Gods Go Begging

by Alfredo Vea

  “You’re a lucky young man,” said the young doctor through his white mask. “The ceiling of your cell wasn’t high enough to allow for much of a drop, and the ligature that they used was much too thick. Your neck isn’t broken, but you almost suffocated to death.”

  “Did I drown in a flood, doctor?” asked Calvin in a hoarse, anguish-filled voice that was muffled even more by the mask. Each breath brought with it a stab of pain that ran across his chest and up the left side of his face.

  “I dreamed that I was drownin‘. I dreamed about a huge flood washin’ my people away. Then I seen my hill from way up above.”

  One of the nurses, a woman of African descent, pulled down her surgical mask and moved toward the head of the operating table. Calvin recoiled when he saw her up close. There were symmetrical scars burned into her cheeks and forehead. This woman had been in his dream. This woman had killed her own baby rather than see it suffer. The nurse calmed him by placing a dark index finger on the mask. She then swabbed the young man’s head with a cool cloth and smiled sweetly.

  “You’re gonna be all right. We just had to make a small cut to help you breathe. Your mama’s out in the waiting room. She’s been here all night. I think your brother’s out there, too. You’ll see them both in a few minutes. But first, let me tell you something. That wasn’t no dream, dear boy. That was death that you were seeing, but not your death … not exactly.”

  One of the white nurses turned to glance at the other.

  “It’s sad for a black boy to die—real sad—but it’s a tragedy if he dies when he’s just opened his eyes, when he’s just looked back to see who he is. Listen to me, baby, it was your dreams that were being lynched in that jail cell, and you were right there to witness it. I heard it was black boys that did this to you. May the good Lord have mercy on the dreamless.”

  Jesse’s car pulled off of Highway 101 at the San Francisco airport exit. He parked his car at the short-term parking lot and walked with Eddy Kazuso Oasa to the coffee shop nearest his gate. It was six o‘clock in the morning and neither had spoken a word during the ride. It was far too early for substantive conversation. Both men needed breakfast and a caffeine fix before even attempting to speak.

  “No chorizo and eggs at this place,” said Jesse as he perused the disappointing, plastic-encased menu. “No caldo de rez and no goddamn menudo, either.”

  There was nothing but Disneyland fare in both columns: pigs in a blanket and waffles with raspberry syrup and raisins.

  “No Moko Loko. No Spam and eggs,” moaned Eddy. “Damned haole food. Do you think he did it out of gratitude?”

  “I can only hope he did,” answered Jesse, pensively. “It’s always the same way, isn’t it, over and over again? We start out doing our jobs—sometimes hating the client, but doing our jobs. Then something happens. We stumble onto the humanity in even the worst people. Sometimes we find out that they’re more than simply not guilty, they’re innocent, like the supreme being.”

  “It wouldn’t happen,” answered Eddy, “if we didn’t do the job. I guess you’ve got to believe in the principle first. Somebody’s got to disbelieve the evidence. Shit, did I say that? It’s too damn early.”

  “For me, Eddy, it still boils down to one thing: Where in the courtroom do I want to sit? I can’t go sit with the prosecutor and the cops and the immense power of the state. I can’t sit with the bailiff, putting dark people, people like you and me, in and out of holding cells day in and day out.

  “I look around the courtroom and there’s this guy sitting there that everyone hates, and everyone believes him guilty before one shred of evidence is presented. There he is, disheveled, toothless, smelly, and inarticulate. He’s been accused of something horrible. Maybe he’s an old-time heroin addict, or maybe he’s a lost peasant from Guatemala or he’s a seventeen-year-old black kid who’s been stripped of his cultural memory. Next to him is an empty chair. I know where I belong.

  “I’ve got to sit with the fools, with the grunts. There’s only one chair for me to take. So I sit down and take his part, even someone like Bernard Skelley. If the prosecutor can get the evidence past me, then maybe my client did something. It’s the jury that has to decide that anyway, not you, not me. Did you ask Bernard why he sent us the warning?”

  “Yes,” said Eddy with a smirk. “He said that if a colored boy is going to get killed, it should be a white man who does it. How can mud kill mud? he said. Then he started running off at the mouth about the war that’s going to be fought here, a war to purify America. He said that white women have to be defended. He said a lot more than I wanted to hear. He always does.”

  “His brother Richard is certainly one staunch defender of women, isn’t he? It’s all bullshit.” Jesse laughed. “Bernard may believe all that supremacist garbage in the daytime, but late at night he knows what is really happening. I know that he did it because he could never thank us for what we did for him. He knows that without our brown asses in his corner, he’d be doing a life stretch up in Pelican Bay. He gave us Biscuit Boy’s life in repayment. That’s what he did. I don’t know about you, Eddy, but it’s the best fee I’ve ever gotten.”

  “To the Biscuit Boy.” Eddy smiled as he raised a tiny glass of expensive, transparent orange juice in tribute. Then, remembering the folded piece of paper in his jacket pocket, he reached for it and handed it to Jesse. As Jesse took it, the smile faded from Eddy’s face as he realized, once again, where the plane would be taking him this morning. The ticket for Montgomery was lodged in his jacket pocket. When his plane landed, he would be picking up a rental car and driving to the prison in Huntsville.

  Anvil Harp, the putative spouse of Princess Sabine Harp and the father of Little Reggie, would be waiting there for him. As the plane lifted off, Jesse would be making his way to the homeless encampment on Potrero Hill. Under constant pressure from Eddy, Mr. Homeless had reluctantly agreed to speak.

  “I got a call from Princess Sabine last night,” said Eddy. “Somehow she found out about my trip to Alabama. Boy, did that girl turn on the charm. She said that I was not to believe a single word that the pernicious beast Anvil Harp had to say. She pleaded with me not to go and speak with him.”

  “If she doesn’t want us to speak with him, we must be doing the right thing,” said Jesse, grimacing slightly as the food was placed on the table. It looked as plastic as the menu. He smiled at the waitress. It wasn’t her fault. Then a suddenly clear recollection of Princess Sabine’s home sent a chill down his spine. For the first time he realized that with the exception of Sabine and her crowded, stifling apartment, the entire world was being dragged, second by second, into the future.

  “It sounds like Miss Alabama is afraid of something.”

  “She’s terrified,” retorted Eddy.

  “Did you have a chance to visit Calvin last night?”

  “Yeah,” said Eddy, his mouth filled with a generic-tasting Spanish omelet that had the texture of cellophane. “He’ll be out of the hospital just in time for the trial. He’s a lucky kid. He’s finished Ralph Ellison and he’s reading James Baldwin now. The kid is reading a book every three days. That piece of paper is his latest book report.”

  Jesse unfolded the paper and began to read. With each word, Jesse’s smile grew larger and larger. Jesse read the last sentences aloud: “Me and my friends be always talking about being black and all, growin’ up on the mean streets and whatever. We rap about how bein black is hard. Then I read this book, I did not never know what black mean. Now I know I ain’t suffer. Other people before me suffer for me. We ain’t nothin‘, sellin’ drugs and doin’ dramas. The streets is mean ’cause we be on them.”

  “The boy is becoming a real person. Is he following your hand signals?” asked Jesse, his face beaming with pride.

  “He’s getting much better at that, too. Now he responds without even thinking. The jury will never see it. You’ve been pushing him hard, Jesse. The kid looks tired.”

  “There isn’t much time,
Eddy. You know as well as I do that the Biscuit Boy we saw that first evening, months ago, was dead meat on the witness stand. The jury would have convicted him for stuttering. This book report on The Invisible Man is amazing. Did you read it?”

  Eddy nodded, smiling. He had read it. There was a look of sadness in the face that surrounded his smile. Calvin Thibault had to stand accused of multiple murders in order to discover that an intelligent being lived within his body.

  “The last time I saw him, I asked him to do some supposing,” added Jesse. “I asked him to suppose what the world would be like today if the library at Alexandria, Egypt, hadn’t burned down. I gave him a book on the subject. I wonder if he’ll ever have an answer.”

  Anvil Harp wore trustee’s clothing that was cleaned, pressed, and heavily starched. There were razor-edged creases on the sleeves and on the pant legs. He walked smartly, making severe right angles at every turn. Every shirt button lined up with the buttons on his trousers. The Marine Corps loved men like him, and Anvil was a willing lover. If the corps hadn’t drummed him out years ago, he would be a master sergeant by now. He was heavyset, almost fat. His face was round, and despite his dark skin, his cheeks were red. He looked nothing like his son Reggie.

  After seven years inside, Anvil had finally been given trustee status. He had the run of the kitchen and the woodshop and the prison laundry. Now he could go to the commissary anytime he wanted. There was a swagger in his walk as he entered the interview room. He explained to Eddy as he sat down on his metal stool that his new status as a trustee allowed him to get one day’s credit for each day served—day for day, as the prisoners called it. It would cut his remaining time in half.

  “Shit, I could be a free man in eleven years.” He smiled. “But that ain’t what you come all this way to talk about, now is it? You come about beautiful Miss Sabine and Reggie, ain’t you? Well, let me say my piece and then you can leave me the fuck alone. Leave old Anvil to his eleven years, two months, and seventeen days. I own them years. At least they’re mine, ‘cause Little Reggie Harp ain’t mine. That misbegotten child sure ain’t no kin of mine. No sir.”

  There was no anger in his face, only a look of disgust. In the time it took to hang his head, then slowly raise it again, a gentler expression had settled in.

  “I don’t mean no disrespect to you, but I got some strong feelings about the subject of Sabine. All I do in here is think about it. All I can really say is that I loved that woman. I reckon I still love her. When it’s real good, I guess love can be just like a life sentence.” He laughed. “You might say that I done dedicated my whole life to her.”

  As abruptly as it had arrived, the smile disappeared from his face. Eddy noticed for the first time that Anvil was not aging well in prison. The background he had done on the prisoner stated that he was fifty-nine years old. He looked much older. Each look of concern brought a dark grid of wrinkles to his face.

  “Seven years ago I was convicted of murder in the first degree by the state of Alabama. Premeditated, deliberate, cold-blooded murder is what the judge called it, and that’s just what it was. Make no mistake about that. Ain’t that something? I ain’t never stole so much as a hubcap in my whole life and here I’m a convicted killer. Not just a murderer, but a murderer with—how did the judge say it?—an aggravated sentence and a malicious heart. You see, I went and killed me an old man, a real old man who already had one foot in the grave. That’s what I did.”

  The prisoner nodded to himself, then settled back into his chair to recount the familiar tale.

  “Seven years ago I got down my old M-1 carbine from the Korean War. I dusted it all off and cleaned it up to where it looked brand-new, spankin’ new. Then I went down to brother Angelo Butler’s gun store down on Maple Street and bought some high test bullets. They cost me a week’s pay.

  “Then I went out to the shootin’ range and zeroed in the sights. It felt real good to shoot—it’s been a long time since Inchon. Then I looked at the targets and policed up the brass, just like the old days in boot camp. Then, when I was all locked and loaded, I commenced to go lookin’ for that old bastard. That’s right, Mr. Eddy, I went hunting.”

  He leaned forward as if to whisper, though the strength of his voice remained the same. It was a hollow gesture of secrecy.

  “Now, I’m sure you know this here prison is full of innocent men. To hear them fools tell it, they was all screwed by the system, by their lawyers. But in my case, the jury went and did the right thing. You see, I’m the only guilty man in this place, because I’m the only honest man. I went out on purpose, looking for the enemy.

  “Well, it didn’t take long to find him. I just went to all the places that chillun and young‘uns go to. Sure as flies find shit, I found him at Mae’s Gravy Boat, this little café over on the south side of Selma. They got fried fish and okra in there. Mighty tasty, too. Mostly colored folk goes there. It’s a hangout. There he was in there all gussied up in a wrinkled, three-button suit and a flannel tie. He had a raggedy wig hat on his scalp that looked like a dozen black tarantulas had landed smack dab on his head.

  “And he was just soaked from head to toe with all that stinky aftershave that he be wearin‘. That old fool always did smell like a whore-house. Who on earth ever heard of a real man wearin’ makeup? I swear to God, he put foundation powder on his skin ’cause his face looked like a dry lake bed, like a road map of Nevada. It was Old Spice that he wore. I remember now. I hate that shit. I could always catch whiffs of it on Miss Sabine’s dresses.”

  Sadness flashed across his wide face as he inhaled the recollection of a soft white chemise, the memory of a petticoat.

  “Well, there he was, ugly as a stump—ugly as a frog, flirtin’ with all the pretty young waitresses and them high school girls that comes in all the time for a pork sandwich or a slice of pecan pie and a Cherry Coke. He’s carryin’ on, waving a fat wad of money in front of them and tellin’ them how they brings out the devil in him. Well, I walks into the Gravy Boat and called out his name.

  “I remember that my man Jackie Wilson was playing on the jukebox. It was ‘Lonely Teardrops.’ Jackie died too soon, you know. Well, anyway, I called out the old man’s name, and when he turned around I flipped off the safety and I pumped six rounds right into that sick smilin’ face of his. It’s a semi-automatic rifle, you see. But first, I waited one full second so that he could see what was bein’ done to him and just who it was that was doin’ it.

  “Shit, one minute he’s smilin’ like Judas Iscariot, and the next minute his face looked like one of them waffle things that white folks eat, all covered with jam, strawberry or maybe even raspberry. I’ve never had a waffle, but I like pancakes. Anyway, one of the cops said on the witness stand that they found his false teeth in the parking lot thirty yards from the café. They’d been blown clean out the window. His hairpiece landed in the chili warmer.”

  Anvil Harp placed both hands on the small shelf in front of him, then rose up slowly from the stool. Eddy began to ask a question, when Anvil raised his hand sternly to silence him. Now Anvil’s face was devoid of the trustee’s elation. Now his dark lips quivered with emotion as he spoke, his yellowed teeth flashing in and out of view, and his eyes opened impossibly wide.

  “Listen to me.” He began poking himself in the chest with the index finger of his right hand. “I been knowin’ Princess Sabine since the first time she ever looked in the mirror and liked what she seen. I’m the one she sent over to the grocery store to get them Kotex sanitary napkins. I been knowin’ Princess Sabine since the first day that she ever washed her feet and slapped on them high heels. It was me … I was there closing my eyes when she tried on her first brassiere.

  “I been seein’ every man that ever looked at her. I bad-mouthed ‘em and cursed ’em all. I was out there in the audience for every goddamn one of them beauty contests. You see, Mr. Eddy, I been lovin’ her all of my growed life and—shit—I ain’t never touched her … not once. Oh, I touched—held her hand
and such—but not in that special way. You understand….”

  Anvil winked while Eddy winced.

  “Now, mind you, I ain’t one of them sissy-queers-shit, we got a million of‘em in here. A meaner bunch of bitches and pillow fluffers you ain’t never seen. I sure ain’t one of that bunch. I’m all man. I wanted her. I ain’t never made love to her or even touch her breast, and the good Lord know that I dreamed about it every night. I damn near wore out my right hand and my dick daydreamin’ about Miss Sabine. I loved her even after she became … unnatural.”

  He was silent for a long moment, the discomfort filling his face.

  “She … got this taste for young boys.”

  Anvil Harp closed his eyes as he spoke the final syllables of the sentence.

  “They run her out of Alabama on account of it. They finally caught her with a twelve-year-old boy and stripped her of all of her beauty titles. That twelve-year-old was my youngest brother. She shoulda chose me. It shoulda been me instead.” He sobbed without tears. “I was just too old. But it weren’t her fault, Mr. Eddy. It weren’t her fault. She didn’t have no choice in it. After what happened, well, I went and enlisted for Korea. Ain’t there some kind of sayin’ about love and war?”

  “All’s fair,” said Eddy.

  Anvil’s right thumb was poking at his own chest. His voice dropped down until it was barely audible.

  “I asked her to marry me a thousand times, but she always said no. Mr. Eddy, there been only one growed man in that woman’s life, only one growed man has ever touched Princess Sabine Harp in that there special way, and I shot him dead in Mae’s Gravy Boat café. I would do it again today. She was born married to him.”

  Anvil used the sleeve of his trustee shirt to wipe away the mist that had formed in his red eyes. The starch and the stiffness of the fabric only irritated them further.

  “Was Princess Sabine sleeping with her son, Little Reggie?” asked Eddy.