We Cast a Shadow

by Maurice Carlos Ruffin

  “Araminta wasn’t even with us at the plantation.”

  Nigel leaned against the table and grinned in a way that made me squirm. “Oh, sure she was. Her neighbor brought her along to babysit one of his kids. You and Mom were sleeping when she threw a rock at my window and told me to meet her in the woods.”

  “No. That’s not true. Your mother and I found you splashing around that dirty pond all by yourself.”

  “Dad.” Nigel sighed and rubbed his hands together. “Minty was right next to me. In the water. The whole strip-down-naked-and-free-yourself thing was her idea. But that’s beside the point. The point is that she was the first person who understood me. Her dad, her real dad who died before I met her, had his own demons. Did bad things to her. She was the one who told me that maybe you really meant well but couldn’t help yourself. She was the one who said I couldn’t depend on Mom to shut you down. Minty thought my plan to run away made all the sense in the world. But I had always been too chicken to do it. She made me feel less crazy.”

  “Because of her, you joined a group of killers.”

  “I was wrong to join them.” Nigel stood up, his shoulders slumped. He inhaled. “They were saying what I wanted to hear. The leader told me that the people who died at the mall were an accident. He never even used weapons! No guns. No bombs. People got so freaked out whenever we showed up, they would stampede and hurt each other. But really, I didn’t care. I thought if a few people got hurt, so what. Because I was selfish and angry. One of the men did bring a bomb to the festival. I don’t think anyone knew what he was up to. But it was too late. After, the adults abandoned us outside town with nothing. A bunch of us hopped a train, but only a couple of us got off near the commune.”

  “Who took you from me?” I stepped toward him. “Franklin? Supercargo? Your wife’s neighbor? Octavia? Just tell me.”

  “No one took me, Dad.” Nigel folded his arms and exhaled in exasperation. “As bad as things were with them, they were better than with you. You were so afraid of everything. I mean, you wouldn’t even let me call myself black.”

  “You’re not black,” I said, a bit of spittle leaping from my mouth. “You’re mixed. Two-fifths Irish, one-fifth German—”

  “And you?” he asked. “What are you?”

  I didn’t answer, and I certainly didn’t tell him about my new ID, which listed me as “American White.”

  “Remember the day you rubbed that max-strength bleach on me? It may as well have been battery acid the way the stuff burned.” Nigel leaned forward. “You left. But I didn’t tell Mom about it because I couldn’t. She always knew you were up to something, but she would have been too hurt if she knew about that. I mean, she might have gone after you with a frying pan. Or way worse. She might have fussed for a while, cooled off, and forgot about it like she did with everything else ’cause she felt helpless, too. I mean, in the back of my head, even I kept thinking you might change. And I knew better. Both of us did!”

  “We had our disagreements, but—”

  “She wanted out. She cried all the time when you weren’t there. Even when she thought I couldn’t hear. One night she locked the bedroom door and turned up the TV in there—that Unsafe Wherever You Go show was on—but I heard her. She used to say nothing was wrong with crying, but she couldn’t let me see that, I guess. I made dinner—enchiladas and churros. When I called for her, she wouldn’t come out. So I wrote a note and slipped it under her door. After a while, a letter popped out from her side.”

  I grabbed Nigel’s arm. “I know you hate me, but this—this revisionist history is foolish.”

  He stepped around me and fumbled through piles of paper on the floor. He grabbed a notebook and tossed it aside.

  “Dammit.” He opened a narrow door by the fireplace that was camouflaged to look like part of the back wall. The faux logs swung toward me. There was a stairway behind the door. He entered without saying anything.

  I followed. The stairs were narrow and rickety. In the dull light, a lizard crawled into a gap in the wood.

  The bell tower’s ceiling was high, and at the top of the vaulted ceiling, a massive yoke crossed from one side to the other, but there wasn’t any bell. Nigel knelt by a chest, his arms plunged deep inside.

  “I knew I had them.” He stood up. “What did you say you call it when you’re trying to prove you’re right? You give the judge something for the truth…”

  “Truth of the matter asserted.”

  “Yeah. That. I submit these for that.”

  There were two slips of paper. One was a long rectangular strip with pastel flowers and chickens around the border. We had a to-do list affixed to our fridge by a magnet. This was one of those pages, faded by years. The other paper was narrow and flimsy, a receipt. I glimpsed Penny’s handwriting. I had wondered where all the things that had disappeared around the house went. Nigel must have planned his own disappearance for some time to make off with so many artifacts.

  “No,” he said, “read this one first.” So I read the to-do list slip, which was dated years earlier and scribbled in Nigel’s handwriting.

  Dear Mom, Let’s go somewhere safe where he can’t find us. We can drive to the ocean and float across.

  Another note. This was the receipt. I touched the sunken paper where Penny’s pen had creased the page. Her fingers had held that paper. Her palm had brushed the edges. Some of the ink was blurred by the pressure of her skin. She had always hated the tyranny of grammar and capitalization rules.

  dear my favorite chef i know that your father and i must seem pretty odd to you. there are problems in the adult world that you will face when the time comes. but for now i need you to understand that we both love you very much. food smells great. i’ll have some tomorrow. p.s. i promise things won’t always be this way and maybe we’ll go away, me and you

  I sat on a low stool, covering my mouth with a hand. Nigel was trying to convince me that he and his mother were plotting an escape. What a ridiculous notion. Penny had been upset, for sure, but there’s no way she would have ever left me. She loved me. She wouldn’t have left. Not for good.

  “She’s right to say I didn’t need to understand then. But I do now. I’ll ask again, Dad. Why did you really come here?”

  “You asked me that, and I told you—”

  “You said it was because you were worried about me and my safety.” Nigel lowered and shook his head. “But come on. If that was the case, this would be a happy occasion. You would have hugged me and said how much you missed me, and then you would leave. But look at you. Look at your beady eyes and tense shoulders. Me and my friends used to follow you around sometimes to see what you were really like. I know you. You haven’t done what you came to do. You’re still on duty. That’s why you brought this old gun.” He patted the gun at my waist.

  “Don’t be ludicrous. This was for my protection. It was a long trip through unfamiliar territory.” I didn’t make eye contact. I tried, but I couldn’t.

  “What’s that old story about the rabbit who saves the snake and is surprised when the snake bites him, but shouldn’t be because snakes gonna snake.”

  “You have no right to look down on me. I’m your father! I always took care of you. Did everything I could to make sure you believed in yourself even when the other kids laughed at you. I stood up for you. I protected your self-esteem, and I’d do it all again.”

  “You can’t understand, can you? A little while ago you said that you thought I hate you. But that’s not right. I forgave you a long time ago because, you’re right, you’ll always be my father. But that doesn’t mean you’re worthy of holding that kind of power over me. I never realized how much I needed to tell you that to your face, to show you that I control my life. And after tonight—”

  “Enough!” I pulled my gun on him. “You’re so far gone, you don’t even know it.”

&n
bsp; Nigel glanced at the gun, which was a few inches from his heart.

  “Dad,” he said quietly. “You’re my father.”

  Nigel stared at me with a serenity that I’d never seen. For the first time, I realized that his mind was a planet unto itself. During our years together, I’d only caught brief glimpses of that distant world with my telescope. But I suddenly understood that I couldn’t make him do anything now. To the extent I’d ever had any influence over my son’s orbit, that influence was gone. He was gone from me. He reached out and gently moved the gun downward and to the side. I dropped it. My legs weakened. I found myself on my knees, my arms wrapped around his legs.

  “I’m not letting you stay here,” I said.

  “Dad?”

  “Stop talking and do as I say,” I whimpered. I couldn’t quite catch my breath. I wasn’t even sure he could understand me. “You’re my boy. It’s my job to take care of you. Is that so wrong? Just come with me. Please.”

  Nigel held me back enough to sit down on the floor next to me. He put an arm around my shoulder and lightly squeezed. For a moment, I felt the movement of his chest against my side and his breath against my ear. He made a sound something like a chuckle. Somehow this calmed me.

  “Dad. You need to go home.”

  I glanced up. His cheek was wet. He wiped it with his wrist. Then he wiped my cheek, too.

  I shook my head.

  “I know you’re afraid,” he said. “But that’s something you’re going to have to figure out how to deal with. I’m not leaving with you. This is where I belong, and I love who I am.”

  I pulled away from Nigel and placed my back against one of the wooden table legs. “I know.” I rubbed my face. I was embarrassed to cry in front of my son, but there was something else I felt, a feeling that rose up and startled me. I was envious. I couldn’t say that I’d ever stood so firmly for anything I believed in. But he had. “Why are you so stubborn?”

  “I get it from Mom.”

  “Who else?”

  Outside, something backfired. An engine rumbled. Nigel went to the window. He peered down the road.

  “Minty?” He looked as if he had just seen a flying saucer crash-land. He hurried downstairs. I went to the window. Araminta and Doc were untangling themselves from a motorcycle and sidecar. Nigel entered the field of the headlight. By the time I got downstairs, he and Araminta were arguing again.

  “Why would you come up here in your condition?” Nigel asked Araminta. Then to Doc: “And why would you bring her?”

  “As if I could stop her,” Doc said. “Her water broke as soon as you left.”

  “Neither of you gonna tell me where to go,” Araminta said. “If you thought I was going to have this baby alone while you picked your teeth with your crazy old man, you a dumbass.”

  “You could have just called me!”

  “You mean on this?” Araminta pulled a walkie-talkie from Nigel’s pants pocket and waved it in his face. “You had it off, goofus.”

  “Oh. Sorry.”

  “I had a mind to— Ooh.” Araminta grabbed the side of her stomach.

  “Let’s get her back to the infirmary,” Doc said.

  They brought Araminta to the back of the pickup and lowered the gate. But once they had her situated in the truck bed, Doc turned to Nigel, who had taken a seat next to Araminta, and said there was no way they would get down the mountain before the baby came. Doc asked for blankets, hot water, and a few other items.

  “I’ll get it,” I said.

  But Nigel raised a hand to stop me. “We don’t need your help.” He attempted to get up, but Araminta squeezed his hand and told him to stay.

  “Let him help,” Araminta said. “We’re short—unh—staffed.”

  I went inside and collected all the things, and extras like pillows and a canteen of drinking water. I found myself going back into the lodge for more and more—towels, a flashlight, bug repellent—and circling the pickup truck like a satellite on each trip, speed-walking, jogging, sprinting, mentally cartwheeling in orbit around my son, his wife, and my arriving descendant. Eventually, more people from the commune rolled up in a busted green van. Others arrived on scooters. Suddenly, we were surrounded by a dozen or so others who sat in a semicircle around the impromptu delivery room, lighting candles and incense, playing music and singing prayers in languages I didn’t know, and laughing in the breeze.

  I worried for Araminta. Her screams made my fillings vibrate. What if something went wrong? She lay on a cushion of blankets in the pickup bed, and Nigel alternated between stroking her hair and wetting her forehead with rags.

  I was hovering over them when Dopey tapped my arm.

  “Hey,” she said. “Sit with us.” Which I did. Dopey handed me two small bundles of cloth tied in heavy twine.

  “What are these?” I asked.

  “He asked me to gift-wrap your weapon and ammo.”

  I sighed. The moonlight intensified as clouds gave way to the infinite vast above and stars spilled across the void like jewels across velvet.

  “You ever feel as though there are questions you can’t answer?” Dopey asked.

  “Never,” I said.

  The sound of crying from the back of the pickup. I scampered to my feet. The musicians strummed and sang louder, and everyone cheered. The baby was wrapped in beige swaddling. It’s a girl, someone said. She was a lovely little gumdrop with a doll’s nose and eyes that seemed to ask what did I think I was looking at. She was very dark, nearly Araminta’s color. But she might lighten with time.

  Dopey got behind the wheel of the truck.

  Araminta’s and Nigel’s faces were both dripping wet. Nigel beckoned me, and I leaned over the side of the pickup bed so he could speak into my ear.

  “Tell me something, Dad.” Nigel took his daughter’s chubby hand.

  “Anything.”

  “Do you honestly think you would ever be able to accept her looking the way she does?”

  “I—” I stopped myself from speaking and looked down.

  “At least you’re really thinking about it. I appreciate that. But we don’t need that in our lives. Go home. Enjoy what you’ve done to yourself. But don’t haunt us anymore.”

  44

  I believe there are two states of being: living and living dead. This is the division between moose and taxidermied moose, majestic oaks and the hardwood floors of a Creole cottage, the curious man I was before I found Nigel and the shadowy simulacrum I became thereafter.

  The aforementioned minor events from a short period of my insignificant life compelled me to jot down these notes in my Big Chief Bigboote notebook. In retrospect, I realize that like Mary Magdalene and Dante before me, I’ve suffered a kind of social death. I’ve been thrown off the social step stool. I have a name and a country, but I’m no longer a husband or father. And I no longer possess an identity I recognize. My fumbling attempts to make sense of my absurd predicament—the iron bars persist even with my eyes closed—have been less than successful, as you have seen.

  After my return to the City, I took a leave of absence from the firm and set out with nothing more than my fedora and a surplus duffel. One day I boarded a bus in Selma. The next, I disembarked from a monorail in Gujarat, India. I rode a seaplane in Sri Lanka, a jitney in Jakarta, and a pedicab in Perth. I lost my money and passport in a nightclub in Antananarivo, Madagascar, so I was forced to stow away on a cargo ship bound for the mainland.

  But that vessel was attacked by pirates. The last thing I recall was men, with machine guns on their backs, scampering up the side of the hull. When I came to some days later, I opened my eyes in a hospital bed in a kingdom by the shore. I’d been shot in the back. Or the front. The physicians were unclear about that as the projectile traveled through my body, rendering the point of breach an issue of semantics. I would live, but some nerve
was mutilated, making my left foot useless. I also had a deep slash wound on my cheek. Still, I fared better than the half-dozen or so crew whose bodies were never reclaimed from the Indian Ocean. After weeks in that sanatorium, I was given what belongings they had found—notebook, fedora, sun pendant—and pushed out to fend for myself.

  The kingdom is an odd place. There’s a battle between civilizations being fought nearby, and it’s caused untold numbers of people to seek refuge here. In the shantytown where I live, we’re all stacked atop each other like kindling, doing our best to survive. Pickpockets and confidence brothers outnumber doctors and schoolmarms on this prairie. A man must keep his head on a swivel if he wants to retain anything of himself. I suppose I could try to make my way to the nearest U.S. consulate, which is in the middle of that war, but I can’t bring myself to do so.

  The question I get most often, only slightly more than Say, my friend, what hyena mauled you?, is Why are you here? I don’t look like most of my fellow displaced humans. My living space is a tiny lean-to in a cluster of a thousand similar structures. I have a pot for cooking, a cot for sleeping, and a pillow for my face in case some Othello wanders into my story and wants to put me out of my misery.

  One notable development bugs me whenever I happen to glance at the hurt areas of my body. The skin over my wounds came back in my old coloration. The healing slash on my cheek looks like a slowly expanding brown crevasse. I hope Dr. Nzinga is able to correct this hiccup in her otherwise excellent and—dare I say it—godly process. Nobody wants tar babies coming out of the margaritaceous lady parts of recently demelanated ex-welfare queens. But as has been so often the case during my tales of tilting at windmills, I digress.

  I mind an outdoor kiosk for a discredited expatriate reporter from Holly Springs, selling old-fashioned newspapers. There are more Americans here than I would have guessed. My boss was stripped of her citizenship and deported to this place a decade ago. I trade shifts with a centenarian moonbat who yammers on about missing his basement full of lights. My neighbors in the flea market are lovely local women who take pity on me and ply me with food and drink. One of them even devised a makeshift brace for my extremity. Another gave me a puppy, an adorable mutt called Laika. The women think I’m a shy, damaged man. I can’t argue. At night, the women return to their families. I spider to my corner. Laika falls asleep in the crook of my arm.