by Alan Duff
So this unknowing kid said, bye, baby, to the white woman as he left her shop. Two days later several white men arrived and hauled Emmett out of his relatives' cabin to a car. He was found dead with an eye gouged out, a bullet in his stoved-in head.
Barely able to recognize her son in his horrifically beaten state, Emmett Till's mother decided on an open-casket funeral, so the world can see.
Now I had this newspaper page in my trembling hands, knowing I had to claim back my life: I owed it my children, to every unjustly murdered fourteen-year-old.
When I was fourteen myself I had daydreamed of riding around in an open-top car, blood-red with shiny chrome fittings and white upholstery, a trunk full of money, wind in my face and the air full of praise for Jess Hines, success story.
In my nightmares, though, the car wouldn't start, or it would break down in the middle of a street where crowds were about to call my name like churchgoers calling hallelujah to God. The beautiful white upholstery would be covered in shit, or smeared all over with blood coming inexplicably from my hand, so when I tried to wipe it, it only got worse.
I'd sense the vehicle being slowed by a dragging weight and look out back to see a nigger corpse roped to my new car, connected to it as if by an umbilical cord. Now, well into my adulthood, my eyes cleared and I saw the corpse was me, roped not to a fantasy car but to a bottle.
Selma, Alabama, couple years later. I'd fallen again, jumped a freight train, broke and broken again, riding with other nigger losers we all talked the same self-deluding promises how the next town we'd straighten up, get our shit together, the perfectly justifiable reasons we were down, wouldn't any man? We're niggers aren't we, with everything stacked against us?
Then she came back to me in a dream one night, as I sheltered in an abandoned building running with rats of feral and human kind.
I saw a little dog drowning in a river and I jumped in to save it. It stayed just out of my reach and kept disappearing, crying like a baby. We swept by scenery familiar, of my own growing up, past endless green seas of corn fields, dogs panting away summer heat beneath magnolia trees, always someone singing, the cool creek near our cluster of shacks, men drunk on liquor or the emotion they expressed in music, dusty roads, flies and meat going off.
Then we rounded a bend to sight of snow-capped mountains and forest quite unlike anything of my childhood. Ferns and towering trees with a menacing presence, formations written on the land by massive forces. Of course: New Zealand. The train journey to and from Two Lakes on the main trunk line.
Told the dog, we're in New Zealand. I think we'll be okay. Apparently we were for I managed to get a hold of him and he snuggled into me like a human and our wet journey seemed as if a new form of flight.
Next, the dog talked to me about how amazing the mountains were and was that snow we were seeing? I said, sure is. This is another country, kid, and we're in it.
For the next stretch I lost the talking dog, saw his frantic form swept swiftly toward rapids. Certain death. But in a moment the river turned to steaming waters boiling with heat, not current. Waiwera, I said. For some reason the boiling took away my fear for the dog. You'll be all right, boy. You'll see.
Sure enough, the dog changed to a child of about five, a cute little boy; we were high and dry on crusty white ground streaked yellow and smelling of sulphur.
The boy smiled at me. He looked like a quadroon. I said, what's your name? He said some Maori word. Asked did I know Lena? No, I don't know a Lena. Wait — of course I do. My memory, kid, what my drinking has done to it.
Looked where the boy pointed. A woman, completely naked, emerging from a warm pool. Smiling — at me? Lena?
Hello, Jess. Been a long time.
At first I wanted to explain why I'd fallen down the drinking mine-shaft, to tell of my anger at being humiliated, how I could not face a life of always being at the bottom hardly better off than my slave ancestors. Then she put finger to her lips to tell me don't say anything. Beckoned me to her and we kissed and I started to run fingers most gentle over her shoulders, her neck—
I woke up. A rat running over my legs.
But I'm thinking: this really is the last time, Jess, or you'll die. Or worse, a white cop will put false charges on you and a white judge will throw you in the pen. The starting rate is five years for niggers. See if you survive that, dwelling on how Whitey got you even as you ran from him.
And that dream wouldn't leave me. Took a bit to remember Lena's surname as it was Maori and from years ago. Might be I'd shut it out because it was her married name. Takahe, that's right.
I would write her a letter. Even if full of lies on what I'd done with my life since the war.
To get a reply from New Zealand was unbelievable. She remembered me! Inside the envelope two letters. The second from a son. His photograph — what a fine-looking boy he was. All this time, a son. I broke down and cried. With added guilt that my self-despair had cost me my two daughters.
Lena wrote in a very neat hand, her tone restrained.
The marriage survived the birth of my son, she told me. She spoke mostly about the boy — my son too! — how well he did at school, how musical he was, and what a special air he had about him.
I attribute it to you. In fact my life has stayed quite dull since our unforgettable two weeks together. Though bringing up children has been a joy, and not least our — she said it: our — son. The village gave him the name Yank. In the early days it meant something and of course felt like a knife in the heart to Henry. But we got used to it and it became just another name.
Your letter arrived as if from the grave. My God, Jess, I still can't believe I'm writing to you.
Nor me reading her words.
My son wrote a good letter, quite articulate for a youth. He must be getting a good education, I thought: I knew many whites and Maoris went to the same schools, that segregation there was largely economic.
I read both letters over and over till I could have recited them. Studied every aspect of my boy's features in the two photographs he sent, tried to get inside the mind behind those dark eyes. My heart sang and sang. My sober heart: I'd not touched a drink since I left Selma.
My God, I have a son. A New Zealand, part Maori son.
Lena did not say what her husband did when he found out. Not something any soldier would like of course. But if ever I got to meet and talk with the man, I'd tell him it's not as bad as white people denying your contribution to the war, their humiliation of your race. Tell him it was war and did any soldier not sleep with prostitutes, local women in the different European countries? New Zealand, for that matter.
But it would have been bad a married man coming home to another's child, no denying that. And sure I would have apologized, if just to respect his manhood.
She asked me not to send photos of myself as she had never raised the subject of his true fatherhood with the boy, not one word. He had been called Yank — an irony when, in the Civil War, Southerners called northerners damned Yankees. (In the Second World War, every American got the tag, as a compliment without the damned.) Lena said Yank had this romantic notion his father was a white John Wayne or Elvis Presley, and Negro was the last notion in his mind. Let him mature first, Lena asked.
John Wayne, the Hollywood star we coloreds laughed at for the movie stereotype he was, of superior white hero. Elvis, well he was a Southern boy and his musical roots were greatly inspired by black musicians. We loved him. But I sure as hell don't bear a resemblance to Mister Presley.
I had moved back to a Negro settlement called Piney Woods, on land granted to a Negro slave by his admiring white owner, title locked up in a trust so no one could take it from whomever of Negro descent wished to live there and pay rent. Lived right beside my mother who naturally was glad to see her son seemed to have conquered his booze demon.
Working on highway construction raised one of the same old Southern problems: Niggers just didn't get paid well.
But I wanted to se
nd my boy money. Maybe because in this country money speaks the loudest. Niggers kill for it. And certainly die from a lack of it. I wanted to impress the boy, so he'd think about one day coming over to meet — his daddy? His daddy.
While I was at it, I decided I should send some dollars off to my daughters in Biloxi . . . if I could track them down. Their mother had made less and less contact with the children's grandmother — my mother — and was sure to have moved several times. No choice. We're renters, usually. And desperate dollar-chasers.
How would I find some money?
Desperate people learn inventive ways to acquire the almighty greenback. And they don't have to be illegal, just a little shady. Got enough cash together to send to my daughters and to the son in New Zealand. Felt proud of myself, remembering the person not so far back in the past whose every dime went on his drinking habit.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
HADN'T SEEN HIM FOR THREE years, heard he'd been sentenced to prison. Then he turned up on my doorstep. Chud, the con.
Came home from work each evening to him sitting there, like some alien brute with his size, pumped up muscles in tight-fitting tee-shirt even in autumn. Tattoos on his face, neck, arms. Worst of all, attitude as if inked permanently into him: my place was his place. Like we were bonded for life and didn't owe any standards to each other.
He filled his day waking late, doing press-ups and stomach exercises and shadow-boxing for a good hour. Have to stay in shape, Yank, or they'll get me. They being members of his world, certainly not mine. He walked the streets, sussed out burg possies, his prison language for burglary possibilities. The Chud I'd known had never been a thief. Sometimes he got greedy with food from living where there wasn't certainty the kids would have any. But a thief? Never.
Found we had virtually nothing to talk about, from a lifetime of knowing each other's very souls. Chud didn't take hints about looking for a job; he had no notion of paying rent. His upbringing no excuse — he owed me more than this Chud I did not know.
When he started messing around with my guitar, the expensive equipment, he was on dicey territory. He was incapable of taking even the most obvious hint. And I noticed he looked more like his father, lapsed easily into the same mannerisms as Ted. How ironic, to grow into a man like the one you most hate.
Chud spent his unemployment money on beer and cigarettes, bought not one crumb of food. I had started to resent his presence, even dislike him. But how could I be like this with my best friend?
Came home one evening to hearing his amplified voice and discordant notes — Chud on my microphone and a stranger violating my guitar. They'd been drinking.
No, I don't want a drink. And please don't use that equipment again, it cost a lot of money and if you don't know what you're doing, you can wreck it.
Who are you? the stranger asked, tattooed snake slithering around his neck. The guy had triple blue dots under his right eye, a practised intimidating sneer.
Who the hell are you? I shot back.
Don't talk to my mates like that.
This was Chud. With his own tone at me. I told Chud, this is me, Yank.
Chud said, yeah, but you can't talk like that to my pal.
I said, it's my flat. And my music equipment.
He said, Yank? You better say sorry.
My best friend a picture of naked threat and menace. I could smell the booze on his breath. He could have been his father. His mother.
Now his pal sidled up, acted all hurt. He might even throw the first punch.
Physical coward that I am, I told them my father had sent money. How about I give you fifty quid to get your own flat?
Chud: How much did he send you?
A hundred.
They looked at each other, maybe weighing it up in booze. Fucken lowlifes.
Had to put up with them one more night, taking over my small pad drinking and getting more and more incoherent. Just like Chud's parents, the other guy's too no doubt. Sleepless hours listening to their snoring; Chud slumped in the armchair fully dressed, his pal on the arm.
Arranged to meet them in my lunch break, after I withdrew my coward's levy. No sooner the cash in Chud's hand when he said, count yourself lucky. It's a bad thing to insult a con. With a look that said, you'll keep.
Came home to missing records and they'd even emptied the fridge of food and two bottles of beer. My closest friend like a figure in a dream: walking further and further into the distance.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
HE'S BACK, THAT TROUBLED BOY, now of magnificent physique and so tall, taller than my Yank. With trouble written all over him. And what are those blue tattoo marks under each eye? They look ridiculous, like a child trying to impress. Spider web tattooed round his neck. If he thinks this is old Maori warrior markings, he's mistaken. Those tattoos were earned, their application endured.
If Chud is anything he's more like a slave who has surrendered himself. Not to others but to the loveless raising he had. But that's no excuse, not even for him, the boy I know like my own son. We all have to rise above adversity.
He's leaning against the bridge railing, has back to the sounds of kids below in the river, not for a moment the same happy, penny-diver kid I knew. This is a grown man oozing anger.
Hello, Chud. How are you, honey?
I step up to give him a kiss, but he pulls back. I turn the greeting to a handshake. His grip limp for such a powerful man; means something is being said here or something is gone. What do I say? Can hardly ask, when did you get out? We all know he graduated to prison for violence.
How long you back for? He shrugs. Staying at home? He nods. Caught up with Yank yet? His eyes say yes, but without a warm glow. I bet he was pleased to see you.
Just then his eyes meet mine.
No, he wasn't.
I'm quite shocked. My Yank . . . wasn't pleased to see you? Are you—
He wasn't. Ask him.
I watch him walk off, turn off down the dirt path to his parents' house. Walks like his stupid father, arms out playing Mister Tough Guy.
Barney tells me, acting out the movements, that Chud was a good football player. Boy had it all, he demonstrates: strong tackler, fast, good fend, sidestep, and up here plenty of brain power too, most important of all. But thumbs-down to any suggestion Chud would have made it to the top level. We all know why.
As if holding prison bars, Barney indicates Chud's certain destiny now. Clicks tongue at the waste of talent. A throat-cutting action to say Chud might take revenge, means the parents. He points at a hot pool, imitates a dead body, upraised fingers to say two. I nod yes, a strong possibility. A deserving fate too.
Where you off to, Lena?
Post office, to pay the bills. Want to walk with me?
I crook my arm as I've done for some years now, knowing he doesn't need it, it's only a gesture to say he's loved, to say he deserves respect. I am always afraid he'll give the show away one day and just grab and kiss me as a lover out in the open. But maybe we're such an unlikely pair to be an item we're above suspicion.
Funny thing, I don't fear discovery as much I used to. Yet I know it isn't Barney I want to live with, I'm stuck with Henry and perhaps Henry is stuck with me. Maybe I carry on with Barney to put some spice in my life, trying to confirm I am not a dull person living a dull life.
What happens when you want to break away from what you've been used to all your life? I did it once and look what happened. But who is the person I found back then, the woman Jess liberated? A good-time girl who went back into her shell and has never been seen since? (It can hardly count sleeping with a man psychologically impaired like Barney.) What is anyone in this life if not where and what they were born?
Lena, you know dwelling on such things only gets you mixed up.
I called Yank at work to ask what happened between him and his best mate. Got told why and understood. But I also understood Chud. Determined I'd run into him soon and see if we could have a heart to heart.
When they were little Yank and Chud would play-act as babies, make baby sounds, basic baby words, crawling, wailing. Started by Chud to, I think, claim back the innocence stolen from him.
Chud would act the baby part so well it bothered me. More than once I made excuse to interrupt this play-acting because he was too real.
Lena will hear you out, Chud. Hug you, make things right again with Yank, help you find a place of your own. Before you up and murder your parents one day.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
THE MORTAR SHELL EXPLOSION TOOK not just his brother's life but the memories leading up to the event. Now and then his mind would give back images, seeming to promise a sequence he could lay his old memory on. But always the pictures broke up and fell quickly away, like a dream just starting to mean something.
All those twenty years Barney did not know how he had lost his ability to speak. He did remember the extremely difficult cliff-face climb that had taken most of the day. A unit of five, under Captain Henry Takahe's command (and his idea), had gone up to silence a machine-gun and mortar nest inflicting heavy damage on the main division. Seven gruelling hours it took to scale the cliff; certain death waiting for just one mistake.
Not a hundred yards away the enemy had backs to the raiders. Closer, they counted eight mounted machine-guns and five mortar guns. Henry indicated the ratio — twenty men to five — with twice-splayed hands; even managed to convey by smile that the smaller number had advantage of surprise. This tiny Maori hit squad aching to do battle.
The Germans were talking and laughing, passing bottles of liquor between them, as five brown-skinned men far from their native soil slithered like serpents towards them.
Then Henry indicated all was on the line: follow my lead. Wordlessly he told them, soon, boys. Soon they are ours.
The sun disappears behind us, turning the enemy into silhouettes. Makes their talk and laughter so out of place, I get the thought: this is what a murderer does in civilian life. He wants solely and singularly to commit murder. No feeling could be more wonderful.