprised how positively Bancroft Davis regarded Umoja. “That’ll help situate me. Would you mind if I spoke to your granddaughter for a few minutes?”
The old man looked surprised.
“Amilcar might have confided in her.”
“She’s out back. Don’t let her talk your ear off.”
“That’s what ears are for.”
Ornetta sat cross-legged on a patch of grass beside the vegetable garden, staring off dreamily into a pepper tree. A number of brightly colored stones were set out into a pattern of some sort in front of her.
“Hi, there,” Jack Liffey said. He sat down and got as cross-legged as he could, facing her across the stones. A big 747 came over, descending toward LAX but still fairly high.
“Hi, mister. You want to hear the story about the secret language of cars?”
“I would like nothing better.”
He wondered how long it took to get all the beaded rows into her hair, and if the beads had to come out from time to time for a rework.
“They was this country girl name Piretta, live out on a farm way in the country with her mama and daddy and all they animals in a big white house with a chimbly. One day in the barn Piretta find her a little magic bottle.
“She feel a bump inside there and a voice go, ‘Rub me and let me out!’ She real scared but she rub and, whomp, out pop a big black man like a rassler on TV and he got a big white do-rag on top, call a turband.”
“Wow!” Jack Liffey exclaimed.
Ornetta moved one of the colored stones in front of her with great consentration, as if only that stone unlocked the secrets of the story. Her heroine seemed to have released a very strange genie who wouldn’t give her gold or jewels or anything nice that little girls wanted, but only magical powers he chose. She was going to be able to hear the secret language of cars. Piretta was truly disappointed, because that was not what she had in mind at all.
Ornetta fell silent for a moment at a burst of gunshots in the distance, but there was no sequel. She moved a shiny green stone a few inches before going on s
hyly to tell him that piretta’s first surprise with her new powers came when she started to do chores that afternoon and wash the old Cadillac that her father used once a week to take them all to church.
“‘Bout time, girl,’ Ornetta mimicked a voice as deep and irascible as she could. “Piretta she jump a foot. ‘I was feelin’ pow’ful dirty.’ Mr. Cadillac go. ‘Do me some more, child, over here on this side.’
Piretta was outraged at this bossy car, who called her “child” and wouldn’t even thank her, even though she did an extra-special job washing him, and after dinner she sneaked back out to the barn and overheard the shiny car lording it over the beat-up tractor that Piretta’s father drove every day.
“‘You a fool,’ go Mr. Cadillac. ‘All day I sit here in the cool shady and you work yourself near to death. Look at you. You dirty and broke down and got bumps all over you. You paint comin’ off while I sit here all wash and clean and rest up.’”
As the story went on, it turned out Piretta liked the tractor, which she found kindly and shy, though a bit gullible. The Cadillac was full of mischief and convinced the tractor to play sick so it wouldn’t have to work so hard. Piretta went to bed that night worried about what she’d heard. She knew her father had to use the tractor to take their pumpkins to market the next day, but she couldn’t think of a way to warn him about the trick they were going to play on him.
The next day Piretta peeked in the barn door, and the tractor coughed and sneezed and refused to run. Her daddy cursed a little and then hitched the market wagon to the Cadillac, and only Piretta could hear that proud car howling in outrage.
Some boys bustled past down the alleyway, loud and bellicose, and Ornetta rotated two stones like TV knobs until the boys passed. Jack Liffey noticed how heartbreakingly delicate the girl’s wrists were, as if you might snap them off accidentally with a touch.
The farmer drove off to market with the Cadillac towing a trailer of pumpkins and then came back more and more, all day long.
“That night the Cadillac dirty and bumpy and so tired it can’t keep it headlights on. And Piretta waiting for it in the barn, and she go, ‘You sure Mr. Smarty now, ain’t you, Mr. Cadillac? And you gone stay dirty, too, till you learn how to say thank you.’”
Jack Liffey laughed and clapped, genuinely delighted. “That’s a wonderful story.” He poked around gently, trying to figure out if she’d read it somewhere, but like any good magician she wouldn’t reveal her tricks.
“Ornetta, I have to go soon, but before I do, can I ask you something about your Uncle Amilcar?”
She breathed deeply and her grin faded away. Then she nodded solemnly.
“Do you remember the last time he came home from college?”
She nodded again, looking down at the stone pattern, as if whatever he needed to know might be found there.
“Did he tell you anything? Was there some trouble about Umoja?”
She shook her head. “Uh-uh.”
“How about with his friends? Did they have a fight?”
Again she shook her head.
“Do you know any reason somebody would be mad at him? It might help me find him.”
She moved several stones around, and finally she was satisfied with the arrangement. “Everybody always ax about Ami,” she said. “Nobody ax about Sherry and she people.”
SEVEN
Unacceptable Offerings
“So you wait there, look at the pictures, you hear wh’m sayin’?”
The Umoja headquarters was several old storefronts on Manchester, tied together above the windows by a black-green-red tricolor stripe of fresh paint. To one side, like a bookend, there was an appliance repair shop, and at the other a derelict eatery with a fading YOU-BUY-WE-FRY sign.
Just inside the baking hot entry room, a young man in a colorful pillbox cap frowned at him from a little desk, like a dedicated postal clerk stuck with a troublesome patron. What the young man had waved Jack Liffey over to look at while he waited was a gallery of old photos, so he looked at the old photos.
There was Marcus Garvey, waving to a crowd from an open car. Then a number of other black men in similar crowds, mostly prewar, judging from the cars and clothing. He read the captions.
Marcus Garvey, United Negro Improvement Association, Harlem.
Father Divine, Peace Mission, Harlem: Sitting on a big throne that jutted above the backseat of a touring car that was surrounded by a cheering throng.
Grover Cleveland Redding, Abyssinian Movement, Chicago.
Noble Drew Ali, Moorish American Science Temple, Chicago. This one bearded and in a fez, amongst many other blacks in fezzes.
W.D. Fard, Muslim Temple Number One, Detroit.
Elijah Muhammad, Muslim Temple Number Two, Chicago.
Malcolm X, Organization of African American Unity, Harlem.
Mwalimu wa Weusi, Umoja, Los Angeles.
There really were separate cultures, Jack Liffey thought. He hadn’t even heard of some of these leaders. One black nationalist was conspicuously missing. Jack Liffey turned back to the receptionist, “Where’s Ron Karenga and US?”
The young man furrowed up his eyebrows even more, “Check it out, you go to a Ford dealer, you expect a lot of pictures of Chevys?”
“Point taken.”
There was a framed multicolor motto beside the gallery: GANGSTA RAP NOT WELCOME HERE. THESE ARE THE REAL HEROES.
He took to peering closely at the shot of Malcolm, probably taken toward the end of his life. The man had been caught looking exhausted to the core, as he leaned out over a lectern. A Young Turk stood beside him, his eyes wide as if spotting the assassin in the crowd.
Jack Liffey heard voices and a young man in sweats hurried out of a side room, leaving the door open to what looked like a classroom. A blackboard was covered with what was probably Swahili, and three young men pored over an ancient computer on a scarred desk. One of them wore the same tricolor cap as the receptionist.
“Numba yanga haina malango,” one read off the screen.
“Something about a house.”
“My house has no door. It a Swahili riddle, fool.”
“Huh?”
“It means an egg.”
Outside, a whole parade of fire trucks went wailing down the boulevard, one after another, not just the two you usually heard. Something pretty big was burning.
*
Maeve Liffey hefted a big plastic trash can that was nearly empty and set it under the high window where she could see the curtain was parted. Her heart thundered away so loud that she was afraid they could hear it from inside the house. She knew Mary Beth was watching from the trees, so she stifled an almost irresistible urge to flee as fast as possible.
The plastic can had a lot of disconcerting flex under her feet as she climbed onto it. She pressed her palms against the rough sun-warmed stucco to stabilize herself and inched upward until her head just cleared the sill.
A TV was glowing blue across the room. It took her eyes a moment to adjust to the interior murk, and then she found she was looking across a dining table piled with dishes and cooking pots and ravaged pizza boxes that had probably been there for weeks. Beyond was a front room where half a dozen big men lounged on a sofa and pillows on the floor to watch the TV. One seemed passed out flat on his back on a reed mat, his mouth wide open to collect flies. There were more tattoos per square foot than anywhere she’d ever seen. Most of the guys wore armless T-shirts and jeans that didn’t look any too clean, but one of the bikers was bare-chested, and the man passed out was only wearing jockey shorts and had the hairiest shoulders she’d ever seen, like somebody had glued toupees all over him. The bikers all had beer cans, and they were watching one of those talk shows where people sit side by side to humiliate one another. She could hear the TV voices buzzing lightly against the glass.
A car passed on the street, and one guy on the sofa looked over at the front window and said something. He held up a hand and the man beside him high-fived him, so Maeve gue
ssed whatever he’d said had been judged witty.
She was just wondering what exactly this was going to tell her about the disappearance of Amilcar Davis, beyond the fact that he was not chained up in the corner of their living room, when the trash can started to flex on one side. It was like a slow-motion nightmare. She willed the plastic to stop its inexorable sag and clawed at the stucco to take her weight off that side, but she went right on sinking slowly at an angle until all at once the can sproinged and she fell straight down onto it. She cried out in alarm, unable to stop herself, and found herself on her stomach, draped over the side of the toppled trash can, catching her weight on a smarting knee on the dirt.
Oh, please, please, she thought.
She heard the back door come open and then there was this inconceivable person looming over her, with a grin and a pointy beard and arms like trees that were covered with eagles and daggers and other things. A gigantic hand closed on her thin upper arm.
“Little girl, if you’re so all-fired het up about what’s inside here, maybe you best come on in.”
“Mary Beth, run!” Maeve shouted.
*
The Mwalimu himself came out to usher him into the inner sanctum. He was tall and imposing, maybe sixty, bearded and dressed in full African regalia. He didn’t offer to shake hands, either in standard fashion or Movement style.
“Welcome to Unity House, Mr. Liffey. We’re not as hostile to your people as you may have been led to expect.”
“I’m never sure who my people are,” Jack Liffey said, as he followed along a shabby corridor, with the Mwalimu’s gold-red-green robe billowing ahead like some huge flightless bird. He wondered if it was cooler under there. The place had no air-conditioning, and the deeper he got into the complex the stuffier it got.
“You have that luxury. The oppressed do not.”
“Yes, okay.”
The office was fairly shabby, too, except for an imposing African mask of a woman’s head, with what looked like long seed pods balanced on top, and a large cloth covered with repetitious black-and-white designs that hung flat against the wall. There was a small desk, but the man chose to sit in an old easy chair and motioned Jack Liffey to a threadbare sofa opposite.