by Mat Johnson
“Just honkies. Just really cold, really big honkies, nothing more,” the captain chimed in, not amused by the direction the room was taking.
“I love the way you think, baby. Right here could be a bar-nightclub. We could serve vodka shots in ice cups for twice the cost of the bottle. Honey. Honey. The money.” Nathaniel, lost in his own vision, kept going.
When my darker cousin, being the true leader of our group, tried to engage Pym in a dialogue on his return to this small ice house, you could almost see the well-glazed eyes in the pale man’s head take on an additional layer. Instead of responding, Pym would simply look over toward me nervously, as one might toward the owner of an unruly and possibly dangerous pit bull. It was clear by Pym’s mannerisms that he would listen only to me—his fellow white man. That isn’t to say he did this task particularly well. On his return, it took the good part of an hour to convey to this Pym that I was not in fact a slave trader but rather a member of a crew populated by the descendants of slaves. He kept nodding, but then he just nodded off. At one point I really felt he was listening to what I had to say, but then out of nowhere, distracted, he started reaching for Carlton Damon Carter’s mouth.
“What are you doing?” I asked. Carlton Damon Carter simply jumped back, muttered to himself, and got a new seat behind Jaynes.
“Checking the gums. Is that not the best way to discover the beast’s health?” When he heard the word beast, Jeffree leaped up to slap Pym upside his head, but to his credit he didn’t struggle too hard when Nathaniel held him back. Pym continued on as this was happening, without embarrassment. His eyes, already fairly wide to begin with, grew momentarily larger. “They are a feisty bunch” was all he had to say. And despite my efforts, the idea that we wanted Pym to accompany us off of this frozen continent so that we could reintroduce him to the modern world was clearly incomprehensible to the man.
“Why would I want to leave Heaven?” he started repeating absently, which indicated he understood at least part of what I was saying.
“Well, Arthur, don’t you want to go home? You said you were bored. Don’t you want to see your family? Where are you from?”‡ Nathaniel stepped in to ask all this, and when Pym ignored him, I repeated the questions.
“I’m a Nantucketer,” he replied.
“Well, are your family landowners?” At this the supposed Nantucketer shook his head with enthusiasm and then annoyance that I would even question that fact.
“Well, you’ve been gone awhile, things have gone up in value,” Nathaniel followed, and this time Pym deigned to hear him directly. “Land in Nantucket sells for about two million, two hundred thousand an acre on today’s market. You probably have quite an estate to attend to.” Already growing a bit more alert, at the sound of the figure Pym’s eyes seemed to gain a greater level of consciousness. The ghost of a man leaned in toward me.
“Is this true?” he muttered.
“Yes, it is,” I told him, relieved that we finally seemed to be getting closer to an actual conversation.
“In a world where people would pay so much for sand,” Pym started, clearly awed by the thought of this, “how much did these niggers cost you?”
I flinched and looked over at my cousin when the derogative was said, waiting for a reaction. Despite being confronted with someone who was, in his racial outlook at least, a throwback to the white American nineteenth century, Captain Booker Jaynes did not lose his composure or for that matter seem in any way surprised or offended by Arthur Pym’s word choice. In my cousin’s head, this was how all white people were. Of this Jaynes had no doubt: they were all racist, they looked at all of us as niggers and were blind to us in every human way.§ Even after Obama; a black president in Booker Jaynes’s mind was just the nigger white folks voted to be their servant.
Calling these strange beings back in to see us, Pym soon proved to serve better as a translator of information than as a conversationalist. The older creature of before again took a position of leadership, and Pym spoke directly to the snaggletoothed elder in what sounded like a series of attempts at dog barking. The chief moved as the old do, with the knowledge that things broken might never heal.
“Please tell him we would like you to accompany us far away from here, back to our native land” was what I said to our translator. This was a fairly direct sentence, meant to put our primary position on the table. While I couldn’t understand the harsh sounds Pym was making, I could not believe that it could possibly take so long to relate this relatively simple proposal. The old creature, sitting on a rumpled pile of skins and leaning against his own upright knee as if it was the most stable thing in the world, listened and listened to Pym’s monologue. I saw what seemed to be an increasing hemorrhaging of patience the more Pym’s verbosity continued, which was confirmed when the old creature, in a surprisingly swift movement that left no room for misinterpretation, put his long, vein-traversed palm directly over Pym’s mouth,‖ clamping it shut instantly. Once assured that Pym had received this in no way subtle message, the elder removed his hand and barked one fiercely declarative sentence directly at the man.
Hearing the dismissive nature of that sound, I felt for sure we were denied. Worse, I feared we’d caused offense as well. When I asked for the translation, Pym turned back in my direction and said, “Khun Knee says, ‘Go.’ ” There was no question, from Pym’s deflated manner, who this directive was intended for. Him.
“Make sure to tell them you want a pair of the creatures to come with us. A male and a female,” Nathaniel approached my other ear to coax. Among the crew we had already decided that two would be a good number, since one might be misconstrued as a hoax or a genetic anomaly. Apparently, Nathaniel’s current manner seemed too forceful, because Arthur Pym leaned in with his own whisper to me soon after.
“Would you like the guards to discipline them? The Tekelians can be quite … vigorous when motivated,” he said, rubbing an unseen knot in the corner of his balding head that I assume proved this point.
“No thanks,” I said and turned my attention back to Khun Knee.
“Also, we would like to take two of your …” I stumbled here, because the word people didn’t seem to be quite right, “community to accompany us in our employ.”
“Do you intend to purchase slaves from amongst them? Is that what you are implying?” Pym looked at me aghast, casting a rare glance to the others and shuddering at the unthinkable vision: of his gods in the same position he imagined the Creole crew to be in.
“No, no. Never as slaves, not at all,” I continued, carefully. “More like, ambassadors really, to be put in our legal care for the duration of the tour. We’ll pay well.” This rephrased job description seemed to be a bit more palatable to both Pym and eventually the elder Khun Knee, who nodded sagely as if he knew just what we wanted, and just who should do the job.
When the dozen or so potential ambassadors were paraded before us within the hour, we were at a disadvantage in choosing who among them to take as samples of this species, having just that day been introduced to their existence. That said, while we didn’t know much about their alien physiology or beauty standards, it was pretty clear that the gathered specimens were not the most exquisite examples of this remarkable life-form.
“These guys are clearly morons, right? They look retarded,” Jeffree said to me, adding a second note directly to Carlton Damon Carter’s video lens, “I mean that in a literal sense, y’all. Jeffree got no prejudice against the handi-able.”
“They all look like monsters,” Angela whispered, as if they could understand any of this. “How can you tell the difference?”
“They’re a bit irregular in comparison with the others we’ve seen, honey, I’ll agree with Jeffree on that,” Nathaniel said. “But irregular isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It heightens the difference between them and us. It’s dramatic.”
“Inspect their teeth with your fingers, poke a finger into the backs of their mouths to see if they’re missing any,” Captain Jaynes de
clared, his tone implying that he was both well read and practiced in the art of ice monkey commerce. “Check their hair, make sure it’s not falling out. If they’re sweating, taste it to make sure they’re not salty and sickly. That’s how these things are done.”
Using these traditional methods more and less (luckily none of the creatures were sweating in this ice block), we picked two: a male and, going on the assumption that swollen pectorals were a sign of gender, a female.
Pym, who had spent the proceedings nodding off as he leaned against a far wall, was roused once more when Khun Knee returned. Seeing our selection, the elder gave a polite nod in my direction like a waiter pretending to be pleased with his customer’s order.
“In return, the Tekelians have decided on a price for the services of Krakeer and Hunka.” Pym paused, and for a moment I imagined that they must want a blood offering. “They would like one dozen hogsheads, that is twelve individual hogsheads of the normal size, filled to the brim with your special sweetmeats, delivered on Krakeer’s and Hunka’s return.”
“A ‘hogshead’? Why would you want to shove sugared meat into the head of a pig?” Jeffree interrupted. “That is so not kosher. That is some sick shit, right there.”
“He means a barrel filled with the pastries. And it’s probably the equivalent of about three or four cases of those Little Debbie snack cakes,” I told Nathaniel. “Garth has that.”
“How much would that cost? They’re only like a dollar a box.” In my memory, a calculator appeared over Angela’s head as she tried to figure it out. “About two fifty? Three hundred dollars? That’s it? That’s nothing,” she answered herself.
“Each!” Arthur Pym adjusted hearing this, clearly pleased at his own negotiating skills. “If that is too much, I’m sure you could exchange your chattel for payment.”
“They’re not my ‘chattel,’ Pym: I’m black too,” I snapped, my patience having evaporated after the third time I made this revelation to him only to have it ignored. “And you know what, I must inform you that you are really fucking with the wrong octoroon.” At this final word, Pym recoiled in horror, staring at me and then at his own hands, seemingly terrified of what he may have touched unknowingly.
Nathaniel squinted at me in disgust, then stepped between me and the cringing white man. “Two dozen ‘hogsheads,’ final,” he declared, recovering the negotiations. “Our word is our bond.”
And then Khun Knee hugged me, and up close he smelled of dead fish left too long in the freezer, and his old body felt more solid than any biped had a right to. And I knew immediately that with his gesture the deal was done and there was no turning back from it.
“My stash? All they want to trade for is my Little Debbie stash? Why not your stash? Why not all your books and shit?” Garth asked as we were driving away.
“They don’t need books on Pym, Garth. They have the real thing.”
“I’m saying, I’m the only dude that wasn’t down there, and then you come back and tell me how you traded all my stash, all my comfort foods—and man I need comfort—and nobody else’s? You don’t think that sounds a bit suspicious?” Garth demanded.
“Why do Negroes always have to have conspiracy theories?” I asked directly.
“Why are motherfuckers always conspiring?” Garth turned to face me, taking his eyes off the frozen road without slowing down a mile.
“They don’t just want those goddamn boxes of junk food: that’s just what they want first.” Booker Jaynes interrupted our standoff. He was downcast, resigned. “Garth’s food: that’s just what they knew we had. They’ll want more later, trust me. They’re white folks. Eventually they’ll try to take everything.” Behind us, White Folks the dog seemed equally hungry, barking without pause as he stared out the back window at the Tekelian monsters, who followed our moving truck.
I turned to look at the sight too. Outside the truck’s misty back window the white shrouded figures jogged, trailing us. Bouncing up and down like the wooden horses of a carousel, going nearly as fast on foot as we were in the vehicle. They had insisted on joining us as we returned to our base and had turned down our offers to accompany us in the bellies of our metal beasts. Even Khun Knee was among them, although I couldn’t see the elder at the moment. All I could really see was their outlines through our truck’s crystalline wake, the figures dancing on the horizon like the northern lights.
When we returned, Garth and I checked the hulking satellite dish placed on top of our cramped, one-story encampment. Although the dish had a heater, it still sometimes failed from the cold, so to avoid a loss of reception we covered the entire thing in electric tape and sprayed the receiver with nonstick cooking aerosol. At the moment, the dish did appear to be in complete working order, a fact I intentionally made note of so that I wouldn’t be sent out in the cold to check the thing if the reception wasn’t working. For a moment or even half of one, I believed I hallucinated the image of a white shrouded figure up on the roof, ducking behind the disk as we approached, but this sensation passed rather quickly.a A green light on the base of the satellite receiver indicated that a strong connection was engaged, and that was my primary concern at that moment.
When I came inside they were all there, in the common room. By all of them I mean not just our crew but the contingent of creatures too, with Pym in tow. Literally in tow: one of the group of large, militaristic-looking warrior beasts had carried Pym in like a shawl over its monstrous shoulders and was only just letting him down. And it was freezing. Whether the heat was even on in this portion of the building I don’t remember, but I did see one of the guards holding open the front doors in a successful effort to make the climate more to their liking. Past my sober-looking cousin, our television projected a black, blank screen onto the unpainted white drywall. This, in my experience, simply didn’t happen: when there was no signal from the satellite, the TV said, “No Signal,” the words slowly bouncing around the screen in an almost taunting manner. If there was a problem with the connection on our end, a blue screen was usually the symptom. But the screen projected was simply black, sucking the light from the space it landed on.
“Why is it doing that? Is the cable loose? Is there a cable loose outside or something?” I asked.
“It’s not the cables, inside or out. That’s what comes in on every station. It ain’t a problem on our end. It’s something up there,” Captain Jaynes said with a nod out to the beyond, and I couldn’t determine if by “up there” he meant the satellite orbiting in the heavens or the rest of the world north of the pole. “Chris, I want you to do something for me, okay?” The others, my crewmates, were staring at me as though I had a grenade in my hand.
“You and Garth, go over to the computers, check your email.”
“What are those boxes of light and text?” Pym said, pointing at the computers as if they were aberrations only he noticed. I don’t know what he found more fantastic, that there were such fantastic inventions in the world or that black people had mastered them.
“The modem’s working. Look, it’s green, you can see the signal light from here,” Garth informed our captain.
“We know, we already checked our accounts. Now just look up your email clients, see if any mail came for you since we went away.”
There were several terminals around the room, each of which had been staked out by us individually. With the connection as unreliable as it was, it was good to have a computer up and attempting to retrieve your mail all day, so that even if a viable signal was present for only a ten-second interval, your letters from the outside world might get through. When I checked, there was one email message waiting for me, although even before I opened it, it appeared odd. First, I have fairly sophisticated junk mail protection, barring emails from all but the most recognized sources, known associates, et cetera. This email, however, was from no one. There was no name listed, only a blank space in the sender’s name category. Even more ominous was the subject line: ARMAGEDDON. That was it, ARMAGEDDON, in all caps, wh
ich seemed a bit dramatic and just the type of email you never open lest your computer spontaneously implode. The message itself was blank, whether because the toxic text had been filtered out or because the sender felt the subject heading said it all, I had no idea.
“ ‘Armageddon’? You get this thing, ‘Armageddon’ in your box too?” Garth looked over my shoulder for his answer before I could give it to him.
“Well I’ll be. We all got it,” Captain Jaynes confirmed. “In all of our email accounts. Personal mailboxes, business mailboxes, addresses that in no way should be linked. We all got this one email and nothing more, all day. ‘Armageddon.’ ”
We were all silent for about five seconds, our pale guests unaware that anything was amiss, and then Jeffree began crying. Actually no, crying implies one subtle tear down a somber cheek. Wailing is more apt. Wailing and praying at the same time. The sobs made the individual words difficult to decipher, but when he cried out “It’s the end of the world!” into Carlton Damon Carter’s shoulder, it was impossible not to hear him.
It was only then, as my cousin turned from the embarrassment of the engineer, that he seemed to remember our guests were even there.
“It appears we have a problem,” Booker Jaynes told Arthur Pym, who was before this moment marveling over an electric reading lamp in the corner by the couch, turning it off and on. Catching his attention, our captain continued. “We had planned on bringing our collection of snow monkeys and you back to civilization.”
“Yes, I am here. As are Hunka and Krakeer,” Pym said as the other two, apparently recognizing their names, revealed themselves, coming from behind the more average-heighted of their species. “We are here, and we are in your employ. We are ready to go.”
“Well see, that’s the thing,” I intervened. “There doesn’t seem to be anywhere to go to, at the moment. We’re trying to reach the rest of the world, and it doesn’t appear to be, you know, answering. We’re not going anywhere, at least not at the moment.”