White Tears

by Hari Kunzru

  MISS ALBERTA’S SHACK EXPANDS. Its tiny confines are a great shadowed concourse that I am watching her cross. She moves continuously but makes no headway, shuffling her old bones in place like a deck of cards. It is infinite, this moment, Miss Alberta always receding into the darkness, into the shadows. The slow scrape of her shoe on the boards.

  In her hand, as she turns, is a record. And I know I am slipping into darkness, but I am powerless to stop it. Oh God, says Chester, and there is something repulsively sexual in his tone. Oh God, he says, it’s true.

  I want to get further away, but I can’t move. I am falling down into starless desolation and I cannot lift myself up off the stool.

  —He went to Jackson. Mr. Speir made him an appointment.

  —He recorded. I knew it! I knew it!

  —At the Saint James Hotel in Jackson.

  —Do you remember the year? Oh God, you actually have the record. Can I see it?

  —It’s not for sale.

  She does not hand the record to Chester, though he is beseeching her with every cell of his body. The man is a gut-string, taut, vibrating with need.

  —Please can I see it?

  —Maybe I’ll play it for you.

  —Could you just turn it so I can take a look at the label?

  —Haven’t used this thing in an age.

  She is blowing great puffs of dust off an old Victrola, the kind with an external horn and a crank handle. Chester looks worried.

  —Maybe you ought not to play it on that. Those discs are very easily damaged.

  She cranks the handle and drops the needle. A hard crackle rises up out of the horn. Chester is rigid, mute with panic. I know what he is thinking because I am thinking it too: Metal needles. Blunt needles that can strip a fragile record, a rare and valuable record. Then I cannot bother any more about what he is thinking, because Charlie Shaw’s voice swoops down, and it is ancient and bloody and violent and it is coming for me, hunting for me as I sink lower and lower, into the darkness.

  Believe I buy a graveyard of my own

  Believe I buy me a graveyard of my own

  Put my enemies all down in the ground

  Charlie Shaw’s voice is looking for me, for what I have kept hidden, the guiltiest of my secrets. His voice is filled with such terrible pain that I can hardly bear it.

  Put me under a man they call Captain Jack

  Put me under a man they call Captain Jack

  Wrote his name all down my back

  I should not be obliged to hear this voice. I need it to stop. It is not right. I haven’t done anything wrong. The voice wants payment, but how would I even begin to afford the price?

  It ends. At last it ends.

  —How much do you want for it, Chester asks, before the needle has even run into the gutter. His greed is naked. He is totally powerless to hide it. Again Miss Alberta says it is not for sale.

  —Why not. I’ll give you a good deal. Here, how about a dollar?

  —A dollar.

  The little boy watches us.

  —That’s right. Cash money. A shiny silver dollar right here.

  —A dollar for my brother’s memory.

  —I’ll give you ten for it. Ten dollars, Miss Alberta. That’s a good price. More than fair.

  —I said it’s not for sale.

  —Twenty, then. You can’t argue with twenty dollars. You should trust me. I’ll take good care of your brother’s legacy. I’m a connoisseur. I’m a very respectful man. If you like I can give you an undertaking, all drawn up and legal. You understand what I’m telling you? I will write you out an official undertaking. A paper, Miss Alberta, if you just let me have the record. I’ll make sure a lot of people get to hear him. That’s what you want, isn’t it? For people to hear poor old Charlie?

  —You like the record?

  —Of course I do.

  —And what about you?

  She turns to me. I can’t see her eyes. I want no part of this. Mutely, I nod.

  —Then why am I only hearing about money? Twenty dollars says one. The other can’t manage a word. I played you my brother’s record and you ain’t got a word?

  No no no, says Chester. He’s stuttering. A misunderstanding. No one could be more excited about Charlie Shaw. One of the great question marks. The gap, the missing link. So many questions.

  —Questions? No, I don’t believe so. I don’t believe you have any questions at all.

  Chester laughs his big fake preacher’s laugh. I want to tell him to stop with the molasses. He is pouring it into a great red maw.

  Ha ha ha ha

  ha ha

  ha

  Chester does not know where he is. Around us the night is screaming messages and he isn’t listening. I can’t raise my eyes from the floor, because each time I look at Miss Alberta, she becomes more terrifying. Her substance is absence. She is made of it, made of loss. I am slipping into darkness. It is enveloping me like a shroud.

  —I’d like you to go.

  Only now does it dawn on Chester that she is angry, that it is possible he might leave without the record in his hand.

  —No you wouldn’t, Miss Alberta. Think of your brother. I’m only thinking of poor Charlie.

  —Poor Charlie?

  —That’s right. Poor Charlie. Now, do you just have the one platter? Or is there more than one?

  I find my voice, croak at him.

  —Chester, come on. Leave her alone. We’re not wanted here.

  —Keep out of it.

  His face, snarling at me. There are some about which I will brook no argument. I look at him and nothing I see makes me any less afraid. He is prepared to do whatever it takes to get that record. He would bite out her throat.

  —Now, he says. Now. Now I don’t have the money with me, but I can give you a hundred dollars. One hundred dollars, Miss Alberta. Maybe even more, if there are others. Did Charlie just record the two sides? The two songs?

  —He went to Jackson, never came back.

  —That’s right. Poor Charlie.

  —He went to make the record.

  —In Jackson. While you’re thinking about it, why don’t you play me the other side? And if you’d just let me look at the label? I could maybe tell you some things about it. Wouldn’t that be nice?

  —I just want you to leave. Go. Get out of my house.

  —Miss Alberta.

  And then I have more holes, more gaps. I am sitting on a stool, watching Chester, who is looming over the old woman, raising his voice. I am sitting in the shadows. I sit on a stool. I stand out on the porch, I sit on the swing. I am in the driver’s seat of the car, waiting outside the Saint James Hotel. Turning the key in the ignition. He never came back. Turning the key, outside the Saint James Hotel. And Chester is shouting damn you old woman. Are you going to take that record to your grave?

  I SLEPT. AND WHEN I WOKE in the morning my suspicion was a tangible thing, a taste in my mouth. It had never happened. The whole episode had been an illusion. Leonie was moving round the room, cleaning her teeth, doing her makeup, and I was no more a sexual presence to her than the men on the television, the newscasters and pitchmen and interviewees from the world of entertainment. The disappointment was crushing. I hadn’t slept with her. She’d rented a single room. She was rich but she’d rented one room and I had spent the night in there with her, in the bed next to her bed, and nothing had happened because I was harmless, not enough of a man. And yet I had those memories. Her sounds, her intake of breath by my ear. I had the memories but I could not trust them. That morning she seemed entirely unchanged by what had happened between us. Her indifference was immense. There was none of what there should be between lovers. No complicity, no shared secret.

  As we walked to the car my suspicion grew, parasites of doubt clenching and unclenching themselves in my gut, looking for an orifice through which they could escape into the world. I assumed that we were heading home to New York, as she had said, but at the entrance to the parking lot she turned
to me and asked which way.

  —Aren’t we going back?

  —We’re so close. We’re close, right?

  —Yes.

  —So we might as well go on. Which way?

  —Take a left.

  We drove out of the lot, through the summer sunshine. We drove down a steep hill, down, down, down into the dark until we came to the river, a road that ran beside the levee, a threatening elevation that formed an artificial horizon off to our right. All the weight was on that side, the unseen bulk of the Mississippi. We passed the turnoff for an archaeological site, Choctaw Indian burial mounds, a group of low grassy hills. Trailers and cabins were scattered haphazardly across the land, housing like litter. By the side of the road, convicts in green striped uniforms were picking up trash, under the eye of a guard sitting in the cab of a Walxr corporate transporter.

  We knocked on a few doors, met country people who did not want to be bothered. It wasn’t long before someone showed us a gun. A white woman came to the door with it, a rifle. What did we want? We got smartly back in the car, reversed off the property. Hand-painted religious signs were nailed to a boundary fence. GOD HATES A LYING TONGUE PROV 6:17 SAME SEX MARRIAGE HELL HATH ENLARGED HERSELF ISAIAH 5:14 FOR WITHOUT ARE SORCERERS AND WHOREMONGERS AND MURDERERS. We left that door alone. Sorcerers, whoremongers and murderers, we slunk on by.

  My phone was telling me we were close. JumpJim’s directions had taken us all the way from New York but he couldn’t be certain about the exact location of the cabin. The car bumped over the rutted track. I was vibrating at all the resonant frequencies of the system, my actions amplified into the past, into the future. Each time we saw a house I went to the door and said the name. Charlie Shaw, Charlie Shaw. They shook their heads but I could feel him getting closer. And I knew he could hear us coming too.

  —A cabin with wooden shingles, under a tree.

  —I don’t recall anything like that.

  Charlie Shaw?

  —No one of that name.

  We drove down the road, we drive down the road, we have always and forever been driving down the same dirt road. We drive inside our bubble and I look at my phone and the little red pin is on top of the checkered flag. You have arrived at your destination. I see a giant cottonwood tree. I know nothing about trees but this is what I say to myself. A giant cottonwood tree. As if I have said it before. I see a trailer park of rickety single-wides up on cinder blocks. Washing strung on lines, children’s toys in the yards. We sit in the car, squinting at the trailers.

  —We’re here.

  —This is it? I don’t remember it.

  —This is the place.

  —You looking for someone?

  A kid on a bike. Maybe ten years old, his hair pulled back from his face in severe cornrows.

  —Yeah. You live here?

  —Nice car, lady.

  Thanks, says Leonie.

  —You know a Charlie Shaw?

  —No.

  —Or anyone by that name. Shaw. Alberta Shaw maybe.

  —No sir. There’s us and Sharlene and Mrs. Jackson and then you best not walk any further.

  —Was there a shack here, ever?

  —A what?

  —A timber shack, with shingles.

  —There’s only us here, is what I’m telling you.

  He cycles off. I feel like I am coming down off something, crashing. The predawn light of some psychological day has revealed me to myself: exhausted, out of juice. We get out of the car and walk around by the side of the road. A woman appears at the door of her trailer and watches us. Leonie does some quad stretches, lights a cigarette.

  —Now we can go back. We made our pilgrimage for Carter but now it’s time to go back.

  At that moment I believe she is right, but the present is out of reach and once again I understand that we have done all of it before and I am like a skin stretched over a hollow drum, all my will and striving just surface tension. We have always been here but it has taught us nothing. We still don’t know what we have forgotten, what it is we owe. My phone shows a blank screen. We have always been standing there, Leonie pulling at one ankle, then the other, me looking at my phone, and the car that is coming down the road has always been coming, always coming down the long dirt road. We hear it before we see it, we feel the bass in our guts. Ultra-low frequencies, nausea-inducing. Waves physically displacing human tissue. The emitter is some kind of old muscle car, a Mustang or a GTO, murdered out in matte black paint. Black wheels, black trim. Over the weaponized bassline runs a vocal, chopped and screwed.

  Believe I buy a graveyard of my own

  The driver kills the ignition, and with it the sound. For a moment we stand in silence, Leonie and I, relieved of the awful sonic pressure, returning the machine’s inhuman gaze. Then the door opens and out steps a young black man, who swaggers towards us. He wears a crisp white XXL tee shirt and jeans. Short dreadlocks poke out beneath an angled cap. As he gets closer I see his light-skinned face, delicate and mournful. Tattoos snake down both forearms, onto the backs of his hands. He shows me his left wrist. Numbers 8 11 18 23. Musician. To dream you hear one play foretells grief and sadness…

  Do we feel lucky?

  Even standing still before us, he is relentlessly in motion, rolling his shoulders, hands plucking at his jeans, his shirt, the brim of his cap. As if he is neurotically performing liveliness or perhaps merely aliveness, the continued absence of death. When he speaks, his voice is a surprise, a barely audible rasp.

  —Yo. Who asking about Charlie Shaw?

  He becomes theatrically still, even his stillness a form of motion. He scrutinizes us, stroking his chin with a thumb and forefinger. The passenger side window of the car rolls down. Someone else is watching us too.

  —We’re not police, says Leonie.

  —Why would you feel the need to say that?

  I tell him Charlie Shaw’s sister lived on this spot. Lived here. A long time ago.

  —What’s the name?

  —Charlie Shaw.

  —I know plenty of shorties, Charles.

  Inside the car, the passenger laughs. He hangs an arm out of the door, an arm like a twist of black wire, ending in a gold-ringed hand holding a Big Gulp cup of purple soda. I am cowed by these men, conscious of my meager white body.

  —What this guy do?

  —He was a musician.

  —No Charles, what he do? What you want him for?

  —He didn’t do anything.

  —So how come you need to talk to him, Charles?

  —Something happened. A friend of mine owes him. Owes him money.

  —And if I know this Charlie Shaw?

  —We just need to speak to him. We—my friend really wants to make it right.

  —Is this him, asks Leonie. Did you do something to my brother?

  —Leonie, I say. This isn’t the guy.

  —Step off. I don’t know you or your brother. Your friend wants to make it right? Well that’s OK then. Sure I know the guy. Charlie. He live just up the way.

  —Really?

  —Really? Fuck outta here.

  The man in the car laughs again, spilling a little of his drink. A red cap is pulled low over his head. The driver bares his teeth and takes a step towards me, but for all his bluster I know he will not hurt me because we’ve been here before. I know I’m only talking to the messenger. The real power lies with the man in the car.

  —I said get the fuck out of here, Charles. You ain’t deaf.

  —No. I’m not deaf.

  —So why you ain’t moving? Get in your fucking car and turn the fuck around.

  —I didn’t mean.

  That arm, black fuse wire. We didn’t mean.

  —Turn the fuck around.

  —Just chill out, says Leonie.

  —Oh, and fuck you too bitch. You think Imma talk to you about who I know and don’t know? Fuck all y’all.

  —Let’s go, Seth. Let’s just go.

  Charlie Shaw is in the car and I
need to speak to him. I need him to break his silence, to come out from behind the veil and say what it is he wants. If he doesn’t explain, I’m scared that this will go on and the next person it touches will be me. I am a good person. I have done nothing wrong. Carter was the one. The young man is stepping towards me, holding out his arms wide, the palms of his hands open, herding us into our car. He makes me feel insubstantial. It is not logical to feel this way. I am alive, I think as I fumble with the car door. The ghost is him.

  All I can do is roll down the window and shout as we reverse away.

  —You’re the one! You’re him! We’re so sorry! We didn’t mean any disrespect!

  The passenger turns the music on high, drowning me in bass and that terrible, pitched-down drugged-out vocal.

  Put me under a man called Captain Jack

  Wrote his name all down my back

  The driver walks backwards, lifting up his shirt. He indicates a gaping wound in his side.

  —Right through my motherfucking lung.

  I slam the accelerator and we fishtail backwards along the track. We are still alive, I repeat, over and over. My mantra. We are still alive.

  WE ARE CROSSING THE STATE LINE, leaving Mississippi. We are driving home. It’s morning and I’m eating eggs and drinking coffee at the counter. The cook is scraping burned food off the grill and the waitress is taking orders. It is dark. I am asleep in bed. It is dark and I am asleep in yet another motel room with thin walls and I hear the key in the ignition and I am on the porch turning the key in the ignition and the little boy is watching me. I’m trying to get Chester to leave. The boy scrapes the bottleneck along the wire and sings.

  Pharaoh

  Pharaoh

  Pharaoh army sure got drownded

  Pharaoh

  Chester has gone somewhere. I’m asleep in yet another motel room, asleep in old sheets that smell of lavender detergent. I want to go home. I am eating eggs at the whites-only counter and the vibration of trucks on the highway rattles the windows and the sheets smell of lavender and there is the sound of a key in a car ignition, outside in the darkness at the Saint James Hotel, a gearbox grinding as someone tries to find first.