A child was running, his little feet thudding on the pathway. Looking in the direction of the quick, light steps, Sovereign saw himself as a boy hurrying to his grandfather’s side.
Eagle was dead. And even though Sovereign had returned, and obviously had tried to convince his grandfather to put off the suicide, little Sovereign was still there buying the root beer for him and his grandfather.
Sovereign the man took a step backward and so went unnoticed by the boy, who ran to the wheelchair, stopped, and stared long enough to comprehend what had happened. When the reality of Eagle James’s death settled on the boy he screamed and closed his eyes, fell to the blacktop, and wailed. In the distance Sovereign the man could see people pointing and running his way. The men gathered around the dead man and a white woman picked up the boy, whose eyes were still closed, and held him to her breast.
“Open your eyes, Sovereign,” Solar James commanded.
“No!”
The boy was lying abed with his mother applying a wet towel to his forehead. Sovereign the man stood still in a quiet corner remembering these events as he saw them. Offeran was right. He had kept his eyes shut for almost a day after seeing that glistening snake, that red ribbon of death. This was his attempt to deny the truth.
“Did you know my father had that pistol?” Solar asked angrily.
“Solar!” Winifred shouted. “Let him be!”
The boy wailed. The man watching the dream-memory turned away. He gritted his teeth, expecting to hear the argument continue, but instead there came a kind of blessed silence.
In his sleep Sovereign realized the connection between sight and sound in his mind. Relief, like that cool towel on the boy’s fever, came to him. He turned back and saw himself as a child awakening in the small bed with the early morning sun peeking in from the window. There was another bed in the room—Drum-Eddie’s. That bed was empty, so little Sovereign jumped out from under the covers. He heard sounds from downstairs and followed them, unaware that he himself was being followed by the full-grown dreamer.
From the turn in the stairs Sovereign found himself looking down at his mother and father, and himself at the age of nineteen.
“He is no longer my son,” Solar James was saying. “He’s a thug and a thief and no longer my son.”
“But you weren’t Grandpa Eagle’s son and he always loved you,” the small boy shouted.
No one heard him.
“That’s some dream,” Seth Offeran said that afternoon. “Any thoughts?”
“I woke up crying. Lucky for me Toni sleeps like a stone.”
“Why lucky? Why shouldn’t she see you cry?”
“Because … I don’t know.… Because …”
Offeran sat back in his chair.
Relieved by the psychiatrist’s silence, Sovereign said, “In the morning, when Toni woke up, we went down the stairway two floors to the kitchen. A biracial woman named Madeline was cleaning. She told us that Monte had left that morning for South America. We offered to pay her for the room but she said that it wasn’t a hotel but a courtesy for favored customers. She said that Monte always stayed with them when he was in town.”
“Strange,” Offeran said.
“I forgot about me shutting my eyes to my grandfather’s suicide. I guess you were right about the connection. I guess I’m upset at myself for not speaking up for Eddie too. No matter what he did we should have stood by him.”
“Keeping secrets always takes a toll on children,” Offeran said.
When Sovereign felt the tears cascading down his cheeks he shut his eyes tight and clenched his fists.
“But sooner or later,” Offeran continued, “you have to look at what you are and who you are and where—no matter the cost.”
The rage he felt at Lemuel rose up in his chest again. He understood it now. He couldn’t explain but he knew why he’d beaten that boy, battered him. It was a suppressed violence that had always been there, and anger that survived an entire ice age of suppression and false awareness.
“What about Toni Loam?” Offeran asked.
“She’s like me.”
“What do you mean?”
“Looking for the answer to a question she can’t ask. Wanting to be somewhere, but when she gets there wanting something else. Whenever I see that girl, or think about seeing her, my dick gets hard. I’m not even excited, not really, but my dick gets hard like a rock.”
“Does she appreciate your feelings?”
“She knows how she makes me feel. But in a way it’s like I’m one of the courses in a big feast and she’s outside starving.”
“Sounds kind of hopeless,” Offeran said.
“What can I tell you, Doctor? I loved my grandfather and he took his own life almost in front of me. I loved my father and kept from him the greatest secret he’d ever know. I loved my brother and sister but they abandoned me too. And my mother … I haven’t paid her nearly enough of what I owe.”
On the way to the subway from the doctor’s office, Sovereign’s cell phone sounded.
“Yes?”
“Hello, Sovereign, this is Lena.”
He felt dizzy for a moment but then the feeling dissipated.
“How’s my case coming?”
“The prosecutors are moving forward with charges. I’ve got an appointment with Judge Lowell for an arraignment hearing a week from today. You won’t have to go to jail or pay bail, and I want to ask her for a closed hearing with just the judge and no jury.”
“Why?”
“It’s a simple case but very technical. I believe that we can win on the evidence. But I don’t want to make a circus out of it. I believe that Lowell will understand and appreciate our approach and point of view.”
For the time it took to take three breaths Sovereign pretended that he was thinking over Lena Altuna’s logic. But he knew that he couldn’t make any criticism of her claims.
“Do what you think is right, Lena,” he said at last. “I’ll follow along and hope for the best.”
It was near ten that night when Sovereign began to wonder what had happened to Toni. He called her cell phone but it went straight to voice mail. He tried to think of where she might be. He didn’t know her mother’s number or address, not even her first name. Maybe she was at Lemuel’s apartment. She certainly wasn’t at the hospital. Visiting hours were over at nine.
When the landline rang he was certain that it was her calling to apologize or break up, explain that she really was attacking him that day but changed her mind, or maybe to confess her love. She could have said it all with no contradiction.
“Hello?”
“Sovereign … hi.”
“Valentina. Hey … how are you?”
“Is what the paper said true?”
“About me beating a man into a coma? Yes.”
“What happened?”
“You read the papers. They got most of it down. Keep on reading. There’s going to be a trial.”
“I wanted to hear it from you.”
“Why?” Sovereign asked.
A beeping sound came from the earpiece.
“Hold on, Val, I have another call.”
Sovereign tapped the cradle button and said, “Hello?”
“Hello, Sovereign.”
“I’m on another call, Toni. Can I get back to you in five minutes?”
“Okay. I’ll leave my cell phone on.”
He tapped the button again.
“Hey, Valentina, sorry about that.”
“I’m getting back together with Verso,” she said. “We’re going to remarry.”
“Whoa. Congratulations.”
“I need to know that you aren’t going to give us any problems. I mean, he doesn’t know about you and me, but after I read that article …”
“After you read that article what?”
“I don’t want you going off like a wild man attacking Verso.”
I see, said the blind man, though I haven’t any eyes. It was a phrase Eagle James
used to say at moments of sudden insight. The boy Sovereign loved hearing it.
“You think because of those newspaper articles that I might attack your ex-husband?”
“I know it sounds silly but the papers said that that was what you did.”
“Don’t worry, Valentina. I wish you well and I will stay away from Verso.”
“Your blindness is cured?”
“Yeah,” he said, again thinking of his faux grandfather’s saying. “Listen, Valentina, that call that came in was important. I have to return. You take care and don’t worry about me at all.”
“If you need anything you can call me,” she said.
“I won’t.”
“Hi, Sovereign,” Toni said after one ring.
“What’s up?”
“The prosecutor sent the cops to bring me down to his office,” she said. “They told me that either I was gonna testify against you or they was gonna charge me with attempted murder. They said that they could say that I lured Lemuel in there so you could attack him.”
Sovereign wondered about some legal scholar a thousand years in the future looking back on this case. In the future, he thought, human DNA would be mixed with that of other creatures, and human brains would be augmented with tiny living computers that would make thought much easier, clearer, and unbelievably fast. What would this far-flung thinker suppose about lower intellects making up the crime as they executed inept laws?
“Sovereign,” Toni said.
“I don’t know what to say, honey. You and I both know what happened. What did your lawyer tell you?”
“He said that if the DA was right, I should take his offer and say you planned it.”
“But you know I didn’t.”
“I know I shouldn’t’a been wit’ you right after what you did to Lem,” she said.
“No,” Sovereign agreed, “maybe we should have waited for a little while.”
“What do you think I should do?”
“I suppose the truth isn’t an option.”
“This ain’t funny.”
“No.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“What are you asking me, Toni?”
“They gonna put me in prison, Sovereign. They gonna put me in jail, and the lawyer you give me has told me to turn you ovah.”
“I have to go,” he said.
“What?”
“I have to go and you have to do what’s best for you. We’re both just troglodytes trying to climb out of Plato’s cave.”
“What the fuck are you talkin’ about?”
Sovereign, instead of answering, hung up the landline and disconnected it from the wall. Squatting there, with the slender cord between his thumb and forefinger, he was reminded of the times in his life when he’d cut off contact with family, friends, and loved ones.
Loved ones. He let the words roll around in his mind, trying to make sense of them. Finally admitting to failure in this attempt, he turned off the lights in his apartment, opened the window wide, and sat on the sill for hours, with his eyes closed, listening for sounds in the night.
A little before one the next day Sovereign was leaving his apartment building to go up to Seth Offeran’s. He’d made it only a few steps past the doors when someone called to him.
“Mr. James.”
It was a young white man wearing a green sports jacket and black slacks. The T-shirt he wore was yellow and his tawny hair carelessly brushed.
“Yes?”
“My name is Russ Lamply and I’d like to ask you about the charges leveled against you.”
“I don’t think so.”
“I’m working with the Times and wanted just a few words.”
“ ‘I don’t think so’ is four words. You’ve got yourself a bonus.”
“Did you know the man you fought with?”
“I have to be going. Good-bye, Mr. Lamply.”
Sovereign turned and headed for Christopher Street. The reporter followed.
“I just need a statement for my story,” he said.
Sovereign suppressed a grin and kept on moving. He felt inexplicably happy.
“Your brother was being sought in connection to a bank robbery, wasn’t he?” Lamply asked as they turned right on Christopher and walked east.
“It has been reported that you and the man you attacked, Lemuel Johnson, were fighting over a woman you were both involved with.”
Sovereign was half a step ahead of his ineffectual interlocutor. Lamply couldn’t see the now apparent grin.
“What about the charges of racism leveled against you at your workplace, Techno-Sym? Or your long absence from the job for a supposed case of hysterical blindness?”
Sovereign, without realizing it, picked up his pace.
“The woman who was with Mr. Johnson in your apartment is ready to be a witness against you,” Lamply said, raising his voice.
Sovereign felt his humor turning in on itself. The muscles of his forearms clenched, and the hours he spent exercising each day seemed to be singing. He turned to face the fair young journalist, raised his hand, seemingly intent on striking the young man. Then he yelled, “Taxi!”
The yellow car pulled to the curb and Sovereign forced his angry hand down to grab the handle.
“The trial has already been set,” Lamply said in fast, clipped words. “You’d think that you’d want your side of the story in the paper.”
James threw himself into the backseat of the cab.
“Eighty-sixth and Madison, please.”
“Mr. James,” the reporter called as the car pulled away.
In the back of that taxicab Sovereign was painfully aware of the meaning of the word psychosomatic. His head was spinning and hurting. His fists were clenched and he could not make them release. There was also an ache in his chest and the color red somewhere between his line of vision and imagination. He had lost control, barely escaping the violence welling up inside. The only power left to him was the ability to breathe in, hold the breath for a brief moment, and then exhale.
“Are you okay?” the driver asked, looking up into his rearview mirror.
“Yes,” Sovereign managed to say.
Each breath became deeper, and by the time they had reached 14th Street the HR manager was able to splay out his fingers. He realized that he was sitting at a tilt to the left side and sat up straight.
Once he had regained control he wanted to talk to the driver but couldn’t think of anything to say. The picture on the hack license matched the face in the mirror. The man’s name was Amir Fez. He had a mustache and some hair on his chin—not enough to be called a proper beard. His eyes were dark, and though he was not smiling Sovereign guessed at great humor and concern from his expressions. None of this was the basis for a conversation, so Sovereign sat back and wondered at the possibility that he was a criminal. Maybe the prosecutor had gleaned the threat in Sovereign’s actions and wanted to take steps to protect New Yorkers from his possibly uncontrollable rage.
James took in an enormous gulp of air. He was free to breathe. All people, he thought, had this liberty. The idea of inalienable rights based on a notion of undeniable biological politics calmed him. He closed his eyes and rested his head against the window, becoming conscious of the exhaustion his rage caused.
In the self-imposed darkness, inside the moving vehicle, Sovereign felt lulled and peaceful.…
“We’re here, mister,” the driver said.
It felt like only moments since he’d escaped the journalist, but they had made it all the way to the Upper East Side of Manhattan.
Sovereign gave thirty dollars for an eighteen-dollar ride, feeling somehow grateful to the driver. He stumbled out onto the curb and had to stop for a minute to allow the sleep to slough off his mind. He stood there stroking his left arm with his right hand, remembering running the same palm over Offeran’s sofa cushion when he could not see—or would not.
“… and so you wanted to hit him?” Offeran asked after hearing the s
tory of the reporter.
“I wanted to destroy him,” Sovereign said. “If I had struck that first blow I know I wouldn’t have been able to stop. I would have killed him if I could have.”
“Where do you think this rage is coming from?” the doctor asked.
“It’s a—what did you call it?—a significant psychic event.”
Offeran smiled and nodded.
“When I was a kid I used to listen to Bob Dylan,” Sovereign said. “Him and Jimi Hendrix. I never let anybody know that.”
“Why not?”
“Because black kids weren’t supposed to listen to them. Kids at my school would have made fun of me.”
“But Hendrix was black.”
“But he didn’t play the right kind of music. And Dylan wasn’t only white; he sang like a drowning cat. But I loved both of them and listened when nobody was around. Except for Eddie, of course. I told Eddie everything. My grandfather too. Eagle would listen to anything I had to say. I was his favorite.”
“What does this music have to do with your anger?”
“I don’t know. Or maybe … Maybe it’s just that I had to keep everything a secret. My grandfather’s pistol, my father’s parentage … Even the real job I thought I was doing underneath the job they hired me for. I’m like a spy in a foreign country, a mole in the enemy’s camp. I left everything behind me and no one knew a damn thing about who I am. I can lie up in the bed with a woman, laugh my ass off with somebody at a bar, but as close as I get, no one can really see me.”
A sympathetic hum escaped Offeran’s throat. This single sound told Sovereign that his doctor thought that he was on the right track.
“But what difference does it make,” Sovereign asked, “if you ask me where I am and all I can tell you is that I’m lost?”
“Because even if that’s the only thing you know, then you are not lost—not completely.”
That night in bed, alone and awake for hours, Sovereign tried to imagine his way out of his troubled mind. He wasn’t worried about the trial or the possibility of conviction. He wasn’t worried about the fact that he had stopped going to work even though he was over his condition.
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